Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

Mark Twain

A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode.

Chanakya

"Nava, please come out," that fucking velvet as fuck's voice seeped in through the mahogany door.

"Fuck. Off."

"Nava dear, what would your father say if he heard you being so difficult?"

A shiver wracked my body. It had been five days since I was forced to abandon everything I knew and my life in Dallas. My body jerks and twitching were only at a minimum now. Apparently I recovered faster than most people. I shivered again. Pesado, Mr. Velvet's actual name, told me that when other people visit and come back from Hell they spend the rest of lives plagued by unexplained body movements, burns and sores that never heal, and a deep rooted desire to rip their skin off.

That's right lady and germs. I, Nava Seta, twenty-four year old woman who is most definitely not the Antichrist, went to Hell.

After I showed up at my mom's apartment and that goddamn black bag went over my head I woke up, well, I woke up inside my mom's apartment.

"Sweetie, are you okay?" My mom had a cold wash cloth on my forehead. I was laying on her hideous floral couch. The one I threw up on in the 8th grade when Timothy Hymkey gave me my first kiss. My eyes shifted to the corner of the cushion. Yep, still there.

"Mom? I just had... the craziest dream." I struggled to sit up when a voice halted me- no, it did more than that. The fucking voice was like music and a chainsaw at the same time. It tore something inside of me. I wanted to hurl and cry and fuck me - this voice made me want to pray.

"I am so sorry, Nava, but none of this has been a dream."

I couldn't breathe when I finally managed to sit up and turned to look over the top of my mom's couch. Sitting at her cramp kitchen table was a man. He wasn't wearing a red cape or sporting horns, but his mere presence gave off something. Something like an anxiety attack only multiplied by a hundred. He looked... well it was hard to describe how he looked. He looked like the ending to every sad story I'd ever heard. He looked like the definition of melancholy.

I didn't even have to ask, sitting at my mom's thrift store table, dressed in a white short sleeved tee shirt and white slacks that were burnt at the end in no shoes was the Satan.

Mr. Nice suit and even nicer voice stood behind him. Hands clasped behind his back like some kind of body guard.

"N-Nava, we have some things I think we need to discuss, but first do you need to use the bathroom?" My mom grasped my shoulders lightly turning me away from the men that weren't actually men.

"The bathroom?" I breathed out, my voice had no weight. I think I was suffocating.

A light dusting of a blush fell over my mom's cheeks. For forty-one years old my mother was quite pretty. It probably had something to do with her timid nature. She just seemed so fucking innocent all the time it was like she was trapped in some sort of eternal youth. Everything still affected her.

"Well, I vomited the first time I came here. Actually I did a bit more than just vomiting if I remember correctly, right Luce?" She asked over my shoulder at the seated man.

Luce?

"Yes... yes you did. Although I do not really expect you would remember that. You blacked out during the worst of it."

All of a sudden there was this ringing in my ears, I knew they were all still talking but I couldn't make out their words. My mother's lips moved soundlessly and the wallpaper behind her, it started peeling. A flush crawled on my skin and spread. I was hot everywhere but clammy. My mother's hand was on my forehead. She looked concerned. But why? Why was she concerned? I looked down at my arms, because I noticed an uncomfortable feeling but I could hardly believe my eyes. I saw my right hand scratching my left forearm. My nails were digging into my skin but I couldn't stop. I couldn't even feel myself doing it! Little beads of blood trickled out from the long dragged out marks.

The ringing started to get louder and suddenly it hit me that I was screaming. That's what the ringing sounds was. But the sound wasn't close, it was like it was being muffled. I couldn't dwell on that too long because a tightening started to happen in my stomach like someone was tugging on my belly button from the inside. Tugging, tugging till something snapped. I doubled over as pain radiated through my entire body, I vomited from the shock alone. A murky grayish black substance pooled onto the floor that wasn't the floor of my mom's apartment.

It was hard, and sandy with a slight orange-ish red hue.

