Hell on a Stick Pt. 4: Fine Dining

 
So anyhow, I'm hungry. I walked miles earlier, probably. I keep my wallet on me and go out into the hall, though I'm not sure what currency they use in hell. Money for the town though, food is free at the motel restaurant. I don't know why Minerva calls it a motel, the place is clearly a full scale hotel. Maybe she liked 'm' over 'h'.
The hallways is exactly like it was earlier, though for the first time I see other room doors lining the hall. The numbers on each door are randomized, seemingly. The ones near me away from the stairs read 9876 and 1888. I peer down the hall and see no end to it, and I turn towards the stairs.
The lobby is nicely lit, and the chandelier bulbs have changed colors since when I was here earlier. They're a display of orange and purple now, as opposed to the red and white from earlier. I guess Minerva likes the lobby color-changing. The restaurant doors are open on the left side of the lobby, under the arch of the stairs. "Min & Erro's Classy Cafe" the flowery cursive writing reads, painted in shimmering paint on the wall next to the door.
It's an ok name, I guess.
I go in, and there are numerous small tables, most of which are 2 seaters, arranged throughout the room. A large crow, 6 feet tall, with very flashy rubies lining her neck, croons on a small stage in the corner of the cafe:
"And the sweet talkin' merchant pulled me in to his ear, made me a product to be sold to his dears, I flew away in hindsight but in my mind I asked for gold, and there's no other bird quite like you is what I was told, father don't be harsh with me I was only 22, but really I don't care too much as to what you want me to do..."
I seat myself, as there was no 'please wait to be seated' sign as you typically get at other restaurants. I see Erro cooking in the open kitchen unit located in a recessed area in the back of the room. Minerva is chatting with another guest at a table. I hear footsteps.
"Would you care to look at the menu? Our shipment of fine fish from the Fariond Sea just came in and you may be interested, if you don't really like fish, that is."
A headless waiter hands me a menu. He is short, and not very imposing, though his presence is a little startling.
"Fish, a hit or miss with me, and it's more miss than hit. Let me take a look. Oh---before you go, let me see if I can figure this one out."
"Figure what out?"
"Your punishment. It's pretty easy I think. Ok. The fates saw that you were too tall in real life and wanted you to be a head shorter than everyone else when you got here. Did I get that right?"
I can feel his frustrated blushing, a mild radiant heat, even though he has no head.
"Why yes you got it. How fun for you! Do you want a prize or something? Do you know how many times I've had people poke fun at me for this? Do you--
"HENRY! PLease make our guests comfortable, be a dear." Minerva calls from across the room, breaking out into a big, juicy, false smile.
He stiffens. "I'll be back in a few minutes to take your order." And he vanishes into the shadows on the floor, popping up at another table of a guest who's just seated themselves.
I flip through the menu, lots of odd dishes on the menu. Goat soup on a bed of cornmeal. I don't really like goat. Pickled cod and bell pepper salad? Ummm...no. Veal. Just straight veal. No. Quinoa and braised bittermelon in soy sauce? Maple syrup oatmeal with sausage bits in it. Right. Hot and sour soup with raw salmon chunks. You know what? Let's get that.
I realize I don't have my staff. What? Where did I last have it? Ok. I totally forgot about it when I met Minerva and kissed her........I had it before that, but not after. Did she take it? Did I drop it? Where did it go?
"Have you settled on something?" I am startled by Henry's reappearance.
"Ah--ok. Um. I'll have the hot and sour soup with salmon."
"Good good, and I'm sorry about the lack of drink choices. Minerva is a large advocate for Criozesas's water filtration system, so we only serve water from the Styx. Your order will be out in exactly 14 minutes. Thank you for your patronage."
Henry hands me a glass of Styx water with ice and a slice of lemon, and vanishes again. I look over to see Minerva hugging a guest and saying goodbye. As she leaves she passes me. I stop her.
"Minerva. Did you see my staff? It was grayish and had markings on it, I had it when I ca-
"No, I didn't see it. You didn't come in with any staff if I remember correctly. I'm sorry, I'll keep an eye out!" She flashes a smile and goes out into the lobby. I can tell she's lying. She knows something. Where is my staff? Did she take it? Maybe she had Erro take it from me while we were kissing.
