The sun was a hot, white glare, a perpetual high noon, incapable of ever giving birth to a shadow. Whose perfectly terrible idea, had this been: abandoning the bus stop where at least there were benches, even if unshaded, to walk under a sun as white as burning snow to the city's central terminal? Ah, but there it was at last. There it finally was, its entrance tunnel dark as an Arctic night, promising coolness.

They were four together, two men, two women, a symmetry that pleased Kate. They were strangers: an old actor, comfortingly plump, whose television comedies she remembered fondly from childhood; a girl whose face she vaguely recalled, perhaps from the literature class she taught at the city college; a young man with briefcase, clip-on tie and new shoes, listlessly job hunting through these dog days of August; and herself, backpack too loaded with books and student compositions to rest lightly on her shoulders no matter how, or how often, she repositioned it.

The cooling shadow of the tunnel embraced them one by one and she thought . . . then . . . the long, so very hot walk, justified.

"There's supposed to be a little sidewalk cafe just off the platform where we can await our respective chariots in comfort," the young man said.

"How can there be a sidewalk cafe inside the bus station?" the girl giggled.

"Doesn't matter what they call it," the old actor said. "I could use some comfort."

A bus thundered past in an adjacent tunnel and the girl said, "Oh, I wonder which one that was." In the soft lighting of the tunnel, her smile gleamed shyly at the young man walking beside her. "I hope it wasn't the 51 East. You know the schedules, Randy. Do you think it was the 51 East?'

He consulted his watch. "Probably not, Midge," he assured her. He was an efficient, detail-oriented sort but forever unemployed because he was also lazy in a happy-come-lucky Taoist kind of way that irritated co-workers and employers equally. His philosophy of life could be summed up with a shrug and a compound sentence: O well; shoulda, woulda, coulda and I never sweat the small stuff.

"Romantic conversation, eh?" the old actor said quietly to Kate. "In a screenplay, the stage directions would specify that their eyes are saying other things. Inviting things." He laughed. "In my movies, I never got the girl. Went bald before I was 25. Built an entire career on the intellectual pratfall."

They came to a bend in the tunnel. Up ahead, but still quite far away, artificial light and loud voices echoed down the brick walls to them, like a TV left on in a darkened room.

"Relief ahead, Mr. Dove," Randy called.

"We should have walked that extra two blocks to the main entrance," he answered. "This is the longest shortcut I've ever seen."

"It was a piss poor idea," Randy agreed happily. "Must have been the women who talked us into it."

"I don't remember that it was," Midge said. "I don't remember whose idea this trek was. I'm too hot and too thirsty to remember anything."

"Good. Then we'll put the blame on you," Randy teased.

"Watch it, buddy. Or I'll forget I agreed to go out with you tonight," Midge teased right back.

The light became less diffuse, the voices more clamorous, as they approached the final twisting of the tunnel.

"You know," Dove said, "the architecture of this thing is marvelous. Reminds me of something. That vaulting's very handily done."

"Reminds me of a dream I had once," Midge said.

And it reminds me of old gothic horror movies, Kate thought. Italian ones.

The first apprehension came knocking and she tried not to let it in.

Somewhere - extremely far away now, it sounded - a bus again rumbled through the tunnels. They rounded the last bend, stepping into hard, florescent light. Here the tunnel ended, opening out into a cavernous, too bright, absolutely packed and terrifically noisy cafe. On its far side, they saw the 51 East roar by, rattling the chain link barrier separating the coffee shop from the bus lanes.

"Damn," Midge said.

"Nothing to do but sit down and wait for the next one," Randy said.

This cafe was another vaulted, echoing space, far too crowded, blaring with too many voices and the rushing racket of the buses on the other side of the fence. Randy cleared a way through to a table and they leaned, huddled, over it, as people in nightclubs do, to hear themselves speak.

Dove said what Kate was feeling. "I don't know but that this is marginally worse than the bus stop was."

"It's cooler," Midge pointed out.

