Veiled (Ada Palomino 1)

I can’t breathe.

The world around me is black, my ears filling with pops and clicks, like the sounds you hear from the bottom of the sea. Things brush past my limbs, bare branches or skeletal fingers, it’s hard to tell.

I go down, down, down until I’m going up.

My head bursts out of the water and I instinctively inhale as big and deep as I can, trying to fill my lungs.

But there’s no air to be had.

I make a faint choking sound, my eyes opening in throbbing terror, a brown grey haze staring back, momentarily forgetting where I’m supposed to be.

I’m here, Ada, Jay’s voice comes in my head. Swim to me.

I can’t even look around to find him, I just start moving my arms and kicking my legs in the direction I feel his pull, surprised that they’re even working with no air coming in my lungs.

Somehow I crawl onto solid ground. I feel strong, familiar hands wrap around my arms and pull me further up, the icy water letting go of my feet with a nasty slurp.

I flip over on my back, gasping for breath, panicking when I can’t get it. The grey brown sky presses down from above.

Take it easy, Jay says. There is no air here. You don’t need it.

I know he’s beside me, I can see him out of my peripheral, but I can only stare up at that oppressive sky, alien and alive, and fight along with every natural instinct I have.

Eventually though I realize that I should have died a long time ago. It’s been minutes (years?) without air and that breathing will be one of the things I miss about our world.

I sit up slowly, Jay’s hand at my back for support, and look around.

Hell isn’t fire and brimstone.

It’s New York City.

To be more specific, the look of New York City in January but with mid-July weather. A bleak and grey sky above dark and hollow buildings, a jungle of mildewed concrete and decaying plants, dead trees, and shrubs reduced to skeletons. The air is no-air and it’s thick, muggy, brimming with humidity that has beads of sweat already rolling down my face. The only smell is one of garbage and something so vile that I can feel it eating away at my core. A smell that makes the lizard-brain of my cortex shrink in fear.

Of course how can you smell without breathing? Hell has many tricks up its sleeves, that I’m sure.

For one, I’m lying at the edge of a pond in Central Park.

Are you okay? Jay asks.

I think so, I tell him, having a hard time conjuring up my “inside” voice. Considering where we are.

I twist around and look at him.

I balk.

I don’t look so good, do I? he asks with a dour expression.

No. He doesn’t. It’s not that he looks horrible or gross or even really that different. At a glance he would look the same. But the more I stare at him, the more his face seems to separate from his skin, like he’s wearing a mask and it’s hinting at something terrible underneath. It’s the debilitating sense that he’s been taken apart and put back together and the end result isn’t human at all.

Do I look the same? I ask him.

He gnaws on his lip for a moment before answering. You’re never not beautiful, Ada. You just look like a doll that someone’s made to look like you.

That’s a pretty good summation of what I’m looking at too.

It’s good for me to keep using your name, Ada. Names have power. You’ll need to be reminded of who you are in here. You’ll need to remind me too.

I glance around. Aside from the smell and the awful humidity, there isn’t anything too terrifying here. Still, I can’t say I feel relieved in the slightest.

Are we actually in Hell? Why is it New York? I ask. Where is . . . everybody?

Careful, Ada, he warns me, slowly getting to his feet. He hauls me up effortlessly before dropping his hands to his side. Don’t question things too much. I have no doubt this place would act upon it. Hell itself isn’t just governed by Satan and his disciples, it’s governed by the very essence of Evil itself.

More Evil than Satan? I ask, finding it hard to believe, though a chill sinks deep into my flesh like ice-pick claws. He’s the prince of fucking darkness.

Satan is a fallen angel. He fell here. This place already existed. It was waiting for him to lead. He says this simply, just another fact. It can feel you, hear you, even now. It will start to mess with your head pretty soon.

Can . . . can it keep me here? I wish he’d keep a hold of my hand, my skin is pins and needles in new fear, craving his stability.