A Bizarre Journey ep 32: Warm Blooded Business

I thought that my landing into hell would be easy.

Instead, the world dropped out from under my feet.

Black sand met my face hard enough to split my lip. The air that rushed into my lungs tasted like wet iron and old graves. For a second I just lay there, cheek pressed into grit that felt too cold for any living place, trying to remember how to breathe without making noise.

When I finally raised my head, the Underworld looked back.

There was no sky. Only a low, bruised ceiling of cloud that never moved.

The light came from nowhere and painted everything the color of dried blood. Sound died strangely here — my own heartbeat felt muffled, as if the dark itself was listening.

Distant shapes that might have been trees stood like burnt bones.

Everything was stiff, yet nothing was actually asleep.

And the first thing that moved didn’t even belong here.

Muscle rippled under dull scales. Its head lifted, tongue tasting the air—then it came for me with the clean, unbothered speed of something that had already killed once today and saw no reason to stop.

The snake—the same one that had bitten Quynh under the wedding music—was slipped free the instant I hit the ground.

I scrambled backward on hands and heels, lyre scraping across the black sand.

“Okay. Okay, listen. We both had a really long day. You bit the only person I actually needed alive, I used you as a plectrum and dragged you into the afterlife, nobody’s happy. And I’m willing to be reasonable. You stop trying to kill me, I stop holding the world’s worst grudge. Deal?”

It struck.

My elbow clipped a ridge of stone and jerked me sideways; fangs sliced empty air an inch from my throat. Pain flared up my arm.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Classic toxic-ex energy.”

It lunged again. I rolled the way I’d practiced from a thousand action movies, sand grinding into my palms, barely clearing the strike.

I tried to stand. My foot caught the wedding cloak. I went down hard, the fabric tearing with a loud rrippp.

Before I could even swear about the new bruise forming on my ass, the snake was already coming.

Panic made me clumsy and fast. I snatched a strip of the torn cloak, shoved the lyre up like a shield, and when the next lunge came I somehow looped the cloth around its muzzle and twisted.

It thrashed—heavy, furious, coils slamming my legs hard enough to bruise. I held on, teeth clenched, until the knot locked.

We stayed like that a long moment: me sitting in the black sand, chest heaving, arms shaking, the bound serpent writhing at the end of a scrap of ceremonial fabric. Its eyes were pure, patient hate.

I leaned down until we were almost nose to nose.

“Look at you now. All quiet. Where was this energy when you were ruining my wedding, you little bastard? You had one job—stay in the grass and not murder the bride. But no. You had to make it personal.”

I gave the knotted cloth a small, vindictive tug.

“Congratulations. You’re coming with me. I don’t know why. Maybe you’ll be useful. Maybe I just want you to suffer the group project from hell with me. Either way—smile. We’re bonded.”

I gave it another tug, straightened up, and started walking like a man who had just solved the entire afterlife with pure spite and a scrap of wedding fabric.

Three steps later I stopped dead.

Black sand stretched in every direction. No signs. No paths. No helpful glowing arrows. Just endless, judgmental emptiness and the soft, mocking weight of a bound snake in my hand.

I stared into the middle distance.

“…Okay. I’m in hell,” I said out loud. “Now what?”

The Underworld did not answer. It simply kept breathing around me—slow, heavy, and completely uninterested in my schedule.

I closed my eyes and forced the panic into something useful. Names. I needed names.

Two faces surfaced instead.

My brother’s permanent scowl whenever he complained about paperwork or the ceiling fan being too loud. And the high-school crush who had somehow become the final remaining drop of his common sense.

Loc and Tram.

Or, more accurately: Hades and Persephone. The ones who ran the place. The ones who decided who stayed and who left.

Authorities.

If you needed someone back, you didn’t wander around hoping the cosmic system felt generous. You went to management and made a case.

“All right,” I told the snake. “Management. We find management.”

I could have sworn it rolled its yellow eyes.

I had no map. No path. No useful knowledge beyond two names and the absolute refusal to leave without Quynh. So I did what any university student with zero preparation and far too much commitment would do.

