by Tim Hawken
“Each colored waterfall corresponds to a certain sin,” he whispered. “Seven colors of the rainbow; seven deadly sins. Each barrier creates a space where demons can congregate with those who enjoy the same sin. You are correct that wrath is red. Orange represents gluttony, yellow avarice, green envy, blue lust, indigo sloth and violet pride. The original white waterfall we entered through represents pure virtue, the black waterfall in the center, pure evil.”
I looked back again peering over the crowd, which was indeed split into similar groups by their aquatic barriers. A revelation struck me. There were nine waterfalls, not seven! Nine circles within each other: The nine circles of Hell.
“Correct,” The Perceptionist confirmed and pointed toward the middle of the room.
“So, the entry to the tenth is through the ninth, under the DJ’s feet?” I guessed, looking across to where the black waterfall sat in the center of the club.
The Perceptionist nodded with a slight smile.
“But how are we supposed to get through there?”
Before The Perceptionist could answer, a red light started flashing above the DJ’s head. He looked up and turned the music down. Everyone in the place stopped and looked to the middle of the room.
“Just watch,” The Perceptionist whispered next to me.
Leaning into a microphone in front of him, the DJ boomed.
“One minute. One minute until The Guilt. Enjoy your suffering.”
He then quickly walked over to a chair to the side of his turntables, sat down and pulled a seatbelt over his shoulders to secure him in place. Unbelievably, everyone else in the room did the same. Those who had a chair nearby took it. The rest flopped onto the floor where they were standing and remained silent.
I could feel the beginnings of the guilt start to probe my mind when I heard The Perceptionist’s unmistakable voice inside my head.
“When I get up, follow me. We must run into the center of the room to the black waterfall. I will ensure The Guilt doesn’t consume you. Sit next to the black waterfall and pretend to have the visions. You may keep your eyes open, but make it appear as if you’re staring into space. I will answer your questions afterward.”
Smoke began to billow in through the vents in the room. Everybody in the place started to convulse as the horrid fires burst into the club. The Perceptionist leapt up and nimbly began running toward the center of the room. I pursued him as quickly as possible. He disappeared through the first curtain of colored water. Each waterfall grew hotter and hotter as we passed through. When inside, only the two waterfalls on either side of us were visible. Bursting through the blue curtain I could see hundreds of lust demons thrashing about with guilt. Their engorged genitals were covered in matted black hair, and their skin was infested with weeping sores. I pressed on through the crowd and into the next circle. With solid blue to my back and dark indigo in front, I was assaulted by the smell of rotting flesh. Sloth demons. I could recognize them from my previous journey to Sloth’s lounge. I rushed through the indigo curtain. As I emerged through the final violet waterfall, I almost tripped over a hulking body, which lurched on the ground in fits of despair. Its face was twisted in pain, a mirror clasped in its clawed fist. It was howling and tearing at its own body. Ghastly scars covered the demon’s chest and neck, from what must have been other fits of forced self-loathing. So this was the punishment for the prideful.
“Quickly!” The Perceptionist’s voice entered my mind.
I catapulted myself toward the black waterfall, staying close to him. Pretending to convulse on the ground, I imitated a fit like those of the other demons around us. I could feel the guilt trying to enter my body, but there was resistance. I shifted my perception to the elements. Looking down at my chest I could see a golden hand enclosed over my heart. Black and brown elements tried to hammer inside, but the hand repelled it. I knew this was the elemental hand of The Perceptionist. I could see it was made from molecules of pure rational thought, but couldn’t understand how that was stopping my visions.
“Watch.” The Perceptionist’s internal voice whispered urgently.
