Escape From Hell Read Online Free

us both into an aerosol. I didn’t know anything until my body congealed again, and I don’t know how long that took. I was back on the rim, back where I started, where the undecided are.”
    She said, “Vestibule. Undecided and Opportunists. Were you one of those?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Let me understand. You started in the Vestibule? With those who couldn’t or didn’t choose?”
    “Ditherers. Yes. In a bottle. I don’t know how long I was in that bottle, but when I got out, Benito was standing next to me.”
    “Ben —”
    I tore off a larger twig.
    “God, that hurts.”
    “Sorry —”
    “Don’t be. You can’t imagine how good it feels to talk again. And to listen.”
    “I don’t have to imagine,” I told her. “I can remember.” The memories poured over me. I had just died —
    The big surprise was that I could be surprised. That I could be anything. That I could be.
I was, but I wasn’t. I thought I could see, but there was only a bright uniform metallic color of bronze. Sometimes there were faint sounds, but they didn’t mean anything. And when I looked down, I couldn’t see myself.
When I tried to move, nothing happened. It felt as if I had moved. My muscles sent the right position signals. But nothing happened, nothing at all.
I couldn’t touch anything, not even myself. I couldn’t feel anything, or see anything, or sense anything except my own posture. I knew when I was sitting, or standing, or walking, or running, or doubled up like a contortionist, but I felt nothing at all.
I screamed. I could hear the scream, and I shouted for help. Nothing answered.
Dead. I had to be dead. But dead men don’t think about death. What do dead men think about? Dead men don’t think. I was thinking, but I was dead. That struck me as funny and set off hysterics, and then I’d get myself under control and go round and round with it again.
Dead. This was like nothing any religion had ever taught. Not that I’d ever caught any of the religions going around, but none had warned of this. I certainly wasn’t in Heaven, and it was too lonely to be Hell.
    I shivered and fought off the memories. “I was in that bottle almost as long as you’ve been a tree. Or I think I was. The books about you tell when you died, about ten years before I did. Time’s funny in this place, it seemed like I was in that bottle a thousand years, but it might not have been long at all.”
    “Oh. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I hate it. I thought if I killed myself it would all be over. I guess that’s what I thought. Make it all go away.”
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “You’ve been depressed, too?”
    “I was a writer,” I reminded her.
    “Hah. Ted was a writer, and he was never depressed. Wild, stupid, wonderful sometimes, angry a lot, but not depressed.”
    “He was after you died,” I told her. “Especially when the best known biography about the poet laureate of England had the title
Her Husband.
”
    She giggled. It was a horrible sound. “It was?”
    “Yep.”
    “He really became poet laureate?”
    “He did.”
    “I wonder where they put Ted? Maybe he’s in Heaven. Did he reform? Get religion?”
    “Not that I read,” I told her. “But I’m not even sure he’s dead. Nobody thought he was as interesting as you were. They didn’t make movies about him.”
    “Movies. And you said books, too. About me?” There was a bit of wonder in her voice, but not too much. She’d thought about it.
    When I was in the bottle, I’d thought about everything.
    “Allen?”
    “I’m here.”
    “Do people still read my work?”
    “Yeah. They made a movie out of
The Bell Jar,
too. Julie Harris. Ted Hughes sold the rights. He published most of your work. Letters, stories, poems. Your journal, or nearly all of it. Hughes burned the last month’s entries. Some say he burned more, burned your best work because it made him look bad. I wouldn’t know, I never read much literary gossip.”
    “I read too much of it,” she