by David Gallie
This was starting to sound more complicated as the conversation went on and I could actually feel the monk squirming under his robe.
I got the sense that time was of the essence and I figured he could fill in the rest of the details as we went.
‘Well, we best get to business. I get the feeling you need the scroll back in your possession as quickly as possible?’
‘Yes. We should get moving now. It won't take long before Hermetia figures out what he must do to create the portal.’
I wasn't quite sure what to expect next. My previous journey to Hell had been via a car crash and I wasn't looking to re-create the experience.
This time, I was pleased to discover all it would take is a swipe of the monks’ gloved hand.
I watched, admittedly a little awestruck like a child watching an illusionist, as my new friend the monk waved his hand and the air around us began to twist and rotate violently until a swirling mass of clouds appeared before us.
I opened my mouth, intending to ask him how he did such a magic trick and got the surprise of my life when he firmly gripped my hand and dragged me towards the violent swirling mass.
If I had the time to scream I probably would have, but as it turns out a trip to Hell is actually extremely quick. Before I could utter a word I found myself standing in a long narrow corridor lined with burning torches.
The monk turned to face me and I stared directly back at the void where his face should have been. The air felt one hundred times more oppressive than it had been just moments ago in the thief’s apartment, and although I may never know exactly what it was he stole, it paled in comparison to this sacred scroll business.
‘There are some things you must keep in mind while you are here, Samuel.’ He said, his voice full of doom.
‘Oh really? I’m guessing this isn’t going to be a walk in the park. Not like it ever is when it comes to working for the horny one and his Hellspawn.’ My not so gentle sense of humour was lost on the holy man of Purgatory.
‘The place you are about to enter is the lower region of Hell. This is the place where all souls are first entered into and processed on to their final destinations. There is a very good chance you may recognise people you have known on the earthly plane.’
If I was not mistaken it sounded like the hooded demon was trying to protect me. Although in the back of my mind I was chronically aware that I was just as expendable as all the other poor souls who entered into this nightmarish place.
I plodded along behind him, silently wondering if I was being led to my own private Hell, as he continued to speak.
‘Hermetia takes great pleasure in watching the continued torturing of souls. As a servant of our master, me and my brothers cannot be harmed by anything other than the lord himself, so as long as you stay near me nothing bad can happen to you while you’re here…’
‘But?’ I said expecting that there would be a pretty big catch in his statement somewhere, and I wasn’t wrong.
‘Argo’s fire is located in the great hall where no one except Hermetia is allowed to go. Any attempt by anyone to enter that building while he is there will result in immediate banishment to the outer regions.’ I could tell the big monk was trying to explain to me in the best way possible that basically once I was on the mission I was on my own.
‘Will you lead me to this great hall?’ I was curious to see just how far this holy man of Hell was willing to go to help me.
‘Yes, but I can’t follow you inside and I will not be able to stop them from seeing you once you are in.’
‘Okay, that’s fair enough. I wasn’t expecting it to be all that easy. But if I somehow manage to get my hands on this scroll what do I do with it? Who do I take it to?’
There was no hesitation this time.
‘You bring it back to the monastery where I will meet you….’
I was surprised as he stopped suddenly and turned to look at me. He pointed a long, languid finger in my direction. His voice seemed deeper and much more menacing than it had done up until this point.
‘I promise you, Samuel. If you bring the scroll back to my monastery I will help you break the deal you made with my master.’
‘I certainly hope so big guy.’ I said and followed after him through a non-descript wooden doorway into a place that I just wasn’t prepared for.
Initially, it was the smell that hit me before any of my other senses would tune into the world presented before me. It was the scent of meat that had been left to rot in the heat for days at a time. Although in this case it was probably safe to assume that in this case the meat had been rotting for decades.
The room we stepped into was, at first glance once my eyes focused, a massive barn. The only problem was that there were no horses here. No friendly looking farm hands working out their day caring for the animals. Instead, the wall directly facing us was lined from the floor to the ceiling with small cages. They were just big enough to house a different kind of animal.
Humans.
I could feel my jaw slowly drop as I stared at the massive collection of naked flesh laid out before me. Men and woman of all ages and sizes, bruised, bleeding and whimpering with fear, stared back out at us, their eye’s begging for mercy, which sadly wasn’t going to come. At least not while I was there.
My gaze landed on a bearded man squatting within his cage which was just a few feet up off the floor. As he squirmed around I noticed a thick red trickle of blood continually pour from a gaping wound where his groin should be.
I turned my attention to the cage next to him where a young red haired woman stared out. Despite being dirty and matted with bruises it was obvious that when she was alive she had been a good looking woman and I wasn’t ashamed to feel a slight rush of excitement as I watched her ample breasts move with her body.
Turning my attention away from her just in case I created a sword that I couldn’t get rid of in time, I tried to ignore the sea of desperation and take in the rest of the room, which is something that I began to regret almost instantly.
