Purgatory

By Gun Arvidssen

"Under the circumstances, it takes Nathan Habu a surprisingly short period of time to realise that he has died and is now in Hell."

Thus begins a confusing journey towards redemption as Habu makes his way through Purgatory in his efforts to be liberated into the Next World. He meets an assortment of Purgatory's other occupants, among them the extraordinarily alluring Kaiowas, Blindness the Bringer of Souls, and a mysterious, merciless agent of bad karma.

Being privy, in turn, to periods of brutally visceral Hell and sublime episodes in a turquoise room filled with absolute beauty, Habu is guided by the voice of a woman who transmits communiques directly into his mind. He must learn what Purgatory seeks to teach him, and settle accounts that overshadow him from the World of the Alive.

But Purgatory's layers of reality are more complicated than they initially seem.

The author recommends .pdf or .mobi versions for download, as some ebook readers are known to mangle even the most carefully formatted .epub file.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gun Arvidssen
• Release date: Nov 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311210319

Gun Arvidssen

Wow. The bio that was here for several years sounded like it was written by someone with a stick up their butt. I think I copied it from the Wikipedia entry about me. (And guess who >that< was written by? ~_^)Here is a more practical overview of who I am and where I’m at.I'm a full-time writer and editor, although my attention also wanders to a wide range of other passions: music, DIY, aviation, film-making, product design and manufacture, you name it.The bottom line is: as Jim Morrison once said, “I’ll always be a word man, better than a bird man.”I do love language. I love communication, sharing ideas, telling stories. I agree with Flaubert’s notion that “language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out crude rhythms for bears to dance to, all the while longing to move the stars to tears of pity.”I also should mention that my novel, Purgatory, was penned about a decade ago. While I stand by the quality of the art I produced, and I’m proud of the love and effort I poured into that book, I was a different person then.I’ve come a long way on this wonderful journey, I’ve turned some pretty psycho corners en route, and I’m really happy about how the road ahead is shaping up.

Book preview

PURGATORY

Gun Arvidssen

Published by NAEPALM Industries at Smashwords

Copyright 2008 Gun Arvidssen

This book is also available in print from www.naepalm.com

~~~

Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another individual, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

~~~

PURGATORY

Contents

Author’s notes

Attributions

Act I: Hell Incorporated

Act II: Seasons in the Abyss

Act III: The Unknown Soldier

~~~

Author’s notes

First and most importantly, I offer my sincerest gratitude to Donyale Harrison. Not only is this novel incomparably better than it once was – due exclusively to her expert advice and exceptional literary wisdom – but also she was the person who introduced me to Smashwords, meaning it is thanks to her that you are reading this at all.

Know also, before you begin, that Purgatory is littered with turns of phrase that I did not come up with myself. Rather than thinking of me as a contemptible plagiarist, I hope you will accept that all quotations more than about two or three words long are attributed below, and the remaining allusions are intended only as a respectful homage to the artisans who have inspired me. So it follows that if many expressions – such as the titles of the acts – seem familiar, it is probably because they were coined years before I humbly borrowed them to embellish my interpretations of Hell. My highest compliments to all who recognise and can identify them.

Finally, all but those with a particularly strong stomach should be aware that this novel is, in parts, some severely disturbing shit. Consider yourself cautioned.

~~~

Attributions

Act I opening quotation taken from A Scanner Darkly, copyright (c) by Philip K. Dick, 1977. Published by Orion Books, reproduced with permission, courtesy of Baror International and the Estate of Philip K. Dick.

Act II opening quotation taken from ‘The Asylum’ by Edguy, (c) Tobias Sammet 2006. Reproduced with permission.

