The world ends at 2:54 P.M. on a Friday. Kyle is pissed because, a nonbeliever in the apocalypse, he spent Thursday night studying for a math quiz, having a small fight with his mother, and trying (and failing) to conjugate irregular verbs in French—fuck the French. Even Christophe, since that fucker had to go and die on him and all. Kyle's last night on this planet was uneventful, and now as the earth splits and people fall to Hell, he's bitching to Kenny and Stan. Eighth graders, they'd been sitting in their last period of the day, a joke of a class called Critical Thinking that Kyle vehemently opposes, and now they're falling to a fiery resting place, still in their desks.
"I could've done something meaningful with my life," Kyle says, and he reaches up to grab his hat, fucking physics making it drift above him. Physics is third period and he hates it. It's not even real physics—their tests are multiple choice and conceptual, void of math. He assumes the schools calls it physics to make them sound better and the students feel smarter.
"Death isn't that bad," Kenny says. His parka jacket is billowing behind him, a mess of green angel wings. He outgrew the orange one in a sixth grade growth spurt where he became 5'10 and everybody else became eye-level with his chest. The green one starved his family for two weeks and he rejected the cafeteria ladies' pity scraps. A skeletal skinniness still grasps him, and his visible elbow bones unnerve Kyle, who still has baby fat and a billowing midsection, so he tries not to look at Kenny for too long.
"How would you know?" Stan asks. Stan is normal, that is the only way to describe him, Kyle thinks. Kyle looks at Stan a lot in lieu of Kenny. From what Kyle knows via his extensive knowledge, Stan is following the development for a boy his age perfectly, his appetite spiking and his height more concentrated in the vertical direction, though he shows the beginning of a football player's build, maybe, or a lacrosse player's one. His hair is long around the ears and his mother is always swatting at him to fix it, but Stan refuses. He doesn't wear his hat anymore; Kenny doesn't wear his hood; Kyle grabs his ushanka and slams it on his head, holds the flaps down so it won't fly off again. Their desks are a few feet below them now, and Kyle kicks his legs.
"Just do," Kenny says. Kyle had forgotten about the conversation, couldn't care less. His eyes lay unfocused on what seems to be a stone lining in the pit they're descending into. The fall to Hell is a really fucking long way down, he realizes.
"The fall to Hell is really fucking long," Kyle says, flailing his legs and scowling. Stan doubles over in the air from laughing and gets stuck in a fetal position, which makes him laugh harder, if possible. Kyle doesn't stop scowling, but he stops kicking his legs, fingers tight on his ushanka flaps.
"Tell me about it," Kenny says. Now the parka jacket looks more like a cat's raised back than wings, but cherub features make Kenny look angelic more than anything. Perhaps a gaunt, Gothic angelic, but angelic nonetheless. Kyle yanks his eyes away from Kenny, huffing to himself, it's not fair.
Stan unsticks himself from the fetal position, fumbling, his shirt rearranging itself awkwardly. Kyle gets a flash of Stan's stomach, and though he sees it often for other reasons, the hair crawling down from his belly button kind of breaks Kyle's heart. He follows the trail to the start of Stan's jeans then snaps his eyes up, hoping Stan didn't notice.
Stan sighs. His legs are long, bent a little, and then they're on the ground. Kyle lands facedown, his big Jew nose smacking against an uneven stone ground. The fall doesn't hurt; his death must've alleviated his ability to feel pain, he thinks, but this is Hell. That doesn't make sense. Then again, this is Hell, of course nothing makes sense.
"Satan must be pissed," Kenny muses. He starts walking like he knows where he's going. Stan and Kyle scramble to follow him; for Stan this means shaking his legs and stretching his muscles, and for Kyle this means picking himself up off the ground and making sure his hat is still hugging his head. Their desks, Kyle notices, have fallen on each other in a pile a few yards away, and unlike the boys, they broke during the fall.
