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"Chi-something, you there?"

"I am here, Doug." Came a voice from his cell's toilet. "It's Chimezie."

"Chimezie." Doug tried to repeat.

"Close enough."

"I was talking with some woman through here earlier... but she didn't seem to speak English. She was crying. I don't think she understood me."

"I'm sure you helped her just by talking to her," Chimezie said. "They seem to have mainly taken immigrants -- people who will not be noticed to be missing. I came here from Africa."

"I thought that place was all dead."

"Not all of it." Chimezie paused for a moment. "Things are very bad there, but the Transcendents -- the Demons -- had no interest in it. Still, I came here looking to be part of the civilized world. All I found was evil, though." He was silent again. "I should never have left my home."

"No. Someone has got to stop this, and it might as well be us. I got good news on that. I..." Doug thought a moment how best to express things. "Um... I like saw into another realm when Ronove tried to destroy my soul. I could see it wasn't working, and I saw him and he's like nothing... at least wherever I was I was the more powerful one. And I saw the barrier linked to the cube. Even he was intimidated by it. If we could somehow trap them behind it, we'd be free of them for good."

"How would we do that?"

Doug thought for a while. "I guess I don't know. Still, it seems like progress."

"Yes it does. It is what I pray for. Most here are losing faith, though. Ronove's experiments are hard on many. He seems to be trying to study how things in this world can affect the soul such as trauma or physically affecting the brain." His voice trailed off for a moment. "We all live through it, though."

Doug got the message. None of this should go on even a day longer. "I don't know what to do, Chimezie. I saw outside, and I don't even know how my friends will get here. I guess we really have to work on our own plan... except I'm not really good at that sort of thing."

"We must have faith in God. All things are possible through Him."

Doug wondered how long Chimezie had been here asking God to help him, but didn't want to burst the guy's bubble. "I want to believe in stuff like that, but I remember how as a kid I believed in Santa Claus, but I still never got any presents."

"God is real, Doug."

"Then He better do something about all this soon. There's a lot of crap in this world, and if He really has the power, then He should take care of it."

"We must take action," Chimezie said. "And when we have faith, God will help us."

Stuck in a small dark cell, Doug wasn't really sure of any action he could take. He knew there was something he could do -- he saw it -- but he had no idea how. And he had no idea how to figure out how to do it either.

"Do you want me to tell you about Jesus, Doug?"

"Not really." He really didn't want to clutter his head with any other hard to grasp concepts. "He fought evil, right?"

"Yes, and He cast out demons."

"Okay, you can go ahead and tell me about him... but first get away from the toilet for a sec and stop listening."

"Why?"

"I have to pee."

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Hellbender Take Two
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