by Tim Hawken
HellbounD
Tim Hawken
First Published in Great Britain 2010
by Dangerous Little Books www.dangerouslittlebooks.com
© Copyright Tim Hawken
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover Illustration by Christopher Page
Acknowledgements
FOR ME, this is probably one of the most important pages in the book and, most likely, will be one of the least read.
There are a great many people to thank for their help in the creation of Hellbound.
I would sincerely like to thank the following people for their invaluable contribution:
Michael Williams for his professional writing advice. CJ Werleman, author of God Hates You. Hate Him Back, for believing in the concept enough to convince his publishers to take a chance on it. Hobbsy, a wonderful teacher whose passion for literature is infectious and entertaining. Professor Brian Edwards, who assigned the creative writing task that kicked off the idea. Johnny, Nikki, Nat, Sam, Mum, Dad, Lincoln, Eli, Graylo and Tommy G for reading the draft material and providing honest feedback.
And finally to my wife Tara, who is at once my worst critic and my biggest fan. I love you like Michael loves Charlotte. This book is for you.
part one:
Damnation
one
HE PREFERRED TO BE CALLED ASMODEUS. This was all I knew about the man standing before me. In fact, I wasn’t even sure if he was a man. When I looked directly at him, he appeared normal. But if I glanced out of the corner of my eye, I could see something else, something intangible. It was as if his true self was hiding in his shadow, which loomed dark and menacing on the wall, flickering in the firelight.
The fire shed no light itself but rather made the darkness more visible, creating doleful shades of grey throughout the room. The darkness seemed to suck all hope from me, making me restless and edgy, but this man, this ‘Asmodeus’, brought my sense of feeling back. His charismatic air held me totally in thrall. He talked with such passion and authenticity that even if he told a blatant lie, I would believe in its truth.
And what was he talking about? Himself. About how he got to be in his position and how his ‘work’ was always taken out of context.
“You look very confused when I say I’m just trying to help these lost souls make their way to Heaven,” he said. “The reason you’re confused is you think I’m speaking metaphorically. Well, my dear friend, take it very literally. You see, I may have introduced myself as Asmodeus, but let me run off a few of my more well known aliases. Now let’s see: we have Mephistopheles, Beelzebub, Bafomet, Iblis, The Fallen One, Lucifer, The Morning Star, Lord of the Dark, The Devil, oh and my favorite, Satan.”
My jaw dropped as I stared in disbelief at the madman in front of me.
“Now I’ve seen that look on many faces before,” he continued. “That look of, ‘oh my God, I’m stuck in a bad dream!’ Well, this is happening. But please don’t be put off by the negative connotations of my ‘titles’, if that’s what you’d call them. This is real, Michael, this is very real.”
A deep growl rumbled in Satan’s throat and suddenly the fire exploded throughout the room. Satan spread his battered wings, skeletal and black, half draconian half angelic, his eyes turning into pits of oblivion, reflecting my horrified expression as I fell back onto the floor. He collapsed into his chair shaking with fits of laughter. The room once again fell into its despairing shade of grey.
“I’m sorry, Michael, I just couldn’t help it,” The Devil squeezed between giggles. “I love a good joke. I’m not all about wrath and destruction. I am on your side! Haven't you listened to a word I’ve been saying?”
My mind was reeling. I tried to think of how I came to be there, in that room. Nothing came. It was as if a veil had been draped over my thoughts, so that all I could do was concentrate on the moment at hand.
Satan clicked his fingers, chuckling. “A bit confused there, Michael? Don’t worry, your memory will come back soon enough, although not all at once or it would be too much for you to handle. Remembering your own death can be pretty horrifying; remembering your life can be even worse!”
Dead? I was dead. I looked at my hands. They appeared solid. I rubbed my fingers over the palm of my opposite hand. I could hear the crackling of the fire clearly. This isn’t a dream, I know when I’m dreaming, I thought. I looked around the room again. There was a light coat of dust covering the polished-wood floor, but no trace of footprints from where this man had been pacing back and forth in front of me. It wasn’t normal. He wasn’t normal. I looked at Satan closely and he smiled. He had a pointed chin, shiny-white teeth, high cheek bones, black eyes and two short horns protruding just above his thick, jet-black hair. Am I really seeing this? I thought. Am I dead? Where am I? Am I in Hell?
“You are in Hell!” The Devil confirmed with a smirk. “You’re here because you are dead. But that’s not the only reason you’re with me. And, I might observe, you don’t seem too surprised you’re down here and not in Heaven.”
The thing is, I wasn’t surprised at Satan’s remark. Even though I couldn’t remember my lifetime, I somehow knew, or rather felt, that I deserved to suffer.
“Suffer? You will do no such thing down here. You’ll do nothing but enjoy yourself!” Satan laughed.
It occurred to me that my thoughts were being read. This devil was in my mind!
“Oh please, Michael, you don’t really think I could have made it to be ruler of the underworld without learning a few tricks along the way? Don’t worry, my powers only extend to my realm. When I go up there,” he said, pointing up with a clawed hand, “I lose most of my glorious power. That’s why God always tries to get me to fight Him on earth; Armageddon, the final battle. He knows he has my measure.”
