Wrath James White presents Poisoning Eros I & II

by Monica J. O'Rourke

“Yes you are!” Gloria jerked the young girl right off her feet and dragged her across the hard dirt floor.

  “I’m scared! Don’t make me go!”

  Gloria whirled on the frightened little girl. “Do you want to stay here? You like being raped and tortured by these … these things? Is this how you want to spend eternity? In unending pain? Well, I won’t let you. You don’t deserve this. And neither do I.”

  She snatched the girl up onto her feet and they walked the last half a mile toward the tunnel of light.

  “Do you hear that?” Angela said.

  “What?”

  “The screams. They stopped.”

  “I can still hear people screaming,” Gloria said, never slowing, still charging forward through the darkness toward the light.

  “Not the normal screams, Mom. The bad ones. They’ve stopped.”

  Gloria paused for a second and listened. “You’re right. It’s quiet up there.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “It means we’re getting the fuck out of here!”

  Seconds later they burst out of the long passageway and entered a huge cavern spattered with blood. The floor was a wet crimson blanket.

  “What happened here? Where’d all this blood come from?”

  Gloria was quiet for a long time, and when she spoke, it was introspective, more to herself than to Angela. “It’s from the others, the ones that were afraid to go in. The demons must have come for them … that’s why there weren’t more of them. The demons must know about this place. We have to get out of here before they come back!”

  “But why were they afraid to go in? What were they afraid of?”

  “Judgment,” Gloria replied solemnly. Then, without hesitation, she plunged into the tunnel with her daughter in tow.

  *

  After so many months in darkness, the light was almost blinding. Gloria squinted against its harsh glare.

  A fork divided the road ahead, but Gloria had been expecting it. Ever since she first discovered the tunnels, she knew she’d have a choice to make. One corridor led to heaven, the other to earth. She turned left and continued to run, dragging her reluctant daughter by the wrist. Gloria’s body grew heavier as flesh returned to spirit, covered her frame.

  They’d been running for miles when Angela screamed.

  “Oh my god! What am I?” The girl shrieked, fell to the ground sobbing.

  Gloria looked at her fallen daughter, and then looked at her own newly formed body.

  Their legs were fused into one long, sallow, cylindrical tube. Their arms were a nest of tentacles that sprang from the centers of their oily serpentine bodies. Their movements were reduced to a crawl, a peristaltic slither, their eel-like bodies rolling and undulating across the cave floor. The only things that remained even remotely human were their faces, and they were quickly changing.

  They were turning into the same species of worm that had tried to fuck Gloria to death in that hot tub, what seemed like a century ago. That’s where Vlad had acquired the hideous larval creatures. They were escaped souls from hell. That explained the human voices she’d heard in their screams when she’d torn them apart. She had not just imagined it after all.

  Gloria began to weep exhausted tears. Their escape had seemed too easy, and now she understood why. This was their choice. They could return to Earth … return to life … but not as humans. As worms. Or they could attempt to reach heaven and face God’s judgment.

  Karma’s a bitch.

  “We have to go back!” Angela shrieked, scowling at her revolting, pasty gray body.

  “Wait, honey. Think about this.”

  “What the fuck is there to think about? I can’t live like this!” Angela’s features were melding into her flesh, nose dissolving into a pulpish mash. “What was in that other tunnel? The one we passed?”

  Gloria opened her mouth then thought better of it and closed it again. Angela caught it.

  “What? You know, don’t you? What’s in there? What’s in that other tunnel?”

  “It’s better you don’t know.”

  Angela laughed, a cruel, harsh sound that wounded Gloria like the lash of a whip. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re still trying to protect me? Look at me! I’m a fucking worm! I’ve been raped by demons, by a fat slimy con man, by my own father! I’ve been tortured worse than anyone could ever imagine. And now I’ve been reincarnated as a fucking king-sized maggot! And you want to protect me? Fuck you! What the hell is in that other tunnel, Mother?”

