PROLOGUE, "WELCOME TO THE LOWER BERTH"

THE UNDERWORLD, WHERE TIME DOES NOT EXIST

He did not know who had pulled him from the river Styx. He was only grateful to be out of there. The river was filled with the souls of the dead, each of them crying out and tugging at him, begging him to bring them back to life. They pleaded pitifully, weeping and wailing. The noise was deafening. Hades was grateful to whoever had pulled him out, though he had never really bothered to find out who had done it.

He was more concerned with the rotten little bastard who had pushed him in the first place. Hercules. Most of Hades's thoughts – both waking and asleep – were filled with bloody vengeance. His anger did not end with Hercules, however. It extended outward in a great spiral, touching everyone and everything who had ever come to the man's aid.

Hades had woken on the banks of the river gasping and wet, but thrilled to finally be out of there. He did not know how long he had been down in the river; time moved differently beneath its waters. At the bottom of the river – where he had ultimately been dragged – time almost stopped existing.

Though the river was filled with souls, not every soul who entered the Underworld was damned to spend eternity there. In fact, the river was considered one of the better places to spend eternity. Those trapped in the river were in constant motion; they felt as though they were going somewhere. Of course, Hades had not experienced that sensation when he'd been pushed into the river. He knew that the river went nowhere, that it just looped endlessly through the vastness of the Underworld without reaching an actual destination. Plus, he had become trapped in the mud at the bottom while the souls desperate and depraved enough to wish to return to life pulled and clawed at him.

Wandering the banks of the river was worse than being trapped in its current, though only marginally. Those who wandered the river's banks had nowhere to go. They could only walk back and forth, desperately searching for a way out. Most of them gave up and leapt into the river, where they were granted the reprieve of at least thinking that they were going somewhere. Others sat by the bank and let madness take hold of them.

Hades knew that the people he'd found on the riverbank when he'd finally regained consciousness were clearly mad. This, however, did not bother him much. He was fairly certain (when he bothered to think of something besides torturing Hercules) that he himself was mad.

Still, the company was enjoyable. The others on the riverbank had also been wronged. They carried madness in their heads and vengeance in their hearts, and it was refreshing to hear them talk about what they had in mind for those who had dared cross them. They came from other worlds as well, and Hades found their tales fascinating. He could sit and listen for hours as they described their previous lives. They were, in turn, equally fascinated by his life, and he was flattered to a certain extent.

He could not remember his death, and while this bothered him greatly, his death had granted him his freedom. His powers were greatly diminished; they were only a fraction of what they had once been, and he had no access to the materials necessary for potions or brews. Nonetheless, he had freedom. The fact that he was dead didn't matter at all. He had freedom.

He had explored the Underworld as thoroughly as he could when he'd first arrived. To his knowledge, there was no exit. At first, this had been a great annoyance. Being unable to leave any area – no matter how spacious – was the equivalent to being in a prison. The Underworld was vast and stretched on for eternity. It was still a prison, and Jafar was determined to escape.

He would escape. He would re-gain his life, and he would wreak havoc and vengeance on the street rat. Aladdin had stolen the throne that Jafar had so rightfully deserved, and he would pay dearly for that.

The Underworld appeared to be populated with like-minded individuals; men and women who had been wronged and desired vengeance. While Jafar found their stories entertaining, he was more focused on his own goal. From what he had gathered, there were multiple worlds, not one as he had previously believed. The worlds floated separately and never intertwined, except when their residents died.

Despite the different worlds (he was tempted to say "different universes," but the idea that so many vast places could be completely unknown to him was actually a frightening one), there was only one world reserved for the dead. The dead gathered in the Underworld, where they were ruled over by a cranky demon who called himself a god and routinely threw tantrums that resulted in burning everything.

Jafar did not dislike Hades. He simply refused to be ruled by anyone or anything. Now that he had his freedom, he would find a way to escape the Underworld and return to his rightful place as Supreme Ruler of Agrabah.

She had had a great deal of trouble remembering who exactly she was. She had been so many things in her life; a lady at court, a pauper, a witch, a great beauty, a queen, and now she was dead. She was still unsure of it sometimes. She didn't like being so unsure of herself. She never told anyone of her own insecurities, as though denying them could erase them from her head. She knew that she was dead. In her more lucid moments, she knew who exactly she was and who was responsible for her death.

She did not know how she had died; no one did. It was one of the things that they discussed frequently, and it seemed to bother just about everyone. Not knowing how she had died didn't bother her much. She suspected that it had something to do with the chronic pains in her stomach. The pain always came suddenly and without much warning; it was a thick, stabbing sensation.

