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Looking around at the sleeping Hellscape I can feel a sense of anxiety well up inside of me. Beneath the surface of this landscape are so many possibilities, and I have no desire to discover a single one of them. I just want out.. Whereas in moments of weakness before, I prayed before the feeling overcame me, now fear is beginning to compete with my will to save my mother’s soul.
“Father, please guide me. Even in this darkness I can still feel you in all things, and know you are with me. Fear, doubt, and pain always tend to make people forget that fact. That you never leave their side. Their perspective just prevents them from seeing you within the situation. They put you out of the frame and choose to feel alone. I know I am not alone, whether it be by your presence, or through the guidance you have sent into my life. Please help give me the strength to move past all that tries to get me to abandon my path. Amen.”
As I say these words, I can’t help but think back to psalm twenty-three, verses one through six. I haven't read psalms for some time, and at first the words elude me, but then they come into focus - at least in focus from my own phrasing of the Bible.
The Lord is my Shepherd, and I shall not want for he makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me besides still waters as he restores my soul. He leads me down paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil for you are with me. Your rod and your staff comforts me for you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, and my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
All these years reading from the Bible to my congregation, my flock, and I can only remember it in my own wording. Maybe I use it like a crutch instead of fully making the words part of me. While that may be true, it’s still a crutch given to me by God. Taking in a deep breath, I prepare myself for the next task ahead of me. Never has a world of possibilities ever been so frightening to me. Normally when I feel the world is full of possibilities, I feel rather optimistic, but here it instead conjures a deep feeling of hopelessness.
I reach into the bag of marbles, feeling their warmth around my knuckles as my fingers sift through them, dancing with the choice that beckons my near future. Grasping one of the marbles in my hand, I withdraw it from the bag, keeping it tight in my grip. I think of what Bob had said about throwing it harder this time if I want the shift to happen faster. I prepare myself to do just that, but then memories of my son come flooding in, filling my mind.
When he was four, I gave him his first box of snappers for the fourth of July. Not knowing what to do with the snappers, he almost put one in his mouth, but thank goodness God granted me such excellent dad reflexes. After preventing a near disaster, I showed him how to use them; when he saw me throw one at the ground and the little snapper popped, his eyes grew wide, like I’d just performed a miracle. Handing him another one, he got so excited that he jumped up in the air and threw it as he came down like it added to the effect.
Thinking of my son, I hold the marble tight, jump up in the air and throw it to the ground as hard as I can. The marble bounces straight up, bursts in the air, spewing yellow fire in all directions. In seconds the hellscape is burned away as the yellow fire blazes a new scene with flame. Once the flame clears and the last bit of smoke fades away, I find myself in what appears to be a large museum.
The museum looks like a Victorian opera house had a baby with an emporium of darkness from a nightmarish carnival. The walls, ceiling, and floor were carved of fine marble and adorned with untarnished gold and silver. Some of the paintings on the walls are parodies of bible stories, for they all depicted evil triumphing over good. For more of a macabre effect, every other painting is of a happy clown playing with its pet. Why someone would collect such paintings makes no sense but who am I to judge? even here...
In the middle of the large hallways stand two rows of single glass case exhibits. I step a little closer to see what’s inside them, keeping a safe distance. They look foggy on the inside, kind of like a mirror right after you get out of the shower and forget to turn the fan on. I read the plaque on one case, and it reads ‘imprisoned poltergeist’. It appears to only be full of smoke just floating around aimlessly, so I look closer. My face inches away from the glass can feel cold air coming off the case like it’s an icebox. My breath frosts over the glass as the moisture builds up from my breathing. I go to move on to another glass case but not before I hear childrens’ laughter come from the case. I stare at the case once again. Something begins to write in the frost on the case even though it is on the outside. The sound of children laughing grew louder as the words “I will end you” appear on the glass. I cross my chest and utter to myself, “fear no evil...”, going to wipe away the condensation from my breath. Stepping back, I notice I have smeared the glass case heavily, so I step back towards the case to wipe the smeared glass to clear it. Before I even touch the glass, the face of a woman appears in the smoke, enraged.
“Don’t touch my glass, sinner,” shouts the face in the smoke.
I jump back startled, almost tripping on the stiff red carpet that flows down the center of the hallway.
“They never understand, they never understand,” sobs the voice from inside the box.
