The Improvised Plan

I sunk to the floor as I slammed my fists against the glass. My face reflected in the glass that stared back at me. I couldn't see anything but my face.

My nose running and my eyes were puffy, they stung now that I was aware that I was crying. I wanted to rip my face off, whether it was pure anger or hating the fact that I was crying, I wanted to disappear. I wanted to scream, I wanted everything to go back to normal already.

I disgustingly wiped my face with my shirt sleeve and got up from the floor.

Halvor watched me with concern, his hands floated at his sides. He was concerned I might fall. I appreciated this gesture, but it wasn't what I needed right now.

"How do we get Mindy back?" I tried to hold back tears as I chocked those words out.

Kenneth was in the room now with a cookie in his mouth, his said mouth agape and releasing the cookie. It fell to the floor like I did, into millions of pieces and crumbs. There was no saving it. In a twisted sense of fate, I knew the cookie was a representation of me trying to save Mindy.

Halvor was trying to rack his brain and I knew Kenneth thought it was impossible. Mainly because he said it.

"It's impossible. There's not a single human who survived Hell while they were alive."

I came back with, "Actually Dante did." Kenneth paused for a second.

"Dante? Like the game?" Halvor asked.

"She means the guy that basically wrote fan fictions about himself walking through Hell while meeting famous people along with people he knew in real life." Kenneth briefly explained.

"You bastardized it but yeah, in short that's the story." I felt small in my skin as I said this. He wasn't wrong but it wasn't helping the current situation.

"Anyways, there is one way." Halvor started.

"Really?" Kenneth and I questioned in unison.

"Yeah, but you won't like it."

I blurted out, "Why not?"

Halvor sighs. "Because you won't be able to go through the mirror. I honestly don't know how that demon did it. We will have to go to Pennsylvania."

"No." Kenneth gasped. "You don't mean-"

"I do." Halvor stared into my soul as he spoke. "We'll have to go through the seven gates of Hell."

"The seven gates of Hell?" I repeated. "What is that?"

Kenneth pulled up a chair and patted the seat, insisting I sit down for this one.

I plop down, I wiped my face again since it felt a bit crusty now. At this point, I most likely smeared snot on my face then removing anything.

"There's a legend, or myth, whatever you want to call it. In the 1900s, there was an insane asylum that burnt to the ground. Because it was isolated, many of the patients and staff died in the fire, the patients that escaped either died in the woods or were killed there. Along with random skulls in the forest, there's seven gates."

"How fitting. Everything demonic tends to come in sevens, it seems." I remarked.

"I know, that's what I said when Halvor told me this story." Kenneth added, he sat down on the ground and crisscrossed his legs.

Halvor hissed, somewhat upset that we interrupted him. "It's not a story, it's real and I've seen it."

Kenneth rolled his eyes. "When did you do this?"

"When I was part of the exchange student program while we still lived in Norway, believe it or not."

"I don't." Kenneth sneered. His smile was one cocky anime characters wore well. The kind that makes you want to punch them in the face. The kind that usually gets killed off.

"Anyways." Halvor ruffled his hair and continued the legend, "they say if someone is able to get through all seven gates, they go to Hell. Only catch is that people have only found one and say that you can only see the rest of the gates at night. If a mountain lion doesn't get you, a serial killer might. They also said that there's been an unknown account of someone getting to the fifth gate."

"Fun, so you go through normal Hell to get to real Hell. Charming." I sarcastically commented.

Halvor nodded, "Yup, and they also say that humans slowly go insane and deteriorate as they go through the gates."

"Oh lovely, so do either of you have any plans?" They stared at me with a blank slate.

"You could try shrooms." Halvor suggested. "There was once a movie where the characters did that while trying to look for it."

I raised an eyebrow at this, "Did they get to Hell?"

Halvor held his arm in embarrassment. "No," he admitted.

I threw my arms in the air. "Then why would we do that, Halvor?! C'mon!"

Kenneth stayed silent for a moment. Then a light bulb appeared above his head.

"Halvor, didn't you ramble on about some lady that helped Virgil's character to get there?"

"Yeah? That's a sibyl but they are super rare. On top of that, the most popular one is said to live for around a thousand years so she's most likely dead."

"Let me see a pick of her."

"What?"

"For real, pull up a pic, I might know her."

Halvor gives his brother a look of disgust but pulls out his phone. He pulls up a wiki article over the Cumaean Sibyl. An ancient Greek art piece and text was on the screen, her face was unamused.

"Hey, I think I know that chick." Kenneth proceeded to also pull out his phone and showed us an Instagram page over beauty products and traveling in Europe. He then scrolled and found a photo of her comparing her looks from the same art piece and a now picture.

She glowed in the sunlight as she stood on the cruise ship, her eyes were full of joy while she shopped in the finest stores. Products galore that I knew my town didn't have for sure. She appeared happy, but I wanted to bet the two crumpled dollars in my pocket that she was depressed. I die inside day to day with high school, how does this woman feel?

Kenneth texted something and glanced at us, "You both got passports, right?"