You are going to be low on energy as you go through any detox and you will have to supplement your previous toxic intake with healthy nutrients and vitamin supplements.
Try to eat at least one nutritious meal per day and stay hydrated with lots of water. You want to flush these things out of your system and water is the best way to make it happen quickly.
You are not going to want to go to the store within the first few days, so if possible, plan ahead or enlist help from someone close to you that can run to the store if you need them to.
These recipes are easy to prepare and are full of natural vitamins and protein. You're not going to get everything from food alone, so taking a multivitamin and Vitamin C is recommended for your additional dietary supplements.
You're welcome to use this for any detox, although it is designed for opiate withdrawal. When you get back to your old self again, try to continue this daily ritual of preparing your meals. It's not only healthier, but is also a cheaper option then eating out!
Here's a 14-day plan with healthy meals, including ingredients and steps to prepare each dish.

Day 1: Grilled Chicken Salad

Ingredients: - Boneless, skinless chicken breast - Mixed salad greens - Cherry tomatoes - Cucumber, sliced - Red onion, thinly sliced - Olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing
Preparation: 1. Season the chicken breast with salt, pepper, and your choice of herbs. 2. Grill the chicken until fully cooked. 3. Slice the grilled chicken into strips. 4. Toss mixed salad greens, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and red onion in a bowl. 5. Top the salad with the sliced grilled chicken. 6. Drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing over the salad.

Day 2: Quinoa and Veggie Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Quinoa - Mixed vegetables (broccoli, bell peppers, carrots) - Tofu or chicken (optional) - Soy sauce - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Olive oil
Preparation: 1. Cook quinoa according to package instructions. 2. In a pan, sauté garlic and ginger in olive oil. 3. Add tofu or chicken (if using) and cook until browned. 4. Add mixed vegetables and stir-fry until they're cooked but still crisp. 5. Mix in cooked quinoa and soy sauce. 6. Stir until well combined and heated through.

Day 3: Lentil Soup

Ingredients: - Red lentils - Carrots, diced - Celery, diced - Onion, diced - Garlic, minced - Vegetable broth - Cumin, coriander, and turmeric (spices) - Fresh parsley, chopped
Preparation: 1. Rinse red lentils under cold water. 2. In a large pot, sauté onions and garlic until softened. 3. Add carrots, celery, and spices. Cook for a few minutes. 4. Pour in vegetable broth and add red lentils. 5. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until lentils are tender. 6. Garnish with fresh parsley before serving.

Day 4: Baked Salmon with Roasted Vegetables

Ingredients: - Salmon fillets - Sweet potatoes, diced - Brussels sprouts, halved - Olive oil - Lemon juice - Dill (fresh or dried) - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C). 2. Place salmon fillets on a baking sheet. 3. Toss sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts with olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt, and pepper. 4. Spread vegetables around the salmon on the baking sheet. 5. Bake in the preheated oven for about 15-20 minutes or until salmon is cooked through.

Day 5: Chickpea and Spinach Curry

Ingredients: - Chickpeas (canned or cooked) - Spinach - Onion, diced - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Coconut milk - Curry powder, cumin, and coriander (spices) - Basmati rice
Preparation: 1. Cook basmati rice according to package instructions. 2. In a pan, sauté onions, garlic, and ginger until softened. 3. Add chickpeas and spices, stirring for a couple of minutes. 4. Pour in coconut milk and bring to a simmer. 5. Add spinach and cook until wilted. 6. Serve the chickpea and spinach curry over cooked basmati rice.

Day 6: Turkey and Vegetable Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Ground turkey - Broccoli florets - Snap peas - Bell peppers, sliced - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Garlic, minced - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. In a wok or pan, sauté minced garlic in sesame oil. 3. Add ground turkey and cook until browned. 4. Add broccoli, snap peas, and bell peppers. Stir-fry until veggies are tender-crisp. 5. Pour in soy sauce and toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.

Day 7: Caprese Salad with Grilled Chicken

Ingredients: - Boneless, skinless chicken breast - Tomatoes, sliced - Fresh mozzarella, sliced - Fresh basil leaves - Balsamic glaze - Olive oil - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Season chicken breast with salt and pepper. 2. Grill the chicken until fully cooked. 3. Slice the grilled chicken into strips. 4. Arrange sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and grilled chicken on a plate. 5. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic glaze. 6. Garnish with fresh basil leaves.

Day 8: Vegetable and Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients: - Bell peppers - Quinoa - Black beans (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Corn kernels - Cherry tomatoes, diced - Cumin, chili powder, and paprika (spices) - Shredded cheddar cheese (optional)
Preparation: 1. Cook quinoa according to package instructions. 2. Cut bell peppers in half and remove seeds. 3. In a bowl, mix cooked quinoa, black beans, corn, cherry tomatoes, and spices. 4. Stuff each pepper half with the quinoa mixture. 5. Optional: sprinkle shredded cheddar cheese on top. 6. Bake in the oven at 375°F (190°C) for 20-25 minutes or until peppers are tender.

Day 9: Shrimp and Asparagus Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Shrimp, peeled and deveined - Asparagus spears, trimmed and cut into pieces - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. In a wok or pan, sauté minced garlic and grated ginger in sesame oil. 3. Add shrimp and cook until pink. 4. Add asparagus and stir-fry until crisp-tender. 5. Pour in soy sauce and toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.

Day 10: Greek Salad with Grilled Chicken

Ingredients: - Chicken breast, grilled and sliced - Cucumbers, diced - Cherry tomatoes, halved - Red onion, thinly sliced - Feta cheese, crumbled - Kalamata olives - Olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing
Preparation: 1. Grill chicken breast until fully cooked, then slice. 2. In a bowl, combine diced cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, sliced red onion, feta cheese, and Kalamata olives. 3. Add the sliced grilled chicken on top. 4. Drizzle with olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing.

Day 11: Black Bean and Vegetable Quesadillas

Ingredients: - Whole wheat tortillas - Black beans (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Bell peppers, diced - Red onion, diced - Corn kernels - Shredded Mexican cheese blend - Cumin, chili powder, and garlic powder (spices) - Fresh cilantro, chopped (optional)
Preparation: 1. In a bowl, mix black beans, diced bell peppers, red onion, corn, and spices. 2. Lay out whole wheat tortillas. 3. Spread the black bean and vegetable mixture on one half of each tortilla. 4. Sprinkle shredded cheese on top. 5. Fold the tortillas in half, creating quesadillas. 6. In a skillet, cook each side until the tortillas are golden and the cheese is melted. 7. Garnish with fresh cilantro if desired.

Day 12: Eggplant and Chickpea Curry

Ingredients: - Eggplant, diced - Chickpeas (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Coconut milk - Curry powder, turmeric, and cayenne pepper (spices) - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Basmati rice
Preparation: 1. Cook basmati rice according to package instructions. 2. In a pot, sauté minced garlic and grated ginger. 3. Add diced eggplant, chickpeas, and spices. Stir well. 4. Pour in coconut milk and let it simmer until the eggplant is tender. 5. Serve the curry over cooked basmati rice.

Day 13: Spinach and Feta Stuffed Chicken Breast

Ingredients: - Chicken breasts, boneless and skinless - Fresh spinach leaves - Feta cheese, crumbled - Garlic, minced - Olive oil - Lemon juice - Dill (fresh or dried) - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). 2. Butterfly the chicken breasts by slicing them horizontally. 3. In a bowl, mix fresh spinach, crumbled feta, minced garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt, and pepper. 4. Stuff each chicken breast with the spinach and feta mixture. 5. Secure with toothpicks and place in a baking dish. 6. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

Day 14: Vegetable and Tofu Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Extra-firm tofu, cubed - Broccoli florets - Carrots, julienned - Snow peas - Bell peppers, sliced - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Ginger, grated - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. Press tofu to remove excess water, then cube it. 3. In a wok or pan, sauté tofu in sesame oil until golden. 4. Add broccoli, carrots, snow peas, and bell peppers. Stir-fry until vegetables are crisp-tender. 5. Pour in soy sauce and grated ginger. Toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.
Feel free to continue exploring new recipes or repeat your favorite ones. This meal plan aims to provide a variety of nutritious and delicious options. Adjust portion sizes to fit your needs, and always consult with a healthcare professional or nutritionist for personalized advice. Enjoy your healthy and satisfying meals!

I have an Associate in Business Management and am starting school again on July 1 and I CANNOT decide which degree I want to get!
B.A. in Psychology conc. Substance Abuse OR B.A. in Human Services conc. Substance Abuse
OR
B.A. in Graphic Design OR B.A. in Graphic Design conc. User Experience Design OR B.A. in Graphic Design conc. in Web Design
I know that's quite a few options but not only can I not decide on the Degree, I can't decide on the concentration. I know I want to work from home. My fiance and I have owned our own business for 7 years now remodeling homes, but the wonderful economy has proven too shitty and we are out of jobs and struggling to pay our bills. While I realize I may be returning to work for someone else (gut-wrenching & heartbreaking) while in school, I do not want to work for someone else, especially in an office or brick-and-mortar location.
I love computers, I love designing things on the computer, i.e. business cards, greeting cards, and flyers. I've always wanted to learn how to create websites, but never have.
I am also a recovering addict. 20 years off of methamphetamine & 8 years off of opiates and benzodiazepines. So there lies my draw to substance abuse counseling. I feel like I'd only be interested in working with individuals or groups of addicts who are in a program, i.e. detox, or rehab. Is it logical to think that I could possibly do counseling sessions remotely via video conferencing, whether it be individuals or groups?
My fiance will be going back to work with the local electrician's union. So I don't necessarily have to make a whole lot of money. Just enough to combine with his and live comfortably.
Any advice, opinions, thoughts, or ideas would be greatly appreciated!!
T.I.A.

Resume
I have tried multiple times to update my resume and am sharing the latest one. Please suggest improvements. Thank You!!

You are going to be low on energy as you go through any detox and you will have to supplement your previous toxic intake with healthy nutrients and vitamin supplements.
Try to eat at least one nutritious meal per day and stay hydrated with lots of water. You want to flush these things out of your system and water is the best way to make it happen quickly.
You are not going to want to go to the store within the first few days, so if possible, plan ahead or enlist help from someone close to you that can run to the store if you need them to.
These recipes are easy to prepare and are full of natural vitamins and protein. You're not going to get everything from food alone, so taking a multivitamin and Vitamin C is recommended for your additional dietary supplements.
You're welcome to use this for any detox, although it is designed for opiate withdrawal. When you get back to your old self again, try to continue this daily ritual of preparing your meals. It's not only healthier, but is also a cheaper option then eating out!
Here's a 14-day plan with healthy meals, including ingredients and steps to prepare each dish.

Day 1: Grilled Chicken Salad

Ingredients: - Boneless, skinless chicken breast - Mixed salad greens - Cherry tomatoes - Cucumber, sliced - Red onion, thinly sliced - Olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing
Preparation: 1. Season the chicken breast with salt, pepper, and your choice of herbs. 2. Grill the chicken until fully cooked. 3. Slice the grilled chicken into strips. 4. Toss mixed salad greens, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and red onion in a bowl. 5. Top the salad with the sliced grilled chicken. 6. Drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing over the salad.

Day 2: Quinoa and Veggie Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Quinoa - Mixed vegetables (broccoli, bell peppers, carrots) - Tofu or chicken (optional) - Soy sauce - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Olive oil
Preparation: 1. Cook quinoa according to package instructions. 2. In a pan, sauté garlic and ginger in olive oil. 3. Add tofu or chicken (if using) and cook until browned. 4. Add mixed vegetables and stir-fry until they're cooked but still crisp. 5. Mix in cooked quinoa and soy sauce. 6. Stir until well combined and heated through.

Day 3: Lentil Soup

Ingredients: - Red lentils - Carrots, diced - Celery, diced - Onion, diced - Garlic, minced - Vegetable broth - Cumin, coriander, and turmeric (spices) - Fresh parsley, chopped
Preparation: 1. Rinse red lentils under cold water. 2. In a large pot, sauté onions and garlic until softened. 3. Add carrots, celery, and spices. Cook for a few minutes. 4. Pour in vegetable broth and add red lentils. 5. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until lentils are tender. 6. Garnish with fresh parsley before serving.

Day 4: Baked Salmon with Roasted Vegetables

Ingredients: - Salmon fillets - Sweet potatoes, diced - Brussels sprouts, halved - Olive oil - Lemon juice - Dill (fresh or dried) - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C). 2. Place salmon fillets on a baking sheet. 3. Toss sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts with olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt, and pepper. 4. Spread vegetables around the salmon on the baking sheet. 5. Bake in the preheated oven for about 15-20 minutes or until salmon is cooked through.

Day 5: Chickpea and Spinach Curry

Ingredients: - Chickpeas (canned or cooked) - Spinach - Onion, diced - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Coconut milk - Curry powder, cumin, and coriander (spices) - Basmati rice
Preparation: 1. Cook basmati rice according to package instructions. 2. In a pan, sauté onions, garlic, and ginger until softened. 3. Add chickpeas and spices, stirring for a couple of minutes. 4. Pour in coconut milk and bring to a simmer. 5. Add spinach and cook until wilted. 6. Serve the chickpea and spinach curry over cooked basmati rice.

Day 6: Turkey and Vegetable Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Ground turkey - Broccoli florets - Snap peas - Bell peppers, sliced - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Garlic, minced - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. In a wok or pan, sauté minced garlic in sesame oil. 3. Add ground turkey and cook until browned. 4. Add broccoli, snap peas, and bell peppers. Stir-fry until veggies are tender-crisp. 5. Pour in soy sauce and toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.

Day 7: Caprese Salad with Grilled Chicken

Ingredients: - Boneless, skinless chicken breast - Tomatoes, sliced - Fresh mozzarella, sliced - Fresh basil leaves - Balsamic glaze - Olive oil - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Season chicken breast with salt and pepper. 2. Grill the chicken until fully cooked. 3. Slice the grilled chicken into strips. 4. Arrange sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and grilled chicken on a plate. 5. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic glaze. 6. Garnish with fresh basil leaves.

Day 8: Vegetable and Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients: - Bell peppers - Quinoa - Black beans (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Corn kernels - Cherry tomatoes, diced - Cumin, chili powder, and paprika (spices) - Shredded cheddar cheese (optional)
Preparation: 1. Cook quinoa according to package instructions. 2. Cut bell peppers in half and remove seeds. 3. In a bowl, mix cooked quinoa, black beans, corn, cherry tomatoes, and spices. 4. Stuff each pepper half with the quinoa mixture. 5. Optional: sprinkle shredded cheddar cheese on top. 6. Bake in the oven at 375°F (190°C) for 20-25 minutes or until peppers are tender.

Day 9: Shrimp and Asparagus Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Shrimp, peeled and deveined - Asparagus spears, trimmed and cut into pieces - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. In a wok or pan, sauté minced garlic and grated ginger in sesame oil. 3. Add shrimp and cook until pink. 4. Add asparagus and stir-fry until crisp-tender. 5. Pour in soy sauce and toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.

Day 10: Greek Salad with Grilled Chicken

Ingredients: - Chicken breast, grilled and sliced - Cucumbers, diced - Cherry tomatoes, halved - Red onion, thinly sliced - Feta cheese, crumbled - Kalamata olives - Olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing
Preparation: 1. Grill chicken breast until fully cooked, then slice. 2. In a bowl, combine diced cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, sliced red onion, feta cheese, and Kalamata olives. 3. Add the sliced grilled chicken on top. 4. Drizzle with olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing.

Day 11: Black Bean and Vegetable Quesadillas

Ingredients: - Whole wheat tortillas - Black beans (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Bell peppers, diced - Red onion, diced - Corn kernels - Shredded Mexican cheese blend - Cumin, chili powder, and garlic powder (spices) - Fresh cilantro, chopped (optional)
Preparation: 1. In a bowl, mix black beans, diced bell peppers, red onion, corn, and spices. 2. Lay out whole wheat tortillas. 3. Spread the black bean and vegetable mixture on one half of each tortilla. 4. Sprinkle shredded cheese on top. 5. Fold the tortillas in half, creating quesadillas. 6. In a skillet, cook each side until the tortillas are golden and the cheese is melted. 7. Garnish with fresh cilantro if desired.

Day 12: Eggplant and Chickpea Curry

Ingredients: - Eggplant, diced - Chickpeas (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Coconut milk - Curry powder, turmeric, and cayenne pepper (spices) - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Basmati rice
Preparation: 1. Cook basmati rice according to package instructions. 2. In a pot, sauté minced garlic and grated ginger. 3. Add diced eggplant, chickpeas, and spices. Stir well. 4. Pour in coconut milk and let it simmer until the eggplant is tender. 5. Serve the curry over cooked basmati rice.

Day 13: Spinach and Feta Stuffed Chicken Breast

Ingredients: - Chicken breasts, boneless and skinless - Fresh spinach leaves - Feta cheese, crumbled - Garlic, minced - Olive oil - Lemon juice - Dill (fresh or dried) - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). 2. Butterfly the chicken breasts by slicing them horizontally. 3. In a bowl, mix fresh spinach, crumbled feta, minced garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt, and pepper. 4. Stuff each chicken breast with the spinach and feta mixture. 5. Secure with toothpicks and place in a baking dish. 6. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

Day 14: Vegetable and Tofu Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Extra-firm tofu, cubed - Broccoli florets - Carrots, julienned - Snow peas - Bell peppers, sliced - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Ginger, grated - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. Press tofu to remove excess water, then cube it. 3. In a wok or pan, sauté tofu in sesame oil until golden. 4. Add broccoli, carrots, snow peas, and bell peppers. Stir-fry until vegetables are crisp-tender. 5. Pour in soy sauce and grated ginger. Toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.
Feel free to continue exploring new recipes or repeat your favorite ones. This meal plan aims to provide a variety of nutritious and delicious options. Adjust portion sizes to fit your needs, and always consult with a healthcare professional or nutritionist for personalized advice. Enjoy your healthy and satisfying meals!

Article Link: https://thestreetreports.com/intelligent-bio-solutions-inc-nasdaq-inbs-advancing-us-fda-process-featured-among-top-health-care-movers/
Intelligent Bio Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ: INBS), a medical technology company, offers rapid, intelligent, and non-invasive testing solutions. On May 29, the company announced its success in recruiting and starting the screening of subjects for its pharmacokinetic (PK) study. This study is a crucial step in Intelligent Bio Solutions’ FDA 510(k) regulatory clearance process. The dedicated team worked diligently to ensure the study’s design met FDA standards.
On Thursday, May 30, 2024, INBS closed up 5.68% on lower-than-normal volume, triggering a Stochastic Buy Signal, a bullish indicator suggesting the stock is oversold and may present a buying opportunity. Additionally, Intelligent Bio Solutions Inc. (NASDAQ: INBS) was highlighted among Health Care Stocks in Thursday’s After-Market Session Movers by Benzinga, along with OneMedNet Corp (NASDAQ: ONMD), Abeona Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: ABEO), BiomX Inc. (NYSE: PHGE), MyMD Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: MYMD), and Adaptimmune Therapeutics (NASDAQ: ADAP) among others, Read more.
The PK study aims to offer a detailed understanding of opiate metabolism, distribution, and excretion, particularly in human sweat. Human fingerprint sweat specimens will be collected and analyzed as part of the study. The results will be compared with those from urine, blood, and saliva specimens. The company’s Intelligent Drug Screening System leads in non-invasive drug screening solutions. Intelligent Bio Solutions expects the PK study to be completed in June.
On May 23, Intelligent Bio Solutions announced key performance indicators from its UK operations, highlighting significant growth in the drug screening sector. For the nine months ending March 31, 2024, the company reported $2.38 million in revenue, a 193% year-over-year increase, with 93% from UK operations. High-margin cartridges accounted for 49% of total revenue. Intelligent Bio Solutions provided fast, intelligent, and non-invasive drug testing to over 400 UK customers across 15 industries, acquiring 111 new accounts in the 12 months ending March 31, 2024. B2B referrals significantly drove this growth.

News Link: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/05/29/2889878/0/en/Intelligent-Bio-Solutions-Successfully-Completes-Recruitment-and-Begins-Subject-Screening-for-FDA-510-k-Pharmacokinetic-PK-Study.html
NEW YORK, May 29, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Intelligent Bio Solutions Inc. (Nasdaq: INBS) ("INBS" or the "Company"), a medical technology company delivering intelligent, rapid, non-invasive testing solutions, today announced the successful recruitment and commencement of screening for subjects in its pharmacokinetic (PK) study, a critical component of the Company's FDA 510(k) regulatory pathway for clearance.
Harry Simeonidis, President and CEO at INBS, commented, "As we navigate the FDA 510(k) regulatory pathway, we are proud to announce the successful recruitment and commencement of screening for subjects in our PK study, a key milestone in our clinical study plan. Our dedicated team has worked tirelessly to ensure the study's design meets the rigorous standards set by the FDA. As we continue to make strides in our clinical study plan, we look forward to completing the screening phase, proceeding to the next phase of the plan, and moving closer to bringing our innovative technology to the market."
The PK study will provide a more thorough understanding of opiate metabolism, distribution, and excretion, particularly in human sweat. The study will collect and analyze human fingerprint sweat specimens and compare the results with other specimen matrices: blood, saliva, and urine.
"We appreciate the ongoing collaborative effort and diligence of our CRO partner, Cliantha Research, in executing this study," said Daniel Brown, Head of Clinical Affairs at INBS. "We look forward to analyzing the laboratory results soon."
The Intelligent Fingerprinting Drug Screening System, which includes a drug screening cartridge, a DSR-Plus fluorescence reader, and a collection kit for laboratory analysis, is at the forefront of non-invasive drug testing technology. The Company expects subject screening for the PK study to be completed in June 2024.

You are going to be low on energy as you go through any detox and you will have to supplement your previous toxic intake with healthy nutrients and vitamin supplements.
Try to eat at least one nutritious meal per day and stay hydrated with lots of water. You want to flush these things out of your system and water is the best way to make it happen quickly.
You are not going to want to go to the store within the first few days, so if possible, plan ahead or enlist help from someone close to you that can run to the store if you need them to.
These recipes are easy to prepare and are full of natural vitamins and protein. You're not going to get everything from food alone, so taking a multivitamin and Vitamin C is recommended for your additional dietary supplements.
You're welcome to use this for any detox, although it is designed for opiate withdrawal. When you get back to your old self again, try to continue this daily ritual of preparing your meals. It's not only healthier, but is also a cheaper option then eating out!
Here's a 14-day plan with healthy meals, including ingredients and steps to prepare each dish.

Day 1: Grilled Chicken Salad

Ingredients: - Boneless, skinless chicken breast - Mixed salad greens - Cherry tomatoes - Cucumber, sliced - Red onion, thinly sliced - Olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing
Preparation: 1. Season the chicken breast with salt, pepper, and your choice of herbs. 2. Grill the chicken until fully cooked. 3. Slice the grilled chicken into strips. 4. Toss mixed salad greens, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and red onion in a bowl. 5. Top the salad with the sliced grilled chicken. 6. Drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing over the salad.

Day 2: Quinoa and Veggie Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Quinoa - Mixed vegetables (broccoli, bell peppers, carrots) - Tofu or chicken (optional) - Soy sauce - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Olive oil
Preparation: 1. Cook quinoa according to package instructions. 2. In a pan, sauté garlic and ginger in olive oil. 3. Add tofu or chicken (if using) and cook until browned. 4. Add mixed vegetables and stir-fry until they're cooked but still crisp. 5. Mix in cooked quinoa and soy sauce. 6. Stir until well combined and heated through.

Day 3: Lentil Soup

Ingredients: - Red lentils - Carrots, diced - Celery, diced - Onion, diced - Garlic, minced - Vegetable broth - Cumin, coriander, and turmeric (spices) - Fresh parsley, chopped
Preparation: 1. Rinse red lentils under cold water. 2. In a large pot, sauté onions and garlic until softened. 3. Add carrots, celery, and spices. Cook for a few minutes. 4. Pour in vegetable broth and add red lentils. 5. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until lentils are tender. 6. Garnish with fresh parsley before serving.

Day 4: Baked Salmon with Roasted Vegetables

Ingredients: - Salmon fillets - Sweet potatoes, diced - Brussels sprouts, halved - Olive oil - Lemon juice - Dill (fresh or dried) - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C). 2. Place salmon fillets on a baking sheet. 3. Toss sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts with olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt, and pepper. 4. Spread vegetables around the salmon on the baking sheet. 5. Bake in the preheated oven for about 15-20 minutes or until salmon is cooked through.

Day 5: Chickpea and Spinach Curry

Ingredients: - Chickpeas (canned or cooked) - Spinach - Onion, diced - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Coconut milk - Curry powder, cumin, and coriander (spices) - Basmati rice
Preparation: 1. Cook basmati rice according to package instructions. 2. In a pan, sauté onions, garlic, and ginger until softened. 3. Add chickpeas and spices, stirring for a couple of minutes. 4. Pour in coconut milk and bring to a simmer. 5. Add spinach and cook until wilted. 6. Serve the chickpea and spinach curry over cooked basmati rice.

Day 6: Turkey and Vegetable Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Ground turkey - Broccoli florets - Snap peas - Bell peppers, sliced - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Garlic, minced - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. In a wok or pan, sauté minced garlic in sesame oil. 3. Add ground turkey and cook until browned. 4. Add broccoli, snap peas, and bell peppers. Stir-fry until veggies are tender-crisp. 5. Pour in soy sauce and toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.

Day 7: Caprese Salad with Grilled Chicken

Ingredients: - Boneless, skinless chicken breast - Tomatoes, sliced - Fresh mozzarella, sliced - Fresh basil leaves - Balsamic glaze - Olive oil - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Season chicken breast with salt and pepper. 2. Grill the chicken until fully cooked. 3. Slice the grilled chicken into strips. 4. Arrange sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and grilled chicken on a plate. 5. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic glaze. 6. Garnish with fresh basil leaves.

Day 8: Vegetable and Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients: - Bell peppers - Quinoa - Black beans (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Corn kernels - Cherry tomatoes, diced - Cumin, chili powder, and paprika (spices) - Shredded cheddar cheese (optional)
Preparation: 1. Cook quinoa according to package instructions. 2. Cut bell peppers in half and remove seeds. 3. In a bowl, mix cooked quinoa, black beans, corn, cherry tomatoes, and spices. 4. Stuff each pepper half with the quinoa mixture. 5. Optional: sprinkle shredded cheddar cheese on top. 6. Bake in the oven at 375°F (190°C) for 20-25 minutes or until peppers are tender.

Day 9: Shrimp and Asparagus Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Shrimp, peeled and deveined - Asparagus spears, trimmed and cut into pieces - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. In a wok or pan, sauté minced garlic and grated ginger in sesame oil. 3. Add shrimp and cook until pink. 4. Add asparagus and stir-fry until crisp-tender. 5. Pour in soy sauce and toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.

Day 10: Greek Salad with Grilled Chicken

Ingredients: - Chicken breast, grilled and sliced - Cucumbers, diced - Cherry tomatoes, halved - Red onion, thinly sliced - Feta cheese, crumbled - Kalamata olives - Olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing
Preparation: 1. Grill chicken breast until fully cooked, then slice. 2. In a bowl, combine diced cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, sliced red onion, feta cheese, and Kalamata olives. 3. Add the sliced grilled chicken on top. 4. Drizzle with olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing.

Day 11: Black Bean and Vegetable Quesadillas

Ingredients: - Whole wheat tortillas - Black beans (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Bell peppers, diced - Red onion, diced - Corn kernels - Shredded Mexican cheese blend - Cumin, chili powder, and garlic powder (spices) - Fresh cilantro, chopped (optional)
Preparation: 1. In a bowl, mix black beans, diced bell peppers, red onion, corn, and spices. 2. Lay out whole wheat tortillas. 3. Spread the black bean and vegetable mixture on one half of each tortilla. 4. Sprinkle shredded cheese on top. 5. Fold the tortillas in half, creating quesadillas. 6. In a skillet, cook each side until the tortillas are golden and the cheese is melted. 7. Garnish with fresh cilantro if desired.

Day 12: Eggplant and Chickpea Curry

Ingredients: - Eggplant, diced - Chickpeas (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Coconut milk - Curry powder, turmeric, and cayenne pepper (spices) - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Basmati rice
Preparation: 1. Cook basmati rice according to package instructions. 2. In a pot, sauté minced garlic and grated ginger. 3. Add diced eggplant, chickpeas, and spices. Stir well. 4. Pour in coconut milk and let it simmer until the eggplant is tender. 5. Serve the curry over cooked basmati rice.

Day 13: Spinach and Feta Stuffed Chicken Breast

Ingredients: - Chicken breasts, boneless and skinless - Fresh spinach leaves - Feta cheese, crumbled - Garlic, minced - Olive oil - Lemon juice - Dill (fresh or dried) - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). 2. Butterfly the chicken breasts by slicing them horizontally. 3. In a bowl, mix fresh spinach, crumbled feta, minced garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt, and pepper. 4. Stuff each chicken breast with the spinach and feta mixture. 5. Secure with toothpicks and place in a baking dish. 6. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

Day 14: Vegetable and Tofu Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Extra-firm tofu, cubed - Broccoli florets - Carrots, julienned - Snow peas - Bell peppers, sliced - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Ginger, grated - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. Press tofu to remove excess water, then cube it. 3. In a wok or pan, sauté tofu in sesame oil until golden. 4. Add broccoli, carrots, snow peas, and bell peppers. Stir-fry until vegetables are crisp-tender. 5. Pour in soy sauce and grated ginger. Toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.
Feel free to continue exploring new recipes or repeat your favorite ones. This meal plan aims to provide a variety of nutritious and delicious options. Adjust portion sizes to fit your needs, and always consult with a healthcare professional or nutritionist for personalized advice. Enjoy your healthy and satisfying meals!

It came up on my YT feed and it’s really illuminating and maybe a bit depressing to watch. I’m not exactly sure what Anton‘s diagnosis is or would be, but he definitely suffers from mania and in this conversation his political paranoia is really intense. You would think there is some ASD in his diagnosis as well as he seems so oblivious to certain social cues. And in between the weird digressions and such he describes his opiate addiction and alcohol addiction, hospitalizations for what he terms “mental illness”, getting sober and then finally going on medication designed to keep him from continued manic episodes.
He talks about his music, his work, as a solution to some of these problems, a diversion which gets him out of the hypermania, and says that he needs to create and make music almost literally to keep himself alive. And that to me is just extremely compelling. You can see why he’s written so much, why he has so much material and releases so many albums, and this contrast between all of his neurodivergent challenges and the incredibly focused simplicity and beauty of the music he makes is fascinating.
I really hope that wherever he is, he is getting healthy and taking care of his soul. And I selfishly hope that he will make it back out onto the road again and play some more brilliant shows for us. He says in the interview he was born in 1967 so he’ll only be 58 next year. Look at what Neil Young’s doing, we could have so much more from Anton if his health allows it.

You are going to be low on energy as you go through any detox and you will have to supplement your previous toxic intake with healthy nutrients and vitamin supplements.
Try to eat at least one nutritious meal per day and stay hydrated with lots of water. You want to flush these things out of your system and water is the best way to make it happen quickly.
You are not going to want to go to the store within the first few days, so if possible, plan ahead or enlist help from someone close to you that can run to the store if you need them to.
These recipes are easy to prepare and are full of natural vitamins and protein. You're not going to get everything from food alone, so taking a multivitamin and Vitamin C is recommended for your additional dietary supplements.
You're welcome to use this for any detox, although it is designed for opiate withdrawal. When you get back to your old self again, try to continue this daily ritual of preparing your meals. It's not only healthier, but is also a cheaper option then eating out!
Here's a 14-day plan with healthy meals, including ingredients and steps to prepare each dish.

Day 1: Grilled Chicken Salad

Ingredients: - Boneless, skinless chicken breast - Mixed salad greens - Cherry tomatoes - Cucumber, sliced - Red onion, thinly sliced - Olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing
Preparation: 1. Season the chicken breast with salt, pepper, and your choice of herbs. 2. Grill the chicken until fully cooked. 3. Slice the grilled chicken into strips. 4. Toss mixed salad greens, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and red onion in a bowl. 5. Top the salad with the sliced grilled chicken. 6. Drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing over the salad.

Day 2: Quinoa and Veggie Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Quinoa - Mixed vegetables (broccoli, bell peppers, carrots) - Tofu or chicken (optional) - Soy sauce - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Olive oil
Preparation: 1. Cook quinoa according to package instructions. 2. In a pan, sauté garlic and ginger in olive oil. 3. Add tofu or chicken (if using) and cook until browned. 4. Add mixed vegetables and stir-fry until they're cooked but still crisp. 5. Mix in cooked quinoa and soy sauce. 6. Stir until well combined and heated through.

