AToRaF Redux Ch. 1 - Chairs

	A rainy, gloomy overcast hung over the rooftops of Hometown. Doors were shut and locked. Children that yearned to return outdoors waited impatiently behind windows drenched in condensation. Most teenagers and adults were content with indoor activities, but one young dragon had no such luxury.

	Susie, the local dragon delinquent, was passing the time by rooting around in her household’s garage. She had no phone, her father was hogging the television, and it was too late in the day to just deal with the rain and walk over to her friend’s house, so she might as well look for interesting stuff from years long past. The friend in question was a quiet human boy she had befriended only two and a half months prior. They had embarked on an adventure, albeit unwillingly, into a world of darkness.

	After they had defeated the mad king of the Dark World and escaped into the world of light, a friendship sparked between them. As it turned out, they had a lot in common, such as both of them living in a single parent household, both being introverts with none of their adult life planned out, and both having a goofy side behind their cold exteriors among other things.

	As Susie sifted through the grimy boxes and old power tools, she pondered what she might find. She might find something cool like a skateboard, or an old gaming console from her father’s youth. The more rebellious side of her hoped to find something dangerous, like a firearm. She had no malicious intentions, of course, but shooting a gun off deep in the woods with Kris could be one hell of a blast.

	Instead, she found something else. A long, shiny object sat inside an old unlabeled crate. As Susie grabbed it, she felt just how heavy and cold it was, leaving no doubt that it was made out of metal. Once she had pulled it out, she noticed the curved part with a forked tip. She had found a crowbar.

	It was roughly three fourths of the length of her entire arm, and it was around an inch in thickness if not a tad thicker. The dragon gave it a few good swings to get a good feel for its weight, then held it in both hands, pondering what to do with it. She had no use for the other tools lying around that required power to be used, but a crowbar? It could be fun to swing it against a tree, or maybe smash a few empty bottles out in the woods with it.

	Or, perhaps, there was a separate purpose for it. She could pry open anything she wanted to get into, such as a nailed box, or a jammed door. Then, a lightbulb went off in Susie’s head. She recalled something that made her crack a mischievous smirk.

	Last month, Kris had shown Susie something strange just south of the House of Worship. What Susie originally assumed to be a hill she had seen in the distance was actually an entrance to something mysterious. Just on the other side of the hill that faced away from the rest of the town was a set of red double doors, overtaken by overgrowth.

	What lied beyond those doors was a complete mystery to both of them, seeing as they were locked and possibly rusted shut, much to Susie’s disappointment. The thought of uncovering the hill’s secret had gnawed at her occasionally, but knowing that she now had the means of getting them open excited her. The whelp nearly leapt for the door leading back into the house so that she could run to Kris’s house, but the circumstances that lead her into the garage in the first place reminded her of why she would need to wait.

	With a sigh, Susie placed the crowbar where she found it in and walked back into the house. To her surprise, the couch in the living room was empty, yet the TV was still on. The whelp walked over to her father’s closed bedroom door and listened. When she heard thunderous snoring from the other side, Susie walked back over to the couch, picked up the remote, and lazily sat down whilst kicking her legs up on the coffee table.

	Just as Susie was about to relax, a sharp pain shot up from her growling stomach. Susie groaned, knowing that there was nothing good to eat anywhere in the house. There was only expired ingredients that would lead to stale, incomplete meals.

	The dragon ignored her hunger to the best of her ability and flipped through the channels to find something to watch. The time she spent looking for something decent to watch was much longer than she thought, and her eyelids began to grow heavier with every passing moment. There was one thing that kept Susie awake, however.

	She felt oddly… cold.

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	Kris lazily shoveled a spoonful of mashed potatoes into his mouth and quickly swallowed. He felt disappointed and oddly isolated, and it made flavor something he wanted to avoid until he went into another shameful late night binge. Dinner was early today because Toriel planned on getting up extra early on the approaching weekend to catch up on work.

	Kris looked up to see his mother looking at him with her usual concerned frown. No matter how hard Kris tried to be stoic, his mother always knew when something was up, even if he didn’t know it himself. The boy avoided her gaze and peered out the window. He hated that look she gave him as if she thought was something wrong with him.

	If the pitter patter against the roof wasn’t a big enough indication, then the sight just outside the window confirmed that it was raining. He wanted to spend some time alone with his sketchbook in the woods today after school, or maybe spend some time with Susie if she wanted. He could always sketch and draw in the house, but his mother always had a curious nature.

