Content note: this work of original fiction includes depictions of hell and associated tortures, inspired by the Inferno.

“The most important thing you need to understand is what omniscience is,” the tree says in an urgent whisper. “He knows when every sparrow dies. He knows how many hairs are on anyone’s head. It’s knowledge. It’s not thinking.”

I would answer but I’m a little busy desperately trying to catch my breath as quietly as possible, curled up small behind the tree. If I did answer it’d be to ask how that can be more important than—hm, no, actually it’d be to ask how anything at all can be important to the damned.

“The reason that matters is that we might be able to outsmart him. He doesn’t think so—if he thought so, he wouldn’t let us try—but he might be wrong.”

I’ve caught my breath a bit and I dare to risk the quietest whisper I can manage. “Isn’t he omnipotent?”

“Yes,” says the tree, “but bound by—shit. Run.”

I run. The forest of the seventh circle of hell is a terrible place to run, all gnarled roots poking out of uneven ground, but I’m sure on my feet and I’m getting used to it. This time I make it three minutes before the hounds of hell catch me. (I count the time by remembering songs. I’ll probably never sing out loud again, of course—I’m too out of breath all the time—and I probably deserve it, but I have my imagination and I know how long Carol of the Bells is.)

I tell you about the songs because I don’t really want to tell you what happens next. Suffice it to say the hounds get bored when I stop screaming. While they go after someone else, I look for a better hiding place. There aren’t any good bushes to hide in, and anyway that doesn’t work (well, I haven’t tried it, but it didn’t work in Dante’s Inferno). I see a hellhound look up from someone else and turn toward me and I don’t even know which direction to run in.

So I don’t. I sit down, hands over my head. That’s not a clever gambit; I just don’t know what else to do. The hellhound, of course, has no trouble finding stationary, despondent prey.

I lie there, intermittently being played with by dogs, and I go through Carol of the Bells and Scarborough Fair and This Land Is Your Land and Love is Just A Four Letter Word and Sweet Sir Galahad and then I run out of songs besides the ones that I always used to turn to for comfort. I can’t help myself, or maybe that’s just what I tell myself. Maybe t...

Anonymous Lemur

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