When he’d been alive, Edgar had been obsessed with cheese. He’d also been a huge prick and made everyone around him miserable. Now he was being tortured with cheese. He had cheese running through his veins and was repeatedly dropped into a vat of scalding cheese sauce. Even the scent of cheese lingered on his clothes in between dips. They thought of everything.

It seems like a no-brainer, but to understand the nature of my dilemma, you’ll need some background. As a graduate student, I lived next to a nursery. The enclosure had been shoddily built and one day I awoke to a pack of feral babies surrounding my bed. It was only with tremendous bravery that I was able to make it out of that ordeal alive.

There was just one rule to being an angel. Every angel learned, upon getting his wings, the one hard fast prohibition that could get you in hot water. Unfortunately, Brian had broken it three times this very first morning.

Now Brian was going to hell.

But that’s the kind of attitude that got me in here to begin with. You’d think all the time alone would have given me a chance to mature, but it’s always the same. I can never yield, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

No heifer had ever embraced all seven deadly sins with such fervor. She had long ago discarded her pastoral virtues, no longer content to play her role of milk-giver. She delighted in corrupting others from her herd. There was no possibility of redemption, and woe to anyone who crossed her path.

Now she was confined inside a true house of glass, forever damned to clean windows, and floors and walls. Her fingers tasted of windex.

The worst part was the audience of gawkers and art critics parading past, taunting her with their stones and opaque clothing. They recycled themselves incessantly, and their presence was a constant reminder of her former hubris.

Blake sat on the porch of the Sierra Motel, staring at the horizon. His vision plumed and prismed in the heat, causing him to hallucinate. Or maybe he was already in Hell.

Blake lamented having to meet death with the lingering caress of rough linen on his skin and greasy cheeseburgers on his breath, but like his mom used to say, you get what you deserve.

The two old men took a gander at their new home.

“This place is wonderful.”

“Bravo.”

“I love it.”

“This is great!”

The sweat started to stream down their temples.

“Well, it’s pretty good.”

“Well, it isn’t bad.”

“There are parts of it that aren’t very good though.”

“It could be a lot better.”

The eternal torment begins.

“I don’t really like it.”

“It’s pretty terrible.”

“It’s bad.”

“It’s awful!”

“It’s terrible!”

“Get us out of here.”

“Boo!”

Calico Jack had no such compunction. Moral qualms were a disorder for weak men fearful of Hell. Jack figured no Hell could be worse than the Hell of the high seas.