Tour Guide to Tartarus

The alarm clock repeated its digital scream at full volume until Eurydice dug it out of its hiding space under her shoe rack and slammed the button on top. Red numbers on the front told her it was 5:42 in the morning. Or rather, that's what time it would be, if Tartarus had such things "mornings" and "the passage of time." Eurydice put the alarm clock down and it started blaring again. She pressed the button to silence it, turned on the weak light bulb in her cell, and examined the alarm clock more closely.

The button's label read, "SNOOZE."

The alarm clock sounded again as Eurydice turned its black rectangular body over in her hands. The clock apparently only had three features: the red numbers, the snooze button, and a switch with three positions. Eurydice turned the switch from "Alarm" to "AM." Now it emitted a loud static sound. She turned the switch one last time to "FM."

"Good morning, Torturers and maggots!" the radio shouted in Eris's convivial feminine voice. "I hope you hated your first torment of the day as much as I loved setting it up." Eris, Goddess of Discord cackled. "Some of you nincompoops are still struggling with the snooze button. Classic!"

Eurydice tossed the alarm clock to the floor, where it continued to transmit Eris's voice.

"Well, get your butts ready for another sweltering day in Hell. Today, Lord Hades has set Tarturus's thermostat to 36°. No, I will not translate for those of you who think Fahrenheit is worth your time. Our ceiling setting today is Muggy Sunshowers, because who doesn't love Orlando in August?" Eris howled like a party girl on Spring Break.

Eurydice tried to ignore the alarm clock as she brushed her teeth and pulled her long, curly, sandy locks into their usual sensible bun.

"I've got some disappointing news for you from the desk of Lady Persephone," Eris persisted. "Her Underworld Unification Initiative is transitioning the aesthetic of all three Fields from 1680's Paris to 1960's New York City. Now ladies, don't be too relieved at the lack of tight, binding bodices, okay? It's your turn to trip around in tights and high heels."

Eurydice watched as the wardrobe in her cell transformed before her eyes. Dresses shrank. Shoes grew. Porcelain cosmetic jars twisted themselves into small plastic palettes. She sighed and dressed.

"And gentlemen," Eris continued, "Don't think you're off the hook with your trousers and sensible footwear. You're stuck in uniforms now, babies! Get your Windsor knot right or you're in for an old fashioned whipping." Eris cackled one last time. "All right, cockroaches. Get to work."

CONTENT WARNING - From this point forward, you can expect characters to: blaspheme, express anti-Semitism, behave violently towards anti-Semites, express misogyny, behave violently towards misogynists, and discuss sexual assault and suicide. The views and actions described are the sole property of the fictional story's made-up characters.

The alarm clock exploded into green flame and emitted a cloud of noxious gas. Coughing, Eurydice pressed herself to the bare concrete floor beside the steel door of her cell. She heard the familiar electronic hum and steel click of the door unlocking. She staggered into the cinderblock hallway with dozens of other coughing, gasping Torturees.

They caught their collective breath and proceeded down the cellblock.

"Wow," said one of Eurydice's male neighbors. "You make fluorescent floral prints look good."

Eurydice continued walking. "No one makes fluorescent floral prints look good, Ajax. That's the point."

"You've got a run in your stockings," he sneered.

"Children, please!" snapped a matronly neighbor with a grey bouffant hairstyle. "It's bad enough we're all stuck here getting tortured by demons. The Good Lord Jesus will never Save us if we torment each other too."

"Then shut up, Ruth," Ajax told her. "I'm tormented every time you open your mouth."

"Leave her alone!" another neighbor pushed Ajax.

The bickering spread through the hallway. Eurydice put her head down and hastened her step, sweating in her ugly polyester minidress.

She just had to get through the morning. Then she could get through the rest of the day. And get through the next day. And get through the day after that… and weeks after that… and the centuries after that…

Eurydice barely noticed her surroundings changing as she left the dormitory complex and turned up Kant Avenue. Her neighbors and thousands of other tortured souls made their way through the city, bumping into each other, bickering, walking to their miserable jobs.

