The staircase was built out of salvaged boards, no two of which were the same; different lengths, different colors. There were fourteen steps exactly, but the topmost step was smaller than all the others and bright red. A last minute addition to avoid Unlucky 13 perhaps.

My nerves were on edge as we descended. Every little creaking step telegraphed our movements to anything lurking nearby.

At the bottom of the stairs we found a diseased and barren wasteland. The ground was black and filthy like the Athabasca oil sands of Canada. My throat and lungs ached. Noxious smoke filled the air and made breathing a chore.

I saw a hundred burning fires lighting up the distant mountains. That made me real tense. I’d watched “The Hills Have Eyes” once and the things down here would have put cannibal mutant rapists to shame.

Glancing backwards, I saw the staircase slowly disappearing like it’d never existed.

In front of us, our destination was uncomfortably close. Squatting less than two hundred yards away was a dilapidated motel modeled after every circa-1940s cheaper-than-shit roadside inn on “the wrong side of the tracks” but worse. The walls had been marred by fire. A flickering red neon sign stuttered “VACANCY” into the night. On the porch was a screen door creaking back and forth on its hinges as if begging for relief. Acid rain tinkled weakly against the corrugated tin roof.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Hotel California.” I said.

Inside, we found rusted pipes leaking raw sewage and rotting the stucco. Fungal blooms spread over paper-thin plywood with the texture of rotten leaves splintering at the softest touch. Nearly every window was boarded up over the remnants of razor-sharp glass.

We searched room to room, seeing some of the sickest things you’ve never imagined. Things that can’t be unseen. It took us almost three days to find our target. I think the New Kid must have puked twenty times during that stretch.

Sleep was damn-near impossible for a variety of reasons. The moth-eaten sheets were stained yellow, constantly and consistently damp with every body fluid imaginable.

Thanks to the AC units mounted in the walls, most of the rooms were freezing cold and when I say freezing cold I mean actual people covered in actual ice. Never thought I’d see someone with their own urine frozen in an icicle hanging from their crotch.

Some of the rooms were blazing hot, literally cooking the inhabitants alive.

“Mmm! Smells like down-home cooking!” Felix quipped as he caught a whiff of scorched human flesh.

The ice machine down the hall never actually worked until you were attempting to sleep at which point it spontaneously turned on. It wouldn’t do a damn thing when you wanted it to but it would happily and loudly make the sound of a thousand blenders grinding away at a fistful of pebbles as soon as you laid down.

The first night we were camping in one of the motel rooms when the old TV in the corner suddenly turned itself on, self-tuned those old rabbit ear antennas covered in foil, and scared the ever-loving crap out of us by blasting some repugnant program at maximum volume.

The New Kid unplugged the television from the wall, but it stayed on anyway, causing him to start pounding on it angrily.

“Kid, quit making such a damn racket.” Vasquez said.

“Okay, fine.” the New Kid huffed, throwing himself down on the bed. “So here’s a question.”

“Jerkstain, your entire life is one big fucking question.” Felix quipped.

“Where do those shows come from? Is it something the Hotel made to screw with us?”

“Actually, that is a good question.” I said, busily stripping, cleaning, and reassembling my rifle. “I’m fairly certain those shows are piped in from CRT.”

“CRT?”

“It’s another Domain in the Big Bad. Except instead of a motel imagine a sewer filled with television sets and bad wiring. All the TV channels are fucked-up versions of the worst shows ever made.”

“Yeah Dickcheese, if you survive this job maybe someday you’ll get to go there!” Felix said, holding out a flask.

The Kid ignored the jibe but accepted the flask and took a swig of whiskey.

“For example?”

“Okay, you’ve seen the show ‘Survivor?’ Now imagine it’s more like the Hunger Games except the contestants hunt and eat each other to survive.”

“Jesus…”

“Trust me Kid; you really don’t want to watch anything on that boob tube. Here’s a question for you, Kid. How’d you get into this line of work?”

“Well… I dropped out of high school and started getting into trouble, hanging out with a bad crowd. One night my gang broke into a moving van and the cops spotted us. So I ran and made it into the basement of an abandoned meat packing plant. Found a door leading to a hallway made of baby teeth. The cops following me got eaten by a monster made out of tumors and barbed wire. Bought me time to get back Topside. After that, it was only a matter of time before I found more Crashers. What about you guys?”

“Back in the day I was a long-haul trucker until I went into the wrong goddamn gas station. My partner never really came out again. I found that I’d lost the use of my legs when I dragged myself out of the Pit. I figure if I keep Crashing I’ll find a way to make them work permanently.”

“How about you?”

“Me? I’m in it for the money. Cold, hard cash. This ain’t no charity; I got bills to pay. When I do a job, I expect to get paid.” I said.

“Amen to that, brother.” Jackie said, tilting a bottle in my direction with a nod. “The bigger the paycheck the better.”

“How about you Vasquez? How’d you get into this line of work?”

“I’ve been doing this my whole life, man.” Vasquez replied.