Day 3: Lentil Soup

Ingredients: - Red lentils - Carrots, diced - Celery, diced - Onion, diced - Garlic, minced - Vegetable broth - Cumin, coriander, and turmeric (spices) - Fresh parsley, chopped
Preparation: 1. Rinse red lentils under cold water. 2. In a large pot, sauté onions and garlic until softened. 3. Add carrots, celery, and spices. Cook for a few minutes. 4. Pour in vegetable broth and add red lentils. 5. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until lentils are tender. 6. Garnish with fresh parsley before serving.

Day 4: Baked Salmon with Roasted Vegetables

Ingredients: - Salmon fillets - Sweet potatoes, diced - Brussels sprouts, halved - Olive oil - Lemon juice - Dill (fresh or dried) - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C). 2. Place salmon fillets on a baking sheet. 3. Toss sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts with olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt, and pepper. 4. Spread vegetables around the salmon on the baking sheet. 5. Bake in the preheated oven for about 15-20 minutes or until salmon is cooked through.

Day 5: Chickpea and Spinach Curry

Ingredients: - Chickpeas (canned or cooked) - Spinach - Onion, diced - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Coconut milk - Curry powder, cumin, and coriander (spices) - Basmati rice
Preparation: 1. Cook basmati rice according to package instructions. 2. In a pan, sauté onions, garlic, and ginger until softened. 3. Add chickpeas and spices, stirring for a couple of minutes. 4. Pour in coconut milk and bring to a simmer. 5. Add spinach and cook until wilted. 6. Serve the chickpea and spinach curry over cooked basmati rice.

Day 6: Turkey and Vegetable Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Ground turkey - Broccoli florets - Snap peas - Bell peppers, sliced - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Garlic, minced - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. In a wok or pan, sauté minced garlic in sesame oil. 3. Add ground turkey and cook until browned. 4. Add broccoli, snap peas, and bell peppers. Stir-fry until veggies are tender-crisp. 5. Pour in soy sauce and toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.

Day 7: Caprese Salad with Grilled Chicken

Ingredients: - Boneless, skinless chicken breast - Tomatoes, sliced - Fresh mozzarella, sliced - Fresh basil leaves - Balsamic glaze - Olive oil - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Season chicken breast with salt and pepper. 2. Grill the chicken until fully cooked. 3. Slice the grilled chicken into strips. 4. Arrange sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and grilled chicken on a plate. 5. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic glaze. 6. Garnish with fresh basil leaves.

Day 8: Vegetable and Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients: - Bell peppers - Quinoa - Black beans (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Corn kernels - Cherry tomatoes, diced - Cumin, chili powder, and paprika (spices) - Shredded cheddar cheese (optional)
Preparation: 1. Cook quinoa according to package instructions. 2. Cut bell peppers in half and remove seeds. 3. In a bowl, mix cooked quinoa, black beans, corn, cherry tomatoes, and spices. 4. Stuff each pepper half with the quinoa mixture. 5. Optional: sprinkle shredded cheddar cheese on top. 6. Bake in the oven at 375°F (190°C) for 20-25 minutes or until peppers are tender.

Day 9: Shrimp and Asparagus Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Shrimp, peeled and deveined - Asparagus spears, trimmed and cut into pieces - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. In a wok or pan, sauté minced garlic and grated ginger in sesame oil. 3. Add shrimp and cook until pink. 4. Add asparagus and stir-fry until crisp-tender. 5. Pour in soy sauce and toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.

Day 10: Greek Salad with Grilled Chicken

Ingredients: - Chicken breast, grilled and sliced - Cucumbers, diced - Cherry tomatoes, halved - Red onion, thinly sliced - Feta cheese, crumbled - Kalamata olives - Olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing
Preparation: 1. Grill chicken breast until fully cooked, then slice. 2. In a bowl, combine diced cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, sliced red onion, feta cheese, and Kalamata olives. 3. Add the sliced grilled chicken on top. 4. Drizzle with olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing.

Day 11: Black Bean and Vegetable Quesadillas

Ingredients: - Whole wheat tortillas - Black beans (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Bell peppers, diced - Red onion, diced - Corn kernels - Shredded Mexican cheese blend - Cumin, chili powder, and garlic powder (spices) - Fresh cilantro, chopped (optional)
Preparation: 1. In a bowl, mix black beans, diced bell peppers, red onion, corn, and spices. 2. Lay out whole wheat tortillas. 3. Spread the black bean and vegetable mixture on one half of each tortilla. 4. Sprinkle shredded cheese on top. 5. Fold the tortillas in half, creating quesadillas. 6. In a skillet, cook each side until the tortillas are golden and the cheese is melted. 7. Garnish with fresh cilantro if desired.

Day 12: Eggplant and Chickpea Curry

Ingredients: - Eggplant, diced - Chickpeas (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Coconut milk - Curry powder, turmeric, and cayenne pepper (spices) - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Basmati rice
Preparation: 1. Cook basmati rice according to package instructions. 2. In a pot, sauté minced garlic and grated ginger. 3. Add diced eggplant, chickpeas, and spices. Stir well. 4. Pour in coconut milk and let it simmer until the eggplant is tender. 5. Serve the curry over cooked basmati rice.

Day 13: Spinach and Feta Stuffed Chicken Breast

Ingredients: - Chicken breasts, boneless and skinless - Fresh spinach leaves - Feta cheese, crumbled - Garlic, minced - Olive oil - Lemon juice - Dill (fresh or dried) - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). 2. Butterfly the chicken breasts by slicing them horizontally. 3. In a bowl, mix fresh spinach, crumbled feta, minced garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt, and pepper. 4. Stuff each chicken breast with the spinach and feta mixture. 5. Secure with toothpicks and place in a baking dish. 6. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

Day 14: Vegetable and Tofu Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Extra-firm tofu, cubed - Broccoli florets - Carrots, julienned - Snow peas - Bell peppers, sliced - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Ginger, grated - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. Press tofu to remove excess water, then cube it. 3. In a wok or pan, sauté tofu in sesame oil until golden. 4. Add broccoli, carrots, snow peas, and bell peppers. Stir-fry until vegetables are crisp-tender. 5. Pour in soy sauce and grated ginger. Toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.
Feel free to continue exploring new recipes or repeat your favorite ones. This meal plan aims to provide a variety of nutritious and delicious options. Adjust portion sizes to fit your needs, and always consult with a healthcare professional or nutritionist for personalized advice. Enjoy your healthy and satisfying meals!

1. Write my will.

2. Solve a Rubik's Cube.

1. Visit Aigre, France.
   
2. Go mining in the Mines in Hare Hill, New Cumnock, East Ayrshire, Scotland, UK.
   
3. Earn £50,000+.
   
4. Get the tattoo design I've wanted since I was nine.
   
5. Try olive oil and sea salt on vanilla ice cream.
   
6. Go golfing in Scotland.
   
7. Finish a tube of chapstick.
   
8. Take a photo of my Aunt to Paris. Show her picture around all the sites. It's the last place she wanted to go before she unexpectedly died in lockdown.
   
9. Figure out x's surname and meet the people from my half-family.
   
10. Run in the London Marathon.
    
11. Complete the hidden Tetris levels.
    
12. Run a mile in under 8 minutes.
    

15. Go to the corner bodega and pick out a soda flavour that sounds completely disgusting or out of the ordinary for me.

1. Make at least one Strava Art.
   
2. Adopt a cat and name it after my late Aunt.
   
3. Eat a homemade quiche that doesn't make me gag.
   
4. Try Opiate Dentiare toothpaste.
   
5. Own an ereader with a digital pen.
   
6. Try a deep fried Mars bar from the chippy shop.
   
7. Buy a bottle of wine and drink it in twenty years.
   
8. Start a women's football team at work.
   

24. Discover a new band.

1. See a Yankees game in London.
   
2. Fast for a day.
   
3. Go to a restaurant and order something completely different from my usual.
   

28. Reconnect with an old friend.

1. Grow my cuticle back on my pinky finger on my right hand.
   
2. Don't dye my hair.
   
3. Own a set of bed pillows from The Ritz.
   
4. Eat a hog roast leg at Peppa Pig World.
   

33. Eat fufu with my hands.

1. Kiss the blarney stone.
   
2. Find a four leaf clover.
   
3. Go to Turf Tavern in Oxford and have a cider.
   
4. Read a banned book.
   
5. Bowl a strike.
   
6. Eat a Colin the Caterpillar cake on my birthday.
   
7. Bike for a charity every year until fifty.
   
8. Become a British citizen.
   

42. Eat insects that aren't covered in chocolate, sour coating, sugar, or spicy dusting.

1. Be the Mother of the Bride/Groom at a godchild's wedding.
   
2. Petition to get a statue of John Woodcock next to Baxter Hulme's.
   
3. Try a Korean corn dog.
   
4. Time travel to experience New Year's Eve twice.
   
5. Watch the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace on the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
   

48. Try carbonara the traditional way without cream.

1. Swim in Bulgaria's Black Sea.

50. Put a flag on my bicycle.
Someone at work was talking about doing this and I wasn't sure because my dad died at 50 unexpectedly and so did his father so I've always been quite scared of reaching that number. Nevertheless, I'm going to face the big number with different things I want to do to make it less scarier. I think some of the things are silly, but I tried to make most of the things easily attainable. Bold means I've already done them.

You are going to be low on energy as you go through any detox and you will have to supplement your previous toxic intake with healthy nutrients and vitamin supplements.
Try to eat at least one nutritious meal per day and stay hydrated with lots of water. You want to flush these things out of your system and water is the best way to make it happen quickly.
You are not going to want to go to the store within the first few days, so if possible, plan ahead or enlist help from someone close to you that can run to the store if you need them to.
These recipes are easy to prepare and are full of natural vitamins and protein. You're not going to get everything from food alone, so taking a multivitamin and Vitamin C is recommended for your additional dietary supplements.
You're welcome to use this for any detox, although it is designed for opiate withdrawal. When you get back to your old self again, try to continue this daily ritual of preparing your meals. It's not only healthier, but is also a cheaper option then eating out!
Here's a 14-day plan with healthy meals, including ingredients and steps to prepare each dish.

Day 1: Grilled Chicken Salad

Ingredients: - Boneless, skinless chicken breast - Mixed salad greens - Cherry tomatoes - Cucumber, sliced - Red onion, thinly sliced - Olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing
Preparation: 1. Season the chicken breast with salt, pepper, and your choice of herbs. 2. Grill the chicken until fully cooked. 3. Slice the grilled chicken into strips. 4. Toss mixed salad greens, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and red onion in a bowl. 5. Top the salad with the sliced grilled chicken. 6. Drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing over the salad.

Day 2: Quinoa and Veggie Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Quinoa - Mixed vegetables (broccoli, bell peppers, carrots) - Tofu or chicken (optional) - Soy sauce - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Olive oil
Preparation: 1. Cook quinoa according to package instructions. 2. In a pan, sauté garlic and ginger in olive oil. 3. Add tofu or chicken (if using) and cook until browned. 4. Add mixed vegetables and stir-fry until they're cooked but still crisp. 5. Mix in cooked quinoa and soy sauce. 6. Stir until well combined and heated through.

Day 3: Lentil Soup

Ingredients: - Red lentils - Carrots, diced - Celery, diced - Onion, diced - Garlic, minced - Vegetable broth - Cumin, coriander, and turmeric (spices) - Fresh parsley, chopped
Preparation: 1. Rinse red lentils under cold water. 2. In a large pot, sauté onions and garlic until softened. 3. Add carrots, celery, and spices. Cook for a few minutes. 4. Pour in vegetable broth and add red lentils. 5. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until lentils are tender. 6. Garnish with fresh parsley before serving.

Day 4: Baked Salmon with Roasted Vegetables

Ingredients: - Salmon fillets - Sweet potatoes, diced - Brussels sprouts, halved - Olive oil - Lemon juice - Dill (fresh or dried) - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C). 2. Place salmon fillets on a baking sheet. 3. Toss sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts with olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt, and pepper. 4. Spread vegetables around the salmon on the baking sheet. 5. Bake in the preheated oven for about 15-20 minutes or until salmon is cooked through.

Day 5: Chickpea and Spinach Curry

Ingredients: - Chickpeas (canned or cooked) - Spinach - Onion, diced - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Coconut milk - Curry powder, cumin, and coriander (spices) - Basmati rice
Preparation: 1. Cook basmati rice according to package instructions. 2. In a pan, sauté onions, garlic, and ginger until softened. 3. Add chickpeas and spices, stirring for a couple of minutes. 4. Pour in coconut milk and bring to a simmer. 5. Add spinach and cook until wilted. 6. Serve the chickpea and spinach curry over cooked basmati rice.

Day 6: Turkey and Vegetable Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Ground turkey - Broccoli florets - Snap peas - Bell peppers, sliced - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Garlic, minced - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. In a wok or pan, sauté minced garlic in sesame oil. 3. Add ground turkey and cook until browned. 4. Add broccoli, snap peas, and bell peppers. Stir-fry until veggies are tender-crisp. 5. Pour in soy sauce and toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.

Day 7: Caprese Salad with Grilled Chicken

Ingredients: - Boneless, skinless chicken breast - Tomatoes, sliced - Fresh mozzarella, sliced - Fresh basil leaves - Balsamic glaze - Olive oil - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Season chicken breast with salt and pepper. 2. Grill the chicken until fully cooked. 3. Slice the grilled chicken into strips. 4. Arrange sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and grilled chicken on a plate. 5. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic glaze. 6. Garnish with fresh basil leaves.

Day 8: Vegetable and Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients: - Bell peppers - Quinoa - Black beans (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Corn kernels - Cherry tomatoes, diced - Cumin, chili powder, and paprika (spices) - Shredded cheddar cheese (optional)
Preparation: 1. Cook quinoa according to package instructions. 2. Cut bell peppers in half and remove seeds. 3. In a bowl, mix cooked quinoa, black beans, corn, cherry tomatoes, and spices. 4. Stuff each pepper half with the quinoa mixture. 5. Optional: sprinkle shredded cheddar cheese on top. 6. Bake in the oven at 375°F (190°C) for 20-25 minutes or until peppers are tender.

Day 9: Shrimp and Asparagus Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Shrimp, peeled and deveined - Asparagus spears, trimmed and cut into pieces - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. In a wok or pan, sauté minced garlic and grated ginger in sesame oil. 3. Add shrimp and cook until pink. 4. Add asparagus and stir-fry until crisp-tender. 5. Pour in soy sauce and toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.

Day 10: Greek Salad with Grilled Chicken

Ingredients: - Chicken breast, grilled and sliced - Cucumbers, diced - Cherry tomatoes, halved - Red onion, thinly sliced - Feta cheese, crumbled - Kalamata olives - Olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing
Preparation: 1. Grill chicken breast until fully cooked, then slice. 2. In a bowl, combine diced cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, sliced red onion, feta cheese, and Kalamata olives. 3. Add the sliced grilled chicken on top. 4. Drizzle with olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing.

Day 11: Black Bean and Vegetable Quesadillas

Ingredients: - Whole wheat tortillas - Black beans (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Bell peppers, diced - Red onion, diced - Corn kernels - Shredded Mexican cheese blend - Cumin, chili powder, and garlic powder (spices) - Fresh cilantro, chopped (optional)
Preparation: 1. In a bowl, mix black beans, diced bell peppers, red onion, corn, and spices. 2. Lay out whole wheat tortillas. 3. Spread the black bean and vegetable mixture on one half of each tortilla. 4. Sprinkle shredded cheese on top. 5. Fold the tortillas in half, creating quesadillas. 6. In a skillet, cook each side until the tortillas are golden and the cheese is melted. 7. Garnish with fresh cilantro if desired.

Day 12: Eggplant and Chickpea Curry

Ingredients: - Eggplant, diced - Chickpeas (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Coconut milk - Curry powder, turmeric, and cayenne pepper (spices) - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Basmati rice
Preparation: 1. Cook basmati rice according to package instructions. 2. In a pot, sauté minced garlic and grated ginger. 3. Add diced eggplant, chickpeas, and spices. Stir well. 4. Pour in coconut milk and let it simmer until the eggplant is tender. 5. Serve the curry over cooked basmati rice.

Day 13: Spinach and Feta Stuffed Chicken Breast

Ingredients: - Chicken breasts, boneless and skinless - Fresh spinach leaves - Feta cheese, crumbled - Garlic, minced - Olive oil - Lemon juice - Dill (fresh or dried) - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). 2. Butterfly the chicken breasts by slicing them horizontally. 3. In a bowl, mix fresh spinach, crumbled feta, minced garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt, and pepper. 4. Stuff each chicken breast with the spinach and feta mixture. 5. Secure with toothpicks and place in a baking dish. 6. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

Day 14: Vegetable and Tofu Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Extra-firm tofu, cubed - Broccoli florets - Carrots, julienned - Snow peas - Bell peppers, sliced - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Ginger, grated - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. Press tofu to remove excess water, then cube it. 3. In a wok or pan, sauté tofu in sesame oil until golden. 4. Add broccoli, carrots, snow peas, and bell peppers. Stir-fry until vegetables are crisp-tender. 5. Pour in soy sauce and grated ginger. Toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.
Feel free to continue exploring new recipes or repeat your favorite ones. This meal plan aims to provide a variety of nutritious and delicious options. Adjust portion sizes to fit your needs, and always consult with a healthcare professional or nutritionist for personalized advice. Enjoy your healthy and satisfying meals!

Would this story be acceptable for plausibility? If we say, "I made it out of there by ascending the silver spire" or whatever, and that it is a memory, does that suffice? The part 1 is below
​

I died and went to Hell. Next to the Lake of Blood, I found a list of rules [part 1]

Throughout my life, I was always a piece of shit. From an early age, I joined a gang and started selling drugs. Anything from weed to heroin to crack sold itself, but on the unforgiving streets of the city, a single mistake could be fatal. I always carried a cheap burner pistol that I could throw away after using it. I know quite a few friends and acquaintances who died from drugs I sold them- some overdosing, others crashing their cars while high. A couple of them committed suicide during opiate withdrawals. One got cut in half by a train while nodding off.
But by seventeen, I had committed my first confirmed murder- a rival gang member and drug dealer who pulled a gun on me first. I had probably killed people before, but I never watched the news after a shooting or a stabbing to see the result. I wasn’t interested in the slightest.
In this case, I had just been slightly quicker than my rival and, a fraction of a second later, his forehead imploded like a smashed pumpkin in front of me, spraying bone splinters and brains all over the sidewalk. He stumbled forward a step before falling forward. His pistol went off in his dying hand, but it went low, the bullet disappearing with a crack into the nearby street. He fell forward with a dull thud, his legs kicking as if he were seizing.
The sidewalk of the dead end street we stood on spun around me for a moment. The many abandoned, rotting houses of the city loomed over us like hanging corpses. My ears gave a high-pitched shriek of tinnitus from the gunshots.
Nervous, I looked up and down the side street. The entire place seemed silent and dead. Then I heard voices nearby and saw lights turning on in the front yards and windows of houses. Without a moment of hesitation, I took off, sprinting blindly away from the crime scene, not caring much where I was going. Someone a few houses down came out, an old black man in his boxers and slippers. He saw me running and called out something in a quavering voice. I didn’t slow down for a moment.
Not long after, I heard the wailing of sirens off in the distance. They were drawing closer by the second. When the street abruptly ended in a cul-de-sac of mostly abandoned and dilapidated houses, I chose one at random and cut across its back yard, jumped over the rusted metal fence and kept on running, cutting across random yards and jumping more fences until I started making my way back towards downtown.
After about five minutes, I got to a street with a lot more traffic and people. Covered in sweat, I walked casually back towards my tiny, cockroach-infested apartment.
I thought I had gotten away with it. I thought I had been able to kill this worthless scumbag without anyone noticing. But there were more eyes glittering behind the veil than I realized at that moment.
I went back home- and that was the night I died and went to Hell.
***
I lived on the first floor in a building with falling-down rafters and a flat black roof like an infected scab. The paint on the outside was the color of vomit, the windows cracked and broken. Moreover, the place always smelled like Mexican food and chemicals, and every night, I would hear gunshots and panicked screams outside.
I sat down at the table and opened a beer. The ancient CRT TV was on, showing some old horror movie from the 1970s. I took a deep breath, relieved. I didn’t expect a thing to happen at that moment.
Suddenly, my door burst open as if someone had fired a cannonball at it. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Standing there, I saw a dozen black police in SWAT gear holding rifles. The laser sights jumped and danced across the floor before they converged on my head and chest. Someone screamed something in a hoarse voice, but I didn’t understand. The words sounded garbled, like the whispering of a demon. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
I fell back in my chair in surprise. A single breath later, one of them opened fire. I felt the first bullet crash through my left shoulder, felt the bone shatter and the flesh explode behind it, warm blood running down my back and chest.
The next moment, others joined in. I didn’t feel the bullet that smashed into my head and sent me to Hell. It moved fast, faster than my nerves. It must have moved as fast as death itself.
The blackness descended on me like a cloud.
***
I don’t know how much time passed. It seemed like an eternity, full of freezing darkness and screams that came from everywhere and nowhere. I remember coming awake suddenly, standing before a face formed from blinding white light. I was healed without any signs of wound or blood from the gunshots. I found myself standing naked and alone in the freezing winds.
I was shivering, my arms wrapped protectively around my chest as I stood on a flat plain of cracked, gray stone. The wind whipped around me as if I were in a hurricane, blowing sand and dust across the eternal plains. The features of the endless face constantly melted and shifted, spiraling out with bolts of lightning that cracked and sizzled all around the hurricane of light. The face seemed to stand miles high with eyes that spun like the Sun.
“Where am I?” I whispered in terror. The face of infinite light stared down at me with a blinding intensity. It seemed to see every thought, every feeling, every memory. I could feel it looking through me as if I were glass.
“You are in the Bardo,” the being said in a voice like an exploding nuclear bomb. “I am the one who sees. I am GOD, the creator of the universe and all who live within it. In the end, to Me you will always return. Did you not know you would one day have to stand here?” I shook my head.
“No… I… I…” I stuttered in terror, unable to respond.
“I have seen your evil, for indeed, I am closer to you than your own jugular vein, your own heart. Did you not see the suffering of those who harmed the innocent, those who murdered and stole and lived their lives wallowing in filth? Did you not see them get wounded, shot, stabbed, strangled and imprisoned? Did you not see them die in their evil and return to Me?”
“I did,” I admitted. “Many times.”
“And yet you have fallen into the sickness yourself,” God said in a voice like a rushing waterfall. Fury and anger seemed to seethe from him. Dozens of bolts of lightning flashed out from all sides of that radiant face. “For this, you must be purified. Your soul must be cleansed with fire. For that is the fate of those who harm the innocent- they fall down to the bottomless pit, to the blazing inferno whose fuel is men and stones. The flames eat them all greedily, and then the fires cry out to Me for more.”
My body felt like it was covered with stinging hornets. Excruciating pins and needles ran all up and down my legs and arms. I looked down, seeing a swirling dark hole opening up underneath me in the field of gray stone, spitting out drops of liquid blackness. They splashed upwards, burning through my skin like napalm, but no blood came out. It was as if my body were dissolving into dripping shadows that pulled me downwards. I felt myself slowly falling through the eternal stone plain as unseen hands dragged me away. As I descended, I heard the voice of God one last time.
“Down into the pit you will go, to the valley of wailing and the lake of flames where the damned scream for peace that never comes, to the city of shadows, to Naraka…”
***
Beneath me, the shadowy tunnel descended. I fell through it like lightning. Everything spun around me at an incredible speed. Suddenly, I broke through something, some invisible barrier in the endless darkness. I found myself falling through a cloud of suffocating smoke, and then the world opened up all around me.
A blood-red sky with thick black clouds extended out in all directions. I glimpsed a world of sharp cliffs and rivers of lava that wound their way down mountains of obsidian.
I fell through the middle of the sky at a tremendous speed, the wind whipping around my ears like a hurricane. A scream ripped its way out of my throat, but I was traveling so fast I could barely hear it as the echoes disappeared above me. Below me was what looked like a massive lake filled with blood about half a mile wide, and it was coming up to meet me fast. Many struggling bodies writhed in the currents, trying to claw their way out. I crashed through the surface at an incredible speed, going deep under the warm crimson waves.
The bloody water of the lake filled my mouth and nose with the overwhelming taste of copper and iron. I started trying to swim back up to the surface, frantically kicking and pushing with my arms and legs. I opened my eyes, and the salty blood stung them. It looked like I was peering through a translucent red film into a world of deep-sea abominations. Long snakes with two heads swam all around me, snapping and biting at each other and any legs or arms nearby. I saw them drag people down one by one, wrapping their slick bodies around their struggling victims as they drowned.
I broke through the surface, inhaling deeply. I was worried about the snakes and whatever else was slinking around down there. Thousands of people treaded water in the massive lake, trying to make their way to the shores. The nearest person to me was only ten feet away, a young woman with panicked eyes and wavy black hair. As I watched her, she gave a scream of terror and then was dragged under the surface, struggling and kicking. She never reappeared.
All around me, I smelled the fetid rot of decaying bodies. There must have been thousands and thousands of corpses at the bottom of this bloody lake. Some of them floated on top of the surface, rancid and swollen, their sightless eyes staring up at the fiery sky. The surface of the lake constantly bubbled and writhed, though whether this was from the rotting of so many bodies or from hidden monsters breathing under the surface, I didn’t yet know.
Frantically, I looked around for the nearest shore to get out of the danger. I saw that if I swam past the direction where the young woman had been, I would only have to go about two hundred feet. But my heart hammered in my chest as I remembered her being dragged under, her frantic, panicked struggling. What if the same creature was waiting over there, waiting for someone like me to try to swim over?
There were dozens more people between me and the nearest shore. Most of them climbed out, dripping drops of crimson onto the black volcanic sands of the beaches. I made my way as fast as I could in that direction, deciding to take my chances with the snakes. Otherwise, I would have to swim at least four times as far to get to the next nearest beach, which also swarmed with masses of naked people clawing their way out of the bloody lake.
A small group of people was concentrated only twenty feet away, three men who were swimming in the same direction I was. One started screaming suddenly. A purple tentacle the color of an old bruise broke through the surface of the water. To my horror, I saw it had black spikes that clicked and clacked together all along its massive arms. The spikes resembled long, hollow hypodermic needles.
The screaming man tried to swim in the opposite direction, but the tentacle wrapped around him, pulling him above the water. It tightened like a boa constrictor, the black spikes stabbing into his chest and stomach. Countless punctures opened up all along his body. The black spikes flexed, and his ribcage ripped open with a wet, ripping sound. The man’s screams abruptly cut off as his head lolled. With a sucking sound, the hollow spikes began drinking, consuming the man’s spurting blood with a sound like an inhalation of air. Slowly, almost lazily, the tentacle began dragging his limp corpse under the surface, back towards the main body of whatever monstrosity it belonged to.
The other two gave panicked sobs as more purple tentacles broke through the surface of the lake. Frantically, I started swimming around them, giving them a wide berth. Within seconds, the other two men were dragged under, deep stab wounds opening in their bodies as the hollow spikes drank greedily with loud sucking sounds.
“Fuck!” I cried, horrified. I felt something brush past my leg, something slimy and eel-like that writhed and slithered under the opaque crimson surface. In horror, I felt its slimy skin wrap around my leg, at first loosely slithering, then tightening. Two black faces with white, lidless eyes rose out of the water, the faces of serpents with fangs like switchblades. I saw both heads were connected to a single slithering body, one that wrapped slowly around my legs and arms, strangling me. Screaming, I felt its fangs dig into my neck. As the twin pairs of lidless white eyes stared at me, I tried to fight, tried to raise my arm, but it was far too strong. It dragged me under the surface.
Struggling against the beast, feeling its poison coursing through my bloodstream like lava, I drowned in the lake of blood. The experience of drowning is horrifying beyond all measure- the overwhelming fear and anxiety when you realize you have no air, the sensation of inhaling the bloody water, the sensation of dying. My vision turned black as a suffocating, clenching fist squeezed my heart. It felt like it took an eternity, but it was probably only a couple minutes at most. Death came over me then, cold and filled with small, suffocating agonies. That was the first time I died in Hell, but it would not be my last.
For in Hell, as I quickly learned, you never truly died, but were just thrown back to the beginning.
***
I felt myself falling again through the black clouds, the Lake of Blood beneath me. It all repeated like before. I screamed as I fell through the water at an incredible speed. Eldritch monstrosities were dragging people under the surface all around me. As quickly as I could, I swam towards the nearest shore. I dared not look down, didn’t dare slow for a single moment. A few times, I was nearly swiped by large, writhing tentacles, but they found other shrieking victims nearby to my immense relief.
I didn’t want to die ever again. It was a horrible sensation, though one that I would, sadly, become used to. Death followed me like a shadow, and starting over in Hell was always a nightmare.
I gave a gasp of joy when my feet touched bottom. Running through the rippling currents of blood, naked and gasping, I came upon the black sands of the shore. Looking around the lake, I saw there were four beaches, seemingly placed at each point of the compass underneath the spinning, blood-red sky.
At the end of each of the black sands lay a sparkling silver gate fifty feet tall and hundreds of feet across. The thin strands of silver intertwined like the fine filaments of a spiderweb, spiraling around each other in graceful, curving arches. Embossed over the top were the words, “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.” No one seemed to pay the gate any mind. Naked crowds of struggling people stumbled through it onto the streets of Hell, streets that were paved with human bones and stretched off to the horizon.
Skyscrapers made of obsidian with spiraling windows like the murderholes of a castle stretched hundreds of stories up into the blood-red sky. As I staggered out, pressed body to body in the thick crowd of crying, wailing people, I saw ahead of us the second mortal danger of Hell.
There were countless gangs of mostly men gathered on the streets of bone, the desperate soldiers of this apocalyptic wasteland. They huddled together in groups of ten or twelve, attacking and murdering random people who tried to sprint past from the Lake of Blood. They wore crude leather tunics and pants that looked like they were made from human skin. Some wore crude masks of human skin on their faces, ragged patches of flesh that had been cut from the bodies of the dead. They stared out with cold, emotionless eyes through the holes in the dried, leathery skin, surveying the surging crowds like lions surveying their prey.
They held primitive weapons in their hands, clubs and maces made from bone, swords sharpened from obsidian glass and even wooden spears. The wood looked strange and dark, almost like mahogany. Next to them were fires with sharpened spits of roasting human meat. The fat dripped off the dismembered arms and legs sizzling over the flames. It gave off a smell like roast pork that permeated the area, rising up in thick, fragrant clouds.
I followed the surging crowds, watching in horror as the groups of armed men attacked and killed random passersby in the crowd, dragging their limp bodies next to the fires where they stacked the unconscious or dead people in stacks like cordwood. I figured they would inevitably roast their flesh for food or make pale leather armor from their dead skin. I felt myself being pushed over in the direction of the nearest group of armed thugs. A few of the nearest men wore masks made of people’s faces, though those behind them did not, only wearing the crude leather armor instead.
One of them standing only ten feet away met my eyes, his cold killer’s gaze boring through me. The mask of skin made him look like some monster from a horror movie, with its ragged, mutilated edges and garish black stitches. He took a step towards me, raising a short spear made from a human leg bone and sharpened to a blood-stained point.
In panic, I looked around, seeing a young woman in her early twenties standing next to me. She was looking straight ahead with panic and terror in her eyes, not paying any attention to me or the men that crept towards us. With all of my strength, I shoved the woman towards the masked killer. She stumbled back in surprise, falling into the man’s weapon. His bone spear stabbed through her stomach. She looked down at her naked body in horror when the point emerged from her navel, dripping rivers of blood down her trembling legs. As she spit up trickles of blood and collapsed to her knees, I ran. A sickening crack rang out behind me like a shattering of bones, and I knew they had murdered the young woman.
I sprinted away from the gangs of cannibal killers as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast considering how many naked, screaming bodies pressed in all on me from all sides. I felt myself being carried forward by the surging masses towards the silver gate. Hanging from the delicate silver threads, I saw signs written in many languages. I found one in English and started reading it with rapt attention, even as I was relentlessly pushed forward and elbowed and kicked.
I still remember what it said by heart.
“Rules for Naraka:

1. Those who are damned will be fed from the fountain of life. GOD will ensure your rebirth at the Lake of Blood. Though death may crush you over and over, there will be no rest.
2. Stay away from the Screamers, the faceless ones who roam the land. Those who are taken by the Screamers will know endless torment and madness in the caverns deep under the ground.
3. When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
4. Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”

