On Christmas Day almost two years ago, thousands upon thousands of hell portals opened simultaneously across the world. They appeared in random places: From famous spots—Buckingham Palace, George Washington’s left eye on Mount Rushmore—to ordinary spaces like classrooms, homes, and KFCs. Nearly sixty thousand portals appeared in North America alone.
That day, about 1 percent of all portals spewed monsters. Phantasmagoric beasts, the likes of which the world had never seen before, spilled out into streets, offices, homes. Most of those active portal spots became bloodbaths. But eventually, the world’s militaries managed to slay the demons and hold back subsequent incursions.
So, Hell Portal Day wasn’t an apocalypse per se.
But the confirmed existence of Satan’s kingdom led to a shitstorm of chaos. It caused looting, murders, suicides, mass baptisms. YouTube became an unmoderated snuff video channel before it threw up a 404 Error message itself. Cults sprung up like weeds in the wake of all the fear and hopelessness. Governments strained to fight demons and hold back anarchy.
Then the Vanguard Corporation stepped up.
Vanguard is a mega-conglomerate that specialized in billion-dollar weapon and surveillance systems long before Hell Portal Day. In the midst of all the chaos, Vanguard offered to bring back normality. With everything falling apart, and everyone lost in despair, it didn’t take long for the president of the United States to accept their help.
Within weeks, the Vanguard Corporation had quarantined all of America’s portals. They rolled out private military forces—armed with the latest tech—to every city. They broadcast their wins all over social media and turned soldiers into heroes we all could believe in. Oh, and they helped little old ladies safely cross the street to access newly reopened Walmarts and Costcos.
From there, Vanguard went on to protect the entire western world. Countries gave the corporation more and more authority to do whatever it deemed necessary to keep people safe. Sure, you hear the occasional rumbling about “corpo-martial law” but it’s easy to ignore those concerns. ( Just google the countries that refused Vanguard’s help, and you’ll find whole towns that were digested by demons.) Eventually, Vanguard set their spin machine on the general public—and started pushing the idea that life in a portal-riddled world was still highly livable.
And as it turned out, civilians learned pretty quickly to just . . . carry on.
People resumed carpooling their kids to soccer practice. They went back to swiping left and right. They fought, screwed, abused each other, and wept about their messy lives. They watched Dr. Phil. All in all, it seemed most of us were happy to tolerate a strange new normal as long as we didn’t have to look too closely at the strangeness.
But these days, looking closely is all I seem to do. . . .
As I walk home from work, I gaze around at the businesspeople, FedEx couriers, and busy, bustling parents. There are no portals in the immediate area, just tall gray buildings and warm breezes. Everyone moves with a surprising calm. But still, I’m never quite sure how safe we really are: there’s always Vanguard patrolmen stalking up and down the sidewalks, the sound of their boots setting the tempo for the city.
To my right, two Vanguard workers are plastering up posters of Lady Gaga. She’s got a speech bubble over her head that reads: “Hey there! Install the Vanguard app to receive alerts about No-Go Zones. Stay safe and live your best life!”
The edge of the poster reads, “Vanguard thanks you for reading this message. Please open the app to receive one complimentary VC point!”
I pull out my phone, open the Vanguard app, and a microchip embedded in the poster causes my device to make a coin-clink sound. My Vanguard account has been credited with one VC point. (Each week I usually snare about seventy points—enough to redeem a free Baskin-Robbins single-scoop cone.) I pass a barbershop called Close Cuts, and the same app flashes with the message: Close Cuts is a Relatively Safe Hell Zone that has one portal. Pausing to peer in the window, I’m instantly gifted a half-off coupon.
No surprise, the barbershop is packed.
During the first ninety days of its mission to fix America, Vanguard instituted huge lockdowns to allow them to repair cities and relocate people from the worst danger zones. But when the lockdowns ended and the repairs were done, Vanguard was unwilling to turn every portal-riddled workplace into a No-Go Zone.
