Screaming navel
I recovered from MTD - I want to share my experience
2024.05.19 19:02 YourInnerFlamingo I recovered from MTD - I want to share my experience
Preface: I'm not a doctor, I'm not a speech therapist, and this is not medical advice. This is just what I've done to overcome my MTD and my opinions.
MTD is a name given to a large number of conditions. The architecture of our vocal instrument is very complex though, and "muscle tension" is not only a very uninformative diagnosis, but even a misdirecting one. I say this because:
The speech therapist gave me exercises and tips, she told me to talk with a confidential voice, she instructed me to keep a correct posture, she instructed me to always use abdominal breathing. She was meaning well, but all this had the effect of adding tension to my tension.
Months went by with no progress. I could speak, but not more than one day at a time. If I spoke one day, my voice would feel destroyed the day after. Speaking would become painful and effortful. Several days of silence would get my voice back almost to a normal state, but a single day of speaking would ruin all the work I'd done.
I was fortunate enough however, that all this happened after I left my job to focus on music (the irony), and so at some point I decided to find a way myself, focus entirely on my voice and get rid of this problem once for all.
My MTD lasted about 6 months. After I practiced what I'm describing in this post it subsided over the span of about 3 weeks.
I want to share my findings with you, but keep in mind that
First, some general principles I followed 1. Don't interfere with your voice outside of your exercises. Don't try to speak the right way. Leave that voice alone. 2. Only unintentional progress is real progress. I don't care about progress that is actually a result of breaking the first rule. So you can finally stop worrying about your voice when you are not exercising. 3. Progress comes after sleep, not while you practice
When you practice things will get frustrating. Your brain registers that frustration and builds new connections while you sleep. Frustration and lack of progress while you practice are a good thing, it means that you are successfully building the input that will be processed while you sleep. Give it two nights of sleep, and results will come.
Ok, so here's what I've done. It's a simple three phases plan where we keep adding stuff:
1. Fix your breathing:
This is the basis. You've heard that before, but if I ask you to do abdominal breathing I'd be asking you to do something intentionally, which breaks principle 1. The other component of the basis is a relaxed attitude, which is a difficult thing to have when you feel betrayed by your body. We need to kill these two birds with a single massive stone.
What follows is a slightly modified version of the zazen meditation technique. I'm aware it can sound boring, but this is really important and I think it's necessary to practice this every day until recovery, without exceptions. Really.
Set a timer for 25 minutes, sit comfortably, close your eyes, and let your body breathe. While you breathe, identify the point at the centre of your body, about 4 inches below your navel. I want you to notice the sensation of breathing in that point. Don't try to change your breath, just notice any sensations there. If there aren't any, just stay vigilant, 'cause there will be.
Keep paying attention to that point, and start counting the breaths 1 to 10. When you get to 10 restart from one. If you lose the count, just restart from one. If you start thinking about dinner and lose contact with the centre of your body, just bring it back into your attention field. Every time you lose attention and bring it back, your mind relaxes a bit. The more you do it, the more your attention naturally settles on the sensation of breathing at the centre of your body.
Don't try to force your attention to stay there. Let it be and bring it back only if you notice it wanders. Also, don't focus super hard, that wouldn't be relaxing at all! Chill and let your attention rest there.
Thoughts will occur. That's ok, in fact, thoughts are part of the process. Let them happen, but keep the sensations at the centre of your body in your field of attention. When you notice that you lost attention, the thought stream will naturally interrupt and your attention will go back to your centre. There is no need for you to forcefully interrupt your thought stream. It'll happen by itself when you remember about your centre.
You may feel deeply relaxed, which is great, just try not to fall asleep.
If you do this consistently, you'll be breathing diaphragmatically without even noticing, which we agreed counts as real progress.
2. Rewiring
After about one week practicing the previous step (which you must keep doing), I started humming whenever I felt tension building up around my neck, which was normally just after I spoke two sentences. I know it's counterintuitive, but it made sense for me. What we are trying to do here is breaking the association voice emission -> tension, and create a new one voice emission -> relaxation. After all, we all know that our vocal chords are perfectly fine, and those sweet vibrations have a relaxing effect on our muscles. They have it even if you experience MTD, we just don't notice it because the tension created by our condition is greater than that relaxing stimulus.
So now when you feel that tension building up do the following:
3. Trigger relaxation. After about a week practicing the previous step (which you must keep doing) I started working actively on muscle relaxation. The basic idea here is to trigger a chain reaction. All our muscles are connected. As we all learned, unfortunately, one muscle becoming tense leads to all the muscles around becoming tense too. Well, the opposite is also true.
Because we can interact with our tongue much more easily than with other internal muscles, we'll use that to trigger the chain reaction. Follow the instructions on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OorqNloxITM do it al least twice a day (in the morning and before you go to sleep) and every time you feel you need it. Pay especial attention to step where you let the tongue relax while pulling it.
From now on, stop trying to control your voice or to speak confidentially, or whatever you are doing in fear of hurting yourself. Now it's the time to let all the work express some results, so don't interfere. Do whatever comes naturally. If you naturally want to speak softly do that, if not, don't.
Keep practicing all the three steps for a few weeks and only then check whether this is working for you or not. Unless you feel you are getting hurt by this, abstain from judgement until then, otherwise you'll pay too much attention to your voice and interfere with the process.
I really hope this works for you as well as it did for me. Once again, I'm nobody, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a speech therapist, I just wanted to share this in case it's helpful to somebody, but what you do with your voice is your responsibility.
submitted by YourInnerFlamingo to singing [link] [comments]
MTD is a name given to a large number of conditions. The architecture of our vocal instrument is very complex though, and "muscle tension" is not only a very uninformative diagnosis, but even a misdirecting one. I say this because:
- Most people don't actually know how muscles work, and will create an incorrect mental model of what's going on, which adds tension to tension.
- It encourages a view of our muscles and vocal instrument as an "external object" that is "misbehaving" and that "we need to correct and control", which, needless to say, adds more tension to tension.
The speech therapist gave me exercises and tips, she told me to talk with a confidential voice, she instructed me to keep a correct posture, she instructed me to always use abdominal breathing. She was meaning well, but all this had the effect of adding tension to my tension.
Months went by with no progress. I could speak, but not more than one day at a time. If I spoke one day, my voice would feel destroyed the day after. Speaking would become painful and effortful. Several days of silence would get my voice back almost to a normal state, but a single day of speaking would ruin all the work I'd done.
I was fortunate enough however, that all this happened after I left my job to focus on music (the irony), and so at some point I decided to find a way myself, focus entirely on my voice and get rid of this problem once for all.
My MTD lasted about 6 months. After I practiced what I'm describing in this post it subsided over the span of about 3 weeks.
I want to share my findings with you, but keep in mind that
- I am not a doctor, I'm only sharing my experience. What you do with this is only your responsibility. If you have any doubts please consult with your doctor first.
First, some general principles I followed 1. Don't interfere with your voice outside of your exercises. Don't try to speak the right way. Leave that voice alone. 2. Only unintentional progress is real progress. I don't care about progress that is actually a result of breaking the first rule. So you can finally stop worrying about your voice when you are not exercising. 3. Progress comes after sleep, not while you practice
When you practice things will get frustrating. Your brain registers that frustration and builds new connections while you sleep. Frustration and lack of progress while you practice are a good thing, it means that you are successfully building the input that will be processed while you sleep. Give it two nights of sleep, and results will come.
Ok, so here's what I've done. It's a simple three phases plan where we keep adding stuff:
1. Fix your breathing:
This is the basis. You've heard that before, but if I ask you to do abdominal breathing I'd be asking you to do something intentionally, which breaks principle 1. The other component of the basis is a relaxed attitude, which is a difficult thing to have when you feel betrayed by your body. We need to kill these two birds with a single massive stone.
What follows is a slightly modified version of the zazen meditation technique. I'm aware it can sound boring, but this is really important and I think it's necessary to practice this every day until recovery, without exceptions. Really.
Set a timer for 25 minutes, sit comfortably, close your eyes, and let your body breathe. While you breathe, identify the point at the centre of your body, about 4 inches below your navel. I want you to notice the sensation of breathing in that point. Don't try to change your breath, just notice any sensations there. If there aren't any, just stay vigilant, 'cause there will be.
Keep paying attention to that point, and start counting the breaths 1 to 10. When you get to 10 restart from one. If you lose the count, just restart from one. If you start thinking about dinner and lose contact with the centre of your body, just bring it back into your attention field. Every time you lose attention and bring it back, your mind relaxes a bit. The more you do it, the more your attention naturally settles on the sensation of breathing at the centre of your body.
Don't try to force your attention to stay there. Let it be and bring it back only if you notice it wanders. Also, don't focus super hard, that wouldn't be relaxing at all! Chill and let your attention rest there.
Thoughts will occur. That's ok, in fact, thoughts are part of the process. Let them happen, but keep the sensations at the centre of your body in your field of attention. When you notice that you lost attention, the thought stream will naturally interrupt and your attention will go back to your centre. There is no need for you to forcefully interrupt your thought stream. It'll happen by itself when you remember about your centre.
You may feel deeply relaxed, which is great, just try not to fall asleep.
If you do this consistently, you'll be breathing diaphragmatically without even noticing, which we agreed counts as real progress.
2. Rewiring
After about one week practicing the previous step (which you must keep doing), I started humming whenever I felt tension building up around my neck, which was normally just after I spoke two sentences. I know it's counterintuitive, but it made sense for me. What we are trying to do here is breaking the association voice emission -> tension, and create a new one voice emission -> relaxation. After all, we all know that our vocal chords are perfectly fine, and those sweet vibrations have a relaxing effect on our muscles. They have it even if you experience MTD, we just don't notice it because the tension created by our condition is greater than that relaxing stimulus.
So now when you feel that tension building up do the following:
- Check your upper chest: if it's contracted, let it relax
- Bring your attention to the point below the navel, just like you've practiced every day.
- Hum at a very low volume, in a similar fashion as humming in yoga practice. Try to identify that relaxation stimulus in your body. Pay attention to the positive sensations. Hum slowly, feel your body relaxing and your breath naturally centering itself lower in your body.
- Bonus: play with the resonance of that hum and check if your pleasant sensations change.
3. Trigger relaxation. After about a week practicing the previous step (which you must keep doing) I started working actively on muscle relaxation. The basic idea here is to trigger a chain reaction. All our muscles are connected. As we all learned, unfortunately, one muscle becoming tense leads to all the muscles around becoming tense too. Well, the opposite is also true.
Because we can interact with our tongue much more easily than with other internal muscles, we'll use that to trigger the chain reaction. Follow the instructions on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OorqNloxITM do it al least twice a day (in the morning and before you go to sleep) and every time you feel you need it. Pay especial attention to step where you let the tongue relax while pulling it.
From now on, stop trying to control your voice or to speak confidentially, or whatever you are doing in fear of hurting yourself. Now it's the time to let all the work express some results, so don't interfere. Do whatever comes naturally. If you naturally want to speak softly do that, if not, don't.
Keep practicing all the three steps for a few weeks and only then check whether this is working for you or not. Unless you feel you are getting hurt by this, abstain from judgement until then, otherwise you'll pay too much attention to your voice and interfere with the process.
I really hope this works for you as well as it did for me. Once again, I'm nobody, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a speech therapist, I just wanted to share this in case it's helpful to somebody, but what you do with your voice is your responsibility.
2024.05.16 06:21 New_Selection_8250 Indian women in saree
I was always the unassuming type. I could finish a day without speaking to anyone and the world could go on nonchalant. It was alright till I hit the teens. It was difficult to understand the hormones and the new sense of feelings that it kicked within me. Suddenly from a boy, I was a man. Only, nobody seems to notice. I had to make sense of this new waves of sensations that hits me very often especially when a girl walks past - her growing bosom, the widening hips. It was making sense somewhere but didnt know where. After the initial few years, it was amply clear to me that I am not among the preferred list of boys for girls to giggle or gossip about. I was another chap - decent in studies, helpful when asked.
Adulthood was no different. Once the resignation to a life of solitude was internalized, it seemed seemingly easy to walk past the hot chicks while maintaining a stoic face; only if they looked below they would have seen how much my penis failed me. Porn was a relief to start with. A cope up mechanism and even before I realized, it was an addiction. Imaginations ran wild as I stroked myself to pleasure again after again - at times upto 4 to 6 times a day. As my body aged faster than my mind was growing, it was the only solace. With time, the stoking became mechanical and the pleasure sensations seem to go unnoticed even for me.
As I near 40, it was time to change. Time to grab the life by its neck and chock till it squirmed the way I wanted. In Feb I started hitting the gym. I started losing fat. My jawlines started shaping. My confidence started building. My arms, my chests and my legs - all of them started showing a defined muscles. I feel younger. My confidence building up. The beast in me started wagging its tail, licking its lips.
One of the prominent fantasy I have is to be with a women who wears a saree below her navel. If she has good cleavage then jannat. I have always admired a woman in a saree. The many teleseries with women in saree have made be obsessed with this fantasy. I want to unleash the beast within me. Take her down. Grope her. Squeeze her melons. Suck her nipples. Take her from behind. Make her boobs swing with every thrust. Choke her with my arms as I ride her like no tomorrow. Pleasure will only be mine. The beast needs its prey. I want her to moan; to shout my name with every thrust. To scream in lust, to cry in ecstasy. I want to feel the warmth of releasing my jism inside her. Feel my penis pulse as it ejaculates in her fertile pussy. Sense her breath; the panting. Smell her sweat. I want to be the beast that I am within.
The fantasy has become an obsession now. It is unproductive and hinders my thoughts. I lose my focus and gives me a boner each time I think of a woman in a saree - oh! her tantalizing navel fluttering beneath the saree as the pallu swings with the breeze. The beast in me sighs loudly. Determined. It needs its release.
submitted by New_Selection_8250 to u/New_Selection_8250 [link] [comments]
Adulthood was no different. Once the resignation to a life of solitude was internalized, it seemed seemingly easy to walk past the hot chicks while maintaining a stoic face; only if they looked below they would have seen how much my penis failed me. Porn was a relief to start with. A cope up mechanism and even before I realized, it was an addiction. Imaginations ran wild as I stroked myself to pleasure again after again - at times upto 4 to 6 times a day. As my body aged faster than my mind was growing, it was the only solace. With time, the stoking became mechanical and the pleasure sensations seem to go unnoticed even for me.
As I near 40, it was time to change. Time to grab the life by its neck and chock till it squirmed the way I wanted. In Feb I started hitting the gym. I started losing fat. My jawlines started shaping. My confidence started building. My arms, my chests and my legs - all of them started showing a defined muscles. I feel younger. My confidence building up. The beast in me started wagging its tail, licking its lips.
One of the prominent fantasy I have is to be with a women who wears a saree below her navel. If she has good cleavage then jannat. I have always admired a woman in a saree. The many teleseries with women in saree have made be obsessed with this fantasy. I want to unleash the beast within me. Take her down. Grope her. Squeeze her melons. Suck her nipples. Take her from behind. Make her boobs swing with every thrust. Choke her with my arms as I ride her like no tomorrow. Pleasure will only be mine. The beast needs its prey. I want her to moan; to shout my name with every thrust. To scream in lust, to cry in ecstasy. I want to feel the warmth of releasing my jism inside her. Feel my penis pulse as it ejaculates in her fertile pussy. Sense her breath; the panting. Smell her sweat. I want to be the beast that I am within.
The fantasy has become an obsession now. It is unproductive and hinders my thoughts. I lose my focus and gives me a boner each time I think of a woman in a saree - oh! her tantalizing navel fluttering beneath the saree as the pallu swings with the breeze. The beast in me sighs loudly. Determined. It needs its release.
2024.05.15 12:36 AnchorPointsOfficial Anchor Points: Age of Heroes Chapter 9 - Entropy
CHAPTER 9 – ENTROPY
DATE: MARCH 10th, 7 A.U. (AFTER UNIFICATION) LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, ABOARD UTRN INDOMITABLE WILL
CAPTAIN HENRY O’TOOLE
"Ah, there you are Commander. Your message said there was something you wanted to talk with me about?" Henry asked as his executive officer approached the system map.
“Aye Captain, now's a good a time as any. As you know, the rate of disciplinary incidents has more than tripled in the last two weeks. We've had six fistfights, one near strangling, a few dozen counts of sexual harassment amongst different parties, and a few more incidents of a nature that I would rather not get into for fear of derailing the point of this conversation. I need additional resources to allocate towards ship internal security. With your permission, I'd like to borrow some of our more trusted marines to help the MA's out on their off shifts.” Commander Alvarez asked.
“Yeah, of course, take what you need to nip this in the bud. I can't say I'm entirely surprised; we expected a certain amount of this with the stresses of FTL travel. With everyone cooped up like this, maybe we should brainstorm some new outlets for the crew. Were there any specific incidents I need to get involved with?” Henry replied as he looked up from the list of updates and reports on his own console.
“No, I have it covered. It's just the regs state I need to ask permission to use marines for internal security matters.” The Commander waved it off.
“Excellent, continue to keep me in the loop then. Can I ask you a question?” Henry took the opportunity to ask something that had been bothering him.
“You just did. Hah! Just kidding, put the axe away boy! Now what would you like to know?” He said with a twinkle in his eye.
“I've seen your file, well, the parts that weren’t redacted anyway. If anything, I should be taking your orders! I mean, you're the Space Wolf! Nobody came even close to the number of ships captured or destroyed than you in the early days of the battle for the belt. Why would they want me to be captain when they had someone like you coming along the whole time? Why aren't you a captain anymore? By all right this should be your command, not mine.” Henry asked, after taking one last look around to verify they were still alone around the system map.
Commander Alvarez seemed stunned for a moment before he settled into a more pensive look.
“Listen, son, you're all full of the vigor and high passions of youth. By that I mean you've got a certain fire and aggression in you, yet I've seen you generally keep it balanced by wit and wisdom. You are a perfect match for the job, even if you could use some more real world experience. With some guidance, you'll do just fine, if you can keep strict standards for yourself and crew and a cool head when things get tough."
"I appreciate that, and I will definitely lean on your experience whenever possible. However, you didn't really answer my question... Why aren't you a captain anymore?"
"I... got a lot of damn good men and women killed in an impossible situation when we lost the Michigan-II, and I never truly got over it. No amount of medals, captured enemy ships, or the fact that I've saved many more lives than I lost can make up for that. I finally found peace with that, but that peace required that I relieve myself of any chance of future command. My legacy, for better or worse, is set in stone. Joining this expedition gives me another chance at adjusting the scales without breaking my former vows, even if the only people who will ever know it are here on the voyage with us.”
“So, you claim you have no aims or desires for leadership, but here you are a mere heartbeat away from it.” Henry said, carefully studying his executive officer's every reaction.
“My time for glory is mostly gone, yours is at your feet before you. To the world, I am retired in comfort and isolation. In reality you have me here to help make your will law. You can relax. I already turned down command of this expedition. I was plan A, why do you think they had to scramble to find you? I will take command of this mission only if you are incapable of doing so yourself, Sir. In the meantime, let my experience and whatever wisdom I can offer guide you.”
An emergency alert snapped both of their attention out of their conversation. "There's a fire in one of the officer's cabins?!" Henry’s pulse quickened as he referenced the map to find which one.
“Fuck, it started in Chantal’s room!” Henry said, horrified.
“I've got the CIC under control. Go on and get her out of there, I'll send the cavalry."
“Thank you, Commander.” Henry called back over his shoulder as he rushed for the quick lift.
The officer cabins were the in the very next deck overhead, so he was able to arrive quickly and break into a sprint. The ship shifted as it dodged some antimatter, causing Henry to slip and scramble back to his feet. As he rounded the corner he saw her door was closed and the keypad powered was off. He could hear thumps and muffled screaming from within the room.
"HANG ON CHANTAL, I'M COMING!" Henry shouted in the hope that she could hear him as he pried at the manual override panel.
Two modified Paladin exo-combat armor suits rounded the corner seconds later with a hospitalman trailing behind pushing a medical cart.
"WE'LL TAKE IT FROM HERE, SIR." A speaker-amplified voice spoke from behind him.
One of the Paladin suits accessed the manual control override and forced the door open enough for the other suit to reach in and pry it the rest of the way open as smoke plumed into the corridor. The second suit charged into the room with its flood lights on as a water cannon mounted on the right wrist sprayed flame retardant from a pack on its back. The first suit abandoned the door control and entered, emerging moments later with Chantal awake and coughing from inside the darkened door frame. She was quickly ushered into cleaner air, set gently down, wrapped in a blanket, and was quickly attended to by a hospitalman who began to check her vitals.
Relief flooded Henry’s mind as his adrenaline surge broke against the wall of worry he had built up during his mad dash from the CIC.
“Baby you came for me! I thought I was going to die in there." She pulled him into a tight embrace as she wept in cathartic release.
"Of course I did! I couldn't stand to lose you, especially not over something like this. So, what the hell happened in there?"
"Well you know me, I was all burning the midnight oil and then I smelled smoke! Then there were some sparks, the outlet pops then whoosh! My computer station and my desk are all ablaze along with half my notes, then the damned door wouldn't work! I had to drop to the floor under the smoke and pound on the door in hopes that someone would hear me. God, it was horrible... I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life." She replied with a deep shudder.
"You're safe now, it's going to be alright."
"I know, but what about my work?" She replied with a forlorn look back at her smoke damaged room.
"What about your work?"
"As you know, I lost a ton of it just now, but what’s worse is I don't even have the ability to recover them! Remember how I lost my backup drive last week? Like, I know I packed it and it is not here anywhere! It’s like some sick cosmic joke on me or something. Sorry! Gotta keep it positive, girl! I get to rethink my last few weeks’ worth of work from scratch... that was almost positive! I probably have most of this recoverable from email sent box backups. Fuck, what do you do if there's no good silver lining?” Chantal bemoaned.
Henry couldn’t help himself but laugh for a second, while his girlfriend stared at him, waiting for a response.
“I’m sorry, is this funny to you or something?”
“No, no of course not. This might be one of those times where the only silver lining is that you're alive. Plus, if anyone can remember and rebuild their notes, you can." Henry smiled down at her.
“Fine, fine, at least I am alive. I was only breathing smoke for a few seconds after all.” She said, rolling her eyes. “Thank you for rushing down here right away anyway, it means a lot. You're amazing, you know.”
Henry smiled, slightly uncomfortable for a moment, so he changed the subject.
“I do my best... Anyway, it seems like these electrical issues seem to be getting worse instead of better. Whatever patch these clowns have slapped on my ship to get her to pass inspection is clearly coming undone. What do you think is going on here?” Henry asked in mild exasperation.
“Honestly, I can’t tell you without digging into the systems myself, which I would rather avoid. My plate is full enough as it is right now, especially having to reproduce so much of my own work now. This ship has kilometers of power cables running throughout it, after all, and you have an entire loyal, capable team down there in electrical, so it should only be a matter of time before they sort it out for you. Let them do their jobs without harassing them too much, please?”
Henry felt a little irked at her for not giving him credit to know not to go overboard, but he stowed it, seeing as she ultimately was right.
“The crew has been under a lot of stress, too, between the technical issues with the lights going out, losing power to workstations, or the constant antimatter threat. More than a few people have tried to convince me to turn us around and return to S33 for a more in-depth refit and repair cycle before we try the mission again. So far, everyone has accepted the fact that we are continuing the mission without much argument, but I fear what may happen if these issues are seen as getting worse. Our orders are clear, though, we must continue the journey.” Henry said, uncomfortable with the implications, even if he didn't dare voice it.
“You should get on the Q-Comm to report the fire to S33. Maybe they will order us back to base after this.” She offered, looking for a solution to an impossible problem.
“Good idea, at least the Q-Comm is still working. It’s incredible to me those particles maintained their entanglement once we passed through the baryonic barrier. That alone has been a huge morale boost, being able to contact home base with no time lag.” Henry replied.
“It’s incredible to you because you only have a basic grasp of the science, hon. But that’s alright, very few people truly understand it. That’s in part what you have me here for anyway. Einstein called the effect spooky action from a distance; I always liked that line.”
Henry ran his fingers through his hair and looked at Chantal, with a shake of his head and a smile.
“Listen, Henry, I just had a crazy stressful experience and I need to unwind. Plus, I haven’t slept in almost a day, so I am bone tired. Let’s go to bed, huh? What do you say doc, am I clear to go?” Chantal asked.
The hospitalman closed her eyes and shook her head before responding. "Yes, you are cleared to rest, and only to rest, do you understand me?"
Chantal mouthed a thank you before she took Henry by the hand and led him off to the captain’s quarters. Henry felt no desire to fight it, nor flaw with her reasoning. Sleep sounded good, really good. Plus, he was about an hour from the start of his sleep shift anyway, and Alvarez had the CIC well covered. The lights flickered again, but Henry very purposefully ignored it.
“Hey, since we have a little time and we are both a little wound up, Why don’t we take a shower together real quick?” She said with genuine enthusiasm and a wink.
“Madam, I like the way you think.” The couple raced just a bit faster than regulations would have liked, and arrived at his door in record speed.
Inside the room they fell upon each other in great passion and need, stripping each other out of their BDU’s and underclothes. Henry tossed a giggling Chantal onto the bed, and proceeded to kiss her neck and nibble on her ear causing her to purr in anticipation before he moved down her chest, past her navel, and then eagerly began to move his kisses in between her thighs.
“Hah…. I haven’t showered. Are you sure? Oooookay! I think…. Hah…. Okay.” She said breathlessly as Henry began to work his tongue until she began to shiver and squirm before she cried out as she melted in his mouth.
“Enough, please, I can’t take it anymore! Just fuck me already!” Chantal pulled herself together enough to beg for it. Henry stood rigid and ready and set himself to granting her request, first slowly, and then with a growing intensity. She once more began to squirm as he paid close attention to her hip’s cues, knowing very well by now what she liked.
As she climaxed again, Henry lifted her from the bed and pushed her up against the wall, and then bent her over his desk for a bit before he could take it no longer and they finished together.
“Holy shit… my legs aren’t gonna work for a bit after that one. Help me up?” Chantal said in between shallow breaths.
“Yes, ma’am. It would be my pleasure.” Henry said as he helped her to her feet and into the shower, staying in longer than was strictly necessary.
Henry left the steam first, once more thankful that his cabin included its own small bathroom, rather than a communal one. Being captain had its perks, after all. He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist, then handed another to Chantal who gratefully accepted it before it dropped to the ground as she stared straight past him.
“Henry!" She squeaked as she pointed past him.
"What?" Henry asked, confused.
"Henry, someone was in here!”
On their bathroom mirror, wiped from the steam were the words TURN BACK.
Henry's blood ran cold and his adrenaline spiked him into overdrive. He waved Chantal back into the shower and put his finger to his lips. She nodded then wrapped herself in her retrieved towel and dropped to the shower floor with her arms wrapped around her knees, whimpering slightly. Henry moved silently along the wall, watching the visible half of his room for any movement. He then burst round the door frame, only to find everything perfectly, precisely as they had left it. The shock of finding nothing collided with the spike of his adrenaline surge, which only fed his growing unease.
“There’s nobody here!” Henry called out after checking the closet, the only other place someone could have hidden.
“Did you lock the door?” Chantal asked, her mind already working on the mystery.
“I set the security protocol to auto lock every time it closes.”
“Paul. We need to talk to Paul.” Chantal said, squeezing her BDU’s up over her hips with a few hops. Henry pulled on his undershirt before tossing over her bra.
“Why would we want to bring that weasel into this?” Henry asked, incredulous at to how he could possibly help.
“Because he has access to the surveillance tapes, why else?”
Henry stared at Chantal, brimming with rage, trying his hardest to keep it isolated to Paul over the invasion of his privacy.
“Did you just say surveillance tapes!?!” Henry asked in an icy tone. “That does it, I’m going to strangle him.” Henry said, moving with a purpose toward the door.
“Stop. Turn around and give me a kiss. I already disabled the video cameras, at least all the ones I could find. He has audio at best, even that I doubt. What he does have that I want is the data from the motion sensor that he had installed just in case you found the more obvious bugs. Unfortunately, I sabotaged its effectiveness by blocking the sensor with dense foam, but there might be enough of something to give us a clue."
“How in the hell do you know about all of this anyway, and why the hell didn’t you tell me?!” Henry roared.
“This entire enterprise is run by an intelligence agency; how can you not have seen that one coming a mile away? I have gotten very good at catching bugs over the years. Just because I expect the invasion of privacy to be happening, doesn’t mean I have to make it easy on them. Just be happy I already took care of the issue, alright?” She replied firmly while staring him in the eyes with raised eyebrows.
“You’re incredible, I love you.” Henry blurted out before he could catch himself. Chantal beamed and tackled him to the bed sitting on his lap.
“What took you so long? Never mind, don’t answer that. I love you too, man have I wanted to say that one for a while now.”
“You know these things aren’t easy for me. I had to be sure, I also didn’t want to mess anything up. We need to be able to work together even if we had turned out to be a bad couple.” Henry admitted, Chantal made an show as she thought it over, but she then smiled and helped Henry to his feet.
“Alright, my captain. You speak great wisdom. While I have certainly felt, and thoroughly enjoyed, the depths of your passion, it is really nice to hear about it too. I do think it makes it all the better that you rule said passion with reason. It’s just one of the many things I love about you.” She said, laying her hand over his heart.
Henry took her other hand and kissed it before replying. “I think above all, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t take you for granted, nor suffer the same in reverse. A wise woman once gave me some great advice there that I have taken to heart.”
“Okay, Romeo, maybe you have a better handle on these things than you think. Now… Let’s go interrogate Paul.” Chantal had a fire in her eyes that Henry was loving very much at that moment.
“I have wanted to turn the screws on that spook for a while now.” Henry smiled as he spoke, and he opened up the connection to the ship’s intranet through his neural implant to send a message.
MEET ME IN YOUR QUARTERS IN 5 MINUTES FOR A DISCUSSION OF CRITICAL IMPORTANCE – CPT. O'TOOLE
“That ought to get him there and alone.” Henry smirked. “Let’s go.”
Together, they made their way to Paul’s equivalent-sized quarters, which he had somehow secured for himself in the ship design to help facilitate his role as the official thorn in Henry’s paw. I guess being the captain’s handler has its perks as well. Henry’s eye twitched at the corner.
After making them wait far too long, Paul opened the door and gesturing them inside. The door closed and Paul turned towards them, narrowing his eyes, studying them both.
“Is this about the fire?” Paul asked before Henry punched the weasel right in the diaphragm, forcing him to gasp for air. The look of shock on his face as he bent forwards was priceless.
“What the fuck, Henry!?” Paul managed to choke out after a minute between gasps.
“Relax, I didn’t do any permanent damage, yet.” Henry said, Paul for just a second showed actual fear in his eyes before he sneered in defiance. “Oh? That got your attention, did it? Why were you spying on me?” Henry growled.
Paul closed his eyes, dropped his head, and began to laugh before Henry grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the wall. Foolishly, Paul even then kept laughing amidst the gasping. So Henry squeezed until Paul started slapping his arm, looking genuine fear once more growing across his face.
“Orders… I was following orders!” Paul managed to say amidst gasps and coughs.
“I thought it might be something like that. You're going to open up those files, now, and you're going to show me everything.” Henry said, dropping him to his feet at last.
“Fucking hell, Henry, I thought you of all people would have anticipated this was going to be the case. Do you think the people who made this all possible would simply let you fly around the most dangerous, advanced warship in human history without some insurance?”
“Don’t try and weasel out of your own personal culpability here. You may also want to think back to other people who were “only following orders” while performing acts they knew were wrong before you wave that line around like some get out of jail free card.” The fact that he had nothing to say spoke volumes.
“You should have told me, Paul.” Henry growled.
“That defeats the purpose! Plus, your girlfriend sabotaged them all before we ever left S33 anyway, and once more after! That type of tech doesn’t just grow on trees you know, and I don’t have an unlimited supply. You should be thanking me for covering for her and reporting back like things are normal!” Paul shouted in indignation.
“This is pointless, show me the files from around fifteen minutes ago, motion trackers, thermals, anything you have that's not blocked or sabotaged.” Henry commanded. Paul’s eyes narrowed, but after a long moment he huffed and closed his eyes.
Paul then sat down at his station and fired it up.
“Like I said, I've got practically nothing. No video, muffled audio and readings from what I assume to be a faulty motion sensor, that’s it. What are we looking for?”
“Chantal and I were, well, together. After we got out of the shower we saw that someone had written turn back in the condensation on the bathroom mirror. Only problem? My door auto locks when closed and only opens for my biometrics. That is why all of this even came up in the first place.”
“Motherfucker. That's a whole heap of bad news.” Paul said. Henry merely nodded, paying rather more attention to the screen to see if he could catch Paul in a lie about the extent of the spying.
“There’s nothing. No disturbances in the air that would even remotely resemble human movement between you two getting in the shower and you charging into your bedroom. With the noise of the shower and the distance to the microphone, there is nothing I can discern that is anomalous. You can see it all right here for yourself.”
Henry found himself even more confused and alarmed than before.
“How is that possible? Look again, run through some filters or something. There must be some evidence somewhere!”
“Alright, relax, I will get to work on this and get you a report by the end of C shift. In the meantime, you look like a mess. Get some sleep man! I can take care of it from here. Oh, and I want you to remember that I forgave you quite magnanimously for that little episode back there where you attacked me.” Henry and Chantal gave each other a look as Paul spoke.
“Wasn’t gonna apologize anyway, you had it coming. I’m going to hit the rack. I expect that report to be detailed and ready when I get up.” Henry took Chantal by the hand, and they left together, not waiting for a response.
“What a snake. Did you see him in there? Zero guilt or recognition whatsoever about spying like that. It just makes my skin crawl. Gives me bad memories.” Chantal said, turning pensive and quiet.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Henry asked, seeing that there was something clearly bothering her.
“I… had an uncle that lived with us from time to time and he would spy on me when I was dressing, try and sneak looks in the shower, stuff like that. Never touched me or anyone else that I know of, thank god, but man did it screw me up a bit still. Played havoc with my sense of security and even my sanity, never being quite sure it was real or all in my head. I wish I had said something, but I was afraid everyone would think I was overreacting or imagining it. I saw it in his eyes though, that look of... predatory lust. At least I didn't see anything like that in Paul's eyes. To this day it makes my skin crawl.”
“Good God, I can see how alone you must have felt in the middle of all that.” He squeezed her hand, she smiled up at him.
“Yeah, that was one of the hardest parts. I don’t think Paul is some raging pervert or anything, but it concerns me how normalized it was to him. Even if he isn’t being a creep with it, as if we can take his claims to be covering for me at face value. There is still no way I am going to let him have easy access to intimate videos of us, if I can possibly help it.” Chantal said before adding, “I’ll be all right, don’t worry about me. Let’s just get some sleep.”
Henry put his palm against the biometric scanner outside his room and the door slid open for them. They definitely needed some sleep after the emotional roller coaster of the past few hours, and the irresistible warm embrace of his bed called for him. The Q-Comm report could wait until he woke, he decided.
Better to have the electrical inspection ordered up, too.
I WANT A FULL REPORT AND INSPECTION PERFORMED ON THE ELECTRICAL FIRE IN CHANTAL’S ROOM BY THE START OF A SHIFT. – CAPT. O'TOOLE
Good enough. Henry thought as he sent the message. Now he could sleep. The chief could handle it from there.
MEANWHILE…
DATE : MARCH 10th, 7 A.U. LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, ABOARD UTRN INDOMITABLE WILL
FIREMAN APPRENTICE SARAH CALLAHAN
It'll be back again tonight...
Sarah’s haunted thoughts repeated like a mantra. She had to be ready, but how? Her skin crawled and itched, the long sleeves of her BDU’s prevented her from being able to do anything about the painful sensation from the inflamed scratches they hid. She blearily rubbed at her sunken eyes, and she drained the rest of her coffee. All the numbers on the screen had started bleeding in together and her eyes hurt horribly, with the throbbing pain in her abdomen only compounding her misery.
“My god, Sarah, you look a wreck, hon. How have you been sleeping?” Yvonne, her shift partner asked, with concern in her voice.
“I have a monster tension headache, I just hope the meds kick in soon. Can you check my math? I need to get out of these white lights for a few minutes. Close my eyes for a bit, something, anything. I've been having nightmares again.” Sarah felt good, being able to admit it, and Yvonne had long since proven her friendship, so it was easier to actually speak.
“Yeah, no prob. As soon as I am done here I will check your readings and we can get out of here. Do you mean nightmares from the invasion?” Yvonne asked, carefully picking her words and tone.
“Kind of the same general themes, but different. Everything is going wrong, like the worst possible outcomes of my worst nightmares are all combining together. Like, it feels actively malicious, I don't know, its hard to explain...” Sarah said, bleakly.
“That’s hard, I am sorry. You need a shower, and an uninterrupted nap. Sleep deprivation plays all kinds of hell on the body and mind. I had a friend who went through an insomniac phase so extreme he would go days without sleeping. Wound up in the hospital after trying to drive to work while hallucinating his dead fiancée was sitting in the passenger seat screaming at him to watch out. Wound up rear-ending the car in front of him. Thank God he lived to tell the tale, but that is why it worries me to see you like this.” Yvonne planted her hand on Sarah’s shoulder as she told the story.
“Yikes, I think I slept like two hours into my sleep shift before I started having the nightmares again, woke up, and passed in and out of some restless sleep. It got really bad around oh three hundred. There were sounds... noises like scratching and a loud bang, and the shadows were moving. I just kept feeling like I was being watched, but everyone else seemed to be having disturbed sleep in their bunks. God, it was a creepy feeling.” Sarah took a moment to compose herself.
“I know how crazy this will sound, maybe that I am sleep deprived and likely hallucinating like your friend, but just hear me out. There was something there Yvonne, in the dark at the edge of perception, I could feel it. I also know I wasn’t the only one tossing and turning either. I could also hear scratchy whispering, too. I just hid, strapped in under the weighted blanket. At some point I slept some more, I must have, but not for what felt like a few stressful and draining hours. I'm just making a total mess of explaining this, aren’t I?”
“No, you're fine, girl! I am sorry that happened, my dorm has been pretty quiet, but I have always slept like a rock. Is there anything I can do?”
“I could use a hug.” Sarah said, which caused Yvonne to laugh, breaking some of the tension. They embraced warmly for a good minute, which did wonders for relieving some of the headache and her black mood.
“Thanks, Yvonne, I know it’s all in my head and it’s a vicious feedback cycle due to lack of quality sleep. Thanks for listening without calling me crazy.“ Sarah said, shying away from the last thing she hadn’t the courage to say.
She didn’t dare mention how she had hidden under the covers as she felt it get near. How she had felt something pushing on the mattress. How as her fear peaked, she herself peeked over the covers to find nothing there just to have the oppressive feeling evaporate along with the sensation of pressure by her feet. Her dorm mates all seemed to stop stirring after that, and only then did the nightmares stop for her that night. By then she was left with barely enough time for one last short sleep cycle before the start of A shift that very morning. This was a secret she would have to keep to herself, nobody would believe her anyway.
“I think I'll ask the Chief for a break from my duties today to rest and to visit med bay. Maybe they can give me something to help catch back up on my sleep.” Sarah said.
“Good idea, can I come with? I’ll back you up.” Yvonne said. Sarah smiled at her friend before she nodded at her before they checked off the last of their duties on site and headed away to find the Chief.
submitted by AnchorPointsOfficial to HFY [link] [comments]
DATE: MARCH 10th, 7 A.U. (AFTER UNIFICATION) LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, ABOARD UTRN INDOMITABLE WILL
CAPTAIN HENRY O’TOOLE
"Ah, there you are Commander. Your message said there was something you wanted to talk with me about?" Henry asked as his executive officer approached the system map.
“Aye Captain, now's a good a time as any. As you know, the rate of disciplinary incidents has more than tripled in the last two weeks. We've had six fistfights, one near strangling, a few dozen counts of sexual harassment amongst different parties, and a few more incidents of a nature that I would rather not get into for fear of derailing the point of this conversation. I need additional resources to allocate towards ship internal security. With your permission, I'd like to borrow some of our more trusted marines to help the MA's out on their off shifts.” Commander Alvarez asked.
“Yeah, of course, take what you need to nip this in the bud. I can't say I'm entirely surprised; we expected a certain amount of this with the stresses of FTL travel. With everyone cooped up like this, maybe we should brainstorm some new outlets for the crew. Were there any specific incidents I need to get involved with?” Henry replied as he looked up from the list of updates and reports on his own console.
“No, I have it covered. It's just the regs state I need to ask permission to use marines for internal security matters.” The Commander waved it off.
“Excellent, continue to keep me in the loop then. Can I ask you a question?” Henry took the opportunity to ask something that had been bothering him.
“You just did. Hah! Just kidding, put the axe away boy! Now what would you like to know?” He said with a twinkle in his eye.
“I've seen your file, well, the parts that weren’t redacted anyway. If anything, I should be taking your orders! I mean, you're the Space Wolf! Nobody came even close to the number of ships captured or destroyed than you in the early days of the battle for the belt. Why would they want me to be captain when they had someone like you coming along the whole time? Why aren't you a captain anymore? By all right this should be your command, not mine.” Henry asked, after taking one last look around to verify they were still alone around the system map.
Commander Alvarez seemed stunned for a moment before he settled into a more pensive look.
“Listen, son, you're all full of the vigor and high passions of youth. By that I mean you've got a certain fire and aggression in you, yet I've seen you generally keep it balanced by wit and wisdom. You are a perfect match for the job, even if you could use some more real world experience. With some guidance, you'll do just fine, if you can keep strict standards for yourself and crew and a cool head when things get tough."
"I appreciate that, and I will definitely lean on your experience whenever possible. However, you didn't really answer my question... Why aren't you a captain anymore?"
"I... got a lot of damn good men and women killed in an impossible situation when we lost the Michigan-II, and I never truly got over it. No amount of medals, captured enemy ships, or the fact that I've saved many more lives than I lost can make up for that. I finally found peace with that, but that peace required that I relieve myself of any chance of future command. My legacy, for better or worse, is set in stone. Joining this expedition gives me another chance at adjusting the scales without breaking my former vows, even if the only people who will ever know it are here on the voyage with us.”
“So, you claim you have no aims or desires for leadership, but here you are a mere heartbeat away from it.” Henry said, carefully studying his executive officer's every reaction.
“My time for glory is mostly gone, yours is at your feet before you. To the world, I am retired in comfort and isolation. In reality you have me here to help make your will law. You can relax. I already turned down command of this expedition. I was plan A, why do you think they had to scramble to find you? I will take command of this mission only if you are incapable of doing so yourself, Sir. In the meantime, let my experience and whatever wisdom I can offer guide you.”
An emergency alert snapped both of their attention out of their conversation. "There's a fire in one of the officer's cabins?!" Henry’s pulse quickened as he referenced the map to find which one.
“Fuck, it started in Chantal’s room!” Henry said, horrified.
“I've got the CIC under control. Go on and get her out of there, I'll send the cavalry."
“Thank you, Commander.” Henry called back over his shoulder as he rushed for the quick lift.
The officer cabins were the in the very next deck overhead, so he was able to arrive quickly and break into a sprint. The ship shifted as it dodged some antimatter, causing Henry to slip and scramble back to his feet. As he rounded the corner he saw her door was closed and the keypad powered was off. He could hear thumps and muffled screaming from within the room.
"HANG ON CHANTAL, I'M COMING!" Henry shouted in the hope that she could hear him as he pried at the manual override panel.
Two modified Paladin exo-combat armor suits rounded the corner seconds later with a hospitalman trailing behind pushing a medical cart.
"WE'LL TAKE IT FROM HERE, SIR." A speaker-amplified voice spoke from behind him.
One of the Paladin suits accessed the manual control override and forced the door open enough for the other suit to reach in and pry it the rest of the way open as smoke plumed into the corridor. The second suit charged into the room with its flood lights on as a water cannon mounted on the right wrist sprayed flame retardant from a pack on its back. The first suit abandoned the door control and entered, emerging moments later with Chantal awake and coughing from inside the darkened door frame. She was quickly ushered into cleaner air, set gently down, wrapped in a blanket, and was quickly attended to by a hospitalman who began to check her vitals.
Relief flooded Henry’s mind as his adrenaline surge broke against the wall of worry he had built up during his mad dash from the CIC.
“Baby you came for me! I thought I was going to die in there." She pulled him into a tight embrace as she wept in cathartic release.
"Of course I did! I couldn't stand to lose you, especially not over something like this. So, what the hell happened in there?"
"Well you know me, I was all burning the midnight oil and then I smelled smoke! Then there were some sparks, the outlet pops then whoosh! My computer station and my desk are all ablaze along with half my notes, then the damned door wouldn't work! I had to drop to the floor under the smoke and pound on the door in hopes that someone would hear me. God, it was horrible... I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life." She replied with a deep shudder.
"You're safe now, it's going to be alright."
"I know, but what about my work?" She replied with a forlorn look back at her smoke damaged room.
"What about your work?"
"As you know, I lost a ton of it just now, but what’s worse is I don't even have the ability to recover them! Remember how I lost my backup drive last week? Like, I know I packed it and it is not here anywhere! It’s like some sick cosmic joke on me or something. Sorry! Gotta keep it positive, girl! I get to rethink my last few weeks’ worth of work from scratch... that was almost positive! I probably have most of this recoverable from email sent box backups. Fuck, what do you do if there's no good silver lining?” Chantal bemoaned.
Henry couldn’t help himself but laugh for a second, while his girlfriend stared at him, waiting for a response.
“I’m sorry, is this funny to you or something?”
“No, no of course not. This might be one of those times where the only silver lining is that you're alive. Plus, if anyone can remember and rebuild their notes, you can." Henry smiled down at her.
“Fine, fine, at least I am alive. I was only breathing smoke for a few seconds after all.” She said, rolling her eyes. “Thank you for rushing down here right away anyway, it means a lot. You're amazing, you know.”
Henry smiled, slightly uncomfortable for a moment, so he changed the subject.
“I do my best... Anyway, it seems like these electrical issues seem to be getting worse instead of better. Whatever patch these clowns have slapped on my ship to get her to pass inspection is clearly coming undone. What do you think is going on here?” Henry asked in mild exasperation.
“Honestly, I can’t tell you without digging into the systems myself, which I would rather avoid. My plate is full enough as it is right now, especially having to reproduce so much of my own work now. This ship has kilometers of power cables running throughout it, after all, and you have an entire loyal, capable team down there in electrical, so it should only be a matter of time before they sort it out for you. Let them do their jobs without harassing them too much, please?”
Henry felt a little irked at her for not giving him credit to know not to go overboard, but he stowed it, seeing as she ultimately was right.
“The crew has been under a lot of stress, too, between the technical issues with the lights going out, losing power to workstations, or the constant antimatter threat. More than a few people have tried to convince me to turn us around and return to S33 for a more in-depth refit and repair cycle before we try the mission again. So far, everyone has accepted the fact that we are continuing the mission without much argument, but I fear what may happen if these issues are seen as getting worse. Our orders are clear, though, we must continue the journey.” Henry said, uncomfortable with the implications, even if he didn't dare voice it.
“You should get on the Q-Comm to report the fire to S33. Maybe they will order us back to base after this.” She offered, looking for a solution to an impossible problem.
“Good idea, at least the Q-Comm is still working. It’s incredible to me those particles maintained their entanglement once we passed through the baryonic barrier. That alone has been a huge morale boost, being able to contact home base with no time lag.” Henry replied.
“It’s incredible to you because you only have a basic grasp of the science, hon. But that’s alright, very few people truly understand it. That’s in part what you have me here for anyway. Einstein called the effect spooky action from a distance; I always liked that line.”
Henry ran his fingers through his hair and looked at Chantal, with a shake of his head and a smile.
“Listen, Henry, I just had a crazy stressful experience and I need to unwind. Plus, I haven’t slept in almost a day, so I am bone tired. Let’s go to bed, huh? What do you say doc, am I clear to go?” Chantal asked.
The hospitalman closed her eyes and shook her head before responding. "Yes, you are cleared to rest, and only to rest, do you understand me?"