As I was pushed forward, I read the sharp, copperplate engraving scrawled across the silver signs in glowing red letters, trying to memorize every single word. At the time, none of it made much sense, but I instinctively felt that it was immensely important in some way I didn’t yet understand.
Immediately outside the gate, the beach turned into a road paved with bones. Leg bones and arm bones were laid side by side, yellowing and drying under the dark crimson sky. Skulls embedded in the center of the road grinned up at me, laughing at silent secrets I could never hope to comprehend.
Naked and barefoot, I sprinted down the road of bones between massive skyscrapers of black obsidian and gleaming red volcanic rock. People started to thin as the survivors scattered in all directions. I felt the sharp points of bone stabbing into the soles of my feet.
That was the moment the sirens began their eerie wailing, rising and falling in a dissonant cacophony, slower and deeper than any tornado siren I had ever heard. It sounded almost like a whale call, stretching out over the infernal city. They sounded from all around us, seemingly ringing out from thousands of speakers hidden throughout the obsidian towers.
I looked up suddenly. The crimson sky had changed rapidly, forming into a cyclone that swirled overhead in great black and red spirals. It met in a fiery eye at the center. As I looked up, I saw glowing orange hail soaring through the air, leaving behind streaks like thousands of comets. It fell towards the naked masses of tens of thousands of bodies pressed together on the streets.
At that moment, I remembered the rules. Some of the others apparently hadn’t read them during the panic and horror of the escape from the Lake of Blood, and they continued surging forward down the road as fire began to fall like drops of napalm all around us. Wails of agony rose up from those who were covered in the glowing lava. The people in the front of the crowd immediately fell under the heat and destruction of the firestorm. Their hair lit on fire, their skin melted and blackened, and still more fire rained down from the sky, sweeping relentlessly in our direction.
I saw an obsidian skyscraper with a great, open archway only a couple hundred feet away. The nearest of the crowd scrambled to find cover under the safety of the building. I sprinted along with them. As I reached the threshold, I felt the first burning drops of magma land on my back. I screamed as I smelled my own skin cooking and my own hair burning, and then I was through the archway. I fell, rolling on my back, trying to put out the sizzling fires that burned me like some corrosive acid.
I felt rivers of warm blood running down my back as more people ran past me, deeper into the hall. The skyscraper was massive, not only in height but in width. The hallway ran for hundreds of feet, disappearing into doorless thresholds on both sides cleaved out of the obsidian, as if the entire structure had been carved from one enormous piece of glassy stone. In the center of the hallway, it opened up into a spiraling staircase.
I looked up abruptly to see three men wearing masks made of human skin standing over me, each holding primitive bone spears in their filthy, blood-stained hands. They looked emaciated, wasted away, like the walking corpses of a death camp. To my utter astonishment, even through the layer of dried, ragged skin, I recognized one of them. It was in his gray eyes, and the twisting dragon tattoos that covered his arms and chest instantly brought a flash of memory.
“Shooter,” I said as they raised their weapons. “Shooter, it’s me. Remember me? It’s Richie.” He froze in place, looking down at me with widening eyes.
“Holy shit, Richie?” he said, tearing the mask off. “What are you doing here?” It was an absurd question, of course. What were any of us doing here?
The last time I had seen Shooter, he had been sitting a pile of blood in his car. He was one of the designated gunman for the Solid Ones, the gang we had both joined when we were young. The amazing luck of finding another Solid in this place of death was astounding. But, then again, I had known many people who had died, and I had a feeling the vast majority were here somewhere.
“I guess I died,” I said sheepishly, giving him a faint half-smile. The other two men standing by his side lowered their weapons. “Fucking pigs came in and shot me.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, unsurprised. “They do have a tendency to do that.” He gave a low laugh. I took a long look at Shooter, who was wearing the pale skin of some unknown victim or victims of this place of agony. He reached a trembling hand down and pulled me up from the smooth surface of this strange skyscraper. More naked, scared people continued to stream past us as the sirens continued their infernal shrieking outside. Many of them had horrific burns all over their body, and a few were clearly on the verge of death by the time they had made it inside.
Farther down the hall, another ten men wearing the same garb as Shooter came towards us, holding sharpened swords of obsidian and thick clubs made of bone. Shooter put his hands up.
“Hey, I know this guy,” he said calmly, motioning over to me with an apathetic wave of his head. “He was in the same gang as me! We used to go around having a great time, I’ll tell you. Remember that time we shot at that cop and he pissed himself?” He gave a racuous laugh at that. I smiled as the memory flooded back. Shooter had definitely hit him, though I think I probably missed. I remembered the blood soaking over the arm of cop’s uniform as he lay there, gasping and turning white, his face looking bloodless and shocked. Shooter and I had run away, high-fiving each other and grinning like maniacs.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, grinning. The other men surrounded me in a semi-circle. Shooter knelt down and extended a hand to me, helping me off the ground.
“Well, you’re in good company,” he said. “Here, we can do whatever the fuck we want. What’s going to happen, after all? It’s not like we can be sent to Hell.” He laughed, and that laughter writhed with the insanity and bloodlust that seemed to be eating him from the inside like a cancer.
***
“We still need to take him to the Sergeant,” one of the masked men next to Shooter said. “We can see if he has the right stuff needed to fight with us.”
“What happens when you guys die?” I asked. “I mean, obviously, you restart at the Lake of Blood, but how do you find your way back to your gang?” Shooter shrugged.
“We always find each other again eventually,” he said. “It’s not like there’s any lack of time here. All we have is time- and fresh meat, of course. There’s always more fresh meat streaming in through the Lake of Blood. We can take whatever we need from them…” The wailing of the sirens suddenly ended as he spoke. I looked around, seeing burnt and dying people still struggling into the front hallway of the skyscraper. The smell of burning hair and searing flesh filled the entire area.
“Come on,” one of the men said. His voice was gruff, as if he had been chainsmoking five packs a day since he was a little kid. “The Sergeant is on the top floor. You’ll have to talk to him.” I nodded, knowing they would certainly kill me if I did not join their group.
But at that moment, something much worse than dying, blackened bodies crawled in through the archway. I saw it before the group of men did. Instinctively upon glimpsing it, I knew it was something terrible, something that could only live in the depths of a psychotic’s nightmare.
It stood nearly ten feet tall. Its skin was as pale as a writhing maggot. On its hairless face, I saw no eyes, no nose, no ears, just smooth, bone-white skin. It had thin lips tied together with black thread, the garish stitches poking out from the ragged, bloodless flesh. Its arms and legs looked inhumanly long and thin. Its ribs and spine jutted out as if it were a starving, rabid animal. From all around its body, an inhuman wailing started, as if dozens of demonic voices were shrieking in unison. Yet its mouth stayed firmly closed, still stitched shut.
Its fingers jutted out like railroad spikes, each a foot long. As its screaming intensified, it ran towards us, crushing the dying and injured under its naked, twisted feet. I stared into its pale, bloodless face, and even though it had no eyes, it felt like it stared straight back at me, looking into my soul.
“Don’t look at it!” Shooter screamed next to me, turning his face away. The rest of the men closed their eyes or turned away, backpedaling away from the abomination. “It will take on the shape of what you fear most! It’s a Screamer!” But it was too late. At that moment, something strange happened to the pale, naked body of the Screamer. It rippled like a mirage sizzling off the sands of a desert. Its body squeezed and contorted as the distorted shrieking around its pale, naked body grew louder and more insane.
Thin stalks of black, spidery legs began jutting out of the sides of its chest. Its face melted like wax as glittering compound eyes sprouted from the top of its head. Within seconds, it had turned into a massive spider, a black widow whose head nearly scraped the ceiling twenty feet above us. The red hourglass on its back shone brightly, as if in reminder of the imminent death it brought to anyone it touched.
I hate spiders. I’ve always hated spiders. When I saw that skittering, crawling monstrosity, something in me broke. I sprinted towards the group of men who were trying to do their best to escape without looking directly at the Screamer, hoping that the spider would choose one of them instead of me. But I heard its massive bulk following closely behind me. I could feel its insectile breath on the back of my neck.
Naked and frantic, I sprinted behind the nearest of the men and used the same tactic I had used escaping through the silver gate: I pushed the unsuspecting figure towards the abomination that rushed towards us in a blur, its eight legs pounding the glassy floor with reverberating thuds.
Drops of clear venom dripped from its fangs as it grabbed the struggling man. It bit deeply into his leg, and as the venom dripped onto his skin, it seemed to eat through his flesh like some sort of acid. The man screamed as red streaks rapidly spread up his leg throughout the rest of his body. His teeth began chattering and his pupils dilated as he stared at me accusingly. But he did not die.
The spider grabbed him and dragged him away down the hallway, down to wherever the victims of the Screamers go. I saw a dozen more of the pale, faceless monstrosities rushing in to take his place. The men looked up, and the Screamers erupted into monstrous shapes: giant, slithering snakes, a floating eyeball with black, squid-like tentacles writhing around its central mass, enormous brown recluses and black widows and faceless Grim Reapers who floated over the ground in black robes. The overwhelming sense of fear and panic I felt at that moment still stays with me to this day, and even though this happened a couple days ago and I did eventually make it out of that den of horrors, it still leaves a deep scar across my mind.
As visions from a nightmare approached us, I turned and ran.

You are going to be low on energy as you go through any detox and you will have to supplement your previous toxic intake with healthy nutrients and vitamin supplements.
Try to eat at least one nutritious meal per day and stay hydrated with lots of water. You want to flush these things out of your system and water is the best way to make it happen quickly.
You are not going to want to go to the store within the first few days, so if possible, plan ahead or enlist help from someone close to you that can run to the store if you need them to.
These recipes are easy to prepare and are full of natural vitamins and protein. You're not going to get everything from food alone, so taking a multivitamin and Vitamin C is recommended for your additional dietary supplements.
You're welcome to use this for any detox, although it is designed for opiate withdrawal. When you get back to your old self again, try to continue this daily ritual of preparing your meals. It's not only healthier, but is also a cheaper option then eating out!
Here's a 14-day plan with healthy meals, including ingredients and steps to prepare each dish.

Day 1: Grilled Chicken Salad

Ingredients: - Boneless, skinless chicken breast - Mixed salad greens - Cherry tomatoes - Cucumber, sliced - Red onion, thinly sliced - Olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing
Preparation: 1. Season the chicken breast with salt, pepper, and your choice of herbs. 2. Grill the chicken until fully cooked. 3. Slice the grilled chicken into strips. 4. Toss mixed salad greens, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and red onion in a bowl. 5. Top the salad with the sliced grilled chicken. 6. Drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing over the salad.

Day 2: Quinoa and Veggie Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Quinoa - Mixed vegetables (broccoli, bell peppers, carrots) - Tofu or chicken (optional) - Soy sauce - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Olive oil
Preparation: 1. Cook quinoa according to package instructions. 2. In a pan, sauté garlic and ginger in olive oil. 3. Add tofu or chicken (if using) and cook until browned. 4. Add mixed vegetables and stir-fry until they're cooked but still crisp. 5. Mix in cooked quinoa and soy sauce. 6. Stir until well combined and heated through.

Day 3: Lentil Soup

Ingredients: - Red lentils - Carrots, diced - Celery, diced - Onion, diced - Garlic, minced - Vegetable broth - Cumin, coriander, and turmeric (spices) - Fresh parsley, chopped
Preparation: 1. Rinse red lentils under cold water. 2. In a large pot, sauté onions and garlic until softened. 3. Add carrots, celery, and spices. Cook for a few minutes. 4. Pour in vegetable broth and add red lentils. 5. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until lentils are tender. 6. Garnish with fresh parsley before serving.

Day 4: Baked Salmon with Roasted Vegetables

Ingredients: - Salmon fillets - Sweet potatoes, diced - Brussels sprouts, halved - Olive oil - Lemon juice - Dill (fresh or dried) - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C). 2. Place salmon fillets on a baking sheet. 3. Toss sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts with olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt, and pepper. 4. Spread vegetables around the salmon on the baking sheet. 5. Bake in the preheated oven for about 15-20 minutes or until salmon is cooked through.

Day 5: Chickpea and Spinach Curry

Ingredients: - Chickpeas (canned or cooked) - Spinach - Onion, diced - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Coconut milk - Curry powder, cumin, and coriander (spices) - Basmati rice
Preparation: 1. Cook basmati rice according to package instructions. 2. In a pan, sauté onions, garlic, and ginger until softened. 3. Add chickpeas and spices, stirring for a couple of minutes. 4. Pour in coconut milk and bring to a simmer. 5. Add spinach and cook until wilted. 6. Serve the chickpea and spinach curry over cooked basmati rice.

Day 6: Turkey and Vegetable Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Ground turkey - Broccoli florets - Snap peas - Bell peppers, sliced - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Garlic, minced - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. In a wok or pan, sauté minced garlic in sesame oil. 3. Add ground turkey and cook until browned. 4. Add broccoli, snap peas, and bell peppers. Stir-fry until veggies are tender-crisp. 5. Pour in soy sauce and toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.

Day 7: Caprese Salad with Grilled Chicken

Ingredients: - Boneless, skinless chicken breast - Tomatoes, sliced - Fresh mozzarella, sliced - Fresh basil leaves - Balsamic glaze - Olive oil - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Season chicken breast with salt and pepper. 2. Grill the chicken until fully cooked. 3. Slice the grilled chicken into strips. 4. Arrange sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and grilled chicken on a plate. 5. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic glaze. 6. Garnish with fresh basil leaves.

Day 8: Vegetable and Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients: - Bell peppers - Quinoa - Black beans (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Corn kernels - Cherry tomatoes, diced - Cumin, chili powder, and paprika (spices) - Shredded cheddar cheese (optional)
Preparation: 1. Cook quinoa according to package instructions. 2. Cut bell peppers in half and remove seeds. 3. In a bowl, mix cooked quinoa, black beans, corn, cherry tomatoes, and spices. 4. Stuff each pepper half with the quinoa mixture. 5. Optional: sprinkle shredded cheddar cheese on top. 6. Bake in the oven at 375°F (190°C) for 20-25 minutes or until peppers are tender.

Day 9: Shrimp and Asparagus Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Shrimp, peeled and deveined - Asparagus spears, trimmed and cut into pieces - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. In a wok or pan, sauté minced garlic and grated ginger in sesame oil. 3. Add shrimp and cook until pink. 4. Add asparagus and stir-fry until crisp-tender. 5. Pour in soy sauce and toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.

Day 10: Greek Salad with Grilled Chicken

Ingredients: - Chicken breast, grilled and sliced - Cucumbers, diced - Cherry tomatoes, halved - Red onion, thinly sliced - Feta cheese, crumbled - Kalamata olives - Olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing
Preparation: 1. Grill chicken breast until fully cooked, then slice. 2. In a bowl, combine diced cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, sliced red onion, feta cheese, and Kalamata olives. 3. Add the sliced grilled chicken on top. 4. Drizzle with olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing.

Day 11: Black Bean and Vegetable Quesadillas

Ingredients: - Whole wheat tortillas - Black beans (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Bell peppers, diced - Red onion, diced - Corn kernels - Shredded Mexican cheese blend - Cumin, chili powder, and garlic powder (spices) - Fresh cilantro, chopped (optional)
Preparation: 1. In a bowl, mix black beans, diced bell peppers, red onion, corn, and spices. 2. Lay out whole wheat tortillas. 3. Spread the black bean and vegetable mixture on one half of each tortilla. 4. Sprinkle shredded cheese on top. 5. Fold the tortillas in half, creating quesadillas. 6. In a skillet, cook each side until the tortillas are golden and the cheese is melted. 7. Garnish with fresh cilantro if desired.

Day 12: Eggplant and Chickpea Curry

Ingredients: - Eggplant, diced - Chickpeas (canned, drained, and rinsed) - Coconut milk - Curry powder, turmeric, and cayenne pepper (spices) - Garlic, minced - Ginger, grated - Basmati rice
Preparation: 1. Cook basmati rice according to package instructions. 2. In a pot, sauté minced garlic and grated ginger. 3. Add diced eggplant, chickpeas, and spices. Stir well. 4. Pour in coconut milk and let it simmer until the eggplant is tender. 5. Serve the curry over cooked basmati rice.

Day 13: Spinach and Feta Stuffed Chicken Breast

Ingredients: - Chicken breasts, boneless and skinless - Fresh spinach leaves - Feta cheese, crumbled - Garlic, minced - Olive oil - Lemon juice - Dill (fresh or dried) - Salt and pepper
Preparation: 1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). 2. Butterfly the chicken breasts by slicing them horizontally. 3. In a bowl, mix fresh spinach, crumbled feta, minced garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, dill, salt, and pepper. 4. Stuff each chicken breast with the spinach and feta mixture. 5. Secure with toothpicks and place in a baking dish. 6. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

Day 14: Vegetable and Tofu Stir-Fry

Ingredients: - Extra-firm tofu, cubed - Broccoli florets - Carrots, julienned - Snow peas - Bell peppers, sliced - Soy sauce - Sesame oil - Ginger, grated - Brown rice
Preparation: 1. Cook brown rice according to package instructions. 2. Press tofu to remove excess water, then cube it. 3. In a wok or pan, sauté tofu in sesame oil until golden. 4. Add broccoli, carrots, snow peas, and bell peppers. Stir-fry until vegetables are crisp-tender. 5. Pour in soy sauce and grated ginger. Toss until well-coated. 6. Serve the stir-fry over cooked brown rice.
Feel free to continue exploring new recipes or repeat your favorite ones. This meal plan aims to provide a variety of nutritious and delicious options. Adjust portion sizes to fit your needs, and always consult with a healthcare professional or nutritionist for personalized advice. Enjoy your healthy and satisfying meals!

Some people will dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist or a crackpot. Hell, if someone had told me a few months ago that all the executions in the United States are staged, I would have laughed in their face.
That is, until I awoke a few nights ago to a frenzied pounding on my door, and my entire world got turned upside-down.
***
For the last few years, I’ve had a recurring nightmare at least a few times a week- a nightmare where I kept having to travel down a rickety, dilapidated hallway in different bodies. I would be an old woman, then a little girl, then a middle-aged man, and so on. I kept taking different bodies, first dozens and then hundreds of them.
I couldn’t ever remember what happened when I got to the end of the hallway and pushed open the black, rotted door that waited there like some giant, grasping hand ready to pull me into Hell. There would be a terrible roar, a cacophony of screaming. The earth would tremble. Then I would find myself back at the front of the house, reborn. The dream would start over again.
All around me, I would see the bodies I had temporarily occupied piled up with their throats slashed. In a new body, I would be forced to go down the hallway yet again and meet whatever ineffable horror awaited at the end- a horror so terrible that I could never remember or comprehend it.
“Help me! God, please, help me, take me out of this Hell…” I cried in my dream, feeling as I rose up into white light at the end, yet still screaming in both my nightmare and in real life. There was a hard smash against the front door of my cabin. I jumped up in bed, sweating heavily. For a long moment, I thought I was still in the nightmare. I looked around my small, dim bedroom, expecting to see bodies stacked one on another like pieces of cordwood.
“They’re right behind me! Please, for the love of God!” The voice that had awakened me erupted into nonsense and wracking sobs.
Fully awake now, I jumped up and turned on the lights. The cabin I lived in was cramped and only meant for one person. It had a bedroom, a joint kitchen-living room, and a bathroom. No one lived within two miles of me in any direction. I had moved to the Texas desert for the privacy, after all. I didn’t really like people that much.
I ripped open the door and found a disheveled man standing there in bright orange coveralls. He had rivulets of blood streaming from what looked like a bullet hole in his shoulder. His gray, faded eyes were wide and filled with panicked tears. He had a face like a tired bulldog. All of the hair on his head had been shaved off except for his eyebrows and eyelashes. His white scalp gleamed like a freshly-polished bowling ball.
He stumbled past me, pushing me aside and slamming the door shut. The house shook with the force of it. I realized that he towered over me, and I wasn’t exactly short. The man must have been nearly seven feet tall.
“Oh, thank God,” he said, still weeping. He fell to his knees, grabbing my shirt in supplication, wringing the cloth between his large, callused hands. A sense of panic rose through my chest. I wondered if I had inadvertently just let in a lunatic or a killer. I looked at his clothes closer. Stamped on the back in large, black letters, I saw the acronym “TDCJ”. My heart turned into a block of ice as I recognized a prison uniform.
“Hey there, stay back…” I said in a trembling voice, backpedaling quickly from the kneeling man. I thought of my shotgun in the other room. Mentally, I kicked myself for not grabbing it.
“It’s not like that, man, really,” he said, showing me his empty hands. “I’m supposed to be dead. They officially executed me last night. Look, you can check. Do you have a phone?” I reached for the phone in my pocket, deciding to dial the police. He jumped up and snatched it from my hands as quickly as a frog snatching a fly. I cried out in alarm, turning away to run back to the bedroom and lock myself inside. A large hand came down on my shoulder, squeezing it tightly within its iron grip.
“I’m not dangerous, friend,” he said. “I was falsely convicted, just like a lot of others. They put me on death row and supposedly executed me last night. Look.” He typed something on the phone quickly, pulling up a news article. Against my better judgment, I looked.
“Texas man executed by lethal injection for 2012 murder of his ex-girlfriend and her mother,” it read. I saw the man’s tired bulldog face looking back out at me from the phone screen. I froze, feeling very confused. I wondered if the man had somehow gotten a website to write up a fake news article, but why? Was this all some sort of prank?
I gingerly took the phone back. The man gave it up without a struggle. I read the article, seeing the man’s name: “Donald G.” I went back to Google and typed in his full name, finding dozens of other articles reporting his death by lethal injection, including some by international media outlets. I scratched my head.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What is this? Why are you here?” The man looked nervously at the door.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” he responded in a raspy, tired voice. The bleeding from his shoulder had slowed to a trickle of dark, clotted blood. “Do you have a car?”
“Of course I have a car,” I said.
“Then, please, take me out of here, and I’ll tell you everything on the way.” I hesitated for a long moment. “Please, sir. I can guarantee you that you’ll never hear another tale like it.”
“Alright, but I’m taking my gun and my phone,” I said. “If you try anything, I’ll blow your fucking head off. Understood?” The man nodded, resigned, still checking outside the front window every few moments with a growing sense of panic. Sighing, I extended my hand. “And, by the way, my name’s Roger.”
“I’m Donny,” he said, giving me an exhausted smile.
***
We got in the car. I put the loaded shotgun between the driver’s door and my seat, propping it straight up. Donny got in the passenger seat, wincing. He grabbed at the bullet hole, breathing hard. His face turned chalk-white, and I thought he might vomit for a moment.
“I have some Aleve in here,” I said, reaching into the center console and handing him some pain relievers and a half-bottle of water. I noticed with dismay that he was bleeding on my seat. Those stains would not be coming out anytime soon. I sighed.
“Thanks,” he grunted, taking four of them in one go. He chugged the water as I turned on the old Ford sedan, pulling out onto the empty desert road. Donny continuously checked the rearview mirrors, but the road stayed deserted.
“I can’t tell you all of it, because that would take all night. I guess it all started when I got home late from work and got an unexpected call from my ex-girlfriend…”
***
I had dated Olivia for a few years. We had recently broken up, but we stayed on good terms. We still talked regularly and helped each other out. She was an accountant, you see, and I was a carpenter who owned my own business. So she would help me out with taxes or paperwork or whatever, and sometimes, I’d go over and help her when she or her mother needed to install some cabinets or bookshelves or anything.
She had called me the previous week saying something about seeing a strange craft flying over her house. She said it would stop in mid-air, as if a videotape had been paused. Then, in a blur, it would jump to the next point. It was high in the air, so she said she couldn’t see the design of it, but it sparkled with gold and silver hues. I had dismissed it as fanciful, assuring her it was probably just a military helicopter or a weather balloon or something.
I was just getting home from work, bone-tired, when my phone rang. I looked down, seeing it was Olivia. We had been broken up for a few months by that point, but we still talked at least once every couple weeks. It was strange to be getting a call at 11 PM, though. She never stayed up this late.
“Hey, what’s up?” I said. I heard her heavy breathing on the other end of the line.
“Donny, I think someone’s peeking in the windows,” she said. “I saw a face… watching me sleep. It was someone with a gasmask on.”
“Call the police then!” I said, my heart speeding up. “Why are you calling me?”
“I don’t want to make a fool of myself if it’s nothing,” she said. “Can you come over and check around the house for me?” I only lived about a three-minute drive from Olivia and her mother. Sighing, I agreed.
I got in the car, speeding over as fast as I could. When I pulled up in front of their quaint, one-story colonial, I saw the front door was wide open and all the lights were on. A sense of dread filled my chest.
I had my pistol with me, just in case. I turned off the safety and cocked it. I heard chaos inside, something being thrown and glass shattering. A woman’s scream shattered the rural Texas night. The crickets all went quiet as I sprinted into the house.
Instantly, I could smell the blood. That coppery, metallic smell that awakens something primal in the human heart. I knew it meant trouble. Waves of adrenaline smashed against the shore of my consciousness. Everything felt slowed down and unreal. My feet moved with their own mind. I walked forward, my breath seeming too loud, like a roaring cyclone in my ears.
I found Olivia and her mother in the kitchen, their throats cut from ear to ear. The blood-stained butcher knife that had done the deed in so little time lay discarded on the floor like a broken toy. I knelt down over Olivia, seeing her sightless eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling. I tried doing what little CPR I knew how while I called the police, but all I ended up doing was getting her blood all over me.
When the police came in with guns drawn and arrested me for murder, I tried protesting, saying that my cell phone’s GPS would show I wasn’t at the house and that I was the one who had called 911 in the first place. But none of that got entered into trial, and before I knew it, I was on death row and awaiting my final day.
I talked to a lot of other people in prison. Lots of people claim to be innocent, but something bothered me. It was the call I had gotten from Olivia the week before…
***
Headlights flashed far behind us. I noticed a black car speeding up. I heard the revving of its powerful engine.
“I think we’ve got company,” I said, thinking first that it was the police. I was absolutely enthralled by Donny’s story, and while I still had my doubts about the veracity of it, the fact that the news media was apparently lying about his execution added some weight to his account.
The car behind us accelerated fast and swerved into the wrong lane. It pulled up beside me, and that was when the sinking feeling started in my stomach. This wasn’t the police.
The dark, tinted window rolled slowly down. I tried speeding up and braking, but whatever I did, it kept pace directly next to me.
“Oh shit, it’s them,” Donny said. A moment later, the back window shattered. Glass exploded all over the back seat. I swerved, horrified. Looking over, I saw the end of a rifle sticking out the open window of the black sedan.
I gave the shotgun to Donny while I tried to keep swerving and speeding ahead of the madman next to me.
“Shoot them!” I screamed. “It’s loaded.” He didn’t hesitate. He rolled down his window and stuck his massive body out of the car. I heard the blasts of the Benelli Nova echoing off the roof as if a cannon had gone off. A burst of fire erupted from the rifle sticking out of the faceless black car keeping pace with us. I saw their window explode inwards at the same time that my car swerved crazily to the left as the front driver’s side tire blew apart.
The wheel spun under my hands. I felt the car start to spin, drifting over into the other lane. With a tortured shriek of rending metal, the front of my car smashed into the black sedan, sending it careening off the side of the road into a pile of boulders, each of them two or three tall. I saw Donny fly out of the window as the car spun, then I smashed my head on the steering wheel and felt the world going black. From far away, I heard a car’s engine giving tortured grinding sounds and loud ticking noises like some large mechanical heart with a fatal arrhythmia. I smelled transmission fluid and coolant. But I was too stunned to really comprehend what was happening.
I inhaled deeply, and my vision came back slightly. Blood streamed from my nose and a gash across my forehead. I felt like I was looking through a tunnel, the bright colors of reality blurring around the edges.
I don’t know how long I sat there, hyperventilating and bleeding all over the steering wheel. Finally, I ripped off my seatbelt, stumbling out into the dark night.
On the side of the road, I saw Donny’s mangled body. He was still breathing, choking on his own blood. It bubbled and frothed from his blue lips as he twitched and blinked rapidly, his hands clenching and unclenching, the knuckles white. His fingernails had begun to turn cyanotic and pale as a puddle of blood spread out from under his crushed body. His right leg looked totally shattered, and I saw pieces of sharp bone poking out through the skin. Laying a few feet away, I found my little 12-gauge Nova; a little scraped up, but still in fine working order. Benelli has always been a solid company, and their guns hold up well under stress.
Looking at Donny made me feel sick to my stomach. I didn’t even know the man, but no one deserved this. And, to be honest, my gut had told me he was telling the truth when he told me his story. I hadn’t noticed an ounce of deception in him.
I picked up the shotgun, slamming another slug in the chamber as I walked over toward the black sedan, wondering what kind of human monsters I would find contained within.
***
I looked in the shattered passenger’s side window under the dim moonlight streaming down from the cloudless sky. I could tell the passenger was dead as soon as I saw him. He had an exit wound the size of an orange on the left side of his skull. He had on a black suit and a tie with a clean-shaven face and a crewcut. An AR-15 lay on his lap. I could see clear through his brains into the rest of the car beyond. It was a sickening and gruesome sight.
The driver was still alive, however. He was dressed similarly to the gunman. He had light olive-skin and dark eyes. His high cheekbones gave his face a narrow, gaunt aspect.
I reached through the shattered passenger’s side window and grabbed the rifle, throwing it on the road. Slowly and carefully, I circled around the car, keeping the shotgun raised. I got to the driver’s side and found the window still intact, though a slug had ripped through the door and left a bullet hole the size of a quarter in the thick metal.
I tried the door but found it locked. Without hesitation, I used the butt end of the shotgun to smash through the driver’s side window. Safety glass rained down onto the still body of the driver. I saw his eyes blinking fast, but he looked stunned and confused. A soft moaning came from his lips. A deep gash ran across his forehead, causing blood to trickle down and stain his undoubtedly expensive clothes. His right eye had begun to swell and change colors already, giving him a slant-eyed, winking appearance. The driver’s side airbag had deployed during the crash and his face had clearly hit at a high velocity. It looked like he might have been coming out of a full-blown concussion.
“Get the fuck out of the car,” I screamed at him, shoving the barrel of the shotgun hard against the front of his forehead. “And put your hands up. If you make any move, then I guarantee you, we will both see what color your brains are.” I gave him a grim, sadistic smile. He raised his trembling hands in the air, his knuckles white with inner tension. I saw the lump of what looked like a pistol holstered under his jacket. I watched him closely, daring him to make a move. “Get out and keep your hands as high above your head as they’ll go. If they drop an inch, I will shoot you. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” he answered in a flat, dead voice.
“Good,” I said. “Because I am telling you the truth, I promise you that. Now open the door and get out- slowly. Very, very slowly.” After spitting blood and pieces of what looked like teeth onto the airbag and floor of the destroyed car, he pulled open the door and practically fell out of it. He caught himself at the last moment, hanging onto the top of the door and breathing heavily. His right eye was totally covered in fresh, gleaming blood, and I doubted if he could see much out of it.
“Get down on the ground and put your hands behind your back,” I said in an icy tone. With a look of pure hatred from his dark eyes, he lay down on the desert sand. I took off my belt and wrapped it around his wrists, binding them tightly. Then I reached into his coat and pulled out a pistol.
“A .45,” I said, examining it. “Nice gun.”
“It’s my work gun,” he said, giving me a predatory smile. “At home, I wouldn’t use such a small caliber. Especially on scumbags like you and your friend.” I shrugged.
“He wasn’t actually my friend, just a total stranger who came to my house in the middle of the night. And, like the good Samaritan I am, I helped him.”
“You’re violating federal law by doing this,” he spat at me. “You’ll go to prison for the rest of your life.”
“Are you guys going to frame me like you did to Donny?” I asked. “And then fake my execution too?” The agent went pale, the scowl on his face deepening.
“I don’t know what kind of conspiracy theorist bullshit you’ve been swallowing, friend, but everything you’re saying sounds insane. I am a federal agent. You can check my pockets for my badge.”
“I don’t give a shit what you are,” I said. “As it stands, it looks like I have all the power and guns- and it looks like you have nothing. So what I want from you is the truth. You can tell me, or I can beat it out of you.”
I still felt sickened by what had happened to Donny and his sudden death. I was not in a forgiving mood. And, to be honest, violence never really bothered me much, even as a kid when I got into fights. A large part of it enjoys the thrill of it, the rush of beating a man into unconsciousness and hearing his nose crack under your fist. The man hesitated, wincing like a beaten dog.
“Please, I really don’t know what you’re…” he began to say. Without hesitation, I brought my steel-toe boot back and kicked him in the ribs. I heard a few of them crack under the blow with a sound like snapping twigs. He screamed as more blood filled his mouth. He rolled onto his stomach, his eyes wide and wild like a panicked animal in a cage. It took him a little while to calm down, but when he did, I knelt close to his face and whispered.
“What I want from you,” I repeated slowly, “is the truth.” Still spitting blood, his face looking like a package of raw hamburger, he nodded. I rolled him over so that he was sitting on the ground, his legs splayed out in front of him. “Why don’t you start by telling me your name?”
***
“I’m Agent Keyes, and…, well, the truth is rather complicated,” he said, his voice sounding nasally and strained through all of his injuries. I could tell it hurt him to breathe. “But I guess it boils down to this: Donny’s girl and her mother saw something that they weren’t supposed to. Our surveillance picked up the craft and cameras from the streets showed that those two were outside when it went overhead. Then we started listening to their calls, heard her telling Donny about it, and our Director insisted that we had to tie up the loose ends.”
“Why does it matter so much that she saw the craft?” I asked.
“She not only saw the craft,” he said, “she took a video of it on her phone. She didn’t tell Donny about that, but we were able to see it. You see, the craft isn’t just some top-secret government plane or anything. It is a legitimate extraterrestrial craft, one being flown by the species that created humanity originally through genetic engineering. We usually call them the ‘Primes’, after the notion of a prime mover.” I laughed at that.
“That’s the craziest goddamn shit I’ve ever heard,” I said.
“Well, it gets a lot crazier. Because your friend there is right. The United States doesn’t actually execute anyone. It’s all fake. It’s easy with lethal injection, because the medical staff can just put opiates or sedatives in the line. Then, when the person is unconscious, we have a doctor go in, pretend to check his vitals and certify the person dead.
“Hell, back when my dad worked for the Agency, they had to fake electric chair executions with smoke and pyrotechnics. They’d drug the person beforehand, so that they would pass out and lose consciousness during the staged execution. To get them to shake and stutter, the medical staff would use a low, non-lethal dose of electricity.” I stared at him, waiting for the punchline.
“Why?” I asked. “Who would go through all that trouble?” He shrugged.
“Well, that brings us to the interesting part,” Agent Keyes said, his one good eye sparkling with something strange and repulsive under the surface. The other had swelled into a slit of purple bruises, and I doubted whether he could see anything out of that eye. He still winced every time he breathed in too hard, probably from his cracked ribs.
“The Primes demand sacrifices from every major government in the world.” Agent Keyes continued. We don’t know exactly what they’re doing with these subjects, though I doubt if it’s anything good. Perhaps they are using them as guinea pigs for genetic engineering experiments. Maybe the Primes just cut their throats and eat their flesh raw. Personally, I…” I heard a strange buzzing from the sky, like the sound a high-voltage power line might make. Off in the distance, I saw something flashing across the sky, hues of silver and gold gleaming off the side of the sleek alien ship.
It had no wings that I could see. It formed a shape like a spear. Thin strands of gold and silver weaved together, forming a graceful, interweaving outer shell. A cold blue light radiated from the craft as it gave off its strange buzzing noise. A strange smell filled the desert, almost like ozone mixed with some kind of sweet, chemical odor. It moved in a strange, alien way, jumping forwards in a blur and then stopping suddenly in mid-air, floating there like a hummingbird.
Agent Keyes' words rang in my ears. A sense of panic filled my heart. Without hesitation, I ran towards my car. I knew I had no time to flee. I got down on my stomach, crawling underneath it, the warm pavement scraping my clothes and skin as I frantically pushed myself forward. Then I peered out, watching and waiting. About half a minute later, the buzzing became overwhelming as the ship stopped directly overhead. That horrendous sound seemed to vibrate my bones. I could feel my skull shaking.
A few seconds later, a shape materialized in front of Agent Keyes’s destroyed car. It had tentacles where its eyes should have been. They writhed like dozens of snakes, their thin, bone-white tendrils slithering in slow, disparate waves. Its body had a sleek, bloody look. Powerful muscles twitched and flexed under the skinless exterior. It towered over everything else in the area, standing nearly nine-feet-tall. Then the figure spoke in a harsh, low voice.
“You have not given your tribute,” it said coldly. “You have broken your agreement.”
“The man killed his guard and escaped,” Agent Keyes said, his hands still bound behind his back. He spat blood. “I tried to hunt him down, but…” He started to motion to my hiding spot with his head, apparently planning to try to give me to the aliens in Donny’s place. But the creature didn’t give him time to finish. He had some black canister in his hand and sprayed Agent Keyes in the face. Agent Keyes tried to protest, stuttering some incomprehensible jumble of sounds. Then he groaned as his eyes fluttered and, finally, went limp.
The alien creature made a series of clicking, guttural sounds as he lifted Agent Keyes body up. A few seconds later, their bodies became translucent and then faded entirely from view. The ship jumped forwards, far out of view, and I found myself alone.
As I crawled out from under the car, I saw the first police lights in the distance. The shrill sirens rang out across the silent desert like the wailing of a banshee.
***
Once they found blood all over the area and the bodies of Donny and the unnamed agent, the police immediately arrested me for suspicion of first-degree murder. They claimed I was some kind of spree killer who went berserk. I told them to check Donny’s identity and they’d see my entire story was true, that the executions were staged, but they refused. In the trial, they claimed he was a “John Doe,” likely some unidentified hitchhiker or homeless person.
Now I’m on death row. I had my lawyer post online this to warn other people. I want someone to hear my story.
Because I know that, after they fake my death, I will disappear- and then a much more horrifying death will come. I will see our creators, the Primes, and maybe they will use me as a subject for some nightmarish experiment.
The executions in the USA are staged, but I think by the time the Primes finish with me, I will wish they were real.

