I went to Hell once, on a Monday, I was walking once and then the ground split like a roll of bread cracked open by two thumbs. And I fell, into Hell. The first demon I found he was painting sunrays in the sky, using a little too much of white - the kind of white that’s only found in yesterday because nowadays we’re all too familiar with shades and hues, and stains and discolorations are never, ever white. I asked the demon, who wiped his hands on his smock, why are you painting sunrays? Aren’t you supposed to be jabbing your trident or whispering to people how much they suck at life? The demon did not grin nor turn but returned to finger-painting and only replied, “My only job here is to make the sun bright, just a little too bright. So people will squint, or stay home.” It giggled.

All in all, Hell is a very normal place. Demons wear pea coats and discuss things at delis on their lunch-breaks about demon sorts of things. "Will you take my shift, Buli'Buli?", "Ok, but no possessing.", "It's not, just keep making sure all the time the candy taste really, damn good . Make them smile.", "Ba-ha, okay, I do that." Then they smoke and do other such things.

I sat on a park bench in Hell, and I tell you it's not all that much different from any city. I'm not trying to say anything bad about the cities, just saying Hell isn't a barren wasteland with bone spires and exploding bodies. On that bench, time moved funny and made me think to myself. You know what the worst thing is, sometimes? When you think the worst night is happening, the kind of night where you just want to strip naked and take an eraser and rub yourself down until the flesh is gone – then muscles and fat – then bones – then whatever volume of air you once possessed – just disappear like a character of fiction during the first edits. Like your piss never had permeated and sunk down into the virgin clay way, way beneath the crust of the earth. Like the sound waves of your words never had curled and burrowed into the ears of somebody, let alone slowly kind of just dance through till your secret message just becomes an inertia in space. Well, anyway, I saw a little demon with teeth a little too big for such a small face walk by and I asked it what it was doing. "I'm to play with some of the kids above." Demons are allowed to spook children? "That's awfully prejudiced, to say that. Some of the children have dads that come really, really late. They need someone to play with them." You really play with them? It didn't answer, it just did some cartwheels, smiled at me with teeth all too white.

Eventually, as you guessed, Hell got boring and I had to go to work. Took an elevator out, it's not surprisingly really, to leave Hell, if you're not dead yet. Demons won't chase you down. They have all the days to wait for you to come back. During my lunch-break at work I sometimes listen to people around me. One man said, "This cookie is awesome." The other said, "It'll make you move up a notch on the belt." The first man said, "I don't care. I work all morning and then I get to have a nice lunch and finish it with a cookie. Gotta enjoy the shit out of the little things, Tom." Crumbs fall and perch on his black suit like a meteor cluster suspended in space. "Mm. Tastes really, damn good." On my walk back, there is a marble fountain with a few pennies and quarters. When I am off work, I sometimes like to look at people. Not like the way weirdos do. Just glance at faces here and there. I don't really try to read them or anything, I just wonder if I make the same stare while walking down a street. And everyone squints when they walk toward the sun. Doesn't matter if you got fired or your wife is about to divorce you: squint or wear some sunglasses. That golden ball just illuminating everything in its path, just beams of photons not caring who or what the hell it strikes. If I had a few wishes, I'd make the days feel like night, but you'd still be able to see, it'd just feel like night - if that makes any sense. I think if it was at night when they ate the Fruit, maybe they wouldn't have realized so quickly it was embarrassing to be nude. I wonder if the thought ever crossed Adam's mind while he hid, "He could've stopped me but he didn't."

That night in my bed, I dreamt about the marble fountain. You know, one of these days you can find me at a fountain with my life savings as a bucket full of fucking pennies dropping them one at a time. One for every photon to not touch me. One for every kid that remembers only remembers who played with them. And one for every Monday. Each one a sunken shooting star. This is just way it is. I'm not bitter. I'm sure of it, because that day I went to Hell there was a little demon with teeth a little too square. He plays with kids, like I told you. But all demons have a job. And his was to lead them chasing trailing lights in the night sky, and always whispering to them, just around the next corner. You'll really see it then, he says with teeth all too white.