I looked up, switching my vision back to normal perception. I was careful not to focus too clearly on one point, but remained looking into the distance. Just to the right of us a pack of figures slowly appeared from behind the violet waterfall. They were all deep red-colored demons of wrath, completely deformed by their sins. One after another came in a line. They marched silently across the floor, unperturbed by The Guilt, which wracked everyone else in the room. Each of the demons held a writhing body bag over their shoulder. They walked forward, through the crowd of bodies on the ground and stepped through the black waterfall to disappear from sight. In total there were twelve demons. As the last one walked past I shifted my perception to see the same golden barrier around his heart as mine. I then closed my eyes to avoid being caught looking, and kept convulsing on the ground.
“Ready. Now!” The Perceptionist whispered after a few moments. I opened my eyes to see him hurtling into the black waterfall. I got up and threw myself inside behind him. I tumbled downward, through scorching heat, falling down and down. As my body twisted in an uncontrolled fall, I struggled to slow myself. The flow of the water swept me along with it. Gradually my momentum eased and I was able to position my body feet down. Finally, I landed softly on my hands and knees on a cold metallic floor. The Perceptionist was right at my side. He held his finger to his lips, indicating silence.
I looked ahead. A slanted corridor ran off into the distance, where I could see the tail of a body bag being dragged around a corner. The Perceptionist quietly stood up. As I rose to stand, I felt a light rush of wind from beneath me. We both lifted slightly off the ground. Looking down, I could see my master had formed a bed of elements to muffle our footsteps. He began to walk silently forward. I followed him, into the Tenth Circle of Hell.
TEN
THE CORRIDOR SPIRALLED DOWNWARD. Rusty metal walls curved away from us on one side and toward us on the other. Gradually, as we walked, the walls altered in their position. As one straightened toward us, the other fell away. It was a disorienting feeling which made me lose the sense of direction in which we were heading. At one point it felt we were circling down clockwise. The next it felt like we were headed counter-clockwise, even though we hadn’t altered the course of the original circular pattern. The tilted arc of the walls seemed to bend matter and time without moving anything right in front of us.
Abruptly, The Perceptionist halted. I almost bumped into the back of him. He turned around and silently reached out with his finger, touching me on the nose. My stomach felt like it was being pulled out of my belly button. I looked down to see my body was turning invisible from the middle out. Looking to The Perceptionist I could see he was doing the same thing to himself. Eventually I could no longer see either of us.
“No noise,” he said telepathically. “We will remain out of sight. The corridor ends around the next bend. We will walk into a room and move to the right, where we can sit on an empty row of seats and watch. Remember to reach out with your sense of feeling. Soak up the emotion and thought in the room.”
Unwilling to answer or move, I simply stood silent where I was. I felt a light pressure on my shoulder willing me onward. Warily, I moved ahead. As we rounded the corner an orange light flooded my vision. My eyes adjusted to reveal what appeared to be a courtroom. There was a huge statue of blind Justice behind the empty judge’s bench. The statue held tipped scales in her left hand and a sword in her right. Either side of her head, sharp flames rose to the ceiling, creating the amber luminance which filled the room. A noise made me look to the left, where the group of demons we had seen earlier assembled in the jurors’ dock. As each of them got inside, they threw their body bag soaring into the center of the room. Each bag landed with a terrible crunch. The sixth bag went scuttling across the floor near my feet. I moved with as much stealth as I could to the empty row of seats as The Perceptionist had instructed. As
I slid along I could feel his presence next to me.
A door opened to the far left of the room and a figure entered.
“All rise for the honorable Judge Minos!” one of the demon jurors bellowed from his stall. I stayed seated.
As the figure moved out of the shadows and into the light of his bench, I could see he was horribly disfigured. His skin was puckered and blistered all over as if it had been seared to his bones. His ears were those of a donkey. A snake protruded at the base of his spine, like a hissing tail with fangs. It wrapped around his waist as he moved to sit down. Picking up his gavel, the Judge banged it down with three resounding smacks.
“I now declare the Court of The Tenth Circle into session. Who are the accused?” he asked, turning to the demon juror closest to him.
The juror stood and turned to Minos. He bowed before puffing out his chest and shouting loudly.