A look of pure hate spread across The Devil’s face. Disgust and frustration deformed him to the point where his eyes turned a deep yellow, as if filled with bile. His mouth dripped venomous spittle and his bared teeth twisted into points. I let out a muffled cry and, instantly, he returned to normal.
“Oh, sorry about that, Michael,” he said cheerfully. “God and I have a bit of a past, but you’ll learn the truth of that soon enough. Let me try to explain the essence of why you are actually here. Come with me.”
Satan stood up, turned and walked towards the door at the far end of the room, motioning for me to follow. I quickly fell in step just behind him, as we walked out the door towards an elevator.
“An elevator?” I wondered aloud.
“Of course!” he said. “Do you think we’d live in caves down here while everyone else on the planet lives in houses and apartments? We are the future, Michael, not the past, and we have everything you need.”
The elevator doors opened with a sharp sounding ‘bing’ and he ushered me inside. Satan reached up and pressed the button for floor 666.
“See,” he said as he turned to me with a cheeky grin, “we even have a sense of humor in Hell!”
This must be a dream, I thought to myself. A vivid, horrible dream. I watched the elevator’s shimmering silver doors close in front of me. Cheesy eleva
tor music leaked out of a speaker in the roof, just as if I was riding any ordinary elevator in any ordinary building. The metal cage lurched upwards and The Devil started talking again.
“Hell, Michael,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder as if to reassure me, “isn’t a place of suffering or torture, but a place of purgatory and rehabilitation. It’s a bit like a jail really, but with a few exceptions.” He paused and looked up at the floor counter as it rose slowly towards the number of the beast. “You see, people end up here because they have done something wrong and have not repented for their actions. They didn’t care that what they were doing was wrong. In order that they ‘purge’ these ‘demons’ from their system they come to Hell, so they can be cleansed before entering Heaven.”
I must have looked confused. I certainly felt that way. My head was swimming. Satan paused as if deep in thought before clearing his throat to continue.
“Let me use an example. Say a man loves to rape women. He does it for a portion of his life and then dies. His soul is befouled because of his crimes committed on the spirit of the women he defiled, and so he ends up here in Hell. He comes here because God does not want predatory rapists running rampant in Heaven destroying more souls. It’s my job to help the rapist rid himself of his terrible urges. In other words, I rid him of his will to sin. I convert the damned to the saved. Once the rapist’s soul has been cleansed then he can trot off to Saint Peter with the hope of passing through those pearly gates.”
The elevator shuddered to a halt. Bing, the door opened into a room made completely of glass. I stood for a moment transfixed. We were overlooking a thriving metropolis, where constant movement whirled far below and lights shone from every building. We were at least twice as high as any other structure around us. I could see for miles in every direction. The city stretched beyond sight. Every road below branched out from the building we stood on. They were linked by twisted laneways and offshoots, to look like a massive spider-web. Red and black glowed throughout most of the tangled net of streets. Others were the darkest pitch. Below us, the streets were alive with movement. Tiny cars were zipping, weaving and dodging through the fast-paced traffic. It was organized chaos.
“This is my kingdom, Michael!” Satan said, sweeping his arm out in front of him. “Welcome to Hell.”
two
MY MOUTH HUNG AGAPE as I looked out at the world of Hell. The Devil laughed and slapped me on the back like an old friend. He walked over to stand in front of the huge glass windows. I followed like a lost puppy.
Looking down below and around at the world outside, I barely registered what I saw. To the left a few miles away, a mountain jutted directly out from the otherwise flat surroundings. It was a twisted black crag of rock covered in gnarled, burnt trees which arched toward the boiling sky. A gigantic mansion perched on its peak, no roads going up or around the base.
“The only way up there is by chopper or dragon,” Satan said. “It’s my palace, Casa Diablo, atop of Mount Bilial. Let me give you a tip: it makes Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion look like a monastery!” He pointed to the far distance. “Straight ahead is the sulphur lake you’ve no doubt heard so much about in the classics. It’s bordered to one side by a lake of fire and the other side is a lake of liquid ash. Together, they make the three eyes of Satan.”
He sounded like a chirpy tour guide describing the pyramids of Egypt.
“We go fishing sometimes in the sulphur lake for giant crab-goblins. Very tasty eating.”
He licked his lips with a forked tongue as I turned to look at the three lakes. They did indeed look like three eyes; one red, one black and the last, crystal blue. A thin smokey haze hung above them, blending the colors together to form a twisted kaleidoscopic cloud. I started to get a headache staring at the swirling colors in the sky. Blinking, I looked away and over to the right to see beyond the city. Bare plains stretched out into the distance.
“That is the ‘desert of the doomed’,” Satan said solemnly, “where lost souls who have given up any hope of salvation go to roam aimlessly for all eternity.” He quickly turned me away from the ghostly spectacle, sweeping his hand theatrically in front of us. “And here is the pride of Hell City. A den of diabolical debauchery, fetish and fun. A cross between Las Vegas, Amsterdam and Bangkok. The delicious suburb of Smoking Gun.”