To protect the economy, Vanguard identified workspaces that contained “relatively low-risk portals” and allowed bosses and staff there to keep on keeping on. In fact, they encouraged this by offering hazard pay and increased benefits. The downside of working in a low-risk zone? Nothing big . . . aside from the constant risk of a painful, monster-related death.
“Yo!” a voice calls out.
I’ve dawdled in a crosswalk, and a VC patrolman tells me to keep moving. I start walking again, and a glare of afternoon light hits me in the face. I shield my eyes. Through my fingers, the reddish light almost makes it look as though the building tops are on fire.
My pulse speeds up.
I lower my gaze to see the world clearly again.
Everything’s fine. Just keep moving, Jasper. . . .
I enter my apartment building and take the stairs up to my place, but when I round the corner, I find a Pizza Hut delivery guy kneeling in front of my door. He’s trying to push slices of a pepperoni pizza through the gap by the floor.
A female voice emerges from inside: “Keep going! Don’t worry if toppings fall off.”
Great. Lara has ordered pizza, and now that I’m here, I’m going to have to tip the guy. I give him the loose change in my pocket, then watch him head for the elevator bank, disgusted.
As soon as he’s out of sight, I open my apartment door and slip inside. The carpeting is covered in grease and cheese, but my gaze soon focuses on a stuffed toy—a white-furred plush kitty—sitting on the sofa, chowing down on a ruined-looking slice of pizza.
“Lara!”
The plush cat looks up at me. “Oh, hey, Jasper. How was your day?” she asks.
“Lara, that’s disgusting.” I shut the door. “You know you’re not supposed to eat food off the floor.”
She laughs. “Yeah, that doesn’t really apply to me, does it?”
Right. Lara probably isn’t capable of getting food poisoning, since she’s not even of this world. She’s a demon inspired by some person’s fear of stuffed animals or cats or, who knows, maybe both.
She came to live with me about three months ago. I’d left a window open, and she wandered in. At first, I thought she was a stray, but when I went to pet her, I noticed her plastic eyes and toy stitch lines. And I freaked.
But then Lara held out a paw and said, “Hey! Don’t be scared! I’m not gonna hurt you!”
Her voice sounded like something from a cartoon, and her overpowering cuteness held me back. “You can . . . talk?” I asked, inching closer. I’d never heard of demons talking.
“Look, I won’t hurt you. I just need a place to hide from—” Lara paused to look out the window. I could see a small squad of Vanguard soldiers massing on the corner. Not good. But then she spotted a small box of pizza in my hand. I’d forgotten I was holding it. She took a sniff, her eyes widening. “What . . . is . . . that?”
“Pizza?”
I pulled out a slice and held it out to her. She took a bite and then released an enormous purr. It was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.
“Look, I promise I’m not here to harm you,” Lara said. “I just need a place to crash.” It turned out she was one of a very small number of demons that had managed to avoid being killed by Vanguard. But all she wanted was to never have to go back to hell. She didn’t want to cause anyone any harm.
Now, here’s the thing—the new laws state that if you encounter unexpected demons, you’re supposed to summon assistance on your Vanguard app immediately. And it’s a helluva lot of VC points if you’re the first to call in a stray demon.
But then, Lara reached out to place a soft paw on my knee. Without thinking, I gingerly rubbed the plastic fur on her neck, and well, you know what they say: cats choose their humans.
It’s been months since that day. She’s a pretty chill roomie, but I still don’t know anything about her life in hell. Whenever I pry, she always tries to downplay the underworld—“There’s not much to talk about”—as though it’s just a bad neighborhood full of loser exes she’d rather forget.
Obviously, Lara’s got secrets. But I like living with her: all she ever wants to do is watch TV, eat fast food, and hang out . . . which pretty much makes her my best friend.
“Want some pizza?” she asks.
I stare at the greasy floor. “Lara. You do know that messes like this make it impossible for me to ever have company over, right?”
“Ha! And who exactly were you planning to invite?” she asks matter-of-factly. “If it wasn’t for me, you know you’d be eating all by yourself.”
Ouch. Lara’s sewn-on tag—the one that reads 100% POLYESTER—should also state, 0% FILTER.
I reach down to pet her. “Love you too, buddy.”
