Robert Butler - Hell

George turns to Hatcher. “Heh heh heh. You’ve got your disinformation all wrong there, Snatch.”

“That was the River Styx you came over on the boat.”

George puts on a you-poor-dumb-shit smirk. “The reports are clear. You see, we’re standing here in Heaven, and those boys inside that building over there are in Hell.”

“Look around,” Hatcher says. “Does this look like Heaven?”

George doesn’t move his eyes from Hatcher’s. “We’re searching now for the WMDs — Wings Made Divine — and we expect to find them soon.”

A man’s cries, the women’s cries, the explosion — louder this time — and George keeps his eyes on Hatcher, keeps the smirk fixed, and Hatcher feels a sharp hot burn on his forehead, his cheek — a splash of boiling liquid — and another — glowing red — and it’s falling on George too — a splashing of blood on his hair, his face, searing Hatcher and George — and the former president’s eyes widen, though he does not move a muscle. And then a small, flaming object plops onto George’s shoulder. It is a raggedly severed penis, smoking and glowing red, the flames dying at once. George moves his eyes very slightly to look at the object, and then he returns his eyes to Hatcher and waits. Soon the blood strips itself from the two men and coalesces in the air and the penis rises from George’s shoulder, and then the blood and the penis fly off to join the reassembling of the exploded man.

George’s smirk fades, and Hatcher knows the former president is realizing at last where he is. Then, after a long moment, George clears his throat. His voice is barely a whisper. “So this is where I am?”

“That’s right.”

George nods. “Have you seen my dad?”

“Yes.”

“And my mom?”

“I haven’t seen her.”

George nods again. “She’s probably in the other place.”

Hatcher holds his tongue.

“If she is here,” George says, “she’s going to find me and whip my ass. Heh heh heh.” This time the chuckle is small and sad.

Hatcher wants badly to move away from George now. But before he does, his journalist’s self makes him say, “I do the evening news here, Mr. President. When you get settled, stop by Broadcast Central and we can do an interview.”

George says, “I’m pretty much on my own here, right Hatch?”

“That’s right.”

George nods. “Thanks for asking, but I don’t think I’d know what to say.”

Hatcher mutters a good-bye and moves quickly up the street, thinking about the hell of not knowing who you are and the hell of suddenly knowing.

The Parkway is stalled, dense with naked bodies, their private parts jammed into the private parts of whatever body is pressed against them, wedged there and flaming. Nighttime is the wrong time for this journey, Hatcher realizes.

And the sadness of George Bush and the anguish of the jihadists and the priapic pain of the crowd before him turn Hatcher back toward his own neighborhood: Hatcher McCord understands that sometimes the time is right for a particular news story, and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes larger issues present themselves. He is, after all, spending eternity in the same place as George W. Bush. Who can tell him why? George certainly has refreshed this question, and in spite of the din of voices all around Hatcher and the sucking sounds and the fleshy squeegee rubbing sounds, when his voice-over pauses for dramatic effect, Hatcher’s head goes utterly silent for a long moment. Then: Naomi can. Wife number three. And Deborah. Wife number two. And Mary Ellen. Wife number one. They all would have thoughts on the subject of why he’s here. He might deny the reliability of these sources, but obviously he didn’t get it right, either. Here he is forever with Osama and George and all the rest. And with Naomi, surely. And Deborah. And Mary Ellen.

Surely these women are somewhere in town as well, or soon will be. If Hatcher McCord approaches the Big Why? as if it were a news story — and it is, in a certain way — the instinct he has to track down his former wives is a natural one, journalistically. But by now he knows this instinct in himself as something else: seek the fresh torture. Yes, he will try to find his ex-wives. He is the very model of an intrepid newsman. But also he is driven to suffer. There is a swelling of cheesy music in Hatcher’s head, and he is glad the voice-over is finished. That voice was right, however. He squares his shoulders. Okay, Old Scratch. You’ve got some new thing in mind for me. Scratch the Hatch. Hatch the Scratch. But fuckitfuckitfuckitfuckit, I’m going home to Anne first. He squeezes into the near margin of the crowd, his back to all the naked suffering, and he creeps off, thinking that Satan even wants this, of course, for him to go to Anne, old torture before fresh.

Anne is naked and whole in their bed in the dark, the TV and the hanging, bare, low-watt lightbulb both turned off, and she looks up at Hatcher as he crosses to her, her eyes so dark they register as light in the lesser dark of the room. As soon as he sees her, he is wanting her, wanting to touch her and finally finally die with her, but with the step before the step before the last step, he thinks how he is wanting her, wanting to touch her, and wanting finally finally to die with her but how this always goes wrong, and with the step before the last step he thinks how thinking about how the wanting her, wanting to touch her and wanting finally finally to die with her is often the very thing that makes it go wrong, and with the last step all he is doing is thinking about thinking about wanting her. And his body is no longer wanting her.

He stands there. She lies there. They look at each other.

“It went away,” she says.

“Yes,” he says.

Her eyes are so beautiful, he thinks.

“For me too,” she says.

“Yet again,” he says.

“I was in my mortal life a woman of strong will,” she says.

“Yes.”

“And you were a powerful man.”

“So I thought.”

“You still are.”

“No. Even on earth, I observed power. I spoke of it. Merely that. My own power was celebrity.”

“That is great power.”

“Only an illusion of power.”

“We are ourselves illusions now, forever.”

“And even those who had true power in life,” Hatcher says, “it was in a narrow alley and for a passing moment. They’re all here now, I think. All of them.”

“But I remember what it feels like, to have a strong will.”

Hatcher says, “What did it get you, though, my darling Anne. Look at how it ended. Henry’s will was even stronger, and yet even he could never get what he wanted, and now he’s in Hell like everyone else.”

She closes her eyes.

Hatcher squeezes at his forehead. He himself has brought up Henry. “Why did I say that?”

“Because you are powerless not to,” she says.

But her voice is soft, and Hatcher says, “You’re not angry.”

She thinks on this. She opens her eyes. “That’s true.”

“And I’m not jealous, even having brought up the king.”

Anne rises onto an elbow. “Render thyself naked now, Lord Hatcher, and come lie beside me. Quickly.”

He throws off his shirt and his pants, working his way down toward merely skin.

“No thinking,” Anne says. “Look me in the eyes.”

He does. He does. And he is naked and he is beside her.

Tonight the mattress is gravelly hard. He ignores this.

They have gotten this far before.