A novel by Guy Uri
One HELL of an Adventure
MARCUS MORUS SYNDROME
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🚨 Warning! This page contains some spoilers from the novel ⚠️
“So, what DO you have here?” I asked, thinking how much I regretted not jumping out of the window.
Duce leaned forward in his chair and looked at me. “We have each other... if at all”
LENNY COHEN
The storyteller, main protagonist
“Our existence is what we make of it, and nowhere do we suffer more than in our own thoughts...” I was definitely suffering in my own thoughts. I thought about my parents, my brother, my sister, then tried to force myself to think about other times, distant vacations, one-off trips, hotel rooms, hostels, cabins and hammocks, Greek islands, and the wooden pier facing the turquoise waters of Atitlán... I closed my eyes again and dreamed of the sun's touch on my skin, sex in daylight, a cold beer and a basket of cherries, of diving into a pool in the blazing summer heat...
DUCE
Lenny’s mentor, former fascist
“Don't you get it? The whole structure is centralized. They can pay you whatever they want because there's no one else who'll give you a job. You figured out how many years you need to work to retire from here. And the routine—the routine is killing you; you understand? Hell is routine! Hell is living and hoping that each day passes as quickly as possible. They're killing us again, slowly, a little bit every day! And the problem is that many more days await us! Take a look at the calendar!” he said angrily, turning around and pointing at a calendar. “What about it?” “It's full of days!” Duce burst out, knocking some papers off the table. “This whole rotten thing is just full of days!!!” “What did you want it to be full of? Hours?” He calmed down and leaned back. “Minutes” “Minutes?” “They pass faster than hours.”
MR. SEVEN
Supreme manager, Hell
“You seem like a lost man to me, Cohen. Would you like to stop feeling lost?” “I'm too lost to give up now,” I said. “Would you like to find your way back home, Cohen?” “Home as a metaphor?” “All of life is a metaphor.” “I'd like to go home, not as a metaphor,” I said. “The truth is, I filed an appeal. I hope they'll consider the circumstances.” “You're asking yourself how something like this happens and why it happened to you specifically.” “All the time.” “Mistakes happen, Cohen. Surely you can accept that. We're all human, we all make mistakes.” “Is that what we are?” I asked, “Human?” Mr. Seven smiled. “Existence is a flexible thing.” I sighed. “Do I really exist?” “Do you feel like you exist, Cohen?” “I suppose so.” “Then I suppose you do exist.”
STANLEY
Caretaker of corridor #4
“You have a lot of negative energies for someone your age,” Stanley observed. “You too now with the energies?” I got annoyed. “How could I not? They killed me for no reason, you know?” “What do you mean?” “I wasn't supposed to die. Mistaken identity. It doesn't matter, it's a long story. I filed an appeal.” “I wish you the best of luck, boy!” he said. “But you know, I have a feeling you're carrying these energies from your previous world. And besides, you would have ended up here eventually anyway. You need to come to terms with that.” “Easy for you to say. You died in your bed at the age of 100.” “93,” he corrected. “What's the difference?” “Seven years,” Stanley replied.
PROFESSOR WATSON
A specialist in interworld transitions
“You have to understand”, I muttered. “I must see her. My girlfriend.” “I do understand. But you also must understand—you're not the first person to die. You're not the first person to be in love. You're not the first to lose something. You're not the first to be left with the taste of missed opportunities. You're not the first to feel longing.” “Then send yourself back too,” I suggested angrily. “You’ve got the technology.” “I passed away in 1919,” Watson replied calmly. “I've been dead for many years, even in my alternate reality.” “How old were you? Where did you live?” “51. I spent most of my life in Philadelphia.” We were silent for a few moments. “Were you also an expert on transitions between parallel universes there?” I asked. “Of course not. Death opened new routes for me.”
DOCTOR KAUFMAN
Psychiatrist & Death cases investigator
The doctor smiled. “I see you like sex.” “Guilty as charged.” “No need to feel guilty,” said Kaufman. “It's no crime.” “Glad to hear.” “What does sex make you feel?” She sat there with her white coat, and I was running in my head scenes from the “Milf shrinks in clinic” category. “Alive,” I said and looked into her almond-hazel eyes. “Sex makes me feel more alive than anything else.” “The intimacy,” said Kaufman. “The sense of closeness.” “Yes, those too.” “Have you slept with many women?” she asked. “Not enough.” “How many is enough?” “More than a hundred,” I said. “At least.” “That's not a small number.” “Yes, that's essentially what I said.”
