text: A man wakes up in hell. He feels nothing but pain. He lies on a hill amongst ruins, the foundational outline of a missing home. This is not a world meant for anything living. The sky is thick and gray with clouds like wet cement. Plants do not try to grow here. The carcasses of trees lie beside each other, twisted on the ground. The landscape lies as still and gray as the sky, unstirred by even the wind. The man inhales his first breath and coughs. From his mouth is borne a cloud of white ash and dust. He gets to his feet and walks through the ruins of what must have been an old town once. Instead of buildings, now the bricks are stacked like rubble. The jagged edge of one wall reaches a peak above the rest, at half his height. Upon it his fingers trace the outline of a heart drawn in ash. He looks around at the battered image of a hollowed out town. He closes his eyes. He waits for this nightmare to be over. He coughs up some blood and spits it out. On the ground mixed with the ash it looks more like tar than something from anything alive. He continues now on a path that leads away from the town. The dead trees lie together as though they’d been slaughtered in battle. Fallen comrades. None of them heard. He follows a trail of smeared ash through a large, empty stretch of land. It might have been a field once, when things could grow. He stands over a patch of lifeless earth and watches it. Tears leave trails of smeared ash like the one which led him here. He continues to another ruin. The suggestions of architecture linger. Some stone steps lead him down to a cellar below. Here he finds a hatch and crawls down into it. Inside there are a couple of beds and a smattering of empty cans across the floor. In the center of the room is a table, swept clean except for one half-eaten can of mush. He vomits up some blood then sits down to eat. He eats less than a mouthful worth of bites then lies down in one of the beds. After a fit of violent coughs he’s asleep. He is exhausted. He is even more exhausted when he wakes up. He sits at the table and cries over the can. Finally he rises weakly to his feet and heads back out into the world. He walks through the field to a disturbed patch of dirt and ash. Nearby a shovel lies on the ground and he decides to dig. He digs for hours in a daze. The Earth slowly opens up for him, shovelful by shovelful. Suddenly here, protected from the decomposing world above by a blanket of dirt, he finds the body of a woman. He stoops down, transfixed by the peaceful expression locked upon her face. His own expression is distant, his mind in a hole miles below the one she lies in now. He gently kisses her forehead and then he drags her out of the hole. A coughing fit strikes and he needs to sit down. Then he fills the hole back in. He carries the woman’s body up another path away from the field. It stretches for a mile or two uphill and over rocks. He has to stop several times to try to catch even a gasp of breath between his coughs. He pulls her body up a hill and when they get to the top he can see the whole town. Here at the top of the hill he holds her body and cries endlessly, even when the tears stop. He sits with the body next to him and props her head on his shoulder. This is where she wakes up in hell with him. Her eyes open to a world that life abandoned. It takes her some time but eventually she coughs white clouds of ash to clear the way for air. They watch the distant ghost of a town together then make their way back down the hill. She’s still weak so he helps her down but he doesn’t have to carry her this time. They make their way back across the field and over her grave to the ruins surrounding the stone steps. Together they climb down to the room where all that is left lives. He looks at her with concern which she affirms by vomiting blood across the floor and shaking like chattering teeth. He kisses her forehead and they hold hands at the table for a while before lying down in the bed together. She coughs in her sleep and he doesn’t sleep much at all. When they wake up they eat from some of the dusty cans. After a few bites she stops and coughs for a long time. He watches with concern and fear. He doesn’t want to be alone here. Together they walk through the ruined town and look up at the ruined sky. Neither of them has anything to say. She stops at various piles of bricks and watches them as if imagining what they would look like whole. They come across the wall he woke up by and she traces the heart with her ash covered fingers. She stands in the ruins of a building and here she cries for a long time. He switches between standing back and letting her cry and holding her shuddering sorrow in his arms. Eventually the tears turn from a river to a stream and finally to a faucet, which is how they stay for the rest of their walk through the town. Back in the room they eat some more cans of mush and lie in bed. He cries while she sleeps. This cycle continues for almost a week, with walks through the hollow town, meals of mush out of old cans, and taking turns in tears. More often than not though they cry together instead of waiting for their turn. One day in town they find some old books scattered in the ashes and bring them home with them. The woman hates the books and can’t stand to look at them but the man thumbs through them now and then. After a few days neither of them go near the books anymore. His cough is gone and her cough is getting better. She breaks the long silence with a question. She wants to know what the point of living is. He chews his mush and stares into the empty can wondering how long their food will last and whether they will last long enough to finish it. One morning she doesn’t get out of bed. This goes on for two days. The next day she sits at the table and heaves growing sobs. He sits quietly on the bed. His face looks as lifeless as the town. The next day they are both weeping but they need to go outside again. They go to the field and there he digs another hole through tears while she sits and wails on the ground nearby. At the bottom of this hole the man finds the body of a boy. He picks the boy up tenderly and holds him close, tears running down his cheeks and into the boy’s dirty brown hair. The woman can’t even look. The man lifts the boy out and then fills the hole back in. They bring the body into their room and the man seals them off from hell. The boy lies in one of the beds. She screams and cries. The man touches the boy’s cold head. His face is locked in peaceful slumber. That night they sleep and when they wake up the boy’s head is burning hot. He’s sick. His eyes are closed and when they try to feed him he won’t eat. They stay down there a long time and none of them eat. The man and the woman feel sick with worry. They watch the boy and sit by his side. Even though he can’t hear the woman reads the books to the boy and even though he isn’t looking she hides her tears from him. One day the boy finally opens his eyes. They can all eat again and even share a can of fruit instead of mush. The boy starts getting better. His head cools off but never gets as cold again as when they dug him up. They live together in the underground room. Now their worst problem is boredom, a blessing considering what lies outside. She reads the boy books throughout the day until he’s asleep again. They play games at the table some nights. They eat meals out of cans together and pray for hope. They try their best to be happy, and being together they’re sometimes able to succeed. This lasts a long time and hell feels distant. The man worries about the possibility of the devastation leaking into their home down here but he never lets his worry show. He doesn’t want to lose what he has to the emptiness outside. Then one night a voice on the radio says that bombs are being dropped and that this could be the end. They all rush out of the room and through the hatch. Sirens are going off in the town. The boy cries in terror. She carries him to a room upstairs and lays him in a bed. The man meets her in another bed and they fall quickly to sleep together as the sirens go quiet. The next day they go into the town and she takes the boy for a walk while the man buys cans of food he hopes he’ll never eat. The sky is blue and full of birds and the bricks are stacked like buildings. Trees stand tall and brave and donned in tremendous green. People walk the sidewalks and smile for good reason. An old woman whose hair is gray yet full of life, lets the boy pet her Scottish terrier. The boy, the woman, and the man walk home through a field of grass that hides an orchestra of crickets who fill the air like music. That night the man and woman put the boy to bed together and read him his favorite book. He tells them he wants to write books just like it when he grows up. In their own bed the man watches the woman as she falls asleep. He kisses her forehead and smiles. He has everything. He takes a deep clean breath and feels nothing but bliss. Then he falls asleep in heaven.