  Gloria gave up. “God.”

  “What?”

  “That tunnel we ran past is a doorway to heaven.”

  “Then what the fuck are we doing here? I never wanted to go back to the world anyway. It never was any better than hell, and I definitely don’t want to go back as a giant earthworm. Why didn’t we just go into that other tunnel to begin with?”

  “Because … what if he doesn’t want us?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what if he sends us back to hell? What if he takes one look at us and decides that we were right where we ought to be?”

  “He … he wouldn’t. You said it yourself—nobody belongs here. He couldn’t send us back!”

  Gloria thought about the boy she’d rescued from the insects. Remembering how he’d attacked her. “Nobody’s in hell by accident. You don’t think he knows we’re here? Maybe he just doesn’t care about us. Maybe he put us here himself. It’s all part of his plan or something.”

  “No! Bullshit! He has to love us. That’s what all the churches say. God is love. If there’s a hell, there has to be a heaven. There has to be love!” Angela’s eyes filled with tears. That at least meant she was still partially human. Even if she did look like fish bait.

  “But what if he doesn’t? What if this is all there is?”

  “No! I can’t believe that. I won’t accept that! You can stay here as a goddamned slug or go back to the world or whatever. But I’m going to heaven.” Angela shimmied back down the tunnel, her slug-like body oozing along the ground.

  Gloria paused for a moment. From the end of the passageway, she could almost see the afternoon sun high in the sky. She turned and followed her daughter.

  Gloria and her daughter crawled back through the tunnel in silence. Their bodies slowly began to lose substance, reverting back to the familiar look of their human souls. Still, they said nothing to each other. Gloria was locked in her own world of fear and excitement. It was not every day that you went to meet your maker.

  They reached the spot where the road had forked and Gloria paused. “We could always go back.” She sighed in resignation.

  “Back to hell? What—are you on crack? Did you see what happened to the others? Those demons ripped them apart! I’m not going the fuck back there. I’m going to heaven. Are you with me?” Angela turned without hesitation and entered the light.

  Gloria followed on shaky legs that felt like those of a child on her way to her parents’ room to receive some unknown punishment.

  This new tunnel was much brighter than the first. Not sunshine but something else … like starlight, radiating a light like a supernova.

  They had walked a few hundred yards when the tunnel disappeared. A field of green surrounded them.

  “What is this?” Angela whispered, smiling at her mother. “Is this heaven?”

  “I don’t think so. It wouldn’t be this easy.”

  They walked across the field. The sky was solid light. No clouds. No sun. Just endless white. Off in the distance, a figure moved toward them. It didn’t take long for Gloria to recognize her.

  “Who’s that?” Angela asked.

  “It’s your grandmother. Hello, Mother.”

  The woman hugged Gloria, who stiffened at the embrace. It had been a long time since anyone had touched her in a way other than to cause pain. And her mother had never been this affectionate.

  “Hello, Gloria, Angela. You’ve both come quite a long way.”

&nbs
p; “Mother … what are you doing here?”

  “I was sent to meet you.”

  “Oh, really?” Gloria muttered. “God too busy? What else is new?”

  “God’s been with you, Gloria. You just haven’t let him into your heart.”

  “That’s bullshit, Mother. God abandoned me a long time ago.”

  “So where’s heaven? How do we get in?” Angela asked, skipping the niceties.

  “It’s right here. But only one of you may enter.”

  “What? What do you mean?” Gloria shook her head. She and Angela looked at each other with expressions of absolute shock. “That’s not fair. How can that be?”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

  She shivered as she imagined going back to earth to live as a human-sized maggot, but it was better than having Angela go through it. “You go,” Gloria replied, her shoulders slumped in defeat. “I’ll go back to earth.”

  “Thanks, Mom! Well, let’s go!” Angela said, stepping forward and grinning from ear to ear.

  “I’m afraid the choice isn’t yours, child. It’s his.”

  “What do you mean?” Angela asked.