"Just this side of freezing, you mean," Kate grumbled. She hated to be cold. And she hated to be anywhere crowds and noise were endemic. She also hated grumbling and told herself to be nice: this wasn't their fault. She could have stayed alone at the bus stop, sitting on the broiling bench and reading a book from her backpack. If she were uncomfortable now, it was her fault for going along with a group decision she'd voluntarily taken no part in deciding.

"Say, how do you get from here to there?" Randy pointed at the loading platform across the bus lanes. "That fence is floor to ceiling."

"One of the other tunnel openings, I guess," Midge said.

"Now that lacks logic," Randy objected.

Dove was looking up at the cathedral-high ceiling. "Herringbone brick," he muttered. "Roman arches. Amazing."

Randy and Midge arched their necks to look.

"I'll tell you what's amazing," Kate said. "No Muzak. Thank God."

A waitress suddenly appeared. She was wearing a garish pink uniform, trimmed in muddy brown. Instead of a name City Terminus No. 4 was embroidered on the breast pocket. "Hi," she squealed. "I'm Iris. And, my goodness, you're David Dove! Well, it's a real pleasure having you here. I can't remember the last time we had a celebrity come in. We mostly get city people. Strictly local trade."

"Thanks," Dove said. "Glad to meet you. Can you get me an iced mocha as pronto as possible?"

"How do you want it? Cup or glass?" Milk, sugar or ..." she winked at Dove, "nada? Lots of ice or barely a shaving" Without waiting for his answer, she turned to Midge. "And what's your name?"

"Excuse me," Kate said. "You don't need our names to take the order, do you?"

"We're very friendly here," Iris gushed. "It's our distinction among the termini."

"I don't need any friends," Kate said. "I do need a Coke, lots of ice."

Three buses, apparently drag-racing each other, roared past, this time rattling the condiments on the table as well as the fence. Exhaust floated through the chain-link barrier and Kate realized she couldn't smell it.

The second apprehension came in, this one tinged with the anxiety of a familiar nightmare. In this nightmare, she inevitably boarded the wrong bus and ended up in dark and dangerous neighborhoods with sinister doors all firmly shut against her and all the pay phones out of order.

Dreams, she thought. My dreams. Odorless; almost entirely a visual experience. She looked down at her hands. Rubbed the fingertips together and felt only a ghost of sensation. I'm dreaming, she thought. I'm home, in bed, the air conditioning turned too high. That's why I'm so cold.

The apprehension evaporated like her sweat had done in this icebox of a cafe. We wake up from dreams, after all. Soon she'd wake up and turn down the air conditioner and get out her Jung. Obvious, really. Actor = Animus. The number 4 (the four of them, the numeral on the uniform pocket) = squared circle, balance, the four corners of a sacred tenemos structure. The tunnel, this cave-like room = the passage to, and the place where, one meets oneself. No need to wake up. She could interpret this dream from inside.

The coherence is astonishing, she thought. Like being awake, except for the washed out feel of all physical sensations, the muffled quality of sense perception and . . .

"Boy, that was weird," Midge was saying. Kate looked up. Iris was gone. The noise swelled up around her again like a suffocating vapor.

"How do you want those cokes? Large, small, syrup or ready-made?'" Midge giggled, imitating Iris. "Weird."

"I forgot to ask her which way to the platform," Randy said. "Oh, shit."

"What?" Midge said.

"Can't find my cigarettes. They must have fallen out of my pocket or something."

"They've got a machine over there," a hugely fat man, sweat on his upper lip and coffee stains on his paisley lapel, said. He slid into the seat between Dove and Kate. "You have to get tokens for it at the counter though and sometimes the wait's just not worth it. Most times, actually." He chuckled. "Just got here, did you?"

"And anxious to get out," Kate said.

"We'd all like that." He chuckled again. "Charles Watson. Watson's Fine Pre-owned Cars and Trucks." He stuck out a sweaty hand that everyone politely ignored. Kate saw that the fat of his fingers was puffed out on either side of his wedding ring, making it appear organically embedded in the flesh. She shuddered.