	Knowing that her curiosity was already combined with her motherly tendencies and religious beliefs, the prospect of her seeing him drawing his very ‘specific’ preferred material would spell disaster. He required privacy for such a hobby, of which he felt as if he didn’t have enough within his mother’s vicinity. Kris snuck a glance to see Toriel focusing on cutting a piece of chicken, so he had a brief moment of mental respite.

	“...So!” Toriel began to break the silence, “My darling class and I worked on some wonderful projects today!” she beamed with a grin.
	“...Hm…”
	“I managed to make arts and crafts into a math lesson, and I would say that it turned out rather swell! That darling little green dragon made the sweetest picture for me,” she said, “and it reminded me of back when you and Asriel did the same back when you two were little… Ohh, such wonderful memories!”

	All Kris could manage was a shrug. He wanted to be alone. He didn’t want to talk to anyone right now, but Toriel wanted him to be social, even in a private setting like home. Toriel could clearly tell that he had absolutely no interest in anything she had to say regarding school, prompting her to switch the subject to something a tad more personal.

	“Are you alright, Kris? You seem rather down today. Is it this weather?” she asked in earnest.
	“...Yeah, actually,” Kris responded, “I kinda wanted to hang out in the woods today.” Kris locked eyes with Toriel and felt his heart sink to his stomach. Skepticism and doubt emanated from her gaze.
	“Are you sure you would be alone, Kris?” she asked with a stern tone. Kris felt the weight on his shoulders lift off of him at this question. A simple truth was easier than a fabricated lie.
	“Mmm hmm…” Kris mumbled as he swallowed another mouthful of spud.
	“Are you positive?” she asked again. Kris suddenly began to feel defensive and cornered. He knew what this was about.
	“Yes,” Kris affirmed. He angrily compressed the fork he held between his fingers, but that was the only hint of irritation that even a watchful eye could catch.
	Toriel sighed, physically backing off. “Well, if this weather is here to stay, then perhaps there is something you can do inside. You could draw,” Toriel mused, “or- Oh! I just remembered! Asriel has an old movie collection under his computer desk, does he not? You could plug the TV in and watch a movie!” she suggested with glee.

	That wasn’t a bad idea. Kris nodded his head and quickly finished his meal before getting up and bringing his plate to the trash can to throw away what was left. He stepped on the pedal only to be greeted by a strong floral scent. He looked down into the trashcan to see two discarded bouquets of flowers.

	He stopped. He stared at the flowers for several seconds, not knowing why. When he realized he had stopped breathing, Kris snapped out of his trance and dumped what was left of his uneaten scraps into the can and walked away.

Kris rinsed his plate and fork, then placed them gently into the sink for Toriel to sort out later. He walked up to his room and began sifting through all of Asriel’s old boxes underneath his desk, opening them and checking their contents. He eventually found the box containing the old movies along with the old DVD player and pulled it out. Kris marched back downstairs and set the box down next to the TV.

	“I have already plugged the TV in for you, dear,” Toriel chimed from the kitchen. Kris started plugging the DVD player in. After the cables were plugged in, and the player sat next to the TV, his next task was to find a movie to watch.

	Kris pulled the movies from the box and looked them over. Most of them seemed to be religious in some way, or were clearly made for children. Among them, however, was one movie that peaked his interest. Its title was ‘The City’s Heart’, and the box art made it out to be a dark and gritty movie, though it was rated PG-13.

	“Hm, I don’t know about that one, Kris,” Toriel said from over his shoulder. Kris nearly jumped at the sudden noise from behind him. He turned around and faced his mother, again carrying that increasingly infuriating look of worry.
	“...What’s wrong with it?” Kris asked.
	“It is not a bad movie, nor are you too young for it, clearly, but… Well, I have seen it, and it may trigger more of your… nightmares,” Toriel explained. Kris felt a burning anger rise within him.
	“W-What? But-”
	“Kris, please, pick out another movie. These nightmares you have told me about… They have me concerned, and I am afraid they are having an impact over your health…” Toriel continued.
	“It’s… they’re not about movies…” Kris mumbled, desperately trying to hide his anger. He told her about those horrid dreams in confidence, but she was using them against him. In Kris’s mind, there was no way that she actually thought that his nightmares were connected in any way to whatever se may have seen in a movie.
	“Please, my child?” Toriel begged with soft eyes.

	Her words were filled with genuine compassion, but Kris couldn’t help but be poisoned by them. His heart ached as they did in his nightmares. He felt red hot iron chains wrap around his throat and constrict his breathing. He wanted to speak up, but couldn’t find the courage to do so.

