Corbin Kohl Cornered In Hell, book 3 of the fun low-fantasy cozy mystery series by Megan Bledsoe

Corbin Kohl Cornered In Hell by Megan Bledsoe is a fun low-fantasy cozy mystery full of heart, humor, and optimism no matter your circumstances. The third book in the series.

Corbin Kohl Corned In Hell is Book 3 in the guaranteed-to-make-you-laugh-out-loud fun low-fantasy cozy mystery series Corbin Kohl In Hell. The fourth book is coming. For updates…

Book 2 — Book 4

Corbin Kohl Cornered In Hell – Sample Chapter

Chapter 1

The guy behind the cafeteria’s sneeze guard served me a slice of sheet cake and a fizzy drink in a bottle with most of its label peeled off.

The cake was yellow and covered in some kind of beige frosting. The drink was green, lime green, and the bottle was maybe eight ounces at best. I wasn’t sure either item warranted the line out the door. 

I’d seen the Management Building’s cafeteria this busy before‍—twice. Once when they’d served lasagna and another time when they’d served pizza. When I’d seen the line today‍—so long that the people at the end of it were stuck walking backwards on the escalator up from the lobby‍—I’d gotten excited. A change-up from the usual gruel and oatmeal? Yes, please. 

But I should’ve known better. On both those days, the smell of carbs and tangy tomato had been so strong and so delicious that it had cut right through the City’s perma-stink of sulfur. I’d smelled the goodness from blocks away.

Not today, though. There’d been no sweet carb smell this morning. Not even when I was standing next to the sneeze guard, right in front of all those slices of cake.

Couldn’t say cake wasn’t better than gruel, though. So I told the serving guy thanks and carried my tray into the dining room. 

The dining room had wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows, and my favorite table was the round one in the front right corner that looked down onto the streets below. Six of the eight chairs were taken, but that was fine by me. I only needed the two, and I like meeting new people. And on days like today, when the cafeteria was so crowded that people had to share tables, I actually got to meet some.

As I weaved through all the packed tables to the front corner, I scoped out all the people sporking into their cake. Were they liking it? Was it gonna taste better than it looked?

I don’t know what I was expecting‍—nods and mmm sounds and happy little fist-pumping spork dances‍—but the expressions I saw were… inconclusive. People seemed happy‍—or happier‍—to be eating cake, but they didn’t seem to be particularly enjoying the cake itself.

Those I saw drinking the drink, though? They made expressions I recognized: the wide-eyed, open-mouthed gasp of someone who’d just gulped down their first taste of throat-burning whiskey.

Interesting.

I set my tray on the table and took a seat, but I didn’t scoot it in. I just sat there at a distance and stared at the cake and the bottle of green stuff‍—whatever it was. 

The people at my table were eating it. Four of them with their free hand in their laps, the other two with their forearm on the table‍—but they were all eating it, contentedly staring down at their plates as they chewed. 

I looked up to see if Annie had gotten here yet. Surely she would’ve taken the stairs like I had rather than standing in that long line on the escalator. I’d called up from the lobby to tell her about the food rush at least ten minutes ago. If anyone had heard anything worth knowing before consuming today’s menu, it would be her.

“You gonna eat that?” the guy sitting next to me said. 

He looked college-aged and had really light blond hair, what my grandma would have called a towhead, and like everyone in the cafeteria‍—and most everyone in the City for that matter‍—he was wearing shorts. Some people who work out of the Management Building wore business shorts, but this guy was wearing surf shorts covered with big pink orchids and an orange T-shirt with a faded blue dinosaur on the front. Stegosaurus, if I wasn’t mistaken.

In other words, he was dressed more like me. 

Me? I was wearing one of my homemade Lucky shirts, this one a pale yellow with a handwritten purple grape-juice stain on the chest that said Lucky, and my blue, five-pocket, zip-fly Bermuda shorts. They were my least favorite pair of shorts‍—the cotton was awfully thick for the scorching heat being pumped out by the Pit at the center of the City, just five blocks away‍—but my other shorts were still drying in my bathroom.

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “How was it?”

You’d think that since he was asking me for mine, it must’ve been pretty good. But he looked at me like he didn’t understand the question, and then he said, “It’s cake.”

“Yeah… and? Is it any good?”

He gave me one of those jerky, eye-popping forward head-juts that, to me, come off as rude and never really answer the question. They say something more like Well, duh, why are you asking me? It was odd and a little more intense than the cake situation called for. 

I looked at the woman sitting next to him and extended the question to her. “Is it?”

She shrugged and looked back down at her plate, sporked in another bite. Almost like she was doing it out of duty.

I looked around the table. “I mean, are you guys enjoying it, or is it just another day’s sustenance?”

“Man, just eat it and shut up about it,” said the guy sitting across from me. He sporked in his last bite, downed the last of his green drink with just the tiniest flinch, and got up from the table.

I stared after him as he crossed the room in an ash-tinted white shirt and blue shorts, abruptly dodging people like he used to play basketball.

“Am I missing something?” I asked aloud. I mean, yeah, we were in Hell‍—or someplace like it‍—and surliness was to be expected, I guess, but… surliness about cake?

Just then, I caught a glimpse of a tiny person with a dark, purple-tinted pixie cut, dressed in denim shorts overalls. She dodged people as she made her way toward me through the tables.

“Hey,” Annie said, coming around the table to take the seat next to mine. “Sorry it took me so long. Sherry wanted me to take something up to the penthouse.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “No cake?”

Annie side-eyed my cake and said, “Cake’s made with eggs, Corbin, and dairy. Now I don’t do eggs or dairy, but I also haven’t seen any chickens or cows round these parts, either. Have you?”

“Nope.” If there’s one thing the City is missing‍—and it’s missing a lot of things‍—it’s animals of any kind.

“Not to mention, that frosting is the color of oatmeal.”

“Beige?”

“Whatever. And that stuff”‍—she flicked at the curled remains of the peeled-off label on my green drink‍—“is just straight-up artificially dyed saccharine nasty.”

Rather than argue that I was pretty sure it was something a little stronger than saccharine, although probably just as nasty, I just nodded. 

“You still want my cake?” I said to the guy next to me.

He shrugged, seemingly indifferent about it now, except he couldn’t take his eyes off my plate. I puzzled at him for a second but then figured whatever and slid my tray toward him. 

He dress-right-dressed the plate in front of him, then picked up his spork and sliced off his first bite. And from the look on his face while he chewed, he might as well have been eating plain oatmeal.

I don’t know. The whole thing gave me a weird feeling. I just didn’t get it.

“You want to get out of here?” I asked Annie.

“Yeah,” she said. “This place is giving me the creeps.”

The cafeteria normally gave her the creeps, or at least it had recently, ever since we got the idea that we were not only being watched but scrutinized by Management when we were in here, the only place we were officially allowed to get food. But I didn’t think that’s what she was talking about right now.

It was the people. The people eating the cake. Carrying it to their tables and eating it like automatons. It was creeping me out, too.