Grotesques. Another frequent feature of her dreams.

"If you sell cars," Midge said, "what are you doing riding the bus?"

"Hell, I don't know. I suppose I'm like the plumber who never fixes his own leaky sink. People always call me Chuckie. Any of you got a nickname? They're very fond of nicknames here."

"Which of those tunnels leads to the passenger area?" Randy asked.

"None of them," Watson said, surprised. "Who told you the tunnels would take you to the buses?"

"Hi, Chuckie," Iris said, plopping down Cokes and iced mocha. "Get you anything?"

"No, no, thanks anyway. See you folks later," Watson said and scuttled away. Iris flashed a wide, white grin at them and disappeared after him.

After a minute, Dove said, "Something is seriously not kosher here."

"Definitely weird," Midge said.

"If we can't get over there," Randy pointed to the barrier and the buses booming by, "from over here, I vote we go out the way we came in and trek those extra blocks to the main station entrance."

"Let's do it," Dove said.

"Wait a second," Kate said. "That guy's a geek. A used car salesman, for Christ's sake. You're trusting him? Talk about illogic. There has to be an exit. How can there not be an exit?"

"I trust him," Dove said. "Hasn't got a damn thing to do with logic. It has to do with my gut and my gut says something about this place is really, really wrong."

Kate gave in. She reminded herself that this was a dream, then felt the certainty that it was nothing of the sort settle heavy in her gut. It was the final apprehension, a dull anxiety, like her nightmares of wrong buses and misplaced destinations. And this time, it would not go away.

She followed the others through the press of gesturing, shouting people back to the tunnel where they'd originally entered, but at its mouth, she stopped.

"This isn't the right one," she said. "Ours has a bend within sight of the cafe, remember?"

"It's the right one," Randy said impatiently. "See that newspaper box? I stubbed my toe on it when we came in."

"Did it hurt?" Kate asked. Her voice was odd and distant and he stared at her.

"Well, no. That's why I didn't swear or yelp or anything when I did it."

"Of course it didn't hurt," Midge laughed. "You're wearing those thick leather shoes."

They looked at his feet.

His bare feet.

They all had bare feet.

"What?" Randy said.

"Oh, I don't like this," Dove said.

"My backpack's gone," Kate said in that same odd, distant voice. Like Randy's cigarettes, she didn't know when she'd lost it. The ghost of its discomfort still sat on her shoulders. A residual body image. A tactile memory. She began to understand.

From a table near them a conversation floated over and into their silence.

"Get me a cola. Any kind of cola. My palate's too insensitive to tell the difference between a brand name, its competitor and those generics."

"Like Augustus," the waitress agreed brightly.

"Who?'

"They say the emperor Augustus couldn't tell the difference between virgin olive oil and the final passing of the paste through the press. They say that. I never met him myself."

"Of course not. Before your time."

"No, different destination."

They both laughed.

"OK, now I really don't like this," Dove said.

"That reminds me of a story I heard awhile ago. This poet, some patrician senator, I guess, goes to dine at the palace and later, in the Elysian Fields or wherever those old Romans went, Hades asks him why he's looking so down and the guy says, 'Forsooth, I regret that I did not eat that last corn muffin Caesar offered me at the banquet. It would have made little difference to my waistline or my fate.' See, he said this because he knew that Minerva had convinced Caligula not to poison the corn muffins and. But see - and alas - he died a few days later after eating a poisoned sweetmeat sent by Caligula as a gift."

Now they both were roaring with laughter loud enough to drown out the buses tearing down the lanes on the other side of the boundary.

"This has got to be a dream," Midge said.

Kate shook her head. "It's not."

"It has to be. Remember when I said that the tunnel reminded me of a dream I had? What I should have said was that it reminded me of a dream I'm having. All of you, all of this craziness, it's just an indigestion dream."

"Feel better now?" Dove asked.

"No," Midge admitted.

"You ever see anyone sweat in a dream like ol' Chuckie was doing back at our table?"

"I've never seen anyone sweat in an icebox, either," Kate said.