	Kris merely nodded and put the movie back into the box to fish out another. The only other movie that seemed somewhat decent was an animated religious movie by the name of ‘Earth’s Fruits of Labor’. It looked lame, but it looked better than everything else. Once he showed it to Toriel, she seemed to be happy with it.

	“That is a wonderful choice, Kris. That one was one of Asriel’s favorites!” she said, giving her son a warm smile. Kris sighed and put the movie in as Toriel sat in her Chariel, bible in hand. Kris grabbed the remote, sat on the couch, and hit play.

	The anger he felt earlier had still not subsided. A bread of sweat ran down the side of his forehead, even though the temperature in the house was quite pleasant. Every time he felt like telling her that he wanted to watch the other movie, or that he wasn’t a baby, or that his nightmares were something completely isolated from everything else, he felt his throat be clogged with burning coals.

	He felt as if he were burning alive.

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	Susie didn’t realize when she had fallen asleep. She awoke, surprised that she had managed to get any shuteye at all. She still felt quite chilly, though it seemed that the temperature had grown a bit more comfortable since the night before.

	She sat up, stretched to the point of cracking her back and arms, and stood up to head for the kitchen. In her grog, she had already forgotten that there was barely anything to eat. Her throat itched from dehydration, confirming that she slept with her mouth wide open again.

	Susie snagged the hose that was connected to the sink, opened her maw, pulled the hose’s trigger, pointed the hose toward her mouth, and turned the water on. Her mouth was near instantly filled with water, causing Susie to spill it all into the sink while hacking and coughing. After recovering and trying again, Susie managed to quench her thirst and focus on food.

	Susie opened the fridge, only to be reminded of her household’s nutritional scarcity. Susie opened up the covers and snatched two pieces of bread from an old loaf, unused due to a lack of things to put between the bread itself. The dragon pulled out a knife from the drawer, grabbed an aging container of mayo, and made a mayonnaise sandwich.

	She took a bite and immediately cringed. The bread was dry, and the mayo tasted weird. She looked down at the bread for a moment and little green patches of mold. She grabbed the mayo and looked at the expiration date, which had expired a month ago. Just as she was about to spit her food out and throw it all away, her stomach growled at her, sending a shockwave of cold pain throughout her torso.

	Susie reluctantly chewed and swallowed, then threw the rest of it away in the trash can. The drake walked back into the living room, dejected and still hungry. She was about to give up when she saw her father’s wallet sitting next to a pot of cheap, fake flowers next to the TV.

	She walked over and opened the wallet up to find her father’s debit card and a hefty wad of cash inside. Susie considered using the money to go out and buy some real food, but her heart wrenched at the thought of the consequences. Every time she had done so before, she paid for it hard. She didn’t think she could take so much yelling and screaming, topped off by an unfair amount of grounding…

	That’s when she remembered the crowbar, and Kris. If she was gonna get grounded for something as dumb as one meal, then she wouldn’t be able to hang out with Kris for a long time, and she was still extremely curious about those double doors in the woods. Susie put the wallet back down, angrily grumbling under her breath.

	Susie opened the side door into the garage and found the crowbar right where she left it. She slipped it into her jacket and left the garage, closing the door behind her. She left the house out the front door and headed east towards the rest of town.

The town’s atmosphere was depressing. The skies were still dark and gray with nary a single patch of blue, and color seemed to be drained from the dying, leafless trees. Layers of soggy leaves covered the sidewalks, the grass was nearly swallowed in mud, and the town was empty and lifeless. Susie could hear crows cawing in the distance, a dog barking here and there, but that was it. Everything was absolutely dreary.

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	Kris was alone for the entire day. His mother was out running school related errands, and he could pretty much do anything he wanted. In hindsight, he probably should have saved himself the stress and waited a bit longer before getting angry. Seeing his situation before himself, he took the liberty of watching the movie Toriel pleaded with him not to watch.

	Kris felt disappointed. The movie turned out to not be all he cracked it up to be, and it wasn’t even scary in the slightest. The acting was terrible, the music was generic and forgettable, and the story didn’t make much sense.

	“What’s the point?” Kris wondered. With a sigh, Kris paused the movie and got up to take it out of the DVD player. He popped it out, but nearly dropped it at the sound of someone knocking on the front door. Kris scrambled to put the movie away and hide it under the couch.