  “I mean only one of you has redeemed herself. Only one has improved as a person during her time in hell, proved to be worthy of paradise. You, my daughter. You may enter heaven.”

  Gloria was speechless. She looked at her mother’s smiling face, a face that hadn’t smiled at her like that since before Gloria had left home to suck cock and lick pussy on camera for a living. Then she looked at her daughter’s horrified grimace as the girl’s face fell to pieces.

  “No! Mommy, you can’t leave me here! You can’t! Take me with you. You have to take me with you!”

  “But why? What did she ever do to deserve to go to hell?” Gloria cried.

  “Honor thy mother and thy father. She betrayed you. Tricked you and led you to hell.”

  “But that’s not right! Why should she be expected to honor parents like me and Ryan? If I wasn’t such a bad mother, none of this would have happened!”

  “It’s not your fault. We all have free will, and she chose her path. Now she has to live with it … for eternity.”

  “Mom, please. Don’t leave me. Please take me with you,” Angela begged.

  “The choice isn’t hers.” The old woman scowled bitterly at her granddaughter.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Mother. The choice is mine.”

  Both women looked at Gloria.

  “What kind of God would separate a mother from her daughter? How can there be a heaven when those we love are suffering in hell and on Earth?”

  “Mom. No.”

  “Just like you said, Mother. We all have free will. The choice is mine and I’ve made my decision. I will not abandon my daughter again.”

  “She was ready to leave you behind. Ready to abandon you when she thought she was allowed into heaven, Gloria. You want to sacrifice everything for someone like that?”

  Gloria nodded. “I’m not leaving her.”

  The older woman shook her head.

  Angela turned toward her mother with eyes filled with tears. “You’d give up paradise for me?” Her face was a riot of pain, sorrow, and confusion.

  “I love you, Angela. There is no paradise. Not if it means leaving you behind to suffer.”

  “You know what this means?” The old woman asked, staring at her daughter and granddaughter as if they were both two pitiful fools.

  “Yes. I know.” Gloria took her daughter’s arm and turned away from heaven, back toward the entrance to hell. Somehow, the tunnel didn’t look as dark as it had before

  Poisioning Eros II

  Wrath James White and Monica J. O’Rourke

  Part IV

  The journey back to inferno seemed to take much longer. Gloria and her daughter stumbled along as if in a daze, now stripped of all hope. The tunnel felt even more claustrophobic now. The darkness grew as heaven receded into the distance.

  Even with the light of heaven shining against their backs, casting frightening shadows against the hot, unctuous cave walls, it was as if they were walking through the dripping bowels of some impossibly large beast. Smells of rancid blood and putrescent flesh assailed their senses. Screams echoed through the dank corridors and bounced off cave walls. Even the heat was more oppressive than Gloria remembered.

  Eternity, Gloria thought bitterly. We have to spend eternity here. She thought it best not to share her terror with her daughter—although she couldn’t imagine why not. What was she protecting Angela from? The kid wasn’t stupid.

  Gloria tried to keep the tears from spilling, wanted to be strong for her daughter. But the realization of what she’d done overpowered her. She’d turned her back on heaven. Heaven. Had turned her back on God. Now what? Really, she thought. What the hell is next? She almost laughed at the absurdity.

  Though she didn’t regret her decision. She’d chosen her daughter over Paradise and was proud she’d found the strength. Now she just needed to somehow live with her decision. And to find a way for her and her daughter to survive damnation.

  “Mom? I know I’m the reason you’re here. You could’ve left me behind to rot. I don’t know why you didn’t, but, um … thanks.”

  “I did it for us.” And that was the truth. She had done it for herself as much as for Angela. But something felt off … and she tried to ignore the memory of Angela’s performance on Earth, how easily she’d tricked her mother. She wanted to believe in Angela. Gloria would die—had died—for her daughter, and it had been a selfless act, in part anyway. Part of it was Gloria’s personal redemption. Remorse for having chosen her addiction over her child so many years earlier. Gloria realized and accepted this. But whatever her true reasons, she had chosen to be with Angela, to sacrifice her own happiness for her child’s.

