COFFEE BREAK

Hell didn’t have to freeze over; it was already icy cold in places, and Fleming was as glad to get in out of it as he was to get out of the roaring flames in other regions. The windows of the café had glowed warmly to him across frigid expanses of white tiled floors with drains to collect the rivers of blood. Now, here he was. Bells tinkled when he opened the door.

Chani looked over from behind the counter; after a moment to recognize his cold-blackened face she smiled and waved. Fleming grew warmer. Chani’s cat Bast looked toward him also. The black cat had liked to ride on Chani’s shoulder in life; now it was fused there, inseparable. Her punishment for loving animals but not the Son. But like some punishments here, it was actually in Chani’s favor. She had loved Bast dearly and now could have him with her through eternity. Though all animals automatically went to Hell, that didn’t guarantee that pets and their owners were reunited in the after world.

Fleming took a vacant stool, the red vinyl sighing under his weight. “Man,” he breathed.

“It’s been a while, Flem,” said Chani. “Espresso?”

She remembered him so well. It felt good. You could still feel good like this, in little ways, in Hell. “You got it. How you been?”

“Bored.” Wasn’t that the way? Chani was forever warm in here, never in cold or in flames, always with people with whom to chat. But that was her curse. In life she had been a traveler. Here, she not only never went outside but never even came out from behind the counter. “Where you been to? Someplace new?” Her back was to him as she worked.

“I found a jungle. A lot of animals there, and native-type people. Aborigines. Neanderthals. It was interesting. They didn’t seem to be suffering too much. Diseased and everything, but...” He shrugged. “I did see hunting parties after them, though. One of those chased me out.”

“Bastards.”

Fleming glanced over at a Neanderthal who sat at the end of the counter, in fact. In his loincloth, he was huddled over a hot chocolate. Born before the birth of the Son, the only gate to salvation, he was eternally damned. His heavy brow was forlorn.

At least he could come in here for a hot chocolate. In fiery regions there were far-spaced bars where you could get a beer, ice cream parlors floating in lakes of magma. The Father, in His mercy, gave the damned breaks. Once a year, every damned soul could stop in one such establishment for one hour. It became the anchor for sanity, the reason to trudge on rather than give up and fall and suffer in one spot for all time. It was a place to draw those tiny moments of pleasure. But even that was a punishment. The punishment was experiencing the contrast of pleasure, in a brief, teasing taste. The punishment was having to leave.

Fleming glanced elsewhere about him as his face slowly reverted to its normal color and shape...without pain. Inside these establishments was the only place one could regenerate painlessly. Normally, regenerating from one’s mutilations was more agonizing than receiving them, and much slower. Once Fleming had been overpowered by a gang of drawling Angels in white hoods, who had tied him up and attached a number of hand grenades to him. Reforming after that had been the worst suffering Fleming had experienced in his twelve years in Hell.

At a corner table gazing out the great window was a man with no arms, the stumps closed now and slowly lengthening. He drank tea through a straw. Oriental; shaven head and a robe. Had to be a Buddhist monk. At his feet was a wicker basket with four babies in it. They were healing also, all dozing. He must have found them and collected them up, carried them in here on his back for some fleeting peace. Carved or tattooed on them all were the words found on every unbaptized infant or child: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”

Fleming looked back around as Chani set his espresso before him. The aroma made him want to cry. He sipped it without waiting for it to cool; extremes of temperature were now second nature to him. He wanted to drink it quickly so he could have more. “Mmm,” he moaned.

“Hungry?”

“Everything you have for breakfast. I want a taste of it all. Pancakes, eggs, sausages, home fries...”

“Ed,” Chani called over her shoulder. “Barnyard.” She smiled at Fleming, shook a cigarette out of a pack from her apron. She lit it for him while his eyes wandered to a TV up near the ceiling behind the counter. Teasing taste of the upper world. Not some evangelical program to lecture and berate his unsalvageable soul; you could see them on TVs everywhere in Hell, hanging from trees and nests of barbed wire. Here, a sitcom played. Fleming didn’t recognize any of these new actors. It didn’t matter. He ached to be with them. To have sex with that pretty young actress. And most of all, to warn them. They were so dangerously oblivious...

“You weren’t here last year,” Chani noted.

He returned his attention to her. “Sorry. Too far away. I stopped in a Chinese restaurant. Had me a Zombie. A Zombie for a zombie.”

“That’s okay.” She lowered her eyes. “So many other places to explore, any way. Why always go to the same rest stop?”

“Well,” he said, feeling guilty, “this is my favorite one.” He meant it.

“Thanks,” she said, smiling sadly, reaching up absently to scratch Bast under the jaw.

“Hey, at least you get to explore TV...see the world. Anybody famous die we might be seeing?”

“That serial killer they executed, the one who used to dress up like a clown? He came in here last year. Ate two Barnyard breakfasts. Be careful for his type, Flem; they go around hunting their own kind, folks like you and me. It’s a field day for them. As if the Angels weren’t bad enough.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got a guardian angel.” Fleming held his coat open to show her the automatic pistol he wore in a holster. “Got it off an Angel I managed to get away from. I messed that goon up good...not that it hurt him any, but it incapacitated him so I could run. This thing’s a beauty...never runs out of ammo.”

“Neat.”

The Angels were people who had died in the good graces of the Father. Hell was the chosen Heaven for many Angels, who spent their eternity hunting Demons like Fleming, torturing them when they found them. Raping women. For some Angels, this was more entertaining than the replicas of Disney World and Las Vegas up in Heaven. Of course, they could always go up there and come back here as their moods changed, as they grew bored. No limitations for Angels.