	After sliding the case under the couch, Kris peeked through the doorhole to see… “Susie?” Kris took a deep breath, relieved that it wasn’t his mother coming back home several hours early. He unlocked and opened the door to greet his friend.

	“Hey Kris, I think I know how we’re gonna open those doors,” she said as she pulled out a crowbar. Kris visibly flinched as his eyes widened under his bangs. “Look what I found!”
	“Susie… Where did you get that?” he asked, pointing at the crowbar in her hands. Something like a crowbar was way above an average teenager’s paygrade, especially in a town like Hometown where they don’t see much use.

	“I found it lying around in my garage. Come on, don’t you wanna see what’s inside?” Susie asked with an ecstatic grin.
	Kris felt hesitant, but he admitted to himself that he was a bit excited at uncovering an old mystery. Regardless, his dread won over his curiosity. “I don’t know about this, Susie.”
	“Oh come on, don’t be such a wimp! Who knows…” Susie continued, her grin now sporting a more mischievous snarl, “...it might be another portal to the Dark World…”
	Kris instantly lit up, causing Susie to stifle a chortle. “...Fine. Mom won’t be back until night anyway,” Kris relented, now stepping out and closing the door behind him.
	“Great! Come on, we don’t got all day!”

	Kris followed Susie through the colorless town, occasionally stomping on a puddle or avoiding a pile of soggy leaves. A car occasionally passed by, but that seemed to be the extent of the townsfolk’s activity. Everyone stayed inside to avoid the weather, or were at work despite the weekend.

	Susie noticed the awkward silence between her and Kris as they walked. “What do you think we’ll find in there?” she asked, turning her head back to look at Kris.
	“I dunno,” he answered, looking at the ground as he walked.
	“Oh come on, I didn’t ask if you knew. I asked for a guess,” Susie spat, unsatisfied with Kris’s answer.
	“...Maybe a dead body,” Kris said with playful mirth in his voice.
	“Hah, yeah,” Susie chuckled, “maybe, and maybe the dead body will put down a murder case. We’d be heroes!”
	“Or maybe…” Kris playfully growled, “some old dead monster dust…”
	“Oh shut up,” Susie snapped back, only to be met with a small chuckle from Kris, making her roll her eyes. He always had a way of getting a rise out of people.

	The two classmates eventually made it to the church, where the path to the bunker was clearly visible. They took not a single moment to stop as they walked through the trail. The trees eerily looked more dead than the ones around town. The once grassy path was reduced to mud and tangled roots, which made the path quite dangerous.

	After traversing the treacherous path and nearly falling over several times, they both made it to the hill in the distance. For some strange and unexplained reason, the mud and roots seemed to end right before the hill itself. The teenage duo walked around it to find the mysterious doors.

	“We’re here!” Susie hollared. She pulled the crowbar back out and grasped it tightly within her clawed fists. The whelp approached the doors and gave the handles a try for the sake of making sure they were still locked. To no one’s surprise, they still wouldn’t budge. “Guess we still gotta do it the hard way,” Susie huffed.

	Susie motioned for Kris to back away, which he did for his own safety. Susie bent her knees, took a deep breath, and prepared a swing at the right door’s handle. An ear-piercing clang rang out through the surrounding woods upon impact, leaving a large dent in the rusted metal. Susie swung again and smashed the handle clean off the door.

	“*Huff* ...Nice! The door’s opening! Just gotta pry it the rest of the way!” Susie exclaimed. The doors had opened slightly after the handle came loose, showing a dirty concrete floor through the cracks. However, something was keeping them from opening all the way. Susie wedged the back end of the crowbar between the doors and pushed.

She grunted and groaned as the doors seemed to stay in place, even as she put an immense amount of pressure on the crowbar. The sound of metal groaning and grinding kept her going and gave her the feeling that she was making progress.

	“...Uhh, Susie…?” Kris asked with worry in his voice. He had only now realized how high the chances of Susie pulling a muscle or accidentally getting the crowbar lodged in her skull were.
	“I… got it… Kris…!” she rasped as she pushed harder.
	“The crowbar might come out and put a dent in your head. I don’t want you to hurt yourself, Susie…” Kris said. He took a step towards Susie, arm outstretched to grab her shoulder.
	“Kris! I said I GOT THI-”

	The doors snapped open with a sharp metallic bang, sending a startled Susie into the wet, grassy wall of earth that surrounded the doors. The crowbar dropped to the ground with a thud as Susie struggled to regain her composure. After finding her footing, Susie looked at the extremely cold, wet spot on her side to find it covered in mud and dead plant matter.

