Oubliette

Pseudo-hipster-punk Sig Waldgrave was just looking for a little peace and quiet (and, okay, an easy A for his PE credit) when he signed up for “Hiking and Exploring”, but he got a lot more– a trip to the suburbs of Hell and a gauntlet to run with his worst enemies as help, specifically. And all for the amusement of a fallen angel with an affection for torment.

Oubliette is a modern, morbidly playful fairy tale about what happens when people aren’t quite what they seem, evil gets infernally bored, and hell really is other people.

Excerpt from Chapter I. Wherein Sig Is Introduced To the Oubliette

When Sig opened his eyes, his first thought was that it was extremely hot. His second was that it smelled like burned, rotten eggs. Really disgusting, this time.

His third was that Radiohead had obviously been playing for quite some time, since he was halfway through Exit Music.

He pushed himself up to sitting and looked around. It was dark, like a cave, but everything was strangely clear-shadows were deep and somehow elongated, in spite of there being no direct light source that he could make out. They had a black sharpness that struck him as feverish. The effect was most obvious with the strange racks that decorated the stone walls, hung with what appeared to be long drooping things, like thick-lined fishing poles, and the occasional metal flash here and there. The air was stifling and still, thick and hot in his lungs. It felt like trying to breathe too near to a fire, sans smoke.

Christ, his head felt like it was full of angry gnomes with drums.

“Oh, you’re awake, finally.”

Sig looked to his right. He saw an executive-type desk of gleaming mahogany in front of a cast iron gate made up of several long, severely pointed gratings. This gate, a good six feet wide and almost to the ten-foot high ceiling, was the only break in an otherwise featureless, solid stone wall.

Behind the desk sat a man.

At least, he was something like a man. His arms stretched out in front of him on the desk, one of the hands holding a feather for some inane reason… but the arms were wrong. Too long, abnormally long, and sitting at odd angles, as if his shoulders didn’t connect into his upper arms properly, and his elbows had been pulled apart so that his lower arms hung by tendons only. Like a doll with disconnected limbs, hanging by threads beneath archaic business-casual.

It made Sig feel slightly sick to his stomach. The rotten egg smell didn’t help.

“Name.”

He shook his head, reached up and held it in one hand to try and quash the throbbing there. His brain was only just starting to work, and Thom Yorke wasn’t helping. He pulled out his left earbud, creating an eerie half-tracked auditory phenomenon. The chamber-cave, whatever-struck him as desperately silent.

“Name,” the voice demanded, cutting the quiet painfully.

“Sig,” he muttered, not wanting to look back at the strange stretched out man yet. His stomach felt iffy, still. If he threw up, he was afraid he’d pass out again.

The man sighed, a sound heavy with exasperation and disturbingly foppish.

“Full name, if you don’t mind.”

“Sigmund Julius Waldgrave the Third,” he replied automatically. He hated his name, but the gnomes with drums made it hard to care.

Another sigh, this time shorter. “You’re not on the list.”

Sig looked back up, still attempting to will his brain into functioning. “What the hell?”

Come to think of it, what the hell was he? The man’s face was extraordinarily sallow, and the freaky weird light applied its shadow contortions to his expressions, making his bored, irritated look surreal and overblown.

A quick glimpse over the man’s shoulder, and Sig noticed a strange and familiar device behind the desk, just beside the gate. An upright black iron coffin with a woman’s face painted on the outside-an iron maiden. The thing seemed to loom now that he noticed it, a hulking ominous giant. That had been the answer to essay question 4a on his test today, actually.

“The list,” the man repeated, sounding like he had a mouthful of dust. “We never get unplanned denizens since the upgrade.”

“What?” God… what the…?

Another sigh, this time louder. It bounced off the walls and magnified. “Nevermind. I suppose I should give you the speech anyhow.”

Sig closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and nearly choked on it. He coughed, too loud in the silence. “What is that smell?”

“I’ve just had my tea. Are you going to stand or will you need to be dragged kicking and screaming?”

The question was asked with such matter-of-factness that Sig was shocked into opening his eyes again.

The man stood now, looking down at him. Sig was vaguely horrified to note that his legs were as disjointed and stretched as his arms-it was obvious in spite of the long nondescript gray trousers that covered them. They were bowed at odd angles and frighteningly long. As if he’d been left in the sun too long and melted, then been pulled him from either end.

“Or just dragged, I suppose. Though we usually see kicking and screaming when force is involved. At first.”

Somehow, Sig forced himself to stand. He came up to the man’s chest. And, he could see now, the man had black eyes. Not just the iris and pupil, but entirely black.

He staggered slightly, wondering how the fuck he’d fallen into a Hieronymous Bosch painting, and if his father was somewhere laughing right now.

“I’m Arthur Dale, Secretary to Inquisitor Malphus. Welcome to The Oubliette.”

Oubliette had been on the test too. And it wasn’t exactly a good sign that he was supposedly in one.