Chantal mouthed a thank you before she took Henry by the hand and led him off to the captain’s quarters. Henry felt no desire to fight it, nor flaw with her reasoning. Sleep sounded good, really good. Plus, he was about an hour from the start of his sleep shift anyway, and Alvarez had the CIC well covered. The lights flickered again, but Henry very purposefully ignored it.
“Hey, since we have a little time and we are both a little wound up, Why don’t we take a shower together real quick?” She said with genuine enthusiasm and a wink.
“Madam, I like the way you think.” The couple raced just a bit faster than regulations would have liked, and arrived at his door in record speed.
Inside the room they fell upon each other in great passion and need, stripping each other out of their BDU’s and underclothes. Henry tossed a giggling Chantal onto the bed, and proceeded to kiss her neck and nibble on her ear causing her to purr in anticipation before he moved down her chest, past her navel, and then eagerly began to move his kisses in between her thighs.
“Hah…. I haven’t showered. Are you sure? Oooookay! I think…. Hah…. Okay.” She said breathlessly as Henry began to work his tongue until she began to shiver and squirm before she cried out as she melted in his mouth.
“Enough, please, I can’t take it anymore! Just fuck me already!” Chantal pulled herself together enough to beg for it. Henry stood rigid and ready and set himself to granting her request, first slowly, and then with a growing intensity. She once more began to squirm as he paid close attention to her hip’s cues, knowing very well by now what she liked.
As she climaxed again, Henry lifted her from the bed and pushed her up against the wall, and then bent her over his desk for a bit before he could take it no longer and they finished together.
“Holy shit… my legs aren’t gonna work for a bit after that one. Help me up?” Chantal said in between shallow breaths.
“Yes, ma’am. It would be my pleasure.” Henry said as he helped her to her feet and into the shower, staying in longer than was strictly necessary.
Henry left the steam first, once more thankful that his cabin included its own small bathroom, rather than a communal one. Being captain had its perks, after all. He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist, then handed another to Chantal who gratefully accepted it before it dropped to the ground as she stared straight past him.
“Henry!" She squeaked as she pointed past him.
"What?" Henry asked, confused.
"Henry, someone was in here!”
On their bathroom mirror, wiped from the steam were the words TURN BACK.
Henry's blood ran cold and his adrenaline spiked him into overdrive. He waved Chantal back into the shower and put his finger to his lips. She nodded then wrapped herself in her retrieved towel and dropped to the shower floor with her arms wrapped around her knees, whimpering slightly. Henry moved silently along the wall, watching the visible half of his room for any movement. He then burst round the door frame, only to find everything perfectly, precisely as they had left it. The shock of finding nothing collided with the spike of his adrenaline surge, which only fed his growing unease.
“There’s nobody here!” Henry called out after checking the closet, the only other place someone could have hidden.
“Did you lock the door?” Chantal asked, her mind already working on the mystery.
“I set the security protocol to auto lock every time it closes.”
“Paul. We need to talk to Paul.” Chantal said, squeezing her BDU’s up over her hips with a few hops. Henry pulled on his undershirt before tossing over her bra.
“Why would we want to bring that weasel into this?” Henry asked, incredulous at to how he could possibly help.
“Because he has access to the surveillance tapes, why else?”
Henry stared at Chantal, brimming with rage, trying his hardest to keep it isolated to Paul over the invasion of his privacy.
“Did you just say surveillance tapes!?!” Henry asked in an icy tone. “That does it, I’m going to strangle him.” Henry said, moving with a purpose toward the door.
“Stop. Turn around and give me a kiss. I already disabled the video cameras, at least all the ones I could find. He has audio at best, even that I doubt. What he does have that I want is the data from the motion sensor that he had installed just in case you found the more obvious bugs. Unfortunately, I sabotaged its effectiveness by blocking the sensor with dense foam, but there might be enough of something to give us a clue."
“How in the hell do you know about all of this anyway, and why the hell didn’t you tell me?!” Henry roared.
“This entire enterprise is run by an intelligence agency; how can you not have seen that one coming a mile away? I have gotten very good at catching bugs over the years. Just because I expect the invasion of privacy to be happening, doesn’t mean I have to make it easy on them. Just be happy I already took care of the issue, alright?” She replied firmly while staring him in the eyes with raised eyebrows.
“You’re incredible, I love you.” Henry blurted out before he could catch himself. Chantal beamed and tackled him to the bed sitting on his lap.
“What took you so long? Never mind, don’t answer that. I love you too, man have I wanted to say that one for a while now.”
“You know these things aren’t easy for me. I had to be sure, I also didn’t want to mess anything up. We need to be able to work together even if we had turned out to be a bad couple.” Henry admitted, Chantal made an show as she thought it over, but she then smiled and helped Henry to his feet.
“Alright, my captain. You speak great wisdom. While I have certainly felt, and thoroughly enjoyed, the depths of your passion, it is really nice to hear about it too. I do think it makes it all the better that you rule said passion with reason. It’s just one of the many things I love about you.” She said, laying her hand over his heart.
Henry took her other hand and kissed it before replying. “I think above all, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t take you for granted, nor suffer the same in reverse. A wise woman once gave me some great advice there that I have taken to heart.”
“Okay, Romeo, maybe you have a better handle on these things than you think. Now… Let’s go interrogate Paul.” Chantal had a fire in her eyes that Henry was loving very much at that moment.
“I have wanted to turn the screws on that spook for a while now.” Henry smiled as he spoke, and he opened up the connection to the ship’s intranet through his neural implant to send a message.
MEET ME IN YOUR QUARTERS IN 5 MINUTES FOR A DISCUSSION OF CRITICAL IMPORTANCE – CPT. O'TOOLE
“That ought to get him there and alone.” Henry smirked. “Let’s go.”
Together, they made their way to Paul’s equivalent-sized quarters, which he had somehow secured for himself in the ship design to help facilitate his role as the official thorn in Henry’s paw. I guess being the captain’s handler has its perks as well. Henry’s eye twitched at the corner.
After making them wait far too long, Paul opened the door and gesturing them inside. The door closed and Paul turned towards them, narrowing his eyes, studying them both.
“Is this about the fire?” Paul asked before Henry punched the weasel right in the diaphragm, forcing him to gasp for air. The look of shock on his face as he bent forwards was priceless.
“What the fuck, Henry!?” Paul managed to choke out after a minute between gasps.
“Relax, I didn’t do any permanent damage, yet.” Henry said, Paul for just a second showed actual fear in his eyes before he sneered in defiance. “Oh? That got your attention, did it? Why were you spying on me?” Henry growled.
Paul closed his eyes, dropped his head, and began to laugh before Henry grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the wall. Foolishly, Paul even then kept laughing amidst the gasping. So Henry squeezed until Paul started slapping his arm, looking genuine fear once more growing across his face.
“Orders… I was following orders!” Paul managed to say amidst gasps and coughs.
“I thought it might be something like that. You're going to open up those files, now, and you're going to show me everything.” Henry said, dropping him to his feet at last.
“Fucking hell, Henry, I thought you of all people would have anticipated this was going to be the case. Do you think the people who made this all possible would simply let you fly around the most dangerous, advanced warship in human history without some insurance?”
“Don’t try and weasel out of your own personal culpability here. You may also want to think back to other people who were “only following orders” while performing acts they knew were wrong before you wave that line around like some get out of jail free card.” The fact that he had nothing to say spoke volumes.
“You should have told me, Paul.” Henry growled.
“That defeats the purpose! Plus, your girlfriend sabotaged them all before we ever left S33 anyway, and once more after! That type of tech doesn’t just grow on trees you know, and I don’t have an unlimited supply. You should be thanking me for covering for her and reporting back like things are normal!” Paul shouted in indignation.
“This is pointless, show me the files from around fifteen minutes ago, motion trackers, thermals, anything you have that's not blocked or sabotaged.” Henry commanded. Paul’s eyes narrowed, but after a long moment he huffed and closed his eyes.
Paul then sat down at his station and fired it up.
“Like I said, I've got practically nothing. No video, muffled audio and readings from what I assume to be a faulty motion sensor, that’s it. What are we looking for?”
“Chantal and I were, well, together. After we got out of the shower we saw that someone had written turn back in the condensation on the bathroom mirror. Only problem? My door auto locks when closed and only opens for my biometrics. That is why all of this even came up in the first place.”
“Motherfucker. That's a whole heap of bad news.” Paul said. Henry merely nodded, paying rather more attention to the screen to see if he could catch Paul in a lie about the extent of the spying.
“There’s nothing. No disturbances in the air that would even remotely resemble human movement between you two getting in the shower and you charging into your bedroom. With the noise of the shower and the distance to the microphone, there is nothing I can discern that is anomalous. You can see it all right here for yourself.”
Henry found himself even more confused and alarmed than before.
“How is that possible? Look again, run through some filters or something. There must be some evidence somewhere!”
“Alright, relax, I will get to work on this and get you a report by the end of C shift. In the meantime, you look like a mess. Get some sleep man! I can take care of it from here. Oh, and I want you to remember that I forgave you quite magnanimously for that little episode back there where you attacked me.” Henry and Chantal gave each other a look as Paul spoke.
“Wasn’t gonna apologize anyway, you had it coming. I’m going to hit the rack. I expect that report to be detailed and ready when I get up.” Henry took Chantal by the hand, and they left together, not waiting for a response.
“What a snake. Did you see him in there? Zero guilt or recognition whatsoever about spying like that. It just makes my skin crawl. Gives me bad memories.” Chantal said, turning pensive and quiet.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Henry asked, seeing that there was something clearly bothering her.
“I… had an uncle that lived with us from time to time and he would spy on me when I was dressing, try and sneak looks in the shower, stuff like that. Never touched me or anyone else that I know of, thank god, but man did it screw me up a bit still. Played havoc with my sense of security and even my sanity, never being quite sure it was real or all in my head. I wish I had said something, but I was afraid everyone would think I was overreacting or imagining it. I saw it in his eyes though, that look of... predatory lust. At least I didn't see anything like that in Paul's eyes. To this day it makes my skin crawl.”
“Good God, I can see how alone you must have felt in the middle of all that.” He squeezed her hand, she smiled up at him.
“Yeah, that was one of the hardest parts. I don’t think Paul is some raging pervert or anything, but it concerns me how normalized it was to him. Even if he isn’t being a creep with it, as if we can take his claims to be covering for me at face value. There is still no way I am going to let him have easy access to intimate videos of us, if I can possibly help it.” Chantal said before adding, “I’ll be all right, don’t worry about me. Let’s just get some sleep.”
Henry put his palm against the biometric scanner outside his room and the door slid open for them. They definitely needed some sleep after the emotional roller coaster of the past few hours, and the irresistible warm embrace of his bed called for him. The Q-Comm report could wait until he woke, he decided.
Better to have the electrical inspection ordered up, too.
I WANT A FULL REPORT AND INSPECTION PERFORMED ON THE ELECTRICAL FIRE IN CHANTAL’S ROOM BY THE START OF A SHIFT. – CAPT. O'TOOLE
Good enough. Henry thought as he sent the message. Now he could sleep. The chief could handle it from there.
MEANWHILE…
DATE : MARCH 10th, 7 A.U. LOCATION: SOL SYSTEM, ABOARD UTRN INDOMITABLE WILL
FIREMAN APPRENTICE SARAH CALLAHAN
It'll be back again tonight...
Sarah’s haunted thoughts repeated like a mantra. She had to be ready, but how? Her skin crawled and itched, the long sleeves of her BDU’s prevented her from being able to do anything about the painful sensation from the inflamed scratches they hid. She blearily rubbed at her sunken eyes, and she drained the rest of her coffee. All the numbers on the screen had started bleeding in together and her eyes hurt horribly, with the throbbing pain in her abdomen only compounding her misery.
“My god, Sarah, you look a wreck, hon. How have you been sleeping?” Yvonne, her shift partner asked, with concern in her voice.
“I have a monster tension headache, I just hope the meds kick in soon. Can you check my math? I need to get out of these white lights for a few minutes. Close my eyes for a bit, something, anything. I've been having nightmares again.” Sarah felt good, being able to admit it, and Yvonne had long since proven her friendship, so it was easier to actually speak.
“Yeah, no prob. As soon as I am done here I will check your readings and we can get out of here. Do you mean nightmares from the invasion?” Yvonne asked, carefully picking her words and tone.
“Kind of the same general themes, but different. Everything is going wrong, like the worst possible outcomes of my worst nightmares are all combining together. Like, it feels actively malicious, I don't know, its hard to explain...” Sarah said, bleakly.
“That’s hard, I am sorry. You need a shower, and an uninterrupted nap. Sleep deprivation plays all kinds of hell on the body and mind. I had a friend who went through an insomniac phase so extreme he would go days without sleeping. Wound up in the hospital after trying to drive to work while hallucinating his dead fiancée was sitting in the passenger seat screaming at him to watch out. Wound up rear-ending the car in front of him. Thank God he lived to tell the tale, but that is why it worries me to see you like this.” Yvonne planted her hand on Sarah’s shoulder as she told the story.
“Yikes, I think I slept like two hours into my sleep shift before I started having the nightmares again, woke up, and passed in and out of some restless sleep. It got really bad around oh three hundred. There were sounds... noises like scratching and a loud bang, and the shadows were moving. I just kept feeling like I was being watched, but everyone else seemed to be having disturbed sleep in their bunks. God, it was a creepy feeling.” Sarah took a moment to compose herself.
“I know how crazy this will sound, maybe that I am sleep deprived and likely hallucinating like your friend, but just hear me out. There was something there Yvonne, in the dark at the edge of perception, I could feel it. I also know I wasn’t the only one tossing and turning either. I could also hear scratchy whispering, too. I just hid, strapped in under the weighted blanket. At some point I slept some more, I must have, but not for what felt like a few stressful and draining hours. I'm just making a total mess of explaining this, aren’t I?”
“No, you're fine, girl! I am sorry that happened, my dorm has been pretty quiet, but I have always slept like a rock. Is there anything I can do?”
“I could use a hug.” Sarah said, which caused Yvonne to laugh, breaking some of the tension. They embraced warmly for a good minute, which did wonders for relieving some of the headache and her black mood.
“Thanks, Yvonne, I know it’s all in my head and it’s a vicious feedback cycle due to lack of quality sleep. Thanks for listening without calling me crazy.“ Sarah said, shying away from the last thing she hadn’t the courage to say.
She didn’t dare mention how she had hidden under the covers as she felt it get near. How she had felt something pushing on the mattress. How as her fear peaked, she herself peeked over the covers to find nothing there just to have the oppressive feeling evaporate along with the sensation of pressure by her feet. Her dorm mates all seemed to stop stirring after that, and only then did the nightmares stop for her that night. By then she was left with barely enough time for one last short sleep cycle before the start of A shift that very morning. This was a secret she would have to keep to herself, nobody would believe her anyway.
“I think I'll ask the Chief for a break from my duties today to rest and to visit med bay. Maybe they can give me something to help catch back up on my sleep.” Sarah said.
“Good idea, can I come with? I’ll back you up.” Yvonne said. Sarah smiled at her friend before she nodded at her before they checked off the last of their duties on site and headed away to find the Chief.
2024.05.14 15:08 YourlocalTitanicguy Odd Titanica: Hollywood sleaze
In this edition of “Odd Titanica”, we are going to dive into the sleazy, opportunistic world of show business. A world that comedian Fred Allen said of, “you can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly, and still have room for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart”. Hyperbolic? Let’s take a look at Hollywood’s response to the Titanic disaster to see that there really is no business like show business.
Dorothy Gibson and the lost, first, film are well worn trivia by now. The traumatized actress rushed into production, her inability to process her trauma causing her mental breakdown, collapse, and retirement from acting immediately after the film was finished - it’s a perfect story to demonstrate the callousness of the film industry. But there is more to the story, and digging deeper shows us that “Saved” may have been the least sleazy project undertaken by the studios.
Dorothy’s account of the sinking and the suffering she endured filming “Saved from the Titanic” are predominantly found in two sources - The New York Dramatic Mirror and Moving Picture World. These were trade magazines, published weekly, and consisting solely of material related to the stage and screen business. These would be announcements of upcoming features, casting news, celebrity gossip, technical news - anything the movie star to the man sweeping the floor at the cinema needed to know. And they included ads … lots and lots of ads.
Immediately realizing that Titanic was not only a horrible tragedy but an incredible business opportunity, Moving Picture World got to work. As people stormed White Star Line offices, and raided newspaper carts for any drop of news regarding the sinking, Moving Picture World provided the latest in Titanic news; or perhaps we should say “Titanic” news.
The headlines of the April 27th issue may have screamed TITANIC, but as the public grabbed their copy and hurriedly flipped through the pages, they found that what they were actually given was ads. Those eye grabbing headlines were followed by much smaller print-
TITANIC EFFORTS... are being exerted by Champion to put before the exhibitors that will make them regular Champ Patrons! Get the following latest [releases] and you’ll be convinced!.
UNSINKABLE … is the reputation of Rep productions, but these two releases will sink into the minds of everyone who sees them and will remain there as worthy object lessons.
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN …suggested by the poem of Elizabeth Barret Browning in 2 reels this Tuesday!
THE GREATEST MOTION PICTURE OF NATIONAL INTEREST - THE SINKING OF…. the big battleship. Remember the Maine!
THE DEATH SHIP...a sensational two reel drama of the sea containing one of the most thrilling dynamite explosions imaginable!
For all the slimy marketing tricks, flipping through the pages still has plenty of legitimate ads for real Titanic newsreels, movies, and a specific type of presentation known a Myriorama involving painting, music, and recitation. But, show business would strike again - the ads were legitimate, but what they were advertising was not. History has sort of forgotten the huge demand for Titanic media in the wake of the sinking, something that didn’t really exist. When cinema owners would order these “only surviving genuine negatives of the disaster” complete with lobby display package, they instead received-
Once this ruse was discovered, the studios shifted gears. The next step was to advertise film along with presentations by “A Lecturer who was on board”. When the audience realized the lecturer was not on Titanic and demanded a refund - the response from the managers was
As for the movies themselves?
But, where was Dorothy in all this? Tucked in the very back of the magazine, after another newsreel ad,, we get to the celebrity sighting and gossip section. Ed Lux of the Rex Film Exchange was in town, Dan Markowitz of Fox Pictures was as well, Arthur Schmidt of the Victor Film Company was seen having a lovely spa at a Turkish Bath, Sam Gobel of the St Louis Motion Picture Company has been walking up and down 42nd street, we don’t know if Southern film maker Henry Wasserman is still here but he might be, Dorothy Gibson survived the sinking of the Titanic, and the Director of Selig Pictures took some actresses to Santa Catalina for a swim and a photoshoot and they had a great time.
By the following edition, on May 2nd, Moving Picture World was also able to provide its readers with the first stills from “Saved from the Titanic” and a feature on Dorothy. Along with this, tucked in the editorials, the magazine finally published a piece of truthful news about the Titanic disaster-
submitted by YourlocalTitanicguy to titanic [link] [comments]
Dorothy Gibson and the lost, first, film are well worn trivia by now. The traumatized actress rushed into production, her inability to process her trauma causing her mental breakdown, collapse, and retirement from acting immediately after the film was finished - it’s a perfect story to demonstrate the callousness of the film industry. But there is more to the story, and digging deeper shows us that “Saved” may have been the least sleazy project undertaken by the studios.
Dorothy’s account of the sinking and the suffering she endured filming “Saved from the Titanic” are predominantly found in two sources - The New York Dramatic Mirror and Moving Picture World. These were trade magazines, published weekly, and consisting solely of material related to the stage and screen business. These would be announcements of upcoming features, casting news, celebrity gossip, technical news - anything the movie star to the man sweeping the floor at the cinema needed to know. And they included ads … lots and lots of ads.
Immediately realizing that Titanic was not only a horrible tragedy but an incredible business opportunity, Moving Picture World got to work. As people stormed White Star Line offices, and raided newspaper carts for any drop of news regarding the sinking, Moving Picture World provided the latest in Titanic news; or perhaps we should say “Titanic” news.
The headlines of the April 27th issue may have screamed TITANIC, but as the public grabbed their copy and hurriedly flipped through the pages, they found that what they were actually given was ads. Those eye grabbing headlines were followed by much smaller print-
TITANIC EFFORTS... are being exerted by Champion to put before the exhibitors that will make them regular Champ Patrons! Get the following latest [releases] and you’ll be convinced!.
UNSINKABLE … is the reputation of Rep productions, but these two releases will sink into the minds of everyone who sees them and will remain there as worthy object lessons.
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN …suggested by the poem of Elizabeth Barret Browning in 2 reels this Tuesday!
THE GREATEST MOTION PICTURE OF NATIONAL INTEREST - THE SINKING OF…. the big battleship. Remember the Maine!
THE DEATH SHIP...a sensational two reel drama of the sea containing one of the most thrilling dynamite explosions imaginable!
For all the slimy marketing tricks, flipping through the pages still has plenty of legitimate ads for real Titanic newsreels, movies, and a specific type of presentation known a Myriorama involving painting, music, and recitation. But, show business would strike again - the ads were legitimate, but what they were advertising was not. History has sort of forgotten the huge demand for Titanic media in the wake of the sinking, something that didn’t really exist. When cinema owners would order these “only surviving genuine negatives of the disaster” complete with lobby display package, they instead received-
our astonishment to find the Lusitania and Olympic, and one or two scratch films of ancient days posing as pictures of Titanic.But they didn’t stop. Animated Weekly advertised that they were “the first to reach the wreck… chartered a tug from Cape Breton and rushed to the scene while the survivors were still in the water”. Cinemas began to promote footage of the sinking. Audiences wrote their disgust to Moving Picture World-
These representations are to the point of criminality … Take, for instance, the picture showing the Titanic with about a sixth of her forward length stuck into the iceberg. Everybody knows the collision did not occur in that manner!They pointed to the following ad as an example - FIRST PICTURES OF THE TITANIC OCEAN DISASTER. The cinema owners responded by noting that they had misread, crammed in tiny letters were the words “sunk in” so that ad actually read FIRST PICTURES OF THE TITANIC sunk in OCEAN DISASTER. It was the customer's fault, they said, to be stupid enough to think anyone could have actually filmed the sinking.
Once this ruse was discovered, the studios shifted gears. The next step was to advertise film along with presentations by “A Lecturer who was on board”. When the audience realized the lecturer was not on Titanic and demanded a refund - the response from the managers was
Those signs didn’t say he was a survivor.… and any attempt to charge him with the crime of fraud was absurd because, in his own words-
Of course I didn’t give him his money back. The sign didn’t misrepresent anything. West was on the Titanic, the sign didn’t say when he was.…which was true. The lecturer, Eugene West, had visited Titanic while she was under construction at Belfast.
As for the movies themselves?
We said we had pictures. If people were foolish enough to think we meant moving pictures, that was their fault.This particular cheated audience member was told if he wanted his money back, to go on the street and sing for it. Whether it was this, or something else, eventually the public snapped and began hauling out cinema managers and beating them in the streets. By May, the mayors of Boston and Memphis had banned the showing of any Titanic pictures - moving or still- within the city.
But, where was Dorothy in all this? Tucked in the very back of the magazine, after another newsreel ad,, we get to the celebrity sighting and gossip section. Ed Lux of the Rex Film Exchange was in town, Dan Markowitz of Fox Pictures was as well, Arthur Schmidt of the Victor Film Company was seen having a lovely spa at a Turkish Bath, Sam Gobel of the St Louis Motion Picture Company has been walking up and down 42nd street, we don’t know if Southern film maker Henry Wasserman is still here but he might be, Dorothy Gibson survived the sinking of the Titanic, and the Director of Selig Pictures took some actresses to Santa Catalina for a swim and a photoshoot and they had a great time.
By the following edition, on May 2nd, Moving Picture World was also able to provide its readers with the first stills from “Saved from the Titanic” and a feature on Dorothy. Along with this, tucked in the editorials, the magazine finally published a piece of truthful news about the Titanic disaster-
Senator William Alden Smith … declined to grant permission to have the cinematopgraph make a record of the sessions of the committee. “The sessions” he is quoted as saying…”are solemn affairs and must not be hippodromed or commercialized”. He is, however, falling into a serious error in judgement-…they sniffed.
As a matter of right, the camera man ought to have been permitted. The day of the enfranchisement of the motion picture will surely come .. which will give equal rights to the cinematographer and the newspaper man.Then, among the illegal false advertising and reports of public brawls at the cinema, they ended with-
The lesson of the Titanic disaster and all its incidents can be made far more impressive by pictures that move than by mere words in cold letters.
2024.05.14 15:05 YourlocalTitanicguy Odd Titanica: Hollywood sleaze
In this edition of “Odd Titanica”, we are going to dive into the sleazy, opportunistic world of show business. A world that comedian Fred Allen said of, “you can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly, and still have room for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart”. Hyperbolic? Let’s take a look at Hollywood’s response to the Titanic disaster to see that there really is no business like show business.
Dorothy Gibson and the lost, first, film are well worn trivia by now. The traumatized actress rushed into production, her inability to process her trauma causing her mental breakdown, collapse, and retirement from acting immediately after the film was finished - it’s a perfect story to demonstrate the callousness of the film industry. But there is more to the story, and digging deeper shows us that “Saved” may have been the least sleazy project undertaken by the studios.
Dorothy’s account of the sinking and the suffering she endured filming “Saved from the Titanic” are predominantly found in two sources - The New York Dramatic Mirror and Moving Picture World. These were trade magazines, published weekly, and consisting solely of material related to the stage and screen business. These would be announcements of upcoming features, casting news, celebrity gossip, technical news - anything the movie star to the man sweeping the floor at the cinema needed to know. And they included ads … lots and lots of ads.
Immediately realizing that Titanic was not only a horrible tragedy but an incredible business opportunity, Moving Picture World got to work. As people stormed White Star Line offices, and raided newspaper carts for any drop of news regarding the sinking, Moving Picture World provided the latest in Titanic news; or perhaps we should say “Titanic” news.
The headlines of the April 27th issue may have screamed TITANIC, but as the public grabbed their copy and hurriedly flipped through the pages, they found that what they were actually given was ads. Those eye grabbing headlines were followed by much smaller print-
TITANIC EFFORTS are being exerted by Champion to put before the exhibitors that will make them regular Champ Patrons! Get the following latest [releases] and you’ll be convinced!.
UNSINKABLE … is the reputation of Rep productions, but these two releases will sink into the minds of everyone who sees them and will remain there as worthy object lessons.
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN …suggested by the poem of Elizabeth Barret Browning in 2 reels this Tuesday!
** THE GREATEST MOTION PICTURE OF NATIONAL INTEREST - THE SINKING OF**…. the big battleship. Remember the Maine!
THE DEATH SHIP...a sensational two reel drama of the sea containing one of the most thrilling dynamite explosions imaginable!
For all the slimy marketing tricks, flipping through the pages still has plenty of legitimate ads for real Titanic newsreels, movies, and a specific type of presentation known a Myriorama involving painting, music, and recitation. But, show business would strike again - the ads were legitimate, but what they were advertising was not.
History has sort of forgotten the huge demand for Titanic media in the wake of the sinking, something that didn’t really exist. When cinema owners would order these “only surviving genuine negatives of the disaster” complete with lobby display package, they instead received-
Once this ruse was discovered, the studios shifted gears. The next step was to advertise film along with presentations by “A Lecturer who was on board”. When the audience realized the lecturer was not on Titanic and demanded a refund - the response from the managers was
As for the movies themselves?
But, where was Dorothy in all this? Tucked in the very back of the magazine, after another newsreel ad,, we get to the celebrity sighting and gossip section. Ed Lux of the Rex Film Exchange was in town, Dan Markowitz of Fox Pictures was as well, Arthur Schmidt of the Victor Film Company was seen having a lovely spa at a Turkish Bath, Sam Gobel of the St Louis Motion Picture Company has been walking up and down 42nd street, we don’t know if Southern film maker Henry Wasserman is still here but he might be, Dorothy Gibson survived the sinking of the Titanic, and the Director of Selig Pictures took some actresses to Santa Catalina for a swim and a photoshoot and they had a great time.
By the following edition, on May 2nd, Moving Picture World was also able to provide its readers with the first stills from “Saved from the Titanic” and a feature on Dorothy. Along with this, tucked in the editorials, the magazine finally published a piece of truthful news about the Titanic disaster-
submitted by YourlocalTitanicguy to RMS_Titanic [link] [comments]
Dorothy Gibson and the lost, first, film are well worn trivia by now. The traumatized actress rushed into production, her inability to process her trauma causing her mental breakdown, collapse, and retirement from acting immediately after the film was finished - it’s a perfect story to demonstrate the callousness of the film industry. But there is more to the story, and digging deeper shows us that “Saved” may have been the least sleazy project undertaken by the studios.
Dorothy’s account of the sinking and the suffering she endured filming “Saved from the Titanic” are predominantly found in two sources - The New York Dramatic Mirror and Moving Picture World. These were trade magazines, published weekly, and consisting solely of material related to the stage and screen business. These would be announcements of upcoming features, casting news, celebrity gossip, technical news - anything the movie star to the man sweeping the floor at the cinema needed to know. And they included ads … lots and lots of ads.
Immediately realizing that Titanic was not only a horrible tragedy but an incredible business opportunity, Moving Picture World got to work. As people stormed White Star Line offices, and raided newspaper carts for any drop of news regarding the sinking, Moving Picture World provided the latest in Titanic news; or perhaps we should say “Titanic” news.
The headlines of the April 27th issue may have screamed TITANIC, but as the public grabbed their copy and hurriedly flipped through the pages, they found that what they were actually given was ads. Those eye grabbing headlines were followed by much smaller print-
TITANIC EFFORTS are being exerted by Champion to put before the exhibitors that will make them regular Champ Patrons! Get the following latest [releases] and you’ll be convinced!.
UNSINKABLE … is the reputation of Rep productions, but these two releases will sink into the minds of everyone who sees them and will remain there as worthy object lessons.
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN …suggested by the poem of Elizabeth Barret Browning in 2 reels this Tuesday!
** THE GREATEST MOTION PICTURE OF NATIONAL INTEREST - THE SINKING OF**…. the big battleship. Remember the Maine!
THE DEATH SHIP...a sensational two reel drama of the sea containing one of the most thrilling dynamite explosions imaginable!
For all the slimy marketing tricks, flipping through the pages still has plenty of legitimate ads for real Titanic newsreels, movies, and a specific type of presentation known a Myriorama involving painting, music, and recitation. But, show business would strike again - the ads were legitimate, but what they were advertising was not.
History has sort of forgotten the huge demand for Titanic media in the wake of the sinking, something that didn’t really exist. When cinema owners would order these “only surviving genuine negatives of the disaster” complete with lobby display package, they instead received-
our astonishment to find the Lusitania and Olympic, and one or two scratch films of ancient days posing as pictures of Titanic.But they didn’t stop. Animated Weekly advertised that they were “the first to reach the wreck… chartered a tug from Cape Breton and rushed to the scene while the survivors were still in the water”. Cinemas began to promote footage of the sinking. Audiences wrote their disgust to Moving Picture World-
These representations are to the point of criminality … Take, for instance, the picture showing the Titanic with about a sixth of her forward length stuck into the iceberg. Everybody knows the collision did not occur in that manner!They pointed to the following ad as an example - FIRST PICTURES OF THE TITANIC OCEAN DISASTER. The cinema owners responded by noting that they had misread, crammed in tiny letters were the words “sunk in” so that ad actually read FIRST PICTURES OF THE TITANIC sunk in OCEAN DISASTER. It was the customers fault, they said, to be stupid enough to think anyone could have actually filmed the sinking.
Once this ruse was discovered, the studios shifted gears. The next step was to advertise film along with presentations by “A Lecturer who was on board”. When the audience realized the lecturer was not on Titanic and demanded a refund - the response from the managers was
Those signs didn’t say he was a survivor.… and any attempt to charge him with the crime of fraud was absurd because, in his own words-
Of course I didn’t give him his money back. The sign didn’t misrepresent anything. West was on the Titanic, the sign didn’t say when he was.…which was true. The lecturer, Eugene West, had visited Titanic while she was under construction at Belfast.
As for the movies themselves?
We said we had pictures. If people were foolish enough to think we meant moving pictures, that was their fault.This particular cheated audience member was told if he wanted his money back, to go on the street and sing for it. Whether it was this, or something else, eventually the public snapped and began hauling out cinema managers and beating them in the streets. By May, the mayors of Boston and Memphis had banned the showing of any Titanic pictures - moving or still- within the city.
But, where was Dorothy in all this? Tucked in the very back of the magazine, after another newsreel ad,, we get to the celebrity sighting and gossip section. Ed Lux of the Rex Film Exchange was in town, Dan Markowitz of Fox Pictures was as well, Arthur Schmidt of the Victor Film Company was seen having a lovely spa at a Turkish Bath, Sam Gobel of the St Louis Motion Picture Company has been walking up and down 42nd street, we don’t know if Southern film maker Henry Wasserman is still here but he might be, Dorothy Gibson survived the sinking of the Titanic, and the Director of Selig Pictures took some actresses to Santa Catalina for a swim and a photoshoot and they had a great time.
By the following edition, on May 2nd, Moving Picture World was also able to provide its readers with the first stills from “Saved from the Titanic” and a feature on Dorothy. Along with this, tucked in the editorials, the magazine finally published a piece of truthful news about the Titanic disaster-
Senator William Alden Smith … declined to grant permission to have the cinematopgraph make a record of the sessions of the committee. “The sessions” he is quoted as saying…”are solemn affairs and must not be hippodromed or commercialized”. He is, however, falling into a serious error in judgement-…they sniffed.
As a matter of right, the camera man ought to have been permitted. The day of the enfranchisement of the motion picture will surely come .. which will give equal rights to the cinematographer and the newspaper man.Then, among the illegal false advertising and reports of public brawls at the cinema, they ended with-
The lesson of the Titanic disaster and all its incidents can be made far more impressive by pictures that move than by mere words in cold letters.
2024.05.12 06:51 Mikron_Labo The Apology Of Chris To The World Of Placebo
 | Months ago, I wrote this post (Why Do Non-fans Hate Placebo & The Soulmates?). In it, I related my kean observations on how the outside world hates Placebo so much. For they indeed hate Brian, Stefi, the band, and the Solemates. They cast such fowel names upon us and say we are mentally untested, dirty, pale, unwell, et cetera. Because of Brian's Nancy-boy days, they assault him still, claming he is a sexy, sweaty girl who masquerades as a man with a ridiculous false mustache; and for Steff, they make him out to be the Swedish Elephant-man, although in reality, Stef is merely real tall and nothing unusual. submitted by Mikron_Labo to placebo [link] [comments] The enemies of Placebo compartmentalize Brian in a clear box I then shared a story about what recently happened to me. I was at the pub in Smolensk, Brussels, where I got into a big debate about Placebo with these two nasty Englishman. They insulted the Soulmates and Brian. I, in turn, insulted their prefered hero-band, Oasis. We then had harsh words. And later, they caught me alone in the bathroom and took my body apart. It was a massive attack. I had stood alone at the urinal when these two Englishmen quietly entered and got me. One man held me from behind, while the other man burnt my sideburn with his lit cigarette. He cupped my mouth to stiffle my scream, then knead into my balls many consecutive times. He followed with a headsbutts, right between my eyes. And then he and the other brute headbutted me back and forth as though I were but a ping-pongs ball. This went on until blood erupted from my every pores. I bled so much and cried so much. Delusional, I shouted for Steff, "Brian's Champion," to explode from the tiled wall and kill these men. But Stef did not come because he could not hear me. (He was probably out with Brian somewhere, doing some fun activity.) When I finally collapsed down into the toilet seat with my pants pulled down, these cruel guys glassed my abs with their broken beer bottles. I firmly resisted the urge to fight beck, and so I just kept my arms by my sides to fully receive the stabes. The pain was incredulous. Much blood and urine fell into the water below, and the tension was feverish. I screamed into the heavens with a sexy voice -- not unlike Rian Molok's voice. Because of the cuts, I had lost quarts of my fluid, and I thought I was to die. At this point, the men were satisfied with their handiwork and left me face down in the plastic basin -- a shell of a man, beaten within a milliliter of his fife. https://preview.redd.it/pbe4vtgmdxzc1.jpg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7de83277f9522b87941bb98b87bc875f7a9d46de Indeed, it was a thoroughly wicked battle-scenario that nearly closed my books. If not for the encourgament of Placebo, whose songs had sounded in my mind, I certainly would have died that day. Some might see art in this merciless beating: a tragic beauty with the aroma of funerary flowers. Others might see grim eroticism in it: the homoerotic sensation of beefcakes musclemen banging up some poor French guy in a filthy bathroom. Certainly, the fight captured all these things and more. Indeed, my ordeal was a scenario worthy of Placebo. Truly, there was an honor to be had -- to get publicly beatinged in the name of Brian, Stedd, and this and that. (Truthfully, I say: I would gladly take the beat-off again in the name of Brian, the Steves, Steff, or even Robert S. I would surely die in the defence of Placebo, and with relish.) And so, when I came on this subsboard and related this heinous shit to you, lots of you Soulmates said I was in fact wrong and that the English blokes was right. You also hershly criticize my words and called me "a stupid, a kinase," and this and that. Indeed, I was pushed hard by some of the Soulmates. In return, I pushed back harder -- the culmination of which was my self-dismissle from this subsboard. It was a powerful statement, to be sure, and it shooked many of you people to the cord (Goodbye Placeboard. I Must Leave Forever). Immediately after this events, I maintained the radio silence and went away as promised. However, there is more to the story. I, Chris, have now come to tell you about what had happen to me in the aftermath of our disastrous breakup. The strain almost killed me dead. The Almost Death of Chris, Thanks To YOU Solemateshttps://preview.redd.it/4mwk31iqdxzc1.jpg?width=1024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0321b5c860845a06a8f5a1ef5a1b0d31223b6b33After our big fight, I did not felt so good. Indeed, I felt so guilty -- dirty, naked, and ashmed. Truly, I felt as though I had been skinned alife and reduced to mothing but raw nerves. I fled the town, a man on the edge of time. Without hope, I sought refuge at the derelict's pub. Therein, I consumed fart too much, and as the result, I nearly died. I found myself lying at the bottom of the bottle. I had drunk all of its contents and then fallen within it. When a man consumes too much alchocohol -- and adds highly concentrated powder (inhaled through the nose) -- the results is explosive. And in my case, it brought on the near-death scenario. Truly, I felt like Brian in “Special K,” “Just like I swallowed half my mustache. Never ever gonna crash.” \"The End Of Chris\" I was found unconscious in the alley of the pub. I had a bottle in one hand; and in the other, I had a little Placebo comic from 1999 (a rare issue). On the back of it, I had written a little notice in black marker: "I am dead now; leave me alone." But whoever found me did not listen. They instead called the paramedic services. After I was collected by these paramedics, they took me to the clinic of rehabilitation in Poultice Marsala, Charleroi, Brussles. I would remain in this reccoperation facility for the next 48 hours. "You are most lucky you are still alife, Monsieur Chris." said the doctor. "For you were nearly without clothing and had consumed fat too much alcohol beverages. Certainly, the process could have killed you. Luckily, the curious memo you held in your hand (the Placebo comic) roused the suspicions of the constabulary. He in turn called the paramedics, who, in turn, picked you up and took you here: to this state-of-the-art Belgium Detoxification Center.” Yes, my friends, I, Chris, was almost killed by alcohol and exposure to cool weather as I lounged, half-undressed, in the filthy alley in Belgium. If not for that Placebo comic, no one would have ever noticed my wilting body. For it was the comic, with the cover featuring the sexy art of Brian, which caught the eye of passersby, and this kind sole then called the paramedic. So, indeed, again, Placebo has saved my life. I am thankful to you, Brian & Stefan. Bless your souls. Now, you might think that I must be pretty mad -- mad at the solemates who drove me to do bad upon my person and then almost die. No, my friends. On the contrary, I, Chris, take full responsibility for my almost undoing. It was my fault, and nobody elise. So, I have not come to solicit your apologies for almost killing me. Instead, it is the reverse. To You, My Solemates, I apologies (just as Brane Molko profusely apologizes to the Lady of Flowers). I am sorry for the hatesful words that past between us and led to our disastrous breakup. It all fills me with regret (much like Brian, after he views his pornographic memory sex tapes in “Forever Chemicals.”) And now that I have apologized and have been forgiven, I hereby fully resume my place on Placebo bored of directors. And now, I am hereby re-assimilated – fully reintegrated once again – into the world of Palcebo. Indeed, my name is back in the cards. I am most glad to be back. I accept your rapaciousness, Solemates! Thank your for taking me back into the boards again! You all have my true respect and gratitute! Oh! Merci, âme sœur! Chapter II: Chris Praises The Good, Real, True SoulmatesMy dear friends, I am constrain to be among you. Placebo is in my blood, like the disease -- but a good disease. It is shooting forth through the vain, spreading always nonstope. (It is rather like Brian’s song about his “hemogoblin,” which compels him to be a total maniac. Is it not?) My love for the Placebo and the Soledmates is just too strung to deny. This you must believe and rely upon, always.However, there is just one thing, and it pains me to say these: not all of you guys are for real. In others words, some of you guys are scumbag enemy spies who not only hate me, Chris, but secretly hate Palcebo and the other S. mates. Now, I have paid attention. Must of you guys on this board are indeed “goodguys.” There are so manay Soulmates whom I love. I cannot nameth you all, but here are some good guys, in no particular oder, who have helped me in many ways. You are all quite kind. I shout out to you: u/PlasticeEuropa- Some nice girl who speaks to me in French and tells me encouraging mantras, urging me not to use chemicals, and other positive stuff such as this. u/She'saCupCake - Some nice girl who oncogenes me when the going gets tough. Very wise; she also taught me "The Riddle of Molko" and the very simple key to lock it. And it blew my mind. I am grateful for this valuable lesson. u/Silver_Trainer_4836- This person is a good-guy 100%. He urged me not to kilt myself when the action got too hot in Brussels. "Chris, you mustn't die," he said. "Soulmates cannot die. Go, visit your grandmother in Marseilles, and rest on her cot. Then return to Brusshles after the noises in your head die down." And so, his reports made me become strong once more. Bless you. u/TheJFKSociety- You helped me greatly, man. With your comments and nice things. Oh, and: u/Ziggystardusts- You have the nomenclature of Bowie, so this makes you a superlative chap. Plus, you tried to help me when I cosidered jumping off the tower like Brian in the Pure Morning music video. u/TheLiving Master- Not too long ago, I was in jail for a month, awaiting arraignment for some false charge -- the possession of some pill (it was legal, rest assured). And when I was confined in the penal colony, this kind woman (i am somewhat shure it was she) sent me a little hand-held game. Tiger electronics. A Game about a Ninja. And this little toy kept me well while I was in jail. It kept me healthy and bodily focused. And then, at my hearing, when I stood before the judge in the Salles de Justice, I proclamed her genuine act of kindness. And this judge was thus heartwormed and dropped the charges forthwith. So I am gretefuil to all the parties concerned. u/Brian Swervo- This guy has zero relation to Molko, but he is A cool guy anyways. A jazz musician and very new-wave French. He sent me clove cigarettes, and sometimes he defends me in this subarea. MErci, monsieur Swervo. There are such much more people. However, I cannot be naming all the friends here because I am contrived for time. But you are all such great people. If Brian should happen to see you all, I guarantee you that it would melt his heart. And I say this with serenity. Chapter IV: Chris Excoriates The False SoulmatesBizon Looks Upon The Enemies of Chris With Scorn and ContemptAnd now, having said some nice things, I must tell you about the bad thugs. For there are enemy spies amongst us who must be dealt with, with a serious hand. I shall get into this now. These pretendos claim to be "Soulmates," but they ain't, and they attack Chris with a regretful passion that rivals Hitler at the height of his pressure-gasm. These are the ones Brain complains about in his song, "Surrounded by spies." There are two Sole mates of this subsboard whose names I will no say, but they are the worst critics of all. One guy, I know, is a powerful enemy Shaman (a huge black guy from Jamaican who works in West London). This man not only made fun of me on the subsboard but also sickened me with a demonic attack he issued from the airwaves. Devil ghosts shit from my private JVC stereo receiver at home, and the pestilence caused the UTI that I still cannot shake. And truly, I feel like I nearly was killed by this sadistic gentleman -- this spearmint voodoo tactician, who is cowardly, too. I add this because when I challenged him to hand-to-hans combat in a mutual setting, someplace unspecified in Europe, this guy just smiled wickedly. Although he is supposedly a Placebo fan, he is immensely wicked. I tell you this: Do not engage this man. The other bad guy of whom I speak identifies himself as "a nice teacher from Kent and LGBT activist." He wears sweater vests and pretends to be kind to all; he is also quite smug and brags about his "little, modest house," which ain't modest at all, but real big. But he ain't a good guy. He is a psychopathic liar. He attacked my writing something awful. And when I said I would meet him at his house in Kent to discuss your differences, he told me to "GO Fock Yourself." (He is CLEARLY a racist pig against the French, and he is still mad about the wars between the English and French, which took place eons ago. What a dickshead!) Hey, you -- the Jamacian and English teacher. I had brought you nothing but friendships, and you have indeed push a sharp pencil into my navel (for that is how your disrespect felt to me). You then attacked me, slandering me in these boards like there is not tomorrow. As a result, I nearly died of alcoholic drinking attack. I swear, if Brian heard this shit, he would issue forth his helper Stefan, who would make nothing out of you both. You are the real disease to the Placebo. I have my eyes on both of you at all times, and do not think you will get away with the evils you have done to me, Chris. The fates will get you one of these days. And that is all for now. But please know that there are other, lesser enemies whom I do not mention here. These two are like the bosses, whereas the others are underlings of lesser importance. It is up to you, Soulmates, to find these people. First, I ask that you chastise them. Give them the chance to reform. However, if they ignore the admoistation, I charge you to eliminate these men. No, no, I did not mention the use of violence. Did I imply it? I cannot say. It is up to you to interpret my words, then use the apropos leveler of action. Do not restraint yourself. Do What you feel is right. LEt Placebo guide your hands and "Come Up on Infra-red" on their ass. Brian, Coming Up On Infra-Red To Obliterate The Foes Chapter V: The Conclusion of ChrisAnd last week I finally left Brussels. In the words of B. Molko, I too needed “a change of environment – to get the fucke out of here” (Brian, Chem Trials).I put all my stuff into the storage prison and caught on the plane to Canada. So, yes, I am now in Quebec, working as a fisherman with my cousin Philippe, and the sea-air has helped to purge my sinus; I have found peace and enjoyment in my live once more -- something I have not felt since I cannot remember when. I am working from the piers and catchup with the crabs on the sting line, and I feel quite alright, so no worries. In my next post, I will tell you of this fishing business and its relation to Placebo -- because, indeed, I have discovered a very startling connection between the sea animals and Placebo: the music. Also, I will be giving you other reconciliations, and little mummers of things relative to Brian, Steff, Stefard, and Sweetie Steve. I Love You Guys – This You Must “Breathe … breathe ... breathe ... breath ... believe." Du Québec avec amour, Chris |
2024.05.07 21:40 CIAHerpes Plausibility for a story
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
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:
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.
submitted by CIAHerpes to NoSleepAuthors [link] [comments]
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
- Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”
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.
2024.05.01 06:29 CIAHerpes 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:
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.
submitted by CIAHerpes to TheDarkGathering [link] [comments]
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
- Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”
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.
2024.05.01 06:27 CIAHerpes 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:
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.
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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:
- 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.
- 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.
- When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
- Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”
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.
2024.05.01 06:27 CIAHerpes 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:
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.
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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:
- 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.
- 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.
- When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
- Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”
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.
2024.05.01 06:25 CIAHerpes 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:
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.
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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:
- 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.
- 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.
- When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
- Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”
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.
2024.05.01 06:24 CIAHerpes 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:
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.
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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:
- 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.
- 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.
- When the sirens in the center of Naraka wail, the firestorms are coming. Seek shelter immediately.
- Those rare ones who ascend the silver spire at the end of Naraka may find salvation, even in the city of shadows.”
