#tartarus

I know i dont know yousorry

Oh no that's ok! I would love to be German buddies with you! Then I can really lean into my God of Torture job no? Nyhehehehehe!

I am Tartarus btw so it is nice to meet you and I would be honored if you joined the Hell Resources fanclub, the blog @hellresourcespodcast and ALSO down below the podcast itself 👇🏻

The old bus waited beneath Daniel’s window.

No horn. No notebook. No driver calling. Just open doors and yellow light on wet pavement.

Daniel boarded wearing Phil’s coat, but the bus was empty. No passengers from before. No guide. Only the driver and the seat Phil had left behind.

“Am I becoming him?” Daniel asked.

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you’re worried about it.”

The bus stopped for a woman named Leah. She carried a suitcase and a sealed letter written by her dead sister to their dead father. She had kept it for six years because she believed protecting him was love.

Now both of them were gone.

The letter belonged to no one.

Or perhaps it still belonged to her decision.

Leah asked Daniel whether he was the guide.

“No,” he said. “I’m someone riding one stop.”

She wanted him to tell her what to do with the letter. Open it. Burn it. Keep it. Leave it on the bus.

He refused to decide for her.

When she tried to leave the envelope on Phil’s empty seat, Daniel understood what the bus had been collecting: unfinished objects carried by people who believed keeping them was responsibility.

He returned the letter to Leah.

“This belongs with your decision.”

Then he removed Phil’s coat and left it on Phil’s seat.

At the next stop, Daniel and Leah got off.

She walked into the square carrying the letter. Daniel placed the red toy car on top of Phil’s folded coat.

The driver offered him a permanent place.

“You could stay.”

“Would I help people?”

“Yes.”

“Would it matter?”

“Yes.”

“Would I become useful?”

“Yes.”

“Would I know when to leave?”

“No.”

That was the whole trap.

Phil had written:

If I become useful, leave me anyway.

So Daniel refused.

The driver admitted that he had once been a passenger too. A passenger who stayed because someone had to drive.

“Do they?” Daniel asked.

For the first time, the driver said:

“I don’t know.”

The bus left.

Daniel stood on the curb without Phil’s coat, the badge, the notebook, or the red car.

No visible proof of the route.

Just Daniel.

Cold. Hungry. Responsible for the next ordinary choice.

Behind him, somewhere beyond traffic, brakes sighed.

He did not turn around.

Not because the bus was gone.

Because this time, he was.

The narrator was driving to help Max move a compressor when he saw a boy sitting alone at a bus shelter. The boy said he was waiting for route twenty-seven. His father had left him there and promised the bus would take him to his aunt.

There was no route twenty-seven on that street.

The narrator did not take the boy’s phone, demand personal information, or decide what was best for him. He introduced himself, kept his distance, and offered a process the boy could control. The boy watched him enter his aunt’s number and spoke first when she answered.

His aunt was twenty minutes away.

Then the old bus arrived.

No route number. No destination. The same driver behind the wheel. The doors opened.

The boy stood.

“Would you get on?” he asked.

The narrator wanted to. Tartarus had rules. Stops. Instructions. The ordinary world had promises, delays, and people waiting for him to arrive when he said he would.

“Not today,” he said.

The driver closed the doors.

The boy stayed.

When his aunt arrived, the narrator gave him Aaron’s red toy car. Not as a gift. Not as a lesson. Something to keep until he understood who needed it next.

Later, the car returned by itself.

The driver called.

“Am I the last guide?”

“No.”

“Then who is?”

“The last guide is not a person. It is the last time someone returns without staying.”

Outside, the old bus waited again.

The narrator put on Phil’s coat, placed the red car in his pocket, and went downstairs.

Not because he had accepted a permanent role.

Because another return might be required.

The brass key opened a locker in an old municipal bus depot.

Inside were Phil’s coat, his satchel, and dozens of notebooks written by passengers who had traveled through Tartarus before. Different lives. Different rooms. Different instructions on the final pages.

Burn this.

Return this.

Keep this sealed.

My sister does not need this account. I did.

The narrator found Phil’s notebook near the bottom of the satchel.

