don’t understand.”

The demon spread his hands over the desk and said, “Zoroastrianism.”

Gordy Clinton scratched at his mouth. The preacher and the woman in the pantsuit had already been sent away. They had vanished with the snap of the fingers like a magic show.

He stared at the picture window behind the desk, behind the demon, with lava blasting up from the pool. The demon had said something about it being a show before the preacher was sent out. The actors’ mouths opened in silent screams. As far as Gordy could tell, it all looked pretty real, at the same time he couldn’t quite believe any of it. It could have been part of the magic, but demons were liars and Hell was where liars went, so how could he believe him? He looked just like the pitchforked devils from the color plates in the family Bible he got after his mother died.

“Is this because I killed myself?”

The demon narrowed his eyes. “The not understanding part, or the being in Hell part? Well, Gordon, I’m going to cut this conversation short and tell you it’s neither. I suppose you might be a little confused coming off being stone drunk and blasting the back of your head out with a shotgun in your shed. It was your kids that found you—which will probably mess them up pretty good—but none of that carries weight down here like you think it would.”

A woman in a flowered dress scooted away from Gordy and muttered, “That’s terrible.”

He felt like pointing out to her that she was in Hell with him, but unlike how he usually felt after a couple bottles or a case, he wasn’t much up for the fight.

“I’ve sent a lot to the library lately,” the demon muttered to himself. “I might be getting into a rut. What to do? What to do with you, Gordon?”

“I can’t read.” Gordy swallowed hard.

He admitted it to few in life, although he knew a lot of people knew. He took lessons from one of the teacher’s husbands at the elementary school where he was a custodian before the fellow died of cancer. Gordy still used the color on the labels to know which chemicals to use for cleaning. When the company changed their label colors for wax and paint thinner, he nearly melted the floors one summer. A lot of people knew, but he told no one straight out.

It occurred to him that teacher’s husband was already here somewhere. He was agnostic, which was a fancy word for atheist. Of course, a preacher had been on the couch beside him, too, for what that was worth.

“Well, the library would just be cruel, although you would have plenty of time to learn and teach yourself.”

Gordy shook his head and thought about his brains being splattered on the wall on Earth. If the shot from the shell left holes and they didn’t patch it right, the damaged area would rust through. Maggie probably wouldn’t think about it, and Gordy hadn’t taught his boys enough to know it needed doing or how to do it. He pulled his lips back from his teeth. He hadn’t taught them much of anything worth knowing. Drake was nine and Buster was only three. After today, Buster would only remember his father as the thing with no face in the shed. Gordy blinked and started to ask if both boys had found him together.

Instead, he said, “Hell isn’t supposed to be cruel?”

“You’re supposed to learn something before you leave, but it’s best if you don’t think too much on that. That’s on the rules you’ll read… well, no matter where you go, I recommend you learn to read. Until then, get someone to read them to you.”

“There’ll be other folks there?”

“Yes, but you might feel alone for long stretches. You won’t be. But at times it will seem that way.”

“So, Hell’s not forever?”

“You Christian folks, I tell you. You have a dark view of eternity. I guess you could live with it when you thought it was someone else’s destiny.”

Gordy shrugged. “I always kind of figured my baptism didn’t take. I never felt saved the way my mama described it.”

“There are some books on Zoroastrianism where I’m sending you. Read up once you are able and learn the rules.”

“All Christians ended up here? Not just the Catholics and Democrats?”

Gordy spotted another man in the corner. A fellow he recognized from the real world. He was some kind of hobo or panhandler that hung out near the railroad bridge. His name was Old Tommy or Timothy or something like that. It appeared Hell was taking all kinds.

The demon shook his head, bringing Gordy’s attention back to the desk. “You’re a piece of work, Gordon Clinton. I need to move on, so I’m going to send you on where you can get started.”

The demon snapped his fingers for the magic trick, but Gordy missed the end of it. He thought he was plunged into the eternal darkness of the underworld, but he turned his head and saw the bare lightbulb screwed in at an angle on the underside of an A-framed roof above him.