Some people will dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist or a crackpot. Hell, if someone had told me a few months ago that all the executions in the United States are staged, I would have laughed in their face.
That is, until I awoke a few nights ago to a frenzied pounding on my door, and my entire world got turned upside-down.
***
For the last few years, I’ve had a recurring nightmare at least a few times a week- a nightmare where I kept having to travel down a rickety, dilapidated hallway in different bodies. I would be an old woman, then a little girl, then a middle-aged man, and so on. I kept taking different bodies, first dozens and then hundreds of them.
I couldn’t ever remember what happened when I got to the end of the hallway and pushed open the black, rotted door that waited there like some giant, grasping hand ready to pull me into Hell. There would be a terrible roar, a cacophony of screaming. The earth would tremble. Then I would find myself back at the front of the house, reborn. The dream would start over again.
All around me, I would see the bodies I had temporarily occupied piled up with their throats slashed. In a new body, I would be forced to go down the hallway yet again and meet whatever ineffable horror awaited at the end- a horror so terrible that I could never remember or comprehend it.
“Help me! God, please, help me, take me out of this Hell…” I cried in my dream, feeling as I rose up into white light at the end, yet still screaming in both my nightmare and in real life. There was a hard smash against the front door of my cabin. I jumped up in bed, sweating heavily. For a long moment, I thought I was still in the nightmare. I looked around my small, dim bedroom, expecting to see bodies stacked one on another like pieces of cordwood.
“They’re right behind me! Please, for the love of God!” The voice that had awakened me erupted into nonsense and wracking sobs.
Fully awake now, I jumped up and turned on the lights. The cabin I lived in was cramped and only meant for one person. It had a bedroom, a joint kitchen-living room, and a bathroom. No one lived within two miles of me in any direction. I had moved to the Texas desert for the privacy, after all. I didn’t really like people that much.
I ripped open the door and found a disheveled man standing there in bright orange coveralls. He had rivulets of blood streaming from what looked like a bullet hole in his shoulder. His gray, faded eyes were wide and filled with panicked tears. He had a face like a tired bulldog. All of the hair on his head had been shaved off except for his eyebrows and eyelashes. His white scalp gleamed like a freshly-polished bowling ball.
He stumbled past me, pushing me aside and slamming the door shut. The house shook with the force of it. I realized that he towered over me, and I wasn’t exactly short. The man must have been nearly seven feet tall.
“Oh, thank God,” he said, still weeping. He fell to his knees, grabbing my shirt in supplication, wringing the cloth between his large, callused hands. A sense of panic rose through my chest. I wondered if I had inadvertently just let in a lunatic or a killer. I looked at his clothes closer. Stamped on the back in large, black letters, I saw the acronym “TDCJ”. My heart turned into a block of ice as I recognized a prison uniform.
“Hey there, stay back…” I said in a trembling voice, backpedaling quickly from the kneeling man. I thought of my shotgun in the other room. Mentally, I kicked myself for not grabbing it.
“It’s not like that, man, really,” he said, showing me his empty hands. “I’m supposed to be dead. They officially executed me last night. Look, you can check. Do you have a phone?” I reached for the phone in my pocket, deciding to dial the police. He jumped up and snatched it from my hands as quickly as a frog snatching a fly. I cried out in alarm, turning away to run back to the bedroom and lock myself inside. A large hand came down on my shoulder, squeezing it tightly within its iron grip.
“I’m not dangerous, friend,” he said. “I was falsely convicted, just like a lot of others. They put me on death row and supposedly executed me last night. Look.” He typed something on the phone quickly, pulling up a news article. Against my better judgment, I looked.
“Texas man executed by lethal injection for 2012 murder of his ex-girlfriend and her mother,” it read. I saw the man’s tired bulldog face looking back out at me from the phone screen. I froze, feeling very confused. I wondered if the man had somehow gotten a website to write up a fake news article, but why? Was this all some sort of prank?
I gingerly took the phone back. The man gave it up without a struggle. I read the article, seeing the man’s name: “Donald G.” I went back to Google and typed in his full name, finding dozens of other articles reporting his death by lethal injection, including some by international media outlets. I scratched my head.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What is this? Why are you here?” The man looked nervously at the door.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” he responded in a raspy, tired voice. The bleeding from his shoulder had slowed to a trickle of dark, clotted blood. “Do you have a car?”
“Of course I have a car,” I said.
“Then, please, take me out of here, and I’ll tell you everything on the way.” I hesitated for a long moment. “Please, sir. I can guarantee you that you’ll never hear another tale like it.”
“Alright, but I’m taking my gun and my phone,” I said. “If you try anything, I’ll blow your fucking head off. Understood?” The man nodded, resigned, still checking outside the front window every few moments with a growing sense of panic. Sighing, I extended my hand. “And, by the way, my name’s Roger.”
“I’m Donny,” he said, giving me an exhausted smile.
***
We got in the car. I put the loaded shotgun between the driver’s door and my seat, propping it straight up. Donny got in the passenger seat, wincing. He grabbed at the bullet hole, breathing hard. His face turned chalk-white, and I thought he might vomit for a moment.
“I have some Aleve in here,” I said, reaching into the center console and handing him some pain relievers and a half-bottle of water. I noticed with dismay that he was bleeding on my seat. Those stains would not be coming out anytime soon. I sighed.
“Thanks,” he grunted, taking four of them in one go. He chugged the water as I turned on the old Ford sedan, pulling out onto the empty desert road. Donny continuously checked the rearview mirrors, but the road stayed deserted.
“I can’t tell you all of it, because that would take all night. I guess it all started when I got home late from work and got an unexpected call from my ex-girlfriend…”
***
I had dated Olivia for a few years. We had recently broken up, but we stayed on good terms. We still talked regularly and helped each other out. She was an accountant, you see, and I was a carpenter who owned my own business. So she would help me out with taxes or paperwork or whatever, and sometimes, I’d go over and help her when she or her mother needed to install some cabinets or bookshelves or anything.
She had called me the previous week saying something about seeing a strange craft flying over her house. She said it would stop in mid-air, as if a videotape had been paused. Then, in a blur, it would jump to the next point. It was high in the air, so she said she couldn’t see the design of it, but it sparkled with gold and silver hues. I had dismissed it as fanciful, assuring her it was probably just a military helicopter or a weather balloon or something.
I was just getting home from work, bone-tired, when my phone rang. I looked down, seeing it was Olivia. We had been broken up for a few months by that point, but we still talked at least once every couple weeks. It was strange to be getting a call at 11 PM, though. She never stayed up this late.
“Hey, what’s up?” I said. I heard her heavy breathing on the other end of the line.
“Donny, I think someone’s peeking in the windows,” she said. “I saw a face… watching me sleep. It was someone with a gasmask on.”
“Call the police then!” I said, my heart speeding up. “Why are you calling me?”
“I don’t want to make a fool of myself if it’s nothing,” she said. “Can you come over and check around the house for me?” I only lived about a three-minute drive from Olivia and her mother. Sighing, I agreed.
I got in the car, speeding over as fast as I could. When I pulled up in front of their quaint, one-story colonial, I saw the front door was wide open and all the lights were on. A sense of dread filled my chest.
I had my pistol with me, just in case. I turned off the safety and cocked it. I heard chaos inside, something being thrown and glass shattering. A woman’s scream shattered the rural Texas night. The crickets all went quiet as I sprinted into the house.
Instantly, I could smell the blood. That coppery, metallic smell that awakens something primal in the human heart. I knew it meant trouble. Waves of adrenaline smashed against the shore of my consciousness. Everything felt slowed down and unreal. My feet moved with their own mind. I walked forward, my breath seeming too loud, like a roaring cyclone in my ears.
I found Olivia and her mother in the kitchen, their throats cut from ear to ear. The blood-stained butcher knife that had done the deed in so little time lay discarded on the floor like a broken toy. I knelt down over Olivia, seeing her sightless eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling. I tried doing what little CPR I knew how while I called the police, but all I ended up doing was getting her blood all over me.
When the police came in with guns drawn and arrested me for murder, I tried protesting, saying that my cell phone’s GPS would show I wasn’t at the house and that I was the one who had called 911 in the first place. But none of that got entered into trial, and before I knew it, I was on death row and awaiting my final day.
I talked to a lot of other people in prison. Lots of people claim to be innocent, but something bothered me. It was the call I had gotten from Olivia the week before…
***
Headlights flashed far behind us. I noticed a black car speeding up. I heard the revving of its powerful engine.
“I think we’ve got company,” I said, thinking first that it was the police. I was absolutely enthralled by Donny’s story, and while I still had my doubts about the veracity of it, the fact that the news media was apparently lying about his execution added some weight to his account.
The car behind us accelerated fast and swerved into the wrong lane. It pulled up beside me, and that was when the sinking feeling started in my stomach. This wasn’t the police.
The dark, tinted window rolled slowly down. I tried speeding up and braking, but whatever I did, it kept pace directly next to me.
“Oh shit, it’s them,” Donny said. A moment later, the back window shattered. Glass exploded all over the back seat. I swerved, horrified. Looking over, I saw the end of a rifle sticking out the open window of the black sedan.
I gave the shotgun to Donny while I tried to keep swerving and speeding ahead of the madman next to me.
“Shoot them!” I screamed. “It’s loaded.” He didn’t hesitate. He rolled down his window and stuck his massive body out of the car. I heard the blasts of the Benelli Nova echoing off the roof as if a cannon had gone off. A burst of fire erupted from the rifle sticking out of the faceless black car keeping pace with us. I saw their window explode inwards at the same time that my car swerved crazily to the left as the front driver’s side tire blew apart.
The wheel spun under my hands. I felt the car start to spin, drifting over into the other lane. With a tortured shriek of rending metal, the front of my car smashed into the black sedan, sending it careening off the side of the road into a pile of boulders, each of them two or three tall. I saw Donny fly out of the window as the car spun, then I smashed my head on the steering wheel and felt the world going black. From far away, I heard a car’s engine giving tortured grinding sounds and loud ticking noises like some large mechanical heart with a fatal arrhythmia. I smelled transmission fluid and coolant. But I was too stunned to really comprehend what was happening.
I inhaled deeply, and my vision came back slightly. Blood streamed from my nose and a gash across my forehead. I felt like I was looking through a tunnel, the bright colors of reality blurring around the edges.
I don’t know how long I sat there, hyperventilating and bleeding all over the steering wheel. Finally, I ripped off my seatbelt, stumbling out into the dark night.
On the side of the road, I saw Donny’s mangled body. He was still breathing, choking on his own blood. It bubbled and frothed from his blue lips as he twitched and blinked rapidly, his hands clenching and unclenching, the knuckles white. His fingernails had begun to turn cyanotic and pale as a puddle of blood spread out from under his crushed body. His right leg looked totally shattered, and I saw pieces of sharp bone poking out through the skin. Laying a few feet away, I found my little 12-gauge Nova; a little scraped up, but still in fine working order. Benelli has always been a solid company, and their guns hold up well under stress.
Looking at Donny made me feel sick to my stomach. I didn’t even know the man, but no one deserved this. And, to be honest, my gut had told me he was telling the truth when he told me his story. I hadn’t noticed an ounce of deception in him.
I picked up the shotgun, slamming another slug in the chamber as I walked over toward the black sedan, wondering what kind of human monsters I would find contained within.
***
I looked in the shattered passenger’s side window under the dim moonlight streaming down from the cloudless sky. I could tell the passenger was dead as soon as I saw him. He had an exit wound the size of an orange on the left side of his skull. He had on a black suit and a tie with a clean-shaven face and a crewcut. An AR-15 lay on his lap. I could see clear through his brains into the rest of the car beyond. It was a sickening and gruesome sight.
The driver was still alive, however. He was dressed similarly to the gunman. He had light olive-skin and dark eyes. His high cheekbones gave his face a narrow, gaunt aspect.
I reached through the shattered passenger’s side window and grabbed the rifle, throwing it on the road. Slowly and carefully, I circled around the car, keeping the shotgun raised. I got to the driver’s side and found the window still intact, though a slug had ripped through the door and left a bullet hole the size of a quarter in the thick metal.
I tried the door but found it locked. Without hesitation, I used the butt end of the shotgun to smash through the driver’s side window. Safety glass rained down onto the still body of the driver. I saw his eyes blinking fast, but he looked stunned and confused. A soft moaning came from his lips. A deep gash ran across his forehead, causing blood to trickle down and stain his undoubtedly expensive clothes. His right eye had begun to swell and change colors already, giving him a slant-eyed, winking appearance. The driver’s side airbag had deployed during the crash and his face had clearly hit at a high velocity. It looked like he might have been coming out of a full-blown concussion.
“Get the fuck out of the car,” I screamed at him, shoving the barrel of the shotgun hard against the front of his forehead. “And put your hands up. If you make any move, then I guarantee you, we will both see what color your brains are.” I gave him a grim, sadistic smile. He raised his trembling hands in the air, his knuckles white with inner tension. I saw the lump of what looked like a pistol holstered under his jacket. I watched him closely, daring him to make a move. “Get out and keep your hands as high above your head as they’ll go. If they drop an inch, I will shoot you. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” he answered in a flat, dead voice.
“Good,” I said. “Because I am telling you the truth, I promise you that. Now open the door and get out- slowly. Very, very slowly.” After spitting blood and pieces of what looked like teeth onto the airbag and floor of the destroyed car, he pulled open the door and practically fell out of it. He caught himself at the last moment, hanging onto the top of the door and breathing heavily. His right eye was totally covered in fresh, gleaming blood, and I doubted if he could see much out of it.
“Get down on the ground and put your hands behind your back,” I said in an icy tone. With a look of pure hatred from his dark eyes, he lay down on the desert sand. I took off my belt and wrapped it around his wrists, binding them tightly. Then I reached into his coat and pulled out a pistol.
“A .45,” I said, examining it. “Nice gun.”
“It’s my work gun,” he said, giving me a predatory smile. “At home, I wouldn’t use such a small caliber. Especially on scumbags like you and your friend.” I shrugged.
“He wasn’t actually my friend, just a total stranger who came to my house in the middle of the night. And, like the good Samaritan I am, I helped him.”
“You’re violating federal law by doing this,” he spat at me. “You’ll go to prison for the rest of your life.”
“Are you guys going to frame me like you did to Donny?” I asked. “And then fake my execution too?” The agent went pale, the scowl on his face deepening.
“I don’t know what kind of conspiracy theorist bullshit you’ve been swallowing, friend, but everything you’re saying sounds insane. I am a federal agent. You can check my pockets for my badge.”
“I don’t give a shit what you are,” I said. “As it stands, it looks like I have all the power and guns- and it looks like you have nothing. So what I want from you is the truth. You can tell me, or I can beat it out of you.”
I still felt sickened by what had happened to Donny and his sudden death. I was not in a forgiving mood. And, to be honest, violence never really bothered me much, even as a kid when I got into fights. A large part of it enjoys the thrill of it, the rush of beating a man into unconsciousness and hearing his nose crack under your fist. The man hesitated, wincing like a beaten dog.
“Please, I really don’t know what you’re…” he began to say. Without hesitation, I brought my steel-toe boot back and kicked him in the ribs. I heard a few of them crack under the blow with a sound like snapping twigs. He screamed as more blood filled his mouth. He rolled onto his stomach, his eyes wide and wild like a panicked animal in a cage. It took him a little while to calm down, but when he did, I knelt close to his face and whispered.
“What I want from you,” I repeated slowly, “is the truth.” Still spitting blood, his face looking like a package of raw hamburger, he nodded. I rolled him over so that he was sitting on the ground, his legs splayed out in front of him. “Why don’t you start by telling me your name?”
***
“I’m Agent Keyes, and…, well, the truth is rather complicated,” he said, his voice sounding nasally and strained through all of his injuries. I could tell it hurt him to breathe. “But I guess it boils down to this: Donny’s girl and her mother saw something that they weren’t supposed to. Our surveillance picked up the craft and cameras from the streets showed that those two were outside when it went overhead. Then we started listening to their calls, heard her telling Donny about it, and our Director insisted that we had to tie up the loose ends.”
“Why does it matter so much that she saw the craft?” I asked.
“She not only saw the craft,” he said, “she took a video of it on her phone. She didn’t tell Donny about that, but we were able to see it. You see, the craft isn’t just some top-secret government plane or anything. It is a legitimate extraterrestrial craft, one being flown by the species that created humanity originally through genetic engineering. We usually call them the ‘Primes’, after the notion of a prime mover.” I laughed at that.
“That’s the craziest goddamn shit I’ve ever heard,” I said.
“Well, it gets a lot crazier. Because your friend there is right. The United States doesn’t actually execute anyone. It’s all fake. It’s easy with lethal injection, because the medical staff can just put opiates or sedatives in the line. Then, when the person is unconscious, we have a doctor go in, pretend to check his vitals and certify the person dead.
“Hell, back when my dad worked for the Agency, they had to fake electric chair executions with smoke and pyrotechnics. They’d drug the person beforehand, so that they would pass out and lose consciousness during the staged execution. To get them to shake and stutter, the medical staff would use a low, non-lethal dose of electricity.” I stared at him, waiting for the punchline.
“Why?” I asked. “Who would go through all that trouble?” He shrugged.
“Well, that brings us to the interesting part,” Agent Keyes said, his one good eye sparkling with something strange and repulsive under the surface. The other had swelled into a slit of purple bruises, and I doubted whether he could see anything out of that eye. He still winced every time he breathed in too hard, probably from his cracked ribs.
“The Primes demand sacrifices from every major government in the world.” Agent Keyes continued. We don’t know exactly what they’re doing with these subjects, though I doubt if it’s anything good. Perhaps they are using them as guinea pigs for genetic engineering experiments. Maybe the Primes just cut their throats and eat their flesh raw. Personally, I…” I heard a strange buzzing from the sky, like the sound a high-voltage power line might make. Off in the distance, I saw something flashing across the sky, hues of silver and gold gleaming off the side of the sleek alien ship.
It had no wings that I could see. It formed a shape like a spear. Thin strands of gold and silver weaved together, forming a graceful, interweaving outer shell. A cold blue light radiated from the craft as it gave off its strange buzzing noise. A strange smell filled the desert, almost like ozone mixed with some kind of sweet, chemical odor. It moved in a strange, alien way, jumping forwards in a blur and then stopping suddenly in mid-air, floating there like a hummingbird.
Agent Keyes' words rang in my ears. A sense of panic filled my heart. Without hesitation, I ran towards my car. I knew I had no time to flee. I got down on my stomach, crawling underneath it, the warm pavement scraping my clothes and skin as I frantically pushed myself forward. Then I peered out, watching and waiting. About half a minute later, the buzzing became overwhelming as the ship stopped directly overhead. That horrendous sound seemed to vibrate my bones. I could feel my skull shaking.
A few seconds later, a shape materialized in front of Agent Keyes’s destroyed car. It had tentacles where its eyes should have been. They writhed like dozens of snakes, their thin, bone-white tendrils slithering in slow, disparate waves. Its body had a sleek, bloody look. Powerful muscles twitched and flexed under the skinless exterior. It towered over everything else in the area, standing nearly nine-feet-tall. Then the figure spoke in a harsh, low voice.
“You have not given your tribute,” it said coldly. “You have broken your agreement.”
“The man killed his guard and escaped,” Agent Keyes said, his hands still bound behind his back. He spat blood. “I tried to hunt him down, but…” He started to motion to my hiding spot with his head, apparently planning to try to give me to the aliens in Donny’s place. But the creature didn’t give him time to finish. He had some black canister in his hand and sprayed Agent Keyes in the face. Agent Keyes tried to protest, stuttering some incomprehensible jumble of sounds. Then he groaned as his eyes fluttered and, finally, went limp.
The alien creature made a series of clicking, guttural sounds as he lifted Agent Keyes body up. A few seconds later, their bodies became translucent and then faded entirely from view. The ship jumped forwards, far out of view, and I found myself alone.
As I crawled out from under the car, I saw the first police lights in the distance. The shrill sirens rang out across the silent desert like the wailing of a banshee.
***
Once they found blood all over the area and the bodies of Donny and the unnamed agent, the police immediately arrested me for suspicion of first-degree murder. They claimed I was some kind of spree killer who went berserk. I told them to check Donny’s identity and they’d see my entire story was true, that the executions were staged, but they refused. In the trial, they claimed he was a “John Doe,” likely some unidentified hitchhiker or homeless person.
Now I’m on death row. I had my lawyer post online this to warn other people. I want someone to hear my story.
Because I know that, after they fake my death, I will disappear- and then a much more horrifying death will come. I will see our creators, the Primes, and maybe they will use me as a subject for some nightmarish experiment.
The executions in the USA are staged, but I think by the time the Primes finish with me, I will wish they were real.

