CHAPTER FOUR

Clara had begun to wonder how time passed in Hell. To her, it had felt as though they had been drifting down the river for about an hour, but her watch was being very stubborn and hadn't changed time since she'd first thought to look at it. She would have checked her phone too, but it hadn't made the trip apparently. She had read enough science fiction to hypothesize that perhaps time didn't move at all down here, or at least differently. She'd briefly wondered how time could not pass here and still pass up on Earth, but ultimately, she decided that places like this could easily operate outside her normal and, admittedly, not very deep understanding of time and relativity. She was also aware that these thoughts were nothing more than a reason for her to distract her mind from thinking about the fact that she was traveling through Hell on a river of blood on a boat guided by a skeletal ferryman on a journey to find her biological father who was supposed to be dead. She was also fine with this.

Had it been an option, Clara would have preferred to distract herself by getting to know her new traveling companions, but they all had little to say. Gabe had tried multiple times to initiate conversation with them, but they were all relentlessly tight-lipped. Well, except for Marie, who stood at the front of the boat, imitating a stereotypical sea captain and giving orders that the skeleton simply ignored. Clara couldn't decide if the woman was just trying to distract her mind as Clara was in order to keep from losing her sanity or if she had already gone insane. Either way, it had lost its novelty after mere moments.

Glenn continued to seem as remarkably calm as he'd been since the beginning. He sat with his legs and back perfectly straight and his arms folded tightly, refusing to say a word. For much of the time, his eyes had been closed and, initially, Clara thought he may actually have fallen asleep. However, after careful examination, she'd noted that he wasn't quite fully closing them, but instead watching everything as inconspicuously as possible. Occasionally, one or both eyes would shoot open and investigate something, before settling back into their resting place. It was obvious that he was used to being on his guard at all times. Clara had narrowed down his likely professions to only a handful, but hadn't yet determined exactly what he was most likely to be; she was waiting on more information. There was one thing about him she knew for sure though: he was easily one of the most attractive men she had ever seen. Physically, he was almost too perfect, as though he had been manufactured to be the most impressive male specimen of all time. Perhaps if she wasn't already in a very happy relationship and, more importantly, if she were interested in men, she might have been attracted to him. In fact, her girlfriend, Alex, would have hated Glenn, no doubt constantly stating how he just looked too perfect and that you just couldn't trust someone like that. It didn't matter though, because Glenn's personality definitely didn't seem to match his looks in terms of attractiveness. Marie didn't seem to be drawn to his beauty either though that might simply be because she was too busy with her captain duties to spare him a look. Anita, however, seemed unable to escape his good looks.

Anita had spent most of the trip silently staring at the horrible things happening on the shores around them. She seemed mesmerized by them, as though she were both afraid of and drawn to them. The only times that she peeled her eyes away from a business man being shredded to pieces by razor-sharp hundred dollar bills was when she would steal a glance at Glenn. She seemed to be studying his face, but never spent too long watching him because her face soon would flush. She would have to pinch her leg to break herself from the spell and would then turn her attention back to the shore. Anita seemed to have some kind of deep-seated issues that really needed to be worked on. Clara felt slightly guilty because she mainly thought about this in terms of how it might slow her and the others down.

In front of her, Miller appeared to be quiet for a very different reason. His face had gone pale almost immediately after the boat ride began and he was clinging to the sides of the boat so hard that his fingernails were digging up wood. At first, Clara thought maybe he was afraid of boats, or couldn't swim but, on closer inspection, he appeared to simply be seasick. So far, he had managed to suppress any projection of this, but if their ride didn't end soon, Clara didn't have high hopes that he'd be able to contain it much longer.

She continued to watch them all until Gabe finally made his way to her. He awkwardly shifted his way past everyone else to the back of the boat and seated himself next to Clara. The seats were not particularly wide, so this forced them to sit uncomfortably close. She decided to let him speak first, but this resulted in an awkward silence. Finally, he started. “So, uh, nice friend you got here.”

“What?” asked Clara. She had no clue what he was talking about. He pointed his thumb over his shoulder, toward the skeleton behind her. “Ah. Well, I suppose. He's not much on conversation though.”

“No one here is,” he grumbled. “Please don't give me the silent treatment too. We're on a freaking mission from Satan and no one has anything to say?”

He looked extremely frustrated. “To be fair, it is an awful lot to take in,” she responded.

“Yeah, I get that, but we're still stuck here together for now. It wouldn't hurt to get to know each other and speak up a bit, y'know?”

“Would you prefer everyone be more like her?” asked Clara, nodding her head in the direction of Marie, who was yelling something about how they needed to turn hard to starboard, though she seemed to not actually know what that meant as she was pointing to the left. Either way, their actual captain paid her no mind.

Gabe laughed at this. “No, I guess not. One of her is enough. But at least she's moving. The others are moving so little, they might as well actually be dead.” As if on cue, this was the exact moment Miller finally lost control and he threw up violently into the river. For a brief moment, there was a brownish-yellow color added to the red of the river.

“There you go,” said Clara with a slight smile. “Movement.”