	“Ah, damn it! More ruined clothes, just what I friggin’ needed…” Susie grumbled, “Well, anyway, maybe now we can… look at…. Holy shit…”

	Susie looked over at Kris to see him frozen in place. His eyes were fixed on the doorway, and he seemed to have stopped breathing. Susie looked back at the door, not knowing what to say.

	A familiar darkness was pouring out of the doorway that seemed to blacken everything around it like a reverse lightbulb. The same eerie, cold vibe she felt on that fateful day months ago returned to her, yet this time it felt tenfold. There was no mistaking what she was looking at.

	Kris gained control of his senses back and wiped the heavy beads of sweat off his brow. He found it hard to breathe in all of his sudden excitement that had just replaced apprehension and fear. He forced a deep breath down and back up his chest and approached his friend from behind.

	Susie suddenly spun around and grabbed Kris by the shoulders. “KRIS! KRIS, WE JUST FOUND A FRIGGIN’ PORTAL TO THE DARK WORLD!” she excitedly bellowed. Ignoring Kris’s clear distress at suddenly being grabbed and yelled at out of nowhere, Susie snatched her human friend up by the waist and spun him around, hugging him and laughing in pure glee.

	The elated dragon put Kris down after a moment of self-awareness and startling embarrassment. As Kris’s shoes made contact with the ground again, he stumbled a bit while holding his head in one hand. “Uhh…. S-Sorry, Kris… I’m just… uh… Really excited…” Susie said, scratching the back of her head and looking away.

	“...It’s okay, just warn me next time,” Kris said, looking back at the portal, “Let’s just walk in and see what happens.”
	“That’s not a bad idea!” Susie replied. She turned around and immediately began walking towards the darkness. She stopped right at the edge, though. That same heart-pounding, adrenaline rushing dread and fear from months ago came back.

	The dragon whelp looked back to see that Kris hadn’t moved from his spot. “Come on, Kris… Don’t be a wuss! We can… uh… go in at the same time like… um… last time?” she sputtered. Kris took another breath and walked forward until he was next to Susie.

	“Okay… On three!” Susie said, to which Kris nodded. “One… two… THREE!” The two teenagers power walked inside, embracing the darkness. If they were right about the nature of this portal, then they had no reason to fear it. And yet, Susie couldn’t shake a bad gut feeling about it. What didn’t help is that neither of them could even so much as see anything around them any longer.

	Unsurprisingly, the floor seemed to be sloped downwards, going further underground with every step. Susie held her hands out in front of her incase she made contact with a wall, while Kris seemed to be courageous enough to keep his hands by his side. With every step, the feeling of dread only seemed to grow.

	Kris felt oddly hot in the bunker when realistically he should feel cold. His forehead and the tips of his bangs were soaked with sweat, his sweater felt constricting, and he found the hot air difficult to breathe in. Something, maybe a furnace, was blasting heat throughout the bunker. A part of him wished he brought a flashlight so that he could find the source of the heat and turn it off, but another part of him realized that a flashlight would likely fail in Dark World conditions.

	“...Uh… I’m actually not so sure about this anymore. We’ve been walking for a while now… You think this portal’s broken or something?” Susie asked, breaking the silence.
	“I think this is a different kind of Dark World than we’re used to, Susie,” Kris replied.
“Wait, Kris, you see that?” Susie asked. There was a faint light in the distance. It was barely visible, but it was clearly there. It seemed to be illuminating two other silhouetted objects in the distance, but neither of them could be too sure.

	“Come on, let’s go see what it is, Kris!” Susie yelled, now breaking off into a sprint.
	“Wait…” Kris whispered, trying to muster up the nerve to yell for his friend to stop, but his voice was drowned out by Susie’s loud footfalls. Instead, he took to following her at her pace and praying that he didn’t trip on something.

	The feeling of heat only intensified for Kris, especially now that he was beginning to exert himself as he chased after Susie. His entire body moistened with sweat, and his legs grew sore rather quickly. He rapidly ran out of breath, making his chase require more and more effort by the second.

	Susie slowed down as her silhouette grew more pronounced. As she grew closer to the light, she slowed down to a regular walking pace. Oddly, she seemed to be holding her arms as if she was cold. He even heard what sounded like her teeth chattering.