Lara shoots me a smile that would make a Disney animator jealous.
After dinner, while I’m toweling myself dry from a shower, Lara knocks on the bathroom door and says, “Hey. I need to use the toilet.”
“Out in a sec,” I reply. “But you know, you can always use the litter box.”
She hisses. “I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that.”
Lara wanders off, and as I change into my pajamas, I notice myself in the bathroom mirror. With my finger, I trace the length of the mean-looking scar that runs from the middle of my hairline to my left eyebrow like a serpent’s tail.
It’s been five months since the accident. It was so stupid. I was price-checking in aisle three when a hanging, hard-plastic piggy bank decoration thing fell on my head. I awoke in the hospital, my head in a helmet of bandages.
Ever since, whenever I look at myself in the mirror, I feel like a stranger in my own body. All I see is this reedy young guy with floppy dark hair and darker eyes—and I always need to remind myself: that’s me. It’s why sometimes Gully can yell my name and I don’t know who he’s talking to until he comes up and pokes me.
My head trauma certainly did a number on me. I still remember shit, like general knowledge about the world, portals, retail, YouTube memes. But the section of my brain that holds actual personal memories—of my life and experiences from before the accident—is entirely blank. I have no past. Honestly, if it weren’t for a nurse telling me about my accident, I wouldn’t even know how I wound up in a hospital bed.
“Who are you?” I ask my reflection.
I wander through my tiny apartment—well, technically my parents’ place—and take in the things I can observe. It’s like being in a museum but without labels. Over in the living room, the pictures on the wall show two parents and an only child: me.
My mom seemed to favor fringed skirts and oversized wood-bead jewelry. My dad always seemed to be stretching his smile as big as possible. In one picture, at the beach, he’s got on a T-shirt that reads You Cat to Be Kitten Me! And I have this feeling that if he were a piñata, he’d release cheesy dad jokes instead of candy when you whacked him open. But I don’t actually remember anything about them. They might as well be strangers.
I stare closer at that beach pic—the way my dad rests his hand on my shoulder, the way my mom seems to be sneaking a peek at me—and I like to believe our family was super close. But that’s just one of a hundred assumptions I’ve made about my life before hell opened up.
Problem is that I can’t just ask my parents. According to an obituary I found in a drawer, they both died on Hell Portal Day. There’s not a lot of info in the clipping, but there are some deep claw marks on the ground level of my apartment building—
I shudder. I refuse to let my thoughts go there.
Instead, I try to piece myself together from tidbits of info I can gather in my apartment. On the doorframe, someone used a Sharpie to mark my height from toddler to age thirteen. In the hall, there’s a closet with old knickknacks; in the living room, a bookshelf packed with sci-fi books; and in my bedroom, a desk with a homemade diorama of the Return of the Jedi Ewok village.
(I recently discovered I can list every Ewok ever mentioned in the Star Wars universe, in alphabetical order—Chief Chirpa . . . Chubbray . . . Flitchee . . .—which does paint a pretty good picture, I suppose, of the kid I was.)
No one’s bothered to check in on me over these past five months, but I keep thinking wishfully—all right, deludedly—that I’ve got a friend who’s out there trying desperately to get in touch. Of course, I could learn a whole lot more about my past social life if I could check my laptop and old phone, get onto my social media accounts, answer some emails. But I don’t remember any passwords. FML.
I slump onto my bed and stare at the ceiling and walls. Surfaces that have nothing but Blu Tack dots. When I first came home from the hospital, I figured the dots had once held up posters. But then I opened a bedside drawer to find a large photo . . . of a street dumpster graffitied with the words No place like home and filled with flaming garbage. On the ground in front of the dumpster are the shadows of two people: what looks like a guy holding out a phone to take this picture, and a girl holding his hand.
I can’t tell if it’s my shadow in the pic. Maybe it’s just a quirky image I printed off Instagram. But the back of this photo has Blu Tack stains, which always makes me wonder: Was my bedroom once wallpapered in weird photos like this?
And damn, was there a girl in all of them?