Looking beneath the name plaque I read a brief story of the exhibit. “Here lies the tormented soul of Tabatha. A religious fanatic who killed her own children to save them from the influence of the devil. Torment twisted her soul into a poltergeist after her suicide, but Father Owens casted her out into the depths of Hell where I found her for my collection. Isn’t God grand? For even the damned receive gifts from God once in a while.”
Reading such vile words eats at my soul. I swear I can feel the presence of this nightmare’s evil designer as if it were right behind me. After taking a few minutes to shrug off my feelings, I move on. The hallways are endless, but it appears that this place has no rooms for I never saw any doors, just endless hallways, and walls decorated with bizarre paintings. I roam the halls for hours, never seeing the same painting or glass case twice.
Boredom sets in. As I’m walking, I notice a severed hand in one of the glass cases with a shackle screwed into its wrist. I lean down to get a closer look at the descriptive plaque; it read ‘The hand of a professional antagonist’. Now upright, the hand is flipping me the bird while running around its glass cage. That’s quite a talent for a dismembered hand. Beneath the plaque, the exhibit information reads, ‘You know it's funny... well at least while it's caged’. Unsure whether I should laugh or fear the idea of such a hand escaping, I move away and continue walking down the never-ending hallway.
My legs grow heavy – I can feel the call of sleep weighing me down like a crumbling building, rushing to find its final resting place. My eyes struggle to stay open, but each time I try to fight it, all I see is yet another eyeful of the horrific displays around me. It's an odd and unnerving sensation to fear falling asleep because half of the things around you might want to kill you, but being so tired that not even fear can keep me awake. Thank the good lord that I'm facing agents of sin and not a Christmas sweater wearing dream demon.
My heart struggles to stay calm while sleep beckons me to deep slumber. The feeling is unnatural, but nothing about this place is. Why would a soul need to sleep anyway? Unable to fight the pull towards unconsciousness any longer, I lay down against the wall under a bizarre painting of a clown tossing a fish to a seal. I didn’t fear sleeping beneath it, but I did fear what I may see upon waking. Soon enough I am drifting off into the silence of the abandoned hallway.
In my sleep, I dream of nothing. It's funny how we can sleep and only remember the darkness, yet we don’t fear the darkness void of thought, feeling, or memory. If the human soul can find peace in such a place, maybe it's because God is within such silence. Drifting in this peace,I hear a familiar voice.
“David, resist,” my mother’s voice echoes in my mind.
I’m jerk awake, up and away from the floor in an instant, a string of drool trailing from the corner of my mouth, until gravity snatches it from my lip. I wipe my face, look around, and listen intently for the voice of my mother. Straight ahead of me, at the end of the hallway, are a set of large wooden doors that were not there when I fell asleep. They’re massive, towering maybe three stories high. They radiate an ominous energy, but I have no choice, I must face them.
One foot in front of the other, inching towards the doors, I remember my mentor from my days as a young preacher. He would say that facing fear is simply gaining knowledge, for fear is just a lack of understanding that which seems abnormal. Hell, it’s been years since I last thought of Gary. He used to ask me, ‘how are things young man?’. No matter how old I was, I was always a young man in Gary’s eyes. “But now is not the time to get lost in thought,” I mutter to myself, “so get your ass moving David.”
I approach the doors, finding there are stairs leading up to them which I couldn’t see before. A naturally dark wood with a slight rosy tint to them, the doors appear hand carved, the carvings depicting two opposing armies marching to war. On the left door is an army of demons crawling their way out of a gaping pit, taking flight and scurrying across the land. The right door portrays angels descending as the heavens open and mortal men rush to their aid in the battle. Each door is adorned with a brass loop for a handle, the left held in the mouth of a brass hellhound, and the right by a brass hand wearing a gauntlet. The doors inspire and terrify me at the same time. I’m tempted to enter through the right side, the one with the angels on it, but it doesn’t seem right somehow. But I also didn’t want to enter through the left side with the demons on it because I feel like it’s giving my consent for something bad to take place, so instead I push them both open at the same time.
The doors slowly swing open, resisting the movement due to their weight. They open into a room well-lit with soft blue light . A large desk of the same wood as the doors sits at the end of the room. Behind the desk sits a man that I can’t see clearly without stepping further away from the doors, and further into this mysterious room. But I want to stay near them just in case I have to run.
