by Carlos King
CHAPTER 21
Jade and Drake have boarded a Greyhound bus and are currently en route to Wakarusa, IN. Her parents took the place over after the owner, her father’s brother, passed away.
Just as Alex suggested, Jade hasn’t told Drake the details of where they’re going or even the city where they’re heading. Drake provided Jade with cash to buy the tickets and waited outside the bus station while she paid for them.
Conversation between Jade and Drake has been at a minimal. They’ve remained cordial to one another, but it’s evident that Jade is still upset. Despite his strong stance on the matter, Drake empathizes with her. He appreciates the gravity of Jade’s feelings toward Alex, because in a way, those feelings mirror his affection for her, and that’s why he couldn’t risk leaving her side just to help Alex.
Drake uses their travel time to mend their broken bridge of conversation. “You still mad at me?”
Jade ignores Drake and stares aimlessly down the aisle of the bus.
“Okay,” said Drake, turning his eyes toward the window. “I can take a hint.”
After a considerable delay, Jade breaks the silence by saying, “I hope Alex is okay.”
Respecting the love she and Alex share, Drake strives to better clarify his decision to Jade and offer her comfort in her time of worry, regardless of how much it goes against the grain of who and what he really is.
“Jade, I know you’re pissed and I can understand why. I’m all too familiar with being the bad guy. No matter what my intentions are I’m always going to be the villain. That’s just a burden that I’m gonna have to bear for a very long time to come…And I’m cool with that. So if you want to be upset with me, then be my guest. I can handle being hated. But what I can’t handle is losing you. Now, I’ve said all I had to say…I’ll leave you alone so you can go back to hating me.”
Drake turns back toward the window and stares at the blurred visions of passing grasslands.
“I don’t hate you, Drake,” said Jade, finally relenting. “I just…It’s just that…”
Drake turns to Jade. “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she confessed. “I am.”
Drake exhales. “I’m sure he got out okay. As much as I hate to admit it, it’s hard for the darkness of evil to conquer over the purity of light. I’m not saying it can’t be done…It just would take a hell of a lot to do it.”
“Would a race of ancient demons be able to do the trick?” Jade asked jokingly.
Smiling, Drake responds, “It definitely wouldn’t hurt.”
Jade sighs. “Do you really think he made it out okay?”
“Yeah,” he reluctantly told Jade. “If he loves you half as much as I do, then nothing’s gonna be able to keep him away from you…Nothing.”
Drake’s words place Jade in a state of serenity. In contrast, Drake’s own words have left a bitter taste in his mouth. He honestly believes Alex made it out okay and that’s where the problem lies. Alex’s survival puts Drake in a position of apprehension. Drake realizes that as long as Alex is still around, Jade’s heart can never belong to him.
“Let’s talk about something else,” Jade suggested, “If I sit here quiet for the rest of the trip I’ll worry myself sick.”
Drake asks, “What do you want to talk about?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Okay. You’re kind of putting me on the spot here, but I’ll try to think of something to hold your interest.”
Jade leans as far back as her seat will allow. She tilts her head back and closes her eyes as she prepares to listen to whatever it is Drake comes up with. In the meantime, Drake thinks of a conversation that’ll be interesting enough to take Jade’s mind off of Alex and somehow put it solely on him.
When a topic for discussion finally comes to mind, he settles his eyes on Jade and asks, “You wanna know what Hell is like?”
Jade eyelids slowly open, revealing her beautiful gray eyes. She adjusts her seat back into an upright position. She turns her head toward Drake, locking her eyes on his.
He has succeeded in captivating Jade’s attention.
“It’s nothing like what you’ve been told,” Drake informed.
“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately. So it’s not a bottomless pit that has flowing rivers of fire that span forever?”
“No, that part is true. The conception that man has of Hell is accurate to the degree of what it consists of, but when it comes to the mechanics of how Hell functions, they have no clue.”
