Brad Jones III's First Circle of Hell

A tale of psychological horror.

Art by Crystal Welker

Heaven

As they walk the switchback trail up the mountain, he looks down at his daughter, five years old. Her eyes—big, bright, clear, and clean, in constant wonder of the world—its trees and creatures, what lies below the waters and how Cinnamon Cheerios are born.

As they amble, she bends over, snatches a stick, and taps each rock, plopped randomly and miraculously along the trail. 

He says, “You know, where I was born, it’s completely flat. No mountains.”

She looks up at him, giggles. “Nah.”

He smiles and says, “It’s true. Completely flat.”

“Like a pancake?” she says, in her high singsong voice.

He chuckles. “Flat as a pancake.”

“Nothing can be that flat. Without mountains? You’re joking me. Silly.” She laughs so hard she stumbles and wobbles into him. He catches her, and they giggle up the trail, his hand on her shoulder.

Second Circle

And then, he’s driving the long, flat, narrow road, squeezed by fields, wide and empty as an endless, lifeless ocean. Fields scarred by fire, near dark as his forever night, here in his second circle of hell. 

As he drives and drives, clouds press low, play with his lights, brush the top of his beater, a boat of a car, a 1978 Thunderbird festooned with shit-brown vinyl seats. This is where he lives now.

Backseat piled with empty and crushed Mountain Dew cans. He can’t sleep. He forbids sleep. Fights sleep as if his life depends on it. As if his daughter’s life depends on it. His wife’s life. Sleep will pull him back to the soul eaters.

He slams the wheel. “I’m Brad Jones III. I’m 33. I have a wife and a daughter. I’m a school social worker. I drive a goddamn electric car, not this fucking boat. I wear khakis and blue shirts. Not this shitty, filthy white t-shirt and fucking blue jeans. I fly kites with my daughter, Daisy. I ride my bicycle to work. When I look at my wife, she smiles because she knows what’s inside me. Who am I? That’s who I fucking am. I don’t deserve this fucking road.” He screams and pounds a fist into the dashboard. And again. And again. 

Third Circle

Then, he wonders why the car is stopped, idling at the edge of the unending field of wheat stalks, burnt down to the nub. 

He shakes his head, trying to rustle out a thought that makes sense. As though pulled by a lasso wrapped around his waist, he exits the shit-brown car. Doesn’t want to get out, but he can’t help but get out. The car door creaks through the solemn silence of the endless field, the endless night, the endless, starless dark. 

His hands tremble, remembering what comes next.

Caught in the spray of headlights, a few yards across the field—the shack. Leaning. Rickety. Boards warped and rotting. Orange light flickers through a filmy window. An oil lamp, he always guesses. Inside the shack, a shadow moves. Warped floorboards squeak. 

He’s fallen asleep inside his nightmare again, he knows. This third circle of his hell. 

The shack door opens and bangs against the outer wall. The sound, enormous in the windless silence. 

He startles.

Light bursts out the shack like it’d been imprisoned, waiting for its chance to slash at the night. A silhouette fills the open doorway. A man, tall and lean. Flannel shirt tucked into tight blue jeans. One hand in a pocket. The other bent to the man’s face. The slight bloom of a cigarette’s ember casts a red, ebbing glow over the face of craggy lines, so many lines, and deep, as if describing the topography of a splintering canyon. 

The man exhales. A puff of white smoke billows into the dark and fades into nothing. 

Brad Jones III, frozen to the spot, knows what’s coming but can’t move to escape. He’s a statue stuck on the edge of a burned-out field, smelling its rot, lit by the idling car’s time-yellowed lights. 

The man calls across the field. His voice—old, worn, filled to the brim with a susurrus of labored breath. “Whatcha doing out here?”

“I’m lost.”

“Nah.” The man laughs. “You ain’t lost. You’re on the loop.” The man taps his chest with a knobby finger and grins, gravely. “My loop.”

Brad Jones III nods and sighs. “Seems so.” 

The man takes a step, waves a hand across the field. “This is where I was born and grew, you know.”

“I know.” 

The man cocks his head. “I tell you this one before?”

“Yes. Many times.”

“Well, let’s see how we do if we do again. See if we can gitter done once and for all.”