"You'd think there'd be some more direction," Kyle says as he jogs a little to catch up with Kenny and Stan. The question is designed for Kenny to indicate something, anything, about why he has knowledge of Hell, or if he's bullshitting where they're going or if he actually knows. Kyle realizes that he's still holding firmly onto his ushanka and releases his grip, but it flies off his head. He turns to chase after it and tries to catch it, jumping, but he's short and the hat keeps going higher and higher. Kyle lets out a series of feral little whines, growing in pitch and urgency. Stan notices and tries to help recapture Kyle's hat, being a few inches taller, but when he manages to get his hands on the ushanka it dissipates into the air.
"Welcome to Hell," Kenny says, but nobody thinks it's funny.
Kyle and Stan fall back in line behind Kenny, Kyle with his head down and hands crossed tightly over his chest, Stan with his head down and hands in his pocket. The air buzzes, a sound sort of like cicadas clinging to air, as if the tension has become audible. At some point while they wander through Hell, which cycles through hot weather with lava spurting from rocks and the ground crackling beneath their feet to freezing tundras that leave them blue and frostbitten (and still without pain, which Kyle is beginning to think is actually the worse part) they meet up with Craig's gang.
"Hey guys, this got me out of that math test!" Clyde's cloying nasal voice greets them, and Stan and Kyle balk, though Kyle immediately snaps his mouth shut upon seeing Craig's hat resting smugly on his head.
"God, shut up," Token says. He's hunched and sweating, white t-shirt stuck to his skin. He straightens up, wipes his forehead and looks to the sky. There is no sky in Hell—it just ends, a void of black nothingness, space without stars. "I am so sick of this apocalypse bullshit."
"I mean, normally we get a warning," Kenny says, nodding in agreement. In the heat Kenny has stripped himself of both his parka jacket and t-shirt; his t-shirt serves as a turban, his parka jacket wrapped around his waist, and nobody is saying anything about it.
"I don't think it was the apocalypse," Craig says. "Not the Mayan one. I think it was just our school."
"Why would South Park Middle—" Stan begins, but he stops, and everybody exchanges a look that clearly says the same thing: why wouldn't it?
"Just another fun little episode in our lives," Kenny says, tone almost cheery, bounce in his step. His makeshift turban wobbles and he sets it upright again. "Would you like to join us, Craig? Clyde? Token?" He nods at them individually, a Sultan's seal of approval, a request to join them on their noble quest. Kyle feels dizzy from heat, and maybe also a little insane.
"I'm going to try and find Bebe," Craig says, flat expression and flat voice. They've been going out for two days, and everybody is confused but nobody is saying anything. Kyle doesn't know if it's South Park or just the people that populate South Park, seeing as the same phenomena has so far been evident in Hell, but he hangs around quite the unquestioning bunch. Craig says nothing more, though Kyle would at least follow such a statement with I'm worried about her or to see if she's okay himself, and leaves. Token and Clyde follow him; Clyde runs to catch up with Craig, looking like a big retarded dog in the process, and Token's shirt dissolves off his back much like Kyle's hat. Token curses loudly to the heavens. Or to the roof of Hell, the ceiling to all that nothingness, Kyle supposes.
"Maybe Satan is a pedophile," Stan says, gesturing with his thumb to Token, who's on his knees and sobbing to himself in the distance.
"Ephebophile," Kyle corrects. "One attracted to pubescent children."
"Nah," Kenny says, and he's walking just a little ahead of Kyle and Stan but not so far that he can't be involved in conversations, "he's with Saddam Hussein. Again. Apparently, he escaped Heaven and managed to convince Satan to be with him again. The story is shoddy, I'm not sure of the finer details. Maybe we'll get to find out while we're down here."
Kyle and Stan exchange a look, and then Stan says, "Oh, right." There is no irony in his statement.
Four days of walking through bipolar weather, after encountering no other living soul besides a butterfly that Kenny insisted they follow for a whole goddamned twenty-four hour period, after learning that Hell robs you of sleep or pain, after Kenny's parka evaporates and he's left walking around in the stained Free Pussy Riot shirt previously fashioned into a turban and checkered boxers, Kyle learns why Hell is Hell. It's not the weather, it's not the stolen feelings, it's not the disappearing clothes, it's not the fact that every time he tries to get close to Stan something happens and he's ripped away—it's that he meets up with Eric Cartman at the mouth of a cave.