Eurydice stopped as usual at The Stale Bagel, a café across the street from her office. Two anxious baristas and their overbearing Torturer served lukewarm coffee. There was a choice of two bagel flavors that had been baked two days ago and left in a dusty pantry to age. Every day for all of eternity, the baristas apologized for the quality of the fare and grimaced at the responses of their disappointed customers.

The man in line before Eurydice slammed his hand against the counter. "You have one job!" he roared at Jude, one of the baristas. "All you ever do is make coffee. Can't you do it well? For once in your miserable existence? As a treat?!"

Jude's lip quivered. "I'm sorr-"

"Sorry!" the man shouted. "I wish my torture were as easy as yours. You have it easy!" He spun on his heel and brushed past Eurydice on his way out.

"I am so sorry," Eurydice told Jude. "You don't deserve to be treated like that."

The café Torturer laughed.

A tear trickled down Jude's cheek. "The pity really isn't much better than the anger. But I get that you mean well." Jude poured Eurydice's coffee.

Eurydice nodded. "Gotcha. Well. What flavors of stale bagel do you have today?"

"Onion or Bleu cheese," Jude said.

Eurydice winced.

"I know," Jude said.

"Onion," Eurydice requested. Jude handed it over.

As Eurydice left The Stale Bagel, she heard the next customer behind her explode with anger. "Bleu cheese has mold in it!"

She crossed the street and felt the tear in her pantyhose growing, reaching gradually further up her left thigh. Every Torturer she passed, and some of the Torturees as well, pointed it out to her. She watched its progress in her reflection, first in the windows of the office buildings outside, then in the gleaming elevator door as she rode to the sixth floor.

She proceeded down the windowless path through the cubicle farm. All around her, Torturees took their seats. They opened large legers and sharpened pencils with off-center graphite cores. They got to work on the accounts, logistics, and data entry of the Underworld. The sound of nail clippers trimming nails come from somewhere nearby. Torturers in middle management roles gossiped loudly. One spilled her coffee on a human's report. Another flossed his teeth while leaning against a human's desk. Each one greeted her with, "You've got a tear in your hose."

Eurydice clocked in and reported to the office of her direct report Torturer, Max. He still sported his seventeenth-century fop attire, complete with powdered wig and lacy sleeves.

"You've got a run in your pantyhose," he said.

"Did you miss Eris's morning announcements?" Eurydice asked. "The 1680's are so yesterday."

Max snapped his fingers. His wig vanished, and his clothes morphed into a navy blue suit with wingtip shoes. He adjusted his charcoal necktie and looked Eurydice up and down.

"We look a fine pair," he said.

"I'm just here for the day's assignments," Eurydice answered.

"You should really let your hair down," Max said. He caressed Eurydice's cheek. "You'd look great on my arm at the concert tonight. Come on. Be my date."

Eurydice plucked his hand off of herself and handed it back to him. "I'd rather push Sisyphus's boulder."

Max's red eyes narrowed. "I can arrange that."

Eurydice gave him a disdainful look. "Can you arrange... for me to get the day's assignments?"

Max burst into laughter and handed over a clipboard.

"Thank you," Eurydice sneered. Max continued laughing as she left his office and navigated the cubicle labyrinth to her own desk.

Eurydice chewed her stale bagel and stared at the dossiers on the clipboard. She could have chosen an equally unsatisfying breakfast from any of the city's damned cafés. She could have chosen not to eat at all. It isn't as if her ethereal existence would actually metabolize nutrients from the Underworld's shadowy replications of food and drink. "Eating" in the afterlife was a small, casual kind of torture. Hunger was just as bad. Maybe the real torture was that she had to choose, every single morning, between the dissatisfaction of breakfast and the dissatisfaction of skipping it.

She swallowed the last bite of her bagel and realized she hadn't taken in a single word from the dossiers. She had spent the whole time musing about torture. She sipped her lukewarm coffee, for some reason she couldn't justify, and attended to the paperwork.

Eurydice had four new damned souls to orient. She placed a laminated fuchsia paper on top of the dossiers on her clipboard and retrieved five matching fuchsia baseball caps from her desk. Then she wrote the names of her charges in large letters on a piece of posterboard. She tucked the clipboard, names, and hats under her arm and made her way back out of the office, ignoring the Torturers who called out, "You have a run in your hose," as she passed.