A stew of fatigue, sorrow, longing, helplessness brews in Brad Jones III. He shrugs, arms flapping at his side. Nothing for it. He can only surrender to the rest of what’s to come. 

The man flicks the cigarette into the burnt field and ambles toward Brad Jones III, boots crunching with every slow and steady step. “Yeah. I was born and grew here. A farmer’s boy. Shoveling shit. Milking cows. Bailing hay. Evading rattlers. You name it, I did it.” The man sighs, disgusted. “Now look at it. What you done with it?”

Brad Jones III knows what he’s going to say. Fights not to, but out it comes. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You’re goddamn right you didn’t do anything. That’s why you’re here, on my loop.”

Brad Jones III squeezes his lips tight, but still they quiver. His eyes, hot. 

The man resumes his slow plod toward Brad Jones III, boots crunching over the dead and dry nubs of wheat stalks. “During the war, they plucked me up and tossed me out to Godforsaken Alaska. Terrorized me so I’d do whatever the fuck they told me, and sure I did do whatever they told me and without question. You know that?”

Brad Jones III nods. “I know.”

The man grunts. “Well, let’s see if you know this one.” He hocks and spits. “Ol’ Bill Barley lost his arm to a grizzly, up Alaska way. They made me go out and find it, Bill’s arm. Thought they could sew it back on. Only eighteen years on me. Cold as fuck. Shivering to my balls. Dark. Darker than this goddamn night. Spraying that weak gray light outta that piece of shit flashlight they issued. But I found it. A single arm, a man’s arm, Bill Barley’s goddamn arm, lying out in the dead of night on a snow bank lit up by that weak-ass flashlight.”

Brad Jones III mouths, didn’t seem real.

The man says, “Didn’t seem real. I had to pick up Bill’s arm and stuff it in the garbage bag they give me to haul it back. Three fucking miles in the dead of night I carried that goddamn arm of Bill Barley’s, trying the whole time to think it was something else bouncing in that bag, anything else. And what come of my miserable, ungodly, fucking trek? Bill Barley was dead and gone by the time I got his arm back to base.” 

“That must’ve been hard.”

“Hard? Sheesh.” The man looks away, west. “It was the moment I knew I was never going home again.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you.”

The man stops and stares hard into Brad Jones III. The man’s eyes—gray, near to white. “Keep your goddamn sorrys to yourself.” 

Brad Jones III wants to look away from the man’s cold, gray eyes, but can’t.

The man cocks his head, resumes stepping toward Brad Jones III, boots crunching, and stabs a finger east. “You know, she had to hide from them Nazi fucknuts. In near to a goddamn closet. She and her sister, ma and pa, and three others. Worrying. Praying. Waiting. Hoping against all the hate there ever was. 761 days. And then what happened? They captured her. Hauled her off to be pecked to death by lice and only 60 goddamn days before the Brits woulda saved her.”

Brad Jones III gulps, uncertain if he should say something. He doesn’t, as he always doesn’t. 

The man says, “Well? You sorry about that?”

Brad Jones III nods his head, whimpering. “Of course.” 

“Yeah. You’re sorry. The whole bunch of ya—sorry. You’re the sorriest generations, and I do mean—generations, ever since me and the boys and women come back from crushing them Nazi bastards. And to fucking what? And FOR fucking what? Your goddamn greenbacks.”

Brad Jones III pleads. “Who are you?”

The man stops. “Wrong question. Who the fuck are you? Is the question.” He hocks, spits, and waves across the burnt field. “I ain’t even gonna get into what you done to my crops.”

“What do you want?”

The man smiles. “Oh, we’ll get to that, don’t you worry.” The man sucks through his teeth. “You know what I always wondered on? What was it we were fighting for? Sure, we were against them Nazi demons. Them who’d take everything away from you like it wasn’t yours to have. Your home. Your land. Your grandma’s silver. Your family. Your life. Your fucking teeth and hair. Every goddamn thing so they could go on and do whatever they damn well pleased.” The man jabs a finger at Brad Jones III. “That’s where you are. Again. Same but different. And after we spread our guts over all of Europe to keep you from it.” 

Brad Jones III rubs his face and moans, “Wake up. Wake up.”