I squared my shoulders, lifted the lyre like a battle standard, and declared to the empty landscape and my extremely unimpressed hostage:

“Operation Save Eurydice is a go.”

Then I picked a direction at random and walked.

The first stretch of black sand gave way to a field of pale, brittle flowers that crumbled the second I touched them.

I grabbed a handful of petals, whispered “left or right, you cowards,” and scattered them like the world’s least reliable divination method. They blew in three different directions and then simply vanished mid-air.

Helpful. Truly the administrative support I expected from hell.

I tried again. Closed my eyes, spun in a circle until the world tilted and my dignity left the chat, and walked whatever way I was facing when I stopped. That path led me straight into a low depression in the ground. The sand gave way. I dropped into a shallow pit lined with thin, upward-curving stone spines sharp enough to punch through a sandal.

Only a last-second twist and the lyre saved me from becoming a human kebab. One spine still tore a clean line across my calf. The pain was bright and immediate. Blood looked almost black in the dead light.

I crawled out cursing and sat on the edge of the pit with my forehead against my knees. The snake shifted in its binding, radiating pure, unfiltered smugness.

“Yeah, laugh it up,” I muttered. “You’re still on the group project, venomous little intern.”

I stood again, limping now, and chose the opposite direction out of pure spite. The landscape stayed hostile and identical—burnt-bone trees, ridges that led nowhere, air that tasted like metal and unpaid student loans.

The most scary fact was probably that the Underworld did not need monsters to kill me. It only needed me to keep guessing like an undergrad who forgot to check the syllabus.

I kept walking anyway, snake in one hand, lyre in the other, repeating the only plan I had like a prayer, a threat, and a mission briefing all at once:

Find Hades. Find Persephone. Get her back.