“I have called the Demon Screwtape to judgment. He has committed himself to a life of turning others to evil. For this he must pay.” He sat back down and the demon next to him stood and repeated the same low bow to Minos.
“I have called the Demon Lilith to judgment,” the next juror shouted with spit flying from his mouth. “She is a temptress and lust demon who has found a way to avoid the deformities of her sin. For this she must pay.”
In the same manner, every juror in the line voiced similar charges to their assigned accused. As each revenge demon sat back down, a body bag slid along the floor as if by magic and stood up in a semi-circle in front of the judge. An orange flame sparked below each one, melting the covering to expose a howling figure inside. As each accused screamed, the noise in the room grew to deafening levels. The smell of bubbling flesh raped my nostrils. Although horrified, I refused to look away. As much as the ritual disgusted me, I knew I needed to see this. I channelled my senses toward the burning bodies. Pain and fear entered my head. I could feel what they were feeling only barely, but the intensity was unmistakable.
Judge Minos sat calmly, listening to each of the accusations. He nodded to each of the Jurors as they sat down and then cast his gaze over to the burning victims in the middle of the room. His eyes were dark and unforgiving.
The ceremony came to a head as the twelfth and final accused was stood in front of Minos. Their cries rang about the room, reaching a fever pitch; waves of empathetic terror poured into me from the accused souls. Their shrieks were almost deafening, but above the clamor Minos’ voice rumbled in a fury.
“I can see each of these demons’ guilt,” he boomed. “They are the inmates of Hell and abide here forever. They have lost their souls and their own innovations have caused their doom. The Guilt is not enough for these souls: they deserve pure pain that only we, the Court of The Tenth Circle, can deliver. It is time they tasted the retribution of Hell!”
The jurors roared in the dock, throwing their fists in the air in salute to the statue of Justice, who stood looking over the courtroom with veiled eyes.
Judge Minos hammered his gavel down and the scorching fires increased in their ferocity. The screams of utter dread sounded from the twelve burning demons. Minos stood from his seat and turned to take the Sword of Justice from the statue behind him. He swung its blade through the air. As he did, the stomach of each suffering demon split open. The smell was abominable. Intestines slopped onto the floor. I steeled my stomach. I wanted to stand up and stop it, but felt impotent to do anything but watch. Their throbbing anguish welled even stronger into me. Flames still licked the tortured bodies. Their faces were twisted messes of pain, their eyes rolling orbs of white terror.
With their bowels on the ground before them, all twelve victims unleashed a new cacophony of wails. The sense of pure despair and suffering seeping through my skull almost threw me into unconsciousness. If this was the intensity with which I could feel their plight, I could barely comprehend the immediate and direct misery within their own bodies. The jurors all moved out from their box to kneel before their chosen demon. They bowed in prayer and began to eat the entrails in front of them. The screams of pain grew louder still. Just below the wails I could hear the slurping and chewing of the demons. Each bite sent sympathetic jolts through my body. Finally, Minos swept his sword through the air again. Blood sprayed as twelve throats were cut in harmony. The screams fell to a muffled gurgling. Each juror, having eaten what was before him, moved forward and began to drink the blood from their quarry’s throat. I wanted to retch onto the ground in front of me.
Minos turned around and placed a weight onto the scales behind him. They began ever so slowly to tip to the other side.
“The weight of justice is on our side,” he declared, looking over to the twelve oozing victims on the courtroom floor being devoured by hungry demons. “As this scale turns over the next three days, you will be eaten alive. Once you have been fully ingested, you will then be reborn into a pile of vomit, to resurrect yourself over three more agonizing healing days. On the seventh day you will be taken to the feeding chambers below us, before you are devoured again. You are doomed to be consumed for your sins forever. You will still feel The Guilt of these sins as you are eaten, so you will always be reminded what you have done to deserve the Tenth Circle. This is the real punishment for your actions, eternal pain within eternal consciousness.”