Gabe laughed again. “Not quite what I had in mind, but it'll do.” They both laughed a little, causing Miller to shoot them death glares before he was forced to return to hanging his head over the boat.

Clara felt bad for Gabe. He was trying so hard to be nice and create some kind of connection between this group of total strangers, to bring some sense of normalcy to a situation that was anything but. She decided to assist him in his goal. To start, she reached a hand out toward him and said, “I''m Clara.”

Gabe looked at her, slightly confused. “Yeah, I know. We all know everyone's names already.”

“True,” admitted Clara. “But none of us have really, officially met yet. I'm trying to introduce myself.”

He smiled at this and awkwardly pulled his arm out from between the two of them where it had been trapped thanks to the small seat and and grasped her hand with a firm shake. “Nice to meet you, Clara. My name is Gabe.”

“So what's your story, Gabe? Tell me the twisted tale that is the life of Gabriel, er, Last-Name-Still-Forthcoming.”

Gabe laughed yet again. It was an easy, comfortable laugh that sounded like it had been used often in a happy life. “Oops, guess you're right. Full name is Gabriel Halta. Sorry 'bout that.”

“Well, if you're sorry, I guess I have to be too because I didn't tell you my last name,” admitted Clara. “I'm Clara Green. Depending on how embarrassing we want to get, we can go with middle names too. In which case, and I kid you not, this is the truth, my name is Clara Moose Green.”

There was more laughter following this. Clara had expected that. What she hadn't expected was the source. Though Gabe had laughed, it was actually Glenn that was laughing the loudest.

“Oh ho, so the pretty boy has human emotions too?” she said with feigned sarcasm.

“Of course I do,” he answered with a shrug. “I am human after all. Just perhaps a little less human than you. If he was bothering to listen, even our skinless ferryman here would have laughed at something that ridiculous.”

“Hey, there's a really sweet story behind that name,” countered Clara. She had hoped to lighten the mood, but hadn't expected Glenn to get involved and he was already being impressively grating.

“I'm sure there is. Something really amazing must have happened for your parents to decide it was worth it to torture your for you entire life with the name Moose.”

“Hey!” jumped in Gabe, her hero to the rescue. “No need to be rude, man.” Glenn feigned terror and casually folded his arms again. Gabe looked back at Clara and said, “Don't worry about that asshole. I think it's a pretty cool middle name. Moose is actually the name of one of my favorite comic book characters.”

Miller managed to drag his head back into the boat at this. “You're not talking about that brain-damaged football player from Archie, are you?”

This angered Gabe. “He's not brain-damaged, he's dyslexic! And he does a lot more than just football; he plays pretty much all the sports!” Miller threw his hands up in defeat and escaped the conversation by letting loose another stream into the stream.

Clara had grown up reading her father's old Archie comics that he kept in the basement, so she was well aware of who Moose (AKA Marmaduke Merton Matowski Mason) was. Honestly, he was a good fit for Gabe. While physically Moose was more of a match for Miller, Gabe seemed to have the same single-minded desire to help others whenever possible that Moose did. He wanted to be able to save everyone and tried not to worry too much about the details. It was perhaps too narrow a worldview to hold when one was a taking a jaunt through Hell, but Clara respected him for it and it was appropriate. After all, Gabe did seem something like a comic book character brought to life.

“Ahoy, mateys!” yelled Marie from the front of the boat. “We can't be havin' dissent amongst the crew like this! If ye' got bones to pick between yerselves, settle it with dice and not fists and do it on yer own time! But for now, get yer hands on the rigging, we a got a new world to explore!” Clara and Gabe looked at each other and chuckled. Glenn sighed deeply. Even Anita looked up at Marie, deeply confused.

“They can make fun of us all they want,” started Clara, “but at least we know we'll always have someone crazier on this trip.”

Gabe nodded. “Aww, she's just trying to have a good time. To make something decent out of a bad situation. I can respect that.” Clara hoped he was right and that Marie wasn't just nutty. She wasn't anticipating this to be an easy trip and they were going to have enough trouble working together. Having someone that was legitimately unhinged along certainly wouldn't make it any easier. Things settled into silence once again, so Clara decided to go back to her original goal and get to know Gabe.

“You're a surprisingly optimistic guy,” she said to him. “Especially given our situation. How did you end up as this shining beacon of goodness and positivity?” She had hoped Gabe would laugh or blush at this, but instead it almost seemed to make him uncomfortable. Sometimes Clara could be a bit more blunt than she intended. Alex liked to call it her “best, worst character trait.”

He rubbed the back of his head, trying to come up with an answer. “Um, I don't know if I would consider myself all that. I just try and do good, y'know?”

“No offense, and I know I'm going a bit far here for having just met you, but it seems to go a little beyond that. You seemed almost desperate to save the people in those hells even after you realized you couldn't. What was up with that?”

Gabe looked irritated now. “See, your attitude is exactly why I do that.” Now Clara was confused. “People are so jaded these days. It shouldn't seem odd that I just want to help people, especially people in such a bad situation. The fact that all of you looked at me like a crazy person just for trying to help, that's the real problem.”