She strolled through the administration district towards the docks. Sunlamps glared down from the cavern ceiling. Thunder rumbled gently. Rain drenched her, stopped suddenly, and sprinkled down again.

As usual, the docks bustled with chaotic activity. Freshly damned souls stepped off Chiron's barge and milled around aimlessly, or else sat on the abrasive sand and stared at nothing in particular. Reflections of the sunlamps twinkled on the black, swift river. Heart-wrenching screams drifted up from the water, where the lost souls who couldn't pay Chiron's price struggled against the current.

Eurydice popped one of the fuchsia caps on her head and held up her posterboard. She saw other Orientation Associates with similar signs and brightly colored hats amongst the crowd. Eventually, a confused looking old man wandered up to her.

"I'm Richard Rosenberg," he said, eying Eurydice's sign.

Eurydice placed a cap on his head. "Welcome to Tartarus," she said. "My name is Eurydice. I'll start your orientation when the rest of our group assembles."

Richard gaped. "Is this Hell? Hell really is a thing?"

"It isn't Thebes," Eurydice said. "Just wait a bit."

Before long, the middle aged Charlene Nguyen and the young Ellen Johansson found their names on Eurydice's sign and introduced themselves. They accepted their caps and attempted to make small talk with each other and Richard.

The other orientation groups gathered and left. Eurydice watched the clusters of lime, dandelion, and turquoise baseball caps move on into the city.

"Excuse me," a woman said, tapping Eurydice firmly on the shoulder. "I've been waiting here for ages. These people," she gestured at Richard, Charlene, and Ellen, "Were all on later ferries than me. Where is my tour guide?"

"I have no idea," Eurydice answered.

"It isn't fair to make some people wait this long!" the woman whined.

"Is your name Louis LaMontagne?" Eurydice asked.

"My name is Tammy White!" she huffed.

"Then you aren't my problem," Eurydice said, tapping her sign.

Tammy scoffed.

Ellen sucked her breath in through her teeth. "That was harsh," she said quietly.

"I do not like your attitude!" Tammy told Eurydice. "What is your name? How can I speak to your supervisor?"

Eurydice turned her back on the entitled woman. "Louis?" Eurydice called out. "Louis LaMontagne?"

"I am talking to you!" Tammy said, stamping her foot impatiently.

"Yeah, good luck with that," Eurydice replied. "Louis LaMontagne?"

A young man in chainmail armor approached. "I am called Louis LaMontagne," he said.

Eurydice placed the hat on his head. She held up her clipboard, displaying the fuchsia paper. "Okay: Richard, Charlene, Ellen, and Louis, you're with me. If you get separated, look for your fellow fuchsia hats or this clipboard."

"What about me?" Tammy demanded.

"I have no clue!" Eurydice snapped. "This process is chaotic and frustrating on purpose. Welcome to Tartarus, Karen."

"Tammy!"

"I really don't care," Eurydice told her. "Wait here for your own orientation. Team Fuchsia, with me!" She brandished her clipboard and set a quick pace back into the city. Her charges followed.

"That is one mean demon," Ellen murmured audibly to Charlene.

"And she had a run in her pantyhose," Charlene answered.

Eurydice turned to face them, walking backwards to lead them into the city. "I'm not a Torturer," she said. "I'm a Torturee, like you. Eurydice of Thrace, died at age 23 from a viper bite. My eternal torture here in Tartarus is to work every day as an Orientation Associate. I welcome the newly dead to the Underworld."

"Question," Louis said. "How did I wind up in Hell? I died in the service of His Holiness, Pope Urban II. My brothers-in-arms and I had undertaken the holy quest of ridding the land of Jews."

"You son of a bitch," Richard roared. He took a swing at Louis, who easily dodged and countered with a bodyshot. Richard crumpled to the pavement.

Charlene and Ellen both looked scandalized.

"Good question," Eurydice answered calmly. "A person can be damned to Tartarus for one of two things. You can piss off a deity, like Ellen and I did; or you can do something objectively dreadful. Charlene here defrauded multiple Alzheimer's patients in the 2060's. In the 1980's, Richard committed spousal rape-"

"You can't 'rape' your own wife!" Richard interjected.

