Kenese Dīng, the left head of the Cerberus, reflected back on what had transpired just moments earlier. "I can't believe we did that," he remarked as their body walked on two legs back away from the adult shop and through the woods on the way to their neighborhood and individual homes.
Rebecca Charmer, the middle head, was looking down at her rose-gold cell phone in their right hand as they one-handed typed out a message to their mom using swipe entry. "Which thing? Winning five hundo, seeing a Nekomate, becoming a Greater Demon, getting comfy with seeing humans as prey?" she asked as she hit send.
Jamal Stanford, the right head topped with red dreads glanced over at their blonde-haired, blue-eyed head that was Becca. "The masturbation?" he asked her. Extending his neck back a little to look behind her and towards Dīng with his black spiked hair for an answer. The black eyes caught the look and the other man nodded. "Yeah, the masturbation," Jay confirmed, then looked forward towards the foggy landscape just ahead of them. "Not like I've never seen a chick masturbate before."
Becca laughed. "Plot twist: you were the girl the whole time!" Their shoulders shrugged, and she just smirked. "How do we count that, anyway? Did I masturbate in front of you? Did you both get me off in a three-way? Was it any combination of hand-job or reach-around? And, by definition, I think we can all agree it was our first threesome!" Ken stuck his tongue out a little between his big fangs while Jay just rolled his eyes. Sliding Rebecca's phone into gap between their right and center breasts, she persisted: "Also, was that because we're, like, a Lust demon?"
The head with green eyes glanced at his friends. "Figured we'd be Pride if we were ever a demon..." he said as they walked the well-worn path and towards cemetery up. The day's sky was bleeding into orange with the sun beginning to touch the horizon in the distance, beyond the forest.
"Guys," Kenny said, getting the attention of the other two heads as their body kept walking with a purposeful stride. "Cerberus guard the gates of hell—or, rather, hades... they aren't tied to the usual seven big sins," he explained, though even he wasn't sure where they fell in a pantheon. Their tail still carried the shopping bag with all their clothing and it hung briefly up over their left shoulder. Ken pulled his cell out of the bag, and the tail went back to swaying behind them. "I think. Also, like I said, pretty sure we're not weak to silver."
Stepping through where a part of the six foot fence had been pulled to the ground, their body stopped as one paw touched the wet earth near to a gravestone at the edge of the cemetery. All three heads looked down at the tingling they felt, like a warm doorknob warning them of a fire in an adjacent room. They took a step back and everything was fine. The three heads looked at each other confused, then took another tentative step forward to the same result.
Becca blinked her blue eyes. "What's that?"
Jay was already answering her as the question before Becky finished: "Graveyard." Waving their right hand through the air and feeling the caused a warming feeling across their fur. "Hallowed ground," he clarified.
Ken glanced to his right at the other two of their heads. "So... go around?"
Rebecca took a second step forwards. "No way," she said. "Greater Demons like us aren't scared of a little hollowed ground." Ken and Jay both looked at each other, their necks extending so they could see each other in front of Becky. Then they both turned to look at her. "What? Anyone who sees us is gunna think we're a demon... might as well roll with it." She motioned with the right hand no one else was currently using towards the wide, iron-barred plot of land. "Besides... going around is gunna waste too much time... the party's 'bout to start and St. Panteletubby's graveyard is huge."
Jamal shook his head. "Panteleimon, Bek," he sighed, His grandmother attended service twice a week, as did he on holidays. "But, fine... just dodge the church... and don't be surprised if the front gate is locked..."
"One sec," Ken said, tapping on his small, midnight black cellphone with their left hand. "Was letting mom know that I'm dropping stuff off, but I forgot her and dad are out tonight." Sliding Kenese's cell phone into a pocket of their denim shorts, they leaned forward, putting both hands on the ground. This was Kenny's doing and the other two knew it. He grinned, speaking in his newly feminine voice. "And," he began, tightening their tail around the MTM bag, "Go fast!"
