Kia Sorento One
“Agh!” The traveler yells as he falls. He shuts his eyes tight, so that he does not have to see the ground when he lands and goes SPLAT. This seems to be an irrelevant decision, as he quickly lands on a brick floor and goes thump two seconds later. The traveler picks himself up and looks back up to see that the cabinet he fell out of was only 4 feet above the ground.
Looking around, our traveler realizes he has landed in the middle of a large library. The pink walls are lined with pink bookshelves, filled with hundreds upon thousands of books, scrolls, loose leaf papers, and fast food napkins. Scattered about are people sitting at desks, in chairs, and on the floor, all holding at least 2 books apiece. The last thing the traveler notices about the room is the music. There is no melody to it, it seems. Nothing but a fluctuating buzzing noise.
The traveler decides to explore the room. As he walks straight ahead, the buzzing noise gets louder. And it gets louder. And it gets louder. And it gets louder until he realizes it’s not a buzzing noise at all, but it’s a person talking. The traveler continues his walk, eying a large pink loudspeaker on the wall he had not clocked before. However, his path is blocked by a large desk, which he promptly walks into.
“Hey!” the person sitting at the desk growls. The traveler jumps back in fear, having not heard a human voice that gutterual since his 7th grade spelling bee. The woman sitting at the desk is only recognizable as human because of her eyes. Her skin is so pale, it’s almost blue. She seems to have once been red-headed, the only evidence being her thin eyebrows and the small spots of hair remaining on her nearly bald head. Her fingernails are long and yellow, wrapped around the cover of a book.
“Oh, yeah,” Paul says, suddenly next to the traveler’s feet. “I forgot to do the introduction.”
Paul clears his non-existent throat.
“This is Circle-Slash-2006-Kia-Sorento 1 of Annoying Pop Culture Opinions Hell, home to that very specific breed of person who not only, quote, ‘knows’, their Harry Potter house, but interprets it as a large facet of their personality.”
Our traveler can see the woman’s eye twitch and he sighs, knowing he is about to be subjected to the most redundant tangent ever..
“Listen, buddy.” she snaps. “I don’t think I know my Hogwarts house, I do know it. I’m a Pubertope.”
“What? Pubertope?” Paul says, false confusion in his voice.
“No, I said I’m a Faskemid.”
She throws her hands up in exasperation.
“Ugh! It won’t let me tell you my house! I hate it here!”
The traveler hums sympathetically, even though he is not sympathetic at all. He always knew these people would end up in Hell, real or not. For the first time, the woman at the desk looks up at him. The anger on her face quickly turns to confusion as she takes in our traveler.
“Wait,” she says tentatively. “You’re not, like, dead?”
“Nah.” the traveler says nonchalantly. The woman gives him an inquisitive look, to which he responds with a very eh shrug. The woman replies with her own shrug.
“Well, I’m Anne.” the woman says. She reaches up to shake the traveler's hand, but he ignores it. Sheepishly, Anne pulls her hand back down to her book.
“What are you reading?” The traveler asks. “Harry Potter?”
Suddenly, the woman slams the book down and whips her head around to face our traveler once again.
“No,” she says sharply. “I am not reading Harry Potter. I wish I was reading Harry Potter. But no, here I am.” Anne picks the book back up and flashes the cover at the traveler. “I’m reading AMSCO’s Advanced Placement World History: Modern.”
“Oh,” says the traveler. “I think I’ve read that one.”
“No!” Anne yells. “No you haven’t! No one has read this awful textbook, ever!”
She spins around in her chair and gestures towards the bookshelves.
“Nobody has ever read any of these books here in the history of the planet.”
Anne turns back to the desk and starts picking up the books stacked on the side, one by one.
“The Fault in Our Stars? Boring. To Kill a Mockingbird? So racist, I can’t even remember the plot. Catcher in the Rye? You might as well kill me like Lennon. The Hobbit?
Anne sighs deeply and throws the last book down. Our traveler, being an empath, senses that she is displeased with the book selection in this library.
“Well,” the traveler says. “Why do you keep reading?”
“I have too.” she says, turning back to the textbook.
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“Because this is the punishment. All of us down here-”
She pauses to gesture blindly to her Hell-mates.
“-never read another book on Earth, so now we’re forced to read every other novel, textbook, email, Wattpad fic, and Taco Bueno receipt.”
Our traveler doesn’t think this is so bad.
“I don’t think this is so bad.”
“Oh!” Anne says, indignant. “You don’t think it’s so bad? Try reading with that monster in your ears all the time.”
She points at the pink speaker the traveler had eyed earlier. He leans closer to it, and soon recognizes a dulcet, achy-breaky voice reading the infamous children's book.
“Billy Ray Cyrus?” he marvels. Anne grimaces.
“Billy Ray Cyrus. Reading every Harry Potter book. Out of order. On a loop. 24 hours a day. And every time you get too into whatever you’re reading? He gets louder, just to throw you off.”
Anne puts her head into her hands.
“Worst of all, he’s butchering the pronunciation. It’s levi-O-sa, not levio-SA.”
“Actually, it’s a made up word.”
Anne whips her head back around to stare at the traveler. Another example of his empathic abilities, the traveler takes the hint and walks away. He walks towards a large spiral staircase. Paul speaks up from a few steps below.
“Yeah, we go this way.”