Cat's Claw by Amber Benson Page A

different cultures and religions were way more alike than they were different.
    Afterward, my dad sat down with the three of us, Thalia, Clio, and myself, and explained that Mr. Campbell, who he promised was just a normal human being with no supernatural ties whatsoever, had hit on a very essential truth: that mankind was all the same on the inside, no matter how different they seemed on the outside.
    It was only years later, when I was a freshman at Sarah Lawrence, that I found Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces sitting proudly on a shelf at a used bookstore and remembered so vividly the night that I had first learned that Death was an equal opportunity employer.
    Joseph Campbell had the right idea. All you had to do was hang out in the Afterlife for a little while and you’d see that no matter what mask you happened to be wearing, it was always just that . . . a mask. Underneath it, we were all the same.
    “I wanna go home!!” the Goth girl shrieked, making my ears ring and reminding me that while we might be the same on the inside, some of us were definitely more annoying on the outside.
    “I so did not, like, ask to die,” the girl said, her cadence like that of a Valley Girl on speed, “so, like, send me back right this instant! ”
    I realized that the girl was obviously the leader of the group because, along with being the most vocal of the three, she was also the most aggressive. As I watched openmouthed, she marched right up to Cerberus, who was waiting patiently by the towering stone gates, and demanded once again that he send her back to Earth.
    While the girl screeched, the two boys she had come with appeared to be about to pee on themselves in terror. I’m sure that during all the Black Magic summoning parties they’d had they’d never really expected to be calling up any beasties from the depths of Hell. Now, faced with something straight out of the Clash of the Titans movie, they didn’t have a clue what to do with themselves.
    I couldn’t really blame them for their fear. Cerberus was a pretty terrifying fellow. With three monstrous dog heads and a humongous, muscled body, he resembled an overgrown black Lab that was ready to rumble at a moment’s notice. Believe me when I say that he was definitely a force to be reckoned with.
    I had spent enough time with Cerberus to know that two of the giant dog’s heads were dumber than a bag of rocks but relatively normal looking, while the main head, old “Snarly head,” as I liked to call him, was supersmart but totally vicious. Its one yellow-colored eye shone like a beacon from the middle of its head, and every time it spoke, it revealed two rows of jagged, limb-biting-off-ly sharp teeth.
    As the Goth girl continued with her abrasive invective, I waited for Cerberus to bite her head off or something equally as gory, but instead, he just let the girl go on yammering.
    The girl didn’t seem at all threatened by the massive three-headed dog—rather the opposite, actually. She just kept running her mouth off while Snarly head stared at her. Of course, I suppose when two of the dog’s heads were engaged in licking their balls, there was less to be frightened of.
    I didn’t quite understand why Snarly head was letting the Goth girl drone on until I realized that Snarly head must be impressed by the headstrong girl’s lack of fear, not upset by it. Old Snarly was enjoying her diatribe because forthrightness was the one thing he responded to in people—which only made me wish I’d done my research before I used subterfuge to try to steal Runt.
    Maybe then I wouldn’t owe the guy a favor.
    “I have no interest in whether you wanted to die or not. You’re dead,” Snarly head said sagely.
    The girl, shocked, not by Snarly’s words but by its eloquent speaking voice, shut her mouth for the first time since I’d gotten there.
    One of the boys reached out and pulled on the girl’s sleeve.
    “Don’t make him mad, Chanduthra. He