The others felt similar pain. Jafar occasionally complained of feeling as though he was on fire. One time it was so severe that he'd collapsed, clawing at his skin and screaming in pain. Claude suffered from a perpetual back ache, and had one time confided in her that he had nightmares about a menacing stone monster with red eyes. There were others who suffered

She was the only one who liked the river. She was the only one able to actually swim in it. She had a body that was half-human, half-octopus, and she had spent her entire life under the ocean, where the current was colder and stronger. The river was nothing when compared to the ocean. She could swim in the river and even climb out and sit on its banks. At first she'd been bothered by the souls; they had grabbed at her, screaming at her to save them, but she had brushed them off, and now they no longer reached out to her. Besides, most of them moved too fast to get a good grip on her. They did not know how to handle the current and were often swept away before they could even register her presence. She swam against the current, occasionally pausing to climb out of the river and converse with the others when she grew tired or bored.

Today, she sat with the others, her tentacles lazily plucking at the withered gray grass on the riverbank. She was having one of her more lucid days, and though the others surely noticed, they did not comment out of politeness. They listened to her as she talked, and she told them about the bratty little princess whose idiocy had brought about the end of her life.

He had realized that he was dead very quickly, but it had taken him much longer to figure out where exactly he was. He was not in Heaven; it was much too dark, and he was surrounded by sinners, heathens, and monstrosities. He was not in Hell, though. There were no devils and no flames, and he was not really suffering. He was bored and frustrated, but he was not being tortured by hellish imps and demons. No one was suffering, at least, not physically.

He concluded that he was in Purgatory, though no one else called it that. Everyone simply referred to the place as "the Underworld," which made it sound more hellish and unpleasant than it actually was.

Claude had always believed that death brought peace. When a man died, everyone always said that he was "at peace." Everyone was terribly wrong. There was nothing peaceful about being dead. With no outlet or physical activity, he was tormented by his own thoughts. He was haunted by memories of Esmerelda, of her wicked beauty and blazing green eyes. He longed for her, ached for her, and it maddened him that he could not even gaze upon her. Her rejection of his advances may not have bothered him so much had they not been so public. To humiliate him in front of his peers and inferiors was beyond unforgivable. His desire for her had not morphed into anything even resembling love; he hated her as much as he wanted her.

He was not the only one who had been thoroughly shamed and humiliated by someone so low and filthy. There was Jafar the sorcerer, who had been tricked by a worthless 'street rat.' There was Ursula, whose death had been caused by an uppity princess who thought that her royal blood allowed her to break a deal. Bill Sykes, who had been duped and then killed by a homeless man and a bunch of mongrel dogs. Gaston, whose desire for a frigid woman's affection had blinded him and ultimately led to his demise. Then, of course, there was Hades, whom Claude had initially mistaken for Satan upon his arrival in the Underworld. Hades was, as it turned out, a god who had been banished from the heavens by his own nephew.

There was no shortage of stimulating conversation or stories to share. There was, however, a growing restlessness.

Gaston had never thought about death before. After all, he was too young to die. He was in the prime of his life, the picture of perfect health. Death was something that came to the old and the weak, not to the young. He was supposed to be out living his life, experiencing the world, not wandering around a dull, dank place and listening to other people moan about how unfair their deaths were.

If anyone had the right to complain, it was him. He had been cut down in the prime of his life. There was still so much left for him to do, to taste, to touch, to experience. It wasn't fair.

Gaston had discovered very quickly that the Underworld was boring. There was nothing to do but sit and listen while everyone else around him griped and groaned about how unfair their deaths had been. The others made him feel stupid. They came from rich, grand places; Gaston had come from a small village, and his natural athletic prowess and hunting abilities had immediately catapulted him into the height of society. They did not do the same for him down in the Underworld.

In the Underworld, it seemed as though everyone was just content to sit around and talk. Gaston would not have minded so much if he could understand half of what they were saying. Hades, Jafar, and Claude monopolized the conversation, and they discussed weird, foreign ideas that Gaston had trouble following. Their talks rarely included him; they were more willing to include Ursula, who sometimes referred to herself as Vanessa and was clearly quite insane, than him.

The conversations were always the same, at least, they were to Gaston. Various methods of leaving the Underworld and entering new worlds were tossed around and debated over. The conversation would eventually de-evolve into an in-depth discussion of who had wronged who and how they should be punished. Various torture methods were brought up, and occasionally, Hades would point to the ground and create a nasty-looking device right out of thin air.

Gaston never really paid enough attention to figure out what exactly Hercules, Aladdin, Ariel, and Esmerelda had done to offend Hades, Jafar, Ursula, and Claude, but he would feel nothing but pity for them if Hades, Jafar, Ursula, or Claude found a way out of the Underworld.

END OF PROLOGUE

WELCOME TO THE LOWER BERTH (THE GREATEST SHOW UNEARTHED)