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.
2024.04.27 04:31 DragonKnov Kunlun Sect's Weakest Disciple: Chapter 02
[📖First ⏮️Previous Next⏭️]
"Mooo~ Junior Brother, where are you looking?" A grumbling voice with a teasing lilt interrupted Ji Wuye's wandering gaze.
A group of giggling Senior disciples sauntered over, their martial robes swishing as they blocked his view of the elegant lady who had regarded him with a contemptuous curl of her lips.
Ji Wuye smiled, "Ah...Senior Sisters, Big Sister, please give me a moment...Ji is exhausted," he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
The surrounding Senior Sisters giggled knowingly, their eyes sparkling with mischief as they were well-acquainted with this scenario. "Just admit that we're not attractive enough," one quipped, sticking out her tongue playfully as the others grinned.
"Hmph, Brother Ji always judges by appearances, not character!" Another replied in a melodious tone, tapping Ji Wuye's nose mischievously with a slender finger, though their teasing cadences were laced with genuine concern for their Junior.
Ji Wuye understood their kindly intentions beneath the jests, responding with a light chuckle that eased the tension in his shoulders.
However, the unforgiving march of time was against him.
...
Once the ladies disappeared from view amid a rustle of silk and playful laughter, he turned his brooding gaze back to the spot where the woman had looked at him with such icy disgust.
"Mu Lan Rou..." he murmured.
Mu Lan Rou, one of the true protagonists of their story, had come from their humble sect and become Du Chen's closest companion. Despite her icy demeanor, she had grown increasingly affectionate towards the powerful Du Chen over the years.
She was the pride of the Kunlun Sect, their representative disciple and a highly regarded candidate to be the next Sect Leader. Exceptionally talented, she possessed ethereal beauty and formidable martial skill in equal abundance.
"I'm convinced that I've traveled back in time," Ji Wuye muttered in a low, cold tone, fingers clenching as his gaze shifted towards the distant sparkle of a small waterfall cascading down from the renowned Kunlun Mountain's lofty peak.
...
Inside the serene Outer Disciple Courtyard, several simple cots were lined up neatly. Ji Wuye, the sole remaining disciple, sat cross-legged on one of the beds, eyes closed as he centered his breathing.
At this quiet hour, most of the other disciples were likely out on sect missions earning contribution points or deep in training, improving their martial arts.
It was highly unusual to find someone like the unmotivated Ji Wuye lingering lazily in the courtyard after the rigorous morning practice sessions.
'The disdainful expression on her beautiful face, the grueling morning exercises, and most importantly...' Ji Wuye's brow furrowed as he sensed the peculiar flow of energy pulsing through his Twelve Meridians, so different from the stagnant trickle he was accustomed to.
This was a day that would forever be burned into his memory, a day he deeply regretted not taking decisive action. It marked the looming eve of his impending 17th birthday.
'The day before the Tower of God arrives,'
Only those disciples or people who were 17 years of age or older, regardless of occupation or physical limitations, would be compelled to face the deadly challenge of the mythical Tower of God. Even the elderly or cripplingly injured were not exempt from the harrowing ordeal.
Currently, at the tender age of 16, Ji Wuye was merely a struggling 1st realm martial artist, stuck in a seeming stagnant state for over three agonizing years without any meaningful progress.
Since the bright-eyed age of 9, he had been diligently practicing the foundational inner art bestowed upon all Outer Disciples of the prestigious Kunlun Sect - the Pulse Cleansing Gongfa technique.
The inner art consisted of three profound levels. Upon becoming a 3rd realm martial artist, one would have to seek an advanced or upgraded version of the technique to break through to the 4th realm required for applying as an Official Disciple of the sect.
Most of Ji Wuye's peers his age hovered in the slow-paced 2nd realm or teetered on its pinnacle, considered a normal attainment for their age range. "With my mediocre talent, it has taken me two grueling years just to reach the second realm as a paltry martial artist. I'm practically worthless,"
The 2nd realm involved the painstaking formation of a Lower Dantian energy center, while the elusive 3rd realm required manifesting a Middle Dantian.
As for the arcane requirements to breakthrough to the 4th realm, they remained a mystery cloaked in shadow to Ji Wuye. Even in the previous timeline, he had never been granted the opportunity to advance beyond the 3rd realm's pinnacle.
He was forever stuck teetering on the cusp, relying mostly on the esoteric skills he acquired from the Tower.
"With only fleeting hours until my seventeenth birthday, all I can do is attempt to forcefully break through by any means," Ji Wuye muttered grimly.
He gathered some fragrant green blades of grass he had collected earlier near the musical trickle of a waterfall, beginning to chew them into a rough, bitter-tasting paste. Ji Wuye then carefully applied the cool, viscous paste all over his exposed skin in glistening streaks, leaving himself appearing grimy and unkempt.
The only jarring difference was that this herbal paste emitted a powerfully foul, sulfuric stench, reminiscent of rotten eggs left to fester in the hot sun. Nostrils flaring to endure the unpleasant, eye-watering reek while taking minimal shallow breaths, Ji Wuye closed his eyes once more, features hardening into a mask of intense concentration.
To reach the second realm, one must sit ramrod straight in a lotus meditative pose and circulate their intrinsic Qi energy in a nurturing cycle through the body's Twelve Main Meridian Pathways.
The Qi functioned as a gentle, restorative current, steadily sweeping away any accumulated impurities, waste, or stagnation within the meridians over an extended period of diligent focus and time.
As the Qi flowed and ebbed in its cycle like the inhale and exhale of the breath itself, the martial artist focused their entire consciousness on detecting any lingering obstructions or blockages at each crucial point along the meridians' courses.
If an obstruction was pinpointed, the Qi's current was intensified in that localized area to forcefully break up, dissolve, and flush away the offending impurity.
With truly exceptional, prodigious talent, the full purification and restoration of one's meridians could potentially be accomplished within a rapid window of only 1-3 months' dedicated practice.
For those of average ability, the process often dragged on for a middling 6-12 grueling months of stillness and focus.
However, Ji Wuye had already meticulously cleansed all of his meridians through years of monotonous, consistent Qi circulation - yet still he could not manage to pierce through the shroud and manifest the second realm's Lower Dantian no matter how he strained.
Now, on the brink of his seventeenth birthday's dire deadline, he began to tentatively recall the esoteric, forbidden inner art of explosive progression he had covertly gained from the Tower in the previous timeline, an inner art that offered meteoric advancement and great rewards, but also carried extreme risks of internal injury or even death if mishandled.
'Pulse Accumulation Revolution Gongfa...' The arcane words ghosted through Ji Wuye's mind like a grim invocation, his jaw clenching.
Unlike the standard Pulse Cleansing Gongfa sect teachings which gently cleansed and circulated one's Qi between the Twelve Meridians over time to gradually nurture and manifest the Lower Dantian's formation, this heretical inner art focused on violently gathering all of the purified Qi harvested from one's meridian cleansing into an explosive, volatile revolution forcefully detonated in the area where the Lower Dantian should emerge.
Ji Wuye inhaled deeply through flared nostrils, centering himself as he proceeded to draw in his Qi and intensify the cleansing cycle with arduous focus as he had innumerable times before.
However, instead of dispersing the freshly purified Qi back out in a harmonic flow through the repaired meridians, he gritted his teeth and directed it roiling downward in a churning, condensed torrent of overwhelming force towards his lower abdomen.
The dense, pressurized deluge of Qi in his body rapidly coiled and amassed tightly in defiance of nature around the area where the mystical Lower Dantian gateway should reside, resembling a tightly compressed spring ready to detonate at any moment.
Time seemed to crawl by with each labored, ragged breath that escaped Ji Wuye's clenched jaw, sweat beading on his forehead and dripping down his furrowed brow as he strained under the excruciating exertion.
This barbaric inner art brought about a sudden, violent upheaval and forceful revolution rather than the nurturing, gradual rotation the body was accustomed to enduring.
Yet due to this brutally direct approach, the vicious Qi revolution tore through any potentially remaining impurities or trace blockages with utterly merciless, obliterating force - ruthlessly scouring his meridians spotless in its thunderous wake.
"UGH!" A hoarse, agonized scream was torn from Ji Wuye's throat as he violently lurched forward, a thick stream of warm blood gushing from his clenched lips to stain the bedsheets with gruesome crimson splashes.
The sheer brutal, unnatural force of the savage Qi revolution raging within caused his veins to rupture and tendons to snap with sickening pops, intensifying the merciless internal injuries wreaked upon his body in its thunderous wake.
Yet even as he shuddered, cold sweat drenching his brow, a faint, soothing warmth seemed to flow through his meridians - emanating from the pungent, viscous spiritual grass paste covering his skin in streaked patterns.
The herbal medicine's essence gradually calmed his frayed nerves and began knitting minor wounds, acting as a salve against the explosive technique's most dire toll.
This cyclical process of erupting internal damage followed by herbal soothing continued in waves of white-hot agony until the deep night at last fell over the Kunlun Sect.
...
As the obsidian darkness deepened, the frenzied, roiling force of the Qi revolution pulsing through Ji Wuye's battered form gradually smoothed out from chaos into a firm yet furiously turbulent, centered swirling maelstrom anchored low in his abdomen.
Amidst the churning cyclones of golden Qi intermingled with streaks of his own life's essence, a miniscule yet incredibly dense sphere of energy began materializing and rapidly coalescing, taking unstable shape in the area of Ji Wuye's lower abdomen where the elusive Dantian should form.
With each subsequent whiplash rotation and whirling compression, the sphere appeared to grow exponentially more massive and dense - solidifying into the unmistakable gleaming shape of a concentrated golden jade pill.
Once the sluicing flow of blood had finally ebbed to a sluggish trickle and the most dire internal ruptures mended, a smooth, warm glow radiated outward in pulsing waves from Ji Wuye's Lower Dantian region, indicating the overwhelming yet successful forced formation of his foundational Dantian core.
After what felt like an interminable eternity of torment and exertion, the battered Ji Wuye finally cracked open his eyes - dark circles heavily ringing the crimson-flecked whites as he sucked in a ragged breath, chest heaving.
To his surprise, he found that overnight several other lazy Outer Disciples had drifted in to sleep on the spare cots beside his soiled one, drooling and snoring loudly.
The alarming blood-soaked state of his shredded bedsheets and robes did not seem to trouble or even rouse the negligent youths, suggesting just how little regard they held for his well-being.
Yet the Ji Wuye paid their callous dismissal of his unspeakable trial no mind, his eyes instead widening in elated disbelief as a broad, exhausted yet deeply satisfied smile split his chapped, bloodied lips.
"It worked… I actually… did it, ha" Ji Wuye gasped out in a raspy whisper laced with smile.
Tentatively, he attempted to guide and channel his Qi once more - and this time, to his immense relief, it obediently swirled inward and condensed smoothly, storing within the confines of his newly-forged Lower Dantian rather than dispersing chaotically.
The hallmark of finally stepping past the threshold into the true second realm of the martial path was the foundational ability to properly circulate and contain Qi within the Dantian core.
However, Ji Wuye's hard-won moment of giddy joy was abruptly cut short as a ghostly transparent screen shimmered into existence before his face.
...
A/N
\ Meridians are the pathways through which qi (life energy) flows within the body. There are believed to be 12 primary meridians corresponding to internal organs.*
\ Dantian are three focal points related to storing and cultivating qi in the body, and lower Dantian located in the lower abdomen, about 3 inches below the navel. Considered the primary warehouse for qi.*
[📖First ⏮️Previous Next⏭️]
submitted by DragonKnov to HFY [link] [comments]
"Mooo~ Junior Brother, where are you looking?" A grumbling voice with a teasing lilt interrupted Ji Wuye's wandering gaze.
A group of giggling Senior disciples sauntered over, their martial robes swishing as they blocked his view of the elegant lady who had regarded him with a contemptuous curl of her lips.
Ji Wuye smiled, "Ah...Senior Sisters, Big Sister, please give me a moment...Ji is exhausted," he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
The surrounding Senior Sisters giggled knowingly, their eyes sparkling with mischief as they were well-acquainted with this scenario. "Just admit that we're not attractive enough," one quipped, sticking out her tongue playfully as the others grinned.
"Hmph, Brother Ji always judges by appearances, not character!" Another replied in a melodious tone, tapping Ji Wuye's nose mischievously with a slender finger, though their teasing cadences were laced with genuine concern for their Junior.
Ji Wuye understood their kindly intentions beneath the jests, responding with a light chuckle that eased the tension in his shoulders.
However, the unforgiving march of time was against him.
...
Once the ladies disappeared from view amid a rustle of silk and playful laughter, he turned his brooding gaze back to the spot where the woman had looked at him with such icy disgust.
"Mu Lan Rou..." he murmured.
Mu Lan Rou, one of the true protagonists of their story, had come from their humble sect and become Du Chen's closest companion. Despite her icy demeanor, she had grown increasingly affectionate towards the powerful Du Chen over the years.
She was the pride of the Kunlun Sect, their representative disciple and a highly regarded candidate to be the next Sect Leader. Exceptionally talented, she possessed ethereal beauty and formidable martial skill in equal abundance.
"I'm convinced that I've traveled back in time," Ji Wuye muttered in a low, cold tone, fingers clenching as his gaze shifted towards the distant sparkle of a small waterfall cascading down from the renowned Kunlun Mountain's lofty peak.
...
Inside the serene Outer Disciple Courtyard, several simple cots were lined up neatly. Ji Wuye, the sole remaining disciple, sat cross-legged on one of the beds, eyes closed as he centered his breathing.
At this quiet hour, most of the other disciples were likely out on sect missions earning contribution points or deep in training, improving their martial arts.
It was highly unusual to find someone like the unmotivated Ji Wuye lingering lazily in the courtyard after the rigorous morning practice sessions.
'The disdainful expression on her beautiful face, the grueling morning exercises, and most importantly...' Ji Wuye's brow furrowed as he sensed the peculiar flow of energy pulsing through his Twelve Meridians, so different from the stagnant trickle he was accustomed to.
This was a day that would forever be burned into his memory, a day he deeply regretted not taking decisive action. It marked the looming eve of his impending 17th birthday.
'The day before the Tower of God arrives,'
Only those disciples or people who were 17 years of age or older, regardless of occupation or physical limitations, would be compelled to face the deadly challenge of the mythical Tower of God. Even the elderly or cripplingly injured were not exempt from the harrowing ordeal.
Currently, at the tender age of 16, Ji Wuye was merely a struggling 1st realm martial artist, stuck in a seeming stagnant state for over three agonizing years without any meaningful progress.
Since the bright-eyed age of 9, he had been diligently practicing the foundational inner art bestowed upon all Outer Disciples of the prestigious Kunlun Sect - the Pulse Cleansing Gongfa technique.
The inner art consisted of three profound levels. Upon becoming a 3rd realm martial artist, one would have to seek an advanced or upgraded version of the technique to break through to the 4th realm required for applying as an Official Disciple of the sect.
Most of Ji Wuye's peers his age hovered in the slow-paced 2nd realm or teetered on its pinnacle, considered a normal attainment for their age range. "With my mediocre talent, it has taken me two grueling years just to reach the second realm as a paltry martial artist. I'm practically worthless,"
The 2nd realm involved the painstaking formation of a Lower Dantian energy center, while the elusive 3rd realm required manifesting a Middle Dantian.
As for the arcane requirements to breakthrough to the 4th realm, they remained a mystery cloaked in shadow to Ji Wuye. Even in the previous timeline, he had never been granted the opportunity to advance beyond the 3rd realm's pinnacle.
He was forever stuck teetering on the cusp, relying mostly on the esoteric skills he acquired from the Tower.
"With only fleeting hours until my seventeenth birthday, all I can do is attempt to forcefully break through by any means," Ji Wuye muttered grimly.
He gathered some fragrant green blades of grass he had collected earlier near the musical trickle of a waterfall, beginning to chew them into a rough, bitter-tasting paste. Ji Wuye then carefully applied the cool, viscous paste all over his exposed skin in glistening streaks, leaving himself appearing grimy and unkempt.
The only jarring difference was that this herbal paste emitted a powerfully foul, sulfuric stench, reminiscent of rotten eggs left to fester in the hot sun. Nostrils flaring to endure the unpleasant, eye-watering reek while taking minimal shallow breaths, Ji Wuye closed his eyes once more, features hardening into a mask of intense concentration.
To reach the second realm, one must sit ramrod straight in a lotus meditative pose and circulate their intrinsic Qi energy in a nurturing cycle through the body's Twelve Main Meridian Pathways.
The Qi functioned as a gentle, restorative current, steadily sweeping away any accumulated impurities, waste, or stagnation within the meridians over an extended period of diligent focus and time.
As the Qi flowed and ebbed in its cycle like the inhale and exhale of the breath itself, the martial artist focused their entire consciousness on detecting any lingering obstructions or blockages at each crucial point along the meridians' courses.
If an obstruction was pinpointed, the Qi's current was intensified in that localized area to forcefully break up, dissolve, and flush away the offending impurity.
With truly exceptional, prodigious talent, the full purification and restoration of one's meridians could potentially be accomplished within a rapid window of only 1-3 months' dedicated practice.
For those of average ability, the process often dragged on for a middling 6-12 grueling months of stillness and focus.
However, Ji Wuye had already meticulously cleansed all of his meridians through years of monotonous, consistent Qi circulation - yet still he could not manage to pierce through the shroud and manifest the second realm's Lower Dantian no matter how he strained.
Now, on the brink of his seventeenth birthday's dire deadline, he began to tentatively recall the esoteric, forbidden inner art of explosive progression he had covertly gained from the Tower in the previous timeline, an inner art that offered meteoric advancement and great rewards, but also carried extreme risks of internal injury or even death if mishandled.
'Pulse Accumulation Revolution Gongfa...' The arcane words ghosted through Ji Wuye's mind like a grim invocation, his jaw clenching.
Unlike the standard Pulse Cleansing Gongfa sect teachings which gently cleansed and circulated one's Qi between the Twelve Meridians over time to gradually nurture and manifest the Lower Dantian's formation, this heretical inner art focused on violently gathering all of the purified Qi harvested from one's meridian cleansing into an explosive, volatile revolution forcefully detonated in the area where the Lower Dantian should emerge.
Ji Wuye inhaled deeply through flared nostrils, centering himself as he proceeded to draw in his Qi and intensify the cleansing cycle with arduous focus as he had innumerable times before.
However, instead of dispersing the freshly purified Qi back out in a harmonic flow through the repaired meridians, he gritted his teeth and directed it roiling downward in a churning, condensed torrent of overwhelming force towards his lower abdomen.
The dense, pressurized deluge of Qi in his body rapidly coiled and amassed tightly in defiance of nature around the area where the mystical Lower Dantian gateway should reside, resembling a tightly compressed spring ready to detonate at any moment.
Time seemed to crawl by with each labored, ragged breath that escaped Ji Wuye's clenched jaw, sweat beading on his forehead and dripping down his furrowed brow as he strained under the excruciating exertion.
This barbaric inner art brought about a sudden, violent upheaval and forceful revolution rather than the nurturing, gradual rotation the body was accustomed to enduring.
Yet due to this brutally direct approach, the vicious Qi revolution tore through any potentially remaining impurities or trace blockages with utterly merciless, obliterating force - ruthlessly scouring his meridians spotless in its thunderous wake.
"UGH!" A hoarse, agonized scream was torn from Ji Wuye's throat as he violently lurched forward, a thick stream of warm blood gushing from his clenched lips to stain the bedsheets with gruesome crimson splashes.
The sheer brutal, unnatural force of the savage Qi revolution raging within caused his veins to rupture and tendons to snap with sickening pops, intensifying the merciless internal injuries wreaked upon his body in its thunderous wake.
Yet even as he shuddered, cold sweat drenching his brow, a faint, soothing warmth seemed to flow through his meridians - emanating from the pungent, viscous spiritual grass paste covering his skin in streaked patterns.
The herbal medicine's essence gradually calmed his frayed nerves and began knitting minor wounds, acting as a salve against the explosive technique's most dire toll.
This cyclical process of erupting internal damage followed by herbal soothing continued in waves of white-hot agony until the deep night at last fell over the Kunlun Sect.
...
As the obsidian darkness deepened, the frenzied, roiling force of the Qi revolution pulsing through Ji Wuye's battered form gradually smoothed out from chaos into a firm yet furiously turbulent, centered swirling maelstrom anchored low in his abdomen.
Amidst the churning cyclones of golden Qi intermingled with streaks of his own life's essence, a miniscule yet incredibly dense sphere of energy began materializing and rapidly coalescing, taking unstable shape in the area of Ji Wuye's lower abdomen where the elusive Dantian should form.
With each subsequent whiplash rotation and whirling compression, the sphere appeared to grow exponentially more massive and dense - solidifying into the unmistakable gleaming shape of a concentrated golden jade pill.
Once the sluicing flow of blood had finally ebbed to a sluggish trickle and the most dire internal ruptures mended, a smooth, warm glow radiated outward in pulsing waves from Ji Wuye's Lower Dantian region, indicating the overwhelming yet successful forced formation of his foundational Dantian core.
After what felt like an interminable eternity of torment and exertion, the battered Ji Wuye finally cracked open his eyes - dark circles heavily ringing the crimson-flecked whites as he sucked in a ragged breath, chest heaving.
To his surprise, he found that overnight several other lazy Outer Disciples had drifted in to sleep on the spare cots beside his soiled one, drooling and snoring loudly.
The alarming blood-soaked state of his shredded bedsheets and robes did not seem to trouble or even rouse the negligent youths, suggesting just how little regard they held for his well-being.
Yet the Ji Wuye paid their callous dismissal of his unspeakable trial no mind, his eyes instead widening in elated disbelief as a broad, exhausted yet deeply satisfied smile split his chapped, bloodied lips.
"It worked… I actually… did it, ha" Ji Wuye gasped out in a raspy whisper laced with smile.
Tentatively, he attempted to guide and channel his Qi once more - and this time, to his immense relief, it obediently swirled inward and condensed smoothly, storing within the confines of his newly-forged Lower Dantian rather than dispersing chaotically.
The hallmark of finally stepping past the threshold into the true second realm of the martial path was the foundational ability to properly circulate and contain Qi within the Dantian core.
However, Ji Wuye's hard-won moment of giddy joy was abruptly cut short as a ghostly transparent screen shimmered into existence before his face.
[>>[INFORMATION]<<] The Tower of God has made its arrival in the realm of Jianghu!
[!] As a seventeen-year-old, you meet the eligibility requirements to participate in this game!
[!] You will be forcefully transported into the Tower of God!
...
A/N
\ Meridians are the pathways through which qi (life energy) flows within the body. There are believed to be 12 primary meridians corresponding to internal organs.*
\ Dantian are three focal points related to storing and cultivating qi in the body, and lower Dantian located in the lower abdomen, about 3 inches below the navel. Considered the primary warehouse for qi.*
[📖First ⏮️Previous Next⏭️]
2024.04.26 09:08 CIAHerpes My name is Alice, and I fell into Hell’s version of Wonderland [part 1]
Every night as I lay in bed, I heard the screaming, the shattering of plates and glasses as my mother and father fought and threw everything at each other within reach. They were drunk again, as usual. I just hoped the police wouldn’t come again tonight. I wished they could be happy.
Finally, around midnight, the voices started to fade. I felt my eyes closing as sleep came over me. But, just before I nodded off, I glimpsed a pair of eyes with black, slitted pupils peeking at me from the corner of the room. Beneath them hung a wide, grinning mouth. The mouth had dozens of triangular, razor-sharp teeth that glistened bone-white in the dim glow of the nightlight. Unattached to any visible flesh, the eyes and mouth floated in the air like wavering moonbeams. I sat up in bed, stuttering.
“What… what is this?” I whispered, staring deeply into glowing eyes. “Am I dreaming?”
“No, not dreaming, Alice. Just mad,” the thing hissed, its sharp fangs pulling apart. It gave a high-pitched, insane cackle at this. “We’re all mad here. But your father is the maddest of all, I’m sorry to say. Or, perhaps he’s just a little odd. It is hard to be sane every single day, after all…”
“Who are you?” I quietly asked as a shard of terror pierced my heart. A childish voice in the back of my mind screamed at me to simply pull the covers over my head and hide.
“The Cheshire Cat, of course. I’ll be your guide when you need me. Your adventure will be starting any second now, Alice…” His eyes glimmered brighter as a scream rang out from downstairs. I heard my father yelling, and then a gunshot rang out, shattering the night. Something heavy fell, thudding against the floor. “Ah, there it is. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, after all.”
“What’s happening?” I asked in horror. The Cheshire’s Cat’s glowing face faded like the embers of a dying fire, but his voice continued to speak in the darkness. Heavy footsteps started to ascend the stairs. Something cold and empty slithered through my heart as a feeling of dread overcame me.
“He’s coming,” the Cheshire Cat said in a gleeful tone, the voice coming from all around me. “If you want to live, jump out the window. You have ten seconds to decide.”
“Alice!” I heard my father yell drunkenly, slurring his words. “Come here, right now. I need to talk to you.” I jumped out of bed, slammed my feet into my shoes and flung open the window.
“Five seconds,” the Cheshire Cat said cheerily. I looked down from the second story. My heart dropped as I saw the fall. “Better jump, Alice. You don’t want your adventure to end before it even begins.” I heard a hand roughly grab the doorknob. I crawled out the window, slowly letting myself down by my arms.
My father flung the door open. The front of his white shirt gleamed with slick, wet blood. He had a black revolver in one hand. With wild, excited eyes, he scanned the room, stumbling forward. His head ratcheted toward the open window. For a moment, our gazes met.
“You bitch!” he screamed in rage, raising the gun. “You’re just like your mother, always trying to leave. I’ll show you, you stupid cunt…” As I let myself drop, a gunshot exploded through the night. The window above me exploded in a shower of broken glass. I screamed as the chill night air whipped around me. The garden below rose up to meet me. I felt like I was standing on the tracks as a train barreled down on me.
I hit the dirt hard, rolling as I landed. A bush with sharp branches clawed my shoulder and back, gouging out burning slices across my skin. I glanced up, seeing my father drunkenly leaning out the window, his eyes unfocused. A totally insane, ferocious expression twisted his face into something inhuman and demonic. I barely recognized him.
“Fucking bitch! Stupid cunt!” he screamed, firing the pistol twice more. One of the bullets smashed the lawn only a foot in front of me, spraying grass and soil everywhere. I shrieked, sprinting across the yard in my shoes and pajamas. The dewey grass soaked my feet within seconds. But I knew I had more pressing problems than shoes.
I glanced back at the house, seeing the window empty. A thick forest loomed at the edge of the property. A blanket of shadows covered it, and I could barely see a thing. But I knew I had no choice. I sprinted into the woods, blindly tumbling through prickers and grasping boughs.
A torrent of flickering orange light suddenly illuminated the night. As I descended deeper into the woods, trying to hide myself, I looked back at the house one last time.
I saw a raging inferno there. Long tongues of flame hissed and spit as they licked the dry wood, flowing over the walls like water.
And in front of the hellish flames, I saw my father, a dark silhouette with a gun, striding purposefully across the yard toward me.
***
As my eyes adjusted to the dark forest, I caught a flash of something white sprinting through the bushes. I nearly screamed, startled into a state of terror. The creature turned its pale, dead eyes toward me.
He towered over me, about six feet tall. He had floppy rabbit ears surgically attached to his mutilated skull. Black stitches ran over his face in jagged patches, keeping his rotting flesh together. His white fur had a rainbow of fluids soaked into it, from blood to orange and yellow pus to other things I could never hope to identify. New trickles of blood and pus continued to leak out from the stitches crisscrossing his body. In his arms, grasped between claws like those of a tiger, I saw an unconscious child. The child had a deep gash on its forehead. His head lolled from side to side like a ragdoll’s.
“I’m late…” the rabbit hissed at me, his cataract eyes glimmering with insanity as they shone white in the pale moonlight. “For, you see, I have a very important date. The Red Queen is expecting the blood of a child for her shower, as she does every full moon. What keeps the skin fresher and younger than the blood of a little one, after all?” His lips cracked apart in a wide grin, showing blackened gums mottled with sores. His pointed, needle-like teeth reminded me of some nightmarish deep-sea fish. I stood there, speechless, until the sound of cracking twigs and whipping branches not far behind me startled me back into action.
I started running, giving the insane rabbit creature a wide berth. I glanced back, seeing my father’s pale, sweaty face through the brush. His lunatic eyes flicked from side to side. He kept the gun held out in front of him, his arm swaying gently as if he were caught in some hypnotic state.
“Alice! Come here, right now! How dare you…” I only glanced at my father for a second before turning my gaze forwards again, but, by then, it was too late. In the panic of the moment and the darkness of the forest, I didn’t see the six foot wide hole that stretched across the earth like a gaping maw.
I gave a startled shriek as my foot dropped into empty air. Before I knew what was happening, I was slipping, my arms pinwheeling. I tried to regain my balance, twisting my body around. I saw the rabbit there only a few paces away, grinning at me, the unconscious, kidnapped child slung across his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
I fell backwards. The scream that tried to rip its way out of my throat seemed to get stuck there, and I could do nothing but stare blindly up as the rabbit lunged in after me with a cry of excitement. The last glimpse I caught of the forest showed my insane father stumbling toward us, still crying my name with drunken fury. The air whipped around me, the roar of it like the whine of a tornado shrieking in my ears.
The hole at the top shrank into a pinpoint as the rabbit and I fell downwards together into total darkness. We seemed to spiral around each other. No matter how I tried to pull away, the rabbit always seemed to be right there. The last glimpse I saw before the shadows closed in was the rabbit’s dead eyes flashing excitedly as he glared at me with a face like a corpse.
Then the shadows drew around me like a curtain shutting on a stage. Only my own screams and the ragged breathing of the rabbit surrounded me for what felt like an eternity. Slowly, my consciousness slipped away.
After that, I remember nothing for what felt like a very long time.
***
I awoke suddenly, inhaling deeply. I shivered, my teeth chattering as I looked around in confusion. I beheld an alien landscape stretching out to the horizon. Gently sloping hills of black earth loomed in every direction. There were no grass or plants visible, but giant red-and-white mushrooms the size of pine trees grew in clusters along the peaks of the rolling hills.
Streams of fire crisscrossed the landscape like rivers from Hell. The sun here drifted along the slit wrists of the horizon. It looked like a cold, purple ball of fire that gave off a soft, moon-like radiance but very little heat. Thin, silvery clouds covered the sky in rising plumes of pale mist. The entire world looked dark, all the colors eerie and saturated, almost like the desert at the end of a sunset.
I looked around for any sign of the surgically-altered rabbit creature or the unconscious boy he had been carrying in his arms or even, God forbid, my father. But I saw no signs of any of them.
On top of a nearby mushroom that loomed twenty feet in the air, however, I saw a familiar glint of glowing eyes, their slitted, dilated pupils looking down with insanity. The dragonfish-like teeth of the creature’s mouth shimmered in his eerie, ear-to-ear grin. Over the course of a few seconds, the rest of his body became visible as well, fading into view for the first time. I nearly gagged as I looked up in amazement. It was a disgusting thing to look at.
The Cheshire Cat was entirely hairless, his skin black and reptilian. Patches of his flesh were rotting away, and his tail had started to look like a stripped wire. White bones and infected veins writhing with maggots gleamed through the suppurating sores.
“Cheshire Cat,” I whispered, licking my dry lips, “what happened? Last I knew, I was falling… there was some… hole in the forest, and it seemed to keep going on and on forever. There was a rabbit, too, but not a normal rabbit. It was like a rabbit from a serial killer’s nightmare.” The Cheshire Cat laughed at this, but it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. It reminded me of the laugh of a man who just had his throat slit. It was gurgling and deep, and carried through the cold, dry air like a scream.
“The nightmares swarm across this world like a plague of locusts. The Red Queen’s evil and sickness has infected the very foundation of existence. The barriers between Wonderland and Hell itself seem to grow thinner by the day,” he said, but the glee never evaporated from his expression. Across the horizon, a thin, high-pitched scream rang out, full of pain and mortal terror. The Cheshire Cat’s head swung slowly toward the sound. I followed his gaze.
In the distance, I saw a narrow castle with razor-sharp turrets that disappeared into the silver clouds high above. Thin murderholes spiraled up the outside of the dark granite surface. A giant flag rippled softly in the cold breeze. I squinted, seeing a black flag with a red heart gripped in a skeletal hand. Drops of blood dripped out of the bottom.
“They call it the Chateau de Douleur,” the Cheshire Cat said by reason of explanation, “the home of the Red Queen. It sounds like another victim has fallen into her clutches.”
“What… another victim?” I stuttered, a sense of horror filling my body with a sick, weak feeling. The Cheshire Cat gave a slow, jerky nod. His eerie, gurgling laugh rang out suddenly, making me nearly jump out of my skin.
“The Red Queen seems to think that bathing in the blood of children will keep her young forever. She has an iron maiden set up above the royal shower. Every month on the full moon, her insane, sycophantic followers bring her sacrifices. Young children, boys and girls no older than five or six, usually. The younger they are, the more purifying their blood’s properties, you see.” The Cheshire Cat’s teeth gleamed as another, far weaker, scream rang out through the night. It was cut off suddenly. The eerie silence that rang out in the aftermath felt deafening.
“Ah, there it is. La petite mort- the little death,” he said gleefully, another laugh ripping its way out of his throat.
“I don’t see how that’s funny,” I said. “You think the Red Queen murdering children is funny?” As if offended by my change of tone, the Cheshire Cat’s rotted, black body started fading out, but his grin didn’t falter.
“I think that if you don’t start running soon, you will experience it firsthand,” the Cheshire Cat hissed, his voice echoing from all around me as the last gleam of his eyes faded away. “Beware. The White Rabbit draws near.”
***
I stumbled through the dark, cold world they called Wonderland. The black earth under my feet felt soft and smooth. The smell of the giant red-and-white fungi that covered the landscape like redwoods permeated the area, giving off a smell like mushrooms after a heavy rain. I went in the opposite direction of the Chateau de Douleur.
The pale, purple sun had started to disappear over the horizon. The night’s edge slid across the sky like a razor blade, plunging the world into darkness. Within a few minutes, I could barely see more than twenty feet in front of me. The silvery mist I had first seen in the sky now started spreading its ghostly fingers over the ground, covering the world in a blanket of pale fog.
I heard the White Rabbit before I saw him. In a harsh, dissonant voice, he sang. His voice carried all around me, raising goosebumps all over my skin.
“When the Queen’s eyes looked down from the sky,
They gleamed like the slit wrists of the sun.
Her pale face watches, her dead eyes dry.
Their small faces shriek what she’s done.
“I could not stop the children screaming.
And I could not stop the acid eating the dead.
I could not stop the dead men from dreaming.
I could not stop the voices in my head.
“Fragments of moonlight shine on a kitchen knife,
Crimson and ruby-red and gleaming,
But the rabbit knows no peace in life
When the children’s voices never stop screaming.”
As I ducked behind the giant trunk of a mushroom, I caught a glimpse of white fur with a spiderweb of black, garish stitches running across his back. Slung across the White Rabbit’s shoulder, the unconscious body of the child lay, the head lolling from side to side. The White Rabbit was heading in the direction of the castle. He continued bellowing out his disturbing, strange verses as his voice disappeared off in the distance. Exhaling deeply, I slunk out from behind the massive white fungal trunk. I stopped suddenly, a shard of dread piercing my heart as I saw what stood there before me.
A large man in a ripped-up walrus mask loomed over me, a blood-stained meat cleaver clutched tightly in one hand. The brown mask only covered the top half of his face. It had two giant white tusks jutting down past his chin. He had on a tight, soiled T-shirt that might have once been white but was now covered in a disgusting rainbow of stains. His fat belly protruded over his belt. The rolls of fat jiggled on his neck as he gave a strange, high-pitched laugh.
“They call me the Walrus,” he hissed through a mouthful of broken, rotting teeth, grinning at me. As he exhaled, I smelled rotten meat and the sickly sweet reek of infection. I backpedaled quickly in horror and revulsion. “I ate all the little ones, I did… my sweet little clams, the children of the damned…” He laughed at this, advancing on me. His dark eyes shone with insanity and hunger behind the eerie mask. With a greasy, muscular arm, he grabbed me by the neck.
I was put into a headlock and forced to stumble along behind him, my breaths coming in choking gasps. He pulled me into the mist. For a couple minutes, we went on like this. I continued struggling, trying to beat the giant man away with my hands, but he was too strong. When his grip loosened slightly, a powerful, echoing scream escaped my lips.
“Help me! Someone! Cheshire Cat…” I began, but he tightened his greasy, bulging arm around my neck, cutting off my wind. The world started turning white. A rising sense of animal panic swept through my body until the Walrus finally, mercifully, relaxed. I drew in a deep breath that tasted as sweet as honey, gasping and sweating.
“Don’t do that, my little clam,” the Walrus whispered with venom. His cracked lips had split into a furious grimace. His eyes shone with hatred. “You are courting death. Don’t you know sound draws on the Jabberwock?” He looked around nervously at the name.
As if in response, a high-pitched, animalistic roar ripped its way across the night. It reminded me of the screaming of a woman being burned alive. The echoes faded slowly, but with the mist so thick around us and the sky looking like a flat piece of slate, I couldn’t see more than ten feet in any direction.
Ahead of us loomed a shoddy, one-room cabin. The Walrus murmured to himself, gnashing his destroyed teeth as he looked down on me hungrily.
“You’re a beautiful little clam,” he hissed. “I think you’ll make a nice meal for Mr. Walrus. Indeed, a very tender little clam.” With one greasy, dirt-stained hand, he flung the cabin door open and threw me inside. The smell of cooking meat, rotting flesh and feces smacked me in the face, so thick I could taste it in the back of my throat. I bent over, retching. The Walrus closed the door as quietly as he could, peering through a tiny, smashed window in the mold-ridden boards of the dilapidated cabin.
A little girl crouched in the corner, starved and shivering. On a rough, wooden kitchen counter, I saw small, dismembered fingers and eyeballs. Spools of intestines were rolled up like sausages next to them.
A raging fire in the fireplace flickered and danced, illuminating every corner of this cabin of horrors. Over the fire, a child’s torso roasted, the fats spitting and dripping in greasy, burning drops. It was just the torso, with a ragged patch of bloody neck. It ended at the navel, with pieces of torn organs hanging out and blackening.
“Into the cage, my little sweetie, my little honey,” the Walrus whispered, pushing me forward. I heard the strange animalistic cry again, this time much closer.
“Fuck you!” I screamed, pushing the Walrus away. I tried to run for the door, but in a giant, single bound, he tackled me to the floor. I began shrieking for my life, trying to claw at the Walrus’ eyes. He punched me hard in the face. I saw white spots, bright stars that flashed across my vision. As my head lolled and I tasted coppery blood dripping from my mouth and nose, the high-pitched scream came again from directly outside the door.
“Help!” I cried. The Walrus froze, looking up. His dead eyes flashed with horror and a deep, ineffable fear. That was when the entire front of the cabin exploded. Shards of splintered wood pierced my skin like tiny hornet stings. The Walrus jumped off me, backpedaling quickly toward the back of the cabin. I raised my head and met the eyes of the Jabberwock. Like a dragon from an acid fiend’s nightmare, it raised its powerful body to its full height, looming twenty feet above the ground.
The Jabberwock’s skin gleamed a slate-gray color. Hundreds of pencil-thin appendages hung down from its enormous, fish-like face. The slow, rhythmic tapping of the fetid slime that dripped from its body mixed with its powerful breathing.
Its flat, hungry eyes bulged out, dark and lidless, reflecting the bloody light of the fire. Its enormous lungs inhaled and exhaled as it stared at us, creating the same whipping of wind and fury that a barreling train might produce.
The Jabberwock’s neck slithered out, writhing and serpentine, like some ancient Brachiosaurus’ neck. Its head hung low below its shoulders as it moved forward in a jerky, crawling gait, its webbed, dragon-like feet sliding across the soft black soil of Wonderland like a berserk centipede. It opened its mouth, showing hundreds of spiraling teeth that pulsated and twisted like the mouth of some demonic lamprey. The Jabberwock tried to force its entire body through the crushed wall, crouching down and giving another high-pitched scream. Its black eyes rolled back in its head, showing bloody veins at the bottom.
The Walrus tried to sprint for a back window, but the Jabberwock’s neck slithered out. Like a toad grabbing a fly out of the air, its lamprey mouth struck out in a blur. It attached to the Walrus’ back with a sucking sound. Blood exploded from the back of the Walrus’ body, splashing the coarse floor and broken walls of the cabin. I started crawling away. The panicked, agonized shrieks of the Walrus carried through the air, accompanied by wet crunching and sucking sounds.
As the Jabberwock shook its head like a dog with a chew toy, spatters of blood from the Walrus’ mutilated body the inside of the cabin. The frail, trembling girl in the cage in the corner cowered back from the destruction. The Jabberwock’s tail whipped from side to side, long and tapering like the tail of a dinosaur. Sharp, bony spikes protruded from the ends.
With a tremendous crash that shook the ground, its tail smashed into the cage. The girl gave a squeak like a strangled rabbit as the cage soared across the cabin and crashed into a wall. She tumbled head over heels inside it. Then the cage’s door fell open with a clatter of metal. The girl crawled out, her stunned eyes sweeping over me.
I silently motioned for her to follow me. As silently as I could, I crawled through a massive hole in the collapsed front wall. I glanced back and saw her close behind, her skeletal arms pumping quickly. A glimmer of hope flashed across her sunken, haunted eyes, a look I remember even now when I lay in my bed a few days later.
As we got out to the black soil of Wonderland and the thick mists of its endless night, the cabin fell into a heap behind us. The Jabberwock continued to thrash in the rubble. The sounds of bones cracking and sucking followed us down the rolling hills.
submitted by CIAHerpes to scaryjujuarmy [link] [comments]
Finally, around midnight, the voices started to fade. I felt my eyes closing as sleep came over me. But, just before I nodded off, I glimpsed a pair of eyes with black, slitted pupils peeking at me from the corner of the room. Beneath them hung a wide, grinning mouth. The mouth had dozens of triangular, razor-sharp teeth that glistened bone-white in the dim glow of the nightlight. Unattached to any visible flesh, the eyes and mouth floated in the air like wavering moonbeams. I sat up in bed, stuttering.
“What… what is this?” I whispered, staring deeply into glowing eyes. “Am I dreaming?”
“No, not dreaming, Alice. Just mad,” the thing hissed, its sharp fangs pulling apart. It gave a high-pitched, insane cackle at this. “We’re all mad here. But your father is the maddest of all, I’m sorry to say. Or, perhaps he’s just a little odd. It is hard to be sane every single day, after all…”
“Who are you?” I quietly asked as a shard of terror pierced my heart. A childish voice in the back of my mind screamed at me to simply pull the covers over my head and hide.
“The Cheshire Cat, of course. I’ll be your guide when you need me. Your adventure will be starting any second now, Alice…” His eyes glimmered brighter as a scream rang out from downstairs. I heard my father yelling, and then a gunshot rang out, shattering the night. Something heavy fell, thudding against the floor. “Ah, there it is. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, after all.”
“What’s happening?” I asked in horror. The Cheshire’s Cat’s glowing face faded like the embers of a dying fire, but his voice continued to speak in the darkness. Heavy footsteps started to ascend the stairs. Something cold and empty slithered through my heart as a feeling of dread overcame me.
“He’s coming,” the Cheshire Cat said in a gleeful tone, the voice coming from all around me. “If you want to live, jump out the window. You have ten seconds to decide.”
“Alice!” I heard my father yell drunkenly, slurring his words. “Come here, right now. I need to talk to you.” I jumped out of bed, slammed my feet into my shoes and flung open the window.
“Five seconds,” the Cheshire Cat said cheerily. I looked down from the second story. My heart dropped as I saw the fall. “Better jump, Alice. You don’t want your adventure to end before it even begins.” I heard a hand roughly grab the doorknob. I crawled out the window, slowly letting myself down by my arms.
My father flung the door open. The front of his white shirt gleamed with slick, wet blood. He had a black revolver in one hand. With wild, excited eyes, he scanned the room, stumbling forward. His head ratcheted toward the open window. For a moment, our gazes met.
“You bitch!” he screamed in rage, raising the gun. “You’re just like your mother, always trying to leave. I’ll show you, you stupid cunt…” As I let myself drop, a gunshot exploded through the night. The window above me exploded in a shower of broken glass. I screamed as the chill night air whipped around me. The garden below rose up to meet me. I felt like I was standing on the tracks as a train barreled down on me.
I hit the dirt hard, rolling as I landed. A bush with sharp branches clawed my shoulder and back, gouging out burning slices across my skin. I glanced up, seeing my father drunkenly leaning out the window, his eyes unfocused. A totally insane, ferocious expression twisted his face into something inhuman and demonic. I barely recognized him.
“Fucking bitch! Stupid cunt!” he screamed, firing the pistol twice more. One of the bullets smashed the lawn only a foot in front of me, spraying grass and soil everywhere. I shrieked, sprinting across the yard in my shoes and pajamas. The dewey grass soaked my feet within seconds. But I knew I had more pressing problems than shoes.
I glanced back at the house, seeing the window empty. A thick forest loomed at the edge of the property. A blanket of shadows covered it, and I could barely see a thing. But I knew I had no choice. I sprinted into the woods, blindly tumbling through prickers and grasping boughs.
A torrent of flickering orange light suddenly illuminated the night. As I descended deeper into the woods, trying to hide myself, I looked back at the house one last time.
I saw a raging inferno there. Long tongues of flame hissed and spit as they licked the dry wood, flowing over the walls like water.
And in front of the hellish flames, I saw my father, a dark silhouette with a gun, striding purposefully across the yard toward me.
***
As my eyes adjusted to the dark forest, I caught a flash of something white sprinting through the bushes. I nearly screamed, startled into a state of terror. The creature turned its pale, dead eyes toward me.
He towered over me, about six feet tall. He had floppy rabbit ears surgically attached to his mutilated skull. Black stitches ran over his face in jagged patches, keeping his rotting flesh together. His white fur had a rainbow of fluids soaked into it, from blood to orange and yellow pus to other things I could never hope to identify. New trickles of blood and pus continued to leak out from the stitches crisscrossing his body. In his arms, grasped between claws like those of a tiger, I saw an unconscious child. The child had a deep gash on its forehead. His head lolled from side to side like a ragdoll’s.
“I’m late…” the rabbit hissed at me, his cataract eyes glimmering with insanity as they shone white in the pale moonlight. “For, you see, I have a very important date. The Red Queen is expecting the blood of a child for her shower, as she does every full moon. What keeps the skin fresher and younger than the blood of a little one, after all?” His lips cracked apart in a wide grin, showing blackened gums mottled with sores. His pointed, needle-like teeth reminded me of some nightmarish deep-sea fish. I stood there, speechless, until the sound of cracking twigs and whipping branches not far behind me startled me back into action.
I started running, giving the insane rabbit creature a wide berth. I glanced back, seeing my father’s pale, sweaty face through the brush. His lunatic eyes flicked from side to side. He kept the gun held out in front of him, his arm swaying gently as if he were caught in some hypnotic state.
“Alice! Come here, right now! How dare you…” I only glanced at my father for a second before turning my gaze forwards again, but, by then, it was too late. In the panic of the moment and the darkness of the forest, I didn’t see the six foot wide hole that stretched across the earth like a gaping maw.
I gave a startled shriek as my foot dropped into empty air. Before I knew what was happening, I was slipping, my arms pinwheeling. I tried to regain my balance, twisting my body around. I saw the rabbit there only a few paces away, grinning at me, the unconscious, kidnapped child slung across his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
I fell backwards. The scream that tried to rip its way out of my throat seemed to get stuck there, and I could do nothing but stare blindly up as the rabbit lunged in after me with a cry of excitement. The last glimpse I caught of the forest showed my insane father stumbling toward us, still crying my name with drunken fury. The air whipped around me, the roar of it like the whine of a tornado shrieking in my ears.