"-And our eleventh-century crusader Louis here committed acts of genocide," Eurydice concluded.

"Gracious," Ellen said. "And we all wound up in Tartarus together?"

"Oh, don't worry," Eurydice said. "The severity of the torture is proportionate to how heinous each person was in life. You'll hate it here, but these guys-" Eurydice gestured at Richard and Louis- "Will know true agony. Come on, I'll bring you to Town Square first."

"There is no way my torture is as bad as this Nazi's," Richard grumbled.

"What is a Nazi?" Louis asked.

"Isn't Tartarus a Greek thing?" Charlene asked. "My family wasn't really religious."

Eurydice turned back towards her charges and gestured vaguely at the theaters and galleries around them. "This is the arts district. Tortures here range from playing the clarinet with a broken reed to watching a Torturer paint with your viscera.

"Over to your left," Eurydice charged on, unwilling to linger on their reactions, "is the administration district. That's where I work. Ellen, you're actually going to be in the same office as me, so I'll make it our last stop.

"On your right, you've got the capital district. That is to say, the place for people who committed capital offenses. We usually call it The Abyss. We'll go there soon for Louis and Richard."

Both men looked aghast.

Richard repeated, "There is no way my torture is as bad as his!"

Louis shook his head in bewilderment. "The Bishop of Ostia said we were doing the Work of God!"

Eurydice gestured for them to follow her as she turned on Socrates Lane. "At the moment, we're heading to the center of the city."

"What is this?" Ellen asked, pointing at a poster in a restaurant window.

It read, "Lady Persephone invites YOU to the annual Thesmophoria-palooza! This year's concert headliner is Apollo's own beloved protégé, ORPHEUS!" There was a picture of a handsome, moody-looking man with an open shirt and a lute. Beneath him, the poster gave concert dates: "Pyanepsion 11 - Tartarus Town Square. Pyanepsion 12 - Asphodel Omnitheater. Pyanepsion 13 - Elysian Opera House."

"There's a concert tonight. Ellen and Charlene, you'll both be allowed to attend."

"There are concerts in Hell?" Charlene asked.

"One every year," Eurydice answered. "I'm officially required to say that we enjoy an evening off of torture to celebrate Lady Persephone and her mother, Lady Demeter."

Charlene raised an eyebrow. "What's the part you aren't officially required to say?"

Eurydice kept a straight face despite the sudden heavy feeling on her chest. "People are pretty resilient. If things were All Bad, All The Time, we would just adapt to that. So every once in a while, we hear some music that's on key. We get a whiff of freshly baked bread. We see a cherry tree covered in blossoms. Every once in a while, we get something that tells us, 'This isn't so bad.' And then that something goes away. Without it, everything feels worse."

Ellen's lip quivered as if she were about to say something, but couldn't decide on what.

"Come on," Eurydice told the group. "Town Square."

Her charges remained silent as they walked the last two blocks and stepped onto the Square's astroturf. Rain poured down from the ceiling.

"How is it raining and sunny at the same time?" Charlene asked.

"Ever been to Florida?" Richard answered.

"How is it raining and sunny in a cave?" Ellen asked.

Eurydice sat on the astroturf and gestured for her charges to sit with her. "You've got a lot of questions, and I only have some of the answers," she told them.

They sat.

"Richard asked if this is Hell. The answer is, 'yes-ish.' We are in the Underworld, ruled over by Lord Hades and Lady Persephone. The Underworld is divided into three Fields: Elysian, for great heroes like Harriet Tubman and kids with leukemia; Asphodel, for people who were more or less okay; and Tartarus, where damned souls like us suffer eternal punishment."

"Blasphemy," Louis declared. "If you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you will be eternally rewarded in the Kingdom of Heaven."

Charlene shook her head. "I didn't do that Jesus stuff Louis is talking about, or the ancient Greek myth you're going on about, either."

"I'm Jewish," Richard added.

Louis asked him, "Where are your horns?"

Ellen furrowed her brow. "I guess I had hoped reincarnation was real," she said.

