Splash. Blop.

“Help me… Please… Make it stop…” begged a man’s voice, coming from somewhere neatby. It was hoarse and trembling, muffled by the echo of a dark howling wind. Everything Noah could hear was filtered, echoed and doubled, similar to what he would hear if he had been underwater.

Squish. Squash.

Where am I? Noah wondered. It was cold. Dismal.

He attempted to move, starting with his right arm, but was met with resistance. Somehow, though, it was soft, squishy and wet. Like jello. Nevermind… It’s fine, he thought. He was so sleepy, after all. He only had to keep his eyes closed and remain still, then everything would be alright.

He drifted off, his own mind fading as he slipped back into Morpheus’ embrace.

Splatter, splatter. Thud.

Thud? he thought. That last sound was worrying. Maybe it was important enough to warrant his attention. The sound was distant, but it was remarkably out of place when compared to the background noise he had heard until now; he wanted to know what it was about. Somehow, though, he struggled to shrug off this veil of drowsiness.

“Noah!” an exceedingly young female voice yelled out in the distance. It was sharp, stingy. It felt as an electric shock coursing through him. It was enough to wake him up, but the scene felt uncomfortably familiar. It came back to him: the Jester’s house. Was he back there, again?

He panicked for a moment. Opening his eyes and spasming in an attempt to force his body to move, the landscape slowly came into view as his sight adjusted to the alien environment. He recognized Amherst, although it was more like an obscene parody of it. The houses, normally very typical of any other on the Islands, were now slightly inclined, slimmer than they used to be. They also had dozens of unnecessarily sharp edges, almost as if someone had built the dwellings the same way a computer would type text in italic.

Instead of the occasional cat, dog or bird, the only fauna appeared to be some sort of oddly-shaped balls, somewhat brown in color. The height of an infant, their miniaturized legs and arms appeared to be of barely any use due to their size. In contrast, their big, bubbly eyes could almost make them look cute; instead, the human-sized mouth with pointy fangs gave them a grotesque and troubling appearance.

Most of the creatures seemed to walk around aimlessly, sometimes stopping to contemplate the ground or a wall. However, Noah noticed a pattern where they would start chasing some cerulean ectoplasmic forms when they came into close proximity. Those forms were vaguely anthropomorphic in their general shape; not quite people, but they certainly reminded him of human beings. Spirits? he wondered.

There were other people around, with distinguishable features. Yet they weren’t entirely solid either: he could partially see through them, through their skin and through whatever fragments of clothing they wore. Turning around, he looked at the man that had beseeched for help earlier; he, too, looked mostly human. The miserable, tortured soul was kneeling, facing Noah and held his hands up towards him. “End it! Please, I beg you!” he implored once more as he writhed in agony.

Noah’s mind was sluggish, as if his brain refused to boot up properly after waking up from a long and deep slumber. Thankfully, unlike the other people he had seen here, his own body was whole, although it was covered in some odd gelatinous substance, restraining him. He pushed forward with his arms, put all his weight on his legs. It took a tremendous amount of effort, but he managed to break through. He freed himself, throwing the matter at his feet. Disturbingly, the ground itself seemed to swallow it, making a disgusting slurping noise.

However, Noah paid it no mind; his attention was elsewhere. He had a migraine that was beyond anything he had felt in his entire life. His vision kept shifting in and out of focus. He decided he was not in the Jester’s house anymore; he and his partners had managed to escape earlier. But in turn, this begat an excellent question: they were nowhere to be seen, so where were they?

Holding his temples, he turned towards the man next to him. “What do you need?” he reluctantly asked without really caring. His head was going to explode, and he mostly wanted the man to stop making noise. The only reply he got was more mindless complaints, an unspecified call for a rescue. It was irritating

“If you want my help, you need to tell me what’s wrong with you,” Noah said.

Ordinarily, even when addressing a stranger, he tried to sound warm, or at the very least cordial. Not this time. His voice was rough and cold.

His own emotions betrayed him - he was losing patience due to the headache and the lack of a clear answer - and decided to drop the nice guy charade.

“You’re not making sense. If you don’t want to help me help you, keep quiet, or I’ll walk away.”

The threat evidently got to the man, since a faint glimmer of sanity lit up behind his eyes, hinting that he was ready to answer.

“The fire! It’s so painful!” he screamed. “Please, sir, allow me to die!”

Yet Noah couldn’t see any flames in the vicinity. He relaxed his pose and attempted to focus despite the constant pleas and screams. Did this poor fool completely lose it, believing he was burning when he was not, or was there some hint of reality in this surreal situation? Think, Noah. It’s simple, he told himself. However, provided all of this was real, he had trouble accepting his own answer. This man was dead, eternally reliving his final moments, trapped in an endless abyss of suffering, never allowed to rest.

He looked around once more. Everything seemed to indicate that he was in a parallel dimension, one where the damned erred forever. What some would describe as the afterlife. The thought made him shudder: was this all there was after some eighty-something years of life? And with his illness, he would consider himself lucky if he made it past fifty. That certainly was not something to look forward to.

Hearing the cries once more, he dismissed the thoughts for now. He would have plenty of time to get philosophical and/or worried later. His priority was to figure out the present moment, how he got there and how he could get out.

The current riddle was rather complex, though. With little to no information, how could he ease this man’s pain? Was there any way to do so? He tried touching the soul. It felt cold but, more importantly, where he had touched it, the form vanished in smoke but reformed a mere second after. He decided that attempting physical contact was pointless and could potentially do more harm than good.

“I’m sorry… I don’t know how to help you,” he said.

“No! Mercy! Let me die!” the man begged once more.

“Look,” Noah started. “I want to free you but-”

He could not complete his sentence. Before he could finish admitting defeat, the soul began vanishing. It let out a relieved “Thank you, my lord” before fading into non-existence.

Noah nervously searched for it. He had not done anything that would explain its freedom. Then the thought hit him: was willing it enough to do that? But then, how and why did he come to have such a power? And was he meant to help out everyone in here? Did he have such a purpose, such a responsibility?