Fascinated by this discussion, Jade contorts her entire body to a more comfortable position. “Tell me.”
Drake twists his upper body toward Jade, placing his forearm on the arm rest that divides them. “It all starts when you’re turned away from Heaven’s gates. That’s when your descent begins. Before you know what’s going on, you find yourself sliding down a funnel—a funnel that starts off cool to the touch at first, but progressively gets warmer and warmer the further down you go. You don’t know what’s happening, but you get this feeling in your stomach that something bad is waiting for you on the other end.”
Jade’s hanging on to Drake’s every word.
“After a few minutes of sliding you start thinking the shaft will never end. Then you start noticing that whatever you’re sliding through isn’t just warm, it’s starting to get hot. It gets so hot that it’s unbearable to even touch, and given the fact that you’re completely naked as you slide down this thing doesn’t help the matter much.”
Frightened by the sheer thought, Jade inserts, “That sounds horrible. I don’t even think I can imagine how frightening something like that must’ve felt.”
Drake gives a quick chuckle. “You haven’t heard the worst parts yet. That long, hot tube you’re traveling down gets so hot by the time you near its end that your skin begins to sizzle. Just when you think you can’t take anymore you spot a tiny spec of red light ahead of you. The spec continues to grow bigger and bigger until it becomes clear that you’re approaching the funnel’s end. That’s when it really gets scary.”
“I don’t know if I want to hear anymore,” said Jade, cutting Drake off before he could continue. “It’s bad enough I’m being chased by demons and rogue angels…Hearing this will just scare me even more.”
“In order to beat your enemy, you have to understand them.”
Jade turns away from Drake for a few seconds to contemplate whether or not she wants him to go on. She ultimately decides that Drake may be right. She looks at him and nods, permitting him to continue.
Drake picks up from where he left off. “You shoot out of the bottom of the funnel and embark on what I would estimate to be at least a mile’s worth of freefalling. As you drop, you screaming as loudly as your lungs and vocal chords will allow along the way, you catch a glimpse of your surroundings. For a second you begin to think that you’re back on Earth in a time long before skyscrapers, car, and homes…Only with a post-apocalyptic spin to it.
You really don’t have any control during you’re fall, so in between panicky screams and spinning motions, you can’t help but notice the sky. What would be a blue sky in this world is replaced by a dark red one there. There’s no sun there, but the high temperatures would remind you of the feeling you get when you open an oven door and the heat bursts out at you, taking your breath away. And the clouds…The clouds here are white and fluffy, but in Hell, the clouds are giant balls of fire, and when they collide you don’t get thunder and lightning, you get massive waves of flames.”
“Did you see any other people falling with you?” Jade asked.
“Of course. They were falling from everywhere. I didn’t learn until much later that this is something that never stops. It rains people in Hell constantly. But we’re jumping ahead here. Let me tell you about what happens after you land.”
Jade shakes her head in agreement and holds off any further questions until Drake is done.
“Getting closer to the surface
you begin to gain control over your body and somehow stabilize yourself from spinning uncontrollably. You can actually make out the grounds below. It approaches so fast that you can see the cracks in the pavement—and yes, I said pavement…Rough, jagged pavement. You feel like you’re in a nightmare that you’re bound to wake up from at any second, but you don’t, and then…Splat.”
Jade shivers at the very idea. Up until now, she thought that when people were sent to Hell it would be just a pit of fire that awaited their souls. But the way Drake tells it, it isn’t just your soul that’s punished…It’s your mind and body as well. From the way he describes it, you’re simply transferred from Earth to Hell.
“So you fall a mile from overhead and slam into the ground below just like that?” she asked, appalled.
“Yeah, pretty much. I guess it’s done that way to soften you up. Needless to say, a fall like that would kill a man here on Earth before he would ever have to bear the pain of it, but not in Hell.”
“Wait,” Jade interrupted, “you mean you actually felt the type of pain someone would feel if they fell a mile from the sky?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. You feel the pain of broken bones, internal damage, and everything else you’d endure in a fall like that, only you don’t have the physical scars to show it.”
