Authors: Borne Wilder
The Reaper seemed to not fully understand, nor care about
Nolte’s predicament, the thing continued in its role of the diabolical stone
mason, steadily pushing on the back of his head, guiding him. Couldn’t the
shadow tell he wasn’t ready for this? “Please, I don’t belong here!” Nolte
tried to inject heartfelt pleas into his screams of horror and protest. The
shadow only worked harder at getting Nolte deeper into the slobbering, snapping
mass.
In between the tightly stacked faces, a hissing fissure of
light blinked and then formed. The hissing quickly grew into tormented screams,
as the fissure widened. Nolte breached the last layer of faces and was suddenly
drowned in a horrible cacophony of sound, yellow light and unimaginable stench.
It was at this moment Nolte realized, he had never really experienced fear
before. His screaming was now in the company of the screams of others, millions
of millions of others.
An enormous cathedral constructed entirely of anguished
faces, all snapping, sucking and screaming at each other, stretched out for as
far as he could see. No discernable language could be heard, just the screaming
of millions of mouths in an unholy chorus of pain and sorrow.
The great cathedral mimicked the architecture Nolte imagined
the Vatican would have. The ceilings were made of gawping heads, supported by
tall columns of chomping heads, which arched into the ceiling in four
directions, disappearing into beams of drooling heads. The windowless walls
were slobbering heads, dotted with other shadows and stink clouds working
diligently at fitting new arrivals into place. All motion once again ceased, a
wave of horror crashed around Nolte’s brain, as the misdeeds of some foul soul
were shared with all. Another bell tolled, without the heads to muffle it, this
time, it was deafening. The cathedral shook as all the heads roared again in
unison.
The length of time it had taken to assemble such a
multitude, truly horrified him. Some of these heads must have been here since
the beginning of time. Where was death? He didn’t think he would last five
minutes in this shit hole, let alone eons. Nolte found himself praying to God
for the first time. “Please let me have death.”
He could feel the reaper twisting his head as it tried to
create a niche for him in the wall; pressing and tapping, much like a
hammer-lazy mason might try to force a misshapen stone into place. One of the
faces next to him bit down hard on his chin. The shadow brushed the biter away
and pushed Nolte into position in the wall.
Nolte felt his bodiless head begin to shake and seize
against the reaper’s manipulations. A strange, dislocated nausea overcame him.
He was being pushed back out of the wall, repelled like the polar opposites of
magnets. The more the reaper pushed, the more severe the seizure became,
shaking and pushing his head out of place. The reaper replaced the chin biter
and repositioned the faces on either side of Nolte’s head so that they could
bite his ears, and hold him. His head began to rapidly pulse and seize again,
one of his ears began to tear. The wall didn’t want him.
The darkness was so complete, during the trip in through the
dark chasm, that even the shadow hadn’t noticed the long thin, silver thread
stretching out behind them. Even when it had become taut and began to pull at
Nolte, the demon hadn’t noticed, even though the silver thread held the sheen
of the most polished mirror. In a perfectly balanced chaos, there is no light,
therefore, no reflection. Add to that, the fact that demons are not trained to
be aware of thread issues, and the oversight becomes understandable.
Although the demon had made
this
particular trip hundreds of thousands of times before, this was the first time
it had encountered a soul that required so much effort to push through the rift
that separated the higher dimensions
There was always a struggle, but it usually came from regret
within the soul itself, as it fought and begged for another chance at it all. A
battle that was usually easily crushed, once the point where time could no
longer be measured was breached. The gravity of their situation and the
vastness of space, void of measurable existence, usually rendered them confused
and as passive as a stone.
Most of the time the souls became puzzled and paralyzed with
fear, as soon as the absence of time sunk in, though it sometimes appeared to
them as an impenetrable darkness, it was overwhelming, nevertheless. The idea
that eternity is now and now was going to last forever confused them, humans
are not meant to think in such a manner. The shock and abject horror the souls
went through pleased the demon, it thoroughly enjoyed its work.
