Atlas wanted to yell. What was Arrone thinking, walking into this?

He looked down at the hand he had tried to stop his manager with. He was the one who followed. What had he been thinking?

His fingers trembled slightly as he held them before him, and he wasn't sure if the moisture forming in his eyes was from fear or downright anger, or both.

Atlas didn't yell. He reigned it in, anchoring everything down in the pit of his stomach, and with a brave face he approached his boss.

If Arrone had escaped his own muddled mind too, he didn't show any sign. His breathing was barely there and he stood like a statue. He wasn't rigid like stone, but he sure wasn't reacting to what was around him, like his brain had been shut off.

Atlas clapped him on the back. "Arrone?"

He had to say Arrone's name five times, each with a little bit more desperation seeping into his voice, before he hit him just a tad harder and nearly lost it. "Snap out of it!"

His manager jerked awake, stumbling back from Atlas' touch.

He breathed a sigh that might have been relief. "Oh, thank God," he whispered under his breath, placing his fingers to his chest.

Atlas watched as Arrone carefully looked around, his body tensed. His face morphed into different feelings, and Atlas just let him observe. The sound of blood rushing filled his ears, and the steady thrum of the heartbeat beneath his feet made him wonder if it was his or the thing they stood on.

Arrone swallowed and then gave a humorless laugh. "What did I do?"

"I told you it was like Stranger Things," Atlas said. He feigned a chuckle. Gosh did he want to grill his manager for continuing to walk, but he wasn't any less to blame. He was the one who brought Arrone down there in the first place! If it wasn't for Arrone before, he would have been in this fate earlier, but with the ever-awkward Ashe instead.

Something about his comment made them both fall into a real fit of laughter.

It was absurd! Really!

Where the Hell were they?

"We're going crazy!" Atlas said.

"If Winona Ryder isn't here this is all your fault."

"Me? What does that have to do with anything I did!"

"You were the one who got my hopes up!"

A booming chuckle resounded through the air, and it sure wasn't one of theirs. They froze in place, stepping close enough to touch sounders, their banter halted mid-argument.

If Atlas could describe the chaos of Hell, it would be that laugh.

It made his skin crawl and any retort he had dried immediately in his mouth. It was predatory. It was a laugh promising to rip him apart with glee, one so dangerous it shook the tanned skin-floor beneath their feet and rattled his bones.

Small gray lights started forming in the strips of black above him. His eyes trailed upward as they flickered like little stars.

It's been centuries—

A voice echoed through the world, far louder, far clearer than the laugh that had preceded it.

—Since I've had a human visitor.

"You can't call us visitors if we didn't choose to enter this place," Arrone retorted, his voice far more calm than Atlas could have ever faked.

He peeked at his face. How could he even speak? What he saw was the same focused gaze that he knew he made at meetings and interviews, not the near delirium or stunned stupor that he was moments before.

The voice actually paused to consider what his manager said. Hm. What makes you think that wasn't your choice? You chose this. You walked. You're here. So therefore, you're visiting.

Atlas lowered his head. What dumb, childish logic. But Arrone didn't argue. He leapt forward, doing what he did best — gleaning information from people and compiling it into a solid plan.

Someone blessed him. He would have had to be in that position if it had been Ashe, and he knew he fell much too short on experience to pull it off.

"So where are we?" Arrone asked. "And whom do we have the pleasure of meeting today?"

"Yeah, pleasure," Atlas muttered under his breath. He rubbed his sweating hands down his jacket. It was humid, and heat was building up under his collar. The choking scent of sandalwood pressing in around him did nothing to help quell the discomfort. He may as well have been breathing in campfire smoke with how heavy it sat in the air.

The voice laughed once more, drowning out the sound and rhythm of the heartbeat under them. You're quite funny. I like you. No one's ever had pleasure meeting me. I'm simply an observer here. You do, you live, and I learn.

"I guess I do have that charm," Arrone said. "So, where is here?"

Here is here, it said, there is no name for it.

This conversation was going nowhere.

"Stop kidding around!" Atlas near-shouted. "We don't want to be here. Tell us how to get out."

Hm.

The speaker was quiet for a long time. Atlas could almost picture it leaning forward to stare him in the eyes, a hand on his chin. But there wasn't anything there. The voice had no visible body. It radiated from no direction. Still, it left his skin crawling like he was being regarded in disdain.

All he could assume was that it was up, somewhere. His eyes trailed along the movie film above their heads. The lights were still flickering, like they wanted to bring an image to life but didn't quite know how yet.