It looked as if it were straight out of a bizarre comic book. Themed casinos with flashing lights and neon signs made up the centre. They ranged from the grand to the grotesque. There was obviously no consideration taken about offending anyone, with one casino brashly named Cleopatra’s Clitoris. It was a shining building in the shape of a naked Cleopatra, spreading her legs and pinching her left nipple.
“The nipple is the penthouse suite,” Satan laughed.
Another building to the side of it, obviously a brothel, was called Magdalene’s Mansion. There was a billboard posted on the side of the building advertising Bibles for sale! The list of stupefying establishments went on: glitz and glamor to be had at Castle Dracula, rare meats at Hannibal’s Steakhouse and gay abandon in Liberace’s Drinking Palace.
“It’s like Disneyland for adults. Dead, sinning adults,” The Devil said. “You can dine on all seven of the great sins, Lust, Greed, Gluttony, Pride, Sloth, Wrath and even Envy. There’s gambling, sex, killing and torture. Everyone has fun in Smoking Gun. That’s the suburb’s credo.”
“This isn’t what I expected Hell to be like,” I stammered, as I looked at the gaudy streets of Smoking Gun.
“What did you expect?” Satan asked raising a black eyebrow that framed an even blacker eye.
“Well,” I replied, “Hell: suffering, unbearable heat, demons, the flames of damnation. A place where people come to pay for their sins.”
“Ah ha!” Satan boomed. “Now we’re back to it. The purpose of Hell! Most people, like you,” he said, poking me playfully in the chest, “have it all twisted about. They think my job is to make people pay for their wrong-doing on Earth, to punish the evil for their sins. As I was saying before, Hell is more like a jail. Hell was designed by God to help the tainted souls of Earth become cleansed, so they can go on to Heaven. Unfortunately, just like a jail, some of the souls here become institutionalized and don’t want to leave. Instead of expelling their demons, they become them. As for the heat,” he said with a wry smile, “you’re standing in an air conditioned building. It’s a whole lot hotter once you walk outside.”
I stepped back and looked at him, truly realizing for the first time this might not just be a nightmare. It was as if his talk of something as mundane as air-conditioning helped me connect everything he’d been saying with normal existence.
“Finally!” he laughed. “You’re starting to accept this is actually happening. I must admit, it normally takes people a bit longer.”
“So when you say that people become their sins, you mean that a human can turn into a demon?” I asked.
“They can and they do,” he replied, nodding and smiling like it was the most normal thing in the world. “If a person is so insatiable that they will never have enough money or power, then they eventually turn into a Greed Demon, forever bound to Hell to tempt others into a life of voracity. Their skin slowly turns yellow and their eyes green. Ten fingers sprout from their heads, and their noses grow into a pig’s snout. There are demons for every possible sin you can imagine. The idea is that other souls in Hell will see how deformed these demons have become in pursuit of their chosen pleasure, so they will no longer want to commit that particular sin.”
“So, this isn’t the end of the road then? There is hope?” I asked.
“There’s hope for all,” The Devil smiled, “but still there is not salvation for all. As I said, some cannot or will not be cleansed. Some become demons of their vice. While demons are meant to serve as a warning to those who would go down the same path, sometimes they can be very persuasive, and actually talk others into believing that murder or lust will give them the meaning they’ve been searching
for. They recruit souls to become fellow demons of their sin, but I do my best stop that. You know, some of the demons aren’t all that bad. Many even work for me. However, some are the purest evil and extremely powerful.”
“So, some souls don’t ever leave?” I asked.
A sneer ran across his draconian features. “Well, why would you want to leave here?” he snapped. “Aside from the smell of sulphur and the oppressive heat and darkness, this place is actually a lot of fun! You get to do whatever you want, however you want, to whomever you want, for as long as you want!”
“What’s the catch then? Why would you leave at all?” I asked.
The Devil paused. His face clouded over momentarily, like he was recalling a traumatic memory. “Well, there are a few drawbacks,” he admitted slowly. “One is that there is no law here, except jungle law. If you’re weak, you are easy prey for the torturers, thieves and worse. We stop no-one from doing what they want to do, so Hell is governed by the powerful and the ruthless. People do suffer, but at the hands of others, not by my hand.”
I was horrified. “So there is no punishment for the wicked after all. It’s just like in life, where the mean spirited and selfish get what they want.”
“Now wait a second,” The Devil said. “I haven’t finished just yet. There is serious punishment for those who think they can continue their evil ways without judgment. There is the guilt.”
“Guilt?” I scoffed. “Demons and the damned don’t feel guilt! All they feel is hate and anger. They don’t care about what they do, as long as they get what they want.”
The Devil started to really laugh. I was furious. This was no laughing matter. My belief in goodness was being shattered before my eyes, and he was laughing like a boy who’d just seen an enemy stub his toe.
Satan’s laughter cut short. He looked me deep in the eyes with his flaming stare.