By all accounts, this soul had been unremarkable, though it
had screamed and cried enough for two souls, there was nothing that made it
stand out in any way, but the fact that the wall appeared to be refusing this
one, was confusing in and of itself. Normally, even the slightest void in the
wall, once found, would suck the soul into place and hold it fast, but this one
was actually being rejected.
The demon felt its grip on Nolte slip, and realized too
late, it wasn’t the barrier rejecting the soul, but that the soul was being
pulled back toward the dimension of time. Since this was not a prearranged
warning trip, designed for ‘important’ or ‘key’ souls to get their lives back
on track, the demon was unprepared for the sudden jerk on the soul. Few were
sent this far in before they were reunited with their bodies and never without
prior approval, so the demon was caught unawares. Suddenly the soul was ripped
away from the grasp of the puzzled demon and lost to the darkness.
Even with the limited understanding afforded minions at its
level, the demon knew something dreadful had just happened. Finding it again
was not going to be easy, and truth be told, the incentive plan in Hell, left a
lot to be desired.
***
T
he floating head sensation was gone, so
was the sensation of motion, and even though it was too dark to see, Nolte
seemed to be in a body of some sort. The crushing atmosphere was also gone, but
screams still echoed in his head. If he hadn’t seen it for himself, he would
never have conceived that a place so bleak and completely bereft of hope
actually existed.
Later, he would learn the place he had just left was nothing
more than a waiting room, a place to reflect on one’s past and access the true
meaning of a life wasted, while awaiting Judgement Day. Had he stuck it out, he
would have been presented with an opportunity for redemption, but in his
present state, as he recovered from levels of fear he could have never before
imagined, he assumed he just cheated Hell. He couldn’t envision a worse fate,
but in short order, as the human mind is wont to do, selective memory would
smooth out the edges of what had happened. Time would tame the horror, diminish
the reality of it and resize it so it could be compartmentalized and tucked
neatly away. A decade or so down the road, it will be ready to be taken out and
re-examined over a few beers. A ‘someday we’ll laugh about this moment.’
Human memory is inclined to filter out the worst of our
experiences so that we might function from a relatively clean perception of
what is and what isn’t. It’s what keeps us from playing with fecal matter in
rubber rooms. The truth is not the right size for us to comprehend; it is too
large, and too small, and too scary. The truth is what turned Moses’ hair white
on Mount Sinai.
On several occasions, Nolte had told everyone, everyone
being barflies and dredgers too drunk to move out of earshot, that he would
tell the devil to suck his dick if opportunity ever presented itself, that is
to say, if the two ever came face to face, but he no longer kept to that
opinion, nor did he wish to engage Satan in conversation, nor did he feel the
need to issue such a challenge. Let bygones be bygones, was Nolte’s new motto.
The tormented screams from the millions of heads had filled him with a level of
fear that would make any fire and brimstone preacher shudder and cringe in a
puddle of urine.
The sounds of his own screams were beyond embarrassment,
though he figured, with a little creative thinking, he could blame most of the
girly sounding ones on the little coward in his head.
The shame and regret he was feeling, Nolte knew would pass,
he had learned to bury those sentiments long ago. If it were possible to look
in one of Nolte’s ears and see the landscape of his mind, it would look like
the backyard of someone who had buried ten thousand dollars in a Mason jar, but
couldn’t remember where. Nolte had holes dug all over the backyard of his mind.
Even though Nolte’s ability to justify even the most disgusting misbehavior was
unrivaled in the realm of Pervdom, he still dug holes.
The mental image of the head cathedral would probably soften
over time, along with the memory of the stench, though smells usually took
longer, but the sensation of being mentally violated and truly exposed was
going to stay with him for some time to come. Nolte had never before realized
how profoundly he cherished his secrets.