He did not read the route.

He turned only to the final page.

If I become useful, leave me anyway.

Phil had known what staying would become. A role. A purpose. A way to avoid leaving by making his presence necessary.

Inside the locker was also a locked metal box marked:

For the last guide.

The driver had sealed it years earlier.

The locksmith refused to open it. The lock, he said, was protecting the narrator from pretending he already knew who owned it.

Later, a child called.

Aaron.

He said the red toy car was no longer his.

“Whose is it?”

“The next boy.”

Then the metal box unlocked by itself.

Inside was a driver’s badge with no name, no number, and an empty space where a photograph should be.

Beneath it was one sentence:

The last guide is the passenger who knows how to leave and returns anyway.

The narrator had left the bus.

Then returned to Phil’s objects.

Returned to the route.

Not because he was trapped.

Because someone called.

Because something had been left in his hands.

He closed the box and placed it beneath Phil’s coat.

Then he put the red toy car into his pocket.

Not because it belonged to him.

Because the next boy might ask.

A stranger called from the bus shelter.

He had found a box.

Inside was Phil’s collapsed paper cup, a blank ticket, a black notebook, and Aaron’s red toy car—the toy Phil had already returned to his brother before leaving Tartarus.

On the notebook’s last page, someone had written:

Do not come back for me.

The narrator wanted to search for him immediately. Gratitude became debt. Missing someone became an emergency. The need to help began sounding dangerously similar to the need to remain necessary.

He called Max.

“What exactly are you calling me to override?”

“He helped me.”

“And now he asked you not to follow.”

“What if he needs help?”

“Did he ask?”

“No.”

“Then don’t invent an emergency because being needed feels cleaner than missing him.”

The narrator carried the box home. He did not answer the note. He did not turn the objects into a shrine. He placed the wet paper cup on a saucer because grief does not override furniture.

At 2:13 a.m., an unknown number called.

The driver was on the line.

“Is Phil safe?”

No answer.

“Where is he?”

“Not yours.”

The driver told him to keep what had been returned until the owner asked.

Then the call ended.

Inside Phil’s paper cup, something moved.

A small brass key.

No label. No number. No known door.

For once, the narrator did not immediately try every lock.

He placed the key beside the notebook and returned to bed.

He did not sleep.

But he stayed there.

That was different.

The bus disappeared.

No notebook opened.

That was the first problem.

The narrator stood on a wet street holding the box Anna had returned: passport, charger, glasses, almonds, jumper cables, the small pieces of a life other people had kept functioning for him.

His mother called.

The old answers arrived first: fine, busy, nothing, on my way.

Instead, he told her when he would arrive and promised to call before she had to guess.

At her apartment, he did not deliver a grand confession. He apologized specifically. Then he asked what she needed today.

A prescription.

A plumber.

Two bags of old clothes.

Small things. Real things. Things that did not require a supernatural city.

A former colleague sent an urgent message. The old system wanted him back: only you can solve this.

He sent the file they needed and refused the rest.

Not abandonment.

A boundary.

He called Max, who immediately asked what had broken. Nothing had. That was new.

Max needed help moving a compressor on Saturday.

“What time?”

“Nine.”

“Do you need me, my car, or both?”

“Both. And arrive at eight forty-five.”

The narrator put the gloves in the car immediately.

At home, he unpacked his own life. Passport into the drawer. Charger beside the desk. Umbrella near the door. He found the book Anna had chosen for Claire—the gift Claire believed proved he had seen her.

He did not call Claire.

Sometimes repair is leaving the person alone.

That night, he opened an ordinary blank notebook. It did not write instructions. So he wrote three commitments himself. Small enough to fail. Specific enough to notice.

Then the phone rang.

A stranger asked:

“Are you the owner of the box left at the bus shelter?”

The narrator looked at his empty box.

“I took mine.”

“This one has a paper cup inside.”

Phil.

No notebook opened.

No one told him what to do.

“Don’t move it,” he said. “Tell me exactly where you are.”

The first day without instructions was not over.

It had only stopped pretending ordinary life would be less strange.