Exposed nails jutted from the wood above his head, and pink insulation piles dotted the gaps between supports under him where the plywood sheets didn’t extend. A few of the cardboard cartons were sealed with brown packing tape curling at the edges. Others were open, overstuffed with baby clothes or three ring binders. There were stacks of Christmas tree boxes and large wreaths near him to the right.

“Hell is an attic with Christmas decorations?” Gordy said. “I guess that makes sense.”

A squared track of ventilation trunk work crossed the floor long ways extending into the darkness of the attic in both directions. Two hot water heaters stood in their catch pans beyond the silver foiled trunks. Only one was connected down into the house Gordy assumed must be below him.

“Satan? Are you down there? It’s me. Gordy.”

It hadn’t been Satan, though. The demon at the desk had gotten into a long discussion with the preacher before Gordy about some ancient Arab god he couldn’t pronounce. That was the dude in charge of Hell. Gordy couldn’t remember the name of the right religion anymore, either. It had started with a Z sound, but he hadn’t retained it. It wasn’t one of the cults the preachers screamed about at the primitive Baptist church Gordy took his family to. He had heard about the Pope, Mormons, Moonies, and even some hippies in California that said Jesus was a mushroom, but not the Z one. They heard about the devil a lot, but not the Arab dude the demon mentioned.

Gordy thought about one revival preacher that had gone into exhaustive detail about the structure of Hell for three hours one summer. Not only did Gordy’s church not believe in an organ, a piano, or a sound system, they didn’t do air conditioning either. His boys had quivered beside him while their mother sat across on the women’s side of the sanctuary. That guy had talked about the place like he had a time share there and knew the project foreman personally, but he never mentioned an attic.

“The red label is the hot stuff,” Gordy spoke into the stale air. “Don’t use that on the floors.” Of course , Gordy thought, I haven’t explored much . “Maybe the road of unbaptized baby skulls and the dark pit of unrepentant tyrants are closer to the front of the property.”

He ducked under the triangular slant of the support boards and was careful where he grabbed on for balance because of the nails. He straddled the trunk work and walked between the water heaters along the plywood path.

Once he was past the Christmas decorations, another lightbulb cast light out along the next stretch of attic.

Gordy’s foot caught the edge of a box that wouldn’t give. A marbled cover of an encyclopedia like the set his mother used to have fell off the top beside the box. Gordy picked it up and cracked open the pages. The edges were yellowed and stuck together from moisture. The pictures were of men he did not recognize from which he could not figure out what letter he had. He closed the volume and saw the shiny, embossed “G” on the front. G is for Gordy. That much I know . He set the book back on the stack on the box that was splitting on one edge.

The plywood ran out and he stepped back over the trunk work to keep going on the other side. He pulled open the flap on one of the boxes on the next stack. Easter eggs poured out and rolled into the insulation. Most were not matched with their other halves. Even in the blunted light, Gordy could see the bright pinks, purples, and greens. The preachers talked about Easter eggs being pagan symbols of sex adopted by the Catholics and pushed on the children of wayward Christian parents.

“They’d have quite a laugh to know there’re Easter eggs in Hell’s attic.”

He stepped over and left them scattered. Gordy looked down at the open top of a plastic under-the-bed box. No bed, but he popped open the lid and saw another book on top. It started with a “Z.” He flipped through, but didn’t see any pictures. Underneath the book were photo albums and loose pictures in plastic photo boxes. He dropped the book on the plywood with an echoing crash.

Gordy opened the top album. It had a thick leather cover and felt gritty against his fingers. The first four pictures under the cellophane over the sticky pages were black-and-whites of an old farm house. It reminded him a little of the house he grew up in, but more of his grandparents’ house—the ones on his dad’s side that shot at them once when they came up the driveway unexpectedly.

The pages crackled like paper being ripped. The next images were more black-and-white photos of what looked like branches. Some were out of focus. Others were too dark to tell for sure. He ripped to the next page. One picture was missing at the corner of the right-facing page. A discolored outline marked its missing border.

