HELL

Written by:  P.L.Reed-Wallinger 

The pain was shattering!  I gasped as my foe thrust his knife still deeper into my gut.  The blade burned like a red-hot coal as he withdrew it with cruel clumsiness.  I screamed in sheer agony as the knife plunged once again into the raw bleeding gash in my side.  The pain was so intense it sucked the breath from my lungs. I tried to reach out, to grab my enemy.  I felt nothing but hate!  Blinding, irrational, unmitigated hate.  I wanted to kill him!  NO!  Make him suffer as I was suffering! 

 My whole body was filled with a churning, crushing agony.  I fell to the ground helpless against an overbearing opponent.  He stood above me, legs spread in a victor’s stance.  I lay helpless below him, writhing and squirming like a half-dead insect at the mercy of a more powerful being.

Searing anguish pulsed through my body with each beat of my heart, which grew weaker and less steady as blood pooled around me.  My head reeled and throbbed as though someone beat upon it.  My vision grew dim and my being seemed to float in a vat of sheer misery.  I’m dying, I thought weakly, but couldn’t work up the strength to care.  I closed my eyes and everything turned black.

I was drifting down, down, down.  I glided through space like an autumn leaf finding its way to the ground.  Where was I?  Where was I going?  There was no longer any pain—I felt nothing!  I reached for the wound only to find it…healed!  Where was the torn flesh?  The blood?  What was going on?

I could see nothing.  The world I drifted through was shapeless and void of everything except the blackness—which was all-consuming.  Suddenly my feet touched solidity.  I had landed!  But where?  I tried to pierce the darkness, tried to see, but it was useless.  I couldn’t even find my hand in front of my own face! 

Was that a slight lightening of the darkness?  The world around me, though still black, seemed a less intense hue.  Suddenly I could feel that darkness closing in on me.  I couldn’t see it—but I could feel it!  I tried to run—I couldn’t!  My feet were like lead, and little by little the black walls closed in around me.  They formed a neat little cage—I was trapped!  I clawed at them, trying to tear away at the blackness.  They weren’t solid!  I was shocked.  They weren’t substantial.  They were composed of nothingness.  Black, empty air—and yet—impenetrable!  How?  What was this place?

Suddenly my clothes were torn from by body!  I tried to protest, clawing at them and screaming, but I couldn’t move to retrieve them.  And then they just—disappeared!  I stood bare and shivering in the center of the small, black prison that enclosed me.  Chills ran up and down my spine; a cold sweat covered my brow.  I crouched low, trying to ignore the nausea that clutched at my belly.

 “No!”  I whimpered.  “No.” 

The darkness seemed to lift a little more—ever so slightly—and I sensed, more than saw, something moving into the room.  Something small.  NO!  It was many things!  They were creeping and crawling along the walls.  Moving in a wave of deeper black against the dark gray of the walls.  NOOOOOoooooo!  They were on me.  Crawling along my flesh!  Hundreds—thousands of them! 

          “NO!”  I screamed the denial over and over again.  BUGS!  Hundreds upon hundreds of squirming, slithering, creepy-crawly insects!

          “Oh God!”  I pleaded.  “Make it stop!  Make them go away!”  Was this place hell?  If it was I deserved it—I could admit that much—but where were the flames?  I could accept red-hot flames.  I could bear up under that kind of pain—but not this.  Dear God NO!  NOT THIS!

I ran from corner to corner of that tiny cubicle, trying to hide, trying to flea the horrible creatures that so innocently covered every inch of that room.  I could feel their fragile bodies crunch beneath the weight of my bare feet, and the sound repulsed me beyond words.  I screamed over and over again.  NO!  STOP!  I could feel squirming bodies wriggle along my unprotected flesh and my body shook in violent repulsion.

          “DAMN YOU!”  I screamed.  “Send me to hell!  Send me into those God-damned flames!  NOT THIS!”  Dear God, not this!  “NOT THIS!”

Nausea swept my body over and over and over again.  Sweat fell like rain from my trembling limbs.  The floor was covered with the vomit and sweat of my own suffering.  Hundreds of dead insects floated on the surface of the slime but for each creature that died—two took its place!

My body shook so violently I could not retain my balance, and the stench that filled the room was over-powering!  I fell to the floor in exhaustion only to leap back to my feet, screaming in revulsion. 

          “NO!  NO!  God help me!  Please, help me!  For God’s sake, SOMEONE help me!”

But no one did.  In that dreadful moment I knew!  I was to live out eternity in this place—this hell!  MY hell!  Created from my own fears and weaknesses!  Eternity!  HERE!  Where there was no unconsciousness, no sleep to ease the misery—and no escape!  ETERNITY!  Until time itself should come to an end--and even then?