When I looked up again I wasn't in my mother's apartment. The couch was still there, and the kitchen table too, only we were all in some sort of Hall. The really pretty kind like in Disney movies. The floor was made out of this reddish sand that was shifting and the walls and ceiling were carved out of a black stone into intricate cathedral like designs. Everything was beautiful and horrifying at the same time. I looked down and saw I was still clutching my arm, but I wasn't scratching anymore and the blood had stopped dropping.

"She's handling this extremely well," I heard my mother say to the monster behind me. Well? I thought, I am doing everything but taking this well. I couldn't open my lips.

"You forget she isn't completely human, Mary. She'll be able to stand the weight of being here better than you could." Again that voice ruined something inside of me.

From the corner of my eye I saw my mother pout a bit. And then there were rough hands on me,

"Up we go, your majesty." The man with the silky voice whispered into my ears. Apparently he knew the magic words, because while I still had no control over them, my limbs acted as he wanted as he led me to the table and deposited my numb body in a seat facing the sad man who's mere presence made me want to kill myself.

"Nava…" he whispered my name almost with something like pride, "My Nava… I will never be able to say this enough to you, but I am so, so sorry."

I couldn't reply and I think he knew that.

"Believe me when I say I did everything I could to keep this moment from happening. I never wanted you to come here I-" his voice caught like he might have started crying. "I hid you the best I could and had everything gone as planned two years from now you would have volunteered for the next election. From there your political career would have taken off. You'd have gone back to school and made so, so many people believe in you. Nava you would have been so great."

He had been smiling as he laid out my use-to-be apparent future. It slipped from his lips completely as he said,

"But then those monsters found you."

I shoved the obnoxiously large dresser in front of my bedroom door. Since my faked death and return from hell I had been living in a penthouse suite with Pesado in New York. When he wasn't trying to force me to eat he was trying to force me to study with tutors in every subject imaginable.

He knocked again at my door trying to get me to come out.

"Fuck off!" I shouted and slowly made my way to the bathroom connected to my room. I walked in and shut the door behind me before collapsing to my knees in front of the cabinet under the sink. Slowly I made the difficult effort of clearing away everything from underneath the sink, my hands shook and I struggled to grasp the bottles of cleaning agents and rags and maliciousness stuff. I hated the sight of my bare arms, they were tinged black and there were red swells that were still in different stages of healing. I had to forcefully advert my eyes away from my flesh.

They hadn't looked like that immediately after I'd emerged from Hell. I was sort of fine besides some twitching and unease. Like the last time I had saw Salvation in that bar. But slowly my hair started to fall out. Then my skin wrinkled and broke and burns appeared. I was starving all the time, but food only left me hungrier. I constantly felt like something dead was inside of me. Poisoning me.

Once the space under the sink was empty I crawled my way in, a week ago it would have been a tight squeeze but I was all bones now.

Inside the small cabinet I shut the doors and held my trembling arms tightly to my chest and steadied my breathing.

"In and out, Nava, in... and out," I couched myself, "You're okay... you are fucking okay. You are here... in the bathroom. It is 9:18 and… and you are okay." Once my right hand felt functional I reached for the cell phone in my pocket. Pesado had given it to me my first night here in New York and I'd been using to at night to call the only person left in this world I cared about.

Ring Ring.

"Hello Nava."

"H-hey Godric, what's up?"

A small chuckle escaped his lips

"Nothing on my part, dear one. You are the one that called me."

"So... what have you been up to today?"

Godric wasn't one for small talk, I just don't think it was a concept he understood. But someone bless his soul he really tried for me. The first few nights he tried to convince me to allow him to 'collect me' as he put it. But I couldn't give my location up, hell even if I wanted to I hadn't been outside the apartment since coming.

And anyway I was fairly certain I was dying.

Why have the nice vampire that'd help me see me in such a state?

No.

All I wanted was to hear a voice that cared.

And again, someone bless that fool. He allowed me that pleasure.

"I am afraid I have not much to report," he started, "Since awaking I have attending to a few matter…"