Act III opening quotation taken from ‘Abandoned, Pleased, Brainwashed, Exploited’ from the album Winterheart’s Guild. Composer and author: Tony Kakko. Artist: Sonata Arctica, (c) Magic Arts Publishing/Edition Musik Kontor 2003. Reproduced with permission.

~~~

To Kevin R. Bourke, who taught me the art.

* * * * * * *

Act I

Hell Incorporated

"I saw death rising from the earth, from the ground itself,

in one blue field, in stubbled color."

– Philip K. Dick

[01 Scintillae]

Under the circumstances, it takes Nathan Habu a surprisingly short period of time to realise he has died and is now in Hell.

The understanding of his situation is unequivocal and washes over him smoothly as he rides a bicycle at high speed through the night. The air is coldly crystalline and his breath is transformed to dew in his stubble. On the horizon, the greenish outlines of cranes hunch like sinister surgeons over a massive construction site, their backlit ghosts frozen against the illuminated ferroconcrete skeleton.

The peace of the night, the cold wind as he hurtles down the hill, the city lights – a skyful of self-luminous jewels scattered over the crumpled blanket of the landscape – it’s quite beautiful, antithetical to damnation, and completely bizarre. Hell, in popular understanding, is a pit of fire, eternal torture, very very painful unrelenting bullshit of the worst order. But this... at this moment, it doesn’t seem so bad.

Purgatory is different things to different people, says Aiis. And your persistence in calling it Hell is not very accurate.

In the manner of dreams, it doesn’t strike him as particularly unusual that he did not generate this comment himself. He learns the words as if reading them, and associates them with a woman’s voice. He can’t put a face to it, but there is power behind the voice, and it has a burr edge. It’s as if below a certain threshold of volume she would not be able to engage her voice at all, only whisper.

Distracted by the artificial starfield, he rides through the first flake of Scintillae without looking at it, and experiences a momentary flare of information and energy.

What was that? he thinks to Aiis.

A Scintilla.

Well that explains everything.

Then there is a fine scattering of them, and he sweeps through these too. They go partway through him like subatomic particles, but stop before exiting and unload their charge to him. His nervous system flickers for an instant as they ground out, and he shivers.

Scintillae are fragments of God. Infinity divided into photons. Individual units of the currency that will buy your passage to the Next World.

Why didn’t you just say that to start with?

First you needed to know their name. The true name of a thing can be more important than descriptions which will never precisely identify what is being described.

It seems so self-explanatory to Habu to be having this interior dialogue that he doesn’t even question her identity. He’s in Hell–

Purgatory. Not Hell.

–and talking to a woman in his head, one he suspects to be infinitely intelligent.

Hell is close enough.

Except your damnation is by no means eternal. There are things you need to do. One of them is suffer. Another is learn. Everyone here must do these things. But your final test will be to remember your own death.

Habu thinks hard about this, and realises that he cannot. In fact, he’s having a hard time recalling much about his life at all. He remembers moments from childhood. He remembers happiness, love, but has trouble placing actual events into a linear framework. He remembers seeing foreign lettering and knowing what it means, but not how to read the words. He remembers being injured in warfare.

It will not help you to try reaching out for it like that. You need to learn how to use information before it will be given.

For the remainder of his ride into town, Habu ponders on how he has ended up here, why it’s so pain-free, tries to remember other moments from the World of the Alive. As he enters the business district of Hell, he’s stopped at a set of lights although there’s no traffic anywhere else to be seen. In an adjacent alley, he sees a skinny woman, about forty, shaking and whimpering quietly. She squeezes off photo after photo from a cellphone camera, and she seems too traumatised and engrossed in what she’s doing to notice him there.

There is some thick, distant laughter and a noise like a carcass being dropped to the ground. The sound is repeated. Some words drift to him but he can’t really understand what’s being said. Habu, mindful of potential traffic, tries to triangulate between where the woman is pointing the lens, and the sounds which are reflected between skyscrapers in a misleading way. His vision eventually finds a lit doorway; the sign above it proclaims the establishment to be The Swinging Bat Hotel, and there is stylised cricket imagery on the crest for emphasis.

Slightly off to the side of the doorway, he sees a long and narrow teenage boy on the ground, curled up with his wrists crossed before his face, hands open and palms outward in a pathetic defensive reflex. There are three huge bouncers, verging on large enough to be Sumo, periodically giving him a kick. They appear to be muscular as well as simply fat, and Habu wonders if their uniforms are only made in size XXXL, because nothing else is big enough to generate the required intimidation. There are trails of blood streaming down the youth’s face and his mouth looks somewhat mashed. Even at this distance, Habu can see maroon smudges and drops on the floor, so he guesses they’ve been at it for a while.

One of the giants notices the cyclist watching them, and is quick to holler, Hey, you. The lights have gone green.

He is correct, and Habu pedals on, wondering if a similar fate will meet him. Or worse. He speculates about whether the bouncers are untouchable demons or simply other souls who are going to stay here longer for it. Eventually the main street becomes a bridge over the river, and just on the far side he hangs a right and hops onto the sidewalk. He makes his way down to river level along what is theoretically a pedestrian walkway, or maybe a wheelchair ramp. In practice, it’s just as useful for bicycle travel.

Habu coasts along the strip of closed-up shops and cafes, locks his vehicle, and takes a service entrance up to Shell Hollow Seafood Bistro where he works. The restaurant’s colloquial name probably originated from a translation into the language of a drunken bastard: its workers know it as the Hell Hole Sonofa Bitch.

Out the corner of his eye, he sees the lights of town reflected on the surface of the river. There is something asynchronous about the way they move, and he turns to look. Among the melted sparkles of light, he sees brilliant flakes of electricity, moving along with the surface tension in the slow continuous exhalation of the river.

He realises they are Scintillae, not actually floating on top of the river, but levitating along just barely above it. They look like small points of perfect blue, radiating a roughly circular aura of light. As they move through the air, they oscillate back and forth, flattening and disappearing before reappearing again rapidly. Habu has the impression that they are two-dimensional, and they vanish at points in the cycle when they are on edge to his field of view. They do not fly in a straight line, either. The path of each Scintilla describes something like a stretched zigzag or an angular waveform. They move briskly, animated slivers of internal reflection caused by fracture lines in opal. Visible, invisible, visible, invisible, excited.

Each time his eyes focus on one of the Scintillae, his head is pierced with a pleasant retinal overload, a swarm of arcwelders in the distance. His eyes register the optical avalanche of emerging from darkness into sunlight, at an intensity just short of the pain threshold.

And as soon as they go through his eyes, they are gone. All their power discharges at his optic nerve as his irises shiver in delight.

You wasted those ones, says Aiis.