With her absorption with the discussion reaching a new high, Jade inquires, “What happens next?”
“Well, while you’re lying on this sharp, unforgiving terrain, thriving in pain, you begin to hear the cries and screams of people being tortured all around you. You don’t see them, but you know what you’re hearing, and by now, you’ve begun to come to grips with where you are. Then another sound fills your ears. It’s the scariest thing you’ll ever hear. It’s literally the sound of monsters closing in on you.
Like I said before, there is no sun so the entire place is blanketed in a reddish-darkness. The light from the red skies doesn’t do anything to illuminate the surface. So whatever the things are that are gathering around you, you can’t and won’t see until it’s too late. Suddenly, you feel a crushing grip take hold of you. The grip is so tight you can feel it crushing your bone. It drags you for miles over the rough surface at an incredible speed until you reach a place that instantly reminds you of a slaughterhouse.”
“How did it remind you of a slaughterhouse? Don’t tell me they torture cattle in Hell, too.”
“Yeah, there’s cattle there alright…The human kind.”
Terror-stricken at the horrifying concept, Jade gulps. “You mean…”
“Yes and no,” Drake interjected. “You see, they don’t chop us up into little pieces or anything like that. In this cattle line, they line every man and woman up and brand them.”
Drake turns his back towards Jade and tells her to pull down the collar of his shirt. Jade does so and discovers an indecipherable symbol branded on the top of his back.
“My God!” Jade exclaimed, releasing the collar of Drake’s shirt.
Drake fixes his shirt and rests his back against the seat. Looking at Jade, he adds, “Yeah, tell me about it. It was a lot more painful than it looks.”
“When did they do that?” Jade asked. “It doesn’t look that old.”
Drake pauses, trying to recall the period of time he was branded. “I was branded my first day in Hell, which was about…I’m going to say three hundred and fifty-two years ago.”
Startled by the newsflash, Jade inadvertently swallows her saliva too fast, sending it down her wind pipe, causing her to cough in reaction.
Gentling patting her on the back, Drake asks, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, choked up. “Are you telling me that you’re three-hundred-and-fifty-years old?”
“Well, actually I’m like three-hundred-and-seventy-three-years old. I died the day after my twenty-first birthday. Anyway, what was I telling you about? Oh, yeah…The slaughterhouse. That’s how we’re booked into inventory. The mark on my back is the same mark you’ll see on any demon. It’s a way of connecting us all to each other. It’s also used to keep us out of Heaven. No angel has it.”
“What happens after the brandings?”
“That’s when the Hell you know comes into play. After you’ve been branded, they herd you to the eternal lake of fire. Do you know what the eternal lake of fire is? It’s magma. The same stuff you’ll find inside any volcano. But in Hell, it’s the size of an ocean.
“Here comes the part where you’re forced to get in,” Drake continued. “You can try to fight, but the creatures I told you about earlier, the ones with the crushing grips, they’re right there waiting for anyone who protests. These powerful things throw you in with no problem. That’s when the real pain and torture begins. You’re left to stew in this vat of molting liquid that sticks to your skin like glue for the next three hundred years. You wanna know why they leave you in there for that specific amount of time?”
Jade hesitantly nods her head up and down.
“Because that’s about how long it takes to strip you of your humanity,” he stated. “Being in there that long kills off all kindness, compassion, love, sympathy, joy…Virtually everything that once made you human. Soon, all those human emotions are replaced with rage, hatred, vengeance and the incomprehension of anything good and decent. In short, it changes you from a human to a ruthless, relentless, savage killer.”
Drake turns to stare out of the bus’ window as he recalls the events following his stint in the lake of fire.
Jade can tell by Drake’s behavior that this conversation is hitting a soft spot. She wants to tell him he doesn’t have to go on, yet she can’t bring herself to articulate the words. She wants to hear more.