The others were more colorless blurs that looked like mistakes that had been developed, carefully sorted, and placed in the album. Maybe they’re art? Gordy didn’t know much about art. If he didn’t understand a picture, it was usually because it was art.

He ripped to another page of nonsense photos. One looked like the camera was set down across tall grass. The blades were blown out by the flash and a blur that could have been a person’s arm clawing up at the sky from the weeds that occupied the mid-ground. Another photo showed the exquisite details of a single pine needle with all its partners lost in the blur around it. Another was through branches and the washed out white of a face leered at the camera from around the trunk of a tree.

Gordy felt cold inside and slapped the album closed. He slid it off the top and opened the next in the pile. The pictures were in color, but had the tacky sepia look that pictures from the sixties and seventies took on from acids in the chemicals. Careful what you use to clean the floor . People with computers made their pictures look like that on purpose, but it was uneven and different when the pics were the real deal. These had the shape and white border that Gordy specifically associated with the seventies.

The pages hissed when he turned them. Most looked like mistakes. A man posed in a corduroy sports coat, but the picture cut him off at the side showing one sleeve, a watch, and one sideburn. The rest of the picture was off center on the mustard curtains and a wooden lamp. Under the side table on which the lamp stood were gilded edged pages Gordy was pretty sure was a family Bible.

He smiled as he turned the page. “Don’t bother reading it. We guessed wrong, Daddy-o.”

Daddy-o was more of a sixties thing, I guess , Gordy thought.

He saw the noses of rocking horses, a Ferris wheel from a distance through trees, the backs of kids running down a hill toward a lake, a neighborhood of matching white houses with black cars in the driveways like in a factory town.

He closed the album and started thumbing through the pictures lined up on the sides in the plastic sleeve box. Gordy paused on a picture looking up at a Buddhist temple. He slid it back into the sleeve and kept flipping. He saw the back of a bald man’s head, a fountain, pigeons eating bread, and a man riding an old-timey bicycle with a giant front wheel.

He took out the bicycle picture and stared at it. He felt around the clothes he wore, which looked a lot like ones from his closet, but not the ones he was wearing when he blew his brains out the back of his head. He slid the bicycle picture into the front pocket of his shirt.

He flipped through the others. He paused on a rose with the thorns in focus, but the pink and white petals were just out. He pocketed it. He flipped through a few more and pulled one of a beach looking out toward the ocean. He only took one beach trip his whole life before his dad died. His mother said she hated the beach and only wanted to visit the mountains. There was a resort hotel overlooking the sand on the left edge of the picture. He pocketed it.

Gordy flipped through a few more pictures before giving up. He left the box open and walked on between the containers.

Brooms leaned against the rafters, and Gordy stepped over them. A bicycle frame with no tires and no handlebars hung from plastic hooks mounted near the apex of the ceiling.

Gordy slid a carton of stuffed animals out of his way to make a path. The blank eyes of a pink bunny with matted fur stared up at him in the darkness between lightbulbs. He looked ahead through the space over the insulation where he could see nearly two dozen more lightbulbs in the sections of attic extending ahead of him. It looked like more than a football field and then a set of taller moving boxes on plywood blocked his view of what he expected to be dozens more sections with dozen more lightbulbs with dozens more after that.

He swallowed and tried to clear his throat. “The preachers did warn about being parched. They got that part right.”

He looked down and saw the retracted ladder and hatch next to his feet. Gordy’s mouth went dry again. Do I want to know what’s below Hell’s attic? He whispered, “Hello?”

Gordy knelt and extended his leg. He pushed down with the tip of a work boot that was a shade lighter than a pair he had in his closet on Earth. The colors are faded in Hell like aged photographs , he thought. Gordy pushed and the hatch opened enough to show a lit room and an eggshell wall.

He lost his nerve and pulled back, letting the hatch slam closed. Gordy listened, but heard nothing. In the angle of the light where he knelt, he could see the long, dark specs that roaches left behind as they crapped out whatever they’d eaten. He wondered if Hell’s attic had mice. He’d need to check the boxes for traps. If the attic was infinitely long, there had to be everything in here somewhere.