The hole at the top shrank into a pinpoint as the rabbit and I fell downwards together into total darkness. We seemed to spiral around each other. No matter how I tried to pull away, the rabbit always seemed to be right there. The last glimpse I saw before the shadows closed in was the rabbit’s dead eyes flashing excitedly as he glared at me with a face like a corpse.
Then the shadows drew around me like a curtain shutting on a stage. Only my own screams and the ragged breathing of the rabbit surrounded me for what felt like an eternity. Slowly, my consciousness slipped away.
After that, I remember nothing for what felt like a very long time.
***
I awoke suddenly, inhaling deeply. I shivered, my teeth chattering as I looked around in confusion. I beheld an alien landscape stretching out to the horizon. Gently sloping hills of black earth loomed in every direction. There were no grass or plants visible, but giant red-and-white mushrooms the size of pine trees grew in clusters along the peaks of the rolling hills.
Streams of fire crisscrossed the landscape like rivers from Hell. The sun here drifted along the slit wrists of the horizon. It looked like a cold, purple ball of fire that gave off a soft, moon-like radiance but very little heat. Thin, silvery clouds covered the sky in rising plumes of pale mist. The entire world looked dark, all the colors eerie and saturated, almost like the desert at the end of a sunset.
I looked around for any sign of the surgically-altered rabbit creature or the unconscious boy he had been carrying in his arms or even, God forbid, my father. But I saw no signs of any of them.
On top of a nearby mushroom that loomed twenty feet in the air, however, I saw a familiar glint of glowing eyes, their slitted, dilated pupils looking down with insanity. The dragonfish-like teeth of the creature’s mouth shimmered in his eerie, ear-to-ear grin. Over the course of a few seconds, the rest of his body became visible as well, fading into view for the first time. I nearly gagged as I looked up in amazement. It was a disgusting thing to look at.
The Cheshire Cat was entirely hairless, his skin black and reptilian. Patches of his flesh were rotting away, and his tail had started to look like a stripped wire. White bones and infected veins writhing with maggots gleamed through the suppurating sores.
“Cheshire Cat,” I whispered, licking my dry lips, “what happened? Last I knew, I was falling… there was some… hole in the forest, and it seemed to keep going on and on forever. There was a rabbit, too, but not a normal rabbit. It was like a rabbit from a serial killer’s nightmare.” The Cheshire Cat laughed at this, but it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. It reminded me of the laugh of a man who just had his throat slit. It was gurgling and deep, and carried through the cold, dry air like a scream.
“The nightmares swarm across this world like a plague of locusts. The Red Queen’s evil and sickness has infected the very foundation of existence. The barriers between Wonderland and Hell itself seem to grow thinner by the day,” he said, but the glee never evaporated from his expression. Across the horizon, a thin, high-pitched scream rang out, full of pain and mortal terror. The Cheshire Cat’s head swung slowly toward the sound. I followed his gaze.
In the distance, I saw a narrow castle with razor-sharp turrets that disappeared into the silver clouds high above. Thin murderholes spiraled up the outside of the dark granite surface. A giant flag rippled softly in the cold breeze. I squinted, seeing a black flag with a red heart gripped in a skeletal hand. Drops of blood dripped out of the bottom.
“They call it the Chateau de Douleur,” the Cheshire Cat said by reason of explanation, “the home of the Red Queen. It sounds like another victim has fallen into her clutches.”
“What… another victim?” I stuttered, a sense of horror filling my body with a sick, weak feeling. The Cheshire Cat gave a slow, jerky nod. His eerie, gurgling laugh rang out suddenly, making me nearly jump out of my skin.
“The Red Queen seems to think that bathing in the blood of children will keep her young forever. She has an iron maiden set up above the royal shower. Every month on the full moon, her insane, sycophantic followers bring her sacrifices. Young children, boys and girls no older than five or six, usually. The younger they are, the more purifying their blood’s properties, you see.” The Cheshire Cat’s teeth gleamed as another, far weaker, scream rang out through the night. It was cut off suddenly. The eerie silence that rang out in the aftermath felt deafening.
“Ah, there it is. La petite mort- the little death,” he said gleefully, another laugh ripping its way out of his throat.
“I don’t see how that’s funny,” I said. “You think the Red Queen murdering children is funny?” As if offended by my change of tone, the Cheshire Cat’s rotted, black body started fading out, but his grin didn’t falter.
“I think that if you don’t start running soon, you will experience it firsthand,” the Cheshire Cat hissed, his voice echoing from all around me as the last gleam of his eyes faded away. “Beware. The White Rabbit draws near.”
***
I stumbled through the dark, cold world they called Wonderland. The black earth under my feet felt soft and smooth. The smell of the giant red-and-white fungi that covered the landscape like redwoods permeated the area, giving off a smell like mushrooms after a heavy rain. I went in the opposite direction of the Chateau de Douleur.
The pale, purple sun had started to disappear over the horizon. The night’s edge slid across the sky like a razor blade, plunging the world into darkness. Within a few minutes, I could barely see more than twenty feet in front of me. The silvery mist I had first seen in the sky now started spreading its ghostly fingers over the ground, covering the world in a blanket of pale fog.
I heard the White Rabbit before I saw him. In a harsh, dissonant voice, he sang. His voice carried all around me, raising goosebumps all over my skin.
“When the Queen’s eyes looked down from the sky,
They gleamed like the slit wrists of the sun.
Her pale face watches, her dead eyes dry.
Their small faces shriek what she’s done.
“I could not stop the children screaming.
And I could not stop the acid eating the dead.
I could not stop the dead men from dreaming.
I could not stop the voices in my head.
“Fragments of moonlight shine on a kitchen knife,
Crimson and ruby-red and gleaming,
But the rabbit knows no peace in life
When the children’s voices never stop screaming.”
As I ducked behind the giant trunk of a mushroom, I caught a glimpse of white fur with a spiderweb of black, garish stitches running across his back. Slung across the White Rabbit’s shoulder, the unconscious body of the child lay, the head lolling from side to side. The White Rabbit was heading in the direction of the castle. He continued bellowing out his disturbing, strange verses as his voice disappeared off in the distance. Exhaling deeply, I slunk out from behind the massive white fungal trunk. I stopped suddenly, a shard of dread piercing my heart as I saw what stood there before me.
A large man in a ripped-up walrus mask loomed over me, a blood-stained meat cleaver clutched tightly in one hand. The brown mask only covered the top half of his face. It had two giant white tusks jutting down past his chin. He had on a tight, soiled T-shirt that might have once been white but was now covered in a disgusting rainbow of stains. His fat belly protruded over his belt. The rolls of fat jiggled on his neck as he gave a strange, high-pitched laugh.
“They call me the Walrus,” he hissed through a mouthful of broken, rotting teeth, grinning at me. As he exhaled, I smelled rotten meat and the sickly sweet reek of infection. I backpedaled quickly in horror and revulsion. “I ate all the little ones, I did… my sweet little clams, the children of the damned…” He laughed at this, advancing on me. His dark eyes shone with insanity and hunger behind the eerie mask. With a greasy, muscular arm, he grabbed me by the neck.
I was put into a headlock and forced to stumble along behind him, my breaths coming in choking gasps. He pulled me into the mist. For a couple minutes, we went on like this. I continued struggling, trying to beat the giant man away with my hands, but he was too strong. When his grip loosened slightly, a powerful, echoing scream escaped my lips.
“Help me! Someone! Cheshire Cat…” I began, but he tightened his greasy, bulging arm around my neck, cutting off my wind. The world started turning white. A rising sense of animal panic swept through my body until the Walrus finally, mercifully, relaxed. I drew in a deep breath that tasted as sweet as honey, gasping and sweating.
“Don’t do that, my little clam,” the Walrus whispered with venom. His cracked lips had split into a furious grimace. His eyes shone with hatred. “You are courting death. Don’t you know sound draws on the Jabberwock?” He looked around nervously at the name.
As if in response, a high-pitched, animalistic roar ripped its way across the night. It reminded me of the screaming of a woman being burned alive. The echoes faded slowly, but with the mist so thick around us and the sky looking like a flat piece of slate, I couldn’t see more than ten feet in any direction.
Ahead of us loomed a shoddy, one-room cabin. The Walrus murmured to himself, gnashing his destroyed teeth as he looked down on me hungrily.
“You’re a beautiful little clam,” he hissed. “I think you’ll make a nice meal for Mr. Walrus. Indeed, a very tender little clam.” With one greasy, dirt-stained hand, he flung the cabin door open and threw me inside. The smell of cooking meat, rotting flesh and feces smacked me in the face, so thick I could taste it in the back of my throat. I bent over, retching. The Walrus closed the door as quietly as he could, peering through a tiny, smashed window in the mold-ridden boards of the dilapidated cabin.
A little girl crouched in the corner, starved and shivering. On a rough, wooden kitchen counter, I saw small, dismembered fingers and eyeballs. Spools of intestines were rolled up like sausages next to them.
A raging fire in the fireplace flickered and danced, illuminating every corner of this cabin of horrors. Over the fire, a child’s torso roasted, the fats spitting and dripping in greasy, burning drops. It was just the torso, with a ragged patch of bloody neck. It ended at the navel, with pieces of torn organs hanging out and blackening.
“Into the cage, my little sweetie, my little honey,” the Walrus whispered, pushing me forward. I heard the strange animalistic cry again, this time much closer.
“Fuck you!” I screamed, pushing the Walrus away. I tried to run for the door, but in a giant, single bound, he tackled me to the floor. I began shrieking for my life, trying to claw at the Walrus’ eyes. He punched me hard in the face. I saw white spots, bright stars that flashed across my vision. As my head lolled and I tasted coppery blood dripping from my mouth and nose, the high-pitched scream came again from directly outside the door.
“Help!” I cried. The Walrus froze, looking up. His dead eyes flashed with horror and a deep, ineffable fear. That was when the entire front of the cabin exploded. Shards of splintered wood pierced my skin like tiny hornet stings. The Walrus jumped off me, backpedaling quickly toward the back of the cabin. I raised my head and met the eyes of the Jabberwock. Like a dragon from an acid fiend’s nightmare, it raised its powerful body to its full height, looming twenty feet above the ground.
The Jabberwock’s skin gleamed a slate-gray color. Hundreds of pencil-thin appendages hung down from its enormous, fish-like face. The slow, rhythmic tapping of the fetid slime that dripped from its body mixed with its powerful breathing.
Its flat, hungry eyes bulged out, dark and lidless, reflecting the bloody light of the fire. Its enormous lungs inhaled and exhaled as it stared at us, creating the same whipping of wind and fury that a barreling train might produce.
The Jabberwock’s neck slithered out, writhing and serpentine, like some ancient Brachiosaurus’ neck. Its head hung low below its shoulders as it moved forward in a jerky, crawling gait, its webbed, dragon-like feet sliding across the soft black soil of Wonderland like a berserk centipede. It opened its mouth, showing hundreds of spiraling teeth that pulsated and twisted like the mouth of some demonic lamprey. The Jabberwock tried to force its entire body through the crushed wall, crouching down and giving another high-pitched scream. Its black eyes rolled back in its head, showing bloody veins at the bottom.
The Walrus tried to sprint for a back window, but the Jabberwock’s neck slithered out. Like a toad grabbing a fly out of the air, its lamprey mouth struck out in a blur. It attached to the Walrus’ back with a sucking sound. Blood exploded from the back of the Walrus’ body, splashing the coarse floor and broken walls of the cabin. I started crawling away. The panicked, agonized shrieks of the Walrus carried through the air, accompanied by wet crunching and sucking sounds.
As the Jabberwock shook its head like a dog with a chew toy, spatters of blood from the Walrus’ mutilated body the inside of the cabin. The frail, trembling girl in the cage in the corner cowered back from the destruction. The Jabberwock’s tail whipped from side to side, long and tapering like the tail of a dinosaur. Sharp, bony spikes protruded from the ends.
With a tremendous crash that shook the ground, its tail smashed into the cage. The girl gave a squeak like a strangled rabbit as the cage soared across the cabin and crashed into a wall. She tumbled head over heels inside it. Then the cage’s door fell open with a clatter of metal. The girl crawled out, her stunned eyes sweeping over me.
I silently motioned for her to follow me. As silently as I could, I crawled through a massive hole in the collapsed front wall. I glanced back and saw her close behind, her skeletal arms pumping quickly. A glimmer of hope flashed across her sunken, haunted eyes, a look I remember even now when I lay in my bed a few days later.
As we got out to the black soil of Wonderland and the thick mists of its endless night, the cabin fell into a heap behind us. The Jabberwock continued to thrash in the rubble. The sounds of bones cracking and sucking followed us down the rolling hills.
2024.04.22 09:05 CIAHerpes My name is Alice, and I fell into Hell’s version of Wonderland [part 1]
Every night as I lay in bed, I heard the screaming, the shattering of plates and glasses as my mother and father fought and threw everything at each other within reach. They were drunk again, as usual. I just hoped the police wouldn’t come again tonight. I wished they could be happy.
Finally, around midnight, the voices started to fade. I felt my eyes closing as sleep came over me. But, just before I nodded off, I glimpsed a pair of eyes with black, slitted pupils peeking at me from the corner of the room. Beneath them hung a wide, grinning mouth. The mouth had dozens of triangular, razor-sharp teeth that glistened bone-white in the dim glow of the nightlight. Unattached to any visible flesh, the eyes and mouth floated in the air like wavering moonbeams. I sat up in bed, stuttering.
“What… what is this?” I whispered, staring deeply into glowing eyes. “Am I dreaming?”
“No, not dreaming, Alice. Just mad,” the thing hissed, its sharp fangs pulling apart. It gave a high-pitched, insane cackle at this. “We’re all mad here. But your father is the maddest of all, I’m sorry to say. Or, perhaps he’s just a little odd. It is hard to be sane every single day, after all…”
“Who are you?” I quietly asked as a shard of terror pierced my heart. A childish voice in the back of my mind screamed at me to simply pull the covers over my head and hide.
“The Cheshire Cat, of course. I’ll be your guide when you need me. Your adventure will be starting any second now, Alice…” His eyes glimmered brighter as a scream rang out from downstairs. I heard my father yelling, and then a gunshot rang out, shattering the night. Something heavy fell, thudding against the floor. “Ah, there it is. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, after all.”
“What’s happening?” I asked in horror. The Cheshire’s Cat’s glowing face faded like the embers of a dying fire, but his voice continued to speak in the darkness. Heavy footsteps started to ascend the stairs. Something cold and empty slithered through my heart as a feeling of dread overcame me.
“He’s coming,” the Cheshire Cat said in a gleeful tone, the voice coming from all around me. “If you want to live, jump out the window. You have ten seconds to decide.”
“Alice!” I heard my father yell drunkenly, slurring his words. “Come here, right now. I need to talk to you.” I jumped out of bed, slammed my feet into my shoes and flung open the window.
“Five seconds,” the Cheshire Cat said cheerily. I looked down from the second story. My heart dropped as I saw the fall. “Better jump, Alice. You don’t want your adventure to end before it even begins.” I heard a hand roughly grab the doorknob. I crawled out the window, slowly letting myself down by my arms.
My father flung the door open. The front of his white shirt gleamed with slick, wet blood. He had a black revolver in one hand. With wild, excited eyes, he scanned the room, stumbling forward. His head ratcheted toward the open window. For a moment, our gazes met.
“You bitch!” he screamed in rage, raising the gun. “You’re just like your mother, always trying to leave. I’ll show you, you stupid cunt…” As I let myself drop, a gunshot exploded through the night. The window above me exploded in a shower of broken glass. I screamed as the chill night air whipped around me. The garden below rose up to meet me. I felt like I was standing on the tracks as a train barreled down on me.
I hit the dirt hard, rolling as I landed. A bush with sharp branches clawed my shoulder and back, gouging out burning slices across my skin. I glanced up, seeing my father drunkenly leaning out the window, his eyes unfocused. A totally insane, ferocious expression twisted his face into something inhuman and demonic. I barely recognized him.
“Fucking bitch! Stupid cunt!” he screamed, firing the pistol twice more. One of the bullets smashed the lawn only a foot in front of me, spraying grass and soil everywhere. I shrieked, sprinting across the yard in my shoes and pajamas. The dewey grass soaked my feet within seconds. But I knew I had more pressing problems than shoes.
I glanced back at the house, seeing the window empty. A thick forest loomed at the edge of the property. A blanket of shadows covered it, and I could barely see a thing. But I knew I had no choice. I sprinted into the woods, blindly tumbling through prickers and grasping boughs.
A torrent of flickering orange light suddenly illuminated the night. As I descended deeper into the woods, trying to hide myself, I looked back at the house one last time.
I saw a raging inferno there. Long tongues of flame hissed and spit as they licked the dry wood, flowing over the walls like water.
And in front of the hellish flames, I saw my father, a dark silhouette with a gun, striding purposefully across the yard toward me.
***
As my eyes adjusted to the dark forest, I caught a flash of something white sprinting through the bushes. I nearly screamed, startled into a state of terror. The creature turned its pale, dead eyes toward me.
He towered over me, about six feet tall. He had floppy rabbit ears surgically attached to his mutilated skull. Black stitches ran over his face in jagged patches, keeping his rotting flesh together. His white fur had a rainbow of fluids soaked into it, from blood to orange and yellow pus to other things I could never hope to identify. New trickles of blood and pus continued to leak out from the stitches crisscrossing his body. In his arms, grasped between claws like those of a tiger, I saw an unconscious child. The child had a deep gash on its forehead. His head lolled from side to side like a ragdoll’s.
“I’m late…” the rabbit hissed at me, his cataract eyes glimmering with insanity as they shone white in the pale moonlight. “For, you see, I have a very important date. The Red Queen is expecting the blood of a child for her shower, as she does every full moon. What keeps the skin fresher and younger than the blood of a little one, after all?” His lips cracked apart in a wide grin, showing blackened gums mottled with sores. His pointed, needle-like teeth reminded me of some nightmarish deep-sea fish. I stood there, speechless, until the sound of cracking twigs and whipping branches not far behind me startled me back into action.
I started running, giving the insane rabbit creature a wide berth. I glanced back, seeing my father’s pale, sweaty face through the brush. His lunatic eyes flicked from side to side. He kept the gun held out in front of him, his arm swaying gently as if he were caught in some hypnotic state.
“Alice! Come here, right now! How dare you…” I only glanced at my father for a second before turning my gaze forwards again, but, by then, it was too late. In the panic of the moment and the darkness of the forest, I didn’t see the six foot wide hole that stretched across the earth like a gaping maw.
I gave a startled shriek as my foot dropped into empty air. Before I knew what was happening, I was slipping, my arms pinwheeling. I tried to regain my balance, twisting my body around. I saw the rabbit there only a few paces away, grinning at me, the unconscious, kidnapped child slung across his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
I fell backwards. The scream that tried to rip its way out of my throat seemed to get stuck there, and I could do nothing but stare blindly up as the rabbit lunged in after me with a cry of excitement. The last glimpse I caught of the forest showed my insane father stumbling toward us, still crying my name with drunken fury. The air whipped around me, the roar of it like the whine of a tornado shrieking in my ears.
The hole at the top shrank into a pinpoint as the rabbit and I fell downwards together into total darkness. We seemed to spiral around each other. No matter how I tried to pull away, the rabbit always seemed to be right there. The last glimpse I saw before the shadows closed in was the rabbit’s dead eyes flashing excitedly as he glared at me with a face like a corpse.
Then the shadows drew around me like a curtain shutting on a stage. Only my own screams and the ragged breathing of the rabbit surrounded me for what felt like an eternity. Slowly, my consciousness slipped away.
After that, I remember nothing for what felt like a very long time.
***
I awoke suddenly, inhaling deeply. I shivered, my teeth chattering as I looked around in confusion. I beheld an alien landscape stretching out to the horizon. Gently sloping hills of black earth loomed in every direction. There were no grass or plants visible, but giant red-and-white mushrooms the size of pine trees grew in clusters along the peaks of the rolling hills.
Streams of fire crisscrossed the landscape like rivers from Hell. The sun here drifted along the slit wrists of the horizon. It looked like a cold, purple ball of fire that gave off a soft, moon-like radiance but very little heat. Thin, silvery clouds covered the sky in rising plumes of pale mist. The entire world looked dark, all the colors eerie and saturated, almost like the desert at the end of a sunset.
I looked around for any sign of the surgically-altered rabbit creature or the unconscious boy he had been carrying in his arms or even, God forbid, my father. But I saw no signs of any of them.
On top of a nearby mushroom that loomed twenty feet in the air, however, I saw a familiar glint of glowing eyes, their slitted, dilated pupils looking down with insanity. The dragonfish-like teeth of the creature’s mouth shimmered in his eerie, ear-to-ear grin. Over the course of a few seconds, the rest of his body became visible as well, fading into view for the first time. I nearly gagged as I looked up in amazement. It was a disgusting thing to look at.
The Cheshire Cat was entirely hairless, his skin black and reptilian. Patches of his flesh were rotting away, and his tail had started to look like a stripped wire. White bones and infected veins writhing with maggots gleamed through the suppurating sores.
“Cheshire Cat,” I whispered, licking my dry lips, “what happened? Last I knew, I was falling… there was some… hole in the forest, and it seemed to keep going on and on forever. There was a rabbit, too, but not a normal rabbit. It was like a rabbit from a serial killer’s nightmare.” The Cheshire Cat laughed at this, but it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. It reminded me of the laugh of a man who just had his throat slit. It was gurgling and deep, and carried through the cold, dry air like a scream.
“The nightmares swarm across this world like a plague of locusts. The Red Queen’s evil and sickness has infected the very foundation of existence. The barriers between Wonderland and Hell itself seem to grow thinner by the day,” he said, but the glee never evaporated from his expression. Across the horizon, a thin, high-pitched scream rang out, full of pain and mortal terror. The Cheshire Cat’s head swung slowly toward the sound. I followed his gaze.
In the distance, I saw a narrow castle with razor-sharp turrets that disappeared into the silver clouds high above. Thin murderholes spiraled up the outside of the dark granite surface. A giant flag rippled softly in the cold breeze. I squinted, seeing a black flag with a red heart gripped in a skeletal hand. Drops of blood dripped out of the bottom.
“They call it the Chateau de Douleur,” the Cheshire Cat said by reason of explanation, “the home of the Red Queen. It sounds like another victim has fallen into her clutches.”
“What… another victim?” I stuttered, a sense of horror filling my body with a sick, weak feeling. The Cheshire Cat gave a slow, jerky nod. His eerie, gurgling laugh rang out suddenly, making me nearly jump out of my skin.
“The Red Queen seems to think that bathing in the blood of children will keep her young forever. She has an iron maiden set up above the royal shower. Every month on the full moon, her insane, sycophantic followers bring her sacrifices. Young children, boys and girls no older than five or six, usually. The younger they are, the more purifying their blood’s properties, you see.” The Cheshire Cat’s teeth gleamed as another, far weaker, scream rang out through the night. It was cut off suddenly. The eerie silence that rang out in the aftermath felt deafening.
“Ah, there it is. La petite mort- the little death,” he said gleefully, another laugh ripping its way out of his throat.
“I don’t see how that’s funny,” I said. “You think the Red Queen murdering children is funny?” As if offended by my change of tone, the Cheshire Cat’s rotted, black body started fading out, but his grin didn’t falter.
“I think that if you don’t start running soon, you will experience it firsthand,” the Cheshire Cat hissed, his voice echoing from all around me as the last gleam of his eyes faded away. “Beware. The White Rabbit draws near.”
***
I stumbled through the dark, cold world they called Wonderland. The black earth under my feet felt soft and smooth. The smell of the giant red-and-white fungi that covered the landscape like redwoods permeated the area, giving off a smell like mushrooms after a heavy rain. I went in the opposite direction of the Chateau de Douleur.
The pale, purple sun had started to disappear over the horizon. The night’s edge slid across the sky like a razor blade, plunging the world into darkness. Within a few minutes, I could barely see more than twenty feet in front of me. The silvery mist I had first seen in the sky now started spreading its ghostly fingers over the ground, covering the world in a blanket of pale fog.
I heard the White Rabbit before I saw him. In a harsh, dissonant voice, he sang. His voice carried all around me, raising goosebumps all over my skin.
“When the Queen’s eyes looked down from the sky,
They gleamed like the slit wrists of the sun.
Her pale face watches, her dead eyes dry.
Their small faces shriek what she’s done.
“I could not stop the children screaming.
And I could not stop the acid eating the dead.
I could not stop the dead men from dreaming.
I could not stop the voices in my head.
“Fragments of moonlight shine on a kitchen knife,
Crimson and ruby-red and gleaming,
But the rabbit knows no peace in life
When the children’s voices never stop screaming.”
As I ducked behind the giant trunk of a mushroom, I caught a glimpse of white fur with a spiderweb of black, garish stitches running across his back. Slung across the White Rabbit’s shoulder, the unconscious body of the child lay, the head lolling from side to side. The White Rabbit was heading in the direction of the castle. He continued bellowing out his disturbing, strange verses as his voice disappeared off in the distance. Exhaling deeply, I slunk out from behind the massive white fungal trunk. I stopped suddenly, a shard of dread piercing my heart as I saw what stood there before me.
A large man in a ripped-up walrus mask loomed over me, a blood-stained meat cleaver clutched tightly in one hand. The brown mask only covered the top half of his face. It had two giant white tusks jutting down past his chin. He had on a tight, soiled T-shirt that might have once been white but was now covered in a disgusting rainbow of stains. His fat belly protruded over his belt. The rolls of fat jiggled on his neck as he gave a strange, high-pitched laugh.
“They call me the Walrus,” he hissed through a mouthful of broken, rotting teeth, grinning at me. As he exhaled, I smelled rotten meat and the sickly sweet reek of infection. I backpedaled quickly in horror and revulsion. “I ate all the little ones, I did… my sweet little clams, the children of the damned…” He laughed at this, advancing on me. His dark eyes shone with insanity and hunger behind the eerie mask. With a greasy, muscular arm, he grabbed me by the neck.
I was put into a headlock and forced to stumble along behind him, my breaths coming in choking gasps. He pulled me into the mist. For a couple minutes, we went on like this. I continued struggling, trying to beat the giant man away with my hands, but he was too strong. When his grip loosened slightly, a powerful, echoing scream escaped my lips.
“Help me! Someone! Cheshire Cat…” I began, but he tightened his greasy, bulging arm around my neck, cutting off my wind. The world started turning white. A rising sense of animal panic swept through my body until the Walrus finally, mercifully, relaxed. I drew in a deep breath that tasted as sweet as honey, gasping and sweating.
“Don’t do that, my little clam,” the Walrus whispered with venom. His cracked lips had split into a furious grimace. His eyes shone with hatred. “You are courting death. Don’t you know sound draws on the Jabberwock?” He looked around nervously at the name.
As if in response, a high-pitched, animalistic roar ripped its way across the night. It reminded me of the screaming of a woman being burned alive. The echoes faded slowly, but with the mist so thick around us and the sky looking like a flat piece of slate, I couldn’t see more than ten feet in any direction.
Ahead of us loomed a shoddy, one-room cabin. The Walrus murmured to himself, gnashing his destroyed teeth as he looked down on me hungrily.
“You’re a beautiful little clam,” he hissed. “I think you’ll make a nice meal for Mr. Walrus. Indeed, a very tender little clam.” With one greasy, dirt-stained hand, he flung the cabin door open and threw me inside. The smell of cooking meat, rotting flesh and feces smacked me in the face, so thick I could taste it in the back of my throat. I bent over, retching. The Walrus closed the door as quietly as he could, peering through a tiny, smashed window in the mold-ridden boards of the dilapidated cabin.
A little girl crouched in the corner, starved and shivering. On a rough, wooden kitchen counter, I saw small, dismembered fingers and eyeballs. Spools of intestines were rolled up like sausages next to them.
A raging fire in the fireplace flickered and danced, illuminating every corner of this cabin of horrors. Over the fire, a child’s torso roasted, the fats spitting and dripping in greasy, burning drops. It was just the torso, with a ragged patch of bloody neck. It ended at the navel, with pieces of torn organs hanging out and blackening.
“Into the cage, my little sweetie, my little honey,” the Walrus whispered, pushing me forward. I heard the strange animalistic cry again, this time much closer.
“Fuck you!” I screamed, pushing the Walrus away. I tried to run for the door, but in a giant, single bound, he tackled me to the floor. I began shrieking for my life, trying to claw at the Walrus’ eyes. He punched me hard in the face. I saw white spots, bright stars that flashed across my vision. As my head lolled and I tasted coppery blood dripping from my mouth and nose, the high-pitched scream came again from directly outside the door.
“Help!” I cried. The Walrus froze, looking up. His dead eyes flashed with horror and a deep, ineffable fear. That was when the entire front of the cabin exploded. Shards of splintered wood pierced my skin like tiny hornet stings. The Walrus jumped off me, backpedaling quickly toward the back of the cabin. I raised my head and met the eyes of the Jabberwock. Like a dragon from an acid fiend’s nightmare, it raised its powerful body to its full height, looming twenty feet above the ground.
The Jabberwock’s skin gleamed a slate-gray color. Hundreds of pencil-thin appendages hung down from its enormous, fish-like face. The slow, rhythmic tapping of the fetid slime that dripped from its body mixed with its powerful breathing.
Its flat, hungry eyes bulged out, dark and lidless, reflecting the bloody light of the fire. Its enormous lungs inhaled and exhaled as it stared at us, creating the same whipping of wind and fury that a barreling train might produce.
The Jabberwock’s neck slithered out, writhing and serpentine, like some ancient Brachiosaurus’ neck. Its head hung low below its shoulders as it moved forward in a jerky, crawling gait, its webbed, dragon-like feet sliding across the soft black soil of Wonderland like a berserk centipede. It opened its mouth, showing hundreds of spiraling teeth that pulsated and twisted like the mouth of some demonic lamprey. The Jabberwock tried to force its entire body through the crushed wall, crouching down and giving another high-pitched scream. Its black eyes rolled back in its head, showing bloody veins at the bottom.
The Walrus tried to sprint for a back window, but the Jabberwock’s neck slithered out. Like a toad grabbing a fly out of the air, its lamprey mouth struck out in a blur. It attached to the Walrus’ back with a sucking sound. Blood exploded from the back of the Walrus’ body, splashing the coarse floor and broken walls of the cabin. I started crawling away. The panicked, agonized shrieks of the Walrus carried through the air, accompanied by wet crunching and sucking sounds.
As the Jabberwock shook its head like a dog with a chew toy, spatters of blood from the Walrus’ mutilated body the inside of the cabin. The frail, trembling girl in the cage in the corner cowered back from the destruction. The Jabberwock’s tail whipped from side to side, long and tapering like the tail of a dinosaur. Sharp, bony spikes protruded from the ends.
With a tremendous crash that shook the ground, its tail smashed into the cage. The girl gave a squeak like a strangled rabbit as the cage soared across the cabin and crashed into a wall. She tumbled head over heels inside it. Then the cage’s door fell open with a clatter of metal. The girl crawled out, her stunned eyes sweeping over me.
I silently motioned for her to follow me. As silently as I could, I crawled through a massive hole in the collapsed front wall. I glanced back and saw her close behind, her skeletal arms pumping quickly. A glimmer of hope flashed across her sunken, haunted eyes, a look I remember even now when I lay in my bed a few days later.
As we got out to the black soil of Wonderland and the thick mists of its endless night, the cabin fell into a heap behind us. The Jabberwock continued to thrash in the rubble. The sounds of bones cracking and sucking followed us down the rolling hills.
Part 2
My name is Alice, and I fell into Hell’s version of Wonderland [part 2] : stories (reddit.com)
submitted by CIAHerpes to stories [link] [comments]
Finally, around midnight, the voices started to fade. I felt my eyes closing as sleep came over me. But, just before I nodded off, I glimpsed a pair of eyes with black, slitted pupils peeking at me from the corner of the room. Beneath them hung a wide, grinning mouth. The mouth had dozens of triangular, razor-sharp teeth that glistened bone-white in the dim glow of the nightlight. Unattached to any visible flesh, the eyes and mouth floated in the air like wavering moonbeams. I sat up in bed, stuttering.
“What… what is this?” I whispered, staring deeply into glowing eyes. “Am I dreaming?”
“No, not dreaming, Alice. Just mad,” the thing hissed, its sharp fangs pulling apart. It gave a high-pitched, insane cackle at this. “We’re all mad here. But your father is the maddest of all, I’m sorry to say. Or, perhaps he’s just a little odd. It is hard to be sane every single day, after all…”
“Who are you?” I quietly asked as a shard of terror pierced my heart. A childish voice in the back of my mind screamed at me to simply pull the covers over my head and hide.
“The Cheshire Cat, of course. I’ll be your guide when you need me. Your adventure will be starting any second now, Alice…” His eyes glimmered brighter as a scream rang out from downstairs. I heard my father yelling, and then a gunshot rang out, shattering the night. Something heavy fell, thudding against the floor. “Ah, there it is. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, after all.”
“What’s happening?” I asked in horror. The Cheshire’s Cat’s glowing face faded like the embers of a dying fire, but his voice continued to speak in the darkness. Heavy footsteps started to ascend the stairs. Something cold and empty slithered through my heart as a feeling of dread overcame me.
“He’s coming,” the Cheshire Cat said in a gleeful tone, the voice coming from all around me. “If you want to live, jump out the window. You have ten seconds to decide.”
“Alice!” I heard my father yell drunkenly, slurring his words. “Come here, right now. I need to talk to you.” I jumped out of bed, slammed my feet into my shoes and flung open the window.
“Five seconds,” the Cheshire Cat said cheerily. I looked down from the second story. My heart dropped as I saw the fall. “Better jump, Alice. You don’t want your adventure to end before it even begins.” I heard a hand roughly grab the doorknob. I crawled out the window, slowly letting myself down by my arms.
My father flung the door open. The front of his white shirt gleamed with slick, wet blood. He had a black revolver in one hand. With wild, excited eyes, he scanned the room, stumbling forward. His head ratcheted toward the open window. For a moment, our gazes met.
“You bitch!” he screamed in rage, raising the gun. “You’re just like your mother, always trying to leave. I’ll show you, you stupid cunt…” As I let myself drop, a gunshot exploded through the night. The window above me exploded in a shower of broken glass. I screamed as the chill night air whipped around me. The garden below rose up to meet me. I felt like I was standing on the tracks as a train barreled down on me.
I hit the dirt hard, rolling as I landed. A bush with sharp branches clawed my shoulder and back, gouging out burning slices across my skin. I glanced up, seeing my father drunkenly leaning out the window, his eyes unfocused. A totally insane, ferocious expression twisted his face into something inhuman and demonic. I barely recognized him.
“Fucking bitch! Stupid cunt!” he screamed, firing the pistol twice more. One of the bullets smashed the lawn only a foot in front of me, spraying grass and soil everywhere. I shrieked, sprinting across the yard in my shoes and pajamas. The dewey grass soaked my feet within seconds. But I knew I had more pressing problems than shoes.
I glanced back at the house, seeing the window empty. A thick forest loomed at the edge of the property. A blanket of shadows covered it, and I could barely see a thing. But I knew I had no choice. I sprinted into the woods, blindly tumbling through prickers and grasping boughs.
A torrent of flickering orange light suddenly illuminated the night. As I descended deeper into the woods, trying to hide myself, I looked back at the house one last time.
I saw a raging inferno there. Long tongues of flame hissed and spit as they licked the dry wood, flowing over the walls like water.
And in front of the hellish flames, I saw my father, a dark silhouette with a gun, striding purposefully across the yard toward me.
***
As my eyes adjusted to the dark forest, I caught a flash of something white sprinting through the bushes. I nearly screamed, startled into a state of terror. The creature turned its pale, dead eyes toward me.
He towered over me, about six feet tall. He had floppy rabbit ears surgically attached to his mutilated skull. Black stitches ran over his face in jagged patches, keeping his rotting flesh together. His white fur had a rainbow of fluids soaked into it, from blood to orange and yellow pus to other things I could never hope to identify. New trickles of blood and pus continued to leak out from the stitches crisscrossing his body. In his arms, grasped between claws like those of a tiger, I saw an unconscious child. The child had a deep gash on its forehead. His head lolled from side to side like a ragdoll’s.
“I’m late…” the rabbit hissed at me, his cataract eyes glimmering with insanity as they shone white in the pale moonlight. “For, you see, I have a very important date. The Red Queen is expecting the blood of a child for her shower, as she does every full moon. What keeps the skin fresher and younger than the blood of a little one, after all?” His lips cracked apart in a wide grin, showing blackened gums mottled with sores. His pointed, needle-like teeth reminded me of some nightmarish deep-sea fish. I stood there, speechless, until the sound of cracking twigs and whipping branches not far behind me startled me back into action.
I started running, giving the insane rabbit creature a wide berth. I glanced back, seeing my father’s pale, sweaty face through the brush. His lunatic eyes flicked from side to side. He kept the gun held out in front of him, his arm swaying gently as if he were caught in some hypnotic state.
“Alice! Come here, right now! How dare you…” I only glanced at my father for a second before turning my gaze forwards again, but, by then, it was too late. In the panic of the moment and the darkness of the forest, I didn’t see the six foot wide hole that stretched across the earth like a gaping maw.
I gave a startled shriek as my foot dropped into empty air. Before I knew what was happening, I was slipping, my arms pinwheeling. I tried to regain my balance, twisting my body around. I saw the rabbit there only a few paces away, grinning at me, the unconscious, kidnapped child slung across his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
I fell backwards. The scream that tried to rip its way out of my throat seemed to get stuck there, and I could do nothing but stare blindly up as the rabbit lunged in after me with a cry of excitement. The last glimpse I caught of the forest showed my insane father stumbling toward us, still crying my name with drunken fury. The air whipped around me, the roar of it like the whine of a tornado shrieking in my ears.
The hole at the top shrank into a pinpoint as the rabbit and I fell downwards together into total darkness. We seemed to spiral around each other. No matter how I tried to pull away, the rabbit always seemed to be right there. The last glimpse I saw before the shadows closed in was the rabbit’s dead eyes flashing excitedly as he glared at me with a face like a corpse.
Then the shadows drew around me like a curtain shutting on a stage. Only my own screams and the ragged breathing of the rabbit surrounded me for what felt like an eternity. Slowly, my consciousness slipped away.
After that, I remember nothing for what felt like a very long time.
***
I awoke suddenly, inhaling deeply. I shivered, my teeth chattering as I looked around in confusion. I beheld an alien landscape stretching out to the horizon. Gently sloping hills of black earth loomed in every direction. There were no grass or plants visible, but giant red-and-white mushrooms the size of pine trees grew in clusters along the peaks of the rolling hills.
Streams of fire crisscrossed the landscape like rivers from Hell. The sun here drifted along the slit wrists of the horizon. It looked like a cold, purple ball of fire that gave off a soft, moon-like radiance but very little heat. Thin, silvery clouds covered the sky in rising plumes of pale mist. The entire world looked dark, all the colors eerie and saturated, almost like the desert at the end of a sunset.
I looked around for any sign of the surgically-altered rabbit creature or the unconscious boy he had been carrying in his arms or even, God forbid, my father. But I saw no signs of any of them.
On top of a nearby mushroom that loomed twenty feet in the air, however, I saw a familiar glint of glowing eyes, their slitted, dilated pupils looking down with insanity. The dragonfish-like teeth of the creature’s mouth shimmered in his eerie, ear-to-ear grin. Over the course of a few seconds, the rest of his body became visible as well, fading into view for the first time. I nearly gagged as I looked up in amazement. It was a disgusting thing to look at.
The Cheshire Cat was entirely hairless, his skin black and reptilian. Patches of his flesh were rotting away, and his tail had started to look like a stripped wire. White bones and infected veins writhing with maggots gleamed through the suppurating sores.
“Cheshire Cat,” I whispered, licking my dry lips, “what happened? Last I knew, I was falling… there was some… hole in the forest, and it seemed to keep going on and on forever. There was a rabbit, too, but not a normal rabbit. It was like a rabbit from a serial killer’s nightmare.” The Cheshire Cat laughed at this, but it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. It reminded me of the laugh of a man who just had his throat slit. It was gurgling and deep, and carried through the cold, dry air like a scream.
“The nightmares swarm across this world like a plague of locusts. The Red Queen’s evil and sickness has infected the very foundation of existence. The barriers between Wonderland and Hell itself seem to grow thinner by the day,” he said, but the glee never evaporated from his expression. Across the horizon, a thin, high-pitched scream rang out, full of pain and mortal terror. The Cheshire Cat’s head swung slowly toward the sound. I followed his gaze.
In the distance, I saw a narrow castle with razor-sharp turrets that disappeared into the silver clouds high above. Thin murderholes spiraled up the outside of the dark granite surface. A giant flag rippled softly in the cold breeze. I squinted, seeing a black flag with a red heart gripped in a skeletal hand. Drops of blood dripped out of the bottom.
“They call it the Chateau de Douleur,” the Cheshire Cat said by reason of explanation, “the home of the Red Queen. It sounds like another victim has fallen into her clutches.”
“What… another victim?” I stuttered, a sense of horror filling my body with a sick, weak feeling. The Cheshire Cat gave a slow, jerky nod. His eerie, gurgling laugh rang out suddenly, making me nearly jump out of my skin.
“The Red Queen seems to think that bathing in the blood of children will keep her young forever. She has an iron maiden set up above the royal shower. Every month on the full moon, her insane, sycophantic followers bring her sacrifices. Young children, boys and girls no older than five or six, usually. The younger they are, the more purifying their blood’s properties, you see.” The Cheshire Cat’s teeth gleamed as another, far weaker, scream rang out through the night. It was cut off suddenly. The eerie silence that rang out in the aftermath felt deafening.
“Ah, there it is. La petite mort- the little death,” he said gleefully, another laugh ripping its way out of his throat.
“I don’t see how that’s funny,” I said. “You think the Red Queen murdering children is funny?” As if offended by my change of tone, the Cheshire Cat’s rotted, black body started fading out, but his grin didn’t falter.
“I think that if you don’t start running soon, you will experience it firsthand,” the Cheshire Cat hissed, his voice echoing from all around me as the last gleam of his eyes faded away. “Beware. The White Rabbit draws near.”
***
I stumbled through the dark, cold world they called Wonderland. The black earth under my feet felt soft and smooth. The smell of the giant red-and-white fungi that covered the landscape like redwoods permeated the area, giving off a smell like mushrooms after a heavy rain. I went in the opposite direction of the Chateau de Douleur.
The pale, purple sun had started to disappear over the horizon. The night’s edge slid across the sky like a razor blade, plunging the world into darkness. Within a few minutes, I could barely see more than twenty feet in front of me. The silvery mist I had first seen in the sky now started spreading its ghostly fingers over the ground, covering the world in a blanket of pale fog.
I heard the White Rabbit before I saw him. In a harsh, dissonant voice, he sang. His voice carried all around me, raising goosebumps all over my skin.
“When the Queen’s eyes looked down from the sky,
They gleamed like the slit wrists of the sun.
Her pale face watches, her dead eyes dry.
Their small faces shriek what she’s done.
“I could not stop the children screaming.
And I could not stop the acid eating the dead.
I could not stop the dead men from dreaming.
I could not stop the voices in my head.
“Fragments of moonlight shine on a kitchen knife,
Crimson and ruby-red and gleaming,
But the rabbit knows no peace in life
When the children’s voices never stop screaming.”
As I ducked behind the giant trunk of a mushroom, I caught a glimpse of white fur with a spiderweb of black, garish stitches running across his back. Slung across the White Rabbit’s shoulder, the unconscious body of the child lay, the head lolling from side to side. The White Rabbit was heading in the direction of the castle. He continued bellowing out his disturbing, strange verses as his voice disappeared off in the distance. Exhaling deeply, I slunk out from behind the massive white fungal trunk. I stopped suddenly, a shard of dread piercing my heart as I saw what stood there before me.
A large man in a ripped-up walrus mask loomed over me, a blood-stained meat cleaver clutched tightly in one hand. The brown mask only covered the top half of his face. It had two giant white tusks jutting down past his chin. He had on a tight, soiled T-shirt that might have once been white but was now covered in a disgusting rainbow of stains. His fat belly protruded over his belt. The rolls of fat jiggled on his neck as he gave a strange, high-pitched laugh.
“They call me the Walrus,” he hissed through a mouthful of broken, rotting teeth, grinning at me. As he exhaled, I smelled rotten meat and the sickly sweet reek of infection. I backpedaled quickly in horror and revulsion. “I ate all the little ones, I did… my sweet little clams, the children of the damned…” He laughed at this, advancing on me. His dark eyes shone with insanity and hunger behind the eerie mask. With a greasy, muscular arm, he grabbed me by the neck.
I was put into a headlock and forced to stumble along behind him, my breaths coming in choking gasps. He pulled me into the mist. For a couple minutes, we went on like this. I continued struggling, trying to beat the giant man away with my hands, but he was too strong. When his grip loosened slightly, a powerful, echoing scream escaped my lips.
“Help me! Someone! Cheshire Cat…” I began, but he tightened his greasy, bulging arm around my neck, cutting off my wind. The world started turning white. A rising sense of animal panic swept through my body until the Walrus finally, mercifully, relaxed. I drew in a deep breath that tasted as sweet as honey, gasping and sweating.
“Don’t do that, my little clam,” the Walrus whispered with venom. His cracked lips had split into a furious grimace. His eyes shone with hatred. “You are courting death. Don’t you know sound draws on the Jabberwock?” He looked around nervously at the name.
As if in response, a high-pitched, animalistic roar ripped its way across the night. It reminded me of the screaming of a woman being burned alive. The echoes faded slowly, but with the mist so thick around us and the sky looking like a flat piece of slate, I couldn’t see more than ten feet in any direction.
Ahead of us loomed a shoddy, one-room cabin. The Walrus murmured to himself, gnashing his destroyed teeth as he looked down on me hungrily.
“You’re a beautiful little clam,” he hissed. “I think you’ll make a nice meal for Mr. Walrus. Indeed, a very tender little clam.” With one greasy, dirt-stained hand, he flung the cabin door open and threw me inside. The smell of cooking meat, rotting flesh and feces smacked me in the face, so thick I could taste it in the back of my throat. I bent over, retching. The Walrus closed the door as quietly as he could, peering through a tiny, smashed window in the mold-ridden boards of the dilapidated cabin.
A little girl crouched in the corner, starved and shivering. On a rough, wooden kitchen counter, I saw small, dismembered fingers and eyeballs. Spools of intestines were rolled up like sausages next to them.
A raging fire in the fireplace flickered and danced, illuminating every corner of this cabin of horrors. Over the fire, a child’s torso roasted, the fats spitting and dripping in greasy, burning drops. It was just the torso, with a ragged patch of bloody neck. It ended at the navel, with pieces of torn organs hanging out and blackening.
“Into the cage, my little sweetie, my little honey,” the Walrus whispered, pushing me forward. I heard the strange animalistic cry again, this time much closer.
“Fuck you!” I screamed, pushing the Walrus away. I tried to run for the door, but in a giant, single bound, he tackled me to the floor. I began shrieking for my life, trying to claw at the Walrus’ eyes. He punched me hard in the face. I saw white spots, bright stars that flashed across my vision. As my head lolled and I tasted coppery blood dripping from my mouth and nose, the high-pitched scream came again from directly outside the door.
“Help!” I cried. The Walrus froze, looking up. His dead eyes flashed with horror and a deep, ineffable fear. That was when the entire front of the cabin exploded. Shards of splintered wood pierced my skin like tiny hornet stings. The Walrus jumped off me, backpedaling quickly toward the back of the cabin. I raised my head and met the eyes of the Jabberwock. Like a dragon from an acid fiend’s nightmare, it raised its powerful body to its full height, looming twenty feet above the ground.
The Jabberwock’s skin gleamed a slate-gray color. Hundreds of pencil-thin appendages hung down from its enormous, fish-like face. The slow, rhythmic tapping of the fetid slime that dripped from its body mixed with its powerful breathing.
Its flat, hungry eyes bulged out, dark and lidless, reflecting the bloody light of the fire. Its enormous lungs inhaled and exhaled as it stared at us, creating the same whipping of wind and fury that a barreling train might produce.