Yesterday was the first time I worked since I did that feral bear poaching gig in Tibet. I'm a law clerk's intern's intern now.

I ride the metro to work. I've learned standing up is better than sitting down because as the train fills you can't look up from your seat or your nose will be planted into someone's ass. But, standing up has its challenges too. The metro isn't a prince's way to travel, and all the unpredictable bumps and turns has me on my toes straining every muscle in my body to stay balanced. I hold onto the greasy pole, fist turning white, as I use every willpower my mind can summon in the A.M. to not knock over people around me. Then I see this lady, half my height and third my weight, reading a newspaper with both hands and expertly shifting weight like a standing cat in the opposite direction of the train's inertia - she only moves to turn the page. Metro surfing.

During my shift I got to accompany a clerk to drop off some court orders to the archives and on the way we met his fellow lawyer friend. "Hey, there." "Hey, yourself." "What're you here for this time?" "My client, DUI charges, what an idiot..." The courthouse on the fourth floor has a really, giant window that a whale shark, if they could fly, could probably crash through and still have wiggle room then eat everyone inside like plankton. "You have to take the bar exam twice?" "Yes, fucking blower." "Did you get to go to the bourbon tasting?" "Yea, I got hammered, could barely drive home." "Sweet." Plankton are funny, you just go where ever the ocean current goes until you get swallowed up by a whale. And even if you were swallowed, I wonder if you'd even notice till you got shat out into giant cloud of feces in the water and if you weren't digested I guess you hitch a ride on the currents again.

I went to eat at a Korean deli nearby work for lunch. I sat in a dead-end alley where the the buildings on both sides rose so high that the 1PM sun was completely obliterated and diluted into shade. I found a business card that read, "Smuggy", while eating my sub. On my way back I walked through a congregation (flock?) of pidgeons strutting around the sidewalk pecking at trash. None flew away. My side of the sidewalk was completely empty and I figured out why when I glanced down and saw an endless amount of craters and blast marks of pidgeon shit like Jackson Pollock waltzed through with white paint. Nearing work, I saw on the steps leading into some building with boarded windows a pidgeon chick sprawled on the pavement. Must've fallen from its nest three stories up. Blue unformed eyes and yellow beaks spread apart wide enought to exhibit its short-lived created internal organs to the carefully measured, stone laid city with square windows.

On the metro ride back, which takes forty minutes or so, I gave into the fatigue of a day's work and sat down. Underground lights slowly streaked by like I put shooting stars on replay. I rested my head on the window and the vibration of the rails striking metal shook through my body. It became rhythmic. I felt my senses ball up into the front end of my brain, which is how I feel when I'm, getting sleepy. Yawn. There was a ding and I opened my eyes and the seats were empty and the doors were open. I cursed and ran outside clutching my coat. I stepped onto black tiles, made of obsidian. Obsidian with strange markings on them, like as if a giant talon etched in some old language that gave life to rain and fire. I felt a push of warm wind against my face and looked up only to see it was a giant, black dragon. Do you have my business card, it asked. I showed him what I had found, which read, Smuggy. That's my name, at your service, it said. He breathed silver fire and broke the roof revealing a time when all stars were shooting and cosmos was a stew pot of chaos and currents of gravity and inertia. But,

Yeah, so it didn't happen. The job isn't too bad. I don't what I'll do when I grow up. It'd be nice to be dragon-rider waging war on the pidgeon folk giving man-creatures a reason to be feared again. I woke up today to the alarm clock. I dreamt I took the reigns of the metro and carved tracks into the earth, surfing its bare valleys. Now, I'm drinking coffee again to stay awake through the day. Whatever the case, I wonder what sucks more - to be that pidgeon chick or a plankton. Anyway, I'm off to work. Thanks for the time to spend this morning, with me. It was my pleasure. I'll let Smuggy play you out. Say, you've never seen a dragon play piano.

Allow me.