***Trigger Warning***

***Graphic body mutilation***

There was a cardinal rule that Jack had learned as a child, and even now in the midst of the most frightening and horrible situation he could ever imagine, this rule pounded through his mind. If you were lost, you were suppose to stay where you were until somebody found you. He couldn't exactly be sure if this applied when one was stuck in another dimension, but it was the only rational plan he had left to hold onto.

So despite strong impulses to run and scream and delve deeper into madness, Jack had convinced Rachel and himself to stay put. They sat on the sharp black stone floor, backs to each other and only lightly touching (the incredible unease of being seen in this state still threatened to overtake more rational thought), wrapped their arms tight around their legs, and waited.

It was impossible to know how long they waited like that because it was impossible to gauge time in that place. There was no sky, only thick clouds of smoke that burned the eyes. There was no sun or moon, but sometimes lightning or even fire flashed through the haze. Sometimes it seemed very close and Jack could feel his skin start to burn. The floor they sat on shifted. Rocks crumbled away and a leg or buttock would fall between a sharp crack in the floor. Their skin would cut deep, urging them to move, to find another place to sit and wait, but Jack still had enough of his mind to know that in this place, no matter where they went, pain would be waiting for them.

And so they simply waited, as best that they could. Him and Rachel talked a bit. They didn't always have the mental fortitude to listen, or to even fully grasp what they themselves were saying, but the bits of noise helped to reassure each other that they were still there. Rachel told Jack about her family, her parents and her sisters. She told him about her schooling and the essay she was writing. It was nice to talk about things so far removed from all the horror around them.

Jack told her about his childhood, about the small farming community he'd grown up on with his mom and dad and half-siblings. Jack didn't mince words when talking about this community he'd been part of. He understood now that it had been a cult. It certainly wasn't in the same league as something like the Imperial Cult, but they had their own peculiar practices.

They had been a deeply religious group, close to Christian, but with a much heavier focus on preparing one's self for the imminent rapture. The sect was led by a few men, Father Mathias being the head of them, and each man took a number of women as his wives, for their role was to take care of the men and to give them children that could be raised to serve God in his holy kingdom once the rapture came. At least that was the best Jack could remember of the sect. He had been fairly young when they had left and his mom preferred not to talk about it much.

His mom had been one of Father Mathias' younger daughters, through one of his younger wives. Once she had reached puberty she was married off to Father Bartholomew, an aging man who was only half a decade younger than her own father. She was the fifth of Bartholomew's wives, and the youngest, and by the age of fifteen she gave birth to Jack. There had been complications during his birth and both he and Bethany had nearly died. Their survival was hailed as a miracle, just as the birth of another son was hailed as a miracle. Bethany had been sly though and used these complications for years to come as the reason she could not get pregnant again. It was true that pregnancies didn't take hold in her easily, but the few times they had she took care of them in secret. One of Bartholomew's other wives helped her, one that was only ten years older, but understood the pain Bethany felt living in these conditions. Still it was the only life she knew, and where else was she to go?

She loved Jack, loved him more than anything else in the world, and she worked relentlessly to keep the other men of the community from sinking their teeth into him and twisting him with their warped ideals. The rest of it didn't matter as long as she had her beautiful boy Jack, pure sunshine in her life. Until he got sick.

This part of the story Jack only knew because his mother had told him, but it was not something he had much memory of. The sickness that overcame the twelve-year-old Jack was not like any normal sickness. It took over his mind before it took over his body, but it wasn't long before it took over everything. As a deeply religious cult, the fathers of the community saw this illness for what it was right away: Jack was possessed by a demon. He was restrained and left to die. They prayed for his soul and begged God for Jack to be the last taken by the Devil. They prayed, but Bethany refused to let her child go. She had to leave him briefly, she couldn't escape with a raving child in her arms, the demon would have screamed to the nearest pedestrian that he was being kidnapped, and Bethany would have no way to prove otherwise. She had no ID, no money, but still she went out and begged help from anyone who would listen.