	“W-W-What t-t-the h-hell?” Susie asked through her shuddering jaw. Kris peered around his friend to see an extremely bizarre sight that seemed to perplex the both of them. There was a single candle in the middle of the floor. A tall, normal looking pillar of wax stationed on top of a heavily rusted, gray, metal candlestick with a small handle sticking out through the side.

	On each side of the candle were two chairs. The one on the right was a decrepit recliner resembling the ones found in Kris’s house. The upholstery sagged in several places where the stuffing had seemingly fallen out and rotted away years ago, and there were several strange stains covering the seat and armrests. Someone, or something had burnt a large, eye shaped symbol into the headrest.

	The other was a metal folding chair, blemished with several patches of missing paint, replaced by rust that resembled a sort of metallic mold. The backrest was dented backward as if someone took a bat to it. There was a heavy coat of grime caking the entirety of the chair, giving it much more of a repulsive appearance than it would have otherwise.

	Susie, puzzled by what lay before her, looked over to Kris to gauge how she should react. His face carried no expression past pure apathy, yet his body language told a story of apprehension. What confused her was how Kris could be sweating so badly when it felt like the temperature was only one degree above freezing.

	“...H-Hey, K-K-Kris? Y-Y-Y-You have a-any id-d-dea w-what t-the h-hell this ev-v-ven is?” Susie asked, still shaking and shuddering in place.
	“...I think these chairs have something to do with how we’ll reach this version of the Dark World,” Kris replied, wiping away another torrent of sweat away from his face.
	“W-W-What?” Susie asked, confused.
	“Here, I’ll sit in the recliner. It looks like the ones back at my house, so it might be meant for me,” Kris continued. His words made sense to the dragon, but she couldn’t help but feel cheated by having to sit in the crappier of the two chairs.
	“Oh, a-and I have t-t-to b-bust m-my ass on t-that m-m-m-metal d-deathtrap?” Susie inquired, clearly frustrated.

	“Just do it. The recliner looks grosser and creepier anyway,” Kris said calmly as he approached the recliner. Before Susie could protest any further, he sat down. The recliner was stiff and crinkly, and the wood that kept its structure upheld jabbed into Kris’s backside. It was horrifically uncomfortable. He closed his eyes and waited for Susie to sit in the folding chair.

	“Ugh, f-f-fine!” Susie relented through chattering teeth as she quickly walked up to the folding chair. She slowly sat down as to avoid accidentally stabbing herself with any unseen, jutting pieces of jagged metal. It was as uncomfortable as a metal folding chair could possibly be without actually hurting.

	For a moment, all seemed normal. Nothing happened for several seconds of complete silence until Susie suddenly feel her entire body beginning to flash freeze. Her eyes widened at the sudden cold, sharp pain overtaking her entire body. She tried to scream out for Kris to help her, but her teeth were chattering too fast for her to say anything coherent.

	Kris felt an extreme, burning pain wrap itself around his torso, limbs, and face. His eyes shot open and he immediately tried to scream out in pain, but he felt something clogging his throat. He looked around to see flames in the shapes on arms and hands snatching his arms and legs and keeping them in place. Two large, flaming arms wrapped themselves tightly around Kris’s chest, and he saw another arm shoving itself into Kris’s mouth, wrenched open in a silent scream.

	Susie could barely move. She looked down at her hands to see frost forming on her fingertips as her hands turned to ice. She was terrified, but what scared her more than her body freezing before her eyes was what was happening to Kris. From her increasingly blurry point of view, Kris was on fire. His normally stoic face carried an expression of pure terror, anguish, and agony.

	Kris tried to look at Susie, but all he could see was the hellfire that was burning his body to a crisp. He wanted to cry, but any tears that managed to make it out of his dry eyes were instantly vaporized. He wanted to scream for help, to scream for his family, to scream for Susie, but he was choking on the same flames that kept him bound to the recliner. He felt lightheaded from the lack of oxygen, and he felt himself drifting away from consciousness.

	From the corners of Susie’s eyes, she saw the light on the candle flickering violently as if a harsh wind was rushing over it. The floor began to audibly and physically shake and shudder, losing stability and crumbling beneath her. Her brain recognized this, but she was in no position to consciously realize it.

	After one last moment of agony and despair, the candle’s light was snuffed out. The floor finally gave way as the concrete cracked and crumbled into dust. The two teenagers fell into the abyss below, still burning and freezing all the way down.

	They both felt their bodies violently crash into an unseen floor. In that moment, the horrific burning from the flames and the agonizing chill from the cold ceased, replaced by concussed unconsciousness. When they eventually woke, they found themselves alone in hell.