"And my point is made," Dove said. "Wrong. It's wrong here. Let's try the tunnel."

"Gosh, I wouldn't do that, you know," Chuckie said, puffing up to them, his belly rolling around inside his Quiana shirt, sweat dribbling down his cheeks like tears. He looked scared or perhaps just uneasy.

Quiana? Kate thought. Paisley? Who's worn that stuff since the 70s?

"Look, we came in here and we're leaving the same way," Randy snapped.

"But, that's impossible," Chuckie wheezed. "I mean, of course, you came in here. Hundreds of people come in through the tunnels everyday, but they only go the one way, you understand?"

"You're out of your mind," Randy said. "It's drowned in fat cells." He stepped toward the tunnel.

Desperate, Chuckie grabbed his arm. "Jesus," he cried. "Hasn't anyone filled you people in yet?"

Randy jerked away from him. "Let's go," he said, taking Midge's hand.

"Right behind you," Dove said.

They were four together again and they walked a long time in silence, until the light and noise were dim and diffuse behind them. Here the light was strange and quiet, almost brown, almost textured. In front of them, rocks and debris and boulders too large for even Hercules to lift,

An ancient cave-in--Boulders? Kate wondered. In a brick tunnel?--had fallen across the tracks--Tracks? thought Dove--and partially blocked their way.

"What the hell now?" Randy said. "So what? There's room on this side to squeeze through."

He proceeded to do just that but some thing--some reddish, brown thing, some dark, obscure Lovecraftian Thing--rose from the dirt floor, sank claws and tentacles into screaming, squirming Randy, and carried him off into the farther darkness beyond the boulders. Another detached itself from the wall and took Midge.

"Run!" Dove screamed, pushing Kate ahead of him, back toward to the light of the cafe. They burst from shadows into florescent bedlam, colliding with Charles Watson. Beside him stood a tallish man with white hair above a young face, a white Armani suit and a lapel badge that read CT4 - Management.

"What the fuck were those things?" Kate screamed at him. She was out of breath from running and shaking with rage. "What the fuck were they?"

"This is very unfortunate," Mr. Management said apologetically. "This is the first time ever that souls have been lost because of understaffing. I'm sure this will shake loose some extra help from Upstairs though. At least I hope so. The paperwork is going to be just massive on this incident."

"What were they?" Kate repeated.

"Death Demons. Second Death Demons, to be precise."

"We're dead, aren't we?" Dove said. "So, where are we? Hell? Like in Sartre's play?"

"No Exit, you mean? A fine play, absolutely fine. Gave me the rare case of goosebumps, it did. And didn't you star in it, oh, 5 or 6 years ago, at the Paris Sartre Revival?"

"Sure. As if that's important. Are we dead? Is this Hell?"

"Yes, you are dead. No, this is not Hell."

"Purgatory?" Kate, who'd been raised Catholic, asked.

"No, no," Mr. Management smiled. "One is eventually manumitted from Purgatory. No, we're a new facility. Only been in operation since the Enlightenment and very exclusive." He winked. "Western Man only allowed."

"Hotel California in spades," Dove said. "My God."

"Hmmm? Oh, yes." He laughed. "That's very wry, Mr. Dove. Very good. You can indeed check out, but never leave. The bus never stops for anyone here."

"So what is this place?"

"As I said, a new facility, servicing city dwellers primarily. After the Enlightenment, Western people began more and more to lose faith in any conception of Our Eternal One, except in a rather amorphous way. Hence the need for a new destination. The Creator is tough, but not unfair, I assure you. Good lives do earn a certain recompense, even if lived outside of faith."

"A place for people neither hot nor cold, just indifferent," Kate said, remembering the long, dull afternoons of Sunday School. When Sister Marte said God would spit agnostics out of His mouth, Kate had suddenly envisioned those souls as the cavities in God's teeth and Jesus as the dentist who fixed them. The image came to her now as sharply as it had on that Sunday 40+ years ago: Jesus drilling out the decay, giving God the little Dixie cup filled with the Water of Life and saying, "Rinse and spit, Lord." And she was a bit of that decayed enamel, swirled down the celestial drain to this horrible place of noise, crowds and artificial light.