“Come on in David, it's about time you found your way here. Oh, and don’t mind the doors, they close themselves,” comments a stranger behind the desk.
The doors slowly shut, their weight easily carrying them back to their original positions. Cautiously, I step closer towards the desk, noticing that there are three huge exhibits behind the man. Even closer now, I can clearly see the man’s features. He looks like how you might imagine the boss of some smutty magazine; fat, his belly pushing against the suspenders holding up his black pinstripe slacks. His shirt struggles to cover his biceps, for even though he’s fat, his arms are quite muscular. His face is round, slightly hidden behind a large bushy mustache that helps to draw attention away from the two small horns on his forehead.
“Don’t be shy David, step closer and have a seat, will ya?” A chair comes up through the floor like water moving through dirt, looking for the lowest point to rest, as he speaks.
The wooden chair is large, with red, overstuffed leather cushions. It’s warm and comforting to the touch, or maybe it feels that way because I’ve just slept on a hard cold floor for who knows how long. I sit down, the three exhibits towering over me.
“Oh, I see you noticed the boys. The one on the left is a bone golem, it's an old forgotten art that ancient demons used to construct physical vessels to send up to earth to cause panic... but humans have become very efficient at destruction. The one on the right is a flesh golem. It's like a giant zombie but has six arms and doesn’t eat brains, it captures souls when activated. Oh, and for my favorite,” he says with a wicked gleam in his eye, “the one in the one in the middle, the tormented golem. A soul-peddling agent of greed was looking for a quick way to gain power because other demons just kept beating him, so he changed the rules of the game. He took all the souls in his possession and twisted them into a golem to do his dirty work. They all have their own unique abilities, but they all do one thing very effectively, and that's hunt souls for their master.”
“What do you want from me? I know I'm here to face my sins, and I will guess that you’re Greed, but the question that’s burning the brightest in my mind right now is what do you possibly want?”
“I like that David, straight to the point - no games. The answer is simple. You’re one of the few that Death has truly taken his time to talk to, even showing you around our lovely establishment a bit. That means there is something special about you David, and to hell if I know what it is, but I know Death wants you and that will make an amazing exhibit. Imagine it now, you in a glass case, trapped, never being able to die yet feeling all the pain of starvation. And on your plaque it will read, ‘David Blackthorn, the one Death wanted but couldn’t have.’ That sounds classy to me,” Greed says, laughing at the mask of fear plastered on my face.
I jump out of my seat, running for the door, panicked at the thought of what he’s capable of. I stumble over the corner of a large red carpet decorating the center of the room. I pick myself up, thinking to myself, “God help me out of this and there is a lot of work I'll owe you,” but the truth is I would have done the work anyway. When you're in a bind for time because your soul is at stake, you don’t always think straight.
“Ooh, David don’t be like that. Here I’ll promise that you will not feel a thing in the glass cage, not even the pain of hunger. I'll just remove your stomach and find some way to make it into a display as well. While I'm at it, I'll remove your heart so you don’t feel anything while you stand in that cage like a zombie. Now don’t make me ask twice!”
As Greed rants about his kind offers, I manage to make it to the doors. I give them a hard push in the center and they slowly creak open. I silently thank God and haul ass down the hallway as soon as the gap is wide enough for me to fit between the doors.
It feels like I’ve ran a mile before I dare to turn and look back at the doors. Nothing happened. “Is that it?”, I thought to myself, “do I just have to find the exit and get out of here?”. At this point I’m feeling pretty bewildered. In the distance, the doors slowly open, and Greed walks out into the light of the hallway.
“I like your spirit, kid, but forgive me for doing this to you. And when I say forgive what I really mean is stop running so we can get this over with.” The frustration in Greed’s voice has grown, clearly exacerbated by my unwillingness to be gutted and displayed in such a foul manner.
From the shadows of his office, three massive figures step beyond the doors and into the hallway. The light reveals them, like an unwanted memory suppressed for my own sanity, for they are the golems which Greed spoke of. The hulking monstrosities begin to run, loud thuds echoing through the hallways from their movements. It’s times like these where many people sit and stare like they’re watching someone nude walk down the street, which I can’t understand because my feet are moving before my brain fully registers that those things want to kill me.