Although knowing that what he had witnessed was real and
eternal terrified him, it was the realization, that he had been the one to put
himself in that position, that really cut him to the bone. What had really
driven the experience home for him, was the hopelessness he heard in the
screams. The desperation and despair he had witnessed was overwhelming. What
could be at the root of such sorrow? Was it the lack of time, the collective
horror sharing? Regret? The questions prodded his curiosity, but not enough to
go back and find out. He found himself, for the first time, wishing he could
have a do-over on his life.
For the last twenty years, he’d been worried whether or not the
witch had cheated him, in spite the things he’d seen her do. The honesty of
witches was beyond Nolte’s scope, he was inexperienced as far as witches were
concerned, only having dealt with the one. He had hoped to hell that he was
wrong, but the total impossibility of it all had constantly haunted him. He’d
had a hard time convincing himself an antique coin could keep him from the
clutches of Satan.
Another thing that bothered him, ate at him really, was that
the witch had seemed so damned sure he would be going to hell. He had thought
it awful presumptuous of her to make such a snap judgment, considering she knew
nothing of Nolte’s past. Of course, she knew he had made her acquaintance by
way of a fifty-dollar hooker, but for all she knew, Nolte might have been a
good Samaritan, set about correcting the path of a poor misguided Jezebel,
instead of purchasing one of the more pleasurable blow jobs he could recall in
years. For all she knew, he might have been an honorable man, in fact, as far
as he was concerned, he was an honorable man, at least he considered himself to
be better than most. When it was all said and done, there were worse people out
there, and of that, he was sure as shit. She didn’t know him, but her
prediction had been spot on, as it turned out.
Over the course of those twenty years, many times, Nolte had
thought of giving himself over to God. It had even been suggested by others,
whom, he thought, might do well to mind their own fucking business, yet, whose
testimonies, sometimes appeared to offer a viable alternative to the nest egg
plan, but the thought of getting all squishy sickened him.
Nolte couldn’t wrap his head around the concept of
forgiveness, besides, even if he was forgiven for all the nasty, depraved shit
he had done in his life, he figured he would probably still have to scrub
toilets and replace urinal mints in Heaven. What a fucking eternity of bliss
that would be. However, in the light of recent events, his idea of Hell paled
in comparison to the reality of it. Scrubbing
toilets
no longer seemed that bad. Anyway, what’s done is done; they could all kiss his
ass because neither place was going to get him.
On the third day, he is risen. That’s what the witch had
told him. Some unwritten rule from Heaven or Hell required him to sit it out,
for three days, in the void. It was exactly this type of religious bullshit
that had encouraged his decision to stay away from God.
There were, in Nolte’s opinion, too many rules and
regulations surrounding the surrendering of one’s soul. Eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth, that stuff kind of blended with his way of thinking, but the
other stuff, thou shalt not kill, do unto others and the love thy neighbor
shit, was simply unrealistic. Nolte wanted to kill most of his neighbors, and do
unto others conflicted with his, serves them right, rule of thumb. It all
looked good on paper, but try to love thy neighbor after thy neighbor’s dog has
gotten into your trash cans. Try not to kill the sonofabitch, when he refuses
to clean up the mess his dog made, it just wasn’t a sensible way to for a
society to conduct itself. The way Nolte’s saw it, religious rules should apply
to real life situations because someone had to pick up the trash.
The plan seemed to be back on track, at least the shadow was
gone, but the witch had never mentioned the shadow in the first place, she had
only said he would spend three days in another realm until the preacher prayed
over his grave. Nolte had been under the impression that he would be
unconscious for that period. He could use three days of sleep, the shadow, with
his rattling sand and stink, had kept him awake for almost that long, but all
things considered, Nolte had serious doubts if he would ever be able to sleep
again, at least not without large quantities of alcohol to soften the memory of
the dripping, screaming heads.
Now he had to wait
for some hypocritical man of the cloth to pray over his grave. What a crock of
shit thought Nolte. What fucking good would prayer do him? The whole point of this
undertaking had been to separate him from the stipulations of religion, and the
oppressive demands of the tyrant God. Perhaps it was like a break-up fuck, one
last prayer for the road.