This chapter is dedicated to the very talented @Doctreez. She's writing  a wonderfully weird fantasy story called 'Andhara - Whispers of Power' and an equally wonderfully sweet ChickLit story called "My Sharona' your ass!'. Both of them deserve a ton of reads. I'm talking 'top of the popular list' kind of reads. Please check them out when you can.   

"Scars are memory. Like sutures. They stitch the past to me."

― China Mieville, The Scar

That familiar feeling bubbled in my throat. I hoped for the best. I opened my mouth. I retched. Ugly, hazy strands of saliva dripped from my mouth as my stomach struggled to give up every last trace of what I'd eaten. I wondered, in a strange moment of lucidity, why I was not vomiting out the remains of that apple.

There was nothing to puke, but I couldn't stop. My eyes were glued shut. I struggled to breathe through every passing wave.

I collapsed.

"Oh Bravo." A voice said. A woman's voice. Soft and mellifluous and vile. "Well done. I'm so very proud of you."

I opened my eyes. I was back in the city with the horrible street-lights. I struggled back on to my feet and looked around for the source of the voice. It wasn't hard to find it.

A woman (wo-man. But eye am neither wo nor man) stood before me in a lace night dress of some kind. She had no head. In her left hand, she held the severed head of a cat, dripping with blood, it's open eyes oozing with puss. Flies hummed and buzzed around it. In her right hand, she held an open umbrella.

"Are you the Yakuza?" I asked her.

When she spoke, her voice came from the cat's mouth. It's rotting eyes centred on mine. "I am death, darling. I'm the reaper."

Neither of us said anything for a while, Death and I. It started to rain.

"Am I supposed to do something?" I asked her.

"You are supposed to die."

"Now?"

"What is 'now'? There is no 'now. Or, if you want to put it another way, there is only 'now'." Death said.

"So what do you want me to do?" I asked her.

"Whatever you need to do." She told me. "Then, die."

"Where am I?"

"You are on the dirt but not in it."

"Oh." I told it.

"Walk with me. It is raining, darling. And I have an umbrella."

I eyed the rotting cat-head suspiciously.

"Don't worry about my head. It can do nothing to you."

I stood under the umbrella and we walked together.

"Where do you want to go?" Death asked me.

"I want to find the mouthpiece."

"Good. The sooner we dispense with that bit of work, the sooner you die. Come. Let us find this mouthpiece."

They say the city is beautiful at night. This time, I had time to look at it properly. Buildings from a mess of different eras and architectural styles put together. Red, blue, violet and green all congealing together in the atmosphere.

The smell of death. Sweet, mellifluous and vile.

We walked for a long time together, Death and I. She said nothing, though at times she opened her mouth like as if she wanted to say something and then hastily closed it.

She stopped walking and turned around to look at another building. Ni signboard. No light from inside. No sound except for a steady, bass rumble.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Something that will surprise you, perhaps." Death told me. "Now, I must take my leave. Places to go, souls to collect. You know how it is."

I didn't know how it was, but I nodded anyway.

"We will meet soon. Before you die, I think." she told me. Then she walked. She turned and waved. I waved back. Then I walked into the building.

I was in a tiny, toilet-sized little room with a door. And a pretty young woman in a suit. A bouncer. I looked for something peculiar. A tail, a dog's head or something like that. Nothing.

"What do you want?" She asked me.

"I want to meet the mouthpiece."

"Alright. Password. I told you no when you told me to die."

"I rage but I do not cry." I told her. The last poem I read before I left the Wolf Hall.

Her face broke out into a sunny smile almost immediately. "Welcome. Welcome! I'm Violet! What's your name?"

"Priyanka Chopra." I told her.

"Ooh! Pretty name. Alright, come with me. Let's uh..." she searched her pockets and pulled out a key-card. She slid it into a little slot beside the door and it hissed open.

"I know right?" she said. "All high-tech and stuff. Well, come on. Don't be shy."

The door opened out to a steep stair-case lit only by a single blue bubble light above the door.

"Watch your step, treasure. It's dark here."

She held my hand (rough and callused hands she had this Violet this chitin on the back of the underworld) and we walked down the stairs. They seemed to go on forever.

"Shit, we had to build this like deep, really deep underground. I've only been down here once. My job is just to let the cats in when they show up with I.D, you know?"

I didn't reply.

"You're quiet, aren't you. If you're hungry or something, we can get you some food to eat from the first level. We have a lot of cat food, a lot of tuna and sardines and stuff."

"No, thank you." I said.

"Yeah, I hate the stuff myself. Cats really think Tuna's the bees knees. I'll never figure out why. So, how are you finding the in-between so far?"

"I...uh..."

"Oh, yeah." she said. "You haven't really seen much of the place, have you? Some of it's pretty but it's mostly just shite, you know?"

"Oh."

I finally saw some light. Red light.

"Welcome to level one." Violet told me. "Here's where the cats are."

The room was the size of a small auditorium and it was filled with cats of all kinds. They sat around round tables, eating and drinking, speaking with one-another. Most of them were talking quite animatedly, some on the verge of fighting.

"So many philosophies in one room, all of them just right pissed off. The fight-potential is stunning. Anyways, you'd best not disturb them right now, if you know what I mean."

The two of us walked straight past the room and to another door. Violet swiped her card through the slot and we walked through, this time into a plush little waiting room. Two sofas sat across each other with a coffee table in the middle.

"You can sit here for a bit. There's a coffee machine over there, if you need something to drink. They'll attend to you in a while, maybe." She waved. "I'll see you when you're finished then. Bye."

"Bye." I told her, and sat.

I waited.

An hour passed. I got up, stretched for a bit, made some coffee, drank a sip and threw the disgusting slurry away. I ate a croissant, which tasted a bit cold but alright other than that.

I waited some more. I walked around the room. I tried to touch the ceiling. I counted the polka dots on the curtains.

I slept.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I awoke.

"Miss. Hello, miss. Wake up."

I rubbed my eyes. A little boy stood in front of me, maybe four years old.

"Erm...Hello." I told him.

"Good morning, miss. I'm Karim. Do you need some coffee or something. Or if you want you can freshen up. There's a toilet over there."

"No, I'm alright."

"Good. That's good. Come on, then. The mouthpiece will see you now." H said. He didn't sound like a four year old. He sounded older than me.

"Now, miss." he said. "I need you to follow me very closely. Don't lose sight of me, alright? It's very easy for that to happen. I need you to always stay behind me. If you're comfortable with it, you might even hold my hand."

Karim stretched out his hand. I took it. We walked through the next door.

It looked like the dungeons of a medieval castle. Moss and ivy grew on the walls. Strange sounds ebbed from deep within. Chains clanked.

"Remember miss, right behind me. Whatever you hear. Right behind me."

We wove through a maze of walls, taking turns seemingly at random. I heard screams of pain (pain just pain? be honest with yourself eye) and perhaps pleasure. I saw Death's shadow flitting across the walls with her umbrella and cat's head.

I held tight to Karim's hand and I walked.

"What is this place?" I asked him.

"Jail Hall." he told me. "Are you frightened?"

"Yes." I told him.

He turned around and smiled at me. "Don't be. Nothing will harm you here. Except maybe yourself."

We stopped in front of a dead end. Karim kicked the wall. It disappeared.

"Welcome." he told me. "Welcome to the underworld."