“Or at least a picture of a mousetrap.”

Gordy lifted his heel over the hatch and paused. His mind filled in the rest of the room below him. Millions of roaches could pour up from below and chew Gordy down to the bone.

“Then crap me out in tiny pellets.” He imagined glowing eyes and a demon with shadowed fangs waiting below.

He dropped his heel and knocked the hatch open with force. It bounced when it hit a forty-five-degree angle. The ladder folded down and hit the hardwood floor below with a crash.

From his vantage, he could see a cot with a folded brown blanket, a small counter with a curved faucet, a sink, and a shelf. There were no pictures or decorations on the eggshell walls.

“Hello?”

After a moment, he climbed down the steps and looked just below the edge of the ceiling. A shower stall with a plastic curtain on rings and a toilet occupied one corner. He looked back under the attic ladder, expecting to see a hallway, a kitchen, or a living room, but he stared at a blank wall. There was no door to the room. A bare lightbulb lit the room from a fixture in the center of the ceiling, but there were no windows. The only exit he could see was the hatch to the attic.

He climbed down, leaving the attic ladder extended. Gordy walked to the sink and felt around for a handle. Nothing . Hell was taunting him just like people had done to him his whole life. Even the kids at the school treated him like he was less than them. He imagined none of them were following the Z-word religion either, so they’d be down here with him soon enough. That thought gave him no comfort.

His hands passed under the faucet and it gave a short burst of water. The red light underneath lit and darkened. “Hell’s gone modern, y’all. Next week: doors.”

He held his hands under and felt the cold water pour over his fingers. He splashed a little up into his face and let it drip off the end of his nose above the sink as the water shut off. Gordy cupped his hands, letting the reactivated flow fill his palms and run over. Then, he brought it to his mouth and sucked. The water cooled his throat so he drank as much as he could before the water stopped. He scooped until his belly felt heavy and stretched.

Gordy shook his hands off in the sink and said, “My mother used to call that God’s cup.”

He heard the shower curtain click on its rings and he spun around to face the pulled curtain over the shower stall. “I’m not looking for trouble.” Hell of a thing to say in Hell .

Gordy crossed the room and braced himself. He took hold of the plastic in his fist and ripped it aside. The stall was empty. A new bar of soap sat on the holder. The showerhead was broad and round. Gordy brought the soap to his nose and sniffed. It was pungent and chemical. Probably an off brand . He set it back into place and turned the knob a quarter around the circle. He stuck his hand in the spray and felt the water take heat immediately. Hell has decent plumbers and better water pressure than my house .

He shut off the shower and saw motion in the corner of his eye. A small, reddish roach scurried up the eggshell surface and into the open maw leading back into the attic. The reds breed fast and are tough to kill off.

On the wall above the toilet was an acrylic board with a numbered list and writing he couldn’t read. He knew they were rules. He recognized the pattern from years of working in a school. Raise your hand and wait to be called on before you speak?

Gordy stood over the toilet and took a long, satisfying piss.

His stomach rumbled and Gordy showed his teeth. He raised his hand. “I don’t suppose there’s takeout in Hell?”

Gordy waited for an answer, but nothing replied. He wasn’t sure what he would have done, if he had gotten one. There was no “air in the pipes” sound or clicks from the house settling. Hell has a solid foundation or has had time to finish settling. No cracks though. Good construction . He was starting to miss the roach on the shower curtain. Any living creature was better than total, lonely silence. Gordy lowered his hand. You didn’t wait to be called on. That was the problem .

Gordy sat down on the cot and welcomed the creak from the wooden supports. He moved the blanket to the opposite end and used it as a pillow. His eyes were already heavy. Hell is exhausting .

He crossed his hands over his chest in a pose that reminded him of how vampires slept in the old black and white films. The corners of his stolen pictures poked his chest through his shirt pocket. Gordy took them out and held them above his face. He flipped through them for a few cycles, looking at the beach, the rose, and the bicycle.

