Elliot Andeville is Going to Hell - Chapter 2

“And then he said it looked right at him! And it didn’t do a thing!”

“You’re kidding!” Harry exclaimed, scratching the bandage on his nose.

“That’s what I thought, but it’s true! The whole thing!” Elliot affirmed, cut off from saying any more by almost slipping on the icy sidewalk. He was rebalanced by Mercedes whacking him in the back of the head with a snowball that was more ice than snow.

“Don’t be stupid! You can’t just believe everything old people say!” she shouted from her fort, only the bobble on top of her hat visible. “My grandpa told me he went to the moon once, and I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen!”

Before Elliot could interject Mercedes unleashed another flurry of ice chunks that prompted him to dive behind a tree. Harry wasn’t so lucky, and grabbed at his chest after being struck in the shoulder.

“I’m hit! I’m hit!” he cried out dramatically, covering his face with the back of his hand before flopping over on to his back. Elliot scrambled over to him, shielding his head from Mercedes’ relentless onslaught.

“Mercedes, that’s cheating!” he called out as he crouched down behind Harry’s fort. “You can’t throw ice!”

“Try and stop me!”

Elliot groaned and turned back to Harry, who was sprawled out in the snow.

“Elliot… I’m not gonna make it. This is it, Elliot. This is the end,” he spoke grimly, grabbing Elliot’s scarf.

“Harry, she only hit you in the shoulder. You still have another one, you can still fight! That’s not a realistic way to die.”

“It’s too late… I can see the light… Elliot… you gotta listen to my last request.”

“You’re just gonna ask me to go inside and get you a snack again, and then you’re gonna do that three more times.”

“I was only gonna do it two more times.”

Elliot dumped an armful of snow on his face and scurried back to his own fort, ignoring Harry’s accusatory cries.

“You just left him to die,” Mercedes chided, shaking her head. “That’s messed up, Elliot. You don’t just abandon your comrades.”

“Yeah, Elliot. That’s cold! Get it? ‘Cause it’s cold out-”

“I was gonna avenge you, but I changed my mind.” Mercedes muttered.

“Wh- hey! You’re the one who hit me in the first place!”

“Are you guys knocking more of Harry’s teeth out? You’re gonna make him need dentures before he’s even ten, jeez.”

Harry shot up at the sound of Dorothy’s voice, scrambling over the side of his fort and sticking his tongue through the holes in his grin.

“That’s right! And that way I won’t be a braceface like you!” he teased, causing Dorothy to scowl.

“Elliot, your friends suck. And mom says you need to be home by 8:00,” she informed him bluntly.

Elliot pulled up his coat sleeve, checking the watch his dad gave him. It was only about noon, which surprised him; Dorothy was rarely awake by now on breaks, much less out and about. Must’ve gotten into another fight with Mom, he figured.

“Okay,” he nodded, deciding it would be best not to bring anything up. Dorothy walked off just as abruptly as she had appeared, heading in the direction opposite of home. The group was silent for a few moments before Harry nailed Mercedes in the face with a snowball.

“Teenagers are weird and I AM THE CHAMPION OF DESTRUCTION!”

---

“Aw, c’mon, Elliot. It’s barely even 6:00,” Mercedes said through sips of hot chocolate. “That’s, like, two more hours!”

“It still takes time to walk home, and it looks like the snow is starting to pick up… and you shouldn’t always wait until the last minute to do stuff, you know.”

Harry rolled his eyes, cramming a marshmallow into the fresh gap in his teeth. “You’re such a party pooper, Elliot. Hey, you guys think my parents will believe this is a tooth?”

“Probably not,” Elliot answered, putting his scarf back on. It was still damp, but he hoped once he got outside the snow would distract him from the sensation of all of his clothing sticking to his skin.

“I’m gonna try it anyway,” Harry smirked, ignoring Mercedes as she flicked a marshmallow at him.