The Jabberwock’s neck slithered out, writhing and serpentine, like some ancient Brachiosaurus’ neck. Its head hung low below its shoulders as it moved forward in a jerky, crawling gait, its webbed, dragon-like feet sliding across the soft black soil of Wonderland like a berserk centipede. It opened its mouth, showing hundreds of spiraling teeth that pulsated and twisted like the mouth of some demonic lamprey. The Jabberwock tried to force its entire body through the crushed wall, crouching down and giving another high-pitched scream. Its black eyes rolled back in its head, showing bloody veins at the bottom.
The Walrus tried to sprint for a back window, but the Jabberwock’s neck slithered out. Like a toad grabbing a fly out of the air, its lamprey mouth struck out in a blur. It attached to the Walrus’ back with a sucking sound. Blood exploded from the back of the Walrus’ body, splashing the coarse floor and broken walls of the cabin. I started crawling away. The panicked, agonized shrieks of the Walrus carried through the air, accompanied by wet crunching and sucking sounds.
As the Jabberwock shook its head like a dog with a chew toy, spatters of blood from the Walrus’ mutilated body the inside of the cabin. The frail, trembling girl in the cage in the corner cowered back from the destruction. The Jabberwock’s tail whipped from side to side, long and tapering like the tail of a dinosaur. Sharp, bony spikes protruded from the ends.
With a tremendous crash that shook the ground, its tail smashed into the cage. The girl gave a squeak like a strangled rabbit as the cage soared across the cabin and crashed into a wall. She tumbled head over heels inside it. Then the cage’s door fell open with a clatter of metal. The girl crawled out, her stunned eyes sweeping over me.
I silently motioned for her to follow me. As silently as I could, I crawled through a massive hole in the collapsed front wall. I glanced back and saw her close behind, her skeletal arms pumping quickly. A glimmer of hope flashed across her sunken, haunted eyes, a look I remember even now when I lay in my bed a few days later.
As we got out to the black soil of Wonderland and the thick mists of its endless night, the cabin fell into a heap behind us. The Jabberwock continued to thrash in the rubble. The sounds of bones cracking and sucking followed us down the rolling hills.
Part 2
My name is Alice, and I fell into Hell’s version of Wonderland [part 2] : stories (reddit.com)
2024.04.21 16:04 CIAHerpes I once knew a painter who used to mix blood in with the paint. His paintings are acting rather strangely lately.
I had always liked collecting rare books and paintings with the extra money I made trading stock options on the side. My small, two-bedroom house was cluttered with them. I had bookshelves filled with original signed copies of works by Stephen King, Philip K. Dick and Hunter S. Thompson that I had saved for years.
I also tried to find ascending painters in the local art scene and buy up some of their works for very low prices before they got discovered. Sometimes it worked out, and sometimes it didn’t, but as a whole, I had made far more money than I had lost over the decades. All of the works I liked most, though, I refused to sell at any price.
And these included the paintings of HG Bittaker. After his mysterious death a few years ago, they had gotten the same kind of reputation as paintings done by serial killers like John Wayne Gacy that were sold openly, sometimes for tens of thousands of dollars, on the internet. And like Gacy’s strange portraits of Snow White or the Seven Dwarves or grinning clowns, Bittaker’s paintings all had a sinister and otherworldly pull.
I had kept them locked up in a storage unit, but when the storage company told me they would be doubling their rates, I decided to close the unit and take everything in it back to my house. I set up the macabre paintings around my room and the hallways, remembering the strange conversation I had with the artist just days before his untimely death.
***
“People like to say that ‘life is art’ and meaningless platitudes like that,” HG Bittaker had said as he stood in front of a painting of a victim of murder made to look like Shiva dancing the Tandava. The black, eyeless sockets of the victim stared straight out at the viewer. His mouth was open, showing a spiraling galaxy of shining stars hidden within. Four emaciated, pale arms jutted out from the sides of the starving body, bent in the same posture as Shiva’s eternal cosmic dance. The arms showed signs of torture, patches of burnt and melted flesh eaten into the body like a cancer.
One mutilated leg was lifted into the air in a half-kicking motion. Deep gashes were sliced into its skin and muscle, revealing the white bone gleaming underneath. The emaciated dancer stood on a mountain of hundreds of skulls, many of them with fragments of hair and pieces of gore still clinging to the bone. Feeling slightly sickened, I turned away, chugging the entire bottle of beer I held in a few long swallows.
“But you know what I think? I think death is the true art,” HG Bittaker continued, his gray eyes flashing over me. They looked flat and lifeless, as if all the hope had long ago been sucked out of this young artist. His face was narrow and serious with high cheekbones and close-cropped black hair. “It is the gateway to eternity, after all. The best art comes not from love of life, but from love of death and annihilation.” I nodded as if I understood, though in reality, I didn’t know what he was getting at. I figured he was just another eccentric artist rambling about philosophies he barely understood.
“So what inspired you to paint this piece, for example?” I said, glancing at the macabre murder victim piece. It had a small white placard next to it that read,
“The Damned Spirits Dance the Tandava.
HG Bittaker.
2022.
Oil, marker, hair, blood.”
I recognized immediately that the placard showed the name of the piece, the artist, the year it was created and the materials used to create the piece. But it had to be a joke. I squinted at the last line, reading it over again. All around us, people chattered softly as they sipped wine and sodas, moving slowly around the hall. The entire exhibit showed dozens of HG Bittaker paintings, all of them extremely disturbing. I saw a painting of mass graves under a cold, black sky with rings like those of Saturn extending far out into the void. Next to it stood one of a monk burning himself alive while sitting in complete peace.
“This piece was inspired from a dream I had- or maybe, I should call it a nightmare. Do you know what the Tandava is?” HG Bittaker asked me, his gray eyes flashing with excitement for the first time that night. I shook my head, but I leaned close, interested.
“The Hindus believe that we exist in an eternal multiverse where countless universes are constantly being created and destroyed. The multiverse exists as the body of Vishnu the Maintainer, which stretches out forever outside of time. His maintenance is really just the ultimate reality from which all universes constantly spring. They say that the individual creator god for each universe arises out of Vishnu’s navel. The creator is only a finite god with limited power, a being who they call Brahma. Brahma eventually ages and dies, just like the universe itself. For, you see, Brahma the Creator is by far the weakest of the three. The eternal presence of the multiverse and the omnipresent power of death and destruction are much more powerful.
“When a universe has grown ancient, when it has started to turn gray and fade towards death, one far more powerful than the creator appears: Shiva the Destroyer. At that point, he begins his final dance for that universe- the Tandava, it is called.
“After Shiva starts to dance the Tandava, it cannot be stopped until everything in the universe is destroyed. He dances faster and faster until all the remaining matter and energy is annihilated, released back into consciousness. He does this not out of hatred or spite, you understand, but out of love for all beings. In the destruction of the universe, enlightenment shines through, and the pure consciousness released can be used to start the process of creation again.
“So you asked about what inspired this particular piece. Well, in one recurring nightmare I had, I saw this man, this pale victim of some death camp, I guess. His eyes had been cut out. His still body lay on top of a mass grave of rotting bodies with maggots writhing in his skin and hair. He showed clear signs of torture before the merciful release of death took him away.
“The many arms of the hundreds of other victims lying beneath him started to slither up like snakes, as if the dead were slowly coming back to life. It was like they were trying to reach upwards, trying to reach towards freedom from the rotting pit of horrors they found themselves in. The man on top, the one you see in this painting here, lifted his head and looked straight at me. His blue lips twitched and he abruptly inhaled again, but it sounded like his throat was filled with blood and dirt. Finally, he opened his mouth and, with a gurgling wail that seemed to come straight from Hell itself, he spoke.
“‘Everything is growing old and sick here,’ he hissed at me. ‘The dance will begin again soon.’
“And then the sky went black and a burning cold descended on the world. A freezing wind blew. I looked up into the sky and felt something dreadful and powerful hidden within those swirling currents of darkness. Through the black mist, I could see the barest silhouette of something massive, something whose entire body stretched across the sky- and I saw it was dancing.”
***
After the art show, I had gone home and thought deeply about the words the tortured artist had said. His gray, lifeless eyes kept flashing through my mind. That night, I drank myself into a black-out, until the merciful release of sleep took away the cycle of thoughts that seemed to repeat in my mind like a skipping record.
It was three days later, after I had gotten home from work late, that I saw the news. I remember walking into my house and turning on the flat-screen TV as I poured myself a full glass of whiskey. Within minutes, I had chugged the entire thing. I knew that I drank too much, that I couldn’t stop, and that, eventually, my addiction would probably kill me. I figured that, in the end, I would follow millions of other alcoholics off that dark cliff of fatal addiction into eternity.
“BREAKING NEWS” suddenly flashed across the screen as a TV reporter stood in front of an expensive apartment building under a dark, cloudless sky. It was a ritzy, expensive part of town near the art gallery. Police cars filled the street behind her as she smoothed a long lock of hair behind her ear. She blinked fast at the camera, seeming to finally realize she was live.
“I’m here with Channel Five News in front of the Angel Trace Apartment building where police are investigating multiple bodies found inside one of the residences. We have heard reports from police that the body of the locally renowned artist HG Bittaker was also recovered at the crime scene. Police refuse to say what connection, if any, Mr. Bittaker may have had with…” I rose from my chair, frantically shutting off the TV. The strange conversation I had with the artist a few days ago flashed through my mind over and over. But now, the conversation seemed more sinister.
Later that night, I went over to the computer and started doing some research. On various internet forums, I found strange things floating around. Those investigating the case said the victims were found chained inside HG Bittaker’s apartment and that the police believed he had died from suicide. A lot of this was still speculation and rumor.
While much of it was unconfirmed at first, within a couple days, it would all be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
As I would find out over time, the bodies of eight women were laid around HG Bittaker in a shape like a lotus petal. They showed signs of extensive, prolonged torture before their inevitable deaths from strangulation. Like the painting I had seen in the gallery, these victims had their eyes cut out from their sockets. They had their arms and legs burned or doused in some corrosive acid, and strange occult symbols had been carved into the chests and stomachs of their naked, mutilated bodies. They had suffered greatly before the merciful release of oblivion.
In the center of the circle of death, the police had found the body of HG Bittaker himself. He had burned himself alive while sitting in the full-lotus position. The neighbors had noticed the choking clouds of black smoke that reeked of searing meat and gasoline. They kicked the door down only to find a den of horrors waiting beyond.
HG Bittaker had still been alive at that point, they said, and he had shown no signs of pain at all as he sat there, burning. Fat sizzled off his body in drops as his skin blackened and cooked. The neighbors extinguished the fire before it could spread, but by then, HG Bittaker was dead.
Apparently, HG Bittaker had his own personal library with countless leather-bound tomes on the occult and practices of human sacrifice. Books about the Thuggees and ancient devotional practices to both Kali and Shiva were also found scattered all over the apartment.
After hearing this, I did some research about the Thuggees, a group of cultists in India who were estimated to have murdered up to two million people and where the word “thug” came from. They were cultists who would waylay travelers on the road, strangling them or breaking their necks with special nooses or silk handkerchiefs.
The Thuggees were devoted followers of the goddess of death and destruction, Kali. They believed they were saving the world by murdering innocent travelers in cold blood, for they offered these victims to the goddess Kali. They hoped their sacrifices would keep Kali satiated, so that she would not descend and destroy the entire world in a dancing inferno of death and destruction.
As I sat in front of the computer with a glass of scotch in my hand, my head started to feel like it was spinning from all the strangeness of the case. It seemed like I had many breadcrumbs here that must connect in some way, but for the life of me, I could not figure out how. Before the night was over, however, I would understand everything.
I glanced behind me at the painting I had bought from HG Bittaker after the artshow, the one showing the emaciated death camp victim dancing the cosmic Tandava. The eyeless sockets of that pale face seemed to stare directly into my soul. I shuddered, turning away and back to my empty glass.
***
I ended up refilling my glass to the brim with some expensive scotch while I did my research. I leaned back in the computer chair with a long sigh before sipping the burning liquid that loosened the knots of anxiety and dread in my heart. As I sat alone in that dark room, only the glare of the monitor sent the skittering shadows away. Behind me, the painting continuously stared at me from the wall, grinning like a skull.
I must have passed out at some point. The anesthetizing fog of the alcohol descended slowly over my mind. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I certainly remember waking up.
The room was totally dark now, the monitor having shut off. I blinked slowly, my head feeling hazy. The room seemed to spin around me. I couldn’t see the spinning, but I could feel it thrumming through my whole body. My stomach was churning. My throat felt dry, as if I had been sipping hydrochloric acid. But why had I woken up suddenly? I didn’t know. I felt confused, and everything seemed slow. I was still drunk, I knew, though some of the fog seemed to have cleared as I slept.
I heard a floorboard groan behind me. There was a sudden ragged inhalation of breath, a slow, pained gurgling, as if someone were choking on their own blood. The diseased inhalation and exhalation rang out through the silence. I heard a skittering of light footsteps and the slamming of a door.
I fumbled in my pocket for my cigarette lighter, pulling it out and flicking it. I stumbled out of the chair, holding the small, flickering light in front of me like a shield. It barely drove the shadows back. They seemed to press in all around me like the spikes of an iron maiden.
I got to the light and tried flicking it, but the power had gone off for some reason. Sweating and nervous, I stopped and listened. I heard the stairs creak. Off in the distance, that gurgling breathing continued. I swore under my breath. It must be a robber, I thought. Someone probably broke in while I passed out and cut the circuit breaker. I looked around the room for a weapon, when I noticed something truly bizarre.
My lighter flicked over the painting I kept hanging on the wall, the one called, “The Damned Spirits Dance the Tandava”. It looked different, and I immediately realized why.
The skulls piled on the black earth at the bottom of the painting still gleamed in the dim glare of the lighter’s flame, but the dancing, eyeless man in the painting had disappeared. The stars glimmered in the endless void in the background with their cold white light.
It had to be a joke, I thought to myself. But why would someone go to this length? I lived alone and had few friends. Certainly no one would break in and swap a painting as some kind of prank. I spotted a metal letter opener over on the desk. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had up here. I grabbed it and left the room, heading downstairs. I no longer heard any movement or breathing down there, but I felt some sort of presence, as if the shadows themselves had eyes that were watching me.
***
I felt as if I were in some sort of nightmare as I descended the stairs. The wood groaned softly under my weight. My heart pounded as I moved forward. As I reached the bottom step, that diseased gurgling rang out nearby. I spun, seeing the naked, emaciated body with the four arms standing at the window in the dark kitchen, staring blindly out into the world with his black sockets of eyes. The strange man turned to face me. His face split into a grin, revealing the brown, rotted teeth hidden beneath and the maggots squirming in his putrefying tongue and gums.
“What do you want?” I whispered, terrified. “Who are you?” The grin seemed to widen further, the decaying flesh splitting along the seams of his lips. Dark, clotted blood dripped down from the torn flaps of skin on his cheeks.
“Do you not recognize me, John?” the thing spoke in a voice that writhed with sickness and death. But, at the same time, I recognized it. It was the voice of HG Bittaker, the dead artist and serial killer. “I mixed my own blood and the blood of those holy ones who gave their lives to me with the paintings. Even strands of their hair are in there, dried between the layers of paint. Strands of their hair- and mine. Our essences have mixed, the killer and killed, the strong and weak, the perpetrator and the victim, and the deathless self shines through all of it. Now I have gone beyond death.”
The pale man stepped towards me, his mutilated legs cracking as the stiff limbs twisted and jerked, as if fighting the effects of rigor mortis.
“I’m dreaming,” I said, backpedaling away as he advanced on me. “This can’t be real. You’re dead! You burned yourself alive! It was all over the news, goddamn it!” With inhuman speed, the mutilated man oozed towards me, grabbing me by the head with his cold, dead hands. The skin felt loose, almost falling off the bone, and the smell of rot and putrefaction emanated from the body in thick clouds.
“I have made a friend of death,” he hissed through his blackened teeth as maggots dripped from his blue lips. “You, too, will find peace in death.” He lunged forward suddenly. I felt his sharp splinters of broken teeth sink into my neck. A scream ripped its way out of my throat as I thrashed and kicked. Through the haze of pain, I abruptly remembered the letter opener in my hand.
I brought it up into the body of the naked, rotting corpse, slicing deeply across his stomach. The thin skin burst open with a waterfall of clotted blood running out like sludge. The brown intestines of the corpse inside spilled out, writhing with hundreds of larvae like pale worms that feasted on the dead flesh.
The pale man gave a hissing scream. Black blood burst from his mouth, covering my face in its sickly spatters. My hands grew slick as my blood mixed with the fetid fluids dripping from the animated corpse. He pulled away with a banshee wail. I collapsed to the floor, holding my spurting neck with both hands as I slowly crawled away.
I heard a window shatter behind me. Looking back, I saw the kitchen empty. The pale man had apparently jumped through the front window, leaving pieces of his decaying flesh hanging from the jagged shards of glass.
With the last of my strength, I slowly made my way toward the front door. Feeling weak and sick, stumbling as blood poured from my neck, I made my way to the neighbor’s house. I pounded on their door, collapsing on the mat as they opened it.
***
When I got home from the hospital, I went upstairs to look at the painting. A deep sense of curiosity mixed with an overwhelming dread as I opened the door.
I saw the pile of skulls, the stars like fragments of opal, but the pale victim at the center of the painting was gone forever.
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I also tried to find ascending painters in the local art scene and buy up some of their works for very low prices before they got discovered. Sometimes it worked out, and sometimes it didn’t, but as a whole, I had made far more money than I had lost over the decades. All of the works I liked most, though, I refused to sell at any price.
And these included the paintings of HG Bittaker. After his mysterious death a few years ago, they had gotten the same kind of reputation as paintings done by serial killers like John Wayne Gacy that were sold openly, sometimes for tens of thousands of dollars, on the internet. And like Gacy’s strange portraits of Snow White or the Seven Dwarves or grinning clowns, Bittaker’s paintings all had a sinister and otherworldly pull.
I had kept them locked up in a storage unit, but when the storage company told me they would be doubling their rates, I decided to close the unit and take everything in it back to my house. I set up the macabre paintings around my room and the hallways, remembering the strange conversation I had with the artist just days before his untimely death.
***
“People like to say that ‘life is art’ and meaningless platitudes like that,” HG Bittaker had said as he stood in front of a painting of a victim of murder made to look like Shiva dancing the Tandava. The black, eyeless sockets of the victim stared straight out at the viewer. His mouth was open, showing a spiraling galaxy of shining stars hidden within. Four emaciated, pale arms jutted out from the sides of the starving body, bent in the same posture as Shiva’s eternal cosmic dance. The arms showed signs of torture, patches of burnt and melted flesh eaten into the body like a cancer.
One mutilated leg was lifted into the air in a half-kicking motion. Deep gashes were sliced into its skin and muscle, revealing the white bone gleaming underneath. The emaciated dancer stood on a mountain of hundreds of skulls, many of them with fragments of hair and pieces of gore still clinging to the bone. Feeling slightly sickened, I turned away, chugging the entire bottle of beer I held in a few long swallows.
“But you know what I think? I think death is the true art,” HG Bittaker continued, his gray eyes flashing over me. They looked flat and lifeless, as if all the hope had long ago been sucked out of this young artist. His face was narrow and serious with high cheekbones and close-cropped black hair. “It is the gateway to eternity, after all. The best art comes not from love of life, but from love of death and annihilation.” I nodded as if I understood, though in reality, I didn’t know what he was getting at. I figured he was just another eccentric artist rambling about philosophies he barely understood.
“So what inspired you to paint this piece, for example?” I said, glancing at the macabre murder victim piece. It had a small white placard next to it that read,
“The Damned Spirits Dance the Tandava.
HG Bittaker.
2022.
Oil, marker, hair, blood.”
I recognized immediately that the placard showed the name of the piece, the artist, the year it was created and the materials used to create the piece. But it had to be a joke. I squinted at the last line, reading it over again. All around us, people chattered softly as they sipped wine and sodas, moving slowly around the hall. The entire exhibit showed dozens of HG Bittaker paintings, all of them extremely disturbing. I saw a painting of mass graves under a cold, black sky with rings like those of Saturn extending far out into the void. Next to it stood one of a monk burning himself alive while sitting in complete peace.
“This piece was inspired from a dream I had- or maybe, I should call it a nightmare. Do you know what the Tandava is?” HG Bittaker asked me, his gray eyes flashing with excitement for the first time that night. I shook my head, but I leaned close, interested.
“The Hindus believe that we exist in an eternal multiverse where countless universes are constantly being created and destroyed. The multiverse exists as the body of Vishnu the Maintainer, which stretches out forever outside of time. His maintenance is really just the ultimate reality from which all universes constantly spring. They say that the individual creator god for each universe arises out of Vishnu’s navel. The creator is only a finite god with limited power, a being who they call Brahma. Brahma eventually ages and dies, just like the universe itself. For, you see, Brahma the Creator is by far the weakest of the three. The eternal presence of the multiverse and the omnipresent power of death and destruction are much more powerful.
“When a universe has grown ancient, when it has started to turn gray and fade towards death, one far more powerful than the creator appears: Shiva the Destroyer. At that point, he begins his final dance for that universe- the Tandava, it is called.
“After Shiva starts to dance the Tandava, it cannot be stopped until everything in the universe is destroyed. He dances faster and faster until all the remaining matter and energy is annihilated, released back into consciousness. He does this not out of hatred or spite, you understand, but out of love for all beings. In the destruction of the universe, enlightenment shines through, and the pure consciousness released can be used to start the process of creation again.
“So you asked about what inspired this particular piece. Well, in one recurring nightmare I had, I saw this man, this pale victim of some death camp, I guess. His eyes had been cut out. His still body lay on top of a mass grave of rotting bodies with maggots writhing in his skin and hair. He showed clear signs of torture before the merciful release of death took him away.
“The many arms of the hundreds of other victims lying beneath him started to slither up like snakes, as if the dead were slowly coming back to life. It was like they were trying to reach upwards, trying to reach towards freedom from the rotting pit of horrors they found themselves in. The man on top, the one you see in this painting here, lifted his head and looked straight at me. His blue lips twitched and he abruptly inhaled again, but it sounded like his throat was filled with blood and dirt. Finally, he opened his mouth and, with a gurgling wail that seemed to come straight from Hell itself, he spoke.
“‘Everything is growing old and sick here,’ he hissed at me. ‘The dance will begin again soon.’
“And then the sky went black and a burning cold descended on the world. A freezing wind blew. I looked up into the sky and felt something dreadful and powerful hidden within those swirling currents of darkness. Through the black mist, I could see the barest silhouette of something massive, something whose entire body stretched across the sky- and I saw it was dancing.”
***
After the art show, I had gone home and thought deeply about the words the tortured artist had said. His gray, lifeless eyes kept flashing through my mind. That night, I drank myself into a black-out, until the merciful release of sleep took away the cycle of thoughts that seemed to repeat in my mind like a skipping record.
It was three days later, after I had gotten home from work late, that I saw the news. I remember walking into my house and turning on the flat-screen TV as I poured myself a full glass of whiskey. Within minutes, I had chugged the entire thing. I knew that I drank too much, that I couldn’t stop, and that, eventually, my addiction would probably kill me. I figured that, in the end, I would follow millions of other alcoholics off that dark cliff of fatal addiction into eternity.
“BREAKING NEWS” suddenly flashed across the screen as a TV reporter stood in front of an expensive apartment building under a dark, cloudless sky. It was a ritzy, expensive part of town near the art gallery. Police cars filled the street behind her as she smoothed a long lock of hair behind her ear. She blinked fast at the camera, seeming to finally realize she was live.
“I’m here with Channel Five News in front of the Angel Trace Apartment building where police are investigating multiple bodies found inside one of the residences. We have heard reports from police that the body of the locally renowned artist HG Bittaker was also recovered at the crime scene. Police refuse to say what connection, if any, Mr. Bittaker may have had with…” I rose from my chair, frantically shutting off the TV. The strange conversation I had with the artist a few days ago flashed through my mind over and over. But now, the conversation seemed more sinister.
Later that night, I went over to the computer and started doing some research. On various internet forums, I found strange things floating around. Those investigating the case said the victims were found chained inside HG Bittaker’s apartment and that the police believed he had died from suicide. A lot of this was still speculation and rumor.
While much of it was unconfirmed at first, within a couple days, it would all be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
As I would find out over time, the bodies of eight women were laid around HG Bittaker in a shape like a lotus petal. They showed signs of extensive, prolonged torture before their inevitable deaths from strangulation. Like the painting I had seen in the gallery, these victims had their eyes cut out from their sockets. They had their arms and legs burned or doused in some corrosive acid, and strange occult symbols had been carved into the chests and stomachs of their naked, mutilated bodies. They had suffered greatly before the merciful release of oblivion.
In the center of the circle of death, the police had found the body of HG Bittaker himself. He had burned himself alive while sitting in the full-lotus position. The neighbors had noticed the choking clouds of black smoke that reeked of searing meat and gasoline. They kicked the door down only to find a den of horrors waiting beyond.
HG Bittaker had still been alive at that point, they said, and he had shown no signs of pain at all as he sat there, burning. Fat sizzled off his body in drops as his skin blackened and cooked. The neighbors extinguished the fire before it could spread, but by then, HG Bittaker was dead.
Apparently, HG Bittaker had his own personal library with countless leather-bound tomes on the occult and practices of human sacrifice. Books about the Thuggees and ancient devotional practices to both Kali and Shiva were also found scattered all over the apartment.
After hearing this, I did some research about the Thuggees, a group of cultists in India who were estimated to have murdered up to two million people and where the word “thug” came from. They were cultists who would waylay travelers on the road, strangling them or breaking their necks with special nooses or silk handkerchiefs.
The Thuggees were devoted followers of the goddess of death and destruction, Kali. They believed they were saving the world by murdering innocent travelers in cold blood, for they offered these victims to the goddess Kali. They hoped their sacrifices would keep Kali satiated, so that she would not descend and destroy the entire world in a dancing inferno of death and destruction.
As I sat in front of the computer with a glass of scotch in my hand, my head started to feel like it was spinning from all the strangeness of the case. It seemed like I had many breadcrumbs here that must connect in some way, but for the life of me, I could not figure out how. Before the night was over, however, I would understand everything.
I glanced behind me at the painting I had bought from HG Bittaker after the artshow, the one showing the emaciated death camp victim dancing the cosmic Tandava. The eyeless sockets of that pale face seemed to stare directly into my soul. I shuddered, turning away and back to my empty glass.
***
I ended up refilling my glass to the brim with some expensive scotch while I did my research. I leaned back in the computer chair with a long sigh before sipping the burning liquid that loosened the knots of anxiety and dread in my heart. As I sat alone in that dark room, only the glare of the monitor sent the skittering shadows away. Behind me, the painting continuously stared at me from the wall, grinning like a skull.
I must have passed out at some point. The anesthetizing fog of the alcohol descended slowly over my mind. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I certainly remember waking up.
The room was totally dark now, the monitor having shut off. I blinked slowly, my head feeling hazy. The room seemed to spin around me. I couldn’t see the spinning, but I could feel it thrumming through my whole body. My stomach was churning. My throat felt dry, as if I had been sipping hydrochloric acid. But why had I woken up suddenly? I didn’t know. I felt confused, and everything seemed slow. I was still drunk, I knew, though some of the fog seemed to have cleared as I slept.
I heard a floorboard groan behind me. There was a sudden ragged inhalation of breath, a slow, pained gurgling, as if someone were choking on their own blood. The diseased inhalation and exhalation rang out through the silence. I heard a skittering of light footsteps and the slamming of a door.
I fumbled in my pocket for my cigarette lighter, pulling it out and flicking it. I stumbled out of the chair, holding the small, flickering light in front of me like a shield. It barely drove the shadows back. They seemed to press in all around me like the spikes of an iron maiden.
I got to the light and tried flicking it, but the power had gone off for some reason. Sweating and nervous, I stopped and listened. I heard the stairs creak. Off in the distance, that gurgling breathing continued. I swore under my breath. It must be a robber, I thought. Someone probably broke in while I passed out and cut the circuit breaker. I looked around the room for a weapon, when I noticed something truly bizarre.
My lighter flicked over the painting I kept hanging on the wall, the one called, “The Damned Spirits Dance the Tandava”. It looked different, and I immediately realized why.
The skulls piled on the black earth at the bottom of the painting still gleamed in the dim glare of the lighter’s flame, but the dancing, eyeless man in the painting had disappeared. The stars glimmered in the endless void in the background with their cold white light.
It had to be a joke, I thought to myself. But why would someone go to this length? I lived alone and had few friends. Certainly no one would break in and swap a painting as some kind of prank. I spotted a metal letter opener over on the desk. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had up here. I grabbed it and left the room, heading downstairs. I no longer heard any movement or breathing down there, but I felt some sort of presence, as if the shadows themselves had eyes that were watching me.
***
I felt as if I were in some sort of nightmare as I descended the stairs. The wood groaned softly under my weight. My heart pounded as I moved forward. As I reached the bottom step, that diseased gurgling rang out nearby. I spun, seeing the naked, emaciated body with the four arms standing at the window in the dark kitchen, staring blindly out into the world with his black sockets of eyes. The strange man turned to face me. His face split into a grin, revealing the brown, rotted teeth hidden beneath and the maggots squirming in his putrefying tongue and gums.
“What do you want?” I whispered, terrified. “Who are you?” The grin seemed to widen further, the decaying flesh splitting along the seams of his lips. Dark, clotted blood dripped down from the torn flaps of skin on his cheeks.
“Do you not recognize me, John?” the thing spoke in a voice that writhed with sickness and death. But, at the same time, I recognized it. It was the voice of HG Bittaker, the dead artist and serial killer. “I mixed my own blood and the blood of those holy ones who gave their lives to me with the paintings. Even strands of their hair are in there, dried between the layers of paint. Strands of their hair- and mine. Our essences have mixed, the killer and killed, the strong and weak, the perpetrator and the victim, and the deathless self shines through all of it. Now I have gone beyond death.”
The pale man stepped towards me, his mutilated legs cracking as the stiff limbs twisted and jerked, as if fighting the effects of rigor mortis.
“I’m dreaming,” I said, backpedaling away as he advanced on me. “This can’t be real. You’re dead! You burned yourself alive! It was all over the news, goddamn it!” With inhuman speed, the mutilated man oozed towards me, grabbing me by the head with his cold, dead hands. The skin felt loose, almost falling off the bone, and the smell of rot and putrefaction emanated from the body in thick clouds.
“I have made a friend of death,” he hissed through his blackened teeth as maggots dripped from his blue lips. “You, too, will find peace in death.” He lunged forward suddenly. I felt his sharp splinters of broken teeth sink into my neck. A scream ripped its way out of my throat as I thrashed and kicked. Through the haze of pain, I abruptly remembered the letter opener in my hand.
I brought it up into the body of the naked, rotting corpse, slicing deeply across his stomach. The thin skin burst open with a waterfall of clotted blood running out like sludge. The brown intestines of the corpse inside spilled out, writhing with hundreds of larvae like pale worms that feasted on the dead flesh.
The pale man gave a hissing scream. Black blood burst from his mouth, covering my face in its sickly spatters. My hands grew slick as my blood mixed with the fetid fluids dripping from the animated corpse. He pulled away with a banshee wail. I collapsed to the floor, holding my spurting neck with both hands as I slowly crawled away.
I heard a window shatter behind me. Looking back, I saw the kitchen empty. The pale man had apparently jumped through the front window, leaving pieces of his decaying flesh hanging from the jagged shards of glass.
With the last of my strength, I slowly made my way toward the front door. Feeling weak and sick, stumbling as blood poured from my neck, I made my way to the neighbor’s house. I pounded on their door, collapsing on the mat as they opened it.
***
When I got home from the hospital, I went upstairs to look at the painting. A deep sense of curiosity mixed with an overwhelming dread as I opened the door.
I saw the pile of skulls, the stars like fragments of opal, but the pale victim at the center of the painting was gone forever.
2024.04.21 06:57 CIAHerpes My name is Alice, and I fell into Hell’s version of Wonderland [part 1]
Every night as I lay in bed, I heard the screaming, the shattering of plates and glasses as my mother and father fought and threw everything at each other within reach. They were drunk again, as usual. I just hoped the police wouldn’t come again tonight. I wished they could be happy.
Finally, around midnight, the voices started to fade. I felt my eyes closing as sleep came over me. But, just before I nodded off, I glimpsed a pair of eyes with black, slitted pupils peeking at me from the corner of the room. Beneath them hung a wide, grinning mouth. The mouth had dozens of triangular, razor-sharp teeth that glistened bone-white in the dim glow of the nightlight. Unattached to any visible flesh, the eyes and mouth floated in the air like wavering moonbeams. I sat up in bed, stuttering.
“What… what is this?” I whispered, staring deeply into glowing eyes. “Am I dreaming?”
“No, not dreaming, Alice. Just mad,” the thing hissed, its sharp fangs pulling apart. It gave a high-pitched, insane cackle at this. “We’re all mad here. But your father is the maddest of all, I’m sorry to say. Or, perhaps he’s just a little odd. It is hard to be sane every single day, after all…”
“Who are you?” I quietly asked as a shard of terror pierced my heart. A childish voice in the back of my mind screamed at me to simply pull the covers over my head and hide.
“The Cheshire Cat, of course. I’ll be your guide when you need me. Your adventure will be starting any second now, Alice…” His eyes glimmered brighter as a scream rang out from downstairs. I heard my father yelling, and then a gunshot rang out, shattering the night. Something heavy fell, thudding against the floor. “Ah, there it is. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, after all.”
“What’s happening?” I asked in horror. The Cheshire’s Cat’s glowing face faded like the embers of a dying fire, but his voice continued to speak in the darkness. Heavy footsteps started to ascend the stairs. Something cold and empty slithered through my heart as a feeling of dread overcame me.
“He’s coming,” the Cheshire Cat said in a gleeful tone, the voice coming from all around me. “If you want to live, jump out the window. You have ten seconds to decide.”
“Alice!” I heard my father yell drunkenly, slurring his words. “Come here, right now. I need to talk to you.” I jumped out of bed, slammed my feet into my shoes and flung open the window.
“Five seconds,” the Cheshire Cat said cheerily. I looked down from the second story. My heart dropped as I saw the fall. “Better jump, Alice. You don’t want your adventure to end before it even begins.” I heard a hand roughly grab the doorknob. I crawled out the window, slowly letting myself down by my arms.
My father flung the door open. The front of his white shirt gleamed with slick, wet blood. He had a black revolver in one hand. With wild, excited eyes, he scanned the room, stumbling forward. His head ratcheted toward the open window. For a moment, our gazes met.
“You bitch!” he screamed in rage, raising the gun. “You’re just like your mother, always trying to leave. I’ll show you, you stupid cunt…” As I let myself drop, a gunshot exploded through the night. The window above me exploded in a shower of broken glass. I screamed as the chill night air whipped around me. The garden below rose up to meet me. I felt like I was standing on the tracks as a train barreled down on me.
I hit the dirt hard, rolling as I landed. A bush with sharp branches clawed my shoulder and back, gouging out burning slices across my skin. I glanced up, seeing my father drunkenly leaning out the window, his eyes unfocused. A totally insane, ferocious expression twisted his face into something inhuman and demonic. I barely recognized him.
“Fucking bitch! Stupid cunt!” he screamed, firing the pistol twice more. One of the bullets smashed the lawn only a foot in front of me, spraying grass and soil everywhere. I shrieked, sprinting across the yard in my shoes and pajamas. The dewey grass soaked my feet within seconds. But I knew I had more pressing problems than shoes.
I glanced back at the house, seeing the window empty. A thick forest loomed at the edge of the property. A blanket of shadows covered it, and I could barely see a thing. But I knew I had no choice. I sprinted into the woods, blindly tumbling through prickers and grasping boughs.
A torrent of flickering orange light suddenly illuminated the night. As I descended deeper into the woods, trying to hide myself, I looked back at the house one last time.
I saw a raging inferno there. Long tongues of flame hissed and spit as they licked the dry wood, flowing over the walls like water.
And in front of the hellish flames, I saw my father, a dark silhouette with a gun, striding purposefully across the yard toward me.
***
As my eyes adjusted to the dark forest, I caught a flash of something white sprinting through the bushes. I nearly screamed, startled into a state of terror. The creature turned its pale, dead eyes toward me.
He towered over me, about six feet tall. He had floppy rabbit ears surgically attached to his mutilated skull. Black stitches ran over his face in jagged patches, keeping his rotting flesh together. His white fur had a rainbow of fluids soaked into it, from blood to orange and yellow pus to other things I could never hope to identify. New trickles of blood and pus continued to leak out from the stitches crisscrossing his body. In his arms, grasped between claws like those of a tiger, I saw an unconscious child. The child had a deep gash on its forehead. His head lolled from side to side like a ragdoll’s.
“I’m late…” the rabbit hissed at me, his cataract eyes glimmering with insanity as they shone white in the pale moonlight. “For, you see, I have a very important date. The Red Queen is expecting the blood of a child for her shower, as she does every full moon. What keeps the skin fresher and younger than the blood of a little one, after all?” His lips cracked apart in a wide grin, showing blackened gums mottled with sores. His pointed, needle-like teeth reminded me of some nightmarish deep-sea fish. I stood there, speechless, until the sound of cracking twigs and whipping branches not far behind me startled me back into action.
I started running, giving the insane rabbit creature a wide berth. I glanced back, seeing my father’s pale, sweaty face through the brush. His lunatic eyes flicked from side to side. He kept the gun held out in front of him, his arm swaying gently as if he were caught in some hypnotic state.
“Alice! Come here, right now! How dare you…” I only glanced at my father for a second before turning my gaze forwards again, but, by then, it was too late. In the panic of the moment and the darkness of the forest, I didn’t see the six foot wide hole that stretched across the earth like a gaping maw.
I gave a startled shriek as my foot dropped into empty air. Before I knew what was happening, I was slipping, my arms pinwheeling. I tried to regain my balance, twisting my body around. I saw the rabbit there only a few paces away, grinning at me, the unconscious, kidnapped child slung across his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
I fell backwards. The scream that tried to rip its way out of my throat seemed to get stuck there, and I could do nothing but stare blindly up as the rabbit lunged in after me with a cry of excitement. The last glimpse I caught of the forest showed my insane father stumbling toward us, still crying my name with drunken fury. The air whipped around me, the roar of it like the whine of a tornado shrieking in my ears.
The hole at the top shrank into a pinpoint as the rabbit and I fell downwards together into total darkness. We seemed to spiral around each other. No matter how I tried to pull away, the rabbit always seemed to be right there. The last glimpse I saw before the shadows closed in was the rabbit’s dead eyes flashing excitedly as he glared at me with a face like a corpse.
Then the shadows drew around me like a curtain shutting on a stage. Only my own screams and the ragged breathing of the rabbit surrounded me for what felt like an eternity. Slowly, my consciousness slipped away.
After that, I remember nothing for what felt like a very long time.
***
I awoke suddenly, inhaling deeply. I shivered, my teeth chattering as I looked around in confusion. I beheld an alien landscape stretching out to the horizon. Gently sloping hills of black earth loomed in every direction. There were no grass or plants visible, but giant red-and-white mushrooms the size of pine trees grew in clusters along the peaks of the rolling hills.
Streams of fire crisscrossed the landscape like rivers from Hell. The sun here drifted along the slit wrists of the horizon. It looked like a cold, purple ball of fire that gave off a soft, moon-like radiance but very little heat. Thin, silvery clouds covered the sky in rising plumes of pale mist. The entire world looked dark, all the colors eerie and saturated, almost like the desert at the end of a sunset.
I looked around for any sign of the surgically-altered rabbit creature or the unconscious boy he had been carrying in his arms or even, God forbid, my father. But I saw no signs of any of them.
On top of a nearby mushroom that loomed twenty feet in the air, however, I saw a familiar glint of glowing eyes, their slitted, dilated pupils looking down with insanity. The dragonfish-like teeth of the creature’s mouth shimmered in his eerie, ear-to-ear grin. Over the course of a few seconds, the rest of his body became visible as well, fading into view for the first time. I nearly gagged as I looked up in amazement. It was a disgusting thing to look at.
The Cheshire Cat was entirely hairless, his skin black and reptilian. Patches of his flesh were rotting away, and his tail had started to look like a stripped wire. White bones and infected veins writhing with maggots gleamed through the suppurating sores.
“Cheshire Cat,” I whispered, licking my dry lips, “what happened? Last I knew, I was falling… there was some… hole in the forest, and it seemed to keep going on and on forever. There was a rabbit, too, but not a normal rabbit. It was like a rabbit from a serial killer’s nightmare.” The Cheshire Cat laughed at this, but it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. It reminded me of the laugh of a man who just had his throat slit. It was gurgling and deep, and carried through the cold, dry air like a scream.
“The nightmares swarm across this world like a plague of locusts. The Red Queen’s evil and sickness has infected the very foundation of existence. The barriers between Wonderland and Hell itself seem to grow thinner by the day,” he said, but the glee never evaporated from his expression. Across the horizon, a thin, high-pitched scream rang out, full of pain and mortal terror. The Cheshire Cat’s head swung slowly toward the sound. I followed his gaze.
In the distance, I saw a narrow castle with razor-sharp turrets that disappeared into the silver clouds high above. Thin murderholes spiraled up the outside of the dark granite surface. A giant flag rippled softly in the cold breeze. I squinted, seeing a black flag with a red heart gripped in a skeletal hand. Drops of blood dripped out of the bottom.
“They call it the Chateau de Douleur,” the Cheshire Cat said by reason of explanation, “the home of the Red Queen. It sounds like another victim has fallen into her clutches.”
“What… another victim?” I stuttered, a sense of horror filling my body with a sick, weak feeling. The Cheshire Cat gave a slow, jerky nod. His eerie, gurgling laugh rang out suddenly, making me nearly jump out of my skin.
“The Red Queen seems to think that bathing in the blood of children will keep her young forever. She has an iron maiden set up above the royal shower. Every month on the full moon, her insane, sycophantic followers bring her sacrifices. Young children, boys and girls no older than five or six, usually. The younger they are, the more purifying their blood’s properties, you see.” The Cheshire Cat’s teeth gleamed as another, far weaker, scream rang out through the night. It was cut off suddenly. The eerie silence that rang out in the aftermath felt deafening.
“Ah, there it is. La petite mort- the little death,” he said gleefully, another laugh ripping its way out of his throat.
“I don’t see how that’s funny,” I said. “You think the Red Queen murdering children is funny?” As if offended by my change of tone, the Cheshire Cat’s rotted, black body started fading out, but his grin didn’t falter.
“I think that if you don’t start running soon, you will experience it firsthand,” the Cheshire Cat hissed, his voice echoing from all around me as the last gleam of his eyes faded away. “Beware. The White Rabbit draws near.”
***
I stumbled through the dark, cold world they called Wonderland. The black earth under my feet felt soft and smooth. The smell of the giant red-and-white fungi that covered the landscape like redwoods permeated the area, giving off a smell like mushrooms after a heavy rain. I went in the opposite direction of the Chateau de Douleur.
The pale, purple sun had started to disappear over the horizon. The night’s edge slid across the sky like a razor blade, plunging the world into darkness. Within a few minutes, I could barely see more than twenty feet in front of me. The silvery mist I had first seen in the sky now started spreading its ghostly fingers over the ground, covering the world in a blanket of pale fog.
I heard the White Rabbit before I saw him. In a harsh, dissonant voice, he sang. His voice carried all around me, raising goosebumps all over my skin.
“When the Queen’s eyes looked down from the sky,
They gleamed like the slit wrists of the sun.
Her pale face watches, her dead eyes dry.
Their small faces shriek what she’s done.
“I could not stop the children screaming.
And I could not stop the acid eating the dead.
I could not stop the dead men from dreaming.
I could not stop the voices in my head.
“Fragments of moonlight shine on a kitchen knife,
Crimson and ruby-red and gleaming,
But the rabbit knows no peace in life
When the children’s voices never stop screaming.”
As I ducked behind the giant trunk of a mushroom, I caught a glimpse of white fur with a spiderweb of black, garish stitches running across his back. Slung across the White Rabbit’s shoulder, the unconscious body of the child lay, the head lolling from side to side. The White Rabbit was heading in the direction of the castle. He continued bellowing out his disturbing, strange verses as his voice disappeared off in the distance. Exhaling deeply, I slunk out from behind the massive white fungal trunk. I stopped suddenly, a shard of dread piercing my heart as I saw what stood there before me.
A large man in a ripped-up walrus mask loomed over me, a blood-stained meat cleaver clutched tightly in one hand. The brown mask only covered the top half of his face. It had two giant white tusks jutting down past his chin. He had on a tight, soiled T-shirt that might have once been white but was now covered in a disgusting rainbow of stains. His fat belly protruded over his belt. The rolls of fat jiggled on his neck as he gave a strange, high-pitched laugh.
“They call me the Walrus,” he hissed through a mouthful of broken, rotting teeth, grinning at me. As he exhaled, I smelled rotten meat and the sickly sweet reek of infection. I backpedaled quickly in horror and revulsion. “I ate all the little ones, I did… my sweet little clams, the children of the damned…” He laughed at this, advancing on me. His dark eyes shone with insanity and hunger behind the eerie mask. With a greasy, muscular arm, he grabbed me by the neck.
I was put into a headlock and forced to stumble along behind him, my breaths coming in choking gasps. He pulled me into the mist. For a couple minutes, we went on like this. I continued struggling, trying to beat the giant man away with my hands, but he was too strong. When his grip loosened slightly, a powerful, echoing scream escaped my lips.
“Help me! Someone! Cheshire Cat…” I began, but he tightened his greasy, bulging arm around my neck, cutting off my wind. The world started turning white. A rising sense of animal panic swept through my body until the Walrus finally, mercifully, relaxed. I drew in a deep breath that tasted as sweet as honey, gasping and sweating.
“Don’t do that, my little clam,” the Walrus whispered with venom. His cracked lips had split into a furious grimace. His eyes shone with hatred. “You are courting death. Don’t you know sound draws on the Jabberwock?” He looked around nervously at the name.
As if in response, a high-pitched, animalistic roar ripped its way across the night. It reminded me of the screaming of a woman being burned alive. The echoes faded slowly, but with the mist so thick around us and the sky looking like a flat piece of slate, I couldn’t see more than ten feet in any direction.
Ahead of us loomed a shoddy, one-room cabin. The Walrus murmured to himself, gnashing his destroyed teeth as he looked down on me hungrily.
“You’re a beautiful little clam,” he hissed. “I think you’ll make a nice meal for Mr. Walrus. Indeed, a very tender little clam.” With one greasy, dirt-stained hand, he flung the cabin door open and threw me inside. The smell of cooking meat, rotting flesh and feces smacked me in the face, so thick I could taste it in the back of my throat. I bent over, retching. The Walrus closed the door as quietly as he could, peering through a tiny, smashed window in the mold-ridden boards of the dilapidated cabin.
A little girl crouched in the corner, starved and shivering. On a rough, wooden kitchen counter, I saw small, dismembered fingers and eyeballs. Spools of intestines were rolled up like sausages next to them.
A raging fire in the fireplace flickered and danced, illuminating every corner of this cabin of horrors. Over the fire, a child’s torso roasted, the fats spitting and dripping in greasy, burning drops. It was just the torso, with a ragged patch of bloody neck. It ended at the navel, with pieces of torn organs hanging out and blackening.
“Into the cage, my little sweetie, my little honey,” the Walrus whispered, pushing me forward. I heard the strange animalistic cry again, this time much closer.
“Fuck you!” I screamed, pushing the Walrus away. I tried to run for the door, but in a giant, single bound, he tackled me to the floor. I began shrieking for my life, trying to claw at the Walrus’ eyes. He punched me hard in the face. I saw white spots, bright stars that flashed across my vision. As my head lolled and I tasted coppery blood dripping from my mouth and nose, the high-pitched scream came again from directly outside the door.