He slammed his gavel down one last time. “I now pronounce this court adjourned,” he announced, turning to step off his podium.
“Stop!” The Perceptionist stirred beside me, his voice filling the room. “This court has only just begun.”
ELEVEN
MINOS STOPPED IN HIS TRACKS as The Perceptionist’s pronouncement rang across the courtroom. He spun around to look up and around the room, still unable to see us.
“Who would dare interrupt the Court of the Tenth Circle?” Minos demanded, his voice shaking slightly. I could sense a very tiny amount of fear.
“It is your master, the true Satan, Michael and his servant,” The Perceptionist said.
I felt a chill wash over me and knew that our invisibility had been lifted. I looked to my side, to see The Perceptionist in his true form. Each eye in his body blazed with a fury I had not ever seen. A thousand fuming orbs of light were all directed at Minos. It made me tremble at what might follow.
Each of the twelve demons who were feasting on the accused looked up from their devilish communion to stare at us. Their faces were caked in the ghoulish blood of their victims, shining in the orange light. Growls began to sound in their throats, but were silenced as my hands rose involuntarily out before me, my palms facing the roof and my arms spread out toward them.
I felt my mouth move, although I had not tried to speak.
“I have come to judge those who would presume authority they do not have,” I said, knowing it was The Perceptionist pouring the words into me. “I am your Jesus, I am your Satan. I am your God. I am the final jury in this ethereal existence. You have no right to assume you speak for me or think for me. I have witnessed your disgusting acts of insubordination. I have felt the suffering of those on whom you prey. While they are most certainly evil, you are the greater scourge. It is time you were brought to witness for your own sins, your own evils. The light of life that shines within you is ugly, and it is time it is extinguished.”
As the words left my mouth, The Perceptionist swept out from the bench toward Minos who opened his mouth to scream, but before any noise could escape his throat, The Perceptionist was upon him. There was no blood, or gall, just a thundering clap of noise as Minos exploded into a shower of elements and was gone. The enormity of what had just happened did not escape the twelve demon jurors. Complete bedlam broke loose. Three of the demons began running for the closest exit. Three surged at The Perceptionist and three at me. The others stayed where they were, shrieking in panic. Time seemed to slow as the scene unfolded before me. It was as if The Perceptionist and I were able to move at normal speed, while the others were immersed in water.
The closest demon to The Perc
eptionist burst into nothingness, while the others slowed and were held still in the air in front of him. The three jurors descending upon me were gaining ground, but their speed was hampered by something.
“Destroy them,” I heard The Perceptionist say inside my head. “Dissect them as I have shown you. You have seen their evil, now act upon it.”
Without thinking I changed my vision to that of the elements. I saw the dirty light shining from inside each of the beings in front of me. They were indeed ugly. Concentrating on the central molecules of life, I focused on the essential coil. I reached inside the first demon with a telekinetic hand and twisted the weave of his essence. As the atoms began to separate, I yanked with all of my will. The life force of the demon resisted. He was still gaining upon me as I fumbled within his soul. Sweat beaded on my forehead as I concentrated with all of my power. With a roaring cry, I tore the critical strand of elements out of his body. I felt a wave of fear wash over me before it faded into oblivion. He was gone; his existence at an end.
I looked over to the other two demons advancing toward me. I was exhausted, my energies severely depleted from the effort of tearing the first demon asunder. With a grunt, I threw each of my fists out before me. Pure light hammered into the demons, knocking each of them off their feet, shooting backward, skidding on the ground back to their cowering companions. I sucked in a breath to steady myself.
I looked over to The Perceptionist and his attackers. The thousand-eyed Elemental had completely destroyed what was left of the demons who had decided to advance upon him. He stood serenely, watching me.
“You should have pulled all of them apart,” he whispered into my mind. “Now you have five ugly lights left to observe rather than the tranquility of emptiness.”
His unemotional tone unnerved me. It didn’t seem as though he even cared about what he’d just done. He had completely shattered four lives without a second thought.