“Well, whatever. See you on Monday. Don’t die out there,” Mercedes shrugged, looking somewhat disappointed. Elliot waved to the two, adjusted his glasses, and headed outside. He went to close the door behind him, but the wind beat him to it. He flinched at the cold and pulled his hat down over his ears, watching his boots disappear in the snow with each step. He stopped for a moment, wondering if it would be better to stay at Mercedes’ house until the storm ended even if that meant his parents would get mad at him for staying out too late. They’d probably actually understand him not wanting to walk half a mile home in what he thought might become a blizzard, but if they had already gotten mad at Dorothy earlier he didn’t want to take any chances.

“It’s not that far, anyway. Don’t be a baby, Elliot,” he told himself, continuing onward.

It took him about two blocks to regret his decision. He looked both ways to cross the road, and one step later he was in the air.

His hat cushioned the blow somewhat, but Elliot still found himself flickering in and out of consciousness. He managed to pick himself back up, but the pain in the back of his head had already swallowed up the way back home. He was suddenly conscious of the snowflakes pricking at his face and the wind burning his skin.

“Oh no,” slipped out with an exhale as he struggled to get his bearings. Every time he moved his head the world wobbled, leaving the neighborhood as a bunch of indistinct blobs splattered on a blank canvas. Heart pounding, he stumbled in a random direction, pulling his hood up over his head with shaking hands. He should’ve just stayed at Mercedes’ house, and now he didn’t even know where she lived. Now he was going to pass out in the snow and die of frostbite and no one would even be able to save him because he left early so by the time his parents realized he was late and went to look for him if they looked at all he would be long-

“No, no, don’t…” he muttered to himself, wringing his fingers. He picked at his watch, scratched his neck, and rubbed at his face, but he couldn’t find any sensation that would calm his breathing or slow his heartbeat. Every breath he took made him feel fainter, and the fainter he felt the more he panicked. Unable to stand with the world spinning around him so fast, he crawled across the street and caught his breath on the nearest doorstop. The fear of dying drowned out his fear of the unfamiliar, pulling out his hand to knock on the door. It opened at his touch, and without thinking he scrambled inside and leaned against the door to close it. He looked around the room, but the fuzziness of his vision and the fat snowflakes stuck to his glasses didn’t let him see much. From the lack of activity he assumed at least this room was empty and let himself breathe, lulled by the rhythmic pulsing in his skull.

Just as he was beginning to ease up, Elliot heard voices. He couldn’t determine anything about them other than the fact that they existed and that they weren’t here yet. Slowly realizing he had just broken into someone’s home – the home of someone unsavory who wouldn’t respond well to an intruder, certainly – he wiped off his glasses and stumbled for cover behind a couch. The sound of footsteps drawing nearer was too much to bear, so without checking to see if anyone had arrived yet he tumbled down a hallway and crashed into a room that was miraculously empty. Not nearly well enough to spare a thought on his fortune, Elliot collapsed into a closet, gingerly closed the door, and curled up into a ball. He felt weak and nauseous, not helped by his thoughts swimming every which way.

At the sound of the room’s door opening he sat up, pressing himself against the closet’s back wall. His vision tunneled around the closet’s doorknob as he listened to the floorboards outside creak. He tried to hold his breath, but his body refused to allow it. There was a moment of silence, and Elliot swore he could see the darkness slithering around him.

As soon as he saw the doorknob move, he covered his eyes out of an instinctive, juvenile hope that it would make him invisible. He winced at the light that flooded into the room and shrank further as someone approached him. Against his better judgment, Elliot moved a finger aside and peered through the smudges on his glasses. There was a figure standing before him so tall that it must have had to duck just to get through the doorway. He saw large horns, dark wings, long white hair that cascaded down its form and dissolved into a living pool of black – a demon, undoubtedly.

It definitely saw him. It looked right at him with a single glowing red eye. And then it just stood there- oh no. Oh no, it was coming closer. Oh no no no, that’s not how the story was supposed to go.

The throbbing in the back of his head dragged his eyes away and grabbed for the rest of him, escaping to somewhere safer.