Some people will dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist or a crackpot. Hell, if someone had told me a few months ago that all the executions in the United States are staged, I would have laughed in their face.
That is, until I awoke a few nights ago to a frenzied pounding on my door, and my entire world got turned upside-down.
***
For the last few years, I’ve had a recurring nightmare at least a few times a week- a nightmare where I kept having to travel down a rickety, dilapidated hallway in different bodies. I would be an old woman, then a little girl, then a middle-aged man, and so on. I kept taking different bodies, first dozens and then hundreds of them.
I couldn’t ever remember what happened when I got to the end of the hallway and pushed open the black, rotted door that waited there like some giant, grasping hand ready to pull me into Hell. There would be a terrible roar, a cacophony of screaming. The earth would tremble. Then I would find myself back at the front of the house, reborn. The dream would start over again.
All around me, I would see the bodies I had temporarily occupied piled up with their throats slashed. In a new body, I would be forced to go down the hallway yet again and meet whatever ineffable horror awaited at the end- a horror so terrible that I could never remember or comprehend it.
“Help me! God, please, help me, take me out of this Hell…” I cried in my dream, feeling as I rose up into white light at the end, yet still screaming in both my nightmare and in real life. There was a hard smash against the front door of my cabin. I jumped up in bed, sweating heavily. For a long moment, I thought I was still in the nightmare. I looked around my small, dim bedroom, expecting to see bodies stacked one on another like pieces of cordwood.
“They’re right behind me! Please, for the love of God!” The voice that had awakened me erupted into nonsense and wracking sobs.
Fully awake now, I jumped up and turned on the lights. The cabin I lived in was cramped and only meant for one person. It had a bedroom, a joint kitchen-living room, and a bathroom. No one lived within two miles of me in any direction. I had moved to the Texas desert for the privacy, after all. I didn’t really like people that much.
I ripped open the door and found a disheveled man standing there in bright orange coveralls. He had rivulets of blood streaming from what looked like a bullet hole in his shoulder. His gray, faded eyes were wide and filled with panicked tears. He had a face like a tired bulldog. All of the hair on his head had been shaved off except for his eyebrows and eyelashes. His white scalp gleamed like a freshly-polished bowling ball.
He stumbled past me, pushing me aside and slamming the door shut. The house shook with the force of it. I realized that he towered over me, and I wasn’t exactly short. The man must have been nearly seven feet tall.
“Oh, thank God,” he said, still weeping. He fell to his knees, grabbing my shirt in supplication, wringing the cloth between his large, callused hands. A sense of panic rose through my chest. I wondered if I had inadvertently just let in a lunatic or a killer. I looked at his clothes closer. Stamped on the back in large, black letters, I saw the acronym “TDCJ”. My heart turned into a block of ice as I recognized a prison uniform.
“Hey there, stay back…” I said in a trembling voice, backpedaling quickly from the kneeling man. I thought of my shotgun in the other room. Mentally, I kicked myself for not grabbing it.
“It’s not like that, man, really,” he said, showing me his empty hands. “I’m supposed to be dead. They officially executed me last night. Look, you can check. Do you have a phone?” I reached for the phone in my pocket, deciding to dial the police. He jumped up and snatched it from my hands as quickly as a frog snatching a fly. I cried out in alarm, turning away to run back to the bedroom and lock myself inside. A large hand came down on my shoulder, squeezing it tightly within its iron grip.
“I’m not dangerous, friend,” he said. “I was falsely convicted, just like a lot of others. They put me on death row and supposedly executed me last night. Look.” He typed something on the phone quickly, pulling up a news article. Against my better judgment, I looked.
“Texas man executed by lethal injection for 2012 murder of his ex-girlfriend and her mother,” it read. I saw the man’s tired bulldog face looking back out at me from the phone screen. I froze, feeling very confused. I wondered if the man had somehow gotten a website to write up a fake news article, but why? Was this all some sort of prank?
I gingerly took the phone back. The man gave it up without a struggle. I read the article, seeing the man’s name: “Donald G.” I went back to Google and typed in his full name, finding dozens of other articles reporting his death by lethal injection, including some by international media outlets. I scratched my head.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What is this? Why are you here?” The man looked nervously at the door.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” he responded in a raspy, tired voice. The bleeding from his shoulder had slowed to a trickle of dark, clotted blood. “Do you have a car?”
“Of course I have a car,” I said.
“Then, please, take me out of here, and I’ll tell you everything on the way.” I hesitated for a long moment. “Please, sir. I can guarantee you that you’ll never hear another tale like it.”
“Alright, but I’m taking my gun and my phone,” I said. “If you try anything, I’ll blow your fucking head off. Understood?” The man nodded, resigned, still checking outside the front window every few moments with a growing sense of panic. Sighing, I extended my hand. “And, by the way, my name’s Roger.”
“I’m Donny,” he said, giving me an exhausted smile.
***
We got in the car. I put the loaded shotgun between the driver’s door and my seat, propping it straight up. Donny got in the passenger seat, wincing. He grabbed at the bullet hole, breathing hard. His face turned chalk-white, and I thought he might vomit for a moment.
“I have some Aleve in here,” I said, reaching into the center console and handing him some pain relievers and a half-bottle of water. I noticed with dismay that he was bleeding on my seat. Those stains would not be coming out anytime soon. I sighed.
“Thanks,” he grunted, taking four of them in one go. He chugged the water as I turned on the old Ford sedan, pulling out onto the empty desert road. Donny continuously checked the rearview mirrors, but the road stayed deserted.
“I can’t tell you all of it, because that would take all night. I guess it all started when I got home late from work and got an unexpected call from my ex-girlfriend…”
***
I had dated Olivia for a few years. We had recently broken up, but we stayed on good terms. We still talked regularly and helped each other out. She was an accountant, you see, and I was a carpenter who owned my own business. So she would help me out with taxes or paperwork or whatever, and sometimes, I’d go over and help her when she or her mother needed to install some cabinets or bookshelves or anything.
She had called me the previous week saying something about seeing a strange craft flying over her house. She said it would stop in mid-air, as if a videotape had been paused. Then, in a blur, it would jump to the next point. It was high in the air, so she said she couldn’t see the design of it, but it sparkled with gold and silver hues. I had dismissed it as fanciful, assuring her it was probably just a military helicopter or a weather balloon or something.
I was just getting home from work, bone-tired, when my phone rang. I looked down, seeing it was Olivia. We had been broken up for a few months by that point, but we still talked at least once every couple weeks. It was strange to be getting a call at 11 PM, though. She never stayed up this late.
“Hey, what’s up?” I said. I heard her heavy breathing on the other end of the line.
“Donny, I think someone’s peeking in the windows,” she said. “I saw a face… watching me sleep. It was someone with a gasmask on.”
“Call the police then!” I said, my heart speeding up. “Why are you calling me?”
“I don’t want to make a fool of myself if it’s nothing,” she said. “Can you come over and check around the house for me?” I only lived about a three-minute drive from Olivia and her mother. Sighing, I agreed.
I got in the car, speeding over as fast as I could. When I pulled up in front of their quaint, one-story colonial, I saw the front door was wide open and all the lights were on. A sense of dread filled my chest.
I had my pistol with me, just in case. I turned off the safety and cocked it. I heard chaos inside, something being thrown and glass shattering. A woman’s scream shattered the rural Texas night. The crickets all went quiet as I sprinted into the house.
Instantly, I could smell the blood. That coppery, metallic smell that awakens something primal in the human heart. I knew it meant trouble. Waves of adrenaline smashed against the shore of my consciousness. Everything felt slowed down and unreal. My feet moved with their own mind. I walked forward, my breath seeming too loud, like a roaring cyclone in my ears.
I found Olivia and her mother in the kitchen, their throats cut from ear to ear. The blood-stained butcher knife that had done the deed in so little time lay discarded on the floor like a broken toy. I knelt down over Olivia, seeing her sightless eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling. I tried doing what little CPR I knew how while I called the police, but all I ended up doing was getting her blood all over me.
When the police came in with guns drawn and arrested me for murder, I tried protesting, saying that my cell phone’s GPS would show I wasn’t at the house and that I was the one who had called 911 in the first place. But none of that got entered into trial, and before I knew it, I was on death row and awaiting my final day.
I talked to a lot of other people in prison. Lots of people claim to be innocent, but something bothered me. It was the call I had gotten from Olivia the week before…
***
Headlights flashed far behind us. I noticed a black car speeding up. I heard the revving of its powerful engine.
“I think we’ve got company,” I said, thinking first that it was the police. I was absolutely enthralled by Donny’s story, and while I still had my doubts about the veracity of it, the fact that the news media was apparently lying about his execution added some weight to his account.
The car behind us accelerated fast and swerved into the wrong lane. It pulled up beside me, and that was when the sinking feeling started in my stomach. This wasn’t the police.
The dark, tinted window rolled slowly down. I tried speeding up and braking, but whatever I did, it kept pace directly next to me.
“Oh shit, it’s them,” Donny said. A moment later, the back window shattered. Glass exploded all over the back seat. I swerved, horrified. Looking over, I saw the end of a rifle sticking out the open window of the black sedan.
I gave the shotgun to Donny while I tried to keep swerving and speeding ahead of the madman next to me.
“Shoot them!” I screamed. “It’s loaded.” He didn’t hesitate. He rolled down his window and stuck his massive body out of the car. I heard the blasts of the Benelli Nova echoing off the roof as if a cannon had gone off. A burst of fire erupted from the rifle sticking out of the faceless black car keeping pace with us. I saw their window explode inwards at the same time that my car swerved crazily to the left as the front driver’s side tire blew apart.
The wheel spun under my hands. I felt the car start to spin, drifting over into the other lane. With a tortured shriek of rending metal, the front of my car smashed into the black sedan, sending it careening off the side of the road into a pile of boulders, each of them two or three tall. I saw Donny fly out of the window as the car spun, then I smashed my head on the steering wheel and felt the world going black. From far away, I heard a car’s engine giving tortured grinding sounds and loud ticking noises like some large mechanical heart with a fatal arrhythmia. I smelled transmission fluid and coolant. But I was too stunned to really comprehend what was happening.
I inhaled deeply, and my vision came back slightly. Blood streamed from my nose and a gash across my forehead. I felt like I was looking through a tunnel, the bright colors of reality blurring around the edges.
I don’t know how long I sat there, hyperventilating and bleeding all over the steering wheel. Finally, I ripped off my seatbelt, stumbling out into the dark night.
On the side of the road, I saw Donny’s mangled body. He was still breathing, choking on his own blood. It bubbled and frothed from his blue lips as he twitched and blinked rapidly, his hands clenching and unclenching, the knuckles white. His fingernails had begun to turn cyanotic and pale as a puddle of blood spread out from under his crushed body. His right leg looked totally shattered, and I saw pieces of sharp bone poking out through the skin. Laying a few feet away, I found my little 12-gauge Nova; a little scraped up, but still in fine working order. Benelli has always been a solid company, and their guns hold up well under stress.
Looking at Donny made me feel sick to my stomach. I didn’t even know the man, but no one deserved this. And, to be honest, my gut had told me he was telling the truth when he told me his story. I hadn’t noticed an ounce of deception in him.
I picked up the shotgun, slamming another slug in the chamber as I walked over toward the black sedan, wondering what kind of human monsters I would find contained within.
***
I looked in the shattered passenger’s side window under the dim moonlight streaming down from the cloudless sky. I could tell the passenger was dead as soon as I saw him. He had an exit wound the size of an orange on the left side of his skull. He had on a black suit and a tie with a clean-shaven face and a crewcut. An AR-15 lay on his lap. I could see clear through his brains into the rest of the car beyond. It was a sickening and gruesome sight.
The driver was still alive, however. He was dressed similarly to the gunman. He had light olive-skin and dark eyes. His high cheekbones gave his face a narrow, gaunt aspect.
I reached through the shattered passenger’s side window and grabbed the rifle, throwing it on the road. Slowly and carefully, I circled around the car, keeping the shotgun raised. I got to the driver’s side and found the window still intact, though a slug had ripped through the door and left a bullet hole the size of a quarter in the thick metal.
I tried the door but found it locked. Without hesitation, I used the butt end of the shotgun to smash through the driver’s side window. Safety glass rained down onto the still body of the driver. I saw his eyes blinking fast, but he looked stunned and confused. A soft moaning came from his lips. A deep gash ran across his forehead, causing blood to trickle down and stain his undoubtedly expensive clothes. His right eye had begun to swell and change colors already, giving him a slant-eyed, winking appearance. The driver’s side airbag had deployed during the crash and his face had clearly hit at a high velocity. It looked like he might have been coming out of a full-blown concussion.
“Get the fuck out of the car,” I screamed at him, shoving the barrel of the shotgun hard against the front of his forehead. “And put your hands up. If you make any move, then I guarantee you, we will both see what color your brains are.” I gave him a grim, sadistic smile. He raised his trembling hands in the air, his knuckles white with inner tension. I saw the lump of what looked like a pistol holstered under his jacket. I watched him closely, daring him to make a move. “Get out and keep your hands as high above your head as they’ll go. If they drop an inch, I will shoot you. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” he answered in a flat, dead voice.
“Good,” I said. “Because I am telling you the truth, I promise you that. Now open the door and get out- slowly. Very, very slowly.” After spitting blood and pieces of what looked like teeth onto the airbag and floor of the destroyed car, he pulled open the door and practically fell out of it. He caught himself at the last moment, hanging onto the top of the door and breathing heavily. His right eye was totally covered in fresh, gleaming blood, and I doubted if he could see much out of it.
“Get down on the ground and put your hands behind your back,” I said in an icy tone. With a look of pure hatred from his dark eyes, he lay down on the desert sand. I took off my belt and wrapped it around his wrists, binding them tightly. Then I reached into his coat and pulled out a pistol.
“A .45,” I said, examining it. “Nice gun.”
“It’s my work gun,” he said, giving me a predatory smile. “At home, I wouldn’t use such a small caliber. Especially on scumbags like you and your friend.” I shrugged.
“He wasn’t actually my friend, just a total stranger who came to my house in the middle of the night. And, like the good Samaritan I am, I helped him.”
“You’re violating federal law by doing this,” he spat at me. “You’ll go to prison for the rest of your life.”
“Are you guys going to frame me like you did to Donny?” I asked. “And then fake my execution too?” The agent went pale, the scowl on his face deepening.
“I don’t know what kind of conspiracy theorist bullshit you’ve been swallowing, friend, but everything you’re saying sounds insane. I am a federal agent. You can check my pockets for my badge.”
“I don’t give a shit what you are,” I said. “As it stands, it looks like I have all the power and guns- and it looks like you have nothing. So what I want from you is the truth. You can tell me, or I can beat it out of you.”
I still felt sickened by what had happened to Donny and his sudden death. I was not in a forgiving mood. And, to be honest, violence never really bothered me much, even as a kid when I got into fights. A large part of it enjoys the thrill of it, the rush of beating a man into unconsciousness and hearing his nose crack under your fist. The man hesitated, wincing like a beaten dog.
“Please, I really don’t know what you’re…” he began to say. Without hesitation, I brought my steel-toe boot back and kicked him in the ribs. I heard a few of them crack under the blow with a sound like snapping twigs. He screamed as more blood filled his mouth. He rolled onto his stomach, his eyes wide and wild like a panicked animal in a cage. It took him a little while to calm down, but when he did, I knelt close to his face and whispered.
“What I want from you,” I repeated slowly, “is the truth.” Still spitting blood, his face looking like a package of raw hamburger, he nodded. I rolled him over so that he was sitting on the ground, his legs splayed out in front of him. “Why don’t you start by telling me your name?”
***
“I’m Agent Keyes, and…, well, the truth is rather complicated,” he said, his voice sounding nasally and strained through all of his injuries. I could tell it hurt him to breathe. “But I guess it boils down to this: Donny’s girl and her mother saw something that they weren’t supposed to. Our surveillance picked up the craft and cameras from the streets showed that those two were outside when it went overhead. Then we started listening to their calls, heard her telling Donny about it, and our Director insisted that we had to tie up the loose ends.”
“Why does it matter so much that she saw the craft?” I asked.
“She not only saw the craft,” he said, “she took a video of it on her phone. She didn’t tell Donny about that, but we were able to see it. You see, the craft isn’t just some top-secret government plane or anything. It is a legitimate extraterrestrial craft, one being flown by the species that created humanity originally through genetic engineering. We usually call them the ‘Primes’, after the notion of a prime mover.” I laughed at that.
“That’s the craziest goddamn shit I’ve ever heard,” I said.
“Well, it gets a lot crazier. Because your friend there is right. The United States doesn’t actually execute anyone. It’s all fake. It’s easy with lethal injection, because the medical staff can just put opiates or sedatives in the line. Then, when the person is unconscious, we have a doctor go in, pretend to check his vitals and certify the person dead.
“Hell, back when my dad worked for the Agency, they had to fake electric chair executions with smoke and pyrotechnics. They’d drug the person beforehand, so that they would pass out and lose consciousness during the staged execution. To get them to shake and stutter, the medical staff would use a low, non-lethal dose of electricity.” I stared at him, waiting for the punchline.
“Why?” I asked. “Who would go through all that trouble?” He shrugged.
“Well, that brings us to the interesting part,” Agent Keyes said, his one good eye sparkling with something strange and repulsive under the surface. The other had swelled into a slit of purple bruises, and I doubted whether he could see anything out of that eye. He still winced every time he breathed in too hard, probably from his cracked ribs.
“The Primes demand sacrifices from every major government in the world.” Agent Keyes continued. We don’t know exactly what they’re doing with these subjects, though I doubt if it’s anything good. Perhaps they are using them as guinea pigs for genetic engineering experiments. Maybe the Primes just cut their throats and eat their flesh raw. Personally, I…” I heard a strange buzzing from the sky, like the sound a high-voltage power line might make. Off in the distance, I saw something flashing across the sky, hues of silver and gold gleaming off the side of the sleek alien ship.
It had no wings that I could see. It formed a shape like a spear. Thin strands of gold and silver weaved together, forming a graceful, interweaving outer shell. A cold blue light radiated from the craft as it gave off its strange buzzing noise. A strange smell filled the desert, almost like ozone mixed with some kind of sweet, chemical odor. It moved in a strange, alien way, jumping forwards in a blur and then stopping suddenly in mid-air, floating there like a hummingbird.
Agent Keyes' words rang in my ears. A sense of panic filled my heart. Without hesitation, I ran towards my car. I knew I had no time to flee. I got down on my stomach, crawling underneath it, the warm pavement scraping my clothes and skin as I frantically pushed myself forward. Then I peered out, watching and waiting. About half a minute later, the buzzing became overwhelming as the ship stopped directly overhead. That horrendous sound seemed to vibrate my bones. I could feel my skull shaking.
A few seconds later, a shape materialized in front of Agent Keyes’s destroyed car. It had tentacles where its eyes should have been. They writhed like dozens of snakes, their thin, bone-white tendrils slithering in slow, disparate waves. Its body had a sleek, bloody look. Powerful muscles twitched and flexed under the skinless exterior. It towered over everything else in the area, standing nearly nine-feet-tall. Then the figure spoke in a harsh, low voice.
“You have not given your tribute,” it said coldly. “You have broken your agreement.”
“The man killed his guard and escaped,” Agent Keyes said, his hands still bound behind his back. He spat blood. “I tried to hunt him down, but…” He started to motion to my hiding spot with his head, apparently planning to try to give me to the aliens in Donny’s place. But the creature didn’t give him time to finish. He had some black canister in his hand and sprayed Agent Keyes in the face. Agent Keyes tried to protest, stuttering some incomprehensible jumble of sounds. Then he groaned as his eyes fluttered and, finally, went limp.
The alien creature made a series of clicking, guttural sounds as he lifted Agent Keyes body up. A few seconds later, their bodies became translucent and then faded entirely from view. The ship jumped forwards, far out of view, and I found myself alone.
As I crawled out from under the car, I saw the first police lights in the distance. The shrill sirens rang out across the silent desert like the wailing of a banshee.
***
Once they found blood all over the area and the bodies of Donny and the unnamed agent, the police immediately arrested me for suspicion of first-degree murder. They claimed I was some kind of spree killer who went berserk. I told them to check Donny’s identity and they’d see my entire story was true, that the executions were staged, but they refused. In the trial, they claimed he was a “John Doe,” likely some unidentified hitchhiker or homeless person.
Now I’m on death row. I had my lawyer post online this to warn other people. I want someone to hear my story.
Because I know that, after they fake my death, I will disappear- and then a much more horrifying death will come. I will see our creators, the Primes, and maybe they will use me as a subject for some nightmarish experiment.
The executions in the USA are staged, but I think by the time the Primes finish with me, I will wish they were real.

Some people will dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist or a crackpot. Hell, if someone had told me a few months ago that all the executions in the United States are staged, I would have laughed in their face.
That is, until I awoke a few nights ago to a frenzied pounding on my door, and my entire world got turned upside-down.
***
For the last few years, I’ve had a recurring nightmare at least a few times a week- a nightmare where I kept having to travel down a rickety, dilapidated hallway in different bodies. I would be an old woman, then a little girl, then a middle-aged man, and so on. I kept taking different bodies, first dozens and then hundreds of them.
I couldn’t ever remember what happened when I got to the end of the hallway and pushed open the black, rotted door that waited there like some giant, grasping hand ready to pull me into Hell. There would be a terrible roar, a cacophony of screaming. The earth would tremble. Then I would find myself back at the front of the house, reborn. The dream would start over again.
All around me, I would see the bodies I had temporarily occupied piled up with their throats slashed. In a new body, I would be forced to go down the hallway yet again and meet whatever ineffable horror awaited at the end- a horror so terrible that I could never remember or comprehend it.
“Help me! God, please, help me, take me out of this Hell…” I cried in my dream, feeling as I rose up into white light at the end, yet still screaming in both my nightmare and in real life. There was a hard smash against the front door of my cabin. I jumped up in bed, sweating heavily. For a long moment, I thought I was still in the nightmare. I looked around my small, dim bedroom, expecting to see bodies stacked one on another like pieces of cordwood.
“They’re right behind me! Please, for the love of God!” The voice that had awakened me erupted into nonsense and wracking sobs.
Fully awake now, I jumped up and turned on the lights. The cabin I lived in was cramped and only meant for one person. It had a bedroom, a joint kitchen-living room, and a bathroom. No one lived within two miles of me in any direction. I had moved to the Texas desert for the privacy, after all. I didn’t really like people that much.
I ripped open the door and found a disheveled man standing there in bright orange coveralls. He had rivulets of blood streaming from what looked like a bullet hole in his shoulder. His gray, faded eyes were wide and filled with panicked tears. He had a face like a tired bulldog. All of the hair on his head had been shaved off except for his eyebrows and eyelashes. His white scalp gleamed like a freshly-polished bowling ball.
He stumbled past me, pushing me aside and slamming the door shut. The house shook with the force of it. I realized that he towered over me, and I wasn’t exactly short. The man must have been nearly seven feet tall.
“Oh, thank God,” he said, still weeping. He fell to his knees, grabbing my shirt in supplication, wringing the cloth between his large, callused hands. A sense of panic rose through my chest. I wondered if I had inadvertently just let in a lunatic or a killer. I looked at his clothes closer. Stamped on the back in large, black letters, I saw the acronym “TDCJ”. My heart turned into a block of ice as I recognized a prison uniform.
“Hey there, stay back…” I said in a trembling voice, backpedaling quickly from the kneeling man. I thought of my shotgun in the other room. Mentally, I kicked myself for not grabbing it.
“It’s not like that, man, really,” he said, showing me his empty hands. “I’m supposed to be dead. They officially executed me last night. Look, you can check. Do you have a phone?” I reached for the phone in my pocket, deciding to dial the police. He jumped up and snatched it from my hands as quickly as a frog snatching a fly. I cried out in alarm, turning away to run back to the bedroom and lock myself inside. A large hand came down on my shoulder, squeezing it tightly within its iron grip.
“I’m not dangerous, friend,” he said. “I was falsely convicted, just like a lot of others. They put me on death row and supposedly executed me last night. Look.” He typed something on the phone quickly, pulling up a news article. Against my better judgment, I looked.
“Texas man executed by lethal injection for 2012 murder of his ex-girlfriend and her mother,” it read. I saw the man’s tired bulldog face looking back out at me from the phone screen. I froze, feeling very confused. I wondered if the man had somehow gotten a website to write up a fake news article, but why? Was this all some sort of prank?
I gingerly took the phone back. The man gave it up without a struggle. I read the article, seeing the man’s name: “Donald G.” I went back to Google and typed in his full name, finding dozens of other articles reporting his death by lethal injection, including some by international media outlets. I scratched my head.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What is this? Why are you here?” The man looked nervously at the door.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” he responded in a raspy, tired voice. The bleeding from his shoulder had slowed to a trickle of dark, clotted blood. “Do you have a car?”
“Of course I have a car,” I said.
“Then, please, take me out of here, and I’ll tell you everything on the way.” I hesitated for a long moment. “Please, sir. I can guarantee you that you’ll never hear another tale like it.”
“Alright, but I’m taking my gun and my phone,” I said. “If you try anything, I’ll blow your fucking head off. Understood?” The man nodded, resigned, still checking outside the front window every few moments with a growing sense of panic. Sighing, I extended my hand. “And, by the way, my name’s Roger.”
“I’m Donny,” he said, giving me an exhausted smile.
***
We got in the car. I put the loaded shotgun between the driver’s door and my seat, propping it straight up. Donny got in the passenger seat, wincing. He grabbed at the bullet hole, breathing hard. His face turned chalk-white, and I thought he might vomit for a moment.
“I have some Aleve in here,” I said, reaching into the center console and handing him some pain relievers and a half-bottle of water. I noticed with dismay that he was bleeding on my seat. Those stains would not be coming out anytime soon. I sighed.
“Thanks,” he grunted, taking four of them in one go. He chugged the water as I turned on the old Ford sedan, pulling out onto the empty desert road. Donny continuously checked the rearview mirrors, but the road stayed deserted.
“I can’t tell you all of it, because that would take all night. I guess it all started when I got home late from work and got an unexpected call from my ex-girlfriend…”
***
I had dated Olivia for a few years. We had recently broken up, but we stayed on good terms. We still talked regularly and helped each other out. She was an accountant, you see, and I was a carpenter who owned my own business. So she would help me out with taxes or paperwork or whatever, and sometimes, I’d go over and help her when she or her mother needed to install some cabinets or bookshelves or anything.
She had called me the previous week saying something about seeing a strange craft flying over her house. She said it would stop in mid-air, as if a videotape had been paused. Then, in a blur, it would jump to the next point. It was high in the air, so she said she couldn’t see the design of it, but it sparkled with gold and silver hues. I had dismissed it as fanciful, assuring her it was probably just a military helicopter or a weather balloon or something.
I was just getting home from work, bone-tired, when my phone rang. I looked down, seeing it was Olivia. We had been broken up for a few months by that point, but we still talked at least once every couple weeks. It was strange to be getting a call at 11 PM, though. She never stayed up this late.
“Hey, what’s up?” I said. I heard her heavy breathing on the other end of the line.
“Donny, I think someone’s peeking in the windows,” she said. “I saw a face… watching me sleep. It was someone with a gasmask on.”
“Call the police then!” I said, my heart speeding up. “Why are you calling me?”
“I don’t want to make a fool of myself if it’s nothing,” she said. “Can you come over and check around the house for me?” I only lived about a three-minute drive from Olivia and her mother. Sighing, I agreed.
I got in the car, speeding over as fast as I could. When I pulled up in front of their quaint, one-story colonial, I saw the front door was wide open and all the lights were on. A sense of dread filled my chest.
I had my pistol with me, just in case. I turned off the safety and cocked it. I heard chaos inside, something being thrown and glass shattering. A woman’s scream shattered the rural Texas night. The crickets all went quiet as I sprinted into the house.
Instantly, I could smell the blood. That coppery, metallic smell that awakens something primal in the human heart. I knew it meant trouble. Waves of adrenaline smashed against the shore of my consciousness. Everything felt slowed down and unreal. My feet moved with their own mind. I walked forward, my breath seeming too loud, like a roaring cyclone in my ears.
I found Olivia and her mother in the kitchen, their throats cut from ear to ear. The blood-stained butcher knife that had done the deed in so little time lay discarded on the floor like a broken toy. I knelt down over Olivia, seeing her sightless eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling. I tried doing what little CPR I knew how while I called the police, but all I ended up doing was getting her blood all over me.
When the police came in with guns drawn and arrested me for murder, I tried protesting, saying that my cell phone’s GPS would show I wasn’t at the house and that I was the one who had called 911 in the first place. But none of that got entered into trial, and before I knew it, I was on death row and awaiting my final day.
I talked to a lot of other people in prison. Lots of people claim to be innocent, but something bothered me. It was the call I had gotten from Olivia the week before…
***
Headlights flashed far behind us. I noticed a black car speeding up. I heard the revving of its powerful engine.
“I think we’ve got company,” I said, thinking first that it was the police. I was absolutely enthralled by Donny’s story, and while I still had my doubts about the veracity of it, the fact that the news media was apparently lying about his execution added some weight to his account.
The car behind us accelerated fast and swerved into the wrong lane. It pulled up beside me, and that was when the sinking feeling started in my stomach. This wasn’t the police.
The dark, tinted window rolled slowly down. I tried speeding up and braking, but whatever I did, it kept pace directly next to me.
“Oh shit, it’s them,” Donny said. A moment later, the back window shattered. Glass exploded all over the back seat. I swerved, horrified. Looking over, I saw the end of a rifle sticking out the open window of the black sedan.
I gave the shotgun to Donny while I tried to keep swerving and speeding ahead of the madman next to me.
“Shoot them!” I screamed. “It’s loaded.” He didn’t hesitate. He rolled down his window and stuck his massive body out of the car. I heard the blasts of the Benelli Nova echoing off the roof as if a cannon had gone off. A burst of fire erupted from the rifle sticking out of the faceless black car keeping pace with us. I saw their window explode inwards at the same time that my car swerved crazily to the left as the front driver’s side tire blew apart.
The wheel spun under my hands. I felt the car start to spin, drifting over into the other lane. With a tortured shriek of rending metal, the front of my car smashed into the black sedan, sending it careening off the side of the road into a pile of boulders, each of them two or three tall. I saw Donny fly out of the window as the car spun, then I smashed my head on the steering wheel and felt the world going black. From far away, I heard a car’s engine giving tortured grinding sounds and loud ticking noises like some large mechanical heart with a fatal arrhythmia. I smelled transmission fluid and coolant. But I was too stunned to really comprehend what was happening.
I inhaled deeply, and my vision came back slightly. Blood streamed from my nose and a gash across my forehead. I felt like I was looking through a tunnel, the bright colors of reality blurring around the edges.
I don’t know how long I sat there, hyperventilating and bleeding all over the steering wheel. Finally, I ripped off my seatbelt, stumbling out into the dark night.
On the side of the road, I saw Donny’s mangled body. He was still breathing, choking on his own blood. It bubbled and frothed from his blue lips as he twitched and blinked rapidly, his hands clenching and unclenching, the knuckles white. His fingernails had begun to turn cyanotic and pale as a puddle of blood spread out from under his crushed body. His right leg looked totally shattered, and I saw pieces of sharp bone poking out through the skin. Laying a few feet away, I found my little 12-gauge Nova; a little scraped up, but still in fine working order. Benelli has always been a solid company, and their guns hold up well under stress.
Looking at Donny made me feel sick to my stomach. I didn’t even know the man, but no one deserved this. And, to be honest, my gut had told me he was telling the truth when he told me his story. I hadn’t noticed an ounce of deception in him.
I picked up the shotgun, slamming another slug in the chamber as I walked over toward the black sedan, wondering what kind of human monsters I would find contained within.
***
I looked in the shattered passenger’s side window under the dim moonlight streaming down from the cloudless sky. I could tell the passenger was dead as soon as I saw him. He had an exit wound the size of an orange on the left side of his skull. He had on a black suit and a tie with a clean-shaven face and a crewcut. An AR-15 lay on his lap. I could see clear through his brains into the rest of the car beyond. It was a sickening and gruesome sight.
The driver was still alive, however. He was dressed similarly to the gunman. He had light olive-skin and dark eyes. His high cheekbones gave his face a narrow, gaunt aspect.
I reached through the shattered passenger’s side window and grabbed the rifle, throwing it on the road. Slowly and carefully, I circled around the car, keeping the shotgun raised. I got to the driver’s side and found the window still intact, though a slug had ripped through the door and left a bullet hole the size of a quarter in the thick metal.
I tried the door but found it locked. Without hesitation, I used the butt end of the shotgun to smash through the driver’s side window. Safety glass rained down onto the still body of the driver. I saw his eyes blinking fast, but he looked stunned and confused. A soft moaning came from his lips. A deep gash ran across his forehead, causing blood to trickle down and stain his undoubtedly expensive clothes. His right eye had begun to swell and change colors already, giving him a slant-eyed, winking appearance. The driver’s side airbag had deployed during the crash and his face had clearly hit at a high velocity. It looked like he might have been coming out of a full-blown concussion.
“Get the fuck out of the car,” I screamed at him, shoving the barrel of the shotgun hard against the front of his forehead. “And put your hands up. If you make any move, then I guarantee you, we will both see what color your brains are.” I gave him a grim, sadistic smile. He raised his trembling hands in the air, his knuckles white with inner tension. I saw the lump of what looked like a pistol holstered under his jacket. I watched him closely, daring him to make a move. “Get out and keep your hands as high above your head as they’ll go. If they drop an inch, I will shoot you. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” he answered in a flat, dead voice.
“Good,” I said. “Because I am telling you the truth, I promise you that. Now open the door and get out- slowly. Very, very slowly.” After spitting blood and pieces of what looked like teeth onto the airbag and floor of the destroyed car, he pulled open the door and practically fell out of it. He caught himself at the last moment, hanging onto the top of the door and breathing heavily. His right eye was totally covered in fresh, gleaming blood, and I doubted if he could see much out of it.
“Get down on the ground and put your hands behind your back,” I said in an icy tone. With a look of pure hatred from his dark eyes, he lay down on the desert sand. I took off my belt and wrapped it around his wrists, binding them tightly. Then I reached into his coat and pulled out a pistol.
“A .45,” I said, examining it. “Nice gun.”
“It’s my work gun,” he said, giving me a predatory smile. “At home, I wouldn’t use such a small caliber. Especially on scumbags like you and your friend.” I shrugged.
“He wasn’t actually my friend, just a total stranger who came to my house in the middle of the night. And, like the good Samaritan I am, I helped him.”
“You’re violating federal law by doing this,” he spat at me. “You’ll go to prison for the rest of your life.”
“Are you guys going to frame me like you did to Donny?” I asked. “And then fake my execution too?” The agent went pale, the scowl on his face deepening.
“I don’t know what kind of conspiracy theorist bullshit you’ve been swallowing, friend, but everything you’re saying sounds insane. I am a federal agent. You can check my pockets for my badge.”
“I don’t give a shit what you are,” I said. “As it stands, it looks like I have all the power and guns- and it looks like you have nothing. So what I want from you is the truth. You can tell me, or I can beat it out of you.”
I still felt sickened by what had happened to Donny and his sudden death. I was not in a forgiving mood. And, to be honest, violence never really bothered me much, even as a kid when I got into fights. A large part of it enjoys the thrill of it, the rush of beating a man into unconsciousness and hearing his nose crack under your fist. The man hesitated, wincing like a beaten dog.
“Please, I really don’t know what you’re…” he began to say. Without hesitation, I brought my steel-toe boot back and kicked him in the ribs. I heard a few of them crack under the blow with a sound like snapping twigs. He screamed as more blood filled his mouth. He rolled onto his stomach, his eyes wide and wild like a panicked animal in a cage. It took him a little while to calm down, but when he did, I knelt close to his face and whispered.
“What I want from you,” I repeated slowly, “is the truth.” Still spitting blood, his face looking like a package of raw hamburger, he nodded. I rolled him over so that he was sitting on the ground, his legs splayed out in front of him. “Why don’t you start by telling me your name?”
***
“I’m Agent Keyes, and…, well, the truth is rather complicated,” he said, his voice sounding nasally and strained through all of his injuries. I could tell it hurt him to breathe. “But I guess it boils down to this: Donny’s girl and her mother saw something that they weren’t supposed to. Our surveillance picked up the craft and cameras from the streets showed that those two were outside when it went overhead. Then we started listening to their calls, heard her telling Donny about it, and our Director insisted that we had to tie up the loose ends.”
“Why does it matter so much that she saw the craft?” I asked.
“She not only saw the craft,” he said, “she took a video of it on her phone. She didn’t tell Donny about that, but we were able to see it. You see, the craft isn’t just some top-secret government plane or anything. It is a legitimate extraterrestrial craft, one being flown by the species that created humanity originally through genetic engineering. We usually call them the ‘Primes’, after the notion of a prime mover.” I laughed at that.
“That’s the craziest goddamn shit I’ve ever heard,” I said.
“Well, it gets a lot crazier. Because your friend there is right. The United States doesn’t actually execute anyone. It’s all fake. It’s easy with lethal injection, because the medical staff can just put opiates or sedatives in the line. Then, when the person is unconscious, we have a doctor go in, pretend to check his vitals and certify the person dead.
“Hell, back when my dad worked for the Agency, they had to fake electric chair executions with smoke and pyrotechnics. They’d drug the person beforehand, so that they would pass out and lose consciousness during the staged execution. To get them to shake and stutter, the medical staff would use a low, non-lethal dose of electricity.” I stared at him, waiting for the punchline.
“Why?” I asked. “Who would go through all that trouble?” He shrugged.
“Well, that brings us to the interesting part,” Agent Keyes said, his one good eye sparkling with something strange and repulsive under the surface. The other had swelled into a slit of purple bruises, and I doubted whether he could see anything out of that eye. He still winced every time he breathed in too hard, probably from his cracked ribs.
“The Primes demand sacrifices from every major government in the world.” Agent Keyes continued. We don’t know exactly what they’re doing with these subjects, though I doubt if it’s anything good. Perhaps they are using them as guinea pigs for genetic engineering experiments. Maybe the Primes just cut their throats and eat their flesh raw. Personally, I…” I heard a strange buzzing from the sky, like the sound a high-voltage power line might make. Off in the distance, I saw something flashing across the sky, hues of silver and gold gleaming off the side of the sleek alien ship.
It had no wings that I could see. It formed a shape like a spear. Thin strands of gold and silver weaved together, forming a graceful, interweaving outer shell. A cold blue light radiated from the craft as it gave off its strange buzzing noise. A strange smell filled the desert, almost like ozone mixed with some kind of sweet, chemical odor. It moved in a strange, alien way, jumping forwards in a blur and then stopping suddenly in mid-air, floating there like a hummingbird.
Agent Keyes' words rang in my ears. A sense of panic filled my heart. Without hesitation, I ran towards my car. I knew I had no time to flee. I got down on my stomach, crawling underneath it, the warm pavement scraping my clothes and skin as I frantically pushed myself forward. Then I peered out, watching and waiting. About half a minute later, the buzzing became overwhelming as the ship stopped directly overhead. That horrendous sound seemed to vibrate my bones. I could feel my skull shaking.
A few seconds later, a shape materialized in front of Agent Keyes’s destroyed car. It had tentacles where its eyes should have been. They writhed like dozens of snakes, their thin, bone-white tendrils slithering in slow, disparate waves. Its body had a sleek, bloody look. Powerful muscles twitched and flexed under the skinless exterior. It towered over everything else in the area, standing nearly nine-feet-tall. Then the figure spoke in a harsh, low voice.
“You have not given your tribute,” it said coldly. “You have broken your agreement.”
“The man killed his guard and escaped,” Agent Keyes said, his hands still bound behind his back. He spat blood. “I tried to hunt him down, but…” He started to motion to my hiding spot with his head, apparently planning to try to give me to the aliens in Donny’s place. But the creature didn’t give him time to finish. He had some black canister in his hand and sprayed Agent Keyes in the face. Agent Keyes tried to protest, stuttering some incomprehensible jumble of sounds. Then he groaned as his eyes fluttered and, finally, went limp.
The alien creature made a series of clicking, guttural sounds as he lifted Agent Keyes body up. A few seconds later, their bodies became translucent and then faded entirely from view. The ship jumped forwards, far out of view, and I found myself alone.
As I crawled out from under the car, I saw the first police lights in the distance. The shrill sirens rang out across the silent desert like the wailing of a banshee.
***
Once they found blood all over the area and the bodies of Donny and the unnamed agent, the police immediately arrested me for suspicion of first-degree murder. They claimed I was some kind of spree killer who went berserk. I told them to check Donny’s identity and they’d see my entire story was true, that the executions were staged, but they refused. In the trial, they claimed he was a “John Doe,” likely some unidentified hitchhiker or homeless person.
Now I’m on death row. I had my lawyer post online this to warn other people. I want someone to hear my story.
Because I know that, after they fake my death, I will disappear- and then a much more horrifying death will come. I will see our creators, the Primes, and maybe they will use me as a subject for some nightmarish experiment.
The executions in the USA are staged, but I think by the time the Primes finish with me, I will wish they were real.