“Say what now?”

“When I was a kid, I was a refugee. My dad brought me to the U.S. from Cuba on a raft made out of old plastic barrels he lashed together. I think I was about nine, maybe ten years old at the time.”

“You’re a Cuban?”

“Cuban-American to you, gringo. I’m a Hialeah boy, born and raised. Before ‘95, if a Cubano set foot on American soil they got the chance to apply for residency status a year later. Lucky for us, we made it ashore before we got picked up on Miami Beach. Dry-Feet, they called us.”

“Dad got a job working graveyard shift at a gas station and I started going to school. I always walked down there by myself to bring Dad a soda and we’d sit and chat for a while. One night I’m going down there right before bedtime and there’s all these police out front with that yellow crime scene tape strung up across the door. The cops say that the robbers put lit matches all over him before they killed him.” He takes a long swig from the bottle.

“So Mom couldn’t afford the rent without Dad, and after that we were sleeping rough. Couch-surfing, church pews, shelters, and sidewalks.”

“My God…” Kid said.

“God? God can’t help us, man. See, Satan led his army to storm the Gates of Heaven and drove God and the angels out. The demons smashed his palace of blue-moon marble into dust and Satan sits on the Throne of Heaven. That’s why our world is so fucked up.”

“So Dad’s spirit came to me. He was bloody and there were these tiny flames burning all over his body. He told me that demons found doors to our world. That’s why the gates keep opening, man.”

“Dad told me that he was joining God’s secret army of angels to take back Heaven. He told me that I needed to learn to fight. To stay strong and smart, so I could count on myself, no one else. To fight back against evil. So I went looking for the gates. You look hard enough and long enough, eventually you find something. And I did.”

“Man… is it worth it?” the Kid asked.

“That’s not the right question.” I said.

“Huh?”

“The real question is do you censor yourself or not?”

“What do you mean?”

“Option A: you say the things you ought to, and shut your mouth on what you actually think. You wear the clothes you’re told to wear, go where they say to go when you’re told to go there, do the things they tell you to do. In return, you get the job, the girl, the two-point-five kids, a white picket fence, and a dog. You get to eat three square meals a day, get laid occasionally, and probably enough money to get you everything you need, some of what you want, and a bed to sleep in with a roof over your head. You’re a slave but you’re comfortable.”

“Option B: you get nothing. You get fuck-all and you’ll like it because you’re free. Go where you want when you want and do what you want to do when you want to do it. Comfort means fuck-all because you’ll probably get arrested, get your head kicked in, or both.”

“So my point is do whatever you want to do because I really don’t give a shit, Kid.”

We sat there silently for the rest of the night. There was really nothing more to say.

It was the second night when the New Kid decided that he actually did want to watch something on TV. Scrambled Porn Sally was pole dancing and the fuzzy static bar was right where you didn’t want it to be.

We found the Kid staring and slack-jawed, his nose touching the flickering television screen. His eyes were watering and blood trickled from one nostril.

I shook him out of it and he mumbled a quiet “thank you.” Every so often I’d catch him stealing glances at the television when he thought I wasn’t looking.

If you were still so exhausted that none of that kept you awake, the phone rang and room service cheerfully provided a complimentary wake-up call just as you were nodding off.

Then there were the cock-roaches. Behind one door we found one of the Lost covered in chittering insects. Carnivorous, angry little bastards about three inches long and sporting chitinous dicks.

The moment it was dark the cock-roaches came scuttling out to bite a hole in your skin, pump their nasty bug-dongs in the bleeding orifice, and lay eggs in your flesh. After a few minutes, the cock-roaches deposited a load of eggs and goop into the poor bastard which then burst open and made a new swarm.

Hiding in every nook and cranny, they skittered into hiding beneath the bed and in the closet when illuminated by a flashlight mounted on the barrel of an AR-15.

The New Kid squashed a couple roaches beneath his boot and the rubber sole began to sizzle. “Damn it! That burns like battery acid!” he shouted.

“Then don’t do that.” I calmly said.

On Day Three we found a Damned that swore up and down he’d seen our target. We’d bribed him with a little baggie of black tar heroin that offered a brief respite from his torment, so we felt confident the intel was solid.

We were moving through the darkened hotel hallways, guns at the ready. The Kid was on point with Vasquez watching his back. Felix and Jackie were in the middle while I was behind the squad.

“This scary-ass motel reminds me of that movie ‘Identity’ with John Cusack. You ever see that shit?”

“Is that the one where Cusack delivers a bag to a creepy motel out in the middle of nowhere?”

“Nah, man. That’s ‘The Bagman’ but it did have a creepy motel.” he said.

“Okay, so is Identity the one where Cusack has to stay in a haunted hotel room?” Jackie asked.

“No goddammit, that’s ‘1408.’ Identity is the one where there’s like a dozen people stranded at this motel in the middle of nowhere and they start getting killed one by one.”

“Okay, first of all: why does John Cusack stay in so many scary motels?”

“Typecasting?”