~~~

[02 Morgan and Yevgeny]

Despite his ingrained professionalism, or perhaps because of it, Professor Morgan Slessor is in awe of Yevgeny’s slickness. Exactly sixty seconds early, he sees the grinning blond enter the Hell Hole. His eyes are pointed at a declined angle as he walks through the door, and although he’s looking straight ahead, he sidesteps a weaving teenage couple to his left. Simultaneously, he gives Slessor, to his right, a little gesture of greeting –partly a wave, partly a salute. It’s uncanny.

Yevgeny is very solidly built, but his muscles are knotty and localised and his walk is springy, more like a boxer than a bodybuilder. Whether he is making eye contact with somebody or not, he always seems to start smiling spontaneously, as if he’s on the phone to someone he likes, or he’s just remembered a fabulous joke that he’d heard some time before. This habit tends to unsettle people because their first impression is that he is smiling at them, at moments when this might be inappropriate; then, an instant later, they realise he’s not and they feel uncomfortable because they don’t see an immediate reason for his shining joviality.

He makes a beeline for where Slessor is seated.

Hey Morgie. We have something for one another.

Each time I come here I wonder if they haven’t installed cameras yet.

Oh, there are a few. I don’t usually show this to people, my paranoid friend, but you’ve helped me several times, and that does help my clients. So have a look now. You are familiar with Newton’s Third Law?

Of course.

I have some laws too. I do not really enumerate them. But this is one of Yevgeny’s laws. For every surveillance there should be opposing and superior countersurveillance.