Throughout my life, I was always a piece of shit. From an early age, I joined a gang and started selling drugs. Anything from weed to heroin to crack sold itself, but on the unforgiving streets of the city, a single mistake could be fatal. I always carried a cheap burner pistol that I could throw away after using it. I know quite a few friends and acquaintances who died from drugs I sold them- some overdosing, others crashing their cars while high. A couple of them committed suicide during opiate withdrawals. One got cut in half by a train while nodding off.
But by seventeen, I had committed my first confirmed murder- a rival gang member and drug dealer who pulled a gun on me first. I had probably killed people before, but I never watched the news after a shooting or a stabbing to see the result. I wasn’t interested in the slightest.
In this case, I had just been slightly quicker than my rival and, a fraction of a second later, his forehead imploded like a smashed pumpkin in front of me, spraying bone splinters and brains all over the sidewalk. He stumbled forward a step before falling forward. His pistol went off in his dying hand, but it went low, the bullet disappearing with a crack into the nearby street. He fell forward with a dull thud, his legs kicking as if he were seizing.
The sidewalk of the dead end street we stood on spun around me for a moment. The many abandoned, rotting houses of the city loomed over us like hanging corpses. My ears gave a high-pitched shriek of tinnitus from the gunshots.
Nervous, I looked up and down the side street. The entire place seemed silent and dead. Then I heard voices nearby and saw lights turning on in the front yards and windows of houses. Without a moment of hesitation, I took off, sprinting blindly away from the crime scene, not caring much where I was going. Someone a few houses down came out, an old black man in his boxers and slippers. He saw me running and called out something in a quavering voice. I didn’t slow down for a moment.
Not long after, I heard the wailing of sirens off in the distance. They were drawing closer by the second. When the street abruptly ended in a cul-de-sac of mostly abandoned and dilapidated houses, I chose one at random and cut across its back yard, jumped over the rusted metal fence and kept on running, cutting across random yards and jumping more fences until I started making my way back towards downtown.
After about five minutes, I got to a street with a lot more traffic and people. Covered in sweat, I walked casually back towards my tiny, cockroach-infested apartment.
I thought I had gotten away with it. I thought I had been able to kill this worthless scumbag without anyone noticing. But there were more eyes glittering behind the veil than I realized at that moment.
I went back home- and that was the night I died and went to Hell.
***
I lived on the first floor in a building with falling-down rafters and a flat black roof like an infected scab. The paint on the outside was the color of vomit, the windows cracked and broken. Moreover, the place always smelled like Mexican food and chemicals, and every night, I would hear gunshots and panicked screams outside.
I sat down at the table and opened a beer. The ancient CRT TV was on, showing some old horror movie from the 1970s. I took a deep breath, relieved. I didn’t expect a thing to happen at that moment.
Suddenly, my door burst open as if someone had fired a cannonball at it. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Standing there, I saw a dozen black police in SWAT gear holding rifles. The laser sights jumped and danced across the floor before they converged on my head and chest. Someone screamed something in a hoarse voice, but I didn’t understand. The words sounded garbled, like the whispering of a demon. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
I fell back in my chair in surprise. A single breath later, one of them opened fire. I felt the first bullet crash through my left shoulder, felt the bone shatter and the flesh explode behind it, warm blood running down my back and chest.
The next moment, others joined in. I didn’t feel the bullet that smashed into my head and sent me to Hell. It moved fast, faster than my nerves. It must have moved as fast as death itself.
The blackness descended on me like a cloud.
***
I don’t know how much time passed. It seemed like an eternity, full of freezing darkness and screams that came from everywhere and nowhere. I remember coming awake suddenly, standing before a face formed from blinding white light. I was healed without any signs of wound or blood from the gunshots. I found myself standing naked and alone in the freezing winds.
I was shivering, my arms wrapped protectively around my chest as I stood on a flat plain of cracked, gray stone. The wind whipped around me as if I were in a hurricane, blowing sand and dust across the eternal plains. The features of the endless face constantly melted and shifted, spiraling out with bolts of lightning that cracked and sizzled all around the hurricane of light. The face seemed to stand miles high with eyes that spun like the Sun.
“Where am I?” I whispered in terror. The face of infinite light stared down at me with a blinding intensity. It seemed to see every thought, every feeling, every memory. I could feel it looking through me as if I were glass.
“You are in the Bardo,” the being said in a voice like an exploding nuclear bomb. “I am the one who sees. I am GOD, the creator of the universe and all who live within it. In the end, to Me you will always return. Did you not know you would one day have to stand here?” I shook my head.
“No… I… I…” I stuttered in terror, unable to respond.
“I have seen your evil, for indeed, I am closer to you than your own jugular vein, your own heart. Did you not see the suffering of those who harmed the innocent, those who murdered and stole and lived their lives wallowing in filth? Did you not see them get wounded, shot, stabbed, strangled and imprisoned? Did you not see them die in their evil and return to Me?”
“I did,” I admitted. “Many times.”
“And yet you have fallen into the sickness yourself,” God said in a voice like a rushing waterfall. Fury and anger seemed to seethe from him. Dozens of bolts of lightning flashed out from all sides of that radiant face. “For this, you must be purified. Your soul must be cleansed with fire. For that is the fate of those who harm the innocent- they fall down to the bottomless pit, to the blazing inferno whose fuel is men and stones. The flames eat them all greedily, and then the fires cry out to Me for more.”
My body felt like it was covered with stinging hornets. Excruciating pins and needles ran all up and down my legs and arms. I looked down, seeing a swirling dark hole opening up underneath me in the field of gray stone, spitting out drops of liquid blackness. They splashed upwards, burning through my skin like napalm, but no blood came out. It was as if my body were dissolving into dripping shadows that pulled me downwards. I felt myself slowly falling through the eternal stone plain as unseen hands dragged me away. As I descended, I heard the voice of God one last time.
“Down into the pit you will go, to the valley of wailing and the lake of flames where the damned scream for peace that never comes, to the city of shadows, to Naraka…”
***
Beneath me, the shadowy tunnel descended. I fell through it like lightning. Everything spun around me at an incredible speed. Suddenly, I broke through something, some invisible barrier in the endless darkness. I found myself falling through a cloud of suffocating smoke, and then the world opened up all around me.
A blood-red sky with thick black clouds extended out in all directions. I glimpsed a world of sharp cliffs and rivers of lava that wound their way down mountains of obsidian.
I fell through the middle of the sky at a tremendous speed, the wind whipping around my ears like a hurricane. A scream ripped its way out of my throat, but I was traveling so fast I could barely hear it as the echoes disappeared above me. Below me was what looked like a massive lake filled with blood about half a mile wide, and it was coming up to meet me fast. Many struggling bodies writhed in the currents, trying to claw their way out. I crashed through the surface at an incredible speed, going deep under the warm crimson waves.
The bloody water of the lake filled my mouth and nose with the overwhelming taste of copper and iron. I started trying to swim back up to the surface, frantically kicking and pushing with my arms and legs. I opened my eyes, and the salty blood stung them. It looked like I was peering through a translucent red film into a world of deep-sea abominations. Long snakes with two heads swam all around me, snapping and biting at each other and any legs or arms nearby. I saw them drag people down one by one, wrapping their slick bodies around their struggling victims as they drowned.
I broke through the surface, inhaling deeply. I was worried about the snakes and whatever else was slinking around down there. Thousands of people treaded water in the massive lake, trying to make their way to the shores. The nearest person to me was only ten feet away, a young woman with panicked eyes and wavy black hair. As I watched her, she gave a scream of terror and then was dragged under the surface, struggling and kicking. She never reappeared.
All around me, I smelled the fetid rot of decaying bodies. There must have been thousands and thousands of corpses at the bottom of this bloody lake. Some of them floated on top of the surface, rancid and swollen, their sightless eyes staring up at the fiery sky. The surface of the lake constantly bubbled and writhed, though whether this was from the rotting of so many bodies or from hidden monsters breathing under the surface, I didn’t yet know.
Frantically, I looked around for the nearest shore to get out of the danger. I saw that if I swam past the direction where the young woman had been, I would only have to go about two hundred feet. But my heart hammered in my chest as I remembered her being dragged under, her frantic, panicked struggling. What if the same creature was waiting over there, waiting for someone like me to try to swim over?
There were dozens more people between me and the nearest shore. Most of them climbed out, dripping drops of crimson onto the black volcanic sands of the beaches. I made my way as fast as I could in that direction, deciding to take my chances with the snakes. Otherwise, I would have to swim at least four times as far to get to the next nearest beach, which also swarmed with masses of naked people clawing their way out of the bloody lake.
A small group of people was concentrated only twenty feet away, three men who were swimming in the same direction I was. One started screaming suddenly. A purple tentacle the color of an old bruise broke through the surface of the water. To my horror, I saw it had black spikes that clicked and clacked together all along its massive arms. The spikes resembled long, hollow hypodermic needles.
The screaming man tried to swim in the opposite direction, but the tentacle wrapped around him, pulling him above the water. It tightened like a boa constrictor, the black spikes stabbing into his chest and stomach. Countless punctures opened up all along his body. The black spikes flexed, and his ribcage ripped open with a wet, ripping sound. The man’s screams abruptly cut off as his head lolled. With a sucking sound, the hollow spikes began drinking, consuming the man’s spurting blood with a sound like an inhalation of air. Slowly, almost lazily, the tentacle began dragging his limp corpse under the surface, back towards the main body of whatever monstrosity it belonged to.
The other two gave panicked sobs as more purple tentacles broke through the surface of the lake. Frantically, I started swimming around them, giving them a wide berth. Within seconds, the other two men were dragged under, deep stab wounds opening in their bodies as the hollow spikes drank greedily with loud sucking sounds.
“Fuck!” I cried, horrified. I felt something brush past my leg, something slimy and eel-like that writhed and slithered under the opaque crimson surface. In horror, I felt its slimy skin wrap around my leg, at first loosely slithering, then tightening. Two black faces with white, lidless eyes rose out of the water, the faces of serpents with fangs like switchblades. I saw both heads were connected to a single slithering body, one that wrapped slowly around my legs and arms, strangling me. Screaming, I felt its fangs dig into my neck. As the twin pairs of lidless white eyes stared at me, I tried to fight, tried to raise my arm, but it was far too strong. It dragged me under the surface.
Struggling against the beast, feeling its poison coursing through my bloodstream like lava, I drowned in the lake of blood. The experience of drowning is horrifying beyond all measure- the overwhelming fear and anxiety when you realize you have no air, the sensation of inhaling the bloody water, the sensation of dying. My vision turned black as a suffocating, clenching fist squeezed my heart. It felt like it took an eternity, but it was probably only a couple minutes at most. Death came over me then, cold and filled with small, suffocating agonies. That was the first time I died in Hell, but it would not be my last.
For in Hell, as I quickly learned, you never truly died, but were just thrown back to the beginning.
***
I felt myself falling again through the black clouds, the Lake of Blood beneath me. It all repeated like before. I screamed as I fell through the water at an incredible speed. Eldritch monstrosities were dragging people under the surface all around me. As quickly as I could, I swam towards the nearest shore. I dared not look down, didn’t dare slow for a single moment. A few times, I was nearly swiped by large, writhing tentacles, but they found other shrieking victims nearby to my immense relief.
I didn’t want to die ever again. It was a horrible sensation, though one that I would, sadly, become used to. Death followed me like a shadow, and starting over in Hell was always a nightmare.
I gave a gasp of joy when my feet touched bottom. Running through the rippling currents of blood, naked and gasping, I came upon the black sands of the shore. Looking around the lake, I saw there were four beaches, seemingly placed at each point of the compass underneath the spinning, blood-red sky.
At the end of each of the black sands lay a sparkling silver gate fifty feet tall and hundreds of feet across. The thin strands of silver intertwined like the fine filaments of a spiderweb, spiraling around each other in graceful, curving arches. Embossed over the top were the words, “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.” No one seemed to pay the gate any mind. Naked crowds of struggling people stumbled through it onto the streets of Hell, streets that were paved with human bones and stretched off to the horizon.
Skyscrapers made of obsidian with spiraling windows like the murderholes of a castle stretched hundreds of stories up into the blood-red sky. As I staggered out, pressed body to body in the thick crowd of crying, wailing people, I saw ahead of us the second mortal danger of Hell.
There were countless gangs of mostly men gathered on the streets of bone, the desperate soldiers of this apocalyptic wasteland. They huddled together in groups of ten or twelve, attacking and murdering random people who tried to sprint past from the Lake of Blood. They wore crude leather tunics and pants that looked like they were made from human skin. Some wore crude masks of human skin on their faces, ragged patches of flesh that had been cut from the bodies of the dead. They stared out with cold, emotionless eyes through the holes in the dried, leathery skin, surveying the surging crowds like lions surveying their prey.
They held primitive weapons in their hands, clubs and maces made from bone, swords sharpened from obsidian glass and even wooden spears. The wood looked strange and dark, almost like mahogany. Next to them were fires with sharpened spits of roasting human meat. The fat dripped off the dismembered arms and legs sizzling over the flames. It gave off a smell like roast pork that permeated the area, rising up in thick, fragrant clouds.
I followed the surging crowds, watching in horror as the groups of armed men attacked and killed random passersby in the crowd, dragging their limp bodies next to the fires where they stacked the unconscious or dead people in stacks like cordwood. I figured they would inevitably roast their flesh for food or make pale leather armor from their dead skin. I felt myself being pushed over in the direction of the nearest group of armed thugs. A few of the nearest men wore masks made of people’s faces, though those behind them did not, only wearing the crude leather armor instead.
One of them standing only ten feet away met my eyes, his cold killer’s gaze boring through me. The mask of skin made him look like some monster from a horror movie, with its ragged, mutilated edges and garish black stitches. He took a step towards me, raising a short spear made from a human leg bone and sharpened to a blood-stained point.
In panic, I looked around, seeing a young woman in her early twenties standing next to me. She was looking straight ahead with panic and terror in her eyes, not paying any attention to me or the men that crept towards us. With all of my strength, I shoved the woman towards the masked killer. She stumbled back in surprise, falling into the man’s weapon. His bone spear stabbed through her stomach. She looked down at her naked body in horror when the point emerged from her navel, dripping rivers of blood down her trembling legs. As she spit up trickles of blood and collapsed to her knees, I ran. A sickening crack rang out behind me like a shattering of bones, and I knew they had murdered the young woman.
I sprinted away from the gangs of cannibal killers as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast considering how many naked, screaming bodies pressed in all on me from all sides. I felt myself being carried forward by the surging masses towards the silver gate. Hanging from the delicate silver threads, I saw signs written in many languages. I found one in English and started reading it with rapt attention, even as I was relentlessly pushed forward and elbowed and kicked.
I still remember what it said by heart.
“Rules for Naraka:

1. Those who are damned will be fed from the fountain of life. GOD will ensure your rebirth at the Lake of Blood. Though death may crush you over and over, there will be no rest.
2. Stay away from the Screamers, the faceless ones who roam the land. Those who are taken by the Screamers will know endless torment and madness in the caverns deep under the ground.
3. When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
4. Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”

As I was pushed forward, I read the sharp, copperplate engraving scrawled across the silver signs in glowing red letters, trying to memorize every single word. At the time, none of it made much sense, but I instinctively felt that it was immensely important in some way I didn’t yet understand.
Immediately outside the gate, the beach turned into a road paved with bones. Leg bones and arm bones were laid side by side, yellowing and drying under the dark crimson sky. Skulls embedded in the center of the road grinned up at me, laughing at silent secrets I could never hope to comprehend.
Naked and barefoot, I sprinted down the road of bones between massive skyscrapers of black obsidian and gleaming red volcanic rock. People started to thin as the survivors scattered in all directions. I felt the sharp points of bone stabbing into the soles of my feet.
That was the moment the sirens began their eerie wailing, rising and falling in a dissonant cacophony, slower and deeper than any tornado siren I had ever heard. It sounded almost like a whale call, stretching out over the infernal city. They sounded from all around us, seemingly ringing out from thousands of speakers hidden throughout the obsidian towers.
I looked up suddenly. The crimson sky had changed rapidly, forming into a cyclone that swirled overhead in great black and red spirals. It met in a fiery eye at the center. As I looked up, I saw glowing orange hail soaring through the air, leaving behind streaks like thousands of comets. It fell towards the naked masses of tens of thousands of bodies pressed together on the streets.
At that moment, I remembered the rules. Some of the others apparently hadn’t read them during the panic and horror of the escape from the Lake of Blood, and they continued surging forward down the road as fire began to fall like drops of napalm all around us. Wails of agony rose up from those who were covered in the glowing lava. The people in the front of the crowd immediately fell under the heat and destruction of the firestorm. Their hair lit on fire, their skin melted and blackened, and still more fire rained down from the sky, sweeping relentlessly in our direction.
I saw an obsidian skyscraper with a great, open archway only a couple hundred feet away. The nearest of the crowd scrambled to find cover under the safety of the building. I sprinted along with them. As I reached the threshold, I felt the first burning drops of magma land on my back. I screamed as I smelled my own skin cooking and my own hair burning, and then I was through the archway. I fell, rolling on my back, trying to put out the sizzling fires that burned me like some corrosive acid.
I felt rivers of warm blood running down my back as more people ran past me, deeper into the hall. The skyscraper was massive, not only in height but in width. The hallway ran for hundreds of feet, disappearing into doorless thresholds on both sides cleaved out of the obsidian, as if the entire structure had been carved from one enormous piece of glassy stone. In the center of the hallway, it opened up into a spiraling staircase.
I looked up abruptly to see three men wearing masks made of human skin standing over me, each holding primitive bone spears in their filthy, blood-stained hands. They looked emaciated, wasted away, like the walking corpses of a death camp. To my utter astonishment, even through the layer of dried, ragged skin, I recognized one of them. It was in his gray eyes, and the twisting dragon tattoos that covered his arms and chest instantly brought a flash of memory.
“Shooter,” I said as they raised their weapons. “Shooter, it’s me. Remember me? It’s Richie.” He froze in place, looking down at me with widening eyes.
“Holy shit, Richie?” he said, tearing the mask off. “What are you doing here?” It was an absurd question, of course. What were any of us doing here?
The last time I had seen Shooter, he had been sitting a pile of blood in his car. He was one of the designated gunman for the Solid Ones, the gang we had both joined when we were young. The amazing luck of finding another Solid in this place of death was astounding. But, then again, I had known many people who had died, and I had a feeling the vast majority were here somewhere.
“I guess I died,” I said sheepishly, giving him a faint half-smile. The other two men standing by his side lowered their weapons. “Fucking pigs came in and shot me.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, unsurprised. “They do have a tendency to do that.” He gave a low laugh. I took a long look at Shooter, who was wearing the pale skin of some unknown victim or victims of this place of agony. He reached a trembling hand down and pulled me up from the smooth surface of this strange skyscraper. More naked, scared people continued to stream past us as the sirens continued their infernal shrieking outside. Many of them had horrific burns all over their body, and a few were clearly on the verge of death by the time they had made it inside.
Farther down the hall, another ten men wearing the same garb as Shooter came towards us, holding sharpened swords of obsidian and thick clubs made of bone. Shooter put his hands up.
“Hey, I know this guy,” he said calmly, motioning over to me with an apathetic wave of his head. “He was in the same gang as me! We used to go around having a great time, I’ll tell you. Remember that time we shot at that cop and he pissed himself?” He gave a racuous laugh at that. I smiled as the memory flooded back. Shooter had definitely hit him, though I think I probably missed. I remembered the blood soaking over the arm of cop’s uniform as he lay there, gasping and turning white, his face looking bloodless and shocked. Shooter and I had run away, high-fiving each other and grinning like maniacs.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, grinning. The other men surrounded me in a semi-circle. Shooter knelt down and extended a hand to me, helping me off the ground.
“Well, you’re in good company,” he said. “Here, we can do whatever the fuck we want. What’s going to happen, after all? It’s not like we can be sent to Hell.” He laughed, and that laughter writhed with the insanity and bloodlust that seemed to be eating him from the inside like a cancer.
***
“We still need to take him to the Sergeant,” one of the masked men next to Shooter said. “We can see if he has the right stuff needed to fight with us.”
“What happens when you guys die?” I asked. “I mean, obviously, you restart at the Lake of Blood, but how do you find your way back to your gang?” Shooter shrugged.
“We always find each other again eventually,” he said. “It’s not like there’s any lack of time here. All we have is time- and fresh meat, of course. There’s always more fresh meat streaming in through the Lake of Blood. We can take whatever we need from them…” The wailing of the sirens suddenly ended as he spoke. I looked around, seeing burnt and dying people still struggling into the front hallway of the skyscraper. The smell of burning hair and searing flesh filled the entire area.
“Come on,” one of the men said. His voice was gruff, as if he had been chainsmoking five packs a day since he was a little kid. “The Sergeant is on the top floor. You’ll have to talk to him.” I nodded, knowing they would certainly kill me if I did not join their group.
But at that moment, something much worse than dying, blackened bodies crawled in through the archway. I saw it before the group of men did. Instinctively upon glimpsing it, I knew it was something terrible, something that could only live in the depths of a psychotic’s nightmare.
It stood nearly ten feet tall. Its skin was as pale as a writhing maggot. On its hairless face, I saw no eyes, no nose, no ears, just smooth, bone-white skin. It had thin lips tied together with black thread, the garish stitches poking out from the ragged, bloodless flesh. Its arms and legs looked inhumanly long and thin. Its ribs and spine jutted out as if it were a starving, rabid animal. From all around its body, an inhuman wailing started, as if dozens of demonic voices were shrieking in unison. Yet its mouth stayed firmly closed, still stitched shut.
Its fingers jutted out like railroad spikes, each a foot long. As its screaming intensified, it ran towards us, crushing the dying and injured under its naked, twisted feet. I stared into its pale, bloodless face, and even though it had no eyes, it felt like it stared straight back at me, looking into my soul.
“Don’t look at it!” Shooter screamed next to me, turning his face away. The rest of the men closed their eyes or turned away, backpedaling away from the abomination. “It will take on the shape of what you fear most! It’s a Screamer!” But it was too late. At that moment, something strange happened to the pale, naked body of the Screamer. It rippled like a mirage sizzling off the sands of a desert. Its body squeezed and contorted as the distorted shrieking around its pale, naked body grew louder and more insane.
Thin stalks of black, spidery legs began jutting out of the sides of its chest. Its face melted like wax as glittering compound eyes sprouted from the top of its head. Within seconds, it had turned into a massive spider, a black widow whose head nearly scraped the ceiling twenty feet above us. The red hourglass on its back shone brightly, as if in reminder of the imminent death it brought to anyone it touched.
I hate spiders. I’ve always hated spiders. When I saw that skittering, crawling monstrosity, something in me broke. I sprinted towards the group of men who were trying to do their best to escape without looking directly at the Screamer, hoping that the spider would choose one of them instead of me. But I heard its massive bulk following closely behind me. I could feel its insectile breath on the back of my neck.
Naked and frantic, I sprinted behind the nearest of the men and used the same tactic I had used escaping through the silver gate: I pushed the unsuspecting figure towards the abomination that rushed towards us in a blur, its eight legs pounding the glassy floor with reverberating thuds.
Drops of clear venom dripped from its fangs as it grabbed the struggling man. It bit deeply into his leg, and as the venom dripped onto his skin, it seemed to eat through his flesh like some sort of acid. The man screamed as red streaks rapidly spread up his leg throughout the rest of his body. His teeth began chattering and his pupils dilated as he stared at me accusingly. But he did not die.
The spider grabbed him and dragged him away down the hallway, down to wherever the victims of the Screamers go. I saw a dozen more of the pale, faceless monstrosities rushing in to take his place. The men looked up, and the Screamers erupted into monstrous shapes: giant, slithering snakes, a floating eyeball with black, squid-like tentacles writhing around its central mass, enormous brown recluses and black widows and faceless Grim Reapers who floated over the ground in black robes. The overwhelming sense of fear and panic I felt at that moment still stays with me to this day, and even though this happened a couple days ago and I did eventually make it out of that den of horrors, it still leaves a deep scar across my mind.
As visions from a nightmare approached us, I turned and ran.