On the specials blackboard behind Chani she had written at the top: “We’re No Angels!” Fleming hoped none ever came storming in here and saw that. Once she had mouthed off to an Angel, a visiting minister, who had chopped Bast off her shoulders with his sword and taken the cat away with him, tossing him into a mile-deep ravine. It had taken months for Bast to return to Chani and pull his sad body up to his perch by her head, there to blend again.

Breakfast came. Chani laughed at the amount of salt Fleming shook across the expanse of fried food. “That stuff’ll kill ya,” she told him.

Sipping his orange juice, he smiled up at her. God...what he wouldn’t give to vault over the counter top and hold her. Make love with her on her side, standing up if they had to. But he would be repelled violently from her floor, and she from his. Magnets of the same pole.

Oh, the damned could have sex. In the flames. On the frigid tiles. And he did. Bleeding, burnt. Some women he met again, some never. But they were in too much agony to find real comfort or release in their clinches. Maybe it was because he couldn’t have Chani that he wanted her. Maybe it was seeing a woman who could still smile. Or maybe it was her smile, in particular.

She had been an environmental activist, besides being an animal lover and a Jew. She had believed in Gaia; that the Earth was like a living, breathing God itself. Ohh...big mistake. On the smooth forehead of her otherwise unmarked pretty face were tattooed the words: “Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

They couldn’t mar her prettiness. It wasn’t truly flesh, after all, but the tangible image of her spirit. And how he wished to press the lips of his spirit to hers. And yet he was shy. Of her, of the others around. And there was so little time. So very little time...

Then back to eternity.

Machinegun chatter outside. Screams. Fleming calmly checked over his shoulder. He saw a man slam up against the glass, smearing the blood from the holes in his face as he slid down the surface. Robed, hooded figures came into view, pulled him away. Fleming heard a chainsaw revving up. More screams. Fleming drained the last of his espresso.

“One more?” asked Chani.

“I got time?”

She looked to a wall clock. “Ten minutes, about. You came in at quarter to eight.”

“Eight at night?”

“Yes.”

Only ten minutes left, and yet now Chani was called away from him to tend to another customer down the counter. Fleming was bitter and agonized. He was used to the cold he’d just braved for eight months to get back here. The mutilations, the disease. But it had been a long time since he had had to feel this pain.

When she came back he would take her hand atop the counter, he decided. Squeeze it. He could do that, at least. Link his fingers through hers. Maybe then lean forward and kiss her. Or if not that much, at least he would have broken the ice for next time...

She returned just as he drained his last black coffee. He didn’t have to glance at the clock; he felt the magnetic pull already rising up, like a current, beginning to lightly tug him toward the door. He could resist another minute only...

“Well,” Chani sighed. “Hope you liked it. No tip?”

“Put it on my tab.”

“See you in another couple years?”

“I’ll see you one year from today.”

“Oh come on, you don’t have to do that. There are so many other places to see. It’s something to do, isn’t it? To look around? Even at Hell.” It was big enough, after all. Much, much bigger than Heaven, with its small and elite population.

“There’s something to be said for familiarity, too,” he replied. “Comfort...”

“I guess.”

Oh, this was too intense a pain. His body was accustomed to the horrors beyond this jingling door. Humans were so adaptable. Hadn’t he once read that children had still played while imprisoned in Auschwitz? Those children had since told him that in person, since so many of them who had been burned there were here to burn again.

“Well...” he said. The door jingled behind him as a new soul staggered in. He was distracted, and miserable. Her hand, he hissed at himself within. It was there flat on the counter...waiting...

The pull was growing stronger. Insistent.

A man seated himself on the stool directly to Fleming’s left. He hated the poor mangled bastard for it. And yet, it was almost a relief to be forced not to act.

Instead, Fleming reached out to Chani’s hair. Or so it seemed for a moment. It was Bast’s sleek fur he stroked. The cat seemed to remember him also, and purred at his touch. Now he felt a little better. They were linked, Chani and Bast. He withdrew his hand feeling that he had also caressed her, in a way.  In a way.

The man to his left began trying to speak, his lower jaw gone. It would grow back just in time for him to eat a little bit of something. Chani slid the man a pad to write his order on. She looked irritated at the distraction also. In fact, Fleming thought her eyes even appeared moist...

The pull yanked him backwards off the stool suddenly; he almost fell but righted himself, leaned away from the pull to fight it a moment longer, caught hold of the counter. No one but Chani was looking at his struggles.

“Next year,” he promised her.

“Next year,” she smiled.

He slid toward the door. Through it. Out. The bells jingled. The door closed. Warm yellow light came through the windows, but he couldn’t see anything other than that through them. Otherwise he might stay here and watch Chani through the glass until next year. Mouth conversations to her. Maybe they knew he would want that, and kept the glass one-way.

“Hey, buddy,” a voice addressed him. Two hooded Angels came sauntering toward him, their robes splashed red, one with an UZI and one with a chainsaw. “Agnostic, huh?” Good guess. It was branded across his forehead.

“Nice coat, clown,” the other one mocked him. It was full of bullet holes already, slashed by swords. “Need some new holes?”

Fleming turned slowly and grinned. “How about you?” From inside his coat came the stolen automatic, and he fired. The UZI went off, but he got them good first. Both went down. It might not hurt, and they might regenerate ten times as quickly as he, but he still felt better for it as he bolted away. The air froze the insides of his lungs to crystal. But he laughed. Angry laughter. Sad laughter.

Yeah, those little pleasures. You could still thumb your nose in Hell...in between the Angels cutting it off.

Don’t feel so bad, he cheered himself while he ran. It wasn’t his fault that the breaks were so short, and he’d worked enough years of his life that he should be used to that by now. Bosses were bosses, people were people...as above, so below.

Next year, he’d promised her. Next year, he promised himself.

He had all the time in the netherworld.