Slessor smirks in spite of himself.

Yevgeny opens something that resembles a wallet, cradling it in his palm so that nobody but him and Slessor can see. For all intents and purposes, he might be flashing the surgeon a picture of his girlfriend or kids.

There is a small digital screen inside the leather, and Slessor doesn’t take long to determine it’s a floorplan of the space they’re in. There are two points in blue, and a number of other points, stationary and mobile, in red and green. There are also three white segments on the screen, with arcs that cover almost all the floor space but entirely miss the two blue points.

This is us, says Yevgeny, indicating the blue points with a stylus. These are the sweeps of the surveillance. I hope I have reassured you because your mind and your abilities are worth this. You are a good man, Morgie, I do hope you will move onto greener pastures soon.

Slessor does his best to stay equally collected as Yevgeny puts away the device, and says, Well, I must say, you both impress me and inspire me with hope. Can I buy you a drink?

Yes please. I would request a glass of apple juice.

Whatever.

Slessor feels the lightest slither of something entering his interior breast pocket, although he swears Yevgeny has both arms on the bar, gripping alternate elbows. Whatever sleight-of-hand shit he’s pulling, it’s freaky and convincing.

Here’s your bag. Try to remember to take it with you next time, says Slessor, proffering a squat shoulder pack.

Yevgeny smiles brilliantly as if Slessor has just told him he’s lined up a bevy of nympho virgins for him.

Thank you my friend. I don’t know what I’d do without this. But I can’t leave just yet, my drink is not here yet. And is there any way I could return the favour?

Slessor sighs. He’s not really surprised by the proposition, but figuring Yevgeny wants to make conversation to underline to any witnesses that they are not simply transacting, he decides to give a straight answer.

Yeah, actually Yev, there’s someone who’s really been getting on my nerves lately.

You’re going to have to be more specific, I think.

The barkeep shows up, breaking Slessor’s flow, and delivers an enormous glass of murky liquid, shot through with ice cubes and drinking straws. Yevgeny partakes of the beverage and makes noises of satisfaction.

Yeah. I don’t know how much of this is an urban myth, but the MO seems consistent, even though the cops are pissed at me wasting their time. Purportedly. I’ve had three hit and runs come through Divinity in the last month. And that’s just this month.

Only three?

No, we’ve had many more, but how often do you get patients that were already paraplegics before they got waxed?

Oh, I see what you are saying.

One of the junkies I’m treating told me about this kid, Georgie they call him. He’s nobody, essentially, but his car is not just an extension of his dick, it’s also a murder weapon.

Explain this to me more. You are saying this person actually targets and runs over cripples?

"The cripples I know for sure, because they can’t dive out of the way.

At least, that’s my guess judging by the injuries. I have a feeling there are others."

So, not just cripples?

No, we also had four vagrants so far, and a bike courier just a couple of days ago, DOA. Same pattern of imprint injuries. But the paras, Yev, he really does his best with them.

So, you mean, the wheelchairs are marked characteristically by the bumper.

No, by the Jolly Roger badge on the front of the car.

Surely you are not serious.

Slessor looks at him, and Yevgeny appreciates that he undoubtedly is.

The cops would never touch him, he’s a minor.

Ah yes. But I am not a cop, and I don’t like insolent minors.

I was hoping you would say that. I had a really difficult time explaining to one paraplegic that he was now a quadriplegic. Because he reversed back over the guy and then drove over him a second time.

For an exceptional moment, Yevgeny appears genuinely grief-stricken. The absence of his grin is doubly poignant.

That is really bad news.

Yeah, that’s my thought, exactly. Anything you can do? Bit of scare tactics maybe? I really want this shit to stop, if only because of the obligatory long surgery knowing we won’t succeed anyway.

Yevgeny almost laughs out loud again. Oh Morgie, you medical people are funny sometimes. I will teach him a lesson, he says.