  But she wondered what Angela was thinking. Gloria had experienced far too much misery in her life to take much of anything at face value, even when it involved her daughter. Was the girl truly overwhelmed with love and remorse, sincerely grateful? The skeptic in Gloria had a rough time wrapping around that bit of reality. She tended to believe Angela had one goal in mind: herself.

  “Besides,” Gloria said. “I have to wonder what kind of God allows the existence of a place like this. And what kind of a god allows the conditions to exist on earth that brought us here.”

  Gloria shook her head, grabbed Angela’s shoulder, and they stopped walking. “Whatever I am,” she said, with a bit of urgency, as if these words were vitally important, that Angela would need to hear them to survive. “Whatever you are. Whatever decisions we’ve made—he’s ultimately responsible because he made it all. Do you understand?”

  Angela shrugged and seemed distracted, bored with her mother’s words. She tried to pull away but Gloria held tight.

  “If a car doesn’t run properly, you don’t punish the car, right? You punish the maker. Hell is just where God sends his mistakes so he doesn’t have to be reminded of his own failures. We’ve been swept under the rug. It isn’t fair, baby. And I want no part of a God like that. It’s better to stay in hell. At least we know what we’re up against here.”

  “Do we? Do you really think they’ve done their worst to us?”

  Angela was still terrified and uncertain. She looked utterly depressed and defeated. This last rejection had destroyed her. It would be up to Gloria to rebuild her.

  Gloria’s indignation gave her strength, turned her sorrow to rage. She felt better having focus for her anger, even if it was toward someone as untouchable as God. At least it kept her from turning her rage inward and hating herself. She could understand the desire to project your own failures outward and blame others. She understood why God felt it easier to blame man’s free will for the evil in the world, rather than on his own flawed design. She was doing the same thing by blaming him. It was the only way she could live with the horror, and she supposed that if she were God, looking at the myriad atrocities on earth, she
would do anything to avoid taking responsibility for it, maybe even punish her own creations for their faults.

  “I don’t want to be tortured again!” Angela cried. “What the fuck are we supposed to do now?”

  She didn’t have an answer. Not yet. But there had to be a way. Had to. Gloria didn’t want to be tortured again either, but how long could they avoid it? This was hell, and there was no way they would be allowed to simply exist in peace. They would have to fight or find some way to escape. Heaven was not an option, but neither was returning to Earth as a ridiculous giant slug. Perhaps there was a purgatory after all, despite all mention of Purgatory having been expunged from the bible. Maybe it had never existed. But if heaven and hell existed, then maybe there was a possibility. Maybe another corridor somewhere. Gloria didn’t know, but she was sure that if it did exist, someone in hell would know where to find it. Just like they’d known about this tunnel. There was still so much to consider.

  “I promise, I’ll never let anyone hurt you again.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Mother.”

  Gloria winced. The bitterness in Angela’s voice wounded her.

  As they made their way back into hell, with the light from heaven fading in the distance behind them, they saw others walking up through the tunnel in the opposite direction. Each shared physical traits that clearly marked them as related. Mother, father, and three children. Their scarred and filthy faces were filled with the same mixture of fear and enthusiasm that had no doubt been on Gloria and Angela’s faces when they first made their way toward Paradise. Seeing Gloria and her daughter returning, looking dejected, seemed to diminish the family’s already waning enthusiasm.

  “Di-did you see him?” the father asked, reaching out for Gloria like a starving man reaching for table scraps.

  Gloria brushed him away. She hadn’t forgotten what had happened to her the last time she’d felt sympathy for one of her fellow citizens of damnation. Now she trusted no one.

  “No,” she said. “He wouldn’t see us. Good luck to you though.” Gloria kept walking, hugging her daughter tight. Angela clung to her mother’s side, staring nervously at the family.