Eurydice shrugged. "I've heard vague rumors that the Underworld isn't the only afterlife. Torturers aren't exactly forthcoming with the Great Answers of Existence, though many will tell you it's 'Forty-two.' That's apparently a joke. What I know for certain is: all five of us died. We wound up in Tartarus. It sucks."

"But why am I being tortured?" Louis repeated.

Richard answered him: "Because it's bad to kill Jewish people, you Nazi sunofabitch!"

"Crusader, technically," Eurydice said, pulling out Louis' dossier. "He died almost nine hundred years before the Holocaust." She read out loud: "Louis LaMontagne, died age 20 of sepsis. Eternal torture: daily disembowelment performed by Torturers disguised as his victims." Eurydice put down the dossier. "That's a standard punishment for murderers who killed between five and ten people. It would have been worse if you'd actually been good at the genocide you attempted."

Louis burst into tears.

"If that's what Nazi scum gets," Richard said, "What eternal torture am I looking at?"

Eurydice pulled out his dossier. "Richard Rosenberg, died age 71 of congestive heart failure. Eternal torture: daily vasectomy without anesthesia."

"Thank goodness I'm not headed to The Abyss," Charlene said. "Or, I guess, thank the gods?"

"Thank yourself," Eurydice told her, replacing Richard's dossier in the clipboard and retrieving Charlene's. "I mean, yeah, you were pretty terrible. But you didn't rape, murder, or break a Law of Nature." Eurydice read out loud, "Charlene Nguyen, died age 44 of fentanyl overdose. Eternal torture: domestic servitude to Torturer Luthaero."

"I'm a maid?" Charlene said with disgust.

"A slave," Eurydice clarified. She swapped Charlene's dossier for Ellen's and read, "Ellen Johansson, died age 18 of Major Depression. Referred to Tartarus by Cyrene. Eternal torture: Orientation Associate."

Richard scoffed. "People don't die from feeling sad."

Ellen stared down at the astroturf. She murmured, "I hanged myself."

"A mortal sin!" Louis exclaimed.

"Don't be ridiculous," Eurydice told him. "All terminal illnesses count as natural deaths."

There IS life after suicidal plans/ideation.

In the United States, anyone struggling with suicidal ideations or plans can call 1-800-273-8255 for immediate assistance.

There's also a text-based crisis hotline for the US, UK, and Canada. In the US and UK, text 741741; in Canada, 686868.

Her charges fell silent again. Eurydice suspected they had hit the point of saturation for bad news. It happened to most damned souls during their orientations.

Eurydice nudged Ellen in a friendly way. "Hey. Want to shove Louis into the Abyss?"

"Yes," Ellen, Richard, and Charlene all said as one.

Louis attempted to bargain, plead, fight, and flee as they escorted him to the Abyss. Eurydice signaled for assistance and two unoccupied Torturers grabbed Louis's arms, propelling him forward in an awkward grapple. The Torturers, Eurydice, and her charges came to Voltaire Street, which hugged the bank of the flaming Phlegethon River. They followed the flow downstream to the Voltaire Street Gate into the capital district.

"Thanks, guys," Eurydice told the torturers. "We've got it from here."

"My pleasure!" one said. He took a deep sniff of Louis's hair. "Mmm, the scent of fear."

"Anytime, Eury," the other said, patting her sharply on the back. "You coming to the concert tonight?"

"Eh," Eurydice said.

"By the way," the convivial Torturer added. "You have a run in your hose."

The Torturers wandered off, talking with each other. Eurydice opened the gate and allowed her charges a moment to take in the steep incline below. The fiery river fell in a sudden waterfall. A narrow granite stairway hugged the stony slope. The light of the sunlamps couldn't penetrate the Abyss's depths.

"All right then," Eurydice said. "Genocidal serial killers first."

"I'm supposed to walk down there?" Louis asked, aghast.

"Nope," Eurydice said. She pulled the fuchsia cap off his head and nodded at the other three. Each laid a hand on Louis's chest and shoved him back. He screamed on his way down.

Richard's face suddenly switched from dark glee to sheer terror. "You'll let me walk down, though. Right? Ladies?" He removed his own cap and attempted to flatten his hair, as if trying to make a good impression.

Charlene and Ellen turned to Eurydice for guidance.