"Did the apocalypse get you, or did you legitimately die?" Kenny asks Cartman, as Stan and Kyle are too stunned to speak.
Cartman moved to California at the beginning of sixth grade, following his mother's promising career as a porn star. She soon married a baseball player and found a permanent home in Hollywood Hills, rich as shit and still doing porn vids, and Cartman was forced to stay. Kyle immediately unfriended him on Facebook, going the extra mile to block him, and erased him from all sections of his life. They haven't heard from Cartman since just before seventh grade, when he sent a long, detailed letter to Kenny about the luxuries of his new life. They burned the letter at their last sleepover before the new school year in Stan's backyard, Kenny's laughter rising with the smoke. The Cartman in front of them looks pretty much like the Cartman that left them behind—same awkward haircut, same fat ass, same Neanderthal expression, the only thing different being the expensive clothes he's clad in: the team his stepfather plays for's jacket, designer jeans, and huge, tacky sneakers, his stepfather's team represented on the baseball bat sitting on his head.
"What apocalypse?" Cartman asks, and Kyle jerks his head when he hears the ridiculously low pitch of Cartman's voice, like he's speaking from his feet instead of his throat. "I was hit by a fucking truck. Wasn't it in the newspapers?"
"No," Stan says.
Cartman scowls. "Fuckers. I'm the son of a famous baseball star!"
"The adopted son nobody cares about," Kenny reminds him. "So, how are you enjoying Hell?"
"It sucks ass. I have to guard this cave. I literally can't move my body." He tries to, his face straining, his limbs twitching, and fails. "See? Only my face. I can feel hunger, too."
"You received an actual sentence?" Kenny asks. Then he shakes his head. "Doesn't surprise me." He walks forward and goes to pull Cartman's pants down, but stops. "Fuck, there's no way to get them off your legs."
Cartman laughs.
Kyle wants to say something to Cartman, but dismisses it as not worth his time. Besides, he's too busy being sad about his distance form Stan. If they try to get close—and lately, close means within five feet of each other, as the distance oscillates with the weather—they bounce off one another, as if they mutually hit a rubber wall. Kyle can feel this—the growing distance—when they make eye contact, and he's starting to develop a theory that the longer they hold each other's gazes, the farther apart they're pushed, and it hurts. It hurts so much it's almost physical, but Hell won't allow the sweet release of heartbreak, and Kyle hoards all of his hurt inside his head. It's spilling over; leaking down his ears, into his eyes, deafening him, blinding him, and all he wants to do is latch onto Stan, grab him by the front of his shirt and hold him close, but that's not about to happen anytime soon. So—he avoids Stan's gaze, tries to close the distance between them, so that maybe they can walk just close enough that Kyle can feel the warmth of Stan's skin, smell him, or something. He wonders if he's hurting Stan by ignoring him in this weird way, and hopes that he's not, hopes that Stan has come to the same conclusion and holds the same thoughts about this that Kyle does.
They move on, with no desire to talk with Cartman anymore, and Kyle grows weary. He wishes that he could feel physically what he does emotionally and mentally, yearns for heartache to match this heartbreak, longs for a sick feeling in his stomach to match the one in his head, but none comes, and it's hot, so hot, all he can see is red, his feet are heavy and the ground hot to the touch. Desperate, he lunges at Stan, but he's thrown backwards and lands twenty yards away. He starts to cry, he can't help it, and he's sobbing pathetically as his South Park Cows hoodie leaves his body. He never wears anything underneath in the springtime, and now he's shirtless. Shirtless and fat and crying in Hell. This is Kyle's life now.
"Are you okay, dude?" Stan asks when he catches up with Kyle. He offers his hand and then he starts to cry, too, eyes focused on his outreached hand. He sinks to the ground, still with his arm out, and Kyle can see that he is afraid to move it any closer, for fear that they would ricochet into the distance never to find each other again.