Operation Save Eurydice was still, somehow, a go.

~~~•••~~~

The plain stretched out in every direction without the decency of a horizon line. Pale ashen grass crunched under my sandals like something that had been dead long enough to forget it was ever alive.

The light stayed the same bruised red no matter how far I went. No wind. No birds. No change. Just the slow, stubborn fact of my own footsteps and the dull throb in my calf where the stone spine had cut me.

I had no idea if I was getting closer to anything. I only knew that stopping would mean Quynh was still further away than I could reach, and that version of the future was unacceptable.

So I talked to the snake.

“Listen, Wedding Crasher,” I said, adjusting my grip on the knotted cloth that kept its mouth shut. “I’m going to need you to contribute more than silent judgment. You’re on the team now. Team Get-Her-Back. Membership benefits include free travel through hell and my ongoing commentary.”

The snake thrashed once, hard enough to slap against my bruised leg. I took it as a response.

“See? Communication. We’re already better at this than half the couples I used to advise.”

I kept walking. The lyre bumped against my side with every step. The wound on my calf pulled and released, pulled and released. I narrated the scenery like a tour guide who had given up on tips.

“On your left, more existential dread. On your right, a slightly different shade of nothing. Straight ahead, the vague corporate promise of speaking to management. Ten out of ten for commitment to the bit, zero out of ten for signage. Do you people even have a visitor center?”

The jokes were deliberate. If I let the silence sit too long, the reality of where I was and why I was here started pressing against the edges of my thoughts. Jokes kept it at a workable distance. The same way I used to fill late-night voice notes with too much energy so the people on the other end wouldn’t notice I was scared for them.

I gave the snake a new name every few minutes.

“You’re Fang. No. You’re Bad Decision. No — you’re Consequences. Capital C. You look like a Consequences.”

Another thrash.

“Don’t get attitude with me. You’re the one who turned a wedding into a group project from hell. I’m just the idiot who followed the client into the afterlife.”

The plain did not care. It kept being endless. My throat was dry. The blood on my leg had started to stick the makeshift bandage to the wound. I limped more than I walked now, but I did not stop. Every time the urge to sit down and wait for something to make sense tried to rise, I pushed it back with the same sentence:

She is still down here.

I am going to get her.

I shifted the snake to my other hand when my fingers started cramping. It immediately tried to coil toward my wrist. I clicked my tongue the way I used to at particularly stubborn clients.

“We talked about boundaries. You’re on thin ice, Consequences. One more murder attempt and I’m leaving you at the next metaphorical rest stop.”

The Underworld swallowed the words without echo. I kept talking anyway. The alternative was listening to the quiet, and the quiet had too many teeth. As long as I was moving and the snake was forced to listen to my terrible commentary, the loneliness stayed one step behind me instead of wrapping around my throat.

I walked.

The red light never changed. The grass kept crunching. Somewhere far ahead — or maybe nowhere at all — Hades and Persephone were running the place that currently held the only person I refused to lose.

I tightened my grip on the lyre and the bound snake, and I kept going.

A sound cut through the muffling dark.

Voices. Casual. Overlapping. The ordinary rhythm of people talking about nothing important.

I stopped so fast the snake swung forward and smacked against my already bruised leg. Pure reptilian outrage radiated up my arm. I didn’t care.

People.

Information.

Direction.

I limped toward the noise as fast as the gash on my calf allowed. The sudden speed turned the bound snake into a furious pendulum, repeatedly banging against my leg hard enough to make my eyes water. I muttered a steady stream of apologies it clearly did not accept and did not slow down.

The voices led me into a shallow hollow where the ashen grass had been flattened into a rough circle. A group of figures sat together, gesturing, laughing under their breath, passing something between them. I stepped into the open with the last of my energy and the first real hope I had felt since the courtyard.

“Hey—sorry—can any of you tell me how to get to—”

Then the light hit them wrong.

Their edges were too soft. Their bodies let the red glow pass through in places that should have been solid. Transparent.

I screamed.

It was not a heroic sound. It was the short, high, completely undignified noise of a university student who had just confirmed that ghosts were real and sitting in a circle like they were on a smoke break.

One second later I was already talking over my own terror.

“Right. Ghosts. Of course. Underworld. My bad. Completely normal. Hi.”

I switched into full charm mode so hard it was almost a violence. I walked straight into the circle, smiling like I had known every single one of them since first year.

“There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere. You—” I pointed at a tall shade with a permanently tired expression, “—still owe me that favor from the other side. And you—” I turned to a woman whose form kept flickering at the edges, “—you never texted me back about the group project. Rude.”

They stared.

I kept going, clapping a translucent shoulder that felt like cold mist under my palm, laughing too loudly at nothing. The aggression of my friendliness seemed to short-circuit whatever hostility they might have reached for. One of them actually scooted over to make space.

They mistook me for a newly arrived shade who had not finished fading yet.

A thin figure offered me a cigarette rolled from pale ash leaves. The smoke that rose from it had no smell and no heat. I took it, held it between two fingers, and did not inhale.

“So,” I said, settling into the circle like I belonged there, “what are we talking about? Fill me in. I hate missing gossip.”

That opened the floodgates.