He still held them as he lowered his hand to his side and stared at the opening to the attic. The smell of wood and cardboard from above drifted down into the room with him. He dangled the pictures down by the side of the cot and watched the green spots dance in his vision from the bare lightbulb.

Gordy didn’t remember falling asleep or dropping the photos on the floor.

This first time he woke up on the cot in Hell, he blinked against the glare of the bulb above him and took several minutes to process where he was. He looked around the room finally and tried to locate a light switch. Seeing none, he sat up. With no windows and no clocks, he had no way of knowing if this was supposed to be morning. With no eggs and bacon, does it really matter? His stomach rolled and his muscles felt weak. Hell is starvation with a shower.

He stood up and splashed his face with water from the sink. He drank a few more handfuls to fill his stomach, but it didn’t help.

Gordy felt his pocket and looked around under the cot for the pictures, but didn’t see them. He watched the pull cord with a plastic knob on the end dangle from the hatch leading back up into the attic. He wasn’t ready to explore up there again just yet.

There were no mirrors in the room either, he realized.

He started the shower and folded his clothes—the ones he woke up wearing—on the cot beside the blanket. He held up the dark blue underwear. A picture of fruit was printed on the faded tag inside. This looked like a pair from his own drawer in the world of the living. He imagined the boys finding him with his brains splattered and his drawers filled with his final death crap.

Gordy shook his head and dropped the underwear onto the cot.

He stood in his hot shower for the better part of an hour. He left the curtain open as steam billowed around him and out. The heat held, so it was hard to judge the time. Usually, cold water creeping into the shower was the hourglass that told Gordy when it was time to step back out of the shower into his crappy house and his crappy life.

He shut off the water and stepped out, dripping on the floor next to the toilet under the rules. No towel. You got me again, Hell. Classic Hell . He shook off. Rings spread out across the water in the toilet bowl as some of the drops landed there.

Gordy walked back to the cot and stared at the cord hanging down from the only exit. He could only think about food until he realized he hadn’t closed the hatch himself before he fell asleep. Cold moved through his veins and his testicles pulled up against his body.

“Where are the pictures?”

Gordy pulled his clothes on over wet skin, watching the attic hatch the entire time. He ignored the itchy feeling on his body and pushed his feet back into his shoes.

He approached the hatch with the same aching fear he had felt when he opened it the first time from above. You will not be alone . Those words had no comfort for him now that he was imagining his neighbors in Hell skulking around while he slept.

Gordy took hold of the cord just above the plastic. Instead of demons or an army of flesh-eating roaches, he was picturing another man like himself stuck in this place for God knew how long. He was more frightened by this prospect. Which God is the one that knows, is the question .

Gordy pulled and brought the ladder back down to the forty-five-degree angle. The same low darkness loomed above. He folded down the steps and climbed. As he blinked away the spots and waited for his eyes to adjust, he saw the same boxes as before.

“Hello? Who’s up here?”

The insulation and cardboard absorbed his words and cut their travel short. He climbed up and crouched by the opening, waiting.

Gordy stood and walked past the broomsticks and under the bicycle missing its wheels. Not going far in that, are we?

He thought about the picture of the bicycle with the big front wheel he was holding when he fell asleep, and he felt cold again, even in the stuffy attic.

The under-the-bed box was closed, and everything back in place. The Easter eggs had been collected and returned to their righted box. Gordy drew back and kicked the Easter box over, scattering the colored eggs deep into the attic off the plywood.

He opened the boxes and pushed aside the photo albums. Gordy stared at the sleeve of loose pictures for a moment and then started leafing through the photos.

There it was. He wasn’t sure it was the same spot, but he thought it was. He pocketed the bicycle picture. He flipped through and found the thorns with the blurred rose. Gordy pocketed it and flipped a little further to find the beach. After taking it, he dumped the sleeve out onto the floor and hurled it across the attic, bouncing it off the underside of the roof.

“Leave me alone or I’ll put a hurt on you. I swear it.” Gordy’s throat hurt and he felt dizzy. He wasn’t even sure if one man could kill another in Hell.

