Soon enough Scrivener scrambled out of the pile, brushing himself off. He was a small, balding, jaunty little man.
“I’m Scrivener!” he cried. “You found out it was a mistake, eh? I told them I wasn’t dead when they first brought me here. That Grim Reaper of yours doesn’t do much listening, does he? Just keeps grinning that great big idiotic grin. Plucked me away just like that. I’ve a good mind to complain to someone in authority.”
“Listen to me,” Azzie said. “You’re lucky the mistake was found at all. If you begin litigation, they’ll put you in a holding tank until your case can be heard. That could take a century or two. Do you know what our holding tanks are like?”
Scrivener shook his head, wide-eyed.
“They’re so bad,” Azzie said, “that they even contravene infernal law.”
Scrivener seemed impressed. “I guess I’m lucky to be getting out at all. Thanks for the tip. Are you a lawyer?”
“Not by training,” Azzie said. “But all of us down here have a little lawyer in us. Come on, let’s get you back home.”
“I’ve a feeling I have a few problems at home,” Scrivener said hesitantly.
“That’s what life is,” Azzie continued. “Problems. Be glad you have problems to worry about. When you come down here to stay, you’ll have nothing to worry about. Whatever’s happening to you just goes on and on.”
“I won’t be back,” Scrivener said.
Azzie wanted to ask him if he wanted to bet on it, but decided that it wouldn’t be appropriate under the circumstances.
“We’ll have to wipe your memory of this experience,” he told Scrivener. ‘You understand we can’t have you fellows going back to Earth and telling a lot of stories.”
“Fine with me,” Scrivener said. “Nothing here I want to remember, anyhow. Although earlier, in Purgatory, I met this blond succubus – ”
“Save it,” Azzie growled, grabbing Scrivener by the arm and steering him to the gate in the wall that leads to other parts of Hell and, eventually, to everywhere else and vice versa.
Chapter 2
Azzie and Scrivener proceeded through the iron gate in the iron wall and up the spiraling road that leads through the outer suburbs of Purgatory, a region composed of great crosshatched depths and startling heights exactly as Fuseli drew it. They trudged along, demon and man, and the way was easy, for easy are the roads of Hell, but it was also boring, because Hell is the state of not being amused.
And after a while Scrivener said, “Is it much farther?”
“I’m not sure,” Azzie confessed. “I’m new in this sector. In fact, I shouldn’t be here at all.”
“Just like me,” Scrivener said. “Just because I fall into a corpselike coma from time to time is no reason for your Grim Reaper fellow to grab me up without making proper tests. It was slipshod, I tell you. Why shouldn’t you be here?”
“I was intended for better things,” Azzie said. “I got good grades in Thaumaturgy College. Finished in the top three in my class.”
He failed to tell Scrivener that all of his class except three had wiped out when a sudden infestation of good blew in from the south, freak metaphysical weather that killed all but Azzie and two others, who seemed to have a natural immunity against good halations. And then there had been the poker game.
“So why are you here?” Scrivener asked.
“I’m working off a gambling debt,” Azzie said. “I couldn’t pay up, so I had to serve time.” He hesitated, then said, “I like to gamble.”
“Me too,” Scrivener said, with what sounded like an air of regret.
They walked for a while in silence. Then Scrivener said, “What’s going to happen to me now?”
“We’re going to insert you back into your body.”
“Will I be all right? Some people wake up from the dead and are all funny, so I’ve heard.”
“I’ll be around to look out for you. I’ll stay until I’m sure you’re all right.”
“That’s good to hear,” Scrivener said. He walked for a while in silence, then said, “But of course, when I wake up I won’t know you’re there, will I?”