I stare at those two figures and try to dig out a memory of a girlfriend and a burning dumpster. But . . . nada. Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to pull out a lost memory of anything—friends, family, someone, anyone from my past. But barely seconds later, a sharp, zinging pain shoots through my skull. Which is what always happens when I try to overcome my amnesia.
After the pain subsides, the reality of my condition causes a dull ache to emerge in my chest. A deep tiredness that creeps out like an animal, climbs onto my shoulders, and keeps me pinned to my bed.
Lara comes over. Hops onto my bedside table. “Dude . . . You took so long in the bathroom that I had to end up using the litter box. I hope you’re happy with yourself—because you’re cleaning it.”
I don’t reply.
“Oh.” Lara notices the photo and purses her lips. “Jasper? You okay?”
“Fine. Just living my best life, as always,” I reply.
Is Shadow Girl also living her best life? Or did she . . .
Lara reaches out to paw at my shoulder and smiles. “Hey, I know what will cheer you up: a rerun of Friends.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“Really?”
Lara starts singing the Friends theme song. Her voice is shrill, and I know from experience that the only way to get Lara to hush is to turn on the TV.
We slump on the sofa, and I flick the channel over to Friends.
Tonight’s episode shows a flashback of the characters when they were in college, but I can’t enjoy it. What were my plans for my life? In my bedroom, right next to that Ewok village diorama, is a dog-eared pile of college brochures. What did I want to be? Was I going to college? Did I have big dreams? Honestly, I have no fucking clue.
The show’s laugh track seems to mock me.
“Why do we even watch this shit?” I ask Lara.
The cat shrugs. “I dunno. It’s just fun watching people hanging out and, like, living their lives and doing shit.” She gives me a look that says, Unlike us.
That night I dream about stumbling upon Central Perk. I gaze through the window of the Friends café. Rachel, Joey, Chandler, Ross, and Monica are seated on their orange couch, watching Phoebe strum her guitar. On the back wall, in the space that once held the menu, is a hell portal about six feet tall. The portal is guarded by a Vanguard soldier. None of the café patrons seem overly concerned. Everyone is just going about their lives. Part of me wants to enter the café and hang with the Friends gang, but what would I say to them? Even in dreams, I have no damn backstory.
Then . . .
A flicker of light catches my eye. Four ghostly silhouettes—wriggling humanoid wraiths that no one else seems to notice—gather around the portal to touch it. I seize up as the portal turns bright neon red.
The wraiths step aside, and with a rumble, the portal expands to twice its size and gushes a tide of dark matter. No . . . not dark matter, but monsters. Hundreds of tendrils, claws, and slimy gruesome bodies. People scream. The dark mass swells up to swallow the Vanguard soldier, then the couch with Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, and Joey on it. They barely get out the start of a scream before they’ve been eaten. Phoebe tries to use her guitar to beat back the monsters, but an octopus tentacle lashes out and snares her.
Before I can run away, the tide of monsters smashes through the café windows. A demon claw grabs at my pant leg, pulling me to the ground. I scream as I try to kick my way free.
Abruptly the tide freezes.
I cannot get untangled from the mass, but I gaze up to see the four wraiths standing in front of me, their bodies twisting and shifting, as though they cannot decide how long their limbs should be. I can’t see their faces as they study me. But . . . maybe they don’t have faces.
“Please . . . no!” I stammer.
Wordlessly, they step aside, and hundreds of demons pile on top of me, burying me alive, silencing my screams with their bodies.
I wake startled, sweating. My bedsheets are glued to my body, and my pulse is hammering. Over the last few months, I’ve had countless nightmares where wraiths transform a portal and cause it to gush demons. All the dreams have seemed ultra-HD realistic. Some have even felt real, in the moment.
I wander to the doorway of my parents’ bedroom. “Hey, Mom. Dad,” I whisper to their nonexistent ghosts. “I had another . . . nightmare.”
I try to imagine what my folks would’ve told me, but I can’t even remember their voices. These days there’s only one person who’ll ever tell me things will be okay. “Chill, Jasper,” I mumble as I crouch in the shadows. “That was just a nightmare. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
If only I sounded more convincing.