KIKI
A nurse, former bowling champ
She already knew that I wanted her, for much more than just one lousy bowling game, and I felt that she was also interested, or at least thought the matter was worth exploring. I understood this definitively when she started asking questions about astrology. “Lenny—what's your sign?” she asked. “Scorpio.” “Ahhhh,” she nodded, recoiling slightly. “The best, most pleasant, and noble sign in the zodiac. And you?” “Pisces. Do you like fish?” “Almost all of them,” I lied.
SEBASTIAN APOLLO
CEO, 6th circle of HELL
Apollo was sitting with his blonde hair behind a black table on which a small monitor, some documents, and a silver globe were placed. He was chewing something that looked like gum, tapping on the table with a red pen. A bespectacled typist sat beside him. She had a face that could only find work as a bespectacled typist. “In God we trust,” I said and saluted in a sort of Sieg Heil, as the Nazis instructed me to do. “Indeed,” he replied pleasantly without returning the salute, “but who the hell are you?” He was as beautiful as an angel and as disturbing as the devil.
REUBEN GARCIA
liaison officer
I chuckled and looked at him, and somehow, I started to like him. We continued our slow, patient dialogue until evening fell, the bad blood between us gradually dissipating. He had arrived a few years before me, at the age of 36, following a snorkeling accident in the Caribbean Sea during which he rammed his head against the propeller of a small motorboat. According to him, he had a perfect life—a career in finance, travel, cocktails in first class, models, three-piece suits, a Porsche with an open top, fancy restaurants, 5-star resorts, almost 10K followers on Instagram—and ever since all that was taken from him, he had been driven by bitterness. Even though I had none of these, I connected with that feeling.
KAREN
Lenny’s ex-girlfriend
When we were like that—close, body to body, skin to skin, flesh to flesh, breath to breath—I felt that I didn’t need anything else, that I wanted this moment to last forever, as if I were in a world where time had no meaning, where there was no past and no future, no fears and no thoughts—only that moment. It was only there that I was able to truly live in the moment. Everything fit, synchronized—the legs, the arms, the fingers, the organs, the curves, the hollows, the bumps, the bones—everything in perfect proportions and angles, like a two-piece puzzle. When we merged into each other, we would laugh and say, "Chook chook chook", as if we were two Transformers combining into one.
THE VOICE
(Open to debate)
“Do you see yourself, Lenny? In a terror organization? Sitting in a dark ruin in Beirut, unshaven, colorful beads falling from the doorframe, posters of Khomeini with black balaclavas on the walls, packages of hashish on the floor, Kalashnikovs on the couches, an RPG launcher in the corner? Smoking apple-flavored hookah, not finding any interest in the content, getting high on a tactical lecture by a messianic Shiite, glancing at a female terrorist from East Germany who converted to Islam after being exposed to radical neo-Marxist groups at the University of Leipzig, and thinking how unfortunate she's a lesbian, begging the Shiite not to give you a messianic task that involves working with the public, still not wanting to get dirty because the smell of blood doesn't go away even after hours?”
LUIS
Duce’s son; a bit slow
“Lenny,” he said, looking at me expectantly, “can you cut my toenails?” “No,” I replied, quite disgusted by the idea. “I don’t have scissors. And we don’t have time for your nails right now.” “But they’re so long on my feet!” “Soon, be patient. Soon you’ll get to paradise, and there they’ll cut your nails so much you’ll get sick of it. Every morning, two Brazilian women will give you a pedicure and manicure.” “What’s a penny, core, medi cure?” he said somehow. “Pedicure and manicure.” I laughed. “They’re synonyms for fun. They won’t just cut your nails—you’ll enjoy it too.” “Oh! Promise?” “I swear to you.” “Great!” he cheered. “And which two will give me a penicure-medicure?” “You’re asking about the Brazilians?” “Yeah! What is it?” “Ah, Luis, the Brazilians … the Brazilians are very beautiful women, with a lot of good mood and a desire to dance … They say that Brazilian women are even more beautiful than Israelis. And Israeli women are really beautiful. And there’s no one in the world who can cut your nails better than two Brazilians! They invented nail cutting there.” “Where?” “In Brazil, Luis, in Brazil.” “Maybe we should go there?” “Not now, Luis.” He kept asking tons of questions, wanting to know everything about Brazil, wondering if it was good there, if there were wars, if there was also a sea there, if the sea there was the same sea, and if the sea had an end at all, and I said yes—that Brazil is the end of the sea, and that you have to be very careful there because you can fall off the edge of the world.