Gordy walked back toward the hatch. He paused over the long broom handles and grabbed one. He smacked the metal of the bike frame as he passed under it. He hurled the handle down below through the hatch and climbed in.

Once the hatch was closed, he wedged the handle up under it to force it to stay that way. Gordy drank several handfuls of water to try to soothe his throat, but then he vomited the water back up into the sink. He spit several times, but could not get the acidic burnout.

He collapsed on the cot, his head pounding from being hungry. Gordy started to drift off, but then sat up. He took the pictures out from his pocket and put them under his back before lying down again.

“Come and get it, stranger.”

Gordy stared up at the closed hatch, wavering on his feet. He could barely keep his eyes open from his growing hunger. The broom handle was gone. So were the pictures he had fallen asleep on top of. He had fallen asleep on his back, but then had rolled to his side some time before waking up again. Maybe I gave them easy access, but what about the broom ? He thought about secret doors and looked around the solid walls.

His hands shook as he drew down the ladder. His legs were watery as he climbed. He crossed over the brooms back in their places and stared at the boxes. The eggs were all regathered. The bed box was closed again. He opened the lid and tears fell as he stared at the sleeve with all the photos stacked back inside neatly.

He thumbed through and found his bicycle, thorns, and beach in the places he expected them to be.

Gordy climbed back down and collapsed against the wall with the hatch still open.

His hands shook with the effort, but finally the pictures tore. He ripped them into smaller pieces. Then, he picked up those pieces and tore them again. He considered eating them, but he was afraid the industrious thief might well gut him for the pieces of the photographs, if it came to that.

Eventually, he slumped to his side and fell asleep.

When he awoke, the room was swept clean and the hatch was closed.

It took him a moment to remember if he had actually eaten them or just thought about it. His head wasn’t clear.

He had no strength left and had to use his weight on the cord to bring the hatch down. The foot of the ladder struck his forehead and he lost vision in one eye. As he sat on his knees, drops of blood speckled the floor beneath him.

He crawled up and back over the boxes. He was able to find the spots for the pictures again pretty quickly. All three were back in place and untorn.

“Demon magic. I am alone here after all.” Gordy snapped his fingers a couple times, but nothing changed for him.

Gordy dug through the boxes until he found an extension cord. He had been seeking rope, but he could be creative when he was properly motivated. He traveled far enough that he found another hatch. He licked his lips and kicked it down open hoping to find a kitchen. It was another room identical to the one he had been using. The blanket was folded at the end of the cot, waiting. He walked back toward the other hatch. It’s the same, but not mine.

Gordy imagined rows and rows of identical hatches stretching out into eternity in both directions.

He used the last of his strength to tie the orange cord off and looped it over a rafter. Gordy managed to create a passable knot around his neck. He wavered at the edge of his hatch.

“A real man uses a gun.”

Yeah, drunk in his damn shed for the kids to find. Some man .

Gordy stepped off and snapped short of the floor by only a few inches. His neck didn’t break, but the knot tightened as he swung in the air. As he slowly blacked out, he wondered if he was incapable of dying and would hang here forever, too weak to free himself.

Gordy roused slowly and more confused than the first morning he had awoken in Hell. The lightbulb at an angle jogged his memory first. He thought he was back at the starting point a few feet down from the hatch past the hot water heaters, but he saw the Easter eggs and the bed box to his left beyond the brooms. He knew the pictures would be inside. He looked up at the rafters and saw the cord was gone above the closed hatch. Demon magic had recoiled it and put it back in its box a few yards in the other direction, he suspected.

Gordy was still hungry, but it was dull like the first day he had arrived. It would grow and he surmised that if he faded away to death, he would wake up back here again to start all over.

He reached the brooms and took one. Gordy jammed the blunt tip of the handle against the wood slats above his head with a dull thud. He struck again and again until the handle snapped. He was going to throw it, but then drove the sharp end into the roof. The wood split and fell in splinters. He saw shingles. Gordy stabbed again and again, raining down blackened crumbs and strips of tar paper. The hole wasn’t wide, but the material kept coming and coming as it piled on the pink insulation. He wanted to break through to daylight, but there was no end to the material. Daylight is outside roofs on Earth, not in Hell .