Without a sound, the sandalwood around him started moving. Wisps of incense smoke coalesced, pulled into one single source in front of him, until it turned opaque and dark.

Atlas backed up when something dropped out of it. A huge ball of twine rolled toward his feet and stopped. It could have been a foot wide, and it was oddly shaped enough to make him step back even further.

Here, the voice said. Consider this a gift from me, as getting out isn't as straightforward as heading back anymore. You can figure it out on your own, rude one.

Anymore? Atlas swallowed.

Arrone gave the twine a hesitant acknowledgement before clearing his throat. "I'm sorry if he was rude" he said, giving Atlas a brief, pointed look, "we're just spooked and don't know how to react. Why are you pulling people from Alaska to... here?"

As if they had been speaking to nothing more than a child who turned away with his arms crossed and cheeks puffed, they heard no response. After minutes of silence, another object dropped from nowhere and landed at Arrone's feet with a soft bounce.

Atlas felt unwanted and small when Arrone looked at him next.

"Thanks for that," he said.

"I don't see why you're playing its games when it's not answering anything."

"I figured it might be better to make friends with the supernatural being that drew us here like a siren than to make an enemy of it." Arrone sighed and kicked at the twine in front of him. It rolled twice and stilled before he had the courage to pick it up and undo the knot.

It unraveled to reveal... nothing but air. Yet Arrone continued to act like he was holding something in his cupped hands. Something about his demeanor changed, his eyebrows drawing back like he held an old, painful memory.

"What is it?" he asked.

"It's..." Arrone shook his head, lowering it down to his waist. "It's nothing."

Atlas picked his up. Was his just twine as well? Were they about to fall if they didn't set up a bungee cord?

He slowly unwound it. Rounded plastic corners of a binder appeared, and after a while, what seemed like five pounds of twine dropped completely to the skin beneath him and what he held in his hands was so familiar his gut clenched.

It was a photo book. His mother's old photobook. He held his breath as he traced it with shaking fingers. 

Even the watercolor print on its cover and the blank ink writing out her favorite haiku was exactly like he remembered.

"I'll pour the whole of

me into your heart and fill the

cracks left by others."

- JS Parker

"I don't see anything," Arrone said from beside him. Atlas flinched and dropped his hand, having been so absorbed he almost forgot where he was.

He finally released his breath. "It's my mom's photobook," he said, looking up. "Can you not see it?"

His manager shook his head.

So that explained why Atlas didn't know what gift he got, then.

"How is a photobook supposed to get us out of here?" he wondered. 

And that's when he made the mistake of opening it. In a flare of blinding white light, something leaped off of the first page, shooting straight into the sky like a firework.

He dropped it, jerking back. The light seemed to sap all of the warmth from the air, leaving behind a quiet whine and blast of wind that nearly made him stagger.

"Are you okay?"

Atlas barely heard Arrone's voice or felt his touch when he dared open his eyes and look up.

The movie film above his head had come to life. 

If this world wasn't Hell before, he knew it was now as he stared up upon his mother's face. As if every memory he ever had photographed was stripped from his mind and turned into a movie, he saw them flicker before his eyes in rapid, grayscale stop-motion scenes.

His heart dropped as that day flashed above his head, so painful he couldn't even look away.

He watched his teenage self walk into the house only to find his mother collapsed on the ground after her first, and last, stroke.

Atlas covered his face with his hands, his body weak underneath him.

"Are you okay?" Arrone asked again. His voice was stronger this time, and he clasped Atlas on the shoulders. "What's wrong?"

He couldn't do it. He sat on the ground and buried his head.

How cruel could something be? It was so distant. He was over it. He had moved on. But yet it was there, stuck on repeat above his head. The shout he made that day rang through the air, striking deep into his bones. He didn't have to look to remember how he ran to her side and grasped her shoulders. 

"Atlas, talk to me."

He squeezed his eyes shut. "We need to get out," he gasped. "I need to get out."

Arrone kneeled down beside him and a warm, sturdy hand gripped his shoulder. "Don't worry. We can figure this out, okay? What's happening? I need to know."

Atlas shook his head, squeezing the binder tight in his arms, pressing it down on his head like a shield.

And they sat there. 

They sat there until the scream he made that day no longer made him flinch; until he could breathe normal again; until he could finally look up at his manager. Arrone sat in silence beside him, rotating his own invisible object in his hands with a mournful look on his face.

"Are you ready?" he asked when he noticed Atlas looking.

"No, but I'll try."

"Alright. Good. I think I know where to start, Atlas." He lifted his invisible item up in front of him. "These are our keys out of here."