Throughout my life, I was always a piece of shit. From an early age, I joined a gang and started selling drugs. Anything from weed to heroin to crack sold itself, but on the unforgiving streets of the city, a single mistake could be fatal. I always carried a cheap burner pistol that I could throw away after using it. I know quite a few friends and acquaintances who died from drugs I sold them- some overdosing, others crashing their cars while high. A couple of them committed suicide during opiate withdrawals. One got cut in half by a train while nodding off.
But by seventeen, I had committed my first confirmed murder- a rival gang member and drug dealer who pulled a gun on me first. I had probably killed people before, but I never watched the news after a shooting or a stabbing to see the result. I wasn’t interested in the slightest.
In this case, I had just been slightly quicker than my rival and, a fraction of a second later, his forehead imploded like a smashed pumpkin in front of me, spraying bone splinters and brains all over the sidewalk. He stumbled forward a step before falling forward. His pistol went off in his dying hand, but it went low, the bullet disappearing with a crack into the nearby street. He fell forward with a dull thud, his legs kicking as if he were seizing.
The sidewalk of the dead end street we stood on spun around me for a moment. The many abandoned, rotting houses of the city loomed over us like hanging corpses. My ears gave a high-pitched shriek of tinnitus from the gunshots.
Nervous, I looked up and down the side street. The entire place seemed silent and dead. Then I heard voices nearby and saw lights turning on in the front yards and windows of houses. Without a moment of hesitation, I took off, sprinting blindly away from the crime scene, not caring much where I was going. Someone a few houses down came out, an old black man in his boxers and slippers. He saw me running and called out something in a quavering voice. I didn’t slow down for a moment.
Not long after, I heard the wailing of sirens off in the distance. They were drawing closer by the second. When the street abruptly ended in a cul-de-sac of mostly abandoned and dilapidated houses, I chose one at random and cut across its back yard, jumped over the rusted metal fence and kept on running, cutting across random yards and jumping more fences until I started making my way back towards downtown.
After about five minutes, I got to a street with a lot more traffic and people. Covered in sweat, I walked casually back towards my tiny, cockroach-infested apartment.
I thought I had gotten away with it. I thought I had been able to kill this worthless scumbag without anyone noticing. But there were more eyes glittering behind the veil than I realized at that moment.
I went back home- and that was the night I died and went to Hell.
***
I lived on the first floor in a building with falling-down rafters and a flat black roof like an infected scab. The paint on the outside was the color of vomit, the windows cracked and broken. Moreover, the place always smelled like Mexican food and chemicals, and every night, I would hear gunshots and panicked screams outside.
I sat down at the table and opened a beer. The ancient CRT TV was on, showing some old horror movie from the 1970s. I took a deep breath, relieved. I didn’t expect a thing to happen at that moment.
Suddenly, my door burst open as if someone had fired a cannonball at it. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Standing there, I saw a dozen black police in SWAT gear holding rifles. The laser sights jumped and danced across the floor before they converged on my head and chest. Someone screamed something in a hoarse voice, but I didn’t understand. The words sounded garbled, like the whispering of a demon. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
I fell back in my chair in surprise. A single breath later, one of them opened fire. I felt the first bullet crash through my left shoulder, felt the bone shatter and the flesh explode behind it, warm blood running down my back and chest.
The next moment, others joined in. I didn’t feel the bullet that smashed into my head and sent me to Hell. It moved fast, faster than my nerves. It must have moved as fast as death itself.
The blackness descended on me like a cloud.
***
I don’t know how much time passed. It seemed like an eternity, full of freezing darkness and screams that came from everywhere and nowhere. I remember coming awake suddenly, standing before a face formed from blinding white light. I was healed without any signs of wound or blood from the gunshots. I found myself standing naked and alone in the freezing winds.
I was shivering, my arms wrapped protectively around my chest as I stood on a flat plain of cracked, gray stone. The wind whipped around me as if I were in a hurricane, blowing sand and dust across the eternal plains. The features of the endless face constantly melted and shifted, spiraling out with bolts of lightning that cracked and sizzled all around the hurricane of light. The face seemed to stand miles high with eyes that spun like the Sun.
“Where am I?” I whispered in terror. The face of infinite light stared down at me with a blinding intensity. It seemed to see every thought, every feeling, every memory. I could feel it looking through me as if I were glass.
“You are in the Bardo,” the being said in a voice like an exploding nuclear bomb. “I am the one who sees. I am GOD, the creator of the universe and all who live within it. In the end, to Me you will always return. Did you not know you would one day have to stand here?” I shook my head.
“No… I… I…” I stuttered in terror, unable to respond.
“I have seen your evil, for indeed, I am closer to you than your own jugular vein, your own heart. Did you not see the suffering of those who harmed the innocent, those who murdered and stole and lived their lives wallowing in filth? Did you not see them get wounded, shot, stabbed, strangled and imprisoned? Did you not see them die in their evil and return to Me?”
“I did,” I admitted. “Many times.”
“And yet you have fallen into the sickness yourself,” God said in a voice like a rushing waterfall. Fury and anger seemed to seethe from him. Dozens of bolts of lightning flashed out from all sides of that radiant face. “For this, you must be purified. Your soul must be cleansed with fire. For that is the fate of those who harm the innocent- they fall down to the bottomless pit, to the blazing inferno whose fuel is men and stones. The flames eat them all greedily, and then the fires cry out to Me for more.”
My body felt like it was covered with stinging hornets. Excruciating pins and needles ran all up and down my legs and arms. I looked down, seeing a swirling dark hole opening up underneath me in the field of gray stone, spitting out drops of liquid blackness. They splashed upwards, burning through my skin like napalm, but no blood came out. It was as if my body were dissolving into dripping shadows that pulled me downwards. I felt myself slowly falling through the eternal stone plain as unseen hands dragged me away. As I descended, I heard the voice of God one last time.
“Down into the pit you will go, to the valley of wailing and the lake of flames where the damned scream for peace that never comes, to the city of shadows, to Naraka…”
***
Beneath me, the shadowy tunnel descended. I fell through it like lightning. Everything spun around me at an incredible speed. Suddenly, I broke through something, some invisible barrier in the endless darkness. I found myself falling through a cloud of suffocating smoke, and then the world opened up all around me.
A blood-red sky with thick black clouds extended out in all directions. I glimpsed a world of sharp cliffs and rivers of lava that wound their way down mountains of obsidian.
I fell through the middle of the sky at a tremendous speed, the wind whipping around my ears like a hurricane. A scream ripped its way out of my throat, but I was traveling so fast I could barely hear it as the echoes disappeared above me. Below me was what looked like a massive lake filled with blood about half a mile wide, and it was coming up to meet me fast. Many struggling bodies writhed in the currents, trying to claw their way out. I crashed through the surface at an incredible speed, going deep under the warm crimson waves.
The bloody water of the lake filled my mouth and nose with the overwhelming taste of copper and iron. I started trying to swim back up to the surface, frantically kicking and pushing with my arms and legs. I opened my eyes, and the salty blood stung them. It looked like I was peering through a translucent red film into a world of deep-sea abominations. Long snakes with two heads swam all around me, snapping and biting at each other and any legs or arms nearby. I saw them drag people down one by one, wrapping their slick bodies around their struggling victims as they drowned.
I broke through the surface, inhaling deeply. I was worried about the snakes and whatever else was slinking around down there. Thousands of people treaded water in the massive lake, trying to make their way to the shores. The nearest person to me was only ten feet away, a young woman with panicked eyes and wavy black hair. As I watched her, she gave a scream of terror and then was dragged under the surface, struggling and kicking. She never reappeared.
All around me, I smelled the fetid rot of decaying bodies. There must have been thousands and thousands of corpses at the bottom of this bloody lake. Some of them floated on top of the surface, rancid and swollen, their sightless eyes staring up at the fiery sky. The surface of the lake constantly bubbled and writhed, though whether this was from the rotting of so many bodies or from hidden monsters breathing under the surface, I didn’t yet know.
Frantically, I looked around for the nearest shore to get out of the danger. I saw that if I swam past the direction where the young woman had been, I would only have to go about two hundred feet. But my heart hammered in my chest as I remembered her being dragged under, her frantic, panicked struggling. What if the same creature was waiting over there, waiting for someone like me to try to swim over?
There were dozens more people between me and the nearest shore. Most of them climbed out, dripping drops of crimson onto the black volcanic sands of the beaches. I made my way as fast as I could in that direction, deciding to take my chances with the snakes. Otherwise, I would have to swim at least four times as far to get to the next nearest beach, which also swarmed with masses of naked people clawing their way out of the bloody lake.
A small group of people was concentrated only twenty feet away, three men who were swimming in the same direction I was. One started screaming suddenly. A purple tentacle the color of an old bruise broke through the surface of the water. To my horror, I saw it had black spikes that clicked and clacked together all along its massive arms. The spikes resembled long, hollow hypodermic needles.
The screaming man tried to swim in the opposite direction, but the tentacle wrapped around him, pulling him above the water. It tightened like a boa constrictor, the black spikes stabbing into his chest and stomach. Countless punctures opened up all along his body. The black spikes flexed, and his ribcage ripped open with a wet, ripping sound. The man’s screams abruptly cut off as his head lolled. With a sucking sound, the hollow spikes began drinking, consuming the man’s spurting blood with a sound like an inhalation of air. Slowly, almost lazily, the tentacle began dragging his limp corpse under the surface, back towards the main body of whatever monstrosity it belonged to.
The other two gave panicked sobs as more purple tentacles broke through the surface of the lake. Frantically, I started swimming around them, giving them a wide berth. Within seconds, the other two men were dragged under, deep stab wounds opening in their bodies as the hollow spikes drank greedily with loud sucking sounds.
“Fuck!” I cried, horrified. I felt something brush past my leg, something slimy and eel-like that writhed and slithered under the opaque crimson surface. In horror, I felt its slimy skin wrap around my leg, at first loosely slithering, then tightening. Two black faces with white, lidless eyes rose out of the water, the faces of serpents with fangs like switchblades. I saw both heads were connected to a single slithering body, one that wrapped slowly around my legs and arms, strangling me. Screaming, I felt its fangs dig into my neck. As the twin pairs of lidless white eyes stared at me, I tried to fight, tried to raise my arm, but it was far too strong. It dragged me under the surface.
Struggling against the beast, feeling its poison coursing through my bloodstream like lava, I drowned in the lake of blood. The experience of drowning is horrifying beyond all measure- the overwhelming fear and anxiety when you realize you have no air, the sensation of inhaling the bloody water, the sensation of dying. My vision turned black as a suffocating, clenching fist squeezed my heart. It felt like it took an eternity, but it was probably only a couple minutes at most. Death came over me then, cold and filled with small, suffocating agonies. That was the first time I died in Hell, but it would not be my last.
For in Hell, as I quickly learned, you never truly died, but were just thrown back to the beginning.
***
I felt myself falling again through the black clouds, the Lake of Blood beneath me. It all repeated like before. I screamed as I fell through the water at an incredible speed. Eldritch monstrosities were dragging people under the surface all around me. As quickly as I could, I swam towards the nearest shore. I dared not look down, didn’t dare slow for a single moment. A few times, I was nearly swiped by large, writhing tentacles, but they found other shrieking victims nearby to my immense relief.
I didn’t want to die ever again. It was a horrible sensation, though one that I would, sadly, become used to. Death followed me like a shadow, and starting over in Hell was always a nightmare.
I gave a gasp of joy when my feet touched bottom. Running through the rippling currents of blood, naked and gasping, I came upon the black sands of the shore. Looking around the lake, I saw there were four beaches, seemingly placed at each point of the compass underneath the spinning, blood-red sky.
At the end of each of the black sands lay a sparkling silver gate fifty feet tall and hundreds of feet across. The thin strands of silver intertwined like the fine filaments of a spiderweb, spiraling around each other in graceful, curving arches. Embossed over the top were the words, “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.” No one seemed to pay the gate any mind. Naked crowds of struggling people stumbled through it onto the streets of Hell, streets that were paved with human bones and stretched off to the horizon.
Skyscrapers made of obsidian with spiraling windows like the murderholes of a castle stretched hundreds of stories up into the blood-red sky. As I staggered out, pressed body to body in the thick crowd of crying, wailing people, I saw ahead of us the second mortal danger of Hell.
There were countless gangs of mostly men gathered on the streets of bone, the desperate soldiers of this apocalyptic wasteland. They huddled together in groups of ten or twelve, attacking and murdering random people who tried to sprint past from the Lake of Blood. They wore crude leather tunics and pants that looked like they were made from human skin. Some wore crude masks of human skin on their faces, ragged patches of flesh that had been cut from the bodies of the dead. They stared out with cold, emotionless eyes through the holes in the dried, leathery skin, surveying the surging crowds like lions surveying their prey.
They held primitive weapons in their hands, clubs and maces made from bone, swords sharpened from obsidian glass and even wooden spears. The wood looked strange and dark, almost like mahogany. Next to them were fires with sharpened spits of roasting human meat. The fat dripped off the dismembered arms and legs sizzling over the flames. It gave off a smell like roast pork that permeated the area, rising up in thick, fragrant clouds.
I followed the surging crowds, watching in horror as the groups of armed men attacked and killed random passersby in the crowd, dragging their limp bodies next to the fires where they stacked the unconscious or dead people in stacks like cordwood. I figured they would inevitably roast their flesh for food or make pale leather armor from their dead skin. I felt myself being pushed over in the direction of the nearest group of armed thugs. A few of the nearest men wore masks made of people’s faces, though those behind them did not, only wearing the crude leather armor instead.
One of them standing only ten feet away met my eyes, his cold killer’s gaze boring through me. The mask of skin made him look like some monster from a horror movie, with its ragged, mutilated edges and garish black stitches. He took a step towards me, raising a short spear made from a human leg bone and sharpened to a blood-stained point.
In panic, I looked around, seeing a young woman in her early twenties standing next to me. She was looking straight ahead with panic and terror in her eyes, not paying any attention to me or the men that crept towards us. With all of my strength, I shoved the woman towards the masked killer. She stumbled back in surprise, falling into the man’s weapon. His bone spear stabbed through her stomach. She looked down at her naked body in horror when the point emerged from her navel, dripping rivers of blood down her trembling legs. As she spit up trickles of blood and collapsed to her knees, I ran. A sickening crack rang out behind me like a shattering of bones, and I knew they had murdered the young woman.
I sprinted away from the gangs of cannibal killers as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast considering how many naked, screaming bodies pressed in all on me from all sides. I felt myself being carried forward by the surging masses towards the silver gate. Hanging from the delicate silver threads, I saw signs written in many languages. I found one in English and started reading it with rapt attention, even as I was relentlessly pushed forward and elbowed and kicked.
I still remember what it said by heart.
“Rules for Naraka:

1. Those who are damned will be fed from the fountain of life. GOD will ensure your rebirth at the Lake of Blood. Though death may crush you over and over, there will be no rest.
2. Stay away from the Screamers, the faceless ones who roam the land. Those who are taken by the Screamers will know endless torment and madness in the caverns deep under the ground.
3. When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
4. Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”

As I was pushed forward, I read the sharp, copperplate engraving scrawled across the silver signs in glowing red letters, trying to memorize every single word. At the time, none of it made much sense, but I instinctively felt that it was immensely important in some way I didn’t yet understand.
Immediately outside the gate, the beach turned into a road paved with bones. Leg bones and arm bones were laid side by side, yellowing and drying under the dark crimson sky. Skulls embedded in the center of the road grinned up at me, laughing at silent secrets I could never hope to comprehend.
Naked and barefoot, I sprinted down the road of bones between massive skyscrapers of black obsidian and gleaming red volcanic rock. People started to thin as the survivors scattered in all directions. I felt the sharp points of bone stabbing into the soles of my feet.
That was the moment the sirens began their eerie wailing, rising and falling in a dissonant cacophony, slower and deeper than any tornado siren I had ever heard. It sounded almost like a whale call, stretching out over the infernal city. They sounded from all around us, seemingly ringing out from thousands of speakers hidden throughout the obsidian towers.
I looked up suddenly. The crimson sky had changed rapidly, forming into a cyclone that swirled overhead in great black and red spirals. It met in a fiery eye at the center. As I looked up, I saw glowing orange hail soaring through the air, leaving behind streaks like thousands of comets. It fell towards the naked masses of tens of thousands of bodies pressed together on the streets.
At that moment, I remembered the rules. Some of the others apparently hadn’t read them during the panic and horror of the escape from the Lake of Blood, and they continued surging forward down the road as fire began to fall like drops of napalm all around us. Wails of agony rose up from those who were covered in the glowing lava. The people in the front of the crowd immediately fell under the heat and destruction of the firestorm. Their hair lit on fire, their skin melted and blackened, and still more fire rained down from the sky, sweeping relentlessly in our direction.
I saw an obsidian skyscraper with a great, open archway only a couple hundred feet away. The nearest of the crowd scrambled to find cover under the safety of the building. I sprinted along with them. As I reached the threshold, I felt the first burning drops of magma land on my back. I screamed as I smelled my own skin cooking and my own hair burning, and then I was through the archway. I fell, rolling on my back, trying to put out the sizzling fires that burned me like some corrosive acid.
I felt rivers of warm blood running down my back as more people ran past me, deeper into the hall. The skyscraper was massive, not only in height but in width. The hallway ran for hundreds of feet, disappearing into doorless thresholds on both sides cleaved out of the obsidian, as if the entire structure had been carved from one enormous piece of glassy stone. In the center of the hallway, it opened up into a spiraling staircase.
I looked up abruptly to see three men wearing masks made of human skin standing over me, each holding primitive bone spears in their filthy, blood-stained hands. They looked emaciated, wasted away, like the walking corpses of a death camp. To my utter astonishment, even through the layer of dried, ragged skin, I recognized one of them. It was in his gray eyes, and the twisting dragon tattoos that covered his arms and chest instantly brought a flash of memory.
“Shooter,” I said as they raised their weapons. “Shooter, it’s me. Remember me? It’s Richie.” He froze in place, looking down at me with widening eyes.
“Holy shit, Richie?” he said, tearing the mask off. “What are you doing here?” It was an absurd question, of course. What were any of us doing here?
The last time I had seen Shooter, he had been sitting a pile of blood in his car. He was one of the designated gunman for the Solid Ones, the gang we had both joined when we were young. The amazing luck of finding another Solid in this place of death was astounding. But, then again, I had known many people who had died, and I had a feeling the vast majority were here somewhere.
“I guess I died,” I said sheepishly, giving him a faint half-smile. The other two men standing by his side lowered their weapons. “Fucking pigs came in and shot me.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, unsurprised. “They do have a tendency to do that.” He gave a low laugh. I took a long look at Shooter, who was wearing the pale skin of some unknown victim or victims of this place of agony. He reached a trembling hand down and pulled me up from the smooth surface of this strange skyscraper. More naked, scared people continued to stream past us as the sirens continued their infernal shrieking outside. Many of them had horrific burns all over their body, and a few were clearly on the verge of death by the time they had made it inside.
Farther down the hall, another ten men wearing the same garb as Shooter came towards us, holding sharpened swords of obsidian and thick clubs made of bone. Shooter put his hands up.
“Hey, I know this guy,” he said calmly, motioning over to me with an apathetic wave of his head. “He was in the same gang as me! We used to go around having a great time, I’ll tell you. Remember that time we shot at that cop and he pissed himself?” He gave a racuous laugh at that. I smiled as the memory flooded back. Shooter had definitely hit him, though I think I probably missed. I remembered the blood soaking over the arm of cop’s uniform as he lay there, gasping and turning white, his face looking bloodless and shocked. Shooter and I had run away, high-fiving each other and grinning like maniacs.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, grinning. The other men surrounded me in a semi-circle. Shooter knelt down and extended a hand to me, helping me off the ground.
“Well, you’re in good company,” he said. “Here, we can do whatever the fuck we want. What’s going to happen, after all? It’s not like we can be sent to Hell.” He laughed, and that laughter writhed with the insanity and bloodlust that seemed to be eating him from the inside like a cancer.
***
“We still need to take him to the Sergeant,” one of the masked men next to Shooter said. “We can see if he has the right stuff needed to fight with us.”
“What happens when you guys die?” I asked. “I mean, obviously, you restart at the Lake of Blood, but how do you find your way back to your gang?” Shooter shrugged.
“We always find each other again eventually,” he said. “It’s not like there’s any lack of time here. All we have is time- and fresh meat, of course. There’s always more fresh meat streaming in through the Lake of Blood. We can take whatever we need from them…” The wailing of the sirens suddenly ended as he spoke. I looked around, seeing burnt and dying people still struggling into the front hallway of the skyscraper. The smell of burning hair and searing flesh filled the entire area.
“Come on,” one of the men said. His voice was gruff, as if he had been chainsmoking five packs a day since he was a little kid. “The Sergeant is on the top floor. You’ll have to talk to him.” I nodded, knowing they would certainly kill me if I did not join their group.
But at that moment, something much worse than dying, blackened bodies crawled in through the archway. I saw it before the group of men did. Instinctively upon glimpsing it, I knew it was something terrible, something that could only live in the depths of a psychotic’s nightmare.
It stood nearly ten feet tall. Its skin was as pale as a writhing maggot. On its hairless face, I saw no eyes, no nose, no ears, just smooth, bone-white skin. It had thin lips tied together with black thread, the garish stitches poking out from the ragged, bloodless flesh. Its arms and legs looked inhumanly long and thin. Its ribs and spine jutted out as if it were a starving, rabid animal. From all around its body, an inhuman wailing started, as if dozens of demonic voices were shrieking in unison. Yet its mouth stayed firmly closed, still stitched shut.
Its fingers jutted out like railroad spikes, each a foot long. As its screaming intensified, it ran towards us, crushing the dying and injured under its naked, twisted feet. I stared into its pale, bloodless face, and even though it had no eyes, it felt like it stared straight back at me, looking into my soul.
“Don’t look at it!” Shooter screamed next to me, turning his face away. The rest of the men closed their eyes or turned away, backpedaling away from the abomination. “It will take on the shape of what you fear most! It’s a Screamer!” But it was too late. At that moment, something strange happened to the pale, naked body of the Screamer. It rippled like a mirage sizzling off the sands of a desert. Its body squeezed and contorted as the distorted shrieking around its pale, naked body grew louder and more insane.
Thin stalks of black, spidery legs began jutting out of the sides of its chest. Its face melted like wax as glittering compound eyes sprouted from the top of its head. Within seconds, it had turned into a massive spider, a black widow whose head nearly scraped the ceiling twenty feet above us. The red hourglass on its back shone brightly, as if in reminder of the imminent death it brought to anyone it touched.
I hate spiders. I’ve always hated spiders. When I saw that skittering, crawling monstrosity, something in me broke. I sprinted towards the group of men who were trying to do their best to escape without looking directly at the Screamer, hoping that the spider would choose one of them instead of me. But I heard its massive bulk following closely behind me. I could feel its insectile breath on the back of my neck.
Naked and frantic, I sprinted behind the nearest of the men and used the same tactic I had used escaping through the silver gate: I pushed the unsuspecting figure towards the abomination that rushed towards us in a blur, its eight legs pounding the glassy floor with reverberating thuds.
Drops of clear venom dripped from its fangs as it grabbed the struggling man. It bit deeply into his leg, and as the venom dripped onto his skin, it seemed to eat through his flesh like some sort of acid. The man screamed as red streaks rapidly spread up his leg throughout the rest of his body. His teeth began chattering and his pupils dilated as he stared at me accusingly. But he did not die.
The spider grabbed him and dragged him away down the hallway, down to wherever the victims of the Screamers go. I saw a dozen more of the pale, faceless monstrosities rushing in to take his place. The men looked up, and the Screamers erupted into monstrous shapes: giant, slithering snakes, a floating eyeball with black, squid-like tentacles writhing around its central mass, enormous brown recluses and black widows and faceless Grim Reapers who floated over the ground in black robes. The overwhelming sense of fear and panic I felt at that moment still stays with me to this day, and even though this happened a couple days ago and I did eventually make it out of that den of horrors, it still leaves a deep scar across my mind.
As visions from a nightmare approached us, I turned and ran.

Throughout my life, I was always a piece of shit. From an early age, I joined a gang and started selling drugs. Anything from weed to heroin to crack sold itself, but on the unforgiving streets of the city, a single mistake could be fatal. I always carried a cheap burner pistol that I could throw away after using it. I know quite a few friends and acquaintances who died from drugs I sold them- some overdosing, others crashing their cars while high. A couple of them committed suicide during opiate withdrawals. One got cut in half by a train while nodding off.
But by seventeen, I had committed my first confirmed murder- a rival gang member and drug dealer who pulled a gun on me first. I had probably killed people before, but I never watched the news after a shooting or a stabbing to see the result. I wasn’t interested in the slightest.
In this case, I had just been slightly quicker than my rival and, a fraction of a second later, his forehead imploded like a smashed pumpkin in front of me, spraying bone splinters and brains all over the sidewalk. He stumbled forward a step before falling forward. His pistol went off in his dying hand, but it went low, the bullet disappearing with a crack into the nearby street. He fell forward with a dull thud, his legs kicking as if he were seizing.
The sidewalk of the dead end street we stood on spun around me for a moment. The many abandoned, rotting houses of the city loomed over us like hanging corpses. My ears gave a high-pitched shriek of tinnitus from the gunshots.
Nervous, I looked up and down the side street. The entire place seemed silent and dead. Then I heard voices nearby and saw lights turning on in the front yards and windows of houses. Without a moment of hesitation, I took off, sprinting blindly away from the crime scene, not caring much where I was going. Someone a few houses down came out, an old black man in his boxers and slippers. He saw me running and called out something in a quavering voice. I didn’t slow down for a moment.
Not long after, I heard the wailing of sirens off in the distance. They were drawing closer by the second. When the street abruptly ended in a cul-de-sac of mostly abandoned and dilapidated houses, I chose one at random and cut across its back yard, jumped over the rusted metal fence and kept on running, cutting across random yards and jumping more fences until I started making my way back towards downtown.
After about five minutes, I got to a street with a lot more traffic and people. Covered in sweat, I walked casually back towards my tiny, cockroach-infested apartment.
I thought I had gotten away with it. I thought I had been able to kill this worthless scumbag without anyone noticing. But there were more eyes glittering behind the veil than I realized at that moment.
I went back home- and that was the night I died and went to Hell.
***
I lived on the first floor in a building with falling-down rafters and a flat black roof like an infected scab. The paint on the outside was the color of vomit, the windows cracked and broken. Moreover, the place always smelled like Mexican food and chemicals, and every night, I would hear gunshots and panicked screams outside.
I sat down at the table and opened a beer. The ancient CRT TV was on, showing some old horror movie from the 1970s. I took a deep breath, relieved. I didn’t expect a thing to happen at that moment.
Suddenly, my door burst open as if someone had fired a cannonball at it. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Standing there, I saw a dozen black police in SWAT gear holding rifles. The laser sights jumped and danced across the floor before they converged on my head and chest. Someone screamed something in a hoarse voice, but I didn’t understand. The words sounded garbled, like the whispering of a demon. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
I fell back in my chair in surprise. A single breath later, one of them opened fire. I felt the first bullet crash through my left shoulder, felt the bone shatter and the flesh explode behind it, warm blood running down my back and chest.
The next moment, others joined in. I didn’t feel the bullet that smashed into my head and sent me to Hell. It moved fast, faster than my nerves. It must have moved as fast as death itself.
The blackness descended on me like a cloud.
***
I don’t know how much time passed. It seemed like an eternity, full of freezing darkness and screams that came from everywhere and nowhere. I remember coming awake suddenly, standing before a face formed from blinding white light. I was healed without any signs of wound or blood from the gunshots. I found myself standing naked and alone in the freezing winds.
I was shivering, my arms wrapped protectively around my chest as I stood on a flat plain of cracked, gray stone. The wind whipped around me as if I were in a hurricane, blowing sand and dust across the eternal plains. The features of the endless face constantly melted and shifted, spiraling out with bolts of lightning that cracked and sizzled all around the hurricane of light. The face seemed to stand miles high with eyes that spun like the Sun.
“Where am I?” I whispered in terror. The face of infinite light stared down at me with a blinding intensity. It seemed to see every thought, every feeling, every memory. I could feel it looking through me as if I were glass.
“You are in the Bardo,” the being said in a voice like an exploding nuclear bomb. “I am the one who sees. I am GOD, the creator of the universe and all who live within it. In the end, to Me you will always return. Did you not know you would one day have to stand here?” I shook my head.
“No… I… I…” I stuttered in terror, unable to respond.
“I have seen your evil, for indeed, I am closer to you than your own jugular vein, your own heart. Did you not see the suffering of those who harmed the innocent, those who murdered and stole and lived their lives wallowing in filth? Did you not see them get wounded, shot, stabbed, strangled and imprisoned? Did you not see them die in their evil and return to Me?”
“I did,” I admitted. “Many times.”
“And yet you have fallen into the sickness yourself,” God said in a voice like a rushing waterfall. Fury and anger seemed to seethe from him. Dozens of bolts of lightning flashed out from all sides of that radiant face. “For this, you must be purified. Your soul must be cleansed with fire. For that is the fate of those who harm the innocent- they fall down to the bottomless pit, to the blazing inferno whose fuel is men and stones. The flames eat them all greedily, and then the fires cry out to Me for more.”
My body felt like it was covered with stinging hornets. Excruciating pins and needles ran all up and down my legs and arms. I looked down, seeing a swirling dark hole opening up underneath me in the field of gray stone, spitting out drops of liquid blackness. They splashed upwards, burning through my skin like napalm, but no blood came out. It was as if my body were dissolving into dripping shadows that pulled me downwards. I felt myself slowly falling through the eternal stone plain as unseen hands dragged me away. As I descended, I heard the voice of God one last time.
“Down into the pit you will go, to the valley of wailing and the lake of flames where the damned scream for peace that never comes, to the city of shadows, to Naraka…”
***
Beneath me, the shadowy tunnel descended. I fell through it like lightning. Everything spun around me at an incredible speed. Suddenly, I broke through something, some invisible barrier in the endless darkness. I found myself falling through a cloud of suffocating smoke, and then the world opened up all around me.
A blood-red sky with thick black clouds extended out in all directions. I glimpsed a world of sharp cliffs and rivers of lava that wound their way down mountains of obsidian.
I fell through the middle of the sky at a tremendous speed, the wind whipping around my ears like a hurricane. A scream ripped its way out of my throat, but I was traveling so fast I could barely hear it as the echoes disappeared above me. Below me was what looked like a massive lake filled with blood about half a mile wide, and it was coming up to meet me fast. Many struggling bodies writhed in the currents, trying to claw their way out. I crashed through the surface at an incredible speed, going deep under the warm crimson waves.
The bloody water of the lake filled my mouth and nose with the overwhelming taste of copper and iron. I started trying to swim back up to the surface, frantically kicking and pushing with my arms and legs. I opened my eyes, and the salty blood stung them. It looked like I was peering through a translucent red film into a world of deep-sea abominations. Long snakes with two heads swam all around me, snapping and biting at each other and any legs or arms nearby. I saw them drag people down one by one, wrapping their slick bodies around their struggling victims as they drowned.
I broke through the surface, inhaling deeply. I was worried about the snakes and whatever else was slinking around down there. Thousands of people treaded water in the massive lake, trying to make their way to the shores. The nearest person to me was only ten feet away, a young woman with panicked eyes and wavy black hair. As I watched her, she gave a scream of terror and then was dragged under the surface, struggling and kicking. She never reappeared.
All around me, I smelled the fetid rot of decaying bodies. There must have been thousands and thousands of corpses at the bottom of this bloody lake. Some of them floated on top of the surface, rancid and swollen, their sightless eyes staring up at the fiery sky. The surface of the lake constantly bubbled and writhed, though whether this was from the rotting of so many bodies or from hidden monsters breathing under the surface, I didn’t yet know.
Frantically, I looked around for the nearest shore to get out of the danger. I saw that if I swam past the direction where the young woman had been, I would only have to go about two hundred feet. But my heart hammered in my chest as I remembered her being dragged under, her frantic, panicked struggling. What if the same creature was waiting over there, waiting for someone like me to try to swim over?
There were dozens more people between me and the nearest shore. Most of them climbed out, dripping drops of crimson onto the black volcanic sands of the beaches. I made my way as fast as I could in that direction, deciding to take my chances with the snakes. Otherwise, I would have to swim at least four times as far to get to the next nearest beach, which also swarmed with masses of naked people clawing their way out of the bloody lake.
A small group of people was concentrated only twenty feet away, three men who were swimming in the same direction I was. One started screaming suddenly. A purple tentacle the color of an old bruise broke through the surface of the water. To my horror, I saw it had black spikes that clicked and clacked together all along its massive arms. The spikes resembled long, hollow hypodermic needles.
The screaming man tried to swim in the opposite direction, but the tentacle wrapped around him, pulling him above the water. It tightened like a boa constrictor, the black spikes stabbing into his chest and stomach. Countless punctures opened up all along his body. The black spikes flexed, and his ribcage ripped open with a wet, ripping sound. The man’s screams abruptly cut off as his head lolled. With a sucking sound, the hollow spikes began drinking, consuming the man’s spurting blood with a sound like an inhalation of air. Slowly, almost lazily, the tentacle began dragging his limp corpse under the surface, back towards the main body of whatever monstrosity it belonged to.
The other two gave panicked sobs as more purple tentacles broke through the surface of the lake. Frantically, I started swimming around them, giving them a wide berth. Within seconds, the other two men were dragged under, deep stab wounds opening in their bodies as the hollow spikes drank greedily with loud sucking sounds.
“Fuck!” I cried, horrified. I felt something brush past my leg, something slimy and eel-like that writhed and slithered under the opaque crimson surface. In horror, I felt its slimy skin wrap around my leg, at first loosely slithering, then tightening. Two black faces with white, lidless eyes rose out of the water, the faces of serpents with fangs like switchblades. I saw both heads were connected to a single slithering body, one that wrapped slowly around my legs and arms, strangling me. Screaming, I felt its fangs dig into my neck. As the twin pairs of lidless white eyes stared at me, I tried to fight, tried to raise my arm, but it was far too strong. It dragged me under the surface.
Struggling against the beast, feeling its poison coursing through my bloodstream like lava, I drowned in the lake of blood. The experience of drowning is horrifying beyond all measure- the overwhelming fear and anxiety when you realize you have no air, the sensation of inhaling the bloody water, the sensation of dying. My vision turned black as a suffocating, clenching fist squeezed my heart. It felt like it took an eternity, but it was probably only a couple minutes at most. Death came over me then, cold and filled with small, suffocating agonies. That was the first time I died in Hell, but it would not be my last.
For in Hell, as I quickly learned, you never truly died, but were just thrown back to the beginning.
***
I felt myself falling again through the black clouds, the Lake of Blood beneath me. It all repeated like before. I screamed as I fell through the water at an incredible speed. Eldritch monstrosities were dragging people under the surface all around me. As quickly as I could, I swam towards the nearest shore. I dared not look down, didn’t dare slow for a single moment. A few times, I was nearly swiped by large, writhing tentacles, but they found other shrieking victims nearby to my immense relief.
I didn’t want to die ever again. It was a horrible sensation, though one that I would, sadly, become used to. Death followed me like a shadow, and starting over in Hell was always a nightmare.
I gave a gasp of joy when my feet touched bottom. Running through the rippling currents of blood, naked and gasping, I came upon the black sands of the shore. Looking around the lake, I saw there were four beaches, seemingly placed at each point of the compass underneath the spinning, blood-red sky.
At the end of each of the black sands lay a sparkling silver gate fifty feet tall and hundreds of feet across. The thin strands of silver intertwined like the fine filaments of a spiderweb, spiraling around each other in graceful, curving arches. Embossed over the top were the words, “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.” No one seemed to pay the gate any mind. Naked crowds of struggling people stumbled through it onto the streets of Hell, streets that were paved with human bones and stretched off to the horizon.
Skyscrapers made of obsidian with spiraling windows like the murderholes of a castle stretched hundreds of stories up into the blood-red sky. As I staggered out, pressed body to body in the thick crowd of crying, wailing people, I saw ahead of us the second mortal danger of Hell.
There were countless gangs of mostly men gathered on the streets of bone, the desperate soldiers of this apocalyptic wasteland. They huddled together in groups of ten or twelve, attacking and murdering random people who tried to sprint past from the Lake of Blood. They wore crude leather tunics and pants that looked like they were made from human skin. Some wore crude masks of human skin on their faces, ragged patches of flesh that had been cut from the bodies of the dead. They stared out with cold, emotionless eyes through the holes in the dried, leathery skin, surveying the surging crowds like lions surveying their prey.
They held primitive weapons in their hands, clubs and maces made from bone, swords sharpened from obsidian glass and even wooden spears. The wood looked strange and dark, almost like mahogany. Next to them were fires with sharpened spits of roasting human meat. The fat dripped off the dismembered arms and legs sizzling over the flames. It gave off a smell like roast pork that permeated the area, rising up in thick, fragrant clouds.
I followed the surging crowds, watching in horror as the groups of armed men attacked and killed random passersby in the crowd, dragging their limp bodies next to the fires where they stacked the unconscious or dead people in stacks like cordwood. I figured they would inevitably roast their flesh for food or make pale leather armor from their dead skin. I felt myself being pushed over in the direction of the nearest group of armed thugs. A few of the nearest men wore masks made of people’s faces, though those behind them did not, only wearing the crude leather armor instead.
One of them standing only ten feet away met my eyes, his cold killer’s gaze boring through me. The mask of skin made him look like some monster from a horror movie, with its ragged, mutilated edges and garish black stitches. He took a step towards me, raising a short spear made from a human leg bone and sharpened to a blood-stained point.
In panic, I looked around, seeing a young woman in her early twenties standing next to me. She was looking straight ahead with panic and terror in her eyes, not paying any attention to me or the men that crept towards us. With all of my strength, I shoved the woman towards the masked killer. She stumbled back in surprise, falling into the man’s weapon. His bone spear stabbed through her stomach. She looked down at her naked body in horror when the point emerged from her navel, dripping rivers of blood down her trembling legs. As she spit up trickles of blood and collapsed to her knees, I ran. A sickening crack rang out behind me like a shattering of bones, and I knew they had murdered the young woman.
I sprinted away from the gangs of cannibal killers as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast considering how many naked, screaming bodies pressed in all on me from all sides. I felt myself being carried forward by the surging masses towards the silver gate. Hanging from the delicate silver threads, I saw signs written in many languages. I found one in English and started reading it with rapt attention, even as I was relentlessly pushed forward and elbowed and kicked.
I still remember what it said by heart.
“Rules for Naraka:

1. Those who are damned will be fed from the fountain of life. GOD will ensure your rebirth at the Lake of Blood. Though death may crush you over and over, there will be no rest.
2. Stay away from the Screamers, the faceless ones who roam the land. Those who are taken by the Screamers will know endless torment and madness in the caverns deep under the ground.
3. When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
4. Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”