He considered carving his way into the eggshell walls of his room. Maybe he could dig past wire and pipes into another room. He might find the underside of Hell’s aluminum siding and bust through to Hell’s side yard. Maybe Hell’s neighbors will let me use their phone and call for a ride? I might find old Jesus himself kicked back and watching football since Heaven and Hell are off his mind .

In his heart, Gordy knew he would dig and dig out drywall dust until he passed out and woke up to find the room swept and the wall repaired.

Gordy propped the broken broom back up assuming it and the roof would be healed once whatever qualified for morning was reached again. He went to the pictures and took out the beach picture, but left the bicycle and the thorns.

He returned, kicked down the hatch, and folded it back up once he was below to keep the smell of the attic trapped above. The blanket sat back at the end of the cot just like every other room down the line as far as he wanted to walk, he assumed.

No reason to explore, if it’s all the same and never ends .

Gordy walked up to the sink. He splashed water in his face, but couldn’t bring himself to drink. I just want to stop existing like the atheists said we would . My daddy used to say, people in Hell want ice water. I got water, you old jerk. I need food .

“I want scrambled eggs with cheese and crisp bacon too.”

The plate materialized beside the sink with the bacon and eggs. He snatched it and stared, his jaw hanging open. Gordy crammed the food in his mouth by the fistful, afraid it would vanish as some new form of torture. He gagged on a piece too big for his throat and coughed it back up.

“More bacon.”

It appeared and he dropped the old plate on the floor for the new one.

“Orange juice?”

He took the cup and tilted it back to drink.

“Less pulp?”

The second glass was perfect.

“Warm yeast rolls with melted butter.”

Gordy stacked the plates on the floor and collapsed on the cot.

He opened his eyes some time later and looked over to see the cups and dishes gone. As he stood, he felt the corners of the photo in his pocket and pulled out the beach scene right where he had left it. He stared at the resort of the edge of the frame for some time before returning it to the pocket.

“If it’s in my pocket, you let me keep it. Why?”

With no answer, he went to the toilet and sat down. His eyes opened wide in panic and he looked to the wall to see a roll of paper. Gordy sighed and relaxed. That blanket was about to get rough . Once he used the paper, he realized it was higher quality than the cheap stuff he used to tell his wife to buy.

“She’s probably using the insurance money to buy quality, quilted paper now. And landing herself a man that will raise the boys to be sensitive and liberal.”

Things aren’t all bad, I suppose. That’s the first time I’ve had a sit down since I blew my brains out in the shed . “Because I ate.”

He ran back to the sink and stared at the empty shelf. It was all a trick. They teased you with it and now it won’t work.

“Grilled cheese sandwich. American. Two slices. Cut in two triangles. Two pickle slices and bowl of tomato soup mixed with a little milk instead of water.”

The order appeared and he sat on the floor with his back to the wall as he ate slowly.

He stood again and stared at the shelf. “A jack and coke?”

Nothing.

“Light beer at least?”

Empty.

Gordy shook his head and frowned. Come on. Hell is dry? “Sweet tea. Cold.”

The glass appeared. It was a little sweeter than he liked, but he was just happy to eat.

Gordy passed the next few days ordering food, sleeping, showering, and repeating. The plates vanished and he spent a lot of time lying down staring at the hatch. He looked at the beach picture and thought about going to get some of the others or maybe one of the encyclopedias to look at new pictures.

He didn’t want to go up.

His showers started lasting longer.

He sat naked and dripping dry one day. How many days into his stay was he? He’d lost count. Gordy stared up at the rules above the toilet and tried to make sense of them. They seemed important. They probably told the way to earn out, if the demon wasn’t lying. They most likely explained how the food dispenser spot beside the sink worked. If he hadn’t been standing there at the right moment when he lamented about scrambled eggs, he might still not know. He could have wasted away in starvation only to start over again and again.