She accepted Richard's hat, and then reminded the other two, "He is a rapist."

"Good point," Ellen said. She kicked Richard as hard as she could in his groin. He crumpled.

Charlene laughed and gave him one solid push. His groans lingered a moment as he disappeared into the depths.

Ellen took a deep breath. "I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed that."

"Right?" Charlene asked. "But, what the hey, you know? The fall isn't going to kill them."

Eurydice closed the gate. "Like I said. Every once in a while, we get a little glimmer of enjoyment. Come on, our next stop is the residential district."

For the first few blocks, Ellen and Charlene chatted companionably. Their cheer couldn't last long, though, in the sweltering humidity. Eurydice led them up Voltaire Street, then left onto Wollstonecraft Boulevard towards Town Square again. They turned right on Sun Tsu Circus, circumnavigating the astroturf.

"Are there any real plants down here?" Ellen asked.

"Some of the Torturers have houseplants or gardens," Eurydice answered.

"What about animals?" Charlene asked.

"Some torments include replicas of animals, like the 'eagle' which eats Prometheus's liver every day. And there's Cerberus at the entrance to the palace. But no, there are no real animals in Tartarus."

"Do all dogs really go to Heaven?" Ellen asked.

Eurydice shrugged. "Let me know if you ever find out."

"What about insects?" Charlene asked. "I guess I always associated Hell with being surrounded by flies or something."

"There are specific insect tortures," Eurydice answered. "Eris tried having mosquito replica swarms loose in Tartarus for a while, but it was a logistical nightmare. The Torturers threatened to go on strike."

Buildings on the other side of Town Square were nicer, with more space in between. Architectural styles and building materials reflected the hodge-podge of Torturers' tastes. A quaint A-frame cabin sat with a looming townhouse on one side and a stilted Thai-style home on the other.

"It's so quiet here," Charlene marveled. "No one is blasting music. No dogs barking, no children playing, no birds singing. Just…" She trailed off, aware that someone sobbed loudly in a nearby house. "Oh."

Eurydice did what she always did when the suffering of others bothered her: kept her head down and walked forward. After all, an inability to help relieve her fellow Torturees was part of the torture, wasn't it?

Ellen and Charlene followed Eurydice to the door of a large manor house. Eurydice tapped the cast iron knocker. A wan, bent old woman in a dark uniform answered and scowled.

"Eurydice. You're late."

"Mrs Preston. Time is an illusion," Eurydice responded.

Mrs Preston menaced Eurydice with the back of her hand. "They give us clocks, don't they, girl?"

"They sure do," Eurydice sighed. "Sometimes, the clocks even fall into sync." She indicated Charlene. "Here's your new hire."

"Charlene Nguyen," Charlene said, holding out her hand as if to shake Mrs Preston's.

Mrs Preston stuck up her chin with an air of offense. "The help uses the back or side doors," she said. She stepped out, closed the heavy front door behind her, and grabbed Charlene by the elbow. "Come on. We'll start with your uniform." The old woman half led, half dragged Charlene around the side of the house. Charlene just barely had a chance to look back at Ellen and wave.

Ellen steadied herself with another deep breath. "This is a lot to take in."

"It doesn't get better," Eurydice said. "But, it does get familiar." She turned away from the manor house and started meandering towards the Torturee dormitories. Ellen fell into step beside her.

They walked a few blocks in contemplative silence. Eventually, Ellen asked, "So… you pissed off a god too?"

"Aristaeus," Eurydice explained. "Oddly enough, he's the son of the goddess who condemned you to Tartarus. He was a total sleazeball. Kept groping me after I told him no. So, I slapped him."

"Sounds reasonable to me," Ellen said.

Eurydice scoffed. "He acted as if I'd viciously attacked him. Whined about how 'violence is never the answer.' For a while, I even questioned if me slapping him was worse than his attempts to initiate sex with me."

Ellen gently took Eurydice's hand and stopped walking. "He assaulted you," she said. "It isn't your fault."

"I've sort of... come to terms with that... yeah. Thank you," Eurydice replied. She started to turn and walk again, but Ellen tugged her arm to keep her still.

"You don't deserve eternal torment," Ellen told her.