As I was pushed forward, I read the sharp, copperplate engraving scrawled across the silver signs in glowing red letters, trying to memorize every single word. At the time, none of it made much sense, but I instinctively felt that it was immensely important in some way I didn’t yet understand.
Immediately outside the gate, the beach turned into a road paved with bones. Leg bones and arm bones were laid side by side, yellowing and drying under the dark crimson sky. Skulls embedded in the center of the road grinned up at me, laughing at silent secrets I could never hope to comprehend.
Naked and barefoot, I sprinted down the road of bones between massive skyscrapers of black obsidian and gleaming red volcanic rock. People started to thin as the survivors scattered in all directions. I felt the sharp points of bone stabbing into the soles of my feet.
That was the moment the sirens began their eerie wailing, rising and falling in a dissonant cacophony, slower and deeper than any tornado siren I had ever heard. It sounded almost like a whale call, stretching out over the infernal city. They sounded from all around us, seemingly ringing out from thousands of speakers hidden throughout the obsidian towers.
I looked up suddenly. The crimson sky had changed rapidly, forming into a cyclone that swirled overhead in great black and red spirals. It met in a fiery eye at the center. As I looked up, I saw glowing orange hail soaring through the air, leaving behind streaks like thousands of comets. It fell towards the naked masses of tens of thousands of bodies pressed together on the streets.
At that moment, I remembered the rules. Some of the others apparently hadn’t read them during the panic and horror of the escape from the Lake of Blood, and they continued surging forward down the road as fire began to fall like drops of napalm all around us. Wails of agony rose up from those who were covered in the glowing lava. The people in the front of the crowd immediately fell under the heat and destruction of the firestorm. Their hair lit on fire, their skin melted and blackened, and still more fire rained down from the sky, sweeping relentlessly in our direction.
I saw an obsidian skyscraper with a great, open archway only a couple hundred feet away. The nearest of the crowd scrambled to find cover under the safety of the building. I sprinted along with them. As I reached the threshold, I felt the first burning drops of magma land on my back. I screamed as I smelled my own skin cooking and my own hair burning, and then I was through the archway. I fell, rolling on my back, trying to put out the sizzling fires that burned me like some corrosive acid.
I felt rivers of warm blood running down my back as more people ran past me, deeper into the hall. The skyscraper was massive, not only in height but in width. The hallway ran for hundreds of feet, disappearing into doorless thresholds on both sides cleaved out of the obsidian, as if the entire structure had been carved from one enormous piece of glassy stone. In the center of the hallway, it opened up into a spiraling staircase.
I looked up abruptly to see three men wearing masks made of human skin standing over me, each holding primitive bone spears in their filthy, blood-stained hands. They looked emaciated, wasted away, like the walking corpses of a death camp. To my utter astonishment, even through the layer of dried, ragged skin, I recognized one of them. It was in his gray eyes, and the twisting dragon tattoos that covered his arms and chest instantly brought a flash of memory.
“Shooter,” I said as they raised their weapons. “Shooter, it’s me. Remember me? It’s Richie.” He froze in place, looking down at me with widening eyes.
“Holy shit, Richie?” he said, tearing the mask off. “What are you doing here?” It was an absurd question, of course. What were any of us doing here?
The last time I had seen Shooter, he had been sitting a pile of blood in his car. He was one of the designated gunman for the Solid Ones, the gang we had both joined when we were young. The amazing luck of finding another Solid in this place of death was astounding. But, then again, I had known many people who had died, and I had a feeling the vast majority were here somewhere.
“I guess I died,” I said sheepishly, giving him a faint half-smile. The other two men standing by his side lowered their weapons. “Fucking pigs came in and shot me.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, unsurprised. “They do have a tendency to do that.” He gave a low laugh. I took a long look at Shooter, who was wearing the pale skin of some unknown victim or victims of this place of agony. He reached a trembling hand down and pulled me up from the smooth surface of this strange skyscraper. More naked, scared people continued to stream past us as the sirens continued their infernal shrieking outside. Many of them had horrific burns all over their body, and a few were clearly on the verge of death by the time they had made it inside.
Farther down the hall, another ten men wearing the same garb as Shooter came towards us, holding sharpened swords of obsidian and thick clubs made of bone. Shooter put his hands up.
“Hey, I know this guy,” he said calmly, motioning over to me with an apathetic wave of his head. “He was in the same gang as me! We used to go around having a great time, I’ll tell you. Remember that time we shot at that cop and he pissed himself?” He gave a racuous laugh at that. I smiled as the memory flooded back. Shooter had definitely hit him, though I think I probably missed. I remembered the blood soaking over the arm of cop’s uniform as he lay there, gasping and turning white, his face looking bloodless and shocked. Shooter and I had run away, high-fiving each other and grinning like maniacs.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, grinning. The other men surrounded me in a semi-circle. Shooter knelt down and extended a hand to me, helping me off the ground.
“Well, you’re in good company,” he said. “Here, we can do whatever the fuck we want. What’s going to happen, after all? It’s not like we can be sent to Hell.” He laughed, and that laughter writhed with the insanity and bloodlust that seemed to be eating him from the inside like a cancer.
***
“We still need to take him to the Sergeant,” one of the masked men next to Shooter said. “We can see if he has the right stuff needed to fight with us.”
“What happens when you guys die?” I asked. “I mean, obviously, you restart at the Lake of Blood, but how do you find your way back to your gang?” Shooter shrugged.
“We always find each other again eventually,” he said. “It’s not like there’s any lack of time here. All we have is time- and fresh meat, of course. There’s always more fresh meat streaming in through the Lake of Blood. We can take whatever we need from them…” The wailing of the sirens suddenly ended as he spoke. I looked around, seeing burnt and dying people still struggling into the front hallway of the skyscraper. The smell of burning hair and searing flesh filled the entire area.
“Come on,” one of the men said. His voice was gruff, as if he had been chainsmoking five packs a day since he was a little kid. “The Sergeant is on the top floor. You’ll have to talk to him.” I nodded, knowing they would certainly kill me if I did not join their group.
But at that moment, something much worse than dying, blackened bodies crawled in through the archway. I saw it before the group of men did. Instinctively upon glimpsing it, I knew it was something terrible, something that could only live in the depths of a psychotic’s nightmare.
It stood nearly ten feet tall. Its skin was as pale as a writhing maggot. On its hairless face, I saw no eyes, no nose, no ears, just smooth, bone-white skin. It had thin lips tied together with black thread, the garish stitches poking out from the ragged, bloodless flesh. Its arms and legs looked inhumanly long and thin. Its ribs and spine jutted out as if it were a starving, rabid animal. From all around its body, an inhuman wailing started, as if dozens of demonic voices were shrieking in unison. Yet its mouth stayed firmly closed, still stitched shut.
Its fingers jutted out like railroad spikes, each a foot long. As its screaming intensified, it ran towards us, crushing the dying and injured under its naked, twisted feet. I stared into its pale, bloodless face, and even though it had no eyes, it felt like it stared straight back at me, looking into my soul.
“Don’t look at it!” Shooter screamed next to me, turning his face away. The rest of the men closed their eyes or turned away, backpedaling away from the abomination. “It will take on the shape of what you fear most! It’s a Screamer!” But it was too late. At that moment, something strange happened to the pale, naked body of the Screamer. It rippled like a mirage sizzling off the sands of a desert. Its body squeezed and contorted as the distorted shrieking around its pale, naked body grew louder and more insane.
Thin stalks of black, spidery legs began jutting out of the sides of its chest. Its face melted like wax as glittering compound eyes sprouted from the top of its head. Within seconds, it had turned into a massive spider, a black widow whose head nearly scraped the ceiling twenty feet above us. The red hourglass on its back shone brightly, as if in reminder of the imminent death it brought to anyone it touched.
I hate spiders. I’ve always hated spiders. When I saw that skittering, crawling monstrosity, something in me broke. I sprinted towards the group of men who were trying to do their best to escape without looking directly at the Screamer, hoping that the spider would choose one of them instead of me. But I heard its massive bulk following closely behind me. I could feel its insectile breath on the back of my neck.
Naked and frantic, I sprinted behind the nearest of the men and used the same tactic I had used escaping through the silver gate: I pushed the unsuspecting figure towards the abomination that rushed towards us in a blur, its eight legs pounding the glassy floor with reverberating thuds.
Drops of clear venom dripped from its fangs as it grabbed the struggling man. It bit deeply into his leg, and as the venom dripped onto his skin, it seemed to eat through his flesh like some sort of acid. The man screamed as red streaks rapidly spread up his leg throughout the rest of his body. His teeth began chattering and his pupils dilated as he stared at me accusingly. But he did not die.
The spider grabbed him and dragged him away down the hallway, down to wherever the victims of the Screamers go. I saw a dozen more of the pale, faceless monstrosities rushing in to take his place. The men looked up, and the Screamers erupted into monstrous shapes: giant, slithering snakes, a floating eyeball with black, squid-like tentacles writhing around its central mass, enormous brown recluses and black widows and faceless Grim Reapers who floated over the ground in black robes. The overwhelming sense of fear and panic I felt at that moment still stays with me to this day, and even though this happened a couple days ago and I did eventually make it out of that den of horrors, it still leaves a deep scar across my mind.
As visions from a nightmare approached us, I turned and ran.

Throughout my life, I was always a piece of shit. From an early age, I joined a gang and started selling drugs. Anything from weed to heroin to crack sold itself, but on the unforgiving streets of the city, a single mistake could be fatal. I always carried a cheap burner pistol that I could throw away after using it. I know quite a few friends and acquaintances who died from drugs I sold them- some overdosing, others crashing their cars while high. A couple of them committed suicide during opiate withdrawals. One got cut in half by a train while nodding off.
But by seventeen, I had committed my first confirmed murder- a rival gang member and drug dealer who pulled a gun on me first. I had probably killed people before, but I never watched the news after a shooting or a stabbing to see the result. I wasn’t interested in the slightest.
In this case, I had just been slightly quicker than my rival and, a fraction of a second later, his forehead imploded like a smashed pumpkin in front of me, spraying bone splinters and brains all over the sidewalk. He stumbled forward a step before falling forward. His pistol went off in his dying hand, but it went low, the bullet disappearing with a crack into the nearby street. He fell forward with a dull thud, his legs kicking as if he were seizing.
The sidewalk of the dead end street we stood on spun around me for a moment. The many abandoned, rotting houses of the city loomed over us like hanging corpses. My ears gave a high-pitched shriek of tinnitus from the gunshots.
Nervous, I looked up and down the side street. The entire place seemed silent and dead. Then I heard voices nearby and saw lights turning on in the front yards and windows of houses. Without a moment of hesitation, I took off, sprinting blindly away from the crime scene, not caring much where I was going. Someone a few houses down came out, an old black man in his boxers and slippers. He saw me running and called out something in a quavering voice. I didn’t slow down for a moment.
Not long after, I heard the wailing of sirens off in the distance. They were drawing closer by the second. When the street abruptly ended in a cul-de-sac of mostly abandoned and dilapidated houses, I chose one at random and cut across its back yard, jumped over the rusted metal fence and kept on running, cutting across random yards and jumping more fences until I started making my way back towards downtown.
After about five minutes, I got to a street with a lot more traffic and people. Covered in sweat, I walked casually back towards my tiny, cockroach-infested apartment.
I thought I had gotten away with it. I thought I had been able to kill this worthless scumbag without anyone noticing. But there were more eyes glittering behind the veil than I realized at that moment.
I went back home- and that was the night I died and went to Hell.
***
I lived on the first floor in a building with falling-down rafters and a flat black roof like an infected scab. The paint on the outside was the color of vomit, the windows cracked and broken. Moreover, the place always smelled like Mexican food and chemicals, and every night, I would hear gunshots and panicked screams outside.
I sat down at the table and opened a beer. The ancient CRT TV was on, showing some old horror movie from the 1970s. I took a deep breath, relieved. I didn’t expect a thing to happen at that moment.
Suddenly, my door burst open as if someone had fired a cannonball at it. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Standing there, I saw a dozen black police in SWAT gear holding rifles. The laser sights jumped and danced across the floor before they converged on my head and chest. Someone screamed something in a hoarse voice, but I didn’t understand. The words sounded garbled, like the whispering of a demon. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
I fell back in my chair in surprise. A single breath later, one of them opened fire. I felt the first bullet crash through my left shoulder, felt the bone shatter and the flesh explode behind it, warm blood running down my back and chest.
The next moment, others joined in. I didn’t feel the bullet that smashed into my head and sent me to Hell. It moved fast, faster than my nerves. It must have moved as fast as death itself.
The blackness descended on me like a cloud.
***
I don’t know how much time passed. It seemed like an eternity, full of freezing darkness and screams that came from everywhere and nowhere. I remember coming awake suddenly, standing before a face formed from blinding white light. I was healed without any signs of wound or blood from the gunshots. I found myself standing naked and alone in the freezing winds.
I was shivering, my arms wrapped protectively around my chest as I stood on a flat plain of cracked, gray stone. The wind whipped around me as if I were in a hurricane, blowing sand and dust across the eternal plains. The features of the endless face constantly melted and shifted, spiraling out with bolts of lightning that cracked and sizzled all around the hurricane of light. The face seemed to stand miles high with eyes that spun like the Sun.
“Where am I?” I whispered in terror. The face of infinite light stared down at me with a blinding intensity. It seemed to see every thought, every feeling, every memory. I could feel it looking through me as if I were glass.
“You are in the Bardo,” the being said in a voice like an exploding nuclear bomb. “I am the one who sees. I am GOD, the creator of the universe and all who live within it. In the end, to Me you will always return. Did you not know you would one day have to stand here?” I shook my head.
“No… I… I…” I stuttered in terror, unable to respond.
“I have seen your evil, for indeed, I am closer to you than your own jugular vein, your own heart. Did you not see the suffering of those who harmed the innocent, those who murdered and stole and lived their lives wallowing in filth? Did you not see them get wounded, shot, stabbed, strangled and imprisoned? Did you not see them die in their evil and return to Me?”
“I did,” I admitted. “Many times.”
“And yet you have fallen into the sickness yourself,” God said in a voice like a rushing waterfall. Fury and anger seemed to seethe from him. Dozens of bolts of lightning flashed out from all sides of that radiant face. “For this, you must be purified. Your soul must be cleansed with fire. For that is the fate of those who harm the innocent- they fall down to the bottomless pit, to the blazing inferno whose fuel is men and stones. The flames eat them all greedily, and then the fires cry out to Me for more.”
My body felt like it was covered with stinging hornets. Excruciating pins and needles ran all up and down my legs and arms. I looked down, seeing a swirling dark hole opening up underneath me in the field of gray stone, spitting out drops of liquid blackness. They splashed upwards, burning through my skin like napalm, but no blood came out. It was as if my body were dissolving into dripping shadows that pulled me downwards. I felt myself slowly falling through the eternal stone plain as unseen hands dragged me away. As I descended, I heard the voice of God one last time.
“Down into the pit you will go, to the valley of wailing and the lake of flames where the damned scream for peace that never comes, to the city of shadows, to Naraka…”
***
Beneath me, the shadowy tunnel descended. I fell through it like lightning. Everything spun around me at an incredible speed. Suddenly, I broke through something, some invisible barrier in the endless darkness. I found myself falling through a cloud of suffocating smoke, and then the world opened up all around me.
A blood-red sky with thick black clouds extended out in all directions. I glimpsed a world of sharp cliffs and rivers of lava that wound their way down mountains of obsidian.
I fell through the middle of the sky at a tremendous speed, the wind whipping around my ears like a hurricane. A scream ripped its way out of my throat, but I was traveling so fast I could barely hear it as the echoes disappeared above me. Below me was what looked like a massive lake filled with blood about half a mile wide, and it was coming up to meet me fast. Many struggling bodies writhed in the currents, trying to claw their way out. I crashed through the surface at an incredible speed, going deep under the warm crimson waves.
The bloody water of the lake filled my mouth and nose with the overwhelming taste of copper and iron. I started trying to swim back up to the surface, frantically kicking and pushing with my arms and legs. I opened my eyes, and the salty blood stung them. It looked like I was peering through a translucent red film into a world of deep-sea abominations. Long snakes with two heads swam all around me, snapping and biting at each other and any legs or arms nearby. I saw them drag people down one by one, wrapping their slick bodies around their struggling victims as they drowned.
I broke through the surface, inhaling deeply. I was worried about the snakes and whatever else was slinking around down there. Thousands of people treaded water in the massive lake, trying to make their way to the shores. The nearest person to me was only ten feet away, a young woman with panicked eyes and wavy black hair. As I watched her, she gave a scream of terror and then was dragged under the surface, struggling and kicking. She never reappeared.
All around me, I smelled the fetid rot of decaying bodies. There must have been thousands and thousands of corpses at the bottom of this bloody lake. Some of them floated on top of the surface, rancid and swollen, their sightless eyes staring up at the fiery sky. The surface of the lake constantly bubbled and writhed, though whether this was from the rotting of so many bodies or from hidden monsters breathing under the surface, I didn’t yet know.
Frantically, I looked around for the nearest shore to get out of the danger. I saw that if I swam past the direction where the young woman had been, I would only have to go about two hundred feet. But my heart hammered in my chest as I remembered her being dragged under, her frantic, panicked struggling. What if the same creature was waiting over there, waiting for someone like me to try to swim over?
There were dozens more people between me and the nearest shore. Most of them climbed out, dripping drops of crimson onto the black volcanic sands of the beaches. I made my way as fast as I could in that direction, deciding to take my chances with the snakes. Otherwise, I would have to swim at least four times as far to get to the next nearest beach, which also swarmed with masses of naked people clawing their way out of the bloody lake.
A small group of people was concentrated only twenty feet away, three men who were swimming in the same direction I was. One started screaming suddenly. A purple tentacle the color of an old bruise broke through the surface of the water. To my horror, I saw it had black spikes that clicked and clacked together all along its massive arms. The spikes resembled long, hollow hypodermic needles.
The screaming man tried to swim in the opposite direction, but the tentacle wrapped around him, pulling him above the water. It tightened like a boa constrictor, the black spikes stabbing into his chest and stomach. Countless punctures opened up all along his body. The black spikes flexed, and his ribcage ripped open with a wet, ripping sound. The man’s screams abruptly cut off as his head lolled. With a sucking sound, the hollow spikes began drinking, consuming the man’s spurting blood with a sound like an inhalation of air. Slowly, almost lazily, the tentacle began dragging his limp corpse under the surface, back towards the main body of whatever monstrosity it belonged to.
The other two gave panicked sobs as more purple tentacles broke through the surface of the lake. Frantically, I started swimming around them, giving them a wide berth. Within seconds, the other two men were dragged under, deep stab wounds opening in their bodies as the hollow spikes drank greedily with loud sucking sounds.
“Fuck!” I cried, horrified. I felt something brush past my leg, something slimy and eel-like that writhed and slithered under the opaque crimson surface. In horror, I felt its slimy skin wrap around my leg, at first loosely slithering, then tightening. Two black faces with white, lidless eyes rose out of the water, the faces of serpents with fangs like switchblades. I saw both heads were connected to a single slithering body, one that wrapped slowly around my legs and arms, strangling me. Screaming, I felt its fangs dig into my neck. As the twin pairs of lidless white eyes stared at me, I tried to fight, tried to raise my arm, but it was far too strong. It dragged me under the surface.
Struggling against the beast, feeling its poison coursing through my bloodstream like lava, I drowned in the lake of blood. The experience of drowning is horrifying beyond all measure- the overwhelming fear and anxiety when you realize you have no air, the sensation of inhaling the bloody water, the sensation of dying. My vision turned black as a suffocating, clenching fist squeezed my heart. It felt like it took an eternity, but it was probably only a couple minutes at most. Death came over me then, cold and filled with small, suffocating agonies. That was the first time I died in Hell, but it would not be my last.
For in Hell, as I quickly learned, you never truly died, but were just thrown back to the beginning.
***
I felt myself falling again through the black clouds, the Lake of Blood beneath me. It all repeated like before. I screamed as I fell through the water at an incredible speed. Eldritch monstrosities were dragging people under the surface all around me. As quickly as I could, I swam towards the nearest shore. I dared not look down, didn’t dare slow for a single moment. A few times, I was nearly swiped by large, writhing tentacles, but they found other shrieking victims nearby to my immense relief.
I didn’t want to die ever again. It was a horrible sensation, though one that I would, sadly, become used to. Death followed me like a shadow, and starting over in Hell was always a nightmare.
I gave a gasp of joy when my feet touched bottom. Running through the rippling currents of blood, naked and gasping, I came upon the black sands of the shore. Looking around the lake, I saw there were four beaches, seemingly placed at each point of the compass underneath the spinning, blood-red sky.
At the end of each of the black sands lay a sparkling silver gate fifty feet tall and hundreds of feet across. The thin strands of silver intertwined like the fine filaments of a spiderweb, spiraling around each other in graceful, curving arches. Embossed over the top were the words, “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.” No one seemed to pay the gate any mind. Naked crowds of struggling people stumbled through it onto the streets of Hell, streets that were paved with human bones and stretched off to the horizon.
Skyscrapers made of obsidian with spiraling windows like the murderholes of a castle stretched hundreds of stories up into the blood-red sky. As I staggered out, pressed body to body in the thick crowd of crying, wailing people, I saw ahead of us the second mortal danger of Hell.
There were countless gangs of mostly men gathered on the streets of bone, the desperate soldiers of this apocalyptic wasteland. They huddled together in groups of ten or twelve, attacking and murdering random people who tried to sprint past from the Lake of Blood. They wore crude leather tunics and pants that looked like they were made from human skin. Some wore crude masks of human skin on their faces, ragged patches of flesh that had been cut from the bodies of the dead. They stared out with cold, emotionless eyes through the holes in the dried, leathery skin, surveying the surging crowds like lions surveying their prey.
They held primitive weapons in their hands, clubs and maces made from bone, swords sharpened from obsidian glass and even wooden spears. The wood looked strange and dark, almost like mahogany. Next to them were fires with sharpened spits of roasting human meat. The fat dripped off the dismembered arms and legs sizzling over the flames. It gave off a smell like roast pork that permeated the area, rising up in thick, fragrant clouds.
I followed the surging crowds, watching in horror as the groups of armed men attacked and killed random passersby in the crowd, dragging their limp bodies next to the fires where they stacked the unconscious or dead people in stacks like cordwood. I figured they would inevitably roast their flesh for food or make pale leather armor from their dead skin. I felt myself being pushed over in the direction of the nearest group of armed thugs. A few of the nearest men wore masks made of people’s faces, though those behind them did not, only wearing the crude leather armor instead.
One of them standing only ten feet away met my eyes, his cold killer’s gaze boring through me. The mask of skin made him look like some monster from a horror movie, with its ragged, mutilated edges and garish black stitches. He took a step towards me, raising a short spear made from a human leg bone and sharpened to a blood-stained point.
In panic, I looked around, seeing a young woman in her early twenties standing next to me. She was looking straight ahead with panic and terror in her eyes, not paying any attention to me or the men that crept towards us. With all of my strength, I shoved the woman towards the masked killer. She stumbled back in surprise, falling into the man’s weapon. His bone spear stabbed through her stomach. She looked down at her naked body in horror when the point emerged from her navel, dripping rivers of blood down her trembling legs. As she spit up trickles of blood and collapsed to her knees, I ran. A sickening crack rang out behind me like a shattering of bones, and I knew they had murdered the young woman.
I sprinted away from the gangs of cannibal killers as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast considering how many naked, screaming bodies pressed in all on me from all sides. I felt myself being carried forward by the surging masses towards the silver gate. Hanging from the delicate silver threads, I saw signs written in many languages. I found one in English and started reading it with rapt attention, even as I was relentlessly pushed forward and elbowed and kicked.
I still remember what it said by heart.
“Rules for Naraka:

1. Those who are damned will be fed from the fountain of life. GOD will ensure your rebirth at the Lake of Blood. Though death may crush you over and over, there will be no rest.
2. Stay away from the Screamers, the faceless ones who roam the land. Those who are taken by the Screamers will know endless torment and madness in the caverns deep under the ground.
3. When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
4. Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”

As I was pushed forward, I read the sharp, copperplate engraving scrawled across the silver signs in glowing red letters, trying to memorize every single word. At the time, none of it made much sense, but I instinctively felt that it was immensely important in some way I didn’t yet understand.
Immediately outside the gate, the beach turned into a road paved with bones. Leg bones and arm bones were laid side by side, yellowing and drying under the dark crimson sky. Skulls embedded in the center of the road grinned up at me, laughing at silent secrets I could never hope to comprehend.
Naked and barefoot, I sprinted down the road of bones between massive skyscrapers of black obsidian and gleaming red volcanic rock. People started to thin as the survivors scattered in all directions. I felt the sharp points of bone stabbing into the soles of my feet.
That was the moment the sirens began their eerie wailing, rising and falling in a dissonant cacophony, slower and deeper than any tornado siren I had ever heard. It sounded almost like a whale call, stretching out over the infernal city. They sounded from all around us, seemingly ringing out from thousands of speakers hidden throughout the obsidian towers.
I looked up suddenly. The crimson sky had changed rapidly, forming into a cyclone that swirled overhead in great black and red spirals. It met in a fiery eye at the center. As I looked up, I saw glowing orange hail soaring through the air, leaving behind streaks like thousands of comets. It fell towards the naked masses of tens of thousands of bodies pressed together on the streets.
At that moment, I remembered the rules. Some of the others apparently hadn’t read them during the panic and horror of the escape from the Lake of Blood, and they continued surging forward down the road as fire began to fall like drops of napalm all around us. Wails of agony rose up from those who were covered in the glowing lava. The people in the front of the crowd immediately fell under the heat and destruction of the firestorm. Their hair lit on fire, their skin melted and blackened, and still more fire rained down from the sky, sweeping relentlessly in our direction.
I saw an obsidian skyscraper with a great, open archway only a couple hundred feet away. The nearest of the crowd scrambled to find cover under the safety of the building. I sprinted along with them. As I reached the threshold, I felt the first burning drops of magma land on my back. I screamed as I smelled my own skin cooking and my own hair burning, and then I was through the archway. I fell, rolling on my back, trying to put out the sizzling fires that burned me like some corrosive acid.
I felt rivers of warm blood running down my back as more people ran past me, deeper into the hall. The skyscraper was massive, not only in height but in width. The hallway ran for hundreds of feet, disappearing into doorless thresholds on both sides cleaved out of the obsidian, as if the entire structure had been carved from one enormous piece of glassy stone. In the center of the hallway, it opened up into a spiraling staircase.
I looked up abruptly to see three men wearing masks made of human skin standing over me, each holding primitive bone spears in their filthy, blood-stained hands. They looked emaciated, wasted away, like the walking corpses of a death camp. To my utter astonishment, even through the layer of dried, ragged skin, I recognized one of them. It was in his gray eyes, and the twisting dragon tattoos that covered his arms and chest instantly brought a flash of memory.
“Shooter,” I said as they raised their weapons. “Shooter, it’s me. Remember me? It’s Richie.” He froze in place, looking down at me with widening eyes.
“Holy shit, Richie?” he said, tearing the mask off. “What are you doing here?” It was an absurd question, of course. What were any of us doing here?
The last time I had seen Shooter, he had been sitting a pile of blood in his car. He was one of the designated gunman for the Solid Ones, the gang we had both joined when we were young. The amazing luck of finding another Solid in this place of death was astounding. But, then again, I had known many people who had died, and I had a feeling the vast majority were here somewhere.
“I guess I died,” I said sheepishly, giving him a faint half-smile. The other two men standing by his side lowered their weapons. “Fucking pigs came in and shot me.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, unsurprised. “They do have a tendency to do that.” He gave a low laugh. I took a long look at Shooter, who was wearing the pale skin of some unknown victim or victims of this place of agony. He reached a trembling hand down and pulled me up from the smooth surface of this strange skyscraper. More naked, scared people continued to stream past us as the sirens continued their infernal shrieking outside. Many of them had horrific burns all over their body, and a few were clearly on the verge of death by the time they had made it inside.
Farther down the hall, another ten men wearing the same garb as Shooter came towards us, holding sharpened swords of obsidian and thick clubs made of bone. Shooter put his hands up.
“Hey, I know this guy,” he said calmly, motioning over to me with an apathetic wave of his head. “He was in the same gang as me! We used to go around having a great time, I’ll tell you. Remember that time we shot at that cop and he pissed himself?” He gave a racuous laugh at that. I smiled as the memory flooded back. Shooter had definitely hit him, though I think I probably missed. I remembered the blood soaking over the arm of cop’s uniform as he lay there, gasping and turning white, his face looking bloodless and shocked. Shooter and I had run away, high-fiving each other and grinning like maniacs.
“Yeah, I do,” I said, grinning. The other men surrounded me in a semi-circle. Shooter knelt down and extended a hand to me, helping me off the ground.
“Well, you’re in good company,” he said. “Here, we can do whatever the fuck we want. What’s going to happen, after all? It’s not like we can be sent to Hell.” He laughed, and that laughter writhed with the insanity and bloodlust that seemed to be eating him from the inside like a cancer.
***
“We still need to take him to the Sergeant,” one of the masked men next to Shooter said. “We can see if he has the right stuff needed to fight with us.”
“What happens when you guys die?” I asked. “I mean, obviously, you restart at the Lake of Blood, but how do you find your way back to your gang?” Shooter shrugged.
“We always find each other again eventually,” he said. “It’s not like there’s any lack of time here. All we have is time- and fresh meat, of course. There’s always more fresh meat streaming in through the Lake of Blood. We can take whatever we need from them…” The wailing of the sirens suddenly ended as he spoke. I looked around, seeing burnt and dying people still struggling into the front hallway of the skyscraper. The smell of burning hair and searing flesh filled the entire area.
“Come on,” one of the men said. His voice was gruff, as if he had been chainsmoking five packs a day since he was a little kid. “The Sergeant is on the top floor. You’ll have to talk to him.” I nodded, knowing they would certainly kill me if I did not join their group.
But at that moment, something much worse than dying, blackened bodies crawled in through the archway. I saw it before the group of men did. Instinctively upon glimpsing it, I knew it was something terrible, something that could only live in the depths of a psychotic’s nightmare.
It stood nearly ten feet tall. Its skin was as pale as a writhing maggot. On its hairless face, I saw no eyes, no nose, no ears, just smooth, bone-white skin. It had thin lips tied together with black thread, the garish stitches poking out from the ragged, bloodless flesh. Its arms and legs looked inhumanly long and thin. Its ribs and spine jutted out as if it were a starving, rabid animal. From all around its body, an inhuman wailing started, as if dozens of demonic voices were shrieking in unison. Yet its mouth stayed firmly closed, still stitched shut.
Its fingers jutted out like railroad spikes, each a foot long. As its screaming intensified, it ran towards us, crushing the dying and injured under its naked, twisted feet. I stared into its pale, bloodless face, and even though it had no eyes, it felt like it stared straight back at me, looking into my soul.
“Don’t look at it!” Shooter screamed next to me, turning his face away. The rest of the men closed their eyes or turned away, backpedaling away from the abomination. “It will take on the shape of what you fear most! It’s a Screamer!” But it was too late. At that moment, something strange happened to the pale, naked body of the Screamer. It rippled like a mirage sizzling off the sands of a desert. Its body squeezed and contorted as the distorted shrieking around its pale, naked body grew louder and more insane.
Thin stalks of black, spidery legs began jutting out of the sides of its chest. Its face melted like wax as glittering compound eyes sprouted from the top of its head. Within seconds, it had turned into a massive spider, a black widow whose head nearly scraped the ceiling twenty feet above us. The red hourglass on its back shone brightly, as if in reminder of the imminent death it brought to anyone it touched.
I hate spiders. I’ve always hated spiders. When I saw that skittering, crawling monstrosity, something in me broke. I sprinted towards the group of men who were trying to do their best to escape without looking directly at the Screamer, hoping that the spider would choose one of them instead of me. But I heard its massive bulk following closely behind me. I could feel its insectile breath on the back of my neck.
Naked and frantic, I sprinted behind the nearest of the men and used the same tactic I had used escaping through the silver gate: I pushed the unsuspecting figure towards the abomination that rushed towards us in a blur, its eight legs pounding the glassy floor with reverberating thuds.
Drops of clear venom dripped from its fangs as it grabbed the struggling man. It bit deeply into his leg, and as the venom dripped onto his skin, it seemed to eat through his flesh like some sort of acid. The man screamed as red streaks rapidly spread up his leg throughout the rest of his body. His teeth began chattering and his pupils dilated as he stared at me accusingly. But he did not die.
The spider grabbed him and dragged him away down the hallway, down to wherever the victims of the Screamers go. I saw a dozen more of the pale, faceless monstrosities rushing in to take his place. The men looked up, and the Screamers erupted into monstrous shapes: giant, slithering snakes, a floating eyeball with black, squid-like tentacles writhing around its central mass, enormous brown recluses and black widows and faceless Grim Reapers who floated over the ground in black robes. The overwhelming sense of fear and panic I felt at that moment still stays with me to this day, and even though this happened a couple days ago and I did eventually make it out of that den of horrors, it still leaves a deep scar across my mind.
As visions from a nightmare approached us, I turned and ran.