Gordy got eyeglasses when he was ten, but broke them and never got them replaced after that. He had worn them during the transition when he first got them and the street under his feet had looked like it was up under his chin. Then, one day it just suddenly adjusted to look normal. It happened so fast that he thought the glasses had dropped off his face. Some trick of the brain, the doctor had explained. They had thought Gordy’s trouble with reading had been that he couldn’t see. That wasn’t it.

Still, he wondered if reading was like the glasses, in that the brain just needed to be tricked from seeing the lines and letters to understanding what they meant like the adjustment to the glasses.

Gordy stared and waited.

He kind of knew the word “don’t.” Most rules started with that one from what he saw from the classroom walls. These all started different ways so that wasn’t much help. Gordy had heard in the faculty meetings as he emptied trash after school that the new hippie way of teaching was to start rules with “do,” so that the kids felt more empowered. As far as he could tell, the kids ran the school, so they seemed empowered enough to him. These didn’t seem to start with “do” either though. Maybe the Z-word Arab gods had a different way of writing their rules.

Gordy sighed. He thought he knew some of the letters, but maybe this was Arab writing and staring at it all day wouldn’t help an American Baptist read it.

Gordy stood up and dressed. As he started to doze, he held the beach picture in his open palm on the cot. “This isn’t helping me none, Arab gods. You can have it back. Now you don’t have to rough me up in the night to take it.”

When he awoke, the picture was still clutched between his fingers.

He sat up and pocketed it. “Did I learn something, so I get to keep it now? Do I get to keep things touching my hand or sitting in my pocket?”

He stood up and stretched. Probably in the rules somewhere .

Gordy splashed his face and cupped water up to his mouth even though he knew that he could ask for a cup of something and pour it out to use that. Non-alcoholic and can’t get an empty cup. Those are the rules, I guess .

Gordy said, “I want…”

He stared at the empty shelf for several seconds. He imagined tiny fairies with red roach wings waiting behind the wall to instantly cook anything he asked for. He couldn’t think of the end of his sentence though.

He stepped away and pulled down the ladder. Gordy stopped and considered taking the blanket. He supposed that it didn’t matter if each room had one identical to it. He also suspected that it would magically find its way back to the cot once he fell asleep unless he could find a way to cram the thing into his pocket.

Gordy climbed back into the attic and looked past the brooms. The bicycle and thorn pictures were still over in the sleeve. He thought about them for a moment and then turned away. None of the pictures he had seen so far were his, but the beach picture spoke to him more than the others, so he turned away and followed the plywood track away from where he’d been.

He crossed about a football field worth of clutter and lightbulbs including several more hatches. Gordy ducked around some moving boxes filled with dresses. Beyond them were filing cabinets. He worked the latch on the drawer marked with a handwritten G on a faded card. More random pictures filled manila folders in the drawer. None of them seemed to have any connection to G sounds that he could tell.

He found one black and white image of a rock with writing scribbled on it in haphazard paint. He couldn’t read any of it, but it reminded him of a rock he used to jump off of into a pond as a kid. He pocketed that one with the beach picture. These photos had to be here for a reason.

Gordy left the cabinets and pushed down the hatch in front of him with his foot. The room looked identical to the others. Gordy figured he could stop anywhere, so he might as well keep going for a while.

He could have kept going on Earth too, and wouldn’t have ended up in this attic. He supposed it was going to happen sooner or later. The Z word wasn’t going to come up in church in any useful way even if he lived another hundred years. Might as well get started now .

Gordy fished through another open box to find a bunch of dog-eared novels with the covers torn off. Someone had told him that meant they were stolen, but why would anyone steal an old book?

Gordy stepped over a pipe and continued along the plywood. Maybe one of these boxes has one of those starter readers. I seem to have all the time in the world now . “Maybe it’s not too late to learn a thing or two about a thing or two.” Once I can read the rules, I’ll know how to get out of here. “Lickety split and Bob’s your uncle.”

Gordy had his doubts, but he kept going past another lightbulb and another hatch.