"Does anyone?" Eurydice asked. "Really? If it were up to you, would Louis and Richard and Charlene suffer for all eternity, never learning from their mistakes, never growing into better people?"

Ellen opened her mouth… then shut it again.

"I don't know if any afterlife is really based on what people 'deserve,'" Eurydice said. "I don't get a say in it. I got on the wrong side of the God of Beekeeping and now I'm here."

Ellen's eyes welled up with tears. Eurydice looked away. She had enough misery in her own existence without empathy for someone else's torment.

"Our next stop is your cell," Eurydice said. "The dormitories are this way."

She led Ellen through the Residential District. Thunder rumbled gently and rain sprinkled down from the sunny ceiling. They passed by quaint ranch houses, sprawling villas, a simple tent. They walked down Rand Road. They turned left onto Vatsyayana Street and merged onto Themistius Way. The Torturers' eclectic assortment of homes gave way to gigantic, uniform Torturee dormitories. The rain sputtered to a stop as they walked up Kant Avenue.

"This place is a labyrinth," Ellen said. "How do you find your way around?"

Eurydice shrugged. "At first, you get lost. A lot. And then, you get used to it." She pointed at the sign for Feuerbach St. "You're at 27 Feuerbach. Room 804."

"Twenty-seven Feuerbach," Ellen repeated. "Eight-oh-four."

Ellen meekly followed Eurydice into a building and up the stairs. Eurydice paused at the third floor landing. "The dormitories are all identical," she explained. "I almost started walking down this corridor because I'm on the third floor in my building."

They continued up to the eighth floor and found Ellen's room. Eurydice showed her the wardrobe and explained the current aesthetic for Lady Persephone's Underworld Unification Initiative. They went over the morning routine, with Eris's various alarms and announcements and the variety of terrible breakfast options.

Eventually, the two women returned to Eurydice's office. Again, Torturers greeted Eurydice by observing the run in her hose. Eurydice brought Ellen to her direct report Torturer, Belmont, whose office shared a wall with Max's.

"All right," Eurydice said. "See you around."

"Wait," Ellen said. "Is that it? Do you want to get dinner together or something tonight?"

Belmont burst into laughter. "Did you think you would make friends in Tartarus? That's so pathetic!"

Eurydice winced. Despite her better judgment, she felt for the girl. "We've got to take care of ourselves here. As much as we can, anyway."

"Well, what about that concert? It's an evening off of torture to celebrate Lady Persephone and her mother, Lady Demeter," Ellen said.

Max must have overheard it. He left his own office to linger against the doorframe of Belmont's.

Belmont told Ellen, "I can take you to the concert. I can take you all sorts of places."

Max grinned. "I know why Eurydice doesn't want to go tonight."

Eurydice set her face in its practiced neutral position. "Oh goody," she said. "A new torture."

Max spoke with a lovey-dovey lilt and elongated a few syllables for emphasis: "It's because Orpheus was her boyfriend!" Max smooched the air in Eurydice's direction.

Belmont laughed along with Max. Ellen stared and pouted in a gentle outflow of compassion.

Jude the Barista was right. Pity isn't much better.

Eurydice centered herself with a deep breath. She knew there would be no escape. The most expedient way out of this conversation was through it. "Time is weird, down here," she told Ellen. "According to your lifetime, I died over four thousand years before you did. In my experience, I've been in Tartarus for seven hundred and ninety-three years. And to Orpheus, it's been three years."

"Three years," Ellen marveled. "That's nothing. That isn't enough time to mourn and move on from your true love."

"True love!" Max cackled.

Belmont pushed between Eurydice and Max to stick his head out of his office. "Caroline! Ming! Get over here! My newbie believes in true love!"

Caroline, Ming, and a few other Torturers flocked around Ellen, howling with laughter. Max related what he had said about Eurydice, and her response.

"And then this one!" Belmont shouted, pointing at Ellen. "This one! Says, 'Three years isn't enough to move on from your true love!'"

The Torturers roared with a fresh wave of laughter.

"Three years!" Caroline repeated.

"That isn't enough time to move on from true love!" Ming repeated.

"Everyone knows it takes six years, three months, sixteen days and eleven hours to move on from true love!" another Torturer joked.