Easily dismissible as a madwoman, the true miracle of the story in Jack's mind, was that somehow she got in touch with a man named Logan. It was pure coincidence that brought them together, but once they found each other, he vowed to do all he could to help her child. Logan was quite a bit older than Bethany, but decades younger than the man she was forced to call husband. There was instant connection between them. Logan went back to the community with Bethany and in the dark of night stole away with Jack. By the side of the country road in the heavy cold of winter, Logan performed an exorcism on Jack and expelled the demon from him. Jack was saved and from then on all their lives changed. Bethany and Jack never went back to the community, they followed Logan and he helped them get established in a normal life. And when both Jack and Bethany realized a normal life wasn't going to be possible after all they had been through, they appealed to Logan to teach them more about the hidden worlds he knew of.

The veils on the real horrors of the world had been ripped back permanently, yet because they were together, life became full of joy again too. Eventually Bethany and Logan married, and though Logan didn't worship Jack the way the men of the community had, he did care for him in a way that none but his mother ever had.

Jack told Rachel lots about the strange family that they built: him mom, his stepfather, the gruff uncle, his sister Cara. He missed them all and wanted to get back to them. And then Cara's voice had come to him through the haze.

Jack was sure it was a trick of the place at first, but her voice kept coming through clearer, and he knew it well. She knew where they were now, she knew and she was going to find a way to get him and Rachel out of here. Or his mom would figure it out, or Logan would. Someone would. Staying put had worked, they had been found.

But as time slipped by again he worried that he had simply hallucinated Cara's voice, and that he was only hearing what he wanted to hear. Rachel hadn't heard her voice after all, but she admitted she hadn't even been aware of Jack talking. Jack knew she was slipping in and out of rational thought faster than he was. This was all so far outside of anything she had known in life, there was nothing she had experienced that had prepared her in the slightest for any of this.

When Jack heard Cara's voice again he nearly burst into tears, crying out to her in excitement.

"Cara! Cara, I hear you, I'm here," he called out, gazing at the smoke floating overhead. "Rachel, listen, do you hear her?" Rachel lifted her head and sat up on her knees. She turned around to follow Jack's gaze (not that there was anything to look at).

"Rachel, do you hear me?" Cara's voice echoed through the fog. Rachel gasped. A nervous giggle passing through her lips.

"I can, I hear a girl's voice," she said, desperation thinly hidden in her quivering voice.

"It's Cara, the girl I told you was speaking to me. She's going to find a way to get us out of here." He turned his attention back to the immaterial voice, wondering if he dared ask the question that was screaming inside. "Cara, have you figured out a way? Can you get us out of here?" There was hesitation. Jack was afraid she was gone, that he would never hear her again.

"We've figured out...something," Cara's voice spoke softly, breaking Jack's panic. "We're still looking for this pool, but we may have another way that the two of you can get out." Now both Jack and Rachel stood up, stretching themselves forward into the haze.

"Yes, please!" Rachel cried out. "You have to get us out of here."

"There are other points, like the pool," Cara's voice spoke carefully. "Places where the wall between our world and Hell are thin, and you should be able to find one of these points if you look for it, but..." Her voice trailed off, and again Jack feared that would be the last they heard from her, left for eternity to know that salvation was just out of their grasp.

"What? Cara please!" Jack screamed.

"You will have to go deeper," she said. "Deeper into Hell. It will probably be horribly painful. I don't want you to have to go through anymore, but..."

This time Jack finished her thought, "But it might be our only way out." It was as if he could feel her nod through the air.

"I'm sorry Jack. I'm sorry Rachel. No one should suffer like this. You could stay where you are, and hopefully we would get to you from our side eventually. We're worried though, that if we take too long, that you might...lose yourselves there." Jack thought of how he and Rachel had been living, swarms of maggots peeling out of their flesh as their bodies rotted in place. He looked at Rachel and the wild shifting of her eyes. They wouldn't last like this much longer.

"We need to take control of this," he said. Rachel looked back at him. She was afraid, but there was the same resolve on her face. Rachel nodded.

"I believe in you, Jack," Cara's voice said, fading now.

"Where do we go?" Rachel asked.

"Go deeper, that's all I know. Just go deeper. Jack..." but then her voice was gone, truly gone this time.