“Three hundred years eventually came and went, putting an end to my term in the pit. To me, though, it felt more like three thousand years. I guess that deals with that relativity shit. You feel every second when you’re submerged in a substance that averages temperatures of a few thousand degrees.”
Jade shakes her head. “I don’t care what bad things people may’ve done in their life. No one deserves a punishment like that.”
“When a person reaches the end of their sentence in the lake, things actually get better. That’s probably because the human part of you died a long time ago. Only thing left behind is your body, which now harbors an insatiable monster. For the rest of your time in Hell you’ll spend it training.”
“Training?”
Taking his eyes off of the passing road, he turns to Jade. “Just like how the army trains its troops, Hell trains its demons. We learned how to summon our inner powers, harness our strengths so that we’d be utilizing our maximum potential, and we were also taught hand-to-hand combat tactics to become more efficient killers.”
As Drake reminisces, a dim smirk appears on his handsome face. “I can remember one time we were told to demonstrate what we’ve learned to one of the elders. We were told to simulate a combat scenario where there’d be ten of us against one person. The guy selected to go against us an old, frail guy who had just been sent to Hell. He hadn’t gone through the pit yet and he hadn’t been taught any of the stuff that we had. He hadn’t even been branded.
“One of us could’ve put him down easily, but nonetheless, we did what we were told and attacked. When demons attack it’s like watching a pack of rabid wolves devour a rabbit. To sit here and tell you we literally picked that guy apart would definitely be an understatement. And what’s worse, it didn’t bother me at all. I was actually proud of what I did. When you’re in Hell, you can’t show weakness or compassion. You’ll be seen as pathetic and weak. You’ll be tormented for the rest of eternity—not only by Lucifer and his closest minions, but all the other low-level demons as well. A little while later, the services of a demon were required to come back to Earth to follow you and I volunteered for the job. I’ve been here ever since.”
“You volunteered?”
“Well, yeah. It was the first time a demon was asked t
o go back to Earth in human form. That kind of thing is strictly forbidden by the sacred laws and we all knew it. None of the other demons wanted to break the laws because they fear the possible repercussions. I didn’t care, though. I wanted out. When I saw my opportunity, I took it.”
Puzzled by Drake’s explanation for his arrival, there are a couple of things Jade wants to clear up. “Hold on, Drake. You were branded in Hell, right?”
“Yeah.”
Jade then asks, “And the body you’re in right now isn’t your real body, right?”
Nodding, Drake answers, “Right again.”
“Okay. So how did the brand you got in Hell get engraved in this body? And whose body is this?”
“This body originally belonged to a kid named Drake Anderson.” Sensing Jade is about to interrupt, he quickly inserts. “I don’t remember my real name. Three hundred years in a lake of fire can be hell on the memory. Anyway, Drake Anderson was the son of a rich doctor out in California.”
“And you just took over his body?” she asked with a disturbed stare.
Drake smiles, “No, it doesn’t work that way. First off, we can’t seize the body of any living creature, especially if Hell doesn’t have the rights to them. And the ones Hell does have rights to are the ones who are already damned. Drake was already dead when I took over. He lived a fast life and did a lot of bad things off his dad’s money. So me and him exchanged places after he got into a car accident—drunk driving deal. Hey, at least he went to Hell drunk. I wish I could’ve been as lucky.”
“So you’ve been lying to his family this whole time? You pass yourself off as their son when you’re not?”
Drake’s smile fades, replaced by a more serious expression. “It comes with the territory, Jade. It’s not like I don’t know everything about Drake or his family. I learned everything about them the moment I took over his body. And it’s not like I handpicked him, either. His body was selected because of his looks, his youth, and his financial backing. It didn’t really matter whose body I received, they all would’ve been used purely as a vehicle to help make my mission as easy as possible. Drake just died at the wrong time because if it wouldn’t have been him who bit the bullet, it would’ve been someone else with the same credentials.”