Max and Belmont locked eyes. Their sudden intensity threw a serious quiet over the general mockery.

"Max," Belmont said.

"Belmont," Max replied, taking Belmont's hands. "I couldn't move on from you, not even after three years!"

"Oh Max!" Belmont sighed. "You're my true love!"

The two engaged in a sloppy, noisy, long kiss. The other Torturers once again cracked up laughing, cheering on the "true lovers" as spittle escaped their mocking embrace.

Ellen looked hurt, confused, and trapped in a corner of Belmont's office. She gave Eurydice a pleading look. Eurydice shook her head a little and leaned against the office wall, waiting patiently for the joke to run its unnecessarily prolonged course.

Ming and Caroline declared love for each other. Max, Belmont, and the other Torturers speculated how much time would be sufficient to move on from true love. More Torturers came by to investigate the ruckus, which caused the first few to repeat the initial story and jokes.

"Five o'clock already?!" Eurydice shouted over the din.

"Fuck yes it's five o'clock!" a Torturer shouted.

Others picked up the call to action. "Five o'clock!" "Bye bye day drinking, hello happy hour!" "Concert pregame at my house!" "Whoop! There it is!"

The Torturers abandoned their 'true love' game and made their way towards the main corridor and out of the building. Before she left, Ming turned back to Eurydice and said, "Bye the way, Sweetie, you have a gigantic run in your pantyhose. It's really unprofessional. Good night!"

Finally, Eurydice and Ellen found themselves alone in Belmont's office. Ellen wiped tears away from her puffy, red eyes. She looked at the clock on the wall.

"It's only four-forty," she remarked.

Eurydice shrugged. "If they notice, they won't care. They won't even remember who first said it was five."

Ellen sniffed and wiped away another tear. "I guess it was pretty stupid of me to say 'true love' like that."

"The concept of true love is kind of preposterous," Eurydice agreed. "But. Believing in it isn't stupid. I mean, yeah it's naïve, but everyone starts out naïve, you know?"

Ellen's tears came harder and faster.

"Crap. I'm not trying to torment you," Eurydice said.

"It isn't you," Ellen said. "It's everything. I killed myself because I wanted the pain to stop! And it doesn't stop! Existence just keeps going? And it doesn't fit any of the rules I thought were real? Is any of this real?! Was I ever real?!" Ellen crumpled to the floor, sobbing.

Eurydice could have walked away. She wondered if walking away from Ellen's distress, or sitting beside her, would be a worse torment to herself. She'd tried both over the centuries, and neither actually brought comfort.

It didn't really matter.

Eurydice sat down beside Ellen.

Torturees and a few more Torturers streamed past Belmont's office door on their way out. A few shot curious glances towards the women on the floor, but no one stopped or said anything.

"I don't suppose you have any answers," Ellen said between sobs.

"Nope."

"Does anyone?"

"I don't know."

Ellen gave Eurydice a rather watery look. "You sound like my therapist."

"Have you noticed the theme for the street names of Tartarus?" Eurydice asked.

"Famous people?" Ellen asked.

"Philosophers," Eurydice answered. "Some are in Tartarus, some in Asphodel, some in Elysia. I don't know, maybe some are in different afterlives or something. No matter where you go in Tarturus, you walk by the names of people who Asked Questions and Sought Answers and desperately wanted to find or create Meaning In Existence."

Ellen scowled. "And we don't get to know if any of them were right," she said.

"You're catching on," Eurydice said.

"This sucks," Ellen declared.

"Yep."

"This really sucks."

"It does," Eurydice agreed.

They sat together for a while longer. Ellen finished her cry. Some time passed, and then she said, "Thank you, Eurydice."

Eurydice shrugged. "The tour is just my job."

"I meant for sitting here with me while I cried."

"Was it better, having me here?" Eurydice asked. "I hate experiencing the vulnerability of crying next to someone."

"I think being alone would have been worse," Ellen told her.

"All right," Eurydice said. She rose to her feet. "Come on. Let's go to the concert. The lead singer is really cute."

Ellen nodded and started to rise. "I hear he's a talented musician."

"Makes good feta, too," Eurydice replied. She started towards the door, and Ellen followed.