With that the Cerberus was off across the graveyard and clearly heading towards the corner of the housing development where their single and double-wide houses were situated. There breathing settled into the motion of four-legged travel, their sizable bust-line kept in check by their sports bra. Each time one of their four limbs hit the earth, there was slightly more burning feeling than the last. The air was growing hot and as they neared the church proper, a glow of white light began to fill their vision.
Instinctually, the Cerberus went wider then, quickly moving to run along the old metal fence from the inside, the wet ground that they'd touched at the end of the yard seeming to increase in moistness at the very edge of the cemetary. As they came up to the front gate, with the light of the church dimming behind them, they could hear water moving, and their three sets of eyes each followed a ghostly creek as it moved against the slope of the land, in the ditch outside, upwards towards the front drive of the church.
"The hell is that?" the three asked softly at once.
Moving up to the heavy gate at the edge of the walkway, there was a space of land ahead of some of the parking places that to Jamal's eyes just days before would been an empty patch of grass. Technically, it still was... but like the ghostly water that was flowing up hill, this patch of ground was a misty darkness that had a ramp of trodden dirt and stones that lead down under the ground. The exterior archway over the tunnel curved up just under the bottom rail and pickets of the big metal fence.
At the edges of the path were the ghostly flow of water, now turning the corner up above the doorway to fall as small waterfalls to either sides of the arch before flowing into the ground beneath. The Cerberus, for their part, took a step towards the top of the ramp. Smells of death, burning embers, and something they had no words for all came to their gifted canine noses. There was a 'rightness' to it, like returning home after a long journey.
"Stop," the three said in unison, each realizing they were about to take the entrance downward. They hugged themselves as they backed up a few steps onto the uncomfortable warmth of hollowed ground. "What is it?"
Jamal had some idea, and turned his head to the left to look at his friends. "It's a path to the underworld... but probably not for everyone since the going supernatural assumption is that everyone's afterlife is valid in some regard," he offered, turning his head to look back towards the church behind him. "Gotta be something to do with Christians embracing so many pagan beliefs over time..."
Rebecca took a deep breath for the three of them. "It beckoned us home..." she realized, motioning towards the path with their right hand. "That's scary. We're not really a demon... yet we felt the call. It was all 'you're break is over, get back to the register' and shit," Becca said, her blue eyes glancing at each of her friends. "What's with the wetlands and spooky water lining the plot?" she asked, staring at the water.
Dīng leaned just his head forward with the added distance his neck gave him to do so... looking down into the tunnel and how the water flowed as creeks on either side of the path going down within. "Styx," he offered, leaning back to turn his black eyes towards his friends. "Or, more like, tributaries to the river, Styx... the one dead have to be ferried across."
Running their right hand through his dreads, Jamal shook his head. "But this doesn't make any sense," he implored to the other two. "This is Baptist church... we are we seeing a 'land of the dead' Greek-situation here? Don't Christians, like, 'go towards the light'?" he wondered. "Holy shit, I mean... why don't people already know these answers if simple costumes from a costume shop can give them sight like this?"
Rebecca used that same right hand of theirs to put against her muzzle, thinking. "Maybe it's not real? Maybe this is just how the demon whose skin we're in sees the world? Maybe everyone does see the world differently and the afterlife too? As an employee of hell or hades, maybe we're just perceiving things in a way that makes sense for demons?" She glanced at their two other heads, then shrugged their shoulders.
Dīng leaned in and turned his head to look directly into Becca's eyes: "'Demon whose skin were in'?"
Jamal agreed. "Makes sense, really," he said, looking around at all the graves and the faint light coming off the church from this distance. "How else are you gunna make a one hundred percent accurate costume that has all these nuances in it?" he asked rhetorically. "Skin a demon, probably."
Kenese sighed and he put their hands on their hips. "Really wasn't expecting a costume with a side of existential dread..." He looked over to Jay. "I mean, it's neat and all. But... well, whatever let's get going."