“Help!” I cried. The Walrus froze, looking up. His dead eyes flashed with horror and a deep, ineffable fear. That was when the entire front of the cabin exploded. Shards of splintered wood pierced my skin like tiny hornet stings. The Walrus jumped off me, backpedaling quickly toward the back of the cabin. I raised my head and met the eyes of the Jabberwock. Like a dragon from an acid fiend’s nightmare, it raised its powerful body to its full height, looming twenty feet above the ground.
The Jabberwock’s skin gleamed a slate-gray color. Hundreds of pencil-thin appendages hung down from its enormous, fish-like face. The slow, rhythmic tapping of the fetid slime that dripped from its body mixed with its powerful breathing.
Its flat, hungry eyes bulged out, dark and lidless, reflecting the bloody light of the fire. Its enormous lungs inhaled and exhaled as it stared at us, creating the same whipping of wind and fury that a barreling train might produce.
The Jabberwock’s neck slithered out, writhing and serpentine, like some ancient Brachiosaurus’ neck. Its head hung low below its shoulders as it moved forward in a jerky, crawling gait, its webbed, dragon-like feet sliding across the soft black soil of Wonderland like a berserk centipede. It opened its mouth, showing hundreds of spiraling teeth that pulsated and twisted like the mouth of some demonic lamprey. The Jabberwock tried to force its entire body through the crushed wall, crouching down and giving another high-pitched scream. Its black eyes rolled back in its head, showing bloody veins at the bottom.
The Walrus tried to sprint for a back window, but the Jabberwock’s neck slithered out. Like a toad grabbing a fly out of the air, its lamprey mouth struck out in a blur. It attached to the Walrus’ back with a sucking sound. Blood exploded from the back of the Walrus’ body, splashing the coarse floor and broken walls of the cabin. I started crawling away. The panicked, agonized shrieks of the Walrus carried through the air, accompanied by wet crunching and sucking sounds.
As the Jabberwock shook its head like a dog with a chew toy, spatters of blood from the Walrus’ mutilated body the inside of the cabin. The frail, trembling girl in the cage in the corner cowered back from the destruction. The Jabberwock’s tail whipped from side to side, long and tapering like the tail of a dinosaur. Sharp, bony spikes protruded from the ends.
With a tremendous crash that shook the ground, its tail smashed into the cage. The girl gave a squeak like a strangled rabbit as the cage soared across the cabin and crashed into a wall. She tumbled head over heels inside it. Then the cage’s door fell open with a clatter of metal. The girl crawled out, her stunned eyes sweeping over me.
I silently motioned for her to follow me. As silently as I could, I crawled through a massive hole in the collapsed front wall. I glanced back and saw her close behind, her skeletal arms pumping quickly. A glimmer of hope flashed across her sunken, haunted eyes, a look I remember even now when I lay in my bed a few days later.
As we got out to the black soil of Wonderland and the thick mists of its endless night, the cabin fell into a heap behind us. The Jabberwock continued to thrash in the rubble. The sounds of bones cracking and sucking followed us down the rolling hills.
Part 2: My name is Alice, and I fell into Hell’s version of Wonderland [part 2] : scarystories (reddit.com)
submitted by CIAHerpes to scarystories [link] [comments]
Finally, around midnight, the voices started to fade. I felt my eyes closing as sleep came over me. But, just before I nodded off, I glimpsed a pair of eyes with black, slitted pupils peeking at me from the corner of the room. Beneath them hung a wide, grinning mouth. The mouth had dozens of triangular, razor-sharp teeth that glistened bone-white in the dim glow of the nightlight. Unattached to any visible flesh, the eyes and mouth floated in the air like wavering moonbeams. I sat up in bed, stuttering.
“What… what is this?” I whispered, staring deeply into glowing eyes. “Am I dreaming?”
“No, not dreaming, Alice. Just mad,” the thing hissed, its sharp fangs pulling apart. It gave a high-pitched, insane cackle at this. “We’re all mad here. But your father is the maddest of all, I’m sorry to say. Or, perhaps he’s just a little odd. It is hard to be sane every single day, after all…”
“Who are you?” I quietly asked as a shard of terror pierced my heart. A childish voice in the back of my mind screamed at me to simply pull the covers over my head and hide.
“The Cheshire Cat, of course. I’ll be your guide when you need me. Your adventure will be starting any second now, Alice…” His eyes glimmered brighter as a scream rang out from downstairs. I heard my father yelling, and then a gunshot rang out, shattering the night. Something heavy fell, thudding against the floor. “Ah, there it is. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, after all.”
“What’s happening?” I asked in horror. The Cheshire’s Cat’s glowing face faded like the embers of a dying fire, but his voice continued to speak in the darkness. Heavy footsteps started to ascend the stairs. Something cold and empty slithered through my heart as a feeling of dread overcame me.
“He’s coming,” the Cheshire Cat said in a gleeful tone, the voice coming from all around me. “If you want to live, jump out the window. You have ten seconds to decide.”
“Alice!” I heard my father yell drunkenly, slurring his words. “Come here, right now. I need to talk to you.” I jumped out of bed, slammed my feet into my shoes and flung open the window.
“Five seconds,” the Cheshire Cat said cheerily. I looked down from the second story. My heart dropped as I saw the fall. “Better jump, Alice. You don’t want your adventure to end before it even begins.” I heard a hand roughly grab the doorknob. I crawled out the window, slowly letting myself down by my arms.
My father flung the door open. The front of his white shirt gleamed with slick, wet blood. He had a black revolver in one hand. With wild, excited eyes, he scanned the room, stumbling forward. His head ratcheted toward the open window. For a moment, our gazes met.
“You bitch!” he screamed in rage, raising the gun. “You’re just like your mother, always trying to leave. I’ll show you, you stupid cunt…” As I let myself drop, a gunshot exploded through the night. The window above me exploded in a shower of broken glass. I screamed as the chill night air whipped around me. The garden below rose up to meet me. I felt like I was standing on the tracks as a train barreled down on me.
I hit the dirt hard, rolling as I landed. A bush with sharp branches clawed my shoulder and back, gouging out burning slices across my skin. I glanced up, seeing my father drunkenly leaning out the window, his eyes unfocused. A totally insane, ferocious expression twisted his face into something inhuman and demonic. I barely recognized him.
“Fucking bitch! Stupid cunt!” he screamed, firing the pistol twice more. One of the bullets smashed the lawn only a foot in front of me, spraying grass and soil everywhere. I shrieked, sprinting across the yard in my shoes and pajamas. The dewey grass soaked my feet within seconds. But I knew I had more pressing problems than shoes.
I glanced back at the house, seeing the window empty. A thick forest loomed at the edge of the property. A blanket of shadows covered it, and I could barely see a thing. But I knew I had no choice. I sprinted into the woods, blindly tumbling through prickers and grasping boughs.
A torrent of flickering orange light suddenly illuminated the night. As I descended deeper into the woods, trying to hide myself, I looked back at the house one last time.
I saw a raging inferno there. Long tongues of flame hissed and spit as they licked the dry wood, flowing over the walls like water.
And in front of the hellish flames, I saw my father, a dark silhouette with a gun, striding purposefully across the yard toward me.
***
As my eyes adjusted to the dark forest, I caught a flash of something white sprinting through the bushes. I nearly screamed, startled into a state of terror. The creature turned its pale, dead eyes toward me.
He towered over me, about six feet tall. He had floppy rabbit ears surgically attached to his mutilated skull. Black stitches ran over his face in jagged patches, keeping his rotting flesh together. His white fur had a rainbow of fluids soaked into it, from blood to orange and yellow pus to other things I could never hope to identify. New trickles of blood and pus continued to leak out from the stitches crisscrossing his body. In his arms, grasped between claws like those of a tiger, I saw an unconscious child. The child had a deep gash on its forehead. His head lolled from side to side like a ragdoll’s.
“I’m late…” the rabbit hissed at me, his cataract eyes glimmering with insanity as they shone white in the pale moonlight. “For, you see, I have a very important date. The Red Queen is expecting the blood of a child for her shower, as she does every full moon. What keeps the skin fresher and younger than the blood of a little one, after all?” His lips cracked apart in a wide grin, showing blackened gums mottled with sores. His pointed, needle-like teeth reminded me of some nightmarish deep-sea fish. I stood there, speechless, until the sound of cracking twigs and whipping branches not far behind me startled me back into action.
I started running, giving the insane rabbit creature a wide berth. I glanced back, seeing my father’s pale, sweaty face through the brush. His lunatic eyes flicked from side to side. He kept the gun held out in front of him, his arm swaying gently as if he were caught in some hypnotic state.
“Alice! Come here, right now! How dare you…” I only glanced at my father for a second before turning my gaze forwards again, but, by then, it was too late. In the panic of the moment and the darkness of the forest, I didn’t see the six foot wide hole that stretched across the earth like a gaping maw.
I gave a startled shriek as my foot dropped into empty air. Before I knew what was happening, I was slipping, my arms pinwheeling. I tried to regain my balance, twisting my body around. I saw the rabbit there only a few paces away, grinning at me, the unconscious, kidnapped child slung across his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
I fell backwards. The scream that tried to rip its way out of my throat seemed to get stuck there, and I could do nothing but stare blindly up as the rabbit lunged in after me with a cry of excitement. The last glimpse I caught of the forest showed my insane father stumbling toward us, still crying my name with drunken fury. The air whipped around me, the roar of it like the whine of a tornado shrieking in my ears.
The hole at the top shrank into a pinpoint as the rabbit and I fell downwards together into total darkness. We seemed to spiral around each other. No matter how I tried to pull away, the rabbit always seemed to be right there. The last glimpse I saw before the shadows closed in was the rabbit’s dead eyes flashing excitedly as he glared at me with a face like a corpse.
Then the shadows drew around me like a curtain shutting on a stage. Only my own screams and the ragged breathing of the rabbit surrounded me for what felt like an eternity. Slowly, my consciousness slipped away.
After that, I remember nothing for what felt like a very long time.
***
I awoke suddenly, inhaling deeply. I shivered, my teeth chattering as I looked around in confusion. I beheld an alien landscape stretching out to the horizon. Gently sloping hills of black earth loomed in every direction. There were no grass or plants visible, but giant red-and-white mushrooms the size of pine trees grew in clusters along the peaks of the rolling hills.
Streams of fire crisscrossed the landscape like rivers from Hell. The sun here drifted along the slit wrists of the horizon. It looked like a cold, purple ball of fire that gave off a soft, moon-like radiance but very little heat. Thin, silvery clouds covered the sky in rising plumes of pale mist. The entire world looked dark, all the colors eerie and saturated, almost like the desert at the end of a sunset.
I looked around for any sign of the surgically-altered rabbit creature or the unconscious boy he had been carrying in his arms or even, God forbid, my father. But I saw no signs of any of them.
On top of a nearby mushroom that loomed twenty feet in the air, however, I saw a familiar glint of glowing eyes, their slitted, dilated pupils looking down with insanity. The dragonfish-like teeth of the creature’s mouth shimmered in his eerie, ear-to-ear grin. Over the course of a few seconds, the rest of his body became visible as well, fading into view for the first time. I nearly gagged as I looked up in amazement. It was a disgusting thing to look at.
The Cheshire Cat was entirely hairless, his skin black and reptilian. Patches of his flesh were rotting away, and his tail had started to look like a stripped wire. White bones and infected veins writhing with maggots gleamed through the suppurating sores.
“Cheshire Cat,” I whispered, licking my dry lips, “what happened? Last I knew, I was falling… there was some… hole in the forest, and it seemed to keep going on and on forever. There was a rabbit, too, but not a normal rabbit. It was like a rabbit from a serial killer’s nightmare.” The Cheshire Cat laughed at this, but it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. It reminded me of the laugh of a man who just had his throat slit. It was gurgling and deep, and carried through the cold, dry air like a scream.
“The nightmares swarm across this world like a plague of locusts. The Red Queen’s evil and sickness has infected the very foundation of existence. The barriers between Wonderland and Hell itself seem to grow thinner by the day,” he said, but the glee never evaporated from his expression. Across the horizon, a thin, high-pitched scream rang out, full of pain and mortal terror. The Cheshire Cat’s head swung slowly toward the sound. I followed his gaze.
In the distance, I saw a narrow castle with razor-sharp turrets that disappeared into the silver clouds high above. Thin murderholes spiraled up the outside of the dark granite surface. A giant flag rippled softly in the cold breeze. I squinted, seeing a black flag with a red heart gripped in a skeletal hand. Drops of blood dripped out of the bottom.
“They call it the Chateau de Douleur,” the Cheshire Cat said by reason of explanation, “the home of the Red Queen. It sounds like another victim has fallen into her clutches.”
“What… another victim?” I stuttered, a sense of horror filling my body with a sick, weak feeling. The Cheshire Cat gave a slow, jerky nod. His eerie, gurgling laugh rang out suddenly, making me nearly jump out of my skin.
“The Red Queen seems to think that bathing in the blood of children will keep her young forever. She has an iron maiden set up above the royal shower. Every month on the full moon, her insane, sycophantic followers bring her sacrifices. Young children, boys and girls no older than five or six, usually. The younger they are, the more purifying their blood’s properties, you see.” The Cheshire Cat’s teeth gleamed as another, far weaker, scream rang out through the night. It was cut off suddenly. The eerie silence that rang out in the aftermath felt deafening.
“Ah, there it is. La petite mort- the little death,” he said gleefully, another laugh ripping its way out of his throat.
“I don’t see how that’s funny,” I said. “You think the Red Queen murdering children is funny?” As if offended by my change of tone, the Cheshire Cat’s rotted, black body started fading out, but his grin didn’t falter.
“I think that if you don’t start running soon, you will experience it firsthand,” the Cheshire Cat hissed, his voice echoing from all around me as the last gleam of his eyes faded away. “Beware. The White Rabbit draws near.”
***
I stumbled through the dark, cold world they called Wonderland. The black earth under my feet felt soft and smooth. The smell of the giant red-and-white fungi that covered the landscape like redwoods permeated the area, giving off a smell like mushrooms after a heavy rain. I went in the opposite direction of the Chateau de Douleur.
The pale, purple sun had started to disappear over the horizon. The night’s edge slid across the sky like a razor blade, plunging the world into darkness. Within a few minutes, I could barely see more than twenty feet in front of me. The silvery mist I had first seen in the sky now started spreading its ghostly fingers over the ground, covering the world in a blanket of pale fog.
I heard the White Rabbit before I saw him. In a harsh, dissonant voice, he sang. His voice carried all around me, raising goosebumps all over my skin.
“When the Queen’s eyes looked down from the sky,
They gleamed like the slit wrists of the sun.
Her pale face watches, her dead eyes dry.
Their small faces shriek what she’s done.
“I could not stop the children screaming.
And I could not stop the acid eating the dead.
I could not stop the dead men from dreaming.
I could not stop the voices in my head.
“Fragments of moonlight shine on a kitchen knife,
Crimson and ruby-red and gleaming,
But the rabbit knows no peace in life
When the children’s voices never stop screaming.”
As I ducked behind the giant trunk of a mushroom, I caught a glimpse of white fur with a spiderweb of black, garish stitches running across his back. Slung across the White Rabbit’s shoulder, the unconscious body of the child lay, the head lolling from side to side. The White Rabbit was heading in the direction of the castle. He continued bellowing out his disturbing, strange verses as his voice disappeared off in the distance. Exhaling deeply, I slunk out from behind the massive white fungal trunk. I stopped suddenly, a shard of dread piercing my heart as I saw what stood there before me.
A large man in a ripped-up walrus mask loomed over me, a blood-stained meat cleaver clutched tightly in one hand. The brown mask only covered the top half of his face. It had two giant white tusks jutting down past his chin. He had on a tight, soiled T-shirt that might have once been white but was now covered in a disgusting rainbow of stains. His fat belly protruded over his belt. The rolls of fat jiggled on his neck as he gave a strange, high-pitched laugh.
“They call me the Walrus,” he hissed through a mouthful of broken, rotting teeth, grinning at me. As he exhaled, I smelled rotten meat and the sickly sweet reek of infection. I backpedaled quickly in horror and revulsion. “I ate all the little ones, I did… my sweet little clams, the children of the damned…” He laughed at this, advancing on me. His dark eyes shone with insanity and hunger behind the eerie mask. With a greasy, muscular arm, he grabbed me by the neck.
I was put into a headlock and forced to stumble along behind him, my breaths coming in choking gasps. He pulled me into the mist. For a couple minutes, we went on like this. I continued struggling, trying to beat the giant man away with my hands, but he was too strong. When his grip loosened slightly, a powerful, echoing scream escaped my lips.
“Help me! Someone! Cheshire Cat…” I began, but he tightened his greasy, bulging arm around my neck, cutting off my wind. The world started turning white. A rising sense of animal panic swept through my body until the Walrus finally, mercifully, relaxed. I drew in a deep breath that tasted as sweet as honey, gasping and sweating.
“Don’t do that, my little clam,” the Walrus whispered with venom. His cracked lips had split into a furious grimace. His eyes shone with hatred. “You are courting death. Don’t you know sound draws on the Jabberwock?” He looked around nervously at the name.
As if in response, a high-pitched, animalistic roar ripped its way across the night. It reminded me of the screaming of a woman being burned alive. The echoes faded slowly, but with the mist so thick around us and the sky looking like a flat piece of slate, I couldn’t see more than ten feet in any direction.
Ahead of us loomed a shoddy, one-room cabin. The Walrus murmured to himself, gnashing his destroyed teeth as he looked down on me hungrily.
“You’re a beautiful little clam,” he hissed. “I think you’ll make a nice meal for Mr. Walrus. Indeed, a very tender little clam.” With one greasy, dirt-stained hand, he flung the cabin door open and threw me inside. The smell of cooking meat, rotting flesh and feces smacked me in the face, so thick I could taste it in the back of my throat. I bent over, retching. The Walrus closed the door as quietly as he could, peering through a tiny, smashed window in the mold-ridden boards of the dilapidated cabin.
A little girl crouched in the corner, starved and shivering. On a rough, wooden kitchen counter, I saw small, dismembered fingers and eyeballs. Spools of intestines were rolled up like sausages next to them.
A raging fire in the fireplace flickered and danced, illuminating every corner of this cabin of horrors. Over the fire, a child’s torso roasted, the fats spitting and dripping in greasy, burning drops. It was just the torso, with a ragged patch of bloody neck. It ended at the navel, with pieces of torn organs hanging out and blackening.
“Into the cage, my little sweetie, my little honey,” the Walrus whispered, pushing me forward. I heard the strange animalistic cry again, this time much closer.
“Fuck you!” I screamed, pushing the Walrus away. I tried to run for the door, but in a giant, single bound, he tackled me to the floor. I began shrieking for my life, trying to claw at the Walrus’ eyes. He punched me hard in the face. I saw white spots, bright stars that flashed across my vision. As my head lolled and I tasted coppery blood dripping from my mouth and nose, the high-pitched scream came again from directly outside the door.
“Help!” I cried. The Walrus froze, looking up. His dead eyes flashed with horror and a deep, ineffable fear. That was when the entire front of the cabin exploded. Shards of splintered wood pierced my skin like tiny hornet stings. The Walrus jumped off me, backpedaling quickly toward the back of the cabin. I raised my head and met the eyes of the Jabberwock. Like a dragon from an acid fiend’s nightmare, it raised its powerful body to its full height, looming twenty feet above the ground.
The Jabberwock’s skin gleamed a slate-gray color. Hundreds of pencil-thin appendages hung down from its enormous, fish-like face. The slow, rhythmic tapping of the fetid slime that dripped from its body mixed with its powerful breathing.
Its flat, hungry eyes bulged out, dark and lidless, reflecting the bloody light of the fire. Its enormous lungs inhaled and exhaled as it stared at us, creating the same whipping of wind and fury that a barreling train might produce.
The Jabberwock’s neck slithered out, writhing and serpentine, like some ancient Brachiosaurus’ neck. Its head hung low below its shoulders as it moved forward in a jerky, crawling gait, its webbed, dragon-like feet sliding across the soft black soil of Wonderland like a berserk centipede. It opened its mouth, showing hundreds of spiraling teeth that pulsated and twisted like the mouth of some demonic lamprey. The Jabberwock tried to force its entire body through the crushed wall, crouching down and giving another high-pitched scream. Its black eyes rolled back in its head, showing bloody veins at the bottom.
The Walrus tried to sprint for a back window, but the Jabberwock’s neck slithered out. Like a toad grabbing a fly out of the air, its lamprey mouth struck out in a blur. It attached to the Walrus’ back with a sucking sound. Blood exploded from the back of the Walrus’ body, splashing the coarse floor and broken walls of the cabin. I started crawling away. The panicked, agonized shrieks of the Walrus carried through the air, accompanied by wet crunching and sucking sounds.
As the Jabberwock shook its head like a dog with a chew toy, spatters of blood from the Walrus’ mutilated body the inside of the cabin. The frail, trembling girl in the cage in the corner cowered back from the destruction. The Jabberwock’s tail whipped from side to side, long and tapering like the tail of a dinosaur. Sharp, bony spikes protruded from the ends.
With a tremendous crash that shook the ground, its tail smashed into the cage. The girl gave a squeak like a strangled rabbit as the cage soared across the cabin and crashed into a wall. She tumbled head over heels inside it. Then the cage’s door fell open with a clatter of metal. The girl crawled out, her stunned eyes sweeping over me.
I silently motioned for her to follow me. As silently as I could, I crawled through a massive hole in the collapsed front wall. I glanced back and saw her close behind, her skeletal arms pumping quickly. A glimmer of hope flashed across her sunken, haunted eyes, a look I remember even now when I lay in my bed a few days later.
As we got out to the black soil of Wonderland and the thick mists of its endless night, the cabin fell into a heap behind us. The Jabberwock continued to thrash in the rubble. The sounds of bones cracking and sucking followed us down the rolling hills.
Part 2: My name is Alice, and I fell into Hell’s version of Wonderland [part 2] : scarystories (reddit.com)
2024.04.21 06:52 CIAHerpes My name is Alice, and I fell into Hell’s version of Wonderland [part 1]
Every night as I lay in bed, I heard the screaming, the shattering of plates and glasses as my mother and father fought and threw everything at each other within reach. They were drunk again, as usual. I just hoped the police wouldn’t come again tonight. I wished they could be happy.
Finally, around midnight, the voices started to fade. I felt my eyes closing as sleep came over me. But, just before I nodded off, I glimpsed a pair of eyes with black, slitted pupils peeking at me from the corner of the room. Beneath them hung a wide, grinning mouth. The mouth had dozens of triangular, razor-sharp teeth that glistened bone-white in the dim glow of the nightlight. Unattached to any visible flesh, the eyes and mouth floated in the air like wavering moonbeams. I sat up in bed, stuttering.
“What… what is this?” I whispered, staring deeply into glowing eyes. “Am I dreaming?”
“No, not dreaming, Alice. Just mad,” the thing hissed, its sharp fangs pulling apart. It gave a high-pitched, insane cackle at this. “We’re all mad here. But your father is the maddest of all, I’m sorry to say. Or, perhaps he’s just a little odd. It is hard to be sane every single day, after all…”
“Who are you?” I quietly asked as a shard of terror pierced my heart. A childish voice in the back of my mind screamed at me to simply pull the covers over my head and hide.
“The Cheshire Cat, of course. I’ll be your guide when you need me. Your adventure will be starting any second now, Alice…” His eyes glimmered brighter as a scream rang out from downstairs. I heard my father yelling, and then a gunshot rang out, shattering the night. Something heavy fell, thudding against the floor. “Ah, there it is. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, after all.”
“What’s happening?” I asked in horror. The Cheshire’s Cat’s glowing face faded like the embers of a dying fire, but his voice continued to speak in the darkness. Heavy footsteps started to ascend the stairs. Something cold and empty slithered through my heart as a feeling of dread overcame me.
“He’s coming,” the Cheshire Cat said in a gleeful tone, the voice coming from all around me. “If you want to live, jump out the window. You have ten seconds to decide.”
“Alice!” I heard my father yell drunkenly, slurring his words. “Come here, right now. I need to talk to you.” I jumped out of bed, slammed my feet into my shoes and flung open the window.
“Five seconds,” the Cheshire Cat said cheerily. I looked down from the second story. My heart dropped as I saw the fall. “Better jump, Alice. You don’t want your adventure to end before it even begins.” I heard a hand roughly grab the doorknob. I crawled out the window, slowly letting myself down by my arms.
My father flung the door open. The front of his white shirt gleamed with slick, wet blood. He had a black revolver in one hand. With wild, excited eyes, he scanned the room, stumbling forward. His head ratcheted toward the open window. For a moment, our gazes met.
“You bitch!” he screamed in rage, raising the gun. “You’re just like your mother, always trying to leave. I’ll show you, you stupid cunt…” As I let myself drop, a gunshot exploded through the night. The window above me exploded in a shower of broken glass. I screamed as the chill night air whipped around me. The garden below rose up to meet me. I felt like I was standing on the tracks as a train barreled down on me.
I hit the dirt hard, rolling as I landed. A bush with sharp branches clawed my shoulder and back, gouging out burning slices across my skin. I glanced up, seeing my father drunkenly leaning out the window, his eyes unfocused. A totally insane, ferocious expression twisted his face into something inhuman and demonic. I barely recognized him.
“Fucking bitch! Stupid cunt!” he screamed, firing the pistol twice more. One of the bullets smashed the lawn only a foot in front of me, spraying grass and soil everywhere. I shrieked, sprinting across the yard in my shoes and pajamas. The dewey grass soaked my feet within seconds. But I knew I had more pressing problems than shoes.
I glanced back at the house, seeing the window empty. A thick forest loomed at the edge of the property. A blanket of shadows covered it, and I could barely see a thing. But I knew I had no choice. I sprinted into the woods, blindly tumbling through prickers and grasping boughs.
A torrent of flickering orange light suddenly illuminated the night. As I descended deeper into the woods, trying to hide myself, I looked back at the house one last time.
I saw a raging inferno there. Long tongues of flame hissed and spit as they licked the dry wood, flowing over the walls like water.
And in front of the hellish flames, I saw my father, a dark silhouette with a gun, striding purposefully across the yard toward me.
***
As my eyes adjusted to the dark forest, I caught a flash of something white sprinting through the bushes. I nearly screamed, startled into a state of terror. The creature turned its pale, dead eyes toward me.
He towered over me, about six feet tall. He had floppy rabbit ears surgically attached to his mutilated skull. Black stitches ran over his face in jagged patches, keeping his rotting flesh together. His white fur had a rainbow of fluids soaked into it, from blood to orange and yellow pus to other things I could never hope to identify. New trickles of blood and pus continued to leak out from the stitches crisscrossing his body. In his arms, grasped between claws like those of a tiger, I saw an unconscious child. The child had a deep gash on its forehead. His head lolled from side to side like a ragdoll’s.
“I’m late…” the rabbit hissed at me, his cataract eyes glimmering with insanity as they shone white in the pale moonlight. “For, you see, I have a very important date. The Red Queen is expecting the blood of a child for her shower, as she does every full moon. What keeps the skin fresher and younger than the blood of a little one, after all?” His lips cracked apart in a wide grin, showing blackened gums mottled with sores. His pointed, needle-like teeth reminded me of some nightmarish deep-sea fish. I stood there, speechless, until the sound of cracking twigs and whipping branches not far behind me startled me back into action.
I started running, giving the insane rabbit creature a wide berth. I glanced back, seeing my father’s pale, sweaty face through the brush. His lunatic eyes flicked from side to side. He kept the gun held out in front of him, his arm swaying gently as if he were caught in some hypnotic state.
“Alice! Come here, right now! How dare you…” I only glanced at my father for a second before turning my gaze forwards again, but, by then, it was too late. In the panic of the moment and the darkness of the forest, I didn’t see the six foot wide hole that stretched across the earth like a gaping maw.
I gave a startled shriek as my foot dropped into empty air. Before I knew what was happening, I was slipping, my arms pinwheeling. I tried to regain my balance, twisting my body around. I saw the rabbit there only a few paces away, grinning at me, the unconscious, kidnapped child slung across his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
I fell backwards. The scream that tried to rip its way out of my throat seemed to get stuck there, and I could do nothing but stare blindly up as the rabbit lunged in after me with a cry of excitement. The last glimpse I caught of the forest showed my insane father stumbling toward us, still crying my name with drunken fury. The air whipped around me, the roar of it like the whine of a tornado shrieking in my ears.
The hole at the top shrank into a pinpoint as the rabbit and I fell downwards together into total darkness. We seemed to spiral around each other. No matter how I tried to pull away, the rabbit always seemed to be right there. The last glimpse I saw before the shadows closed in was the rabbit’s dead eyes flashing excitedly as he glared at me with a face like a corpse.
Then the shadows drew around me like a curtain shutting on a stage. Only my own screams and the ragged breathing of the rabbit surrounded me for what felt like an eternity. Slowly, my consciousness slipped away.
After that, I remember nothing for what felt like a very long time.
***
I awoke suddenly, inhaling deeply. I shivered, my teeth chattering as I looked around in confusion. I beheld an alien landscape stretching out to the horizon. Gently sloping hills of black earth loomed in every direction. There were no grass or plants visible, but giant red-and-white mushrooms the size of pine trees grew in clusters along the peaks of the rolling hills.
Streams of fire crisscrossed the landscape like rivers from Hell. The sun here drifted along the slit wrists of the horizon. It looked like a cold, purple ball of fire that gave off a soft, moon-like radiance but very little heat. Thin, silvery clouds covered the sky in rising plumes of pale mist. The entire world looked dark, all the colors eerie and saturated, almost like the desert at the end of a sunset.
I looked around for any sign of the surgically-altered rabbit creature or the unconscious boy he had been carrying in his arms or even, God forbid, my father. But I saw no signs of any of them.
On top of a nearby mushroom that loomed twenty feet in the air, however, I saw a familiar glint of glowing eyes, their slitted, dilated pupils looking down with insanity. The dragonfish-like teeth of the creature’s mouth shimmered in his eerie, ear-to-ear grin. Over the course of a few seconds, the rest of his body became visible as well, fading into view for the first time. I nearly gagged as I looked up in amazement. It was a disgusting thing to look at.
The Cheshire Cat was entirely hairless, his skin black and reptilian. Patches of his flesh were rotting away, and his tail had started to look like a stripped wire. White bones and infected veins writhing with maggots gleamed through the suppurating sores.
“Cheshire Cat,” I whispered, licking my dry lips, “what happened? Last I knew, I was falling… there was some… hole in the forest, and it seemed to keep going on and on forever. There was a rabbit, too, but not a normal rabbit. It was like a rabbit from a serial killer’s nightmare.” The Cheshire Cat laughed at this, but it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. It reminded me of the laugh of a man who just had his throat slit. It was gurgling and deep, and carried through the cold, dry air like a scream.
“The nightmares swarm across this world like a plague of locusts. The Red Queen’s evil and sickness has infected the very foundation of existence. The barriers between Wonderland and Hell itself seem to grow thinner by the day,” he said, but the glee never evaporated from his expression. Across the horizon, a thin, high-pitched scream rang out, full of pain and mortal terror. The Cheshire Cat’s head swung slowly toward the sound. I followed his gaze.
In the distance, I saw a narrow castle with razor-sharp turrets that disappeared into the silver clouds high above. Thin murderholes spiraled up the outside of the dark granite surface. A giant flag rippled softly in the cold breeze. I squinted, seeing a black flag with a red heart gripped in a skeletal hand. Drops of blood dripped out of the bottom.
“They call it the Chateau de Douleur,” the Cheshire Cat said by reason of explanation, “the home of the Red Queen. It sounds like another victim has fallen into her clutches.”
“What… another victim?” I stuttered, a sense of horror filling my body with a sick, weak feeling. The Cheshire Cat gave a slow, jerky nod. His eerie, gurgling laugh rang out suddenly, making me nearly jump out of my skin.
“The Red Queen seems to think that bathing in the blood of children will keep her young forever. She has an iron maiden set up above the royal shower. Every month on the full moon, her insane, sycophantic followers bring her sacrifices. Young children, boys and girls no older than five or six, usually. The younger they are, the more purifying their blood’s properties, you see.” The Cheshire Cat’s teeth gleamed as another, far weaker, scream rang out through the night. It was cut off suddenly. The eerie silence that rang out in the aftermath felt deafening.
“Ah, there it is. La petite mort- the little death,” he said gleefully, another laugh ripping its way out of his throat.
“I don’t see how that’s funny,” I said. “You think the Red Queen murdering children is funny?” As if offended by my change of tone, the Cheshire Cat’s rotted, black body started fading out, but his grin didn’t falter.
“I think that if you don’t start running soon, you will experience it firsthand,” the Cheshire Cat hissed, his voice echoing from all around me as the last gleam of his eyes faded away. “Beware. The White Rabbit draws near.”
***
I stumbled through the dark, cold world they called Wonderland. The black earth under my feet felt soft and smooth. The smell of the giant red-and-white fungi that covered the landscape like redwoods permeated the area, giving off a smell like mushrooms after a heavy rain. I went in the opposite direction of the Chateau de Douleur.
The pale, purple sun had started to disappear over the horizon. The night’s edge slid across the sky like a razor blade, plunging the world into darkness. Within a few minutes, I could barely see more than twenty feet in front of me. The silvery mist I had first seen in the sky now started spreading its ghostly fingers over the ground, covering the world in a blanket of pale fog.
I heard the White Rabbit before I saw him. In a harsh, dissonant voice, he sang. His voice carried all around me, raising goosebumps all over my skin.
“When the Queen’s eyes looked down from the sky,
They gleamed like the slit wrists of the sun.
Her pale face watches, her dead eyes dry.
Their small faces shriek what she’s done.
“I could not stop the children screaming.
And I could not stop the acid eating the dead.
I could not stop the dead men from dreaming.
I could not stop the voices in my head.
“Fragments of moonlight shine on a kitchen knife,
Crimson and ruby-red and gleaming,
But the rabbit knows no peace in life
When the children’s voices never stop screaming.”
As I ducked behind the giant trunk of a mushroom, I caught a glimpse of white fur with a spiderweb of black, garish stitches running across his back. Slung across the White Rabbit’s shoulder, the unconscious body of the child lay, the head lolling from side to side. The White Rabbit was heading in the direction of the castle. He continued bellowing out his disturbing, strange verses as his voice disappeared off in the distance. Exhaling deeply, I slunk out from behind the massive white fungal trunk. I stopped suddenly, a shard of dread piercing my heart as I saw what stood there before me.
A large man in a ripped-up walrus mask loomed over me, a blood-stained meat cleaver clutched tightly in one hand. The brown mask only covered the top half of his face. It had two giant white tusks jutting down past his chin. He had on a tight, soiled T-shirt that might have once been white but was now covered in a disgusting rainbow of stains. His fat belly protruded over his belt. The rolls of fat jiggled on his neck as he gave a strange, high-pitched laugh.
“They call me the Walrus,” he hissed through a mouthful of broken, rotting teeth, grinning at me. As he exhaled, I smelled rotten meat and the sickly sweet reek of infection. I backpedaled quickly in horror and revulsion. “I ate all the little ones, I did… my sweet little clams, the children of the damned…” He laughed at this, advancing on me. His dark eyes shone with insanity and hunger behind the eerie mask. With a greasy, muscular arm, he grabbed me by the neck.
I was put into a headlock and forced to stumble along behind him, my breaths coming in choking gasps. He pulled me into the mist. For a couple minutes, we went on like this. I continued struggling, trying to beat the giant man away with my hands, but he was too strong. When his grip loosened slightly, a powerful, echoing scream escaped my lips.
“Help me! Someone! Cheshire Cat…” I began, but he tightened his greasy, bulging arm around my neck, cutting off my wind. The world started turning white. A rising sense of animal panic swept through my body until the Walrus finally, mercifully, relaxed. I drew in a deep breath that tasted as sweet as honey, gasping and sweating.
“Don’t do that, my little clam,” the Walrus whispered with venom. His cracked lips had split into a furious grimace. His eyes shone with hatred. “You are courting death. Don’t you know sound draws on the Jabberwock?” He looked around nervously at the name.
As if in response, a high-pitched, animalistic roar ripped its way across the night. It reminded me of the screaming of a woman being burned alive. The echoes faded slowly, but with the mist so thick around us and the sky looking like a flat piece of slate, I couldn’t see more than ten feet in any direction.
Ahead of us loomed a shoddy, one-room cabin. The Walrus murmured to himself, gnashing his destroyed teeth as he looked down on me hungrily.
“You’re a beautiful little clam,” he hissed. “I think you’ll make a nice meal for Mr. Walrus. Indeed, a very tender little clam.” With one greasy, dirt-stained hand, he flung the cabin door open and threw me inside. The smell of cooking meat, rotting flesh and feces smacked me in the face, so thick I could taste it in the back of my throat. I bent over, retching. The Walrus closed the door as quietly as he could, peering through a tiny, smashed window in the mold-ridden boards of the dilapidated cabin.
A little girl crouched in the corner, starved and shivering. On a rough, wooden kitchen counter, I saw small, dismembered fingers and eyeballs. Spools of intestines were rolled up like sausages next to them.
A raging fire in the fireplace flickered and danced, illuminating every corner of this cabin of horrors. Over the fire, a child’s torso roasted, the fats spitting and dripping in greasy, burning drops. It was just the torso, with a ragged patch of bloody neck. It ended at the navel, with pieces of torn organs hanging out and blackening.
“Into the cage, my little sweetie, my little honey,” the Walrus whispered, pushing me forward. I heard the strange animalistic cry again, this time much closer.
“Fuck you!” I screamed, pushing the Walrus away. I tried to run for the door, but in a giant, single bound, he tackled me to the floor. I began shrieking for my life, trying to claw at the Walrus’ eyes. He punched me hard in the face. I saw white spots, bright stars that flashed across my vision. As my head lolled and I tasted coppery blood dripping from my mouth and nose, the high-pitched scream came again from directly outside the door.
“Help!” I cried. The Walrus froze, looking up. His dead eyes flashed with horror and a deep, ineffable fear. That was when the entire front of the cabin exploded. Shards of splintered wood pierced my skin like tiny hornet stings. The Walrus jumped off me, backpedaling quickly toward the back of the cabin. I raised my head and met the eyes of the Jabberwock. Like a dragon from an acid fiend’s nightmare, it raised its powerful body to its full height, looming twenty feet above the ground.
The Jabberwock’s skin gleamed a slate-gray color. Hundreds of pencil-thin appendages hung down from its enormous, fish-like face. The slow, rhythmic tapping of the fetid slime that dripped from its body mixed with its powerful breathing.
Its flat, hungry eyes bulged out, dark and lidless, reflecting the bloody light of the fire. Its enormous lungs inhaled and exhaled as it stared at us, creating the same whipping of wind and fury that a barreling train might produce.
The Jabberwock’s neck slithered out, writhing and serpentine, like some ancient Brachiosaurus’ neck. Its head hung low below its shoulders as it moved forward in a jerky, crawling gait, its webbed, dragon-like feet sliding across the soft black soil of Wonderland like a berserk centipede. It opened its mouth, showing hundreds of spiraling teeth that pulsated and twisted like the mouth of some demonic lamprey. The Jabberwock tried to force its entire body through the crushed wall, crouching down and giving another high-pitched scream. Its black eyes rolled back in its head, showing bloody veins at the bottom.
The Walrus tried to sprint for a back window, but the Jabberwock’s neck slithered out. Like a toad grabbing a fly out of the air, its lamprey mouth struck out in a blur. It attached to the Walrus’ back with a sucking sound. Blood exploded from the back of the Walrus’ body, splashing the coarse floor and broken walls of the cabin. I started crawling away. The panicked, agonized shrieks of the Walrus carried through the air, accompanied by wet crunching and sucking sounds.
As the Jabberwock shook its head like a dog with a chew toy, spatters of blood from the Walrus’ mutilated body the inside of the cabin. The frail, trembling girl in the cage in the corner cowered back from the destruction. The Jabberwock’s tail whipped from side to side, long and tapering like the tail of a dinosaur. Sharp, bony spikes protruded from the ends.
With a tremendous crash that shook the ground, its tail smashed into the cage. The girl gave a squeak like a strangled rabbit as the cage soared across the cabin and crashed into a wall. She tumbled head over heels inside it. Then the cage’s door fell open with a clatter of metal. The girl crawled out, her stunned eyes sweeping over me.
I silently motioned for her to follow me. As silently as I could, I crawled through a massive hole in the collapsed front wall. I glanced back and saw her close behind, her skeletal arms pumping quickly. A glimmer of hope flashed across her sunken, haunted eyes, a look I remember even now when I lay in my bed a few days later.
As we got out to the black soil of Wonderland and the thick mists of its endless night, the cabin fell into a heap behind us. The Jabberwock continued to thrash in the rubble. The sounds of bones cracking and sucking followed us down the rolling hills.
Part 2: My name is Alice, and I fell into Hell’s version of Wonderland [part 2] : Horror_stories (reddit.com)
submitted by CIAHerpes to Horror_stories [link] [comments]
Finally, around midnight, the voices started to fade. I felt my eyes closing as sleep came over me. But, just before I nodded off, I glimpsed a pair of eyes with black, slitted pupils peeking at me from the corner of the room. Beneath them hung a wide, grinning mouth. The mouth had dozens of triangular, razor-sharp teeth that glistened bone-white in the dim glow of the nightlight. Unattached to any visible flesh, the eyes and mouth floated in the air like wavering moonbeams. I sat up in bed, stuttering.
“What… what is this?” I whispered, staring deeply into glowing eyes. “Am I dreaming?”
“No, not dreaming, Alice. Just mad,” the thing hissed, its sharp fangs pulling apart. It gave a high-pitched, insane cackle at this. “We’re all mad here. But your father is the maddest of all, I’m sorry to say. Or, perhaps he’s just a little odd. It is hard to be sane every single day, after all…”
“Who are you?” I quietly asked as a shard of terror pierced my heart. A childish voice in the back of my mind screamed at me to simply pull the covers over my head and hide.
“The Cheshire Cat, of course. I’ll be your guide when you need me. Your adventure will be starting any second now, Alice…” His eyes glimmered brighter as a scream rang out from downstairs. I heard my father yelling, and then a gunshot rang out, shattering the night. Something heavy fell, thudding against the floor. “Ah, there it is. The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, after all.”
“What’s happening?” I asked in horror. The Cheshire’s Cat’s glowing face faded like the embers of a dying fire, but his voice continued to speak in the darkness. Heavy footsteps started to ascend the stairs. Something cold and empty slithered through my heart as a feeling of dread overcame me.
“He’s coming,” the Cheshire Cat said in a gleeful tone, the voice coming from all around me. “If you want to live, jump out the window. You have ten seconds to decide.”
“Alice!” I heard my father yell drunkenly, slurring his words. “Come here, right now. I need to talk to you.” I jumped out of bed, slammed my feet into my shoes and flung open the window.
“Five seconds,” the Cheshire Cat said cheerily. I looked down from the second story. My heart dropped as I saw the fall. “Better jump, Alice. You don’t want your adventure to end before it even begins.” I heard a hand roughly grab the doorknob. I crawled out the window, slowly letting myself down by my arms.
My father flung the door open. The front of his white shirt gleamed with slick, wet blood. He had a black revolver in one hand. With wild, excited eyes, he scanned the room, stumbling forward. His head ratcheted toward the open window. For a moment, our gazes met.
“You bitch!” he screamed in rage, raising the gun. “You’re just like your mother, always trying to leave. I’ll show you, you stupid cunt…” As I let myself drop, a gunshot exploded through the night. The window above me exploded in a shower of broken glass. I screamed as the chill night air whipped around me. The garden below rose up to meet me. I felt like I was standing on the tracks as a train barreled down on me.
I hit the dirt hard, rolling as I landed. A bush with sharp branches clawed my shoulder and back, gouging out burning slices across my skin. I glanced up, seeing my father drunkenly leaning out the window, his eyes unfocused. A totally insane, ferocious expression twisted his face into something inhuman and demonic. I barely recognized him.
“Fucking bitch! Stupid cunt!” he screamed, firing the pistol twice more. One of the bullets smashed the lawn only a foot in front of me, spraying grass and soil everywhere. I shrieked, sprinting across the yard in my shoes and pajamas. The dewey grass soaked my feet within seconds. But I knew I had more pressing problems than shoes.
I glanced back at the house, seeing the window empty. A thick forest loomed at the edge of the property. A blanket of shadows covered it, and I could barely see a thing. But I knew I had no choice. I sprinted into the woods, blindly tumbling through prickers and grasping boughs.
A torrent of flickering orange light suddenly illuminated the night. As I descended deeper into the woods, trying to hide myself, I looked back at the house one last time.
I saw a raging inferno there. Long tongues of flame hissed and spit as they licked the dry wood, flowing over the walls like water.
And in front of the hellish flames, I saw my father, a dark silhouette with a gun, striding purposefully across the yard toward me.
***
As my eyes adjusted to the dark forest, I caught a flash of something white sprinting through the bushes. I nearly screamed, startled into a state of terror. The creature turned its pale, dead eyes toward me.
He towered over me, about six feet tall. He had floppy rabbit ears surgically attached to his mutilated skull. Black stitches ran over his face in jagged patches, keeping his rotting flesh together. His white fur had a rainbow of fluids soaked into it, from blood to orange and yellow pus to other things I could never hope to identify. New trickles of blood and pus continued to leak out from the stitches crisscrossing his body. In his arms, grasped between claws like those of a tiger, I saw an unconscious child. The child had a deep gash on its forehead. His head lolled from side to side like a ragdoll’s.
“I’m late…” the rabbit hissed at me, his cataract eyes glimmering with insanity as they shone white in the pale moonlight. “For, you see, I have a very important date. The Red Queen is expecting the blood of a child for her shower, as she does every full moon. What keeps the skin fresher and younger than the blood of a little one, after all?” His lips cracked apart in a wide grin, showing blackened gums mottled with sores. His pointed, needle-like teeth reminded me of some nightmarish deep-sea fish. I stood there, speechless, until the sound of cracking twigs and whipping branches not far behind me startled me back into action.
I started running, giving the insane rabbit creature a wide berth. I glanced back, seeing my father’s pale, sweaty face through the brush. His lunatic eyes flicked from side to side. He kept the gun held out in front of him, his arm swaying gently as if he were caught in some hypnotic state.
“Alice! Come here, right now! How dare you…” I only glanced at my father for a second before turning my gaze forwards again, but, by then, it was too late. In the panic of the moment and the darkness of the forest, I didn’t see the six foot wide hole that stretched across the earth like a gaping maw.
I gave a startled shriek as my foot dropped into empty air. Before I knew what was happening, I was slipping, my arms pinwheeling. I tried to regain my balance, twisting my body around. I saw the rabbit there only a few paces away, grinning at me, the unconscious, kidnapped child slung across his shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
I fell backwards. The scream that tried to rip its way out of my throat seemed to get stuck there, and I could do nothing but stare blindly up as the rabbit lunged in after me with a cry of excitement. The last glimpse I caught of the forest showed my insane father stumbling toward us, still crying my name with drunken fury. The air whipped around me, the roar of it like the whine of a tornado shrieking in my ears.
The hole at the top shrank into a pinpoint as the rabbit and I fell downwards together into total darkness. We seemed to spiral around each other. No matter how I tried to pull away, the rabbit always seemed to be right there. The last glimpse I saw before the shadows closed in was the rabbit’s dead eyes flashing excitedly as he glared at me with a face like a corpse.
Then the shadows drew around me like a curtain shutting on a stage. Only my own screams and the ragged breathing of the rabbit surrounded me for what felt like an eternity. Slowly, my consciousness slipped away.
After that, I remember nothing for what felt like a very long time.
***
I awoke suddenly, inhaling deeply. I shivered, my teeth chattering as I looked around in confusion. I beheld an alien landscape stretching out to the horizon. Gently sloping hills of black earth loomed in every direction. There were no grass or plants visible, but giant red-and-white mushrooms the size of pine trees grew in clusters along the peaks of the rolling hills.