The band finishes with a blare of a trumpet, and the crow-lady bows and walks offstage. The clock on the wall says it's 7pm, and that's a little later than I expected. But time is hard to tell around here, and I don't even know what time I arrived in hell at the start.
I notice a guest coming in from the lobby----Lonnie!
He's still in his black form fitting shirt and work jeans, and strides over to the bar. He doesn't notice me. I wait for my order, and I think about how it's probably gonna be perfectly fine, I have raw salmon all the time when I have sushi. It's just soup. I sip my water for the first time, and I keep it in my mouth, savoring the flavor. It's mildly sour (lemon), and there's a distinctive, smoky taste to it. Almost like cooked meat, but more smoke than meat. Perhaps it is the remnants of the boiled souls. Anyhow, it tastes surprisingly decent, and it's a fine beverage, if boring.
I notice a shirtless skeleton in a tweed two-piece approach Lonnie and lean into his ear, whispering. Lonnie gets tense and looks at the skeleton with a severe look, and then dismisses him. The skeleton sits at the bar next to Lonnie, and then Lonnie quickly looks over right at me and locks eyes for a second, then turns back to the bar and works on what looks like a martini. So he does know I'm here.
The restaurant doors swing open and Henry formulates right behind a wheeled meal cart, and starts dishing out food to other patrons. He slides a strange looking roasted whole bird over to a pair of brick automatons, and they immediately take their hands and I can see their forefingers are thin slats of stone and they start carving the turkey and then impaling large hunks of meat with their fingers and swallowing each piece without even chewing. Brick automatons eat turkey?
Henry gets to me.
"Spiced hot and sour soup with salmon chunks. Made with our very own Criobanero peppers and specialty organic chicken eggs, and the fresh fish I mentioned earlier. Would you like a refill on your water?"
"Sure. Thanks."
He fills my glass and then goes off to serve the other patrons.
The soup is served in a cubelike stone bowl and a largish stone spoon. Interesting spoon--markings engraved, swirls and a few stars, and I flip it over. I squint. There's a number on the back---6789. I guess Minerva has the whole place really well run, to the point where guests get their own silverware. Which means they make them on demand? Or maybe---honestly I don't know. It's just odd.
I try the soup. It's.....fine. It's moderately spicy, and the Criobanero pepper taste is very much like garlic, but if the garlic was kissing a burning skeleton. It's good! I like it. The salmon is raw and tastes dark, like a watery shadow. The soup's ok, overall.
I take another drink of Styx water when Lonnie starts coming over, a fresh martini in hand. I don't see his skeleton friend anywhere.
"Cayman! I see you're enjoying the finest dining this side of the Styx, how's the cuisine? To your likin?"
"It's....Fine, aren't I supposed to mildly dislike it or something? I think that's part of the terms of conditions, no?"
"You're served stuff you think you might not like, doesn't mean you're actually gonna dislike it or not, though."
He leans in.
"Yeah don't tell Minerva this, but I don't really see the point in making your guests jump through so many hoops just to get their innards stuffed."
"Mm. So, it seems like you've been here awhile. Why?"
"Why not? I'm a damn good kisser and Minerva thinks I'm cute, so she keeps me around. Free housing and food, what else do I gotta do? Pass the days in this town until I die."
"Die? Aren't you dead already?"
"Well yeah, but you gotta get reincarnated at some point, though you gotta stay down here equivalent to who knows how long exactly, but at some point, you spend enough time down here, after that point you die again? You get reincarnated up in the Overhead."
"So it's not defined and you don't see a point just yet in dying huh."
"What's the point indeed. No point at all. It's fun down here anyhow."
"You come over to talk about something? I saw you with that skeleton and you guys looked pretty stressed."
"Ah yea, I lose the stress really quick but you my friend, are in no danger at all, but you can be, and you will be, and you already expected that much coming here, but guess what!"
"What?"
"Your staff, well it's not yours, where'd you get it anyways?"
