Status Updates From L'inferno comincia nel giar...

Light and the Sufferer

"Can we go up to your apartment, Kaz? Please?"
Don walked them towards me. A fat black man with a gigantic knitted hat: Kaz. Another black man, smaller in every way, with a little beard, and wearing a weirdly glossy, puffed-out gold coat: Drey.
Nobody my brother knew had a regular name. And they all called him "Light," for his being white, I suppose.

The only thing that's not predictable in Hell, the only thing that doesn't happen according to some familiar junction of time and locale, is the appearance of The Happy Man. He's a free operator. He's his own man. He comes and goes as he pleases, etc.
He's also my ticket home.
When Colonel Eagery is done with me I go back.

The Happy Man

He told me about his Hell, which was pretty crazy. The setting was urban, not rural. He started out on darkened city streets, chased by Chinamen driving garbage trucks and shooting at him with pistols. There was a nuclear war; the animals mutated, grew intelligent and vicious. It went on from there.

Update after short story #2 this author has never thought past his 1st conclusion re: the way sociopolitical systems affect people & IT SHOWS. Unfortunately I do actually love media about pro athletes so I kind of ate up the whole scifi basketball theme. A third grader could have conceptualized this B-plot though. Begging Jonathan Lethem to actually explore a theme rather than just talking about it (I bet he won’t)