"Lukewarm souls, yes. That's exactly right," Mr. Management beamed. "We call our establishment Chaotica. A little pun, but mine own. Officially, our designation is City Terminus No. 4."

"I don't remember dying," Dove said.

"I assume we passed through some modern equivalent of the river Lethe," Kate said.

"And that also is right," Mr. Management said. "Birth and death are the same door. In normal circumstances, you never remember either."

"So what are the rules?" Dove asked.

"There are no rules." He gestured to the tunnel. "You either Stay or Play. That's all."

"Is there a library?" Kate said suddenly. "Solitude? Temperature adjustment?"

"I'm afraid not. Chaotica isn't heaven, is it? We provide an afterlife much like real life. Food, shelter, even companionship, although there's no marrying or giving in marriage, as they say. And like life, you'll neither be perfectly comfortable nor perfectly uncomfortable here."

"The tunnel?"

"Ah, that's the Play part. It's the only exit. But choosing the tunnel means the Second Death Demons devour your soul."

"And what does that mean?" Kate pressed. "What happens to your soul?"

"No one knows. At least not on this level. Some say the soul is indestructible. The demons tear it to bits, they swallow it, but in time they purge themselves of accumulated souls and these are then reincarnated back on earth. Others say the demons digest the soul. Oblivion. It's a very serious game with no certain outcome."

"I understand," Kate said.

"Well, I'm off then. A rather large batch is coming in shortly - plane crash, you know. We're the number one destination these days which is why I'm eternally short-staffed."

"No books," Kate said softly, watching Mr. Management pass through the crowd like water through a buttered sluice.

"What?" said Dove.

"No books," Kate repeated. "No privacy. If you'd asked me to define Hell when I was alive, I'd have said Cold, Noisy and Jampacked With People. This place rings all three bells. I can't stay here."

Chuckie, who'd been a salesman all his life, tried to be helpful. "There's hundreds of scholars in residence. You can talk about books all you want. And if you really have to have some time alone, you could stand just inside the tunnel mouth. Think of it as going outside to have a cigarette. The demons won't bother you if you stay within a few feet of the mouth."

"Kick the tires, take a test drive? No thanks. I hate cold, I hate noise. I need music, even if it's just Muzak. I prefer obliteration to spending my death in CT4. Technically this 'facility' may not be hell, but for me, it is."

"But it's life and every moment of life is precious, right?" Chuckie pleaded.

"This isn't life," Kate said gently. "It's mere existence."

"But ..."

"What kind of photos did you have when you were alive, Watson?" Dove asked.

"Just snapshots. You know, family, friends, fishing trips. Why?"

" Because I'll bet Kate didn't have a single photograph in her house with people in it. Not even one of herself. Am I right?"

"You are," Kate agreed.

"Oh," Chuckie said, mystified.

"In your house, Kate, there was only silence or music, right? Never the sound of a human voice. Did you even own a TV?"

"I did not," Kate said..

"Really?" Chuckie asked, even more mystified.

"You know me well," Kate said, smiling at Dove.

"Well enough to know that if we hug you goodbye, you'll tolerate it, but you won't want it."

"Goodbye," she said. She walked into the tunnel and the depths of that strange brown dimness came forward to greet her.

"You didn't try to stop her," Chuckie said.

"No."

"I don't get it."

"Ever read your Bible, Watson?"

"Sometimes, sure. Well, my wife did."

"Choice," Dove said. "Free will. A difficult concept, but it's what life is really all about. Choice and taking responsibility for our choices."

Dove swung an arm around the fat man's shoulder. "Come on," he said. "Let's find Iris. Do they serve booze here?"

A nice twist, I think, on an old Twilight Zone plot line and a cautionary tale for folks like me. Mr. Charboneaux has spun quite a post mortem yarn and left room for fantastic speculation. I wonder what happened to Kate. Don't you? Talk about it on our BBS.