In the centre of the room was what I thought to be a solid wooden table until I noticed that it had wooden limbs making it look like a large wooden sculpture rather than just a normal table. Apart from the leather restraints on the end of each limb, I noticed that the wood was soaked with blood and some of it was still so fresh it was dripping to the floor.
‘Try and keep your focus, Samuel,’ Said the monk, who must have been sensing my fear was beginning to rise.
I couldn’t help but recognise the irony in it all. Here I was a professional killer, with a free pass to come and go from Hell, the one place known to man that actually put the fear of god into me. And yet I could not bring myself to look any longer at the tortured souls staring out at us with terrified eyes.
‘We should get moving, time is not on our side.’ Said the Monk, his voice a little above a whisper.
I was about to follow after him when he stopped suddenly. The sound of two, deep, scratching voices, came from outside the buildings wooden doors and without warning one of them bust open. Two Demons, their skin a slimy mottled grey and their wings the same colour, staggered into the room. Their wings flapping lazily behind them like they had been attached as more of an afterthought than for any actual purpose.
The monk was frozen. His gaze remained firmly on the two grotesque creatures who were examining the contents of the lower cages as if they were picking their next meal. Which, as it just occurred to me, could possibly be the case.
I decided to follow the monks lead and keep my breathing as shallow as possible. I wasn’t sure what it would take to get those creatures attention, and despite possessing something that was capable of literally knocking their heads clean off their bony bodies, I decided I wasn’t quite up for that kind of fight just yet.
So we watched.
One of the demons, slightly smaller than the other with hints of red near the tips of his wings, pointed to the good looking woman who tried to push herself a
s far back into the cage as she possibly could. Unfortunately, for both me and her, she was still easy enough for the other gargoyle-like creature to reach in and grab her by her arm.
The terror and realization of what was to come suddenly hit the woman like a bullet to the head and she started screaming. She tried with all her might to dig her heels into the concrete floor.
It still wasn’t enough, though. The demons let out a loud, gurgling sound that could easily have passed as laughter, as they dragged the distraught soul to the large wooden table in the centre of the room. It was then that I noticed it had been positioned perfectly so that every set of eye’s in the room could get a good view of what was about to happen.
What was going to happen to her? I wanted to ask the monk, but he wasn’t moving and certainly wasn’t talking. I knew, either way, they weren’t about to sit down and have a naked drinking session with her.
The blood from their last victim, that still continued to soak into the wood, was a perfect example of why I thought that was the last thing that was going to happen.
Sure enough, the young woman, still screaming, was forced to lay down on the table. Her captors working quickly to secure her arms and legs with the restraints built into the solid wood.
I wanted to turn away before I bore witness to her torture. No matter how high the bounty was, I had never accepted any contract that involved the torture or killing of a woman. I can’t really explain why, but it was just something that I found deeply wrong.
Regardless of my moral inclinations, the horror show in front of me was just getting started. The taller of the two demons stood at the top of the wooden torture device, its long bony fingers clasped together over the woman’s forehead like a living vice but probably three times stronger than any humans grip.
Meanwhile, his partner had positioned himself between the victims’ legs. I became almost mesmerized by the scene as it unfolded. I watched as her chest rose and fell rapidly due to her heart beat growing faster and faster. The pain was coming, it was just a matter of time.
The red tipped demon performed a half squat so its head was pretty much level with the woman’s vagina. Then it did something that I wasn’t quite expecting. A long, thin tongue shot out from between its bony jaws and buried itself inside her body.
A few seconds later and its tongue, which looked like a long piece of red rubber, darted back into its mouth and it smacked its thin lips as if it was tasting her sex. Kind of like the way a person may take a sample of a meal they have never had before.
Beads of sweat rolled between the woman’s breasts which only seemed to add to the feeling that I was about to watch a forced porn session, but that would have been awesome compared to what happened next.
The demon between her legs, satisfied with what it had tasted, slammed its face into the woman’s vagina and rather than stopping at that, it continued to push with all its might.
Screams of agony filled the air and I could clearly see the small ribs on the top of the demons head protrude from the woman’s belly. It must have kept its head inside her for what seemed like an eternity to me and probably much longer for the poor soul it was inflicting all the pain on.
Eventually, the demon began to retract its head, and I could feel my horror rise when I noticed it had part of her intestine clamped between its jaws. Then there was a sickening slopping sound as it yanked on the vital organ hard enough to pull the rest of her intestines right out of her.
Both of the nightmare creatures laughed in that strange gurgling sound as their victim convulsed violently on the wooden torture table. What I thought was odd, was that they both headed towards the door and back out to the nightmare land they belonged to leaving their victim to suffer a brutal death, not unlike the one I had dealt out to the young thief in his own apartment.
‘Fuck me that was gruesome. We need to help her before they come back.’ I said and was about to put a foot towards the brutalized woman until the monk made a point that hit home like a slap to the face.
‘There is no point Samuel. She is condemned to spend her eternity here. There is no place you can take her that will grant any kind of solace from her punishment.’