Kenny reaches them a few minutes later and sighs, slapping his hand to his forehead. "Guys. Stop. Seriously. Come on, we'll find Satan, and I'll have him undo this curse or whatever. He owes me a favor anyway, I think." He yanks Stan by the hand he has outreached towards Kyle and pulls him to his feet, places both hands on his shoulders, and bows his head to make eye connection. He nods once, sharp, and Stan nods back a few times, the intensity of their eye connection voiced by the buzzing cicada noise. Kenny releases Stan, who turns to stare at Kyle's shoes with his sad eyes.
Kyle sniffles and stands up before Kenny can offer him help. "I think I'm gay," he says, through his sobs. Stan nods in agreement and Kyle isn't sure if he's professing his own homosexuality or just that he knew Kyle was gay. Kyle hopes for both, or just the former option, or maybe just to touch Stan again.
Kenny does the sigh and hand-on-forehead thing again. "We know," he says.
It takes them eight days to find Satan. Stan lost his shoes, but it's okay because he can't feel pain, and Kenny seems to have lost his faith in everything but trudging on. The pussy riot shirt becomes a turban once more, the bones of his body basking in the orange glow that Hell casts upon their skin. Their journey brought them no familiar faces, which is sort of depressing but really not, because Kenny is ridiculous, Stan's eyes are rimmed red and he droops like a bloodhound, and Kyle is still mostly shirtless and fat and crying,
"With no food," Kyle says as they approach Satan's elaborate palace (which, according to Kenny, is new, and judging by the big red dick decals, designed by Saddam Hussein), "you'd think I'd lose weight."
Kenny opens his mouth to say something but immediately closes it. Nobody responds to Kyle. When they are at the top of the stairs leading to Satan's palace, which took them half an hour to climb, Kenny knocks by hand (the alternative is slamming the dick-shaped knocker on the door) and says, "We're here, guys. We're finally. Fucking. Here."
"I'm starting to think God doesn't exist," Stan says, the heaviness of his statement finding a home in his voice, and even Kyle has to admit that it's a pretty stupid thing to say, since they're in Hell and all.
Saddam Hussein answers the door naked with a "Why, hello, friends! Let me show you to the big guy, I'm sure you're here for him and not little ole me." They collectively cover their eyes with their hands and peep between the cracks to follow him through the winding palace, which Kyle begins to think is also shaped like a penis. They stumble upon Satan in bed, satin covers pooled in his lap, broad red chest exposed in the warm light. Satan's brow crinkles when he sees the three boys hovering behind Saddam Hussein. Saddam grabs a bathrobe on the floor and wraps it around himself, then goes to climb onto bed and cling to Satan's arm, stroking it.
"It's Kenny," Saddam Hussein says, close to Satan's ear, one hand leaving his arm to gesture to Kenny.
"Like you've would've forgotten me," Kenny says. He grins and unwraps the shirt from his hair, putting it back on normally.
"Oh, Kenny, no, of course not!" Satan opens his arms and Kenny walks forward to give him a hug. Stan and Kyle do not find this strange. "What can I do for you?" He asks, releasing Kenny. "My, how big you've gotten since I've last seen you! Guess you haven't been dying as much lately, eh? Good boy."
Kenny shakes his head, blushing and smiling a little, modest like he's in the presence of his adoring grandmother. "My friends here seem to have some sort of curse where they can't get too close to each other without being flung apart, literally," Kenny says, gesturing at Stan and Kyle. "They're getting really emotional over it. Can you undo it?"
"Oh, the Lover's Curse," Satan says, and Kyle blushes. "It's automatic! This year in Hell, our little specialty is that we do this to everybody who's too close, you know, emotionally." Kyle is the exact shade of red of his hair; Kyle has become his hair; Kyle is his hair. "Let me just undo this real quick." Satan waves his hand.