“Pfft.” The man shakes his head in a mix of disgust and pity. “Too late for that, buddy boy.” He hocks and spits. “So, what were we fighting for? That’s what I wanted to know. So I asked Bill Barley, before he lost his arm and was dead. We was shivering our asses off keeping a watch to make sure the goddamn Nazis wouldn’t come charging over the hill and take over goddamned Alaska. Which, of course, we all knew was so near to impossible it wasn’t never gonna happen. So, as we were out waiting for nothing, shivering to our goddamn molars, I ask Bill Barley—Bill, what are we doing all this for?” 

The man stops a few steps away, leans toward Brad Jones III, and whispers, breath stale with filterless Camels and Jim Beam, “You see, we didn’t know about the girl then. Long time before we’d know about the girl. Bill be long dead and rotted to nothing laid out next to his rotting arm by the time we learned about the girl, hid up in the attic with her family—761 days, six months in that Nazi hellhole, and passed on 60 days before she’d be saved. Fifteen years old.” 

“I know. I know all of this.”

“Do you? Do you know it? Don’t seem knowing doing a damn bit of good.”

The dark, the field, the wind keep to their silence.

The man snorts and stretches his back. “So, Bill say, we fighting for choosing. Choosing? I say. Choosing what? Bill look at me, cold brown eyes clear and sparking. He was a smart one, Bill Barley. Smart and from Cali-forn-i-a. So we both the same amount of goddamn cold when we stood watch.”

The man cracks his neck. “So Bill look at me hard and he say, Choosing is the paramount of all life. I didn’t know what paramount meant for sure, but I caught his meaning. It was big. Bigger than the sky and all that’s beyond. That’s what choosing meant to Bill Barley and what it came to mean to me. Even after I had to fetch his arm and haul it back to his corpse. Ya see, in spite of it all—the fucking futility of carrying a deadman’s goddamn arm back to his rotting corpse, we were fighting for choosing, we were fighting for little girls we didn’t even know a goddamn thing about until lonnnnng after.” 

The man pins Brad Jones III with his cold, gray eyes. “We was fighting for you. I never knew you, but I always loved you.” The man’s voice rises to a roar so big it fills the empty spaces of the field, the sky, and beyond. “And what did you do?! What choice did you make? Sure. You ride your goddamn bike to work. You poured Cheerios for daughter Daisy. But where’s all that now? Where’s your daughter? Your wife? Your goddamn life? No goddamn choice is still a goddamn choice! And, if you didn’t catch it yet, shit-for-brains, that’s why you’re on my fucking loop!” The man exhales a giant whoosh of breath and shakes his head. “Y’know we get the news down here. I heard about what they call—woke. Well, I’ll tell ya, you get woke real goddamn quick when you’re dead. See it all and all around. See the Big Bang and all of creation down to a little bang, a world popping open.”

Remembering what comes next, Brad Jones III alerts like someone poured ice down his back.

The man grins. “Oh, and speaking of we.” The man gestures to the endless field. It fills with rows of men and women dressed for battle. Faces, ghost white, implacable, silent as the night, and every one staring with hard, grayed eyes at Brad Jones III. 

The man steps within arm’s reach of Brad Jones III and glares at him. “You wanna get out of this loop?”

Brad Jones III nods and whimpers. “Yes, please.”

The man grins. “Well, we can fix you right up. You just need to let us eat your soul.”

First Circle

His eyes open. The sun—bright. A new day pierces the window. The empty room. Carissa’s spot in the bed, empty. Daisy’s room empty. Both in hiding. 

They were just living their life, and then their life was stolen. 

On the wall, the framed photo, hanging crooked, glass cracked into a spiral, like a spider’s web. His great grandparents before their modest farmhouse out on the flatlands. Shit-brown Thunderbird parked in the driveway behind them. People he never knew, but still his and he theirs. 

He rolls over, looks into the mirror Carissa used to adjust her blouse in before going off to teach. Darkening circles rim his eyes. Worry, fear carved deep into his face. He shouts, “Who are you?! Wake up! Wake up!” 

But he can’t wake up now. Brad Jones III is back in his first circle of hell.

---

Join My Substack for Free! Stories delivered to your inbox once a month.