Streams of fire crisscrossed the landscape like rivers from Hell. The sun here drifted along the slit wrists of the horizon. It looked like a cold, purple ball of fire that gave off a soft, moon-like radiance but very little heat. Thin, silvery clouds covered the sky in rising plumes of pale mist. The entire world looked dark, all the colors eerie and saturated, almost like the desert at the end of a sunset.
I looked around for any sign of the surgically-altered rabbit creature or the unconscious boy he had been carrying in his arms or even, God forbid, my father. But I saw no signs of any of them.
On top of a nearby mushroom that loomed twenty feet in the air, however, I saw a familiar glint of glowing eyes, their slitted, dilated pupils looking down with insanity. The dragonfish-like teeth of the creature’s mouth shimmered in his eerie, ear-to-ear grin. Over the course of a few seconds, the rest of his body became visible as well, fading into view for the first time. I nearly gagged as I looked up in amazement. It was a disgusting thing to look at.
The Cheshire Cat was entirely hairless, his skin black and reptilian. Patches of his flesh were rotting away, and his tail had started to look like a stripped wire. White bones and infected veins writhing with maggots gleamed through the suppurating sores.
“Cheshire Cat,” I whispered, licking my dry lips, “what happened? Last I knew, I was falling… there was some… hole in the forest, and it seemed to keep going on and on forever. There was a rabbit, too, but not a normal rabbit. It was like a rabbit from a serial killer’s nightmare.” The Cheshire Cat laughed at this, but it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. It reminded me of the laugh of a man who just had his throat slit. It was gurgling and deep, and carried through the cold, dry air like a scream.
“The nightmares swarm across this world like a plague of locusts. The Red Queen’s evil and sickness has infected the very foundation of existence. The barriers between Wonderland and Hell itself seem to grow thinner by the day,” he said, but the glee never evaporated from his expression. Across the horizon, a thin, high-pitched scream rang out, full of pain and mortal terror. The Cheshire Cat’s head swung slowly toward the sound. I followed his gaze.
In the distance, I saw a narrow castle with razor-sharp turrets that disappeared into the silver clouds high above. Thin murderholes spiraled up the outside of the dark granite surface. A giant flag rippled softly in the cold breeze. I squinted, seeing a black flag with a red heart gripped in a skeletal hand. Drops of blood dripped out of the bottom.
“They call it the Chateau de Douleur,” the Cheshire Cat said by reason of explanation, “the home of the Red Queen. It sounds like another victim has fallen into her clutches.”
“What… another victim?” I stuttered, a sense of horror filling my body with a sick, weak feeling. The Cheshire Cat gave a slow, jerky nod. His eerie, gurgling laugh rang out suddenly, making me nearly jump out of my skin.
“The Red Queen seems to think that bathing in the blood of children will keep her young forever. She has an iron maiden set up above the royal shower. Every month on the full moon, her insane, sycophantic followers bring her sacrifices. Young children, boys and girls no older than five or six, usually. The younger they are, the more purifying their blood’s properties, you see.” The Cheshire Cat’s teeth gleamed as another, far weaker, scream rang out through the night. It was cut off suddenly. The eerie silence that rang out in the aftermath felt deafening.
“Ah, there it is. La petite mort- the little death,” he said gleefully, another laugh ripping its way out of his throat.
“I don’t see how that’s funny,” I said. “You think the Red Queen murdering children is funny?” As if offended by my change of tone, the Cheshire Cat’s rotted, black body started fading out, but his grin didn’t falter.
“I think that if you don’t start running soon, you will experience it firsthand,” the Cheshire Cat hissed, his voice echoing from all around me as the last gleam of his eyes faded away. “Beware. The White Rabbit draws near.”
***
I stumbled through the dark, cold world they called Wonderland. The black earth under my feet felt soft and smooth. The smell of the giant red-and-white fungi that covered the landscape like redwoods permeated the area, giving off a smell like mushrooms after a heavy rain. I went in the opposite direction of the Chateau de Douleur.
The pale, purple sun had started to disappear over the horizon. The night’s edge slid across the sky like a razor blade, plunging the world into darkness. Within a few minutes, I could barely see more than twenty feet in front of me. The silvery mist I had first seen in the sky now started spreading its ghostly fingers over the ground, covering the world in a blanket of pale fog.
I heard the White Rabbit before I saw him. In a harsh, dissonant voice, he sang. His voice carried all around me, raising goosebumps all over my skin.
“When the Queen’s eyes looked down from the sky,
They gleamed like the slit wrists of the sun.
Her pale face watches, her dead eyes dry.
Their small faces shriek what she’s done.
“I could not stop the children screaming.
And I could not stop the acid eating the dead.
I could not stop the dead men from dreaming.
I could not stop the voices in my head.
“Fragments of moonlight shine on a kitchen knife,
Crimson and ruby-red and gleaming,
But the rabbit knows no peace in life
When the children’s voices never stop screaming.”
As I ducked behind the giant trunk of a mushroom, I caught a glimpse of white fur with a spiderweb of black, garish stitches running across his back. Slung across the White Rabbit’s shoulder, the unconscious body of the child lay, the head lolling from side to side. The White Rabbit was heading in the direction of the castle. He continued bellowing out his disturbing, strange verses as his voice disappeared off in the distance. Exhaling deeply, I slunk out from behind the massive white fungal trunk. I stopped suddenly, a shard of dread piercing my heart as I saw what stood there before me.
A large man in a ripped-up walrus mask loomed over me, a blood-stained meat cleaver clutched tightly in one hand. The brown mask only covered the top half of his face. It had two giant white tusks jutting down past his chin. He had on a tight, soiled T-shirt that might have once been white but was now covered in a disgusting rainbow of stains. His fat belly protruded over his belt. The rolls of fat jiggled on his neck as he gave a strange, high-pitched laugh.
“They call me the Walrus,” he hissed through a mouthful of broken, rotting teeth, grinning at me. As he exhaled, I smelled rotten meat and the sickly sweet reek of infection. I backpedaled quickly in horror and revulsion. “I ate all the little ones, I did… my sweet little clams, the children of the damned…” He laughed at this, advancing on me. His dark eyes shone with insanity and hunger behind the eerie mask. With a greasy, muscular arm, he grabbed me by the neck.
I was put into a headlock and forced to stumble along behind him, my breaths coming in choking gasps. He pulled me into the mist. For a couple minutes, we went on like this. I continued struggling, trying to beat the giant man away with my hands, but he was too strong. When his grip loosened slightly, a powerful, echoing scream escaped my lips.
“Help me! Someone! Cheshire Cat…” I began, but he tightened his greasy, bulging arm around my neck, cutting off my wind. The world started turning white. A rising sense of animal panic swept through my body until the Walrus finally, mercifully, relaxed. I drew in a deep breath that tasted as sweet as honey, gasping and sweating.
“Don’t do that, my little clam,” the Walrus whispered with venom. His cracked lips had split into a furious grimace. His eyes shone with hatred. “You are courting death. Don’t you know sound draws on the Jabberwock?” He looked around nervously at the name.
As if in response, a high-pitched, animalistic roar ripped its way across the night. It reminded me of the screaming of a woman being burned alive. The echoes faded slowly, but with the mist so thick around us and the sky looking like a flat piece of slate, I couldn’t see more than ten feet in any direction.
Ahead of us loomed a shoddy, one-room cabin. The Walrus murmured to himself, gnashing his destroyed teeth as he looked down on me hungrily.
“You’re a beautiful little clam,” he hissed. “I think you’ll make a nice meal for Mr. Walrus. Indeed, a very tender little clam.” With one greasy, dirt-stained hand, he flung the cabin door open and threw me inside. The smell of cooking meat, rotting flesh and feces smacked me in the face, so thick I could taste it in the back of my throat. I bent over, retching. The Walrus closed the door as quietly as he could, peering through a tiny, smashed window in the mold-ridden boards of the dilapidated cabin.
A little girl crouched in the corner, starved and shivering. On a rough, wooden kitchen counter, I saw small, dismembered fingers and eyeballs. Spools of intestines were rolled up like sausages next to them.
A raging fire in the fireplace flickered and danced, illuminating every corner of this cabin of horrors. Over the fire, a child’s torso roasted, the fats spitting and dripping in greasy, burning drops. It was just the torso, with a ragged patch of bloody neck. It ended at the navel, with pieces of torn organs hanging out and blackening.
“Into the cage, my little sweetie, my little honey,” the Walrus whispered, pushing me forward. I heard the strange animalistic cry again, this time much closer.
“Fuck you!” I screamed, pushing the Walrus away. I tried to run for the door, but in a giant, single bound, he tackled me to the floor. I began shrieking for my life, trying to claw at the Walrus’ eyes. He punched me hard in the face. I saw white spots, bright stars that flashed across my vision. As my head lolled and I tasted coppery blood dripping from my mouth and nose, the high-pitched scream came again from directly outside the door.
“Help!” I cried. The Walrus froze, looking up. His dead eyes flashed with horror and a deep, ineffable fear. That was when the entire front of the cabin exploded. Shards of splintered wood pierced my skin like tiny hornet stings. The Walrus jumped off me, backpedaling quickly toward the back of the cabin. I raised my head and met the eyes of the Jabberwock. Like a dragon from an acid fiend’s nightmare, it raised its powerful body to its full height, looming twenty feet above the ground.
The Jabberwock’s skin gleamed a slate-gray color. Hundreds of pencil-thin appendages hung down from its enormous, fish-like face. The slow, rhythmic tapping of the fetid slime that dripped from its body mixed with its powerful breathing.
Its flat, hungry eyes bulged out, dark and lidless, reflecting the bloody light of the fire. Its enormous lungs inhaled and exhaled as it stared at us, creating the same whipping of wind and fury that a barreling train might produce.
The Jabberwock’s neck slithered out, writhing and serpentine, like some ancient Brachiosaurus’ neck. Its head hung low below its shoulders as it moved forward in a jerky, crawling gait, its webbed, dragon-like feet sliding across the soft black soil of Wonderland like a berserk centipede. It opened its mouth, showing hundreds of spiraling teeth that pulsated and twisted like the mouth of some demonic lamprey. The Jabberwock tried to force its entire body through the crushed wall, crouching down and giving another high-pitched scream. Its black eyes rolled back in its head, showing bloody veins at the bottom.
The Walrus tried to sprint for a back window, but the Jabberwock’s neck slithered out. Like a toad grabbing a fly out of the air, its lamprey mouth struck out in a blur. It attached to the Walrus’ back with a sucking sound. Blood exploded from the back of the Walrus’ body, splashing the coarse floor and broken walls of the cabin. I started crawling away. The panicked, agonized shrieks of the Walrus carried through the air, accompanied by wet crunching and sucking sounds.
As the Jabberwock shook its head like a dog with a chew toy, spatters of blood from the Walrus’ mutilated body the inside of the cabin. The frail, trembling girl in the cage in the corner cowered back from the destruction. The Jabberwock’s tail whipped from side to side, long and tapering like the tail of a dinosaur. Sharp, bony spikes protruded from the ends.
With a tremendous crash that shook the ground, its tail smashed into the cage. The girl gave a squeak like a strangled rabbit as the cage soared across the cabin and crashed into a wall. She tumbled head over heels inside it. Then the cage’s door fell open with a clatter of metal. The girl crawled out, her stunned eyes sweeping over me.
I silently motioned for her to follow me. As silently as I could, I crawled through a massive hole in the collapsed front wall. I glanced back and saw her close behind, her skeletal arms pumping quickly. A glimmer of hope flashed across her sunken, haunted eyes, a look I remember even now when I lay in my bed a few days later.
As we got out to the black soil of Wonderland and the thick mists of its endless night, the cabin fell into a heap behind us. The Jabberwock continued to thrash in the rubble. The sounds of bones cracking and sucking followed us down the rolling hills.
Part 2: My name is Alice, and I fell into Hell’s version of Wonderland [part 2] : Horror_stories (reddit.com)
2024.04.21 01:16 The-Mr-E Walk Me Home Part 9 - I DON'T Like You 😡
SYNOPSIS: Walking your OP monster girlfriend home is easy. No one messes with you. Getting back to your house on your own? That's the tricky part.
After encountering the Heat Eater, Norman meets a peculiar pair of nyctals. Apparently, he's a perp now.
First Previous (See NEXT>> link in comments)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Shtap right there!” came a gratingly obnoxious voice.
Norman turned to its source and dialed down the infrared on his nightsight. He raised an eyebrow. Whatever he was expecting to see, this wasn’t it. Standing further down the street was, well … the guy looked human, in a severely caricaturised way. He hobbled on legs less than two feet long that seemed to struggle in maintaining a walking pace. What they lacked in size was compensated for by the sheer girth of his body. His eyes were inhumanly wide, wild with accusatory focus. Norman couldn’t tell if he was frowning, or that fish-like expression was just part of his facial structure. With pudgy little hands that nearly touched the ground as he waddled, this fellow looked like he’d topple over at any point. In his right hand was a stun baton. Unlike the souped up variant Norman wielded, it looked conspicuously ordinary, albeit tattered by poor maintenance. Norman wondered if this nyctal could handle the light it emanated. A long cord was in his left hand. To the untrained eye, he could have been holding a rope. Norman knew better. On the other end of the cord was something that may or may not have been a dog. The idea was reinforced by the fact that he seemed to be ‘walking’ it ... which probably wasn’t the word for this activity. Part of Norman wished he was naïve enough to think it was.
The maybe-not-canine’s long fur was dark. Scratch that. After zooming in, Norman surmised that it likely wasn’t fur. Sometimes, the creature had four legs. Other times, it had more, or less. Its pointed limbs, branching at the tips like roots when they touched the ground, seemed to be made of this fur-like substance. They divided and merged on demand in masses of tendrils the width of hair. What appeared to be a primary eye was at the centre of its face, accompanied by numerous, mostly smaller ones that ran from temple to flanks. Its rounded face had no discernible mouth or other distinguishing facial features. Ordinarily, Norman would be happy not to see a mouth full of pearly white daggers, but the fact that he had no clear idea how it consumed its prey wasn’t entirely comforting. There were worse possibilities than the norm.
The sad truth was that human nyctals were seldom rational. It paid to placate them whenever possible.
“I’m inveshtigating a dishturbance in the area, and YOU are my shushpect!” declared the nyctal, spittle flying out of his mouth with every pronunciation of the letter ‘S’.
Norman guessed said ‘disturbance’ was the twilight angel/whistling wing battle … or perhaps the heat eater’s screech. Who could be sure?
The nyctal shone his stun baton into Norman’s face. Norman didn’t even blink. It was embarrassingly dim. The battery must have been worn down to the point of near-uselessness. He doubted it’s taser function would be anything to write home about. However, Norman had a feeling that didn’t matter when the wielder was strong enough to kebab a victim in the process of trying.
“I’m Norman, and you are?”
“My name ish The Neighbourhood Watchman!” the nyctal proudly proclaimed, standing akimbo as best as his anatomy permitted.
Norman knitted his brow, biting back a question. Someone asked it anyway.
“Sorry, Sir. I was just confused,” Norman apologised.
“A perp with reshpect! Who woulda thought?“ marveled The Neighbourhood Watchman.
Norman didn’t quite like that he was already labelled a ‘perp’.
“It’sh my job to keep the people shafe from the likesh of YOU!” spat The Neighbourhood Watchman.
The Neighbourhood Watchman halted the perpetual waddle that was taking him nowhere fast, briefly growing silent.
“That’sh … that’sh true …” he agreed. “Are you a lawman ash well?”
“No, but I try to help out when I can,” Norman replied.
The Neighbourhood Watchman gave a brisk nod. “Gud. If you shaid ‘yesh’, I would have been shushpicioush. I have never sheen you on the forche before.”
Norman hoped that there weren’t more of these guys. Knowing how delusional night shifted people could be, The Neighbourhood Watchman might be a ‘force’ of one.
“NOT SHO FASHT!” The Neighbourhood Watchman blurted. “Papooshi needs to interrogate you! He eats liars …”
The Neighbourhood Watchman paused as he witnessed Papooshie yank a pig-sized eldritch grub-looking-thing out of the ground. The canine(?) enveloped the grub. His hair tendrils constricted. It popped. Chunks and pulp squeezed between the tendrils like salsa. Papooshie spread those tendrils across the grub’s remains and rolled around in the juices to soak them up. Finally, Papooshi pulled the bigger chunks into his body, leaving little trace of the grub’s existence. The Neighbourhood Watchman didn’t bat an eye.
“Are you backchatting me, perp boy?” demanded The Neighbourhood Watchman, waddling closer with renewed vigour.
Norman rolled his eyes before blasting both nyctals with a stream of light.
“ARRRRGGGH! YOU MONSHTER!” squealed The Neighbourhood Watchman. “YOU- YOU ~EVIL~ PERSHON! JUSHTICHE WILL PREVAI-!”
“Shutup,” Norman snapped snippily. “I’ve tried to be nice, I’ve talked, but you chose violence, so just get rekt.”
Whimpering hopelessly, The Neighbourhood Watchman bundled up Papooshie and shielded him with his body.
Norman’s face softened as he sighed and depowered the smitelight. “Look, we don’t have to do this. Let’s-”
“WRRRRAAAAAAA!” screeched The Neighbourhood Watchman as he hurled Papooshie.
Norman rolled clear and the creature shot by. It splatted into a dead street light like a wet wig and instinctively constricted.
*KrrRNNNK!\*
The light pole fell like a tree, its middle crushed by the needle-thin tendrils.
*FFAASH!*
Papooshie jolted, went limp and clumped to the ground, stunned by a small, concentrated blast of smitelight. The cooldown took a second too long after such bursts. He heard stubby footsteps pattering up to him. There wasn’t enough time to turn from Papooshi, but maybe that wasn’t necessary. If he guesstimated correctly …
“OOF!”
Yup. That back kick landed right on the mark. At first glance, it might have passed for basic Taekwondo, but it impacted toe to navel. If most kicks were hammers, this was an arrow. Against the average Joe, it was enough to rupture an organ, but Norman didn’t stop there. He slithered between The Neighbourhood Watchman’s flailing blows, seamlessly melding a plethora of martial arts from Krav Maga to Silat. Modified variants Arnis and Bajan sticklicking made brutal use of the smitelight as a blunt weapon. There was no sportsmanship, no blow too lethal. Liver, throat, eye, edge of rib. Maximum damage, minimum time. This was life or death. On the upside? Nyctals could take it. On the downside?
Nyctals could take it.
The Neighbourhod Watchman screeched like a swine as he swept a backhanded swat. Norman saw it coming a mile off. Reacting in time? That was a different story. Norman rolled with the blow, deflecting what he could and easing into it with palms as shock absorbers. That didn’t stop it from sending him spinning through the air.
Norman rolled into the landing like a spool of yarn unravelling on the ground. He spiraled to his feet. His ribcage was screaming. Sledgehammer. He imagined that’s what it felt like. The effects of the smitelight were wearing off, bringing the nyctal back to his original speed.
“I don’t like you!” Proclaimed the Neighbourhood Watchman. "Ash a matter of fact, I DISHLIKE you!”
*fweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ...\*
“Eh? What ish that tiny shound?” asked the nyctal, digging a clod of wax the size of a fish cake from his ear.
*FFFOOOOOOOMM!\*
The street lit up like day. Both blinded nyctals screeched in unison. The Neighbourhood Watchman furiously flung his pudgy fists about, seeking out any purchase he could get. He touched something and began to mangle. Once his vision returned sufficiently, he realised it was nothing but a mailbox. At least, he thought it was a mailbox. Hard to tell when it was disfigured near the point of a crumpled tin can. Norman was nowhere in sight.
“GRRRR! That PERP! Making me damage public property!” he raged, maiming the mailbox all the more. “Papooshi! Find the perp!”
Papooshi’s hair tendrils created concaves around his eye-like orbs as he went perfectly still. He reoriented himself in a specific direction and formed a single concave around his biggest orb. Again, Papooshie froze in focus. In the meantime, The Neighbourhood Watchman began digging through his nostrils for some supper. Having retrieved a particularly succulent morsel, he was about to eat it when Papooshie took off, heedless of his owner's meal. Yanked to the ground belly first, The Neighbourhood Watchman was dragged behind Papooshie like a toboggan.
A couple buildings away, Norman descended a wall and dusted off his hands. That took care of that.
“SSHTAAAAAAAAAP!” squealed The Neighbourhood Watchman, rounding a corner a couple buildings away.
Papooshi banked left, tugging his owner behind an abandoned car. Norman lowered the smitelight, beaming their legs beneath the vehicle. The car rocked back and forth as the frantic The Neighbourhood Watchman shoved and jostled until he flipped it onto its side. A sickening screech of metal grinding asphalt. Sparks flew from points of friction as The Neighbourhood Watchman pushed the vehicle forward. Mobile cover.
Then the flash grenade went off.
Papooshi convulsed in the air as the secondhand anguish of his owner made it through the cord attaching them. Norman didn’t bother dodging. The creature face-planted into the pavement in front of him, going limp in a heap of hair tendrils. That throw was never gonna reach anyway. Down but not out, Papooshie began to gather his wits. The hair tendrils slowly regained their form, hissing against each other in the promise of violence.
“Yeah, no,” Norman declared.
He extended his smitelight and gave it a zap. Papooshi spasmed back to the ground. The Neighbourhood Watchman’s anguished howls could be heard from the other side of the car. Okay, THAT should do it.
Norman sprinted on his way.
“N-NOOOO! You … can’t do thish!” griped The Neighbourhood Watchman as he crawled from behind the car. “No one … outrunsh jushtiche! TAXHI! TAX-!”
His cries were silenced. There was a great commotion. Papooshi yiped desperately as, from the sound of it, he was dragged away. Then he too was silenced. The merest moment had had passed, and it was over.
Norman eased to a stop and tentatively turned around. Alone on the street, save the overturned car, was a taxi, its windows pitch black.
First Previous (See NEXT>> link in comments)
submitted by The-Mr-E to HFY [link] [comments]
After encountering the Heat Eater, Norman meets a peculiar pair of nyctals. Apparently, he's a perp now.
First Previous (See NEXT>> link in comments)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Shtap right there!” came a gratingly obnoxious voice.
Norman turned to its source and dialed down the infrared on his nightsight. He raised an eyebrow. Whatever he was expecting to see, this wasn’t it. Standing further down the street was, well … the guy looked human, in a severely caricaturised way. He hobbled on legs less than two feet long that seemed to struggle in maintaining a walking pace. What they lacked in size was compensated for by the sheer girth of his body. His eyes were inhumanly wide, wild with accusatory focus. Norman couldn’t tell if he was frowning, or that fish-like expression was just part of his facial structure. With pudgy little hands that nearly touched the ground as he waddled, this fellow looked like he’d topple over at any point. In his right hand was a stun baton. Unlike the souped up variant Norman wielded, it looked conspicuously ordinary, albeit tattered by poor maintenance. Norman wondered if this nyctal could handle the light it emanated. A long cord was in his left hand. To the untrained eye, he could have been holding a rope. Norman knew better. On the other end of the cord was something that may or may not have been a dog. The idea was reinforced by the fact that he seemed to be ‘walking’ it ... which probably wasn’t the word for this activity. Part of Norman wished he was naïve enough to think it was.
The maybe-not-canine’s long fur was dark. Scratch that. After zooming in, Norman surmised that it likely wasn’t fur. Sometimes, the creature had four legs. Other times, it had more, or less. Its pointed limbs, branching at the tips like roots when they touched the ground, seemed to be made of this fur-like substance. They divided and merged on demand in masses of tendrils the width of hair. What appeared to be a primary eye was at the centre of its face, accompanied by numerous, mostly smaller ones that ran from temple to flanks. Its rounded face had no discernible mouth or other distinguishing facial features. Ordinarily, Norman would be happy not to see a mouth full of pearly white daggers, but the fact that he had no clear idea how it consumed its prey wasn’t entirely comforting. There were worse possibilities than the norm.
_CHAT
- AMBIVALENT.TRENT: Should we be concerned about this?
- A1GHT.DEN: they’re nyctals, so I’m guessing yeah.
- UNREPENTANT.MEMER: somehow, I don’t think Nyctalo Avocado is threat-shaped. I’m just sayin’.
The sad truth was that human nyctals were seldom rational. It paid to placate them whenever possible.
“I’m inveshtigating a dishturbance in the area, and YOU are my shushpect!” declared the nyctal, spittle flying out of his mouth with every pronunciation of the letter ‘S’.
Norman guessed said ‘disturbance’ was the twilight angel/whistling wing battle … or perhaps the heat eater’s screech. Who could be sure?
The nyctal shone his stun baton into Norman’s face. Norman didn’t even blink. It was embarrassingly dim. The battery must have been worn down to the point of near-uselessness. He doubted it’s taser function would be anything to write home about. However, Norman had a feeling that didn’t matter when the wielder was strong enough to kebab a victim in the process of trying.
_CHAT
- HARD.BACK.M8N: dem arms, doh
- CRINGY.BINGER: What do you mean? Wait ... he got biceps?!? Dem arms be swoler than a chimp!
- LAFF.IT_ON: sleeper build tings
- UNREPENTANT.MEMER: You might not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.
“I’m Norman, and you are?”
“My name ish The Neighbourhood Watchman!” the nyctal proudly proclaimed, standing akimbo as best as his anatomy permitted.
Norman knitted his brow, biting back a question. Someone asked it anyway.
_CHAT
- INQU!SIT_R: so his first name is ‘The’?
- JARON-DA-MON: does that make his pet ‘The Neighbourhood Watchdog?’
_CHAT
- LAFF.IT_ON: lol!
- N-TROPEY: Are we in a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment?
- BAJANETTE11: Not sure if this is cute or frightening.
- ENTO_MOLLY: I’m surprised the dog thing lets him walk it like that
- LEMMY_OUTA_HERE: Oh sweet summer child.
- RAIDER-COMMANDER: It’s more likely that it’s walking him.
- LEMMY_OUTA_HERE: Don’t tell them. They still have some innocence left.
- RAIDER-COMMANDER: Some of them live here. They need to know.
“Sorry, Sir. I was just confused,” Norman apologised.
“A perp with reshpect! Who woulda thought?“ marveled The Neighbourhood Watchman.
Norman didn’t quite like that he was already labelled a ‘perp’.
“It’sh my job to keep the people shafe from the likesh of YOU!” spat The Neighbourhood Watchman.
_CHAT
- RAIDER-COMMANDER: He’s not walking the creature. The ‘rope’ is attached to his wrist.
- AMBIVALENT.TRENT: I hate where this is going.
The Neighbourhood Watchman halted the perpetual waddle that was taking him nowhere fast, briefly growing silent.
“That’sh … that’sh true …” he agreed. “Are you a lawman ash well?”
“No, but I try to help out when I can,” Norman replied.
The Neighbourhood Watchman gave a brisk nod. “Gud. If you shaid ‘yesh’, I would have been shushpicioush. I have never sheen you on the forche before.”
Norman hoped that there weren’t more of these guys. Knowing how delusional night shifted people could be, The Neighbourhood Watchman might be a ‘force’ of one.
_CHAT
- RAIDER-COMMANDER: The ‘rope’ between him and his pet is a tube of nerves and feeding conduits. It’s similar to the ‘key chains’ used by the landlords, allowing the two organisms to share information and nutrients. You can liken it to an ethernet cable crossed with an umbilical cord. Arguably, the ... ‘dog chain’ ... is its own organism.
- SMOL.STUPSE: ... That’s so much worse than I expected.
- JARON-DA-MON: speak for yourself. i have a dark mind, apparently.
“NOT SHO FASHT!” The Neighbourhood Watchman blurted. “Papooshi needs to interrogate you! He eats liars …”
The Neighbourhood Watchman paused as he witnessed Papooshie yank a pig-sized eldritch grub-looking-thing out of the ground. The canine(?) enveloped the grub. His hair tendrils constricted. It popped. Chunks and pulp squeezed between the tendrils like salsa. Papooshie spread those tendrils across the grub’s remains and rolled around in the juices to soak them up. Finally, Papooshi pulled the bigger chunks into his body, leaving little trace of the grub’s existence. The Neighbourhood Watchman didn’t bat an eye.
_CHAT
- BAJANETTE11: 😮
- LEMMY_OUTA_HERE: 😐
- ENTO_MOLLY: 🤔 Yeah, I know, but ... is no one else fascinated by this?
“Are you backchatting me, perp boy?” demanded The Neighbourhood Watchman, waddling closer with renewed vigour.
Norman rolled his eyes before blasting both nyctals with a stream of light.
“ARRRRGGGH! YOU MONSHTER!” squealed The Neighbourhood Watchman. “YOU- YOU ~EVIL~ PERSHON! JUSHTICHE WILL PREVAI-!”
“Shutup,” Norman snapped snippily. “I’ve tried to be nice, I’ve talked, but you chose violence, so just get rekt.”
Whimpering hopelessly, The Neighbourhood Watchman bundled up Papooshie and shielded him with his body.
Norman’s face softened as he sighed and depowered the smitelight. “Look, we don’t have to do this. Let’s-”
“WRRRRAAAAAAA!” screeched The Neighbourhood Watchman as he hurled Papooshie.
Norman rolled clear and the creature shot by. It splatted into a dead street light like a wet wig and instinctively constricted.
*KrrRNNNK!\*
The light pole fell like a tree, its middle crushed by the needle-thin tendrils.
*FFAASH!*
Papooshie jolted, went limp and clumped to the ground, stunned by a small, concentrated blast of smitelight. The cooldown took a second too long after such bursts. He heard stubby footsteps pattering up to him. There wasn’t enough time to turn from Papooshi, but maybe that wasn’t necessary. If he guesstimated correctly …
“OOF!”
Yup. That back kick landed right on the mark. At first glance, it might have passed for basic Taekwondo, but it impacted toe to navel. If most kicks were hammers, this was an arrow. Against the average Joe, it was enough to rupture an organ, but Norman didn’t stop there. He slithered between The Neighbourhood Watchman’s flailing blows, seamlessly melding a plethora of martial arts from Krav Maga to Silat. Modified variants Arnis and Bajan sticklicking made brutal use of the smitelight as a blunt weapon. There was no sportsmanship, no blow too lethal. Liver, throat, eye, edge of rib. Maximum damage, minimum time. This was life or death. On the upside? Nyctals could take it. On the downside?
Nyctals could take it.
The Neighbourhod Watchman screeched like a swine as he swept a backhanded swat. Norman saw it coming a mile off. Reacting in time? That was a different story. Norman rolled with the blow, deflecting what he could and easing into it with palms as shock absorbers. That didn’t stop it from sending him spinning through the air.
Norman rolled into the landing like a spool of yarn unravelling on the ground. He spiraled to his feet. His ribcage was screaming. Sledgehammer. He imagined that’s what it felt like. The effects of the smitelight were wearing off, bringing the nyctal back to his original speed.
“I don’t like you!” Proclaimed the Neighbourhood Watchman. "Ash a matter of fact, I DISHLIKE you!”
*fweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ...\*
“Eh? What ish that tiny shound?” asked the nyctal, digging a clod of wax the size of a fish cake from his ear.
*FFFOOOOOOOMM!\*
The street lit up like day. Both blinded nyctals screeched in unison. The Neighbourhood Watchman furiously flung his pudgy fists about, seeking out any purchase he could get. He touched something and began to mangle. Once his vision returned sufficiently, he realised it was nothing but a mailbox. At least, he thought it was a mailbox. Hard to tell when it was disfigured near the point of a crumpled tin can. Norman was nowhere in sight.
“GRRRR! That PERP! Making me damage public property!” he raged, maiming the mailbox all the more. “Papooshi! Find the perp!”
Papooshi’s hair tendrils created concaves around his eye-like orbs as he went perfectly still. He reoriented himself in a specific direction and formed a single concave around his biggest orb. Again, Papooshie froze in focus. In the meantime, The Neighbourhood Watchman began digging through his nostrils for some supper. Having retrieved a particularly succulent morsel, he was about to eat it when Papooshie took off, heedless of his owner's meal. Yanked to the ground belly first, The Neighbourhood Watchman was dragged behind Papooshie like a toboggan.
A couple buildings away, Norman descended a wall and dusted off his hands. That took care of that.
“SSHTAAAAAAAAAP!” squealed The Neighbourhood Watchman, rounding a corner a couple buildings away.
_CHAT
- INQU!SIT_R: HOW DID HE GET HERE SO FAST!?!
_CHAT
- INQU!SIT_R: Oh ...
- SMOL.STUPSE: HE LIKE HE A DEMENTED PENGUIN!
- ARN74: Norman, yuh gin ded!
Papooshi banked left, tugging his owner behind an abandoned car. Norman lowered the smitelight, beaming their legs beneath the vehicle. The car rocked back and forth as the frantic The Neighbourhood Watchman shoved and jostled until he flipped it onto its side. A sickening screech of metal grinding asphalt. Sparks flew from points of friction as The Neighbourhood Watchman pushed the vehicle forward. Mobile cover.
_CHAT
- BAJANETTE11: 😨
Then the flash grenade went off.
Papooshi convulsed in the air as the secondhand anguish of his owner made it through the cord attaching them. Norman didn’t bother dodging. The creature face-planted into the pavement in front of him, going limp in a heap of hair tendrils. That throw was never gonna reach anyway. Down but not out, Papooshie began to gather his wits. The hair tendrils slowly regained their form, hissing against each other in the promise of violence.
“Yeah, no,” Norman declared.
He extended his smitelight and gave it a zap. Papooshi spasmed back to the ground. The Neighbourhood Watchman’s anguished howls could be heard from the other side of the car. Okay, THAT should do it.
Norman sprinted on his way.
“N-NOOOO! You … can’t do thish!” griped The Neighbourhood Watchman as he crawled from behind the car. “No one … outrunsh jushtiche! TAXHI! TAX-!”
His cries were silenced. There was a great commotion. Papooshi yiped desperately as, from the sound of it, he was dragged away. Then he too was silenced. The merest moment had had passed, and it was over.
Norman eased to a stop and tentatively turned around. Alone on the street, save the overturned car, was a taxi, its windows pitch black.
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2024.04.16 00:02 Dmans99 Kelly Cahill Abduction: AN EXTRAORDINARY ENCOUNTER IN THE DANDENONG FOOTHILLS
 | Bill Chalker, International UFO Reporter, Sept/Oct 1994, Vol 19, No 5 submitted by Dmans99 to abovethenormnews [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/5cx8w4it9puc1.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0595266fb0065bbcaca0db609858ad2b0d59e66a https://preview.redd.it/h4m3j6it9puc1.jpg?width=497&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e393c08c143655b4230a0793c06805243ce142dd As a scientist I am always aware of the maxim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. To date Mainstream UFO events have revealed some compelling evidence for their physical reality. The challenge for researchers has always been to determine if that evidence is consistent with an alien reality. Comparable evidence to support the reality of abduction events has been lacking Or relatively uncompelling. In my two decades of research into Australian abduction claims, it has been difficult not to hold the position that abduction cases have perhaps told me more about the human condition than they have about UFOs. What follows, however, is a report On an affair which may amount to evidence for a reality behind abduction reports. Kelly Cahill, a 27 -year-old housewife and mother of three children, is a pivotal figure in a remarkable episode which may have much to tell experiencers and researchers alike. She contacted me on October 4, 1993, seeking assistance in understanding a bizarre experience she underwent near the outer Melbourne suburban housing estate of Narre Warren North, in the foothills of the Dandenongs, Victoria, between Belgrave and Fountain Gate, during the early hours of August 8, 1993. Kelly told me that apart from her husband with her in their car, she was aware of another vehicle farther down the hill from their own position. That car contained at least two persons, a man and a woman. She paid little heed to them at the time because she and her husband had their attention riveted on a massive UFO which had landed in the field opposite them. Because Kelly lived in Victoria and I live in New South Wales, I passed details of Kelly's experience on to John Auchettl of Phenomena Research Australia (PRA) and urged Kelly to contact him. PRA got on the case immediately . By November 17 PRA had located the man and woman Kelly had seen that night. It turned out that the couple also had a friend (a woman) with them. These witnesses took Auchettl to the encounter site, to a spot consistent with Kelly's description. The group's drawings of the UFO and entities also closely coincide with Kelly' s. Here we have a striking situation. Two groups of persons unknown to each other have witnessed the same UFO encounter and entities. They also experienced missing time, and each group has been available to competent investigators. Independent witnesses have provided information which enable cross-checking and correlations to reveal a remarkable amount of similar information. The result is a compelling case for the reality of the strange events.described. The ontological status of the events is further strengthened by a range of apparently related physical traces, including ground traces, a magnetic anomaly, and effects on some of the witnesses. What is perhaps even more extraordinary about this case is that the second group described seeing yet another car parked farther back down from them. In it was (it appeared) one male who seemed to be gazing fixedly toward the encounter site. So we have the situation of three cars present: Kelly and her husband in one near the top of a hill, the three-person group (Bill, Jan, and Glenda) another 150 meters down the hill, and the other car, with one visible occupant, about 25 to 30 meters farther back. The first two cars were parked with their lights off. The other had its lights on. This circumstance may explain an apparent anomaly, in that Kelly was able to glance down and spot the second car, with what to her seemed only two persons (in fact three), but the group of three could not see Kelly, her husband, or their car. It was a dark and cloudy night. Evidently Kelly could see the second car only because it was backlit by the headlights of the third car. From the trio' s testimony, investigators could determine the location of this third car. The male was looking at the UFO's position through a break in the vegetation cover. The trio's evidence coupled with Kelly' s allowed for triangulation of the encounter site with the UFO. The location was consistent with the anomalies discovered (to be discussed later). Unfortunately, this potential additional witness has yet to be found. Typically witnesses to these sorts of events are known to each other, and such relationships often beg the question of whether the witnessed events have emerged from shared delusions or even collusion. Through Auchettl, Kelly became aware of the independent witnesses, but they knew nothing of her existence until quite recently. Kelly tried hard to persuade Auchettl to give her the other group' s names, but he refused because he wanted to maintain the integrity of the testimony. Only when the investigation was completed did the three learn what Kelly had been saying. So far they have not attempted to contact her. PRA has uncovered no evidence of a previous connection between the Cahills and the other group. After the encounter Kelly' s recollection faded from conscious memory, despite animated discussions about it with her husband in the immediate wake of the incident. Her husband remembered at least the UFO encounter but not the entities and has not acknowledged the missing time. It was her husband' s reference to the August 8 event at a barbecue on September 16 that led to Kelly's initial confused attempts to reconcile this troubling situation. Kelly found this temporary amnesia along, especially since she has vivid memories going all the way back to age two. Other events began to be seen in a different and bizarre perspective. These included a "dream" she had immediately after the encounter, upon getting home and going to sleep on August 8, and two "dreamings" in September. Each involved (apparently) the same entities as those encountered on the road. The latter two "dreamings" had a strange physical dimension. A further two "dreamings" followed, one on October 23 and the last during January 1994. Alarmed, Kelly sought help with little success from universities and aviation authorities. The latter gave her two UFO contact numbers, one in Victoria and mine in Sydney. After getting no satisfaction from the Victorian group, she contacted me, and after our preliminary discussion of her experience, the PRA investigation commenced. What follows is the transcript of an interview Kelly gave to my associate Robb Tilley on March 21 of this year. The details are consistent with those recounted to me on October 4, 1993, in numerous conversations with me since then, with the PRA investigation, and with a manuscript she is writing about her experience. THE INCIDENT My husband and I were driving to my girl friend's place up in the mountains. It was her daughter's . . . birthday. It was just after dark, and we were nearly there, about half an hour from her place. It takes us about an hour and a half from our place. It was just after 7. [The area has] little bits of field . . . and then you run right into a major shopping centre. . . . My husband drives really fast. . . . I'm just busy looking out the window . It's turned dark, and I look over towards this field as we are going past, and I see a ring of orange lights. It was the first time I ever thought I had seen something that wasn' t normal. . . . I was going to shut my mouth. I thought, "No, he' s just going to have a go at me." But a couple of minutes up the road I said, "I swear I saw a UFO." He said, "Don't be stupid! It was probably a helicopter." I said, "It wasn't making any noise. It was just sitting on the ground. Anyway, after a few jibes at me, he forgot all about it, and we arrived at [my girl friend's place]. When we were there, my friends bring up this conversation, about what I thought I had seen. Her father says, "You think you've seen little green men or something, . Kelly?" and all this sort of stuff. It was turned into a joke, and I just totally forgot about it. We went out and played bingo. We came back. We had a bit of a problem about what time we left. As far as my husband's concerned, because we got home at 2:30 in the morning, it means we must have left at one o'clock. But that night I think we left at a quarter to 12. We got back from bingo at about 1 1, and we didn't stay for very long because [my friend's] daughter' s boy friend had just . . . split up with her and had gone home with the new girl friend . . . and she was really upset and crying, and we didn't want to stay. So we weren't there for that long at all. THE ENCOUNTER BEGINS Anyway, we were driving back down the road in the same stretch. Both of us,just me and my husband . . . we both saw this ring, mind you ... . in front of us, hovering above the road. It was just something sitting there. . . . I couldn't tell what it was. We were at first far away, but as you got closer to it was sort of . . . well, it wasn't like the orange light in the field. It was a round shape with some sort of glass around, or what looked like windows and lights around the bottom. Because it was dark, you couldn't really tell at first. But as we got closer and closer, there was no noise or anything. Even my husband's going. "You're right! That's something. That's very, very strange." And I swear we saw people in there, and then just as I said to him, "I swear there's people in there," it just shot off to the left as fast as it could go. I mean it just disappeared. Within a split second it had gone. We kept driving and about a kilometre ahead, all of a sudden, there's this really, really bright light in front of us, and I've got my hand up, up above my brow, to look out the window, because it's that bright, but I can't see anything. I said to [my husband], "What are you going to do?" He said, "l'm going to keep driving." From there, that is the last we remembered until . . . I knew I was going to see a UFO, you know, I just knew, because of what we had seen, I'd seen it twice in one night and he had seen it once . . . and the adrenalin is pumping, the heart is thumping, I'm so excited. All of a sudden I'm sitting in the car, and I'm saying to my husband, "What happened?" And he says to me, "I don't know. We must have gone around a corner or something." By the time we got home, he was definite of everything, but at that time he didn't know what happened either. I said to him, "I swear I've had a blackout," because adrenalin just doesn't disappear in a split second like that. I mean your heart is going mad! And all of a sudden. . . . One thing that really annoyed me was that I could smell vomit. I couldn't figure out where the smell of vomit was coming from. I argue about this half the way home until it started getting ridiculous, and I ended up just shutting up to stop all the fighting that was going to come out of it, you know, because we fight like cats and dogs. . . . As we were getting close to our home, about 20 minutes away from where we live (there was no one on the road), I saw a figure standing on the side of the road a tall dark figure. It was only for a couple of seconds, and I didn't relate it to anything until much later on at all. But it made me turn my head. I kept it in my mind, because it reminded me of a story I was told when I was a little girl about the headless horseman on the side of the road . . .because it was on the side of the road. It wasn't headless or anything,just this tall black figure. I saw it for only a couple of seconds, and then I couldn't see it anymore, but I thought I saw it. POST ENCOUNTER FALLOUT I get home. That night I actually had a dream about UFOs to top it all off, that something happened . . . but a whole lot of it went out of my head. Kelly and her husband argued about what happened for part of the way home. They agree they saw a UFO but cannot agree on the feeling Kelly had of experiencing a blackout or missing time and seeing people. They also could both smell vomit. Each experienced unexplained stomach pain. For Kelly it was like a pain from severe muscle fatigue which radiated from her lower abdomen to the upper shoulders. Later, after they got home, Kelly experienced menstrual bleeding and became quite ill. She had had her period only the week before. Eventually she entered the hospital with a womb infection. The doctors there said she must have been pregnant; either that, or she had had some kind of gynaecological operation. In fact, she had had neither in recent times. A strange triangular mark was also found on her abdomen along with a scar. Kelly elaborated on these matters: But when I got home that night, that's when I found the triangular mark below my navel, with what I thought was a little laparoscopy cut, and I also started bleeding that night. Three and a half weeks later I ended up in hospital... . . [The hospital] actually did a laparoscopy, another laparoscopy. This was not when I first went in. I went back in later, another six weeks after that, because I had a lot of pains in my stomach and just wanted to have it checked to see what it was. And I still had the triangular mark there. . . . They just did a blooming laparoscopy cut right next to it. [There was] no comment whatsoever. . . . I have a letter from a friend saying that she saw it. CONSCIOUS RECOLLECTIONS Kelly's recollections did not come from any hypnosis. Indeed she had only one session well after the main investigation had been completed. It failed to reveal anything of significance. Feeling that at best she had been only lightly under, she felt the session had been of little value. With regard to the August 8 encounter, she recalls crossing the road to the paddock, seeing at first one tall black being with glowing red eyes, then many. These latter seemed to be approaching rapidly, as if gliding. The large group of tall black beings apparently were split into two groups, one focused on Kelly and her husband, the other one on the other people who had also crossed farther down the road. The rest of her recollection is largely confusing and fragmented. She experienced voices and blindness. Kelly elaborated on how her memory came back: We went down to a girl friend's place a little bit later, a few weeks later, and the subject of UFOs came up, and her husband was saying, "Oh, I don't think they really exist." It was my husband that said, "If you had seen what Kelly and I saw, you might change your mind." I said, "What are you talking about?" You know, if I'd seen something, I'd have remembered it. I didn't even remember that I had seen it hovering in the middle of the road. It had been totally blanked out of my mind. And I search my head for days, because I knew he wouldn't say something if he didn't mean it. He was telling me, "Remember, on the way home from [your girl friend's], remember, it wasn't making any noise?" And I was just sitting there. I couldn't remember it. And a few days later, all of a sudden I remembered it! It hit me! And .. . . then I remembered going into the light, and then I couldn't remember anything else. A couple of weeks after that, this started to really bug me, because I remembered that light, and I remember arguing with him all the wayhome, but it was all I did remember. I went up to [my girl friend's] house again in October, this time for her other daughter's . . .birthday, and again we went to bingo. On the way home from bingo that night, we went along the same road, and as we passed a certain spot I just got this incredible feeling of terror go through me, I mean absolute terror. All of a sudden I just started remembering, and by the next morning I had remembered just about everything that happened, except there's still missing time that I can't. What we had actually done, we had driven . . . into the light, but the road curved, and the light we had thought was in front of us was actually to our right-hand side. It was in the field, and it was massive. . . . [Estimates put the possible diameter of the UFO at the "size of a house" or perhaps close to 5O meters.] So it was very big.Why I knew it was very big was because we could have driven for five minutes. The road sort of wound around this part. You could have driven for five minutes and not had it out of your sight the whole time. Kelly and her husband had a clear, uninterrupted view of a craft of enormous size. It was much larger than the UFO seen a few minutesearlier, and it was at ground level in the field at the bottom of a gully area. I asked him to stop the car, and we both got out. I remembered leaning back in, actually on the floor, to pick up my handbag, because I didn't go anywhere without my handbag. And that' s one of the sort of things that triggered off a lot of these memories doing that. The other thing was telling myself, "You are conscious. This is real! This is happening! This is real!". . . . For a while it was just absolutely terrifying, but you can't help it because it sounds really wacky. I mean this is not the way it's supposed to happen at all. . . . We crossed over the road. We jumped the gutter, and we walked up. . .I looked down the road, and there was another car-a light blue car-pulled up. Some people got out and went across the road. I only thought it was two, but it was actually three, but I didn' t pay much attention. They must have been at least a hundred meters down the road from us. When you've got something like that in front of you, and you' we got people down the road . . . well, I was more interested in what was in front of me than them, so I didn't get any detail. . . . I'm standing there, and we are looking at this thing [for about 3O seconds]. All of a sudden there is a black figure on the field. It's about seven foot tall. . . . I knew it was really tall at the time. For Kelly this was quite startling. She expected to see a human being, but this was not human. Kelly tried to use thought as a means of communication. She was immediately overwhelmed with fear. Its eyes seemed to turn to a red fire. At the distance of about 150 meters, they possessed an extraordinary luminosity . It started coming towards us, only slowly, and it had big red eyes. It sounds stupid, but it had great big round red eyes, like huge flies' eyes and they were red like, not like a reflection of red, but like burning red, like . . . fluorescent stop lights, I suppose, that sort of real burning red. All of a sudden I started screaming out [to my husbands. . . . Now this has really got me baffled because of the fact that a human being doesn't know this, so I don't even know how I came out with this, but I started saying, "They've got no souls." And then I started screaming, "THEY'VE GOT NO SOULS!" Then all of a sudden there were heaps of them in the field, not just one, a whole heap of them, and they started coming towards us . . . faster than a man could run, and they were gliding off the ground. They got halfway across the field. They split up. Some of them went towards the other people [two or three, Kelly thought]. and some of them [the rest] came towards us. Kelly found herself screaming to the other people down the road, "They're evil! They're going to kill us!" The next thing I know, I felt this oomph! in my stomach, right across here like I was winded, but I was thrown right back, and I was on my back on the ground. I sat up, with my head between my knees. Here, I'm trying to stay conscious. I couldn't see. My eyes. . . . It was all black. .. . . I'm screaming out to [my husband]. . . . Kelly speculated that her "winding" may have been caused by an electric fence present at the site. That may or may not be true. The fence may not even have been on at the time. Even if it was, the power may not have been strong enough to generate the effect she described. Nonetheless this possibly prosaic incident led her into confusion over whether the forces she was confronting were "good" or "evil." But the next thing I heard him saying, "Let go of me." His voice was all sort of cracked up with fear, and I'd never heard that from my husband. He's not frightened or afraid of anything. . . . Then this male voice said, "We [don't] mean you any harm." And then he said, "Why did you hit Kelly then?" That's the last I heard of [my husband]. No one else talked except me. I heard the male voice. Then I heard myself saying, "Oh, God, I'm going to be sick." I've got my head between my knees, and I just felt, like, violently nauseous. Then I must have blacked out for a little while. I don't remember being sick. Then I remember hearing talk about being a peaceful people, and I started screaming out, I said, "Don't believe them! They're going to steal your souls!" I know it sounds so ridiculous now, but at the time I was hysterically terrified. . . . I had never felt terror like that. Not even in my worst nightmares had I experienced terror like that. . . . Oh, there's one thing I remember that he said: "I wouldn't harm her. She's my daughter." Now when I first saw the-on the way up to [my girl friend's] in the field, the first thing I did was pray. And I took it as sarcasm straight away. And it sounded like sarcasm. . . . It sounded like there was even a small laugh after that. I don't know-it just wasn't good to me. For Kelly, a strong faith in God often involved an ability to get answers to many of life's situations, albeit sometimes in the most subtle and unlikely ways. For her the brief observation of a possible UFO on the way to her girl friend's place on August 7 was perhaps a glimpse of one of life's mysteries, perhaps even a lesson from God. So she made a silent prayer which began with "Father." She thought for a moment, "Wait for me. I'll be back down this way in a few hours." To put this in context, it should be pointed out that Kelly had long been on a spiritual quest, anchored in a religious journey and a desire to understand the great mysteries. Though she had little time for organized religions, she had a deep interest in the great religious works and had studied them, particularly the Bible, in great detail. Therefore, given her brief prayer for clarification of the nature of the UFO event on the way up to her friend, as well as the use of the word Father, she got a sense of "mockery" when she heard the voice saying, "She is my daughter." Anyway, I started screaming and going on about demons trying to steal people's souls. . . . I like not to admit that it came from my mouth, but it did. . . . But I'm going to tell it the way it is. Next thing I hear him saying, "Would somebody do something about .her?" And I felt a hand . . . touch my shoulder. It wasn't hard. It was quite gentle.That's when I absolutely cracked! I'm still sitting on the ground, and I couldn't see a thing, but I made sure that my eyes were just fierce. . . . Something snapped in me. Before that I was crying. All of a sudden something snapped in me, and I got so angry . Then I started screaming out, "How dare you do this to these innocent people?" Like it was my fault. Because I was on a big spiritual search, and I really got the impression that it was my fault. And I thought, why involve other people?. . . I felt like, almost like there was a fight for me. Like it was something I had to do. . . . Anyway, I started screaming out stupid things, told them to go back where they came from. Next thing I remember I was sitting in the car. I've still got missing time. When she found herself sitting in the car, her last memory was of driving into the light. THE DREAM OF AUGUST 8, 1993 Once she was home and asleep, the night brought a bizarre dream. This dream is of interest in that it emerged within hours of the encounter and it places Kelly back in the encounter. The subsequent "dreamings" do not have this quality about them. Nonetheless they were unusual in their own way, for reasons that will shortly be apparent. In the August 8 dream she is on the side of the road with her head between her knees. She becomes aware that she can see again. A being is leading her husband down the slope onto the field. Throughout the dream she is unable to see the beings above the level of their elbows. Their limbs seem long and thin. Inexplicably convinced that the being with her husband is female, she tackles it and then blacks out. In the dream she once again regains consciousness to find herself on the extreme right of the field with the UFO further down the field to the left. Before her on the ground is a still body, at first nonhuman, then changing to human. A middle-aged woman standing further down the field is screaming at her, "Murderess! Murderess!" She is overcome with grief with no awareness of having killed anyone. Still in the dream, a hand on her shoulder leads her, and she follows obediently. Eventually Kelly becomes aware that she is in a small room, with only a small table and a being standing before her. The being tells her she did not kill anyone and they had to use her sense of morality to overcome her fear. Kelly has a profound feeling that she knows this being. On a table behind the being is a Bible, one of hers, which had disappeared a few weeks before. The being gives Kelly a strange choice which deepens her suspicion of the beings' motives. She is told she can come but must leave the Bible behind. In the dream the being gives her this Bible. The dream ends at that point. A few days after the encounter, her husband found the Bible in the car. The "dreamings" mentioned earlier, first interpreted as something like a ghostly episode, take on a bizarre perspective when Kelly's recollections flooded back. The first two preceded the point when more complete recall of the events of August 8 returned. THE "DREAMINGS" The first started with a presence which warns her to be calm. Then a frightening "sucking" sensation begins as if something is being taken from her. She comes out of the dream terrified and is confronted by a tall black figure in a floor length hooded cloak, about seven feet tall, with glowing red eyes. She screams, and the being disappears. Initially Kelly interpreted the being as like a "soul vampire" or the Grim Reaper. At the time she did not place this incident in a UFO context, since the memories had yet to resurface. In the second "dreaming" she experiences her legs being lifted and drawn out of the bed. She wakes and once again finds the same or similar being present, but this time the cloak obscures the eyes. When after I did remember it, I had another dream, and these dreams seemed very physical. I know I'm dreaming, and I've got to wake up out of them. . . . In this particular one, I felt as if my legs were being pulled off the bed, and it was like I was paralysed from my waist down, and my legs were being pulled over to the side; yet I could almost use the top of my body. Then I'm grabbing a pillow, trying to hit my husband, to wake him up. . . . I'm fighting this. I'm not going to let this thing drag me off the bed by my legs. Then I woke up and saw it standing there again! This time the hood covered the eyes, and it didn't scare me. . . . I was still terrified, but it didn't scare me quite as much, because each time it scared me, it was that same power like I felt out in the field that night. When I was sitting on the ground, it was like something, almost like a frequency or a sound vibration or something. And it's getting right into my head! And I couldn't get it together. Like I was trying to get my logical thoughts together, not logical, almost conscious thoughts, and I was fighting it the whole time, which is probably why I seemed to remember more than my husband or even the other people. The third "dreaming" occurred at a friend' s place on October23 (see front cover). By then Kelly had experienced the flood of recollections. The two earlier "dreamings" took on an added significance, especially given the presence of the beings after Kelly had awakened from her "dreamings." This time she wakes from a "dreaming" which seems to take the form of a "peak experience" (as psychologist Abraham Maslow calls it; Richard Maurice Bucke defined it as the sense of"cosmic consciousness"). She sees apparently the same creature as before; but unlike earlier manifestations, it is naked and leaning over her as if about to kiss her navel area. It is tall, with a head much larger than normal, long and thin arms, with an abdomen out of proportion to its thin frame, like a child's stomach suffering from malnutrition. Its skin is like gray-black plasticine. Kelly's screams turn into an "uninterrupted stream of hysteria" and words. In the morning she insisted that her husband check under the car. She had heard a distinct voice during the night urging such a check. He ignored her request, but their car subsequently suffered such a problem. Numerous other "psychic" events and "electrical disturbances" followed. Frequently their car started up when no one was inside it. The vehicle had a kill switch which rendered these events even more startling and curious. Kelly thought she had developed enhanced psychic powers. The electrical events apparently ended in January 1994, as did many of the psychic incidents. The fourth "dreaming" occurred in January of this year. In the dream the bathroom light is blown. There is a sense of presence. Something persistently tries to grab Kelly's right hand. Eventually she lets her hand be taken. Immediately she wakes up. Once again the creature in the black robe is standing by her bedside. It goes away. It turned out that the light had indeed blown and that diamond and sapphire rings .she wore on her right hand had disappeared. To date they have not been found. OTHER MATTERS Other, earlier episodes, experiences, and issues of possible significance: . From July through September 1993 small orange fireballs, about the size of tennis balls, frequently hit the windows of the house. Kelly, her husband, and her mother witnessed the phenomena. o About two and a half years earlier, at Lalor, Kelly had a peculiar dream in which she moved through a flesh-like hourglass apparatus. The same night she experienced a "vision" of opening their back door and seeing a light for a few seconds. Then she blacked out. Kelly experienced the same sense of power she felt in the field in August 1993. o After the encounter and until July 1994, the Cahill house (built in 1949) had been the scene of fleeting observations of tall "shadows," seen by both Kelly and her husband. o A bad smell occasionally permeated the house and seemed to move around. THE OTHER WITNESSES If the August 8 encounter had revolved only around Kelly, it could be argued that the experience may have been some sort of psychological episode. But the presence of other witnesses - a married couple and their friend, plus a possible other observer in a third car-forcefully argues for a real encounter. Indeed, the PRA contends that the focus of the incident was not Kelly but the two other women. As in Kelly' s situation, the females in the other group seemed to play a dominant role. Bill, the male witness in the trio, appears, like Kelly's husband, to have had only limited involvement. The two women consciously recalled onboard episodes. They remembered the UFO and the tall black beings. Their description did not feature the red eyes Kelly saw. For the trio the experience apparently started when they approached the site. All three could hear a strange noise and suddenly felt ill. Bill thought he was going to faint. He lost control of the car and ran off the road, striking a pole. After checking for damage, they drove off. A few minutes later a speeding car with its high beams on shot past them. Then another passed. They came to a bridge with a sharp turn following it almost immediately. Farther along this section the trio stopped. As all this was going on, Bill's vision was impaired. Obviously he had Some type of vision as he was driving, but he was unable to remember seeing the UFO. The two women with him recall the UFO clearly, and their descriptions closely match Kelly's. In some unexplained manner Bill was isolated from the central experience. He has conscious recall of smells and sounds and remembers that a lot of activity was going on. He does not recall seeing anything. He subsequently underwent hypnosis, which expanded his apparent recollections to seeming onboard components, but once again these were through the senses of smell and hearing only. The two women did not think of theirs as an "abduction" experience. They felt as if they had exercised free will all through it. Yet the principal element of their onboard experience was a form of examination-not, however, visually remembered. Other parts of their onboard experience exist in visual images and conscious memory. Hypnosis in their cases appears to have only reinforced what they recall already. The entities did not speak and provided very little information. Neither woman saw the other or any of the others while in the alien environment presumably aboard the UFO. Curiously, each was still aware of what was happening to her companion, ostensibly through psychic means. The trio apparently did not have the complex background experiences described by Kelly. Their experience seem limited only to the August 8 encounter. There is also some physical evidence. PRA found a possible related ground trace and low-level magnetic anomaly at the encounter site. Source and more http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case187.htm |
2024.04.15 19:46 Laguera256 Review: Stolen Tongues by Felix Blackwell
I found this on a rec from this sub, and since it had a fair amount of praise, I gave it a shot.
