This steaming mountain of defecation is a snippet of the third and final installment of my Death story. It is the ending, so I don't want people bitching about how it doesn't make sense.
If you actually care, you can e-mail me for the piece in it's entirety.
When I woke up, I was seated in a chair, in a pitch-black chamber. I could hear a cackling emanating from the encircling darkness, but could not pinpoint it precisely.
“So, traveler, what crimes have merited a punishment so harsh as to be chained in the deepest circle of Hell, with Lucifer himself as a cellmate?”
I caught glimpses of a moving being in the shadows, and I knew that the being speaking was the same creature I met on the Plains: Satan.
“I guess that you weren’t as important as we thought, eh?” Satan stepped forward, a thin layer of darkness separating his face from mine. It felt like the worst nightmare imaginable: lights flickered on and off, befuddling my senses, ghouls and demons pranced in hatred, and I had no perceivable way of escaping.
“I think I’ll start off torturing your family first. What’ll it be? Mom, pop, or maybe the little lady first?” Satan squirmed with delight at the prospect.
“Fuck you, degenerate. Too big to do what your betters tell you to?” The voice was mine, but the words belonged to a being not present in the room. “You are no better than the worms you share your palace with.”
“What do you know about following orders, Fortinbras? Your life was perfect from the beginning. We did all the work, while you gained the recognition.”
Death was transplanting words into my mouth; he was going to save me too, hopefully. “If it had been up to me, you would be crushed to sliming pulp now, buried inside these mountains.”
Satan laughed, and replied, “Well friend, it’s a good thing that it was not up to you. We’ll see how your meat puppet here enjoys eternity with me, in my house.” Satan finally walked into view, and he looked just as scorched as before.
“Unfortunately,” Death added, before Satan could lay hands on my body, “you cannot have him this time either.” I felt my body implode upon itself, and I exited Satan’s chamber.
Stone. Hot alabaster, granite, and marble – the makings of a forest of ancient statues. Funny, all that prospective beauty manifesting itself in a place like that. Standing alone, enclosed by fours walls raised from the very living rock below, I thought. That was all I could do really, as I was too afraid to breathe a syllable for the evil that slumped, brooding a short distance away.
Standing in the center of my stone prison, I guessed that it measured about nine feet by nine feet, though I’d never been good at measuring things. That was no understatement; if I had measured my happiness, I wouldn’t be here in the first place. Creeping toward one wall, I winced from the pain of my teeth biting into my lower lip. Standing before the wall, waiting for the blood to gush into my mouth from the wound to my mouth, I scoured for a door or a window or even a crack, some contact with the outside world, no matter how grotesque it may have been.
Running my hand along the rock, searching for a seam, I recoiled back like a snake bitten by a deadlier snake. The walls, while solid stone, were hot as molten rock. The acid smell of seared flesh traveled from my throbbing hand, and I turned my palm upward, expecting to find a mess of melted, bleeding, pussing flesh.
My hand, however, was unscathed, and even quite cool.
“A body impervious to damage, that still feels pain,” I thought aloud, “the perfect torture for an eternity.”
“Eternity?” A rich, familiar voice startled me from behind. “Hopefully it won’t take you that long, Mr. Mitchell.” Death. Though he hadn’t come to rescue me from this pit, his soft, warm face made my immortal eyes burn.
I longed to embrace my dark savior, but my human pride still stung the back of my neck.
“How long do I have to stay in Hell?”
“After all of our time together, and you still have not figured it out yet?” Death pointed to a spot along the wall behind me. “Sit.”
“Sit where?” I asked turning to look at the empty space that Death pointed toward. The space however, was no longer empty, as a marble desk and stool now occupied the cell with me. As I seated myself, Death leaned against the far wall; surprisingly, though, his black tunic and cloak did not catch fire.
“Ethereal garments, like their wearers, are quite indestructible, Mr. Mitchell. Now, to the business at hand: you are not in Hell. You are in Purgatory.” Death lifted his arm and drew an imaginary square on the wall of the cell. I watched with fear as the section of wall inside of the square disappeared, revealing the object of men’s fears and nightmares since the dawning of time.
A city, spewed in fire and darkness, sat grinding the bones of a million men, dead for centuries.
“Behold, Hell in all its wretchedness.” Death placed a hand on my shoulder, and I felt the pain brewing under the eaves and crags of the subterranean torture dens where old friends met their fates at the bloodthirsty hands of demons.
Reeling backward, I fell atop the desk and cowered like a child. “Shut it, please!” I begged, and Death waved his hand over the open window, sealing the fear outside.
“You are safe inside,” he comforted, “never long to see outside of your cell, for it will be there that you will stay. There will be temptations, as the lord of Hell is called the Deceiver in many lands; however, he holds no lordship over those that do not allow him.”
Shuttering the memories from my mind, I asked, “What do I have to do to escape this pit?”
Death felt the determination in my voice and pointed at the seat in from to f the desk. “Sit down and open the drawer.”
I reached down to my left and poked the marble slab. Not hot. Feeling for a grip on the slab, I pulled until my face turned red, barely moving the drawer enough to see inside. Within the drawer sat a single sheet of parchment paper and a pen.
“Paper? What am I supposed to do with paper?”
“People don’t listen to preachers anymore, you are proof of that yourself. The mass of people that are converted to the Lord’s House are reached through…external sources.” Death paused for a moment.
“What kind of external sources?” I asked.
“Books, movies, television shows; anything that can keep someone’s interest long enough for the message to come across.” Death smiled, and I finally caught onto why he chose to help me.
“So I have to sit down here and write bible school stories for the rest of eternity?” It was better than Hell, but not by a lot.
“Incorrect. You will sit down here and do whatever you want until Christ takes the throne of mankind, then you will be judged by God a second time. The volume and effectiveness of your writing will determine the fate of your soul for the rest of eternity.”
I pulled out the sheet of paper and the pen from the drawer. “How long is that?”
“It wouldn’t be fair to tell you in terms of days, years, or millennia, for that matter, so I will leave you with this.” Death produced an oil lamp taken from the pages of Arabian Nights, and I half-expected an ill-tempered genie to snake his way from the hole. “When the flame from this lamp dies, you are out of time.”
I buried my head in my hands, “I’ve haven’t written anything since I was in school; Death, I can’t do this.”
“Don’t you ever tire of whining?” Death was smiling, and I gave a muted chuckle. “The first step in writing anything is a title.” Death put the pen in my hand and dropped my hand on the faded, curling, white parchment. I watched the shadows from the flame dance on the whitish paper.
What most people would call inspiration, I called desperation as it nagged at a dark corner in my mind. Taking the pen, I jotted a line on the middle of the paper: “‘FROM HELL’ by Bruce Mitchell.” I paused, “Death, this is the only piece of paper in the drawer, what do I do now?”
“Look in the drawer now,” Death said. Another piece of parchment, identical to the first, sat at the bottom of the marble tomb.
“There,” Death started, “I can feel your muse coming on, so this must be goodbye. I know that I will see you again; I just hope that between then and now, you find your happiness.” Death pulled me between the great wings that he called arms, and I loosed a fit of tears into his black shirt.
I looked up at his warm face. “Happiness is just a word to me now. It might have meant something better if I had known the difference. Goodbye, my friend.”