I found it rather comforting that I could always trust the spawn of Satan to be brutally honest even when they didn’t have to be.
‘What the Hell did that poor woman do to deserve that?’ I asked the question without really expecting any kind of answer, but the one that the monk offered up suddenly made all the sympathy I had for her wash away.
‘Over the space of ten years, she kidnapped various children, both boys, and girls, and set fire to them while they were either tied to a pole, bed, or something else that the child had no chance of getting away from. She stood and watched as they screamed for their mother's comfort while they burned alive.’
‘Maybe Hell is too good for some people.’ I was speaking more to myself than anyone else, but the monk seemed to feel quite chatty by this point. Maybe he was starting to enjoy the company.
‘What you just witnessed was only a small part of what goes on here. Only one soul is fully equipped to deal with it all, and right now I’m thankful he is not here.’ There was no room for guessing who that one soul was, his lord of darkness, the one, and only Satan.
Back on the torture table, the twisted soul with the beautiful body had stopped convulsing. Her chest continued to rise and fall steadily as her glazed eyes stared blankly at the darkness of the ceiling above. She wasn’t dead but you could bet your bottom dollar she was wishing she was by that point.
Then a thought suddenly occurred to me. In fact, it was more of a fleeting image of Lisa. A quick flash of that lovely smile and those beautiful eye’s that had once been so full of life before the flatbed crushed it out of her.
‘Was Lisa brought here?’ I asked, quietly praying the answer would be anything but yes.
‘You’re wife was not destined for this part of the kingdom. She is in a place where no demon has a hand in her punishment.’ Said the monk, beckoning me to follow after him.
We continued walking towards the same door the demons had entered the room by only a few minutes ago. Somewhere in the distance, I could still hear that horrible gurgling laughter. Just like everyone else I was expecting to step out into a world of raining fire and brimstone as we crossed the threshold of the door and stepped outside.
Instead, I found myself standing on a deserted cobblestone street which was lined with crooked looking buildings that I could not discern where either houses, stores or simply just window dressing for a world that up until a few days ago, I thought was purely just fantasy.
‘I don’t understand what you mean.’ I said, trying to adjust my eyes to the bright light of day under the cold grey sky. ‘I thought all souls that ended up in this kingdom as you call it, where punished for their wrong doings?’
‘They are. But not all of them need the help of the Grimoyle’s to be reminded of the pain they have inflicted on others. Some, like Lisa, only need to be left alone where they will torment themselves until the end of all time.’
This was becoming a much deeper conversation than I had thought I was going to be able to have with the faceless holy man. And to be perfectly honest I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready yet to hear about my wife’s self-imposed punishment.
Although there was still a nagging doubt that her being here was really where she belonged. That could be in part because I had always taken what Lisa had told me about her past as being kosher. She was a kindergarten teacher when I met her, and after much thought, I realized that I had never really gotten to know anything else about her life before the time we met.
I still found it hard to believe that she could have done anything so bad that warranted an eternity of damnation. Not my wife, the woman who would bring stray dogs home for the night before trying to find a new home for them. It just wasn’t in her blood to be bad. Me on the other hand. I deserved this. I deserved to be in Hell for the countless people I had k
illed just for the money and no other motive but the money.
As much as I wanted to learn the truth about my wife’s presence in Hell, I still got the sense that I shouldn’t push too hard. I knew the horned one was most likely keeping tabs on me, and the less I did to piss him off while I was not capable of taking him in a fair fight, the better.
Someday I was going to have to stand up to him, but for now, he was our master, my boss, my soul reason for still being able to draw a breath on Earth.
I decided to change the subject as we headed along the narrow street which seemed to rise up briefly before taking us on to a downhill slope.
‘What are Grimoyle’s ?’ I asked, noticing that there seemed to be no signs of life beyond the windows of the buildings we passed. No shadows, no lights, and more disturbingly no signs that they had ever been lived in, despite how ancient the buildings looked.
‘Grimoyle’s are the demon creatures you witnessed torturing that lady you wanted to save before I put you wise to her past. They are powerful guardian demons supplied by our master to help the overlords maintain their control over each part of the kingdom they are allowed to rule. They’re not the smartest of our lords’ creations but they have enough intelligence to perform their duties without failing.’
I tried to soak in what the big monk was telling me as we continued down the cobblestone road which I noticed was beginning to widen into a kind of village square. I could see a fountain in the centre of the clearing, but I couldn’t tell if water still flowed through it, or perhaps, since I was in Hell, something a bit more gruesome like crimson blood.
Trying to remember all the different names given to the Hellspawn was a task in of itself for me, but I was trying to remember just in case there was ever a pop quiz at the end of my deal with the devil.
‘I’m assuming there are stronger versions of these demons you call the Grimoyle’s?’ I asked, noticing that as we neared the fountain, no liquid of any kind was flowing through it. It looked like it had run dry centuries ago, during a time when lack of water was the least of your day to day worries.