First, the positive: There are some truly creepy scenes in this book. The opening scene with Carrot the Parrot was pitch-perfect and reminded me of the opening scene of the original Scream film, with its steadily-ratcheting tension. You just know things are going to go wrong, but it never quite comes when you expect it to, and then it does. It's a beautiful, perfectly-executed moment that reminds you of why horror can be so sublime when it works. I found myself clapping quietly in my sunroom at the elan.
Unfortunately, that was the sole grace note in a bungled opera.
I knew going in that this was a book based on a creepypasta, and that ultimately hurt the final result. Creepypastas are, by their very nature, usually brief and episodic and certainly not intended or designed to carry so much thematic and narrative weight. It was immediately obvious where the original story ended and the necessary expansion in order to reach novel-length began, and from that point on, the quality plummeted. The deeply unsettling atmosphere dissipated into a funk of labored, repetitive scenes of Our Hero gawping stupidly while Our Lady of the Negative Ambien Side Effects drifts around the conveniently dark house in the middle of the night and mutters cryptic nonsense with which to vex and flummox Sir Weenie of the Hopelessly Ineffectual. For variety, Blackwell tosses in scenes of Our Hero lamely browbeating people who owe him precisely jack and squat into helping him or divulging information to which he has no right, ostensibly to help Fay(or as the audiobook narrator calls her ad nauseam, Faaaaaaaay!). It's not much of a tradeoff, and most of the time, it serves no purpose other than to pad the word count.
The biggest problem in the book are the protagonists. A pair of whinier, more irritating, navel-gazing butt bunions I hope never to meet. Felix, which also happens to be the author's name, boy, oh, boy, is a fragile, oblivious, self-absorbed twonk with delusions of competence. Everything--absolutely everything--is all about him. His needs are the most important things in the world. No one else's feelings matter. He claims to love Fay, but as the novel progresses, it becomes clear that he's bent on saving her for his sake, because he doesn't want to live without her. Or to face her macho, former-military dad knowing he lost a fight to the anorexic Michelin Man.
Further, when Tiwe and Nathan die, Felix's reaction is an exercise in me-me-me mania. Even though he's known these men for a month, max, they're suddenly his best friends. Why, Nathan was even like a brother to him because they fist-bumped once. Naturally, that gives him the right to run roughshod over the grief of people who've known them for decades. He donated money to their burial funds, didn't he? Which given that he is a PhD students means he dropped in a tenner. But so what? He gave money, so his grief means more than yours, freeloader. Plus, he wrote heartfelt letters to read over their burial places. I'm sure a guy who knew them for a month and had two visits and two phone calls will be able to offer so much profound insight.
And Fay(who wants to bet Blackwell's partner's name is Fay?)is a helpless tabula rasa onto whom Felix projects all his issues. Until she isn't and single-handedly bests the monster by...telling it to go away.
Yes, the big bad, the ancient evil who has been pursuing her for decades, gets told to go away and forlornly shuffles off like Gurgy from The Black Cauldron. That's that. Everybody hit the showers.
I wish I were joking.
Add in an insufferable, defensive treatise on how his use of Native characters and folklore was thoughtful and considerate, unlike all those other exploitative portrayals, and I was done. Your Natives were one-note, cardboard cutouts to serve the plot, sir. Just say you needed them for the story and the chance at snatching that bag and own your business.
submitted by Laguera256 to horrorlit [link] [comments]
First, the positive: There are some truly creepy scenes in this book. The opening scene with Carrot the Parrot was pitch-perfect and reminded me of the opening scene of the original Scream film, with its steadily-ratcheting tension. You just know things are going to go wrong, but it never quite comes when you expect it to, and then it does. It's a beautiful, perfectly-executed moment that reminds you of why horror can be so sublime when it works. I found myself clapping quietly in my sunroom at the elan.
Unfortunately, that was the sole grace note in a bungled opera.
I knew going in that this was a book based on a creepypasta, and that ultimately hurt the final result. Creepypastas are, by their very nature, usually brief and episodic and certainly not intended or designed to carry so much thematic and narrative weight. It was immediately obvious where the original story ended and the necessary expansion in order to reach novel-length began, and from that point on, the quality plummeted. The deeply unsettling atmosphere dissipated into a funk of labored, repetitive scenes of Our Hero gawping stupidly while Our Lady of the Negative Ambien Side Effects drifts around the conveniently dark house in the middle of the night and mutters cryptic nonsense with which to vex and flummox Sir Weenie of the Hopelessly Ineffectual. For variety, Blackwell tosses in scenes of Our Hero lamely browbeating people who owe him precisely jack and squat into helping him or divulging information to which he has no right, ostensibly to help Fay(or as the audiobook narrator calls her ad nauseam, Faaaaaaaay!). It's not much of a tradeoff, and most of the time, it serves no purpose other than to pad the word count.
The biggest problem in the book are the protagonists. A pair of whinier, more irritating, navel-gazing butt bunions I hope never to meet. Felix, which also happens to be the author's name, boy, oh, boy, is a fragile, oblivious, self-absorbed twonk with delusions of competence. Everything--absolutely everything--is all about him. His needs are the most important things in the world. No one else's feelings matter. He claims to love Fay, but as the novel progresses, it becomes clear that he's bent on saving her for his sake, because he doesn't want to live without her. Or to face her macho, former-military dad knowing he lost a fight to the anorexic Michelin Man.
Further, when Tiwe and Nathan die, Felix's reaction is an exercise in me-me-me mania. Even though he's known these men for a month, max, they're suddenly his best friends. Why, Nathan was even like a brother to him because they fist-bumped once. Naturally, that gives him the right to run roughshod over the grief of people who've known them for decades. He donated money to their burial funds, didn't he? Which given that he is a PhD students means he dropped in a tenner. But so what? He gave money, so his grief means more than yours, freeloader. Plus, he wrote heartfelt letters to read over their burial places. I'm sure a guy who knew them for a month and had two visits and two phone calls will be able to offer so much profound insight.
And Fay(who wants to bet Blackwell's partner's name is Fay?)is a helpless tabula rasa onto whom Felix projects all his issues. Until she isn't and single-handedly bests the monster by...telling it to go away.
Yes, the big bad, the ancient evil who has been pursuing her for decades, gets told to go away and forlornly shuffles off like Gurgy from The Black Cauldron. That's that. Everybody hit the showers.
I wish I were joking.
Add in an insufferable, defensive treatise on how his use of Native characters and folklore was thoughtful and considerate, unlike all those other exploitative portrayals, and I was done. Your Natives were one-note, cardboard cutouts to serve the plot, sir. Just say you needed them for the story and the chance at snatching that bag and own your business.
2024.04.14 06:25 CIAHerpes I once knew a painter who used to mix blood in with the paint. His paintings are acting rather strangely lately.
I had always liked collecting rare books and paintings with the extra money I made trading stock options on the side. My small, two-bedroom house was cluttered with them. I had bookshelves filled with original signed copies of works by Stephen King, Philip K. Dick and Hunter S. Thompson that I had saved for years.
I also tried to find ascending painters in the local art scene and buy up some of their works for very low prices before they got discovered. Sometimes it worked out, and sometimes it didn’t, but as a whole, I had made far more money than I had lost over the decades. All of the works I liked most, though, I refused to sell at any price.
And these included the paintings of HG Bittaker. After his mysterious death a few years ago, they had gotten the same kind of reputation as paintings done by serial killers like John Wayne Gacy that were sold openly, sometimes for tens of thousands of dollars, on the internet. And like Gacy’s strange portraits of Snow White or the Seven Dwarves or grinning clowns, Bittaker’s paintings all had a sinister and otherworldly pull.
I had kept them locked up in a storage unit, but when the storage company told me they would be doubling their rates, I decided to close the unit and take everything in it back to my house. I set up the macabre paintings around my room and the hallways, remembering the strange conversation I had with the artist just days before his untimely death.
***
“People like to say that ‘life is art’ and meaningless platitudes like that,” HG Bittaker had said as he stood in front of a painting of a victim of murder made to look like Shiva dancing the Tandava. The black, eyeless sockets of the victim stared straight out at the viewer. His mouth was open, showing a spiraling galaxy of shining stars hidden within. Four emaciated, pale arms jutted out from the sides of the starving body, bent in the same posture as Shiva’s eternal cosmic dance. The arms showed signs of torture, patches of burnt and melted flesh eaten into the body like a cancer.
One mutilated leg was lifted into the air in a half-kicking motion. Deep gashes were sliced into its skin and muscle, revealing the white bone gleaming underneath. The emaciated dancer stood on a mountain of hundreds of skulls, many of them with fragments of hair and pieces of gore still clinging to the bone. Feeling slightly sickened, I turned away, chugging the entire bottle of beer I held in a few long swallows.
“But you know what I think? I think death is the true art,” HG Bittaker continued, his gray eyes flashing over me. They looked flat and lifeless, as if all the hope had long ago been sucked out of this young artist. His face was narrow and serious with high cheekbones and close-cropped black hair. “It is the gateway to eternity, after all. The best art comes not from love of life, but from love of death and annihilation.” I nodded as if I understood, though in reality, I didn’t know what he was getting at. I figured he was just another eccentric artist rambling about philosophies he barely understood.
“So what inspired you to paint this piece, for example?” I said, glancing at the macabre murder victim piece. It had a small white placard next to it that read,
“The Damned Spirits Dance the Tandava.
HG Bittaker.
2022.
Oil, marker, hair, blood.”
I recognized immediately that the placard showed the name of the piece, the artist, the year it was created and the materials used to create the piece. But it had to be a joke. I squinted at the last line, reading it over again. All around us, people chattered softly as they sipped wine and sodas, moving slowly around the hall. The entire exhibit showed dozens of HG Bittaker paintings, all of them extremely disturbing. I saw a painting of mass graves under a cold, black sky with rings like those of Saturn extending far out into the void. Next to it stood one of a monk burning himself alive while sitting in complete peace.
“This piece was inspired from a dream I had- or maybe, I should call it a nightmare. Do you know what the Tandava is?” HG Bittaker asked me, his gray eyes flashing with excitement for the first time that night. I shook my head, but I leaned close, interested.
“The Hindus believe that we exist in an eternal multiverse where countless universes are constantly being created and destroyed. The multiverse exists as the body of Vishnu the Maintainer, which stretches out forever outside of time. His maintenance is really just the ultimate reality from which all universes constantly spring. They say that the individual creator god for each universe arises out of Vishnu’s navel. The creator is only a finite god with limited power, a being who they call Brahma. Brahma eventually ages and dies, just like the universe itself. For, you see, Brahma the Creator is by far the weakest of the three. The eternal presence of the multiverse and the omnipresent power of death and destruction are much more powerful.
“When a universe has grown ancient, when it has started to turn gray and fade towards death, one far more powerful than the creator appears: Shiva the Destroyer. At that point, he begins his final dance for that universe- the Tandava, it is called.
“After Shiva starts to dance the Tandava, it cannot be stopped until everything in the universe is destroyed. He dances faster and faster until all the remaining matter and energy is annihilated, released back into consciousness. He does this not out of hatred or spite, you understand, but out of love for all beings. In the destruction of the universe, enlightenment shines through, and the pure consciousness released can be used to start the process of creation again.
“So you asked about what inspired this particular piece. Well, in one recurring nightmare I had, I saw this man, this pale victim of some death camp, I guess. His eyes had been cut out. His still body lay on top of a mass grave of rotting bodies with maggots writhing in his skin and hair. He showed clear signs of torture before the merciful release of death took him away.
“The many arms of the hundreds of other victims lying beneath him started to slither up like snakes, as if the dead were slowly coming back to life. It was like they were trying to reach upwards, trying to reach towards freedom from the rotting pit of horrors they found themselves in. The man on top, the one you see in this painting here, lifted his head and looked straight at me. His blue lips twitched and he abruptly inhaled again, but it sounded like his throat was filled with blood and dirt. Finally, he opened his mouth and, with a gurgling wail that seemed to come straight from Hell itself, he spoke.
“‘Everything is growing old and sick here,’ he hissed at me. ‘The dance will begin again soon.’
“And then the sky went black and a burning cold descended on the world. A freezing wind blew. I looked up into the sky and felt something dreadful and powerful hidden within those swirling currents of darkness. Through the black mist, I could see the barest silhouette of something massive, something whose entire body stretched across the sky- and I saw it was dancing.”
***
After the art show, I had gone home and thought deeply about the words the tortured artist had said. His gray, lifeless eyes kept flashing through my mind. That night, I drank myself into a black-out, until the merciful release of sleep took away the cycle of thoughts that seemed to repeat in my mind like a skipping record.
It was three days later, after I had gotten home from work late, that I saw the news. I remember walking into my house and turning on the flat-screen TV as I poured myself a full glass of whiskey. Within minutes, I had chugged the entire thing. I knew that I drank too much, that I couldn’t stop, and that, eventually, my addiction would probably kill me. I figured that, in the end, I would follow millions of other alcoholics off that dark cliff of fatal addiction into eternity.
“BREAKING NEWS” suddenly flashed across the screen as a TV reporter stood in front of an expensive apartment building under a dark, cloudless sky. It was a ritzy, expensive part of town near the art gallery. Police cars filled the street behind her as she smoothed a long lock of hair behind her ear. She blinked fast at the camera, seeming to finally realize she was live.
“I’m here with Channel Five News in front of the Angel Trace Apartment building where police are investigating multiple bodies found inside one of the residences. We have heard reports from police that the body of the locally renowned artist HG Bittaker was also recovered at the crime scene. Police refuse to say what connection, if any, Mr. Bittaker may have had with…” I rose from my chair, frantically shutting off the TV. The strange conversation I had with the artist a few days ago flashed through my mind over and over. But now, the conversation seemed more sinister.
Later that night, I went over to the computer and started doing some research. On various internet forums, I found strange things floating around. Those investigating the case said the victims were found chained inside HG Bittaker’s apartment and that the police believed he had died from suicide. A lot of this was still speculation and rumor.
While much of it was unconfirmed at first, within a couple days, it would all be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
As I would find out over time, the bodies of eight women were laid around HG Bittaker in a shape like a lotus petal. They showed signs of extensive, prolonged torture before their inevitable deaths from strangulation. Like the painting I had seen in the gallery, these victims had their eyes cut out from their sockets. They had their arms and legs burned or doused in some corrosive acid, and strange occult symbols had been carved into the chests and stomachs of their naked, mutilated bodies. They had suffered greatly before the merciful release of oblivion.
In the center of the circle of death, the police had found the body of HG Bittaker himself. He had burned himself alive while sitting in the full-lotus position. The neighbors had noticed the choking clouds of black smoke that reeked of searing meat and gasoline. They kicked the door down only to find a den of horrors waiting beyond.
HG Bittaker had still been alive at that point, they said, and he had shown no signs of pain at all as he sat there, burning. Fat sizzled off his body in drops as his skin blackened and cooked. The neighbors extinguished the fire before it could spread, but by then, HG Bittaker was dead.
Apparently, HG Bittaker had his own personal library with countless leather-bound tomes on the occult and practices of human sacrifice. Books about the Thuggees and ancient devotional practices to both Kali and Shiva were also found scattered all over the apartment.
After hearing this, I did some research about the Thuggees, a group of cultists in India who were estimated to have murdered up to two million people and where the word “thug” came from. They were cultists who would waylay travelers on the road, strangling them or breaking their necks with special nooses or silk handkerchiefs.
The Thuggees were devoted followers of the goddess of death and destruction, Kali. They believed they were saving the world by murdering innocent travelers in cold blood, for they offered these victims to the goddess Kali. They hoped their sacrifices would keep Kali satiated, so that she would not descend and destroy the entire world in a dancing inferno of death and destruction.
As I sat in front of the computer with a glass of scotch in my hand, my head started to feel like it was spinning from all the strangeness of the case. It seemed like I had many breadcrumbs here that must connect in some way, but for the life of me, I could not figure out how. Before the night was over, however, I would understand everything.
I glanced behind me at the painting I had bought from HG Bittaker after the artshow, the one showing the emaciated death camp victim dancing the cosmic Tandava. The eyeless sockets of that pale face seemed to stare directly into my soul. I shuddered, turning away and back to my empty glass.
***
I ended up refilling my glass to the brim with some expensive scotch while I did my research. I leaned back in the computer chair with a long sigh before sipping the burning liquid that loosened the knots of anxiety and dread in my heart. As I sat alone in that dark room, only the glare of the monitor sent the skittering shadows away. Behind me, the painting continuously stared at me from the wall, grinning like a skull.
I must have passed out at some point. The anesthetizing fog of the alcohol descended slowly over my mind. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I certainly remember waking up.
The room was totally dark now, the monitor having shut off. I blinked slowly, my head feeling hazy. The room seemed to spin around me. I couldn’t see the spinning, but I could feel it thrumming through my whole body. My stomach was churning. My throat felt dry, as if I had been sipping hydrochloric acid. But why had I woken up suddenly? I didn’t know. I felt confused, and everything seemed slow. I was still drunk, I knew, though some of the fog seemed to have cleared as I slept.
I heard a floorboard groan behind me. There was a sudden ragged inhalation of breath, a slow, pained gurgling, as if someone were choking on their own blood. The diseased inhalation and exhalation rang out through the silence. I heard a skittering of light footsteps and the slamming of a door.
I fumbled in my pocket for my cigarette lighter, pulling it out and flicking it. I stumbled out of the chair, holding the small, flickering light in front of me like a shield. It barely drove the shadows back. They seemed to press in all around me like the spikes of an iron maiden.
I got to the light and tried flicking it, but the power had gone off for some reason. Sweating and nervous, I stopped and listened. I heard the stairs creak. Off in the distance, that gurgling breathing continued. I swore under my breath. It must be a robber, I thought. Someone probably broke in while I passed out and cut the circuit breaker. I looked around the room for a weapon, when I noticed something truly bizarre.
My lighter flicked over the painting I kept hanging on the wall, the one called, “The Damned Spirits Dance the Tandava”. It looked different, and I immediately realized why.
The skulls piled on the black earth at the bottom of the painting still gleamed in the dim glare of the lighter’s flame, but the dancing, eyeless man in the painting had disappeared. The stars glimmered in the endless void in the background with their cold white light.
It had to be a joke, I thought to myself. But why would someone go to this length? I lived alone and had few friends. Certainly no one would break in and swap a painting as some kind of prank. I spotted a metal letter opener over on the desk. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had up here. I grabbed it and left the room, heading downstairs. I no longer heard any movement or breathing down there, but I felt some sort of presence, as if the shadows themselves had eyes that were watching me.
***
I felt as if I were in some sort of nightmare as I descended the stairs. The wood groaned softly under my weight. My heart pounded as I moved forward. As I reached the bottom step, that diseased gurgling rang out nearby. I spun, seeing the naked, emaciated body with the four arms standing at the window in the dark kitchen, staring blindly out into the world with his black sockets of eyes. The strange man turned to face me. His face split into a grin, revealing the brown, rotted teeth hidden beneath and the maggots squirming in his putrefying tongue and gums.
“What do you want?” I whispered, terrified. “Who are you?” The grin seemed to widen further, the decaying flesh splitting along the seams of his lips. Dark, clotted blood dripped down from the torn flaps of skin on his cheeks.
“Do you not recognize me, John?” the thing spoke in a voice that writhed with sickness and death. But, at the same time, I recognized it. It was the voice of HG Bittaker, the dead artist and serial killer. “I mixed my own blood and the blood of those holy ones who gave their lives to me with the paintings. Even strands of their hair are in there, dried between the layers of paint. Strands of their hair- and mine. Our essences have mixed, the killer and killed, the strong and weak, the perpetrator and the victim, and the deathless self shines through all of it. Now I have gone beyond death.”
The pale man stepped towards me, his mutilated legs cracking as the stiff limbs twisted and jerked, as if fighting the effects of rigor mortis.
“I’m dreaming,” I said, backpedaling away as he advanced on me. “This can’t be real. You’re dead! You burned yourself alive! It was all over the news, goddamn it!” With inhuman speed, the mutilated man oozed towards me, grabbing me by the head with his cold, dead hands. The skin felt loose, almost falling off the bone, and the smell of rot and putrefaction emanated from the body in thick clouds.
“I have made a friend of death,” he hissed through his blackened teeth as maggots dripped from his blue lips. “You, too, will find peace in death.” He lunged forward suddenly. I felt his sharp splinters of broken teeth sink into my neck. A scream ripped its way out of my throat as I thrashed and kicked. Through the haze of pain, I abruptly remembered the letter opener in my hand.
I brought it up into the body of the naked, rotting corpse, slicing deeply across his stomach. The thin skin burst open with a waterfall of clotted blood running out like sludge. The brown intestines of the corpse inside spilled out, writhing with hundreds of larvae like pale worms that feasted on the dead flesh.
The pale man gave a hissing scream. Black blood burst from his mouth, covering my face in its sickly spatters. My hands grew slick as my blood mixed with the fetid fluids dripping from the animated corpse. He pulled away with a banshee wail. I collapsed to the floor, holding my spurting neck with both hands as I slowly crawled away.
I heard a window shatter behind me. Looking back, I saw the kitchen empty. The pale man had apparently jumped through the front window, leaving pieces of his decaying flesh hanging from the jagged shards of glass.
With the last of my strength, I slowly made my way toward the front door. Feeling weak and sick, stumbling as blood poured from my neck, I made my way to the neighbor’s house. I pounded on their door, collapsing on the mat as they opened it.
***
When I got home from the hospital, I went upstairs to look at the painting. A deep sense of curiosity mixed with an overwhelming dread as I opened the door.
I saw the pile of skulls, the stars like fragments of opal, but the pale victim at the center of the painting was gone forever.
submitted by CIAHerpes to Viidith22 [link] [comments]
I also tried to find ascending painters in the local art scene and buy up some of their works for very low prices before they got discovered. Sometimes it worked out, and sometimes it didn’t, but as a whole, I had made far more money than I had lost over the decades. All of the works I liked most, though, I refused to sell at any price.
And these included the paintings of HG Bittaker. After his mysterious death a few years ago, they had gotten the same kind of reputation as paintings done by serial killers like John Wayne Gacy that were sold openly, sometimes for tens of thousands of dollars, on the internet. And like Gacy’s strange portraits of Snow White or the Seven Dwarves or grinning clowns, Bittaker’s paintings all had a sinister and otherworldly pull.
I had kept them locked up in a storage unit, but when the storage company told me they would be doubling their rates, I decided to close the unit and take everything in it back to my house. I set up the macabre paintings around my room and the hallways, remembering the strange conversation I had with the artist just days before his untimely death.
***
“People like to say that ‘life is art’ and meaningless platitudes like that,” HG Bittaker had said as he stood in front of a painting of a victim of murder made to look like Shiva dancing the Tandava. The black, eyeless sockets of the victim stared straight out at the viewer. His mouth was open, showing a spiraling galaxy of shining stars hidden within. Four emaciated, pale arms jutted out from the sides of the starving body, bent in the same posture as Shiva’s eternal cosmic dance. The arms showed signs of torture, patches of burnt and melted flesh eaten into the body like a cancer.
One mutilated leg was lifted into the air in a half-kicking motion. Deep gashes were sliced into its skin and muscle, revealing the white bone gleaming underneath. The emaciated dancer stood on a mountain of hundreds of skulls, many of them with fragments of hair and pieces of gore still clinging to the bone. Feeling slightly sickened, I turned away, chugging the entire bottle of beer I held in a few long swallows.
“But you know what I think? I think death is the true art,” HG Bittaker continued, his gray eyes flashing over me. They looked flat and lifeless, as if all the hope had long ago been sucked out of this young artist. His face was narrow and serious with high cheekbones and close-cropped black hair. “It is the gateway to eternity, after all. The best art comes not from love of life, but from love of death and annihilation.” I nodded as if I understood, though in reality, I didn’t know what he was getting at. I figured he was just another eccentric artist rambling about philosophies he barely understood.
“So what inspired you to paint this piece, for example?” I said, glancing at the macabre murder victim piece. It had a small white placard next to it that read,
“The Damned Spirits Dance the Tandava.
HG Bittaker.
2022.
Oil, marker, hair, blood.”
I recognized immediately that the placard showed the name of the piece, the artist, the year it was created and the materials used to create the piece. But it had to be a joke. I squinted at the last line, reading it over again. All around us, people chattered softly as they sipped wine and sodas, moving slowly around the hall. The entire exhibit showed dozens of HG Bittaker paintings, all of them extremely disturbing. I saw a painting of mass graves under a cold, black sky with rings like those of Saturn extending far out into the void. Next to it stood one of a monk burning himself alive while sitting in complete peace.
“This piece was inspired from a dream I had- or maybe, I should call it a nightmare. Do you know what the Tandava is?” HG Bittaker asked me, his gray eyes flashing with excitement for the first time that night. I shook my head, but I leaned close, interested.
“The Hindus believe that we exist in an eternal multiverse where countless universes are constantly being created and destroyed. The multiverse exists as the body of Vishnu the Maintainer, which stretches out forever outside of time. His maintenance is really just the ultimate reality from which all universes constantly spring. They say that the individual creator god for each universe arises out of Vishnu’s navel. The creator is only a finite god with limited power, a being who they call Brahma. Brahma eventually ages and dies, just like the universe itself. For, you see, Brahma the Creator is by far the weakest of the three. The eternal presence of the multiverse and the omnipresent power of death and destruction are much more powerful.
“When a universe has grown ancient, when it has started to turn gray and fade towards death, one far more powerful than the creator appears: Shiva the Destroyer. At that point, he begins his final dance for that universe- the Tandava, it is called.
“After Shiva starts to dance the Tandava, it cannot be stopped until everything in the universe is destroyed. He dances faster and faster until all the remaining matter and energy is annihilated, released back into consciousness. He does this not out of hatred or spite, you understand, but out of love for all beings. In the destruction of the universe, enlightenment shines through, and the pure consciousness released can be used to start the process of creation again.
“So you asked about what inspired this particular piece. Well, in one recurring nightmare I had, I saw this man, this pale victim of some death camp, I guess. His eyes had been cut out. His still body lay on top of a mass grave of rotting bodies with maggots writhing in his skin and hair. He showed clear signs of torture before the merciful release of death took him away.
“The many arms of the hundreds of other victims lying beneath him started to slither up like snakes, as if the dead were slowly coming back to life. It was like they were trying to reach upwards, trying to reach towards freedom from the rotting pit of horrors they found themselves in. The man on top, the one you see in this painting here, lifted his head and looked straight at me. His blue lips twitched and he abruptly inhaled again, but it sounded like his throat was filled with blood and dirt. Finally, he opened his mouth and, with a gurgling wail that seemed to come straight from Hell itself, he spoke.
“‘Everything is growing old and sick here,’ he hissed at me. ‘The dance will begin again soon.’
“And then the sky went black and a burning cold descended on the world. A freezing wind blew. I looked up into the sky and felt something dreadful and powerful hidden within those swirling currents of darkness. Through the black mist, I could see the barest silhouette of something massive, something whose entire body stretched across the sky- and I saw it was dancing.”
***
After the art show, I had gone home and thought deeply about the words the tortured artist had said. His gray, lifeless eyes kept flashing through my mind. That night, I drank myself into a black-out, until the merciful release of sleep took away the cycle of thoughts that seemed to repeat in my mind like a skipping record.
It was three days later, after I had gotten home from work late, that I saw the news. I remember walking into my house and turning on the flat-screen TV as I poured myself a full glass of whiskey. Within minutes, I had chugged the entire thing. I knew that I drank too much, that I couldn’t stop, and that, eventually, my addiction would probably kill me. I figured that, in the end, I would follow millions of other alcoholics off that dark cliff of fatal addiction into eternity.
“BREAKING NEWS” suddenly flashed across the screen as a TV reporter stood in front of an expensive apartment building under a dark, cloudless sky. It was a ritzy, expensive part of town near the art gallery. Police cars filled the street behind her as she smoothed a long lock of hair behind her ear. She blinked fast at the camera, seeming to finally realize she was live.
“I’m here with Channel Five News in front of the Angel Trace Apartment building where police are investigating multiple bodies found inside one of the residences. We have heard reports from police that the body of the locally renowned artist HG Bittaker was also recovered at the crime scene. Police refuse to say what connection, if any, Mr. Bittaker may have had with…” I rose from my chair, frantically shutting off the TV. The strange conversation I had with the artist a few days ago flashed through my mind over and over. But now, the conversation seemed more sinister.
Later that night, I went over to the computer and started doing some research. On various internet forums, I found strange things floating around. Those investigating the case said the victims were found chained inside HG Bittaker’s apartment and that the police believed he had died from suicide. A lot of this was still speculation and rumor.
While much of it was unconfirmed at first, within a couple days, it would all be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
As I would find out over time, the bodies of eight women were laid around HG Bittaker in a shape like a lotus petal. They showed signs of extensive, prolonged torture before their inevitable deaths from strangulation. Like the painting I had seen in the gallery, these victims had their eyes cut out from their sockets. They had their arms and legs burned or doused in some corrosive acid, and strange occult symbols had been carved into the chests and stomachs of their naked, mutilated bodies. They had suffered greatly before the merciful release of oblivion.
In the center of the circle of death, the police had found the body of HG Bittaker himself. He had burned himself alive while sitting in the full-lotus position. The neighbors had noticed the choking clouds of black smoke that reeked of searing meat and gasoline. They kicked the door down only to find a den of horrors waiting beyond.
HG Bittaker had still been alive at that point, they said, and he had shown no signs of pain at all as he sat there, burning. Fat sizzled off his body in drops as his skin blackened and cooked. The neighbors extinguished the fire before it could spread, but by then, HG Bittaker was dead.
Apparently, HG Bittaker had his own personal library with countless leather-bound tomes on the occult and practices of human sacrifice. Books about the Thuggees and ancient devotional practices to both Kali and Shiva were also found scattered all over the apartment.
After hearing this, I did some research about the Thuggees, a group of cultists in India who were estimated to have murdered up to two million people and where the word “thug” came from. They were cultists who would waylay travelers on the road, strangling them or breaking their necks with special nooses or silk handkerchiefs.
The Thuggees were devoted followers of the goddess of death and destruction, Kali. They believed they were saving the world by murdering innocent travelers in cold blood, for they offered these victims to the goddess Kali. They hoped their sacrifices would keep Kali satiated, so that she would not descend and destroy the entire world in a dancing inferno of death and destruction.
As I sat in front of the computer with a glass of scotch in my hand, my head started to feel like it was spinning from all the strangeness of the case. It seemed like I had many breadcrumbs here that must connect in some way, but for the life of me, I could not figure out how. Before the night was over, however, I would understand everything.
I glanced behind me at the painting I had bought from HG Bittaker after the artshow, the one showing the emaciated death camp victim dancing the cosmic Tandava. The eyeless sockets of that pale face seemed to stare directly into my soul. I shuddered, turning away and back to my empty glass.
***
I ended up refilling my glass to the brim with some expensive scotch while I did my research. I leaned back in the computer chair with a long sigh before sipping the burning liquid that loosened the knots of anxiety and dread in my heart. As I sat alone in that dark room, only the glare of the monitor sent the skittering shadows away. Behind me, the painting continuously stared at me from the wall, grinning like a skull.
I must have passed out at some point. The anesthetizing fog of the alcohol descended slowly over my mind. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I certainly remember waking up.
The room was totally dark now, the monitor having shut off. I blinked slowly, my head feeling hazy. The room seemed to spin around me. I couldn’t see the spinning, but I could feel it thrumming through my whole body. My stomach was churning. My throat felt dry, as if I had been sipping hydrochloric acid. But why had I woken up suddenly? I didn’t know. I felt confused, and everything seemed slow. I was still drunk, I knew, though some of the fog seemed to have cleared as I slept.
I heard a floorboard groan behind me. There was a sudden ragged inhalation of breath, a slow, pained gurgling, as if someone were choking on their own blood. The diseased inhalation and exhalation rang out through the silence. I heard a skittering of light footsteps and the slamming of a door.
I fumbled in my pocket for my cigarette lighter, pulling it out and flicking it. I stumbled out of the chair, holding the small, flickering light in front of me like a shield. It barely drove the shadows back. They seemed to press in all around me like the spikes of an iron maiden.
I got to the light and tried flicking it, but the power had gone off for some reason. Sweating and nervous, I stopped and listened. I heard the stairs creak. Off in the distance, that gurgling breathing continued. I swore under my breath. It must be a robber, I thought. Someone probably broke in while I passed out and cut the circuit breaker. I looked around the room for a weapon, when I noticed something truly bizarre.
My lighter flicked over the painting I kept hanging on the wall, the one called, “The Damned Spirits Dance the Tandava”. It looked different, and I immediately realized why.
The skulls piled on the black earth at the bottom of the painting still gleamed in the dim glare of the lighter’s flame, but the dancing, eyeless man in the painting had disappeared. The stars glimmered in the endless void in the background with their cold white light.
It had to be a joke, I thought to myself. But why would someone go to this length? I lived alone and had few friends. Certainly no one would break in and swap a painting as some kind of prank. I spotted a metal letter opener over on the desk. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had up here. I grabbed it and left the room, heading downstairs. I no longer heard any movement or breathing down there, but I felt some sort of presence, as if the shadows themselves had eyes that were watching me.
***
I felt as if I were in some sort of nightmare as I descended the stairs. The wood groaned softly under my weight. My heart pounded as I moved forward. As I reached the bottom step, that diseased gurgling rang out nearby. I spun, seeing the naked, emaciated body with the four arms standing at the window in the dark kitchen, staring blindly out into the world with his black sockets of eyes. The strange man turned to face me. His face split into a grin, revealing the brown, rotted teeth hidden beneath and the maggots squirming in his putrefying tongue and gums.
“What do you want?” I whispered, terrified. “Who are you?” The grin seemed to widen further, the decaying flesh splitting along the seams of his lips. Dark, clotted blood dripped down from the torn flaps of skin on his cheeks.
“Do you not recognize me, John?” the thing spoke in a voice that writhed with sickness and death. But, at the same time, I recognized it. It was the voice of HG Bittaker, the dead artist and serial killer. “I mixed my own blood and the blood of those holy ones who gave their lives to me with the paintings. Even strands of their hair are in there, dried between the layers of paint. Strands of their hair- and mine. Our essences have mixed, the killer and killed, the strong and weak, the perpetrator and the victim, and the deathless self shines through all of it. Now I have gone beyond death.”
The pale man stepped towards me, his mutilated legs cracking as the stiff limbs twisted and jerked, as if fighting the effects of rigor mortis.
“I’m dreaming,” I said, backpedaling away as he advanced on me. “This can’t be real. You’re dead! You burned yourself alive! It was all over the news, goddamn it!” With inhuman speed, the mutilated man oozed towards me, grabbing me by the head with his cold, dead hands. The skin felt loose, almost falling off the bone, and the smell of rot and putrefaction emanated from the body in thick clouds.
“I have made a friend of death,” he hissed through his blackened teeth as maggots dripped from his blue lips. “You, too, will find peace in death.” He lunged forward suddenly. I felt his sharp splinters of broken teeth sink into my neck. A scream ripped its way out of my throat as I thrashed and kicked. Through the haze of pain, I abruptly remembered the letter opener in my hand.
I brought it up into the body of the naked, rotting corpse, slicing deeply across his stomach. The thin skin burst open with a waterfall of clotted blood running out like sludge. The brown intestines of the corpse inside spilled out, writhing with hundreds of larvae like pale worms that feasted on the dead flesh.
The pale man gave a hissing scream. Black blood burst from his mouth, covering my face in its sickly spatters. My hands grew slick as my blood mixed with the fetid fluids dripping from the animated corpse. He pulled away with a banshee wail. I collapsed to the floor, holding my spurting neck with both hands as I slowly crawled away.
I heard a window shatter behind me. Looking back, I saw the kitchen empty. The pale man had apparently jumped through the front window, leaving pieces of his decaying flesh hanging from the jagged shards of glass.
With the last of my strength, I slowly made my way toward the front door. Feeling weak and sick, stumbling as blood poured from my neck, I made my way to the neighbor’s house. I pounded on their door, collapsing on the mat as they opened it.
***
When I got home from the hospital, I went upstairs to look at the painting. A deep sense of curiosity mixed with an overwhelming dread as I opened the door.
I saw the pile of skulls, the stars like fragments of opal, but the pale victim at the center of the painting was gone forever.