It was 5:00pm. Sock had worked his required nine to five shift. In fact, he had showed up early, just in case. It went fine, considering. However, now that it was over, he wasn't really sure what to do. He supposed he should return to Hell until the next day, but how would he get there? He'd actually been expecting the ground to just open up and swallow him, or a big ball of flame, or something; yet, here he was at 5:12 and nothing had happened. He'd already looked massively unprofessional to his charge, Jonathan Combs. So he floated up and down the street, trying to decide what to do next. He perked up when he remembered the brochure Mephistopheles had given to him. He fished it out of his back pocket. He opened the first tri-fold to find a mass of text. However, it was written in font too small and too swirly to be legible. He opened the next fold to find in bold letters, "You're on your own, kid!" Sock shoved the brochure into his back pocket again. He thought maybe the way back was the way he came. He just had to remember where and how he died.

He remembered that the moon was full and bright enough to see by. At first, he had considered simply burying his parents in an out of town cemetery, a forensic counter-measure as well as a sign of respect for the man and woman who had raised him. But sometime during the drive in his mother's station wagon, Sock determined that burying his first human victims was not enough. Sock chose a spot under a large tree. There were three simple gravestones already set up, and room to dig shallow graves on the other side. Sock took out the fat permanent marker he had swiped from his father's desk. On the back of the first gravestone he scrawled in large letters DAD. For a moment he chided himself for not writing out his father's full name, but it was too late now, he'd used indelible ink. He wrote MOM on the next stone so at least the tombstones would match. On the third stone, he paused in thought. The names Napoleon and Maxwell were both too long to fit on the stone without some dumb looking hyphen, and Sock would just look silly. Finally, he wrote ME and set to digging. Was the open grave still there with his scrawny body at the bottom? Would he even be able to find the cemetery? He doubted it would be on any road map, assuming he could remember which direction he had driven. However, it was a start. He would find a gas station and use a road map.

Reading road maps requires the ability to open them. Sock discovered opening road maps was very difficult because his fingers kept phasing through. He could stand on the ground and sit on benches, but he couldn't pull the map off the stand, let alone unfold it.

"Just think poltergeist," he said to himself as he struggled to have the slightest effect on the map. Eventually, the whole rack of maps toppled to the floor.

After many more struggles and failures, Sock was in a quiet part of the gas station with a partially unfolded road map. Suddenly he realized, he wasn't even in the same state! He'd need a map of the whole Mid-West, one that included all the little towns. His second map retrieving venture went better than his first. His demon skills were improving, he noted with pride. However, when he finally located his home town and Jonathan's home town on the map, the sun had started to rise. Sock didn't even notice it had gone down. He considered refolding and returning the maps he had used, but rapidly gave up trying. It was nearly 9:00 in the morning.

Lots of people commute to and from work. Sock told himself that this was no different. There was simply no way he could get from one town to the other any other way. He'd spent two full nights planning this trip. Once he was finally back in Hell, he had a ton of questions for his employer. Sock had been hitchhiking, in a way, from one car to another, getting ever closer to the place of his death. The last mile or so he had to float, since the last car to travel to this graveyard at night was a blue station wagon bearing two dead bodies wrapped in bed sheets.

A crescent moon hung over head as Sock nervously floated over the wrought iron fence. Leaning against the large tree was a thin young man with unkempt black hair.

"I'm guessing you're Me," he said as Sock approached.

Sock nodded mutely.

"No one has found you yet, if that's what you're wondering."

Sock shook his head. "I'm trying to get back to Hell," he explained. "Do you know how?"

"Just who do you think I am?" asked the young man, putting his fists on his slender hips.

Sock whined, "I don't know. I'm new at this. You're a demon, you're here… I just assumed…"

The young man let out a sigh. "I'm a ghost."

"So, I'm guessing you can't help demons return to Hell," Sock said with disappointment.

"Why are you trying to get to Hell?" the ghost asked. "Isn't it supposed to be a horrible place?"

"I… well… I..." Sock struggled for an answer, but was realizing that his efforts to return to Hell were rather foolish. "It's where I belong?" he offered feebly.

The ghost shrugged. "If you insist. Personally, if I were you, and no one was forcing me to be in the pits of endless fire, and no one seemed to notice my absence, I wouldn't go out of my way to be somewhere unpleasant."

Sock hung his head in embarrassment. Now he would have to trudge all the way back with no answers from Mephistopheles.

"I was under the impression that Hell was being rebuilt anyway," said the ghost.

"Um, yeah. I just wasn't sure where else..."

"There's some rather disturbing war zones I could recommend, if that's what you're into."

"No… no. Thanks, though." Sock turned and began to journey back to Jonathan's house. He hoped he could make it to the bus-stop before 8:25.

"The name's Fergus!" The ghost called out as Sock hoped over the gate.

"Sock!" the little demon called back over his shoulder.