Although he’s not actually mortified, Slessor briefly considers whether he should appear to be. Then he decides that Yevgeny would see through it and subsequently think less of him. But he does say, Yev, I, uh, don’t want you to get your hands dirty. They don’t pay much where I work, and I work hard, and basically I need to continue doing business with you if I’m to feed my family.

Not to mention your ladies of the night.

Slessor says nothing but feels his cheeks light up like a space heater.

Think nothing of it, says Yevgeny, as it happens, the person I am bringing... the products I left in my bag, owes me a favour related to them.

I hope he’s a minor too.

She. Not he. And she is certainly not a minor. But have no fear, this individual is just as professional as you are. And equally good with surgical devices.

Yevgeny exhales half a laugh. It makes the doctor feel physically cold. As quickly as he can, Slessor stops himself from extrapolating about the devices. The combination of ex-interrogation-specialist vibe radiating from Yevgeny, and Slessor’s certainty that the guy associates only with people of the highest calibre, is enough to make him very uncomfortable about what kind of application such instruments may find. He’s confident there is no anaesthetic involved, at any rate.

OK. Well, you have what you need, and the same is true for me. It’s time for me to go, says Slessor, patting his pocket as subtly as he can to check there’s a hundred-shaped brick of bills in there.

Very well, my friend, says Yevgeny. As Slessor stands to leave, he shakes his hand without leaving the stool. Thank you for the apple juice.

My pleasure, Yevgeny. I’ll see you again.

No doubt you will. Take care, Morgie.

You too, pal.

~~~

[03 work at the Hell Hole]

The dishpig department of the Hell Hole consists of a vast stainless steel platform, an industrial washer that gets dishes largely clean within several minutes, and a couple of bath-sized sinks armed with a pressurised firefighting hose. It is staffed by a crew of two. Habu arrives at his pre-opening detail to find a stocky, round-faced Asian guy in his late thirties on the scene. Habu’s not late, and he doesn’t see why the other guy would show up any more than ten minutes or so early. Nevertheless, it appears he’s already triumphed over most of the shit left over from the prep chefs’ work, which is at least half an hour’s worth of slavery.

Hey buddy, I’m Nathan, how’s it going. What’s your name?

My name is Hen Li. Prease to meet you, Ney Fun. The other man removes a pink rubber glove and shakes Habu’s hand. Although they grip one another’s palms with equal pressure, Habu feels the compacted meat wrapped around Hen Li’s metacarpals and knows he could exert a fuckload more psi than he currently is.

Habu makes an assumption about his name, and the way the characters have been compromised in translation and speech. Pleased to meet you, Henry. I haven’t worked with you before, you been here a long time?

Although it’s not Habu’s initial intention to make deliberate allusions about Hell, Hen Li slightly changes the angle of his gaze without becoming confrontational about it – just very alert.

Actuary I have been heah a very long time.

Habu realises the conversation is working on more than one level, but decides not to go too much further down the dangerous path just yet. Instead, he says, Well, we must be the two guys wiping everyone else’s ass around here. It should be good working with you.

Rikewise. I will be intelested to check yua form.

"Dude, you will not be disappointed."

What, you fink youself da bad ass?

Yes, Henry, I do. Just as you do yourself.

Hen Li looks back at him and smiles broadly. I hope so. What is yua suhname, Ney Fun?

Habu.

Ah, Habu. Rike de snake? Or de sake? Very good sake. Makes you fuck rike ninja.

Habu laughs and immediately likes the guy. Half a minute from meeting to pussy is a kind of record for him, even if filtered through the prism of heterosexual banter.

I make it my business to fuck like a ninja no matter what I’ve been consuming, he replies.

Hen Li smiles again, then the moment is over and Habu understands that reality has overtaken their communion. Hen Li replaces the glove and gets back to work. Habu dons his gear and gets stuck into it, but still somehow is just a fraction behind anything his wingman does. It’s as if the reactions to his actions take a few seconds to filter into being, while Hen Li has an instant-gratification thing going on with the universe.