Jack and Rachel were left looking at each other, really looking at each other for the first time since they had fallen into this pit. Their arms hung limply by their sides, fear of being seen momentarily forgotten.

"So where do we go?" Rachel asked, looking around, trying to see through the smoke. Jack had no real answer, but he felt that if they just walked that eventually it would become clear.

"Let's go this way," he said arbitrarily choosing a direction, and beginning to walk. He took Rachel's hand, and she squeezed back tight, neither wanting to get separated. Walking was painful, as the edges of rocks cut into their feet. The pain would hold but the injuries wouldn't last, no injuries lasted. This was both a blessing and curse. They were immortal in this realm, unable to die, but they would feel every wound, and there were many. 

The maggots made Jack shiver and want to cry out more than the rest. The wounds, though they healed, somehow always ended up infested with maggots, which could be felt crawling around under their skin, until a fresh wound was opened up and they spilled out. Then the whole thing would start again. The hunger and thirst were worse than the constant cuts and scraps. The body seemed to become numb to those, but the desperate aching hunger and thirst never let up. It was a lasting burn throughout every inch of the body, with no relief possible, and not even sleep could give them a moment's peace from all this. They couldn't sleep. Full consciousness wasn't always there, but they never slept, and the exhaustion held.

Jack didn't know how long they walked hand-in-hand, and neither did Rachel. Maybe it was days or weeks. Maybe even months. Time stretched and compressed in new ways that they couldn't comprehend. Jack wished he had asked Cara how long they had been there, how much time had slipped away in the real world. Was it possible that years had gone by? Jack didn't think so, but it wouldn't have surprised him if that had been the case.

At some point as they walked, they noticed the ground dipping downward. They were on the right path, somehow. And that path continued to decline, more and more steeply the further they walked, until they reached a point where they could no longer walk, but had to crawl and climb, making their way down a cliff of that black jagged rock. The stones sliced easily into every piece of their bodies. At the beginning of their descent it was cuts they had become accustomed to. The soles of their feet split open, large gashes across their arms and legs, but as they climbed it grew worse. The stones themselves seemed to twist and lash out to take off pieces of their choosing. Rachel lost fingers and the nipple off her right breast. Jack lost an ear as he slipped down a ledge, his cheek was ripped open giving him a haunting grin, and most of his penis was torn off.

The path narrowed, and the vast hole they were climbing down took form through the smoke. They both cried out as bits were taken off and fell into the darkness at the bottom of this cliff they were climbing. Those injuries didn't heal like they had been. No, the missing pieces would wait for them at the bottom of this hole. Jack held onto Cara's voice, remembering that she had promised a way out through all of this pain. And he held on for Rachel, who kept moving through it all, even as the rocks stabbed through her hands, forcing her to pull them free in order to keep going. Jack looked down into the abyss and then called over to Rachel.

"Dis climb ish meant to take us apart, piesh by piesh," he said, doing his best to form words with one cheek flapping open. "We're not meant to reash the bottom; we're supposh to fall." He locked his gaze with her and tried to smile, only one side of his face functioning normally. "How bout we get it over with?" Rachel looked down as well, at the rocks that grew progressively sharper the further down you looked. She trembled, but with incredible strength nodded regardless. Jack admired her so much in that moment. He realized that without Rachel, he wouldn't stand a chance of getting through any of this.

He pushed himself from the wall and let himself fall back. There was a wonderful moment of falling where nothing touched him. He closed his eyes and for the first time in this aptly named place, he felt relief. Then his ankle snagged between two rocks and his foot was sliced free of his leg. His screams echoed around the narrowing cavern. He heard Rachel screaming just above him, she was following him down, for better or worse. The walls pressed in the longer he fell and the edges of his body scraped on all sides. Skin came loose, as well as other appendages. And then he felt his body surrounded by solid stone, entrails snagging and being left behind as he slipped deeper. His body was no longer whole, again splattered all over, as it had been when they'd first fallen into Hell.

And he was stuck, rocks pressing in on all sides, no light, only pain as pieces of his flesh continued to be ground through the earth. He wondered desperately if Cara had led them astray. If they were now doomed to this, an eternity of scraping through rock and bone and blood, no longer even human. Was this it? Or was there deeper to go? He wondered.