Kia Sorentos 5 & 6
The traveler grabs Paul, who seems to be more open to touching now, and lays down on the conveyor belt as the two are pulled through the curtain in the wall. The conveyor belt ends in a movie theater, where an usher immediately hands the traveler and Paul pairs of noise-protection headphones. The traveler cannot hear anything with the headphones on, but when he attempts to remove them, the usher pulls his hands away and mouths KEEP THEM ON.
The usher guides the traveler to the last empty seat in the theater and turns his head to face him. The usher seems to say "This is the 5th Circle of the Annoying Pop Culture Opinions Hell, where people who think that the TV show Friends is the funniest thing ever." Of course, this is a loose lip reading done by the traveler. Our traveler nods and turns back to face the movie screen, which is playing an episode of Friends. He thinks he might recognize the episode, because his step-dad liked the show when he was a kid. The traveler hated it. It wasn’t funny and everyone was annoying. Nonetheless, he watches as a blonde woman and a dark-haired man try to move a couch in a stairwell. The man is yelling something he cannot hear. He can hear canned laughter, much louder than anything else in the room. The traveler looks around at the other people in the room, his eyes focusing on the man sitting right next to him.
"Daniel?" He tries to say, but is not sure if the words are coming out. Evidently, they do, as the suspected man turns to face him. Just as he feared, the man is our traveler’s step-father, Daniel. The traveler begins to cry. He had hoped he wouldn’t see anyone he knew down here, let alone someone this close. Daniel looks at him, crying as well, but for a different reason.
"Can you hear it?" Daniel mouths. He points at his ears, which are pouring blood. The laugh track. It’s louder. The traveler nods, understanding. He always hated the laugh track. It hurt his head when he was young. It seems like everyone else is experiencing the same.
"I’m so sorry. I should have actually tried another show." Daniel says. "I didn’t know you were being serious about it hurting."
The traveler nods, knowing that right now is not the time to point out that the laugh track clearly didn’t hurt him this bad. He stands up and kisses Daniel on the forehead before finding the usher.
"Leave?" He mouths.
The usher nods and points at the screen. The traveler thanks him and starts walking towards the front of the theater, this time not bothering to wait for Paul. He passes hundreds of people in varying degrees of anguish. Some are crying. Some are screaming. One man is laughing, despite all that is happening around him. He makes eye contact with the traveler and drops into a frown. The traveler turns away and continues to walk towards the screen. He is right up close to it now. The picture is big and waving. He touches it, surprised to find that his hand paces right through it. He steps through the screen into a big, white room, filled with statues. All of the faces are covered by these large, yellow circles.
“Hello?” he says as he takes his headphones off. The traveler realizes this is the first circle he has entered without Paul. The idea scares him a little, being alone in this fake Hell. However, he soon finds that he is not alone.
Our traveler walks up to one of the statues and peers at the dot on its face. The black text reads ‘Yass!’ and contrasts starkly with the bright yellow of the circle. Enchanted, the traveler reaches up and touches the yellow circle. As soon as he touches the dot, it disappears, and the statue's face is revealed.
“Gah!” the statue gasps, as if this was his first breath in a year. The traveler jumps back.
“Who are you?” asks the traveler.
“I’m Kiefer,” the statue pants. “I’ve been stuck here for a year, couldn’t breathe.”
“Why do you need to breathe, you’re dead.”
Kiefer glares at him.
“Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.” he snaps. “That.. that mask blocks everything.”
The traveler is desensitized to these horrors, as he has been inside a Wal-Mart during Black Friday. He doesn’t care.
“I don’t care,” he says. “Why are you here?”
“Wow, rude,” Kiefer says. “But yeah, I’m not sure why.”
“They didn’t tell you?”
“Nah, the baristas just took my order. Bee-tee-dubs-”
The traveler shivers at the use of internet lingo in real life.
“-I get a tall skinny pink drink with two espresso shots.”
“Of course you do.”
“Yeah, that’s what the baristas said, too.” Kiefer thinks to himself for a second and gasps. “Is that why I’m down here? ‘Cause of my Starbucks order? Because that’s not relevant at all to my moral purity, and if they really want to-”
‘It’s not relevant, at all,” the traveler says, cutting the statue off. “They think it’s funny.”
“Oh,” Kiefer says, disappointed. The traveler assumes this disappointment is from not being able to finish his rant.
“What did you do on Earth?”
“Let’s see, I was a social advocate for many causes. I informed people of different things going on in the world, brought attention to bad stuff. Not everything was bad, though, and some of the things I showed people were quite funny, if I do say so myself.”
“Wow, that doesn’t sound that bad, but there’s gotta be a catch.” the traveler says to no one in particular.
“No catch, dude. I wrote articles for all this stuff-”
“Oh, no.”
“-on Buzzfeed.”
The traveler cannot help but gag.
“Hey!” Kiefer says, offended. “Buzzfeed is a great, reliable news source. We’ve also got tons of fun quizzes and easy life hacks.”
“No, man,” the traveler gags out. “It’s not great. I see why you’re here.”
The traveler reaches up to the statue’s face once again. Kiefer freaks out.
“Hey, no, what are you doi-” he is cut off when the traveler touches his face, restoring the yellow ‘Yass!’ dot once more. He understands the dots now, they are the yellow dots that Buzzfeed uses to cover up the faces of celebrities. He always hated those. The traveler looks around to make sure no one saw that.
“No one saw that, right?”
“I did.” The traveler turns around to see Paul sitting behind him.
“You don’t have eyes.”
“I don’t have a mouth, either.”
The traveler furrows his brow before shrugging.
“Anyways, how do we get out?”
“Dunno.”
“Dunno? What do you mean you ‘dunno’?”
“I mean that I don’t know.” Paul shrills. “This is the farthest I’ve been.”
“What do you mean? I thought you were, like, a professional Annoying Pop Culture Opinions Hell tour guide.”
“No, I’m really dead. I’m ‘sposed to be in this circle but I dipped.”
“Oh, ha.” the traveler says. He is too exhausted to fully process what Paul has said.
“Lemme try something,” Paul says. “Turn around, don’t look.”
The traveler turns around. He is somewhat afraid that Paul is going to stab him in the back as revenge for abandoning him in the movie theater. He turns to sneak a peek.
“Don’t look!” Paul screeches. He is laying down next to a long line scratched into the floor. The line wasn’t there before.
“I can’t move if you’re looking at me!”
The traveler turns back around. He hears scratching noises, but continues to stare off into the distance. It isn’t until Paul tells him to turn back around that he finally does.
On the ground is a crude drawing of a door. It is really bad, like as if it was drawn by a monkey that failed kindergarten.
“That drawing sucks.”
Paul scoffs.
“You try drawing without hands. Anyway, open it up.”
Because he no longer believes in the laws of physics, the traveler bends down and grasps for the doorknob. Miraculously, he is able to hold it, and he pulls the door open. The door opens into a steep drop, one wall being stone and the others being open air. The traveler is not sure how he is supposed to enter, but when he turns around to ask Paul, his companion is gone. He looks into the door again and sees Paul laying flush against the stone wall. The traveler shrugs before stepping through.