Kyle receives his first kiss in Hell, thirteen days after the apocalypse, in front of Kenny, Satan and Saddam Hussein in their vaguely phallic palace in their definitely phallic bedroom. Stan's lips are chapped and dry but they can touch, and after a few seconds of lips on lips, they're just hugging, tight and hard. Their hands move up and down each other's backs, their fingers tangle into each other's hair, they stroke each other's faces, they give little pecks on the lips, up and down chins, on cheeks and eyelids. They press their bodies into each other, and Kyle stops himself from sliding a leg between Stan's. Satan is crying to himself, Hussein laughing, and Kenny would probably look bored if Kyle didn't have his face buried in Stan's neck. He doesn't have a smell like Kyle thought he would when this moment came, and that makes Kyle sad, but then again, it is Hell. He can't expect things to go well.
Kyle and Stan are still embracing each other, maybe trying to become each other, when Kenny starts a conversation with Satan. "So what's with this apocalypse thing all about? Only affecting South Park Middle School?"
"What apocalypse? I had nothing to do with that," Satan says. He stops blubbering, and Kyle's sure that if he wasn't currently feeling the belt loops on Stan's jeans and licking the underside of his chin, he would see Satan's face grow confused.
"Uh, I might've." Saddam's squeaky voice manages to sever Stan and Kyle, as it's slimy enough to make them just not want to touch. They break apart but stand with hands together, thighs nearly touching, facing the scene unfolding before them.
"Saddam." Satan turns to look at Saddam. Satan's face indeed grew confused, and his voice has a rather accusing tone in it. Saddam edges near the door, hands behind his back, head bowed.
"You weren't giving me any, man!" Saddam shouts, head snapping up. He's sweating, drops rolling down his face. "But we made up, so no harm done!" He laughs a little and then bolts out the door, fast enough that it swings back and forth.
Satan is silent for a few seconds, watching the door until it finally settles shut, and then sighs. "I'll deal with Saddam later. I don't know what he thought this would do, and I don't know why I trust him, but…he said that he broke out of Heaven to be with me, that he missed me so much, oh, I don't know what I'm going to do about him. Why do I always fall victim to this? To him?" He stares into his lap, and the expectant silence makes Kyle think he actually wants an answer. Satan mutters something to himself, shakes his head, and looks at Kenny. "Anyway! I think I can undo this, and I think I can do it without erasing your memories and experiences here…" This sentence is clearly meant for Stan and Kyle, who, bored, have embraced each other once more; sheepishly, they separate and smile at Satan, who smiles back.
Kenny remains apathetic.
Unfortunately, the way back to Earth is by transcendence, and they're accelerating vertically upward, a literal reversal. Satan did them the favor of transporting them to their entrance spot, and it's weird, their clothes materializing back on their bodies and Kyle's getting a feeling a bit like riding a roller coaster that he really doesn't like. But—Stan's hand is tight in his and they smile at each other.
While waiting for the spell to take into effect, Craig and his gang had appeared. He and Bebe had broken up sometime in Hell; this did not surprise Kyle, who smirked at Stan. Kenny offered Craig and his gang the honor of ascending with them, but Craig had shaken his head and walked off with a hand on Token's back. Token had seemed rather shook up about this whole apocalypse-in-Hell thing. Clyde stayed behind for a few seconds, but Kenny had shot him a look that turned him away, running to catch up with Craig once again.
While they're ascending, Stan and Kyle peck at each other like chickens at feed, extending their necks to try to meet their lips. They fail miserably and it makes Kenny laugh each time, the sound of it echoing off the walls of the chasm, and eventually Stan manages to take Kyle's other hand. He establishes eye contact, which Kyle drinks up after so many days of thirsting for it, and asks, "Will you be my boyfriend?"
Kyle responds by attempting to kiss Stan, but instead his forehead slams into Stan's shoulder.
Kyle realizes with reluctance that a return to the mortal world means a return to pain when the ground in Critical Thinking seals up and his desk squeezes through the closing gap and rams into his ass. He'll have to get used to it, he guesses.
When he looks at the clock and sees that it's only 2:55, Kyle is pissed.