~~~

[04 Minnie]

One of the Hell Hole’s three owners is a slightly spherical cook called Minnie. Short for Minerva or some such. Behind her back, most of the grunts call her Maxi, and because she probably knows this, she treats everyone uniformly like shit. She is the typical Anglo-Saxon phenotype, or at least an inflated version thereof – pale skin verging on freckly, strawberry blonde, and those characteristic English proportions of the face.

Minnie is often frowning, but more often she seems just on the brink of frowning. Her whole demeanour, in fact, seems like she’s fuming and about to throw a tantrum – which she regularly does, too. Nobody likes Minnie, not even the co-owners – or at least, the one co-owner who occasionally comes to the Hell Hole instead of simply acting as a disembodied benefactor behind an idea. In the case of the Third co-owner, it’s bizarre in that he – or she – is never referred to by name, always as ‘the third one’ or ‘the other guy, or ‘Number Three’ in the worst case.

Habu wonders if the Third even exists; if so, he wonders why there’s so much overt evasiveness about identity. Surely, he figures, to co-own a restaurant you’d have to know the names of the other people on the deed.

At any rate, when ass is in need of kicking, Minnie is on the job. Even when ass is not in need of kicking, Minnie keeps everyone on their toes just in case. It doesn’t matter what grunt in the carefully machined establishment of the Hell Hole edges towards an out-of-line possibility: Minnie ducks away from the burners, gets right in the relevant person’s face, and says: You want out, do you? You limp fuck? Well, there’s the door. And she points, invariably, to the staff exit.

Perhaps it’s his personal retribution, but Habu gets targeted by Minnie to do the most heinous of tasks around the place. It is his job to clean the filters above the stove, extracting slimy grease which would pass for crude oil at any refinery. Habu is always the one to mop the floor of the bakery, scraping at the dried-on bits of dough and/or toffee left by the engineers of profiterole pyramids (featuring pistachio frosting) the day before.

Worse than that, Minnie appears to also have a grudge against Habu. He suspects that it’s something related to the fact that he knows they are in Hell, she does not, and she is subconsciously aware of this inequality.

Habu! she yells. You fucking viper. Get your ass over here. Now.

After he complies, she instructs him to perform yet another completely stupid and unnecessary cleaning detail in addition to his usual duties. He notices that she’s splashing even more oil than usual into the food.

Minnie, is it healthy to use that much oil?

The fuck would I care? Between that and the MSG, the asses on seats will keep coming back. That’s the bottom line.

But didn’t you guys go to a lot of trouble to estimate the fat content and stuff of all the meals?

Hey, that wasn’t my idea. Besides, who the fuck is gonna know? Easier to cook the slime, and I drain it before we put it up anyway.

Habu sighs and figures there’s no point arguing. He gets stuck into shifting half a ton of petrified prawns in the freezer to clean the same shelves he cleaned the day before.

~~~

[05 interior dialogue #06]

Aiis, thinks Habu, are there any children in Hell?

No, she replies, the concept of original sin is a lie. Children, on the whole, have a much sounder understanding of reality than they are believed to possess. It is brainwashed out of them over time. And as their native magic dies, their souls begin awakening to the possibility of this place. Before it exists inside a person, Purgatory cannot be reached after a death.

I’ve seen some teenagers here, he notes, remembering the kid he saw getting the shit kicked out of him near The Swinging Bat.

The threshold is not related to chronological age. It is a state of being. Similarly, the young people you’ve seen here may actually have been quite old in the World of the Alive.

But don’t you occasionally get some deranged psycho kids who murder other kids and stuff?

There are multitudes of such children. But not here. Their damage is measured by altogether different parameters. And they are taken elsewhere by Piper the Bringer of Souls.

Must’ve been a fuckload of naughty kids in Hamelin, he thinks.

Habu imagines he can feel Aiis smiling. You don’t know a thing about what actually happened in that scenario, she says. But you are correct in finding a