Our descent slowed as reached the bottom of the dropshaft. My feet gently landed on the floor, and Lucas led me forward.
"You are about to see wonders like you can't imagine," he said, gazing off as if entranced by something.
"Where are we going?" I asked, because the walls were suddenly changing from normal to rocky, like a cave.
"You are about to become and Inner Member!" Lucas announced.
"What? No way! This is my first time! I just barely got here when you came over! I don't know anything about The Sharing, not really!" I protested.
"That doesn't matter," Lucas assured me. "You'll have all the knowledge you need." The farther we walked, the narrower the hallway, tunnel really, became. The floor and ceiling were now rocky as well, although the floor was definitely smoothed for easy walking. Then, I began to hear faint sounds. At first, I thought it was more people playing games, or sports. However, as we got closer, it sounded more like screams of terror. I could have sworn I heard someone shouting for help.
"What's going on?" I asked, hesitant to go any further.
"It's fine," Lucas said, "nothing to worry about." He smiled again, but my apprehension over the apparent screaming negated some of the giddiness his smile had been causing. Somehow, though, he urged me forward more. The tunnel began to widen again, and the screams became louder. Suddenly, we stepped out into the most horrible, terrifying thing I had ever seen in my life.
It was a huge cavern, so large I could barely make out the far reaches of it. All around it were cages filled with people, which it turned out were the source of the screams. I caught sight of giant wormlike creatures with dozens of legs, and a huge mouth with sharp teeth at the top of what I could only assume was its head. Several of them were performing various tasks, including digging out more tunnels with their mouths. More horrfying than that were the large reptilian creatures with blades sticking out of practically every joint of their body, and raking across their head and neck. Even their tails contained blades. The instant I saw them, I knew what they were. They were demons. And if they were demons, that could only mean I was in hell. The Sharing was obviously a Satanic Cult, Kassidy and Lucas were members.
Lucas had escorted me straight to hell.
It was just as I realized this that I finally noticed the large lake in the middle of the cavern. However, instead of being made of fire, as most descriptions of hell mention, it was a sludgy beige color. There were two piers sticking out into the lake. Each one had a line of people being escorted by the demons. On the first pier, the people looked normal enough. They milled around calmly as they made their way to the lake. When the reached the end, they would kneel down, and stick their head in the sludgy water. I could not fathom what they were seeing when they did that, I only knew the instant they pulled back up, they began screaming. A few tried to make a break for it, but the demons would quickly snatch them up, and haul them to one of the cages. One, however, did not scream, did not run. After submerging his head, he stood up, nodded to the demons, and walked off. He went over to an area I noticed just then, a space that looked almost like someone's living room had been transplanted into hell. A few couches surrounding a TV, which appeared to playing a movie. I think I recognized it, but the knowledge that I was standing in hell sort of pushed everything else out, so the name would not come to me.
I looked over at the second pier, where unlike the first pier, most of the people were not calm. They struggled against the demons' grip, begged for mercy, for freedom. Similarly to the one man who did not scream on the first pier, there were a few on the second pier who did not need a demon escort, and voluntarily lowered their heads back into the sludge. All the rest, after they were lowered by the demons, would suddenly stop fighting, and would walk off their pier calmly. It was almost an exact opposite of what was happening on the other pier.
"Amazing, isn't it?" Lucas said, an enraptured look on his face. I slowly started backing away from him, hoping that his reverie would prevent him from realizing I was leaving. However, as I started back down the hallway, I was suddenly face to face with Kassidy.
"You don't want to leave yet," she said, sounding like I was trying to leave a theater in the middle of a movie, just before the best part. I scurried backward, not even trying to be covert anymore. I bolted past Lucas, and ran out along the side of the hell lake. Keeping that expanse of sludge on my right, and ran toward what looked like another dropshaft. Several people called out as I blew by, and I realized some of the demons were starting to chase me. Determined not to be forever damned, I ran even faster toward that dropshaft. Just when I thought I was going to make it, a figure stepped out from the shadows, blocking my entry into the dropshaft. It was Taylor. The look on her face was bone-chilling. It was a strange mixture of airhead giddiness, and pure evil.
"Going somewhere?" she asked mockingly. She raised her right arm, and pointed all five fingers at me. I heard a strange hiss, then I sank to the ground, and everything faded to darkness…