They were discussing a big-deal ghost named Kyrios the Unrelenting — a name I recognized with a jolt from one of Quynh’s notebook rants in the chaotic overnight weeks before.

She had invented him as a former warlord so feared that even the other dead gave him a wide berth. According to the current circle, Kyrios had recently beaten another shade so savagely that the victim’s voice never returned.

The poor soul still tried to mouth words. The group found this hilarious.

They mocked the silent way his jaw moved. They laughed about how he still showed up to places as if anyone wanted to hear him. The casual cruelty sat wrong in my chest. Watching the dead treat suffering like sport scraped against something raw.

I still smiled. I still nodded. I needed them more than I needed to correct their morals.

I tried to steer.

“Speaking of powerful people who run things—”

“Kyrios doesn’t run anything,” one of them cut in. “He just hits people until they stop talking. Different skill set.”

I tried again.

“That kind of reputation must get you close to the palace, though, right? Hades’ place?”

A woman waved a translucent hand. “Hades doesn’t do walk-ins. The palace moves when it’s bored. One time I swear it relocated just to avoid a shade who wouldn’t stop singing.”

“Random question,” I said, still smiling, still holding the useless ash cigarette. “Purely academic. If someone needed to file a formal complaint with management—”

“Management is allergic to complaints,” another shade said. “Last guy who tried got turned into a permanent echo. You can still hear him if you stand in the wrong valley. Very annoying.”

Every attempt slid off them like water. They kept returning to Kyrios, to the voiceless victim, to the small mean entertainments of the already-damned. I laughed when they laughed. I kept the charm locked in place even while something in my stomach turned.

Then the older shade across from me went still.

His gaze dropped to my calf.

The dark blood had soaked through the makeshift bandage again and was seeping into the ashen grass in a small, undeniable stain. He leaned closer. The rest of the circle followed his eyes. The casual atmosphere thinned.

He looked back up at my face with new understanding.

“You’re still warm.”

The ash-leaf cigarette hung forgotten between my fingers. The bound snake shifted once against my leg. For the first time since I entered the hollow, the shades were no longer treating me like one of them.

They were looking at a living man who should not be here.

The circle tightened.

Not dramatically — just enough that the cold mist of their bodies made the air harder to breathe. The older shade who had noticed my blood kept his eyes on the dark stain seeping into the grass. Someone else murmured something I didn’t catch. The ash-leaf cigarette finally crumbled between my fingers.

I raised both hands, snake and lyre still in them, and did what I always did when a room turned against me.

I talked.

“Okay. Let’s reset. I’m not here to cause problems. I just need to speak with Hades and Persephone. Management. The people in charge. Simple request. Point me the right way and I’ll be out of your afterlife before you finish that cigarette.”

They laughed.

It was not kind laughter. One of them repeated “management” in a mocking falsetto. Another asked if I also wanted an appointment with the Fates and a complimentary tour of Tartarus. The sound of dead people finding me ridiculous scraped against the last of my patience.

I dropped the charm for one quiet second.

“I’m trying to get someone back,” I said. The words came out lower than I planned. “That’s all. Someone who shouldn’t be here yet.”

The laughter thinned, but not in a helpful way.

The most creative shade in the group — a thin man whose form kept flickering like a bad signal — leaned forward. His eyes moved from the bound snake, to the lyre, to the blood, then back to my face. I watched the exact moment he connected completely the wrong dots.

“Oh,” he said, almost delighted. “You’re not lost. You’re collecting information. Snake as witness, lyre for the song you’ll sing when you deliver the report, questions about Kyrios so you know where to point the living authorities. You’re a snitch. A warm-blooded little messenger trying to sell Kyrios out to the throne.”

The circle’s mood shifted from mockery to something sharper. A snitch was worse than a lost living man. A snitch was useful to the wrong people.

I panicked in the most Quan way possible.

“Whoa—no. Completely wrong genre. I’m Orpheus. Orpheus the Legendary Musician. Famous. Beloved. Completely non-threatening. Here, I’ll prove it.”

I lifted the lyre, put on the same confident face I used when I had no idea what I was doing, and played.

The sound that came out was an atrocity.

The strings, still faintly sticky from earlier chaos, produced a noise like a dying appliance having an argument with a wet cat. The note warped, cracked, and then somehow got worse. One shade actually recoiled. Another covered what remained of their ears. The snake thrashed in pure shared offense.

The musical catastrophe did not calm them. It convinced them I was either dangerous, cursed, or both.

Someone started to rise.

I had one move left.

“Wait.” My voice came out raw. “I’ll make a deal. Help me reach the palace and I will carry one message for any of you to the upper world when I leave. One true message. No edits. No charge. You pick the words, I deliver them to the living. That’s the offer.”

The hollow went quiet except for the faint, ugly echo of the lyre’s last broken note.

The older shade studied me for a long moment. The creative one still looked suspicious, but the promise of a living voice that could cross the boundary was rare enough to matter. Finally the older shade gave a small, reluctant nod.

“One message,” he said. “And you keep walking. If Kyrios hears a living man is asking about him, we were never here.”

I exhaled.

The snake settled slightly against my leg, as if even it understood the negotiation had closed. I still had no clear map, but I had a guide and a debt. In the Underworld those two things were almost the same.

I tightened my grip on the lyre and the bound serpent, and waited for them to show me the next direction.