"I got it from this kid angel in purgatory, who sent me down here."
"Describe the kid."
"OK, they were tall, and had on a shimmery toga, I thought it was kinda tacky,
"Oh that's Banzie, wait. Banzie gave you that? They don't even know what that stick even does! Why did Banzie give that to you?"
"Uh. Um. I don't even know Banzie personally, they were just in charge of the waiting room in purgatory, and they sent me down here with it because, well, they said they whacked small demons with it when they got out of line or something? It didn't look like they cared much about it."
Lonnie exhales and looks frustrated, and sucks down his martini.
"God be damned. Banzie, the absolute idiot. They don't even know what the staff does. You know what it does? You know what it does??"
"N...No, I don't know what it does."
Lonnie looks at me severely and starts speaking without moving his mouth.
[Telepathy, Cayman. Nobody else can hear us, well, I hope not. That staff is one of the 4 keystaffs. There's one for each realm, and God made them to allow the connecting of one realm to the other, and the ways you join the realms differs based on what you're trying to do. To connect Purgatory and Hell it's pretty easy, you send the Purgatory keystaff down and insert it into the altar at Hade's castle, and then you can move between the two realms freely. Purgatory is a sort of middle area, and you have to move to Purgatory first before getting anywhere else. It goes like this. Nobody gets into Heaven but the Pures, the Angels, and then God. To connect Heaven to anywhere else requires the Heaven keystaff, and only an Angel or God can touch it. They bring it with them to other realms and then they can connect that realm to Heaven. The Heaven keystaff is impossible to steal because the moment the angel lets go of it the connection is severed and the Keystaff teleports right back to God's house. It's never been successfully stolen, although a couple thousand years ago an angel very nearly got away with handing it to Hades. That was Lucifer's little sister Sulia, and then she got banished down here forever as punishment. I guess evil runs in their family or somethin'. But Banzie, the buffoon. Where the hinx is their dad? Fred's in charge of Purgatory, and his kid's running the place?? This can be very bad, this can get very bad, and we gotta make sure it doesn't get bad, ok? So we have to locate and take back the Purgatory keystaff. Where was the last time you had it?]
[Right before I kissed Miner--wow! I get to do telepathy too! That's interesting. So I had it before I kissed Minerva, and then I realized I didn't have it when I sat down here to order my food, and I remembered that I didn't have it when I was putting my things down in my room, and, well, I'm here now.]
[Yeah she definitely got Erro to get it from you. Erro's tricky, because he doesn't mean any harm, but at the same time belongs to nobody, and he'll do anything for anyone if the reward is big enough. I've been here for 48 years and I don't know where his room is, and I don't know where to find him. So this is gonna be tough.]
I finish my soup.
"You want to come along? It looks like we're going on an adventure--"
"Oh you're asking me hHAAHA gosh. I know quite a bit more about this and I know my way around here. Of course I'm coming along. And yes, you're right, this is an adventure. An adventure! It's been a while, I've been bored down here for years. Most drama these days is just money disputes or he cheated with her or whatever. But whatever we do,
[we have to make sure Satan doesn't get his hands on the keystaff. That is paramount. Hades is a good ally to have, which is lucky for us that he hates Lucifer. I mean hates. They've been feuding for over 4 thousand years and I'm sick of it, honestly, but what can I do about it.]
[Lonnie what can Satan do with the keystaff? What's he want with it?]
[It would allow him access to Purgatory, and that would allow him access to the Overhead, and if he gets control over both of those realms, then it's over for God. And I mean over.]
[I thought God was all powerful.....?]
[He is? And isn't? It's complicated. Basically, if you control a majority of the realms, you become God, and God's previous form dies. As of right now God controls Heaven, the Universe, and Purgatory. So he's in control.]
[I'm a little confused. What's the Overhead?]
[Oh that's just us Hell dwellers' term for Earth. Which is part of the Universe. It's not a different realm, sorry for gettin' you confused there.]
“What’s our next step?”
“Mm, well, go get your things from your room, we’re headin’ out. I’m going to meet back with Merald and see what he’s found out in the meanwhile. I’ll wait for you in the lobby.”