“And secondly, why are we talking about this while we’re standing in the scariest motel ever?”

“Third question.” I interrupted. “Do you two ever shut up?”

We entered Room 303 and finding it completely thrashed, lingered in the doorway. Mattress slashed, threadbare blankets ripped, and every stick of furniture broken. The stench in the room was overpowering. The source was easy to spot; a cadaver lay rotting amid scattered toys on the floor.

“Rock and roll.” Felix said glibly.

We slowly searched the room.

“Dude check this out!” Felix excitedly waved his latest find: a teddy bear stitched together with human skin, complete with male genitals and real eyeballs too. Just looking at it gave me the creeps.

Giggling, Felix waved the bear inches from the Kid’s face. “Come here and let me give you a big old kiss!”

“Ugh, it’s blinking at me.” Jackie said.

“You’re coming home with me little buddy!” He stuffed the doll into his backpack.

We heard a scraping sound inside a large armoire in the corner with the doors shut. Everyone went silent immediately. Vasquez pointed his gun at it.

“Come on out of there slowly, and you won’t get shot.”

There was no noise or movement of any kind in response. Felix sighed before moving very slowly towards the armoire. He pulled the door open quickly, surprising the woman crouched inside. She was covered head-to-toe with bleeding holes from the cock-roaches.

“Climb out of there slowly, with your hands up.” Vasquez said. The woman seemed to comply with Vasquez’s order, her palms open and weaponless.

The Kid hesitated for just an instant when she sprang at him. The woman grabbed his hand, pointing the gun away from herself and he fired out of reflex, the blast ringing in our ears. He tripped over the corpse on the floor, falling backwards. His head hit the floorboards, dazing him momentarily.

She straddled him, clawing his face and howling like a banshee until Jackie stepped forward and bashed the other woman upside the head with the butt of her rifle. The woman collapsed to the floor, clutching her bleeding skull.

“Oh God, don’t kill me, don’t kill me!” she sobbed as she cowered and covered her head with both arms.

“Quiet!”

The woman shut her mouth instantly, but her body visibly trembled and her eyes welled up. Occasionally, tears ran down her face, leaving twin trails on her filthy cheeks.

“Damn guys, isn’t that a little harsh? I mean, look at her. She’s scared and she’s hurt!” said the New Kid.

“Look Kid, I explained this before but let me make it perfectly clear. She isn’t a person deserving of respect and dignity. She’s a very bad person who did very bad things and ended up in a very bad place.” I said.

“Yeah, but-“

“Everyone, and I mean everyone, in the Down Below deserves to be here. No one wakes up down here for being an atheist, or being gay, or for smoking weed when you were sixteen.” I continued.

“Every single person in the Bad Place committed at least one genuine act of pure, unmitigated evil.” I counted off a list on each finger. “Rape, murder, torture. Shoot, I’ve even been on a job to collect a Wall Street banker who stole people’s retirement accounts then blew it on hookers and cocaine.”

“The point is that they did something that caused pain and suffering to others and whatever they did was enough to earn a ticket Way Down to Hadestown.” I pointed to the woman crouched and shaking on the floor. “That includes Little Miss Sunshine here.”

“You try anything like that again, and I’ll shoot your hands off. You run, I shoot your feet. Am I making myself clear?” Jackie said to our target.

“Yes.”

“Is your name Laura?”

“Yes… how…?”

Felix gripped the woman roughly by her chin and held her face up. Vasquez pulled out the centerfold and looked back and forth from one to the other.

“That’s a positive ID on the primary target.” Vasquez said.

“Great, can we get the Hell out of here now?” said the New Kid.

“Goddammit Fucktard, we told you not to say the H-Word!” Felix yelled angrily. He grabbed the Kid by the straps of his flak jacket and shoved him back against the wall.

The New Kid stammered out an apology, but we all knew the damage had already been done. By all rights, we could have abandoned him right then and there. We could have left him to die, but for the time being, we still needed another pair of hands to finish the job.

“We need to get out. Now. We have definitely overstayed our welcome. Bag her up.” I said.

Felix and Jackie grabbed the target by the arms, holding them together and Vasquez locked handcuffs to her wrists. The Kid shoved a black bag over the target’s head despite her protests.

Prize in hand, we made our way out of the motel room just as fast as we could. The floorplan had shifted around, closing hallways behind us and most of the time it felt like we were going in circles.

It took another three days to finally find our way out of the motel and make it across the mountain pass. No matter how long we walked it was always late afternoon and a red sun was constantly shimmering faintly across the plain, casting mile-long shadows from the scrubby brush.

Forward motion was slow and steady; every step felt like weights were attached to our feet. Even breathing felt like work. Plumes of smoke and dust rose with every step as we trudged our way down the blighted hillside.

Scattered about were blackened stumps with drifts of wind-blown ash accumulated against them. Jackie accidentally kicked over one of the ash piles, scattering charred twigs and stones. Upon further examination, we realized that the debris we’d thought to be twigs were actually scorched bones.