Clara was completely caught off guard by this. She didn't totally agree with him, but she felt bad nonetheless. “I'm just saying that, given our particular situation, there doesn't seem to be much point in exhausting yourself by doing that kind of stuff. It's like Satan said, even if you could rescue them, these are all the worst of people down here. Why save them?”

Gabe was becoming incensed now. “So we should just trust the word of the freaking Devil? The same guy who regularly takes peoples' souls, forcing them to be trapped down in Hell too, in exchange for removing the cancer the from their child and other such things? How do we know he's telling the truth?! How do we know that one of the people I tried to help isn't that father that sold his soul to help someone else?!”

Clara had to admit, he had her there. Her stubbornness rose up in her defense though. “Those are just stories, we don't know if he actually does that,” she said.

“There's a lot of things we don't know, Clara!” he retaliated. “And we only learn by actually exploring that unknown. Everyone deserves a chance to be saved, to become something better. I just want to give people that chance. For all you know, all this time suffering down here could have changed them, made them see the error of their ways.”

“You're naive,” chimed in Glenn. “Things don't work like that. Sounds like you read too many comics as a kid.”

Gabe shifted in his seat to direct his rage at Glenn. It gave Clara the perfect angle to see all the hairs on his neck that seemed to be sticking straight out. “I didn't stop as a kid. I still read them, as many as I can afford, every damn Wednesday.” Glenn groaned and rolled his eyes. “Seems like you could stand to read more of them. My parents started me on comics early. By five, I had read nearly half the run of Fantastic Four and you know what they all showed me? They showed me the best that people could be. They weren't even real people, but they could still be inspirations for us and they inspired me. My parents embraced it too, knowing that those fictional characters were a symbol for something better and that they could teach me something.”

“Sounds like you had terrible parents,” said Glenn, not even bothering to look at Gabe. Without hesitation, Gabe's fist flew toward Glenn. This had all gone much farther south than Clara could have ever imagined. She tried to grab Gabe's arms, but was too slow. Glenn, however, was not and managed to grab the fist from the air and thrust it down onto one of the seats, drawing a cry of pain from Gabe. “See, that's the problem with symbols; they're just set dressing to give someone a vague idea of where to go. They're the thing on the wall or your uniform that reminds you of your general purpose, but doesn't actually help you achieve anything.” He let the hand go and and Gabe pulled back to nurse his wounded knuckles. “If you really want to accomplish something, you have to figure out your own, specific reason and do it. You can't just throw yourself under some meaningless banner or, worse, fictional character and say that you agree with them. You don't get to be them, just you, for better or worse.” Glenn looked him up and down. “In your case, much farther on the worse end.”

“Screw you,” said Gabe. “That's why they're ideals. We may not ever hit them, but we can strive for them. I may not be able to be Superman, but I can do my best to emulate him. There's nothing wrong with trying to help people.”

“There is something wrong with the way you go about it,” stated Glenn. “Pull a rapist out of Hell with you? Yeah, that's a big help. World really wants him back. What do you do to 'help' up top, huh?”

“Whatever I can. I've been helping in soup kitchens since I could get my parents to bring me and...” But Glenn stopped him there.

“Oh, yes, wonderful. Soup Kitchens. Got to help feed those homeless people so that they can have the strength to get back out there and mug someone with a broken bottle for their drug money. Great service you provide there, Captain America.” Gabe's fist were balled up again, his knuckles turning an unhealthy white as he squeezed them tightly. Miller was watching with one eye over the edge of the boat and Anita was practically shaking as she watched the whole thing. Marie stared straight ahead, but had ceased calling out her nonsensical orders. Clara had to figure out a way to stop this before it got worse, but had no idea where to begin.

Luckily, she got some help from their guide. There was a series of clattering, scraping sounds as bones clacked together and shifted as the ferryman lifted his arm, pointing ahead. For the first time, it spoke as well. “There,” it rasped. Thankfully, it was enough to draw everyone's attention, quickly dispelling the tension that had filled the boat.

“Land ahoy, mates!” yelled Marie. “It's been a long journey and ye daft fools seem to have gotten a case o' the cabin fever, but we've reached the New Land, so get off yer rumps and get this tub ready for anchoring! Let's see what this place has to offer up for...” Thunk. Marie didn't finish her sentence due to the spear that had suddenly lodged itself in her shoulder. Clara was surprised at how fast it had been. Marie had literally been fine one second, and the next there was a spear so far in her that it was coming out the other side, like it had always been there. For the briefest of moments, time slowed to a crawl. Clara and Anita just sat there, but Gabe was lunging towards Marie already, shouting something. Miller lifted his head up, whipping it around and trying to figure out what was going on. Glenn had spun toward the shore, scanning the horizon. Clara caught a red glint as his new gun materialized in his hand.

Then, just like that, everything returned to normal speed, just in time for Marie to limply fall back into the “water” and begin drifting downstream. The skeleton steered on, unperturbed, and all Clara could think was, Oh god, we fucked it up already.