Letters From Hades Read online

  The others hung back behind me. I was a step or two ahead of them. And the two lesser Demons remained where they were while their leader closed more of the distance between us, until he loomed directly before me. From on high, he tilted his head to gaze expressionlessly down at the animal on my arm.

  When the Demon spoke, his words were a hissing like the warning of a cobra. Like a cold draft blowing through a tomb. A scratchy, rustling sound…as if dead autumn leaves were being scuffed about by the wind in that tomb. He said, "You have answered your own question. It is an insect, as you are. It is here, as you are. The Creator is not obligated to make plain to you His design. His acts are beyond your comprehension, should He even care to explain them, which He does not."

  With that, the professor put his other claw-like hand on his staff, and brought it down in a blurred black whoosh. That enigmatic design which crested it neatly sliced through my forearm. I saw half my arm drop to my feet, with the mantis still clinging to it. Blood geysered from my remaining stump like water from a fireman’s hose. I stumbled backward, struck my heel against a flagstone, fell heavily onto my back, wailing in agony, tears streaming from my eyes. But even in my blinding nova-blast of pain, I knew better than to ask my fellows for help. They stood watching me, helpless, horrified, and glad it wasn’t them.

  "You need know only what we deem to instruct you. And that is the fact that you are an insect yourself," the towering Demon went on, in that dry rasp.

  To conclude this little impromptu lesson, my teacher raised his bony bare foot and stomped on my severed arm. Crushing the mantis, in so doing. It was an act as mysterious to me as the existence of the mantis itself.

  By the time it was what I took to be night, my right arm had regenerated to the point that I was able to begin this journal. Thank the Creator for small miracles.

  Day 6 (Days 1 - 4).

  Because I began my journal so late, I suppose I should go back at this point and fill in the blanks…begin at the beginning just to get myself quickly caught up to where I am now. Luckily most of it is a blur of pain and fear, anyway. I can’t believe I’m as sane now as I am, considering the panic and desperation I experienced in those first few days. Maybe my mind regenerated the way my flesh and bones do.

  I woke up alone in a tiny room that was covered entirely in white ceramic tiles, even the ceiling and floor. At first, I thought I was in a hospital. After all, I had just propped a shotgun barrel under my chin and blown the top of my head off. When I swallowed, it was blood and teeth and loose gobs of flesh; a goodly portion of my decimated brain slid down my gullet like an oyster on the half shell. But why, if I were in a hospital, did I lie naked on the floor, my blood running toward a steel drain in its center?

  I tried to sit up, but the nuclear explosion of pain was so immense that I fell back onto my side. I heard the burst piñata of my skull splat against the tiles. How could I still be alive?

  Of course, I wasn’t.

  And when a bright steel submarine-type hatch in one wall of the room opened with a hiss of steam, and the first Demon entered my shower stall-like cell, then I knew things were not what I had counted on when I made that teary, self-pitying decision. I thought it would be the last pain I would ever have to suffer; a microsecond of inferno in my skull, then sweet oblivion. It had been hard enough just to face that microsecond. Just to screw up my courage for that. But this…this…how could I face it, especially without much left for a face?

  I couldn’t even scream as a pair of Demons, now, took hold of me. They dragged me out of what I assume was one of many, many points of deposit for souls when they cross over. We each arrive in one of these white coffin-like rooms, alone, before being transferred to the general populace. Butterfly emerged from its chrysalis, "born again" with its new body knitted from the spirit. So why did I still have the material injuries of my suicide?

  "Suicide is a sin," rumbled one of the monsters dragging me, in a growl almost like a snarling dog’s. These creatures were not the ghoulish walking cadavers that are the academic class, but more like hairless baboons with their gray hides branded in spirals like a Maori’s tattoos, their heavy bony faces long and canine, with tusks like a warthog. They were muscular, naked, with fat stubby dicks, but crouched as they were only came to my shoulder in height. Low ranking demons, for menial tasks…simian-like, primitive, at the lower rungs of demonic evolution. Even their bat-like wings, which you would think would make them look regal, were raggedy, scarred, torn with holes in addition to being scarified with more spirals. The spiral is a symbol for eternity.

  They reminded me of the flying monkeys in the movie The Wizard of Oz, but I wasn’t about to tell them that. They beat me enough as it was, for weakly struggling against them as they dragged me along dark, twisty corridors of black metal, lit with hanging bare bulbs. At one point I received a kick that audibly cracked a rib. At least I could cry, finally, blubber pleas and curses. It was, I soon realized, because my lower jaw was growing back.

  Now personally, if I were running Hell, I might consider leaving everyone exactly the way they arrive. Someone who’d perished through cancer or AIDS would remain skeletal, weak, wasted away for all time. A suicide like me would be forced to go about with his skull shattered, horrific in aspect, shunned by the rest of the Damned, always in excruciating pain. But there is more sadism to be had through contrast. The fulfillment of Christmas morning, after all, is nothing without the anticipation of the night before. Waiting to be wounded again…knowing it is inevitable that your healed flesh will be ravaged…beats down the spirit even more, I think. The periods between the suffering, which only seem like breaks, make the periods of suffering more horrible by contrast. Yin feeds yang. Hot is hotter for knowing cold. If I had never healed from my suicide, I might have been able to lose myself forever in the madness of blind pain. But being able to recover, to come back to myself, makes the fear of losing myself again all the more frightening.

  I was brought into a very large room and I mean very large, like Penn Station. There was even a vast window for a ceiling, though many of the panes set in its metal latticework were broken, and hence, here and there on the floor were pools of rained blood. A long queue of naked people, three abreast, was lined up with patrolling Demons half-sauntering, half-skipping like chimps along either side, poking people with spear-like iron pikes if they thought they were screaming too loudly, or about to crumple hopelessly to the ground, or might try to flee out of sheer panic. My escorts hoisted me to my feet and shoved me toward the end of the line. Miraculously, I was able to stay on my feet, my pain having greatly subsided. Though I was caked thickly in my own gore, I tentatively reached up to find that my face was intact and the top of my skull almost entirely fused whole.

  I remembered a line, then, from Elvis Costello: "This is Hell, this is Hell, I am sorry to tell you…"

  As I say, I was in a shock of pain, terror, most of all disbelief…but I do recall that when I reached the head of the line at last, apparently hours later, I was given the clothes I’m wearing now, stuffed in that black backpack or knapsack made from some sort of organ.

  Seated behind a long table at the head of the queue were three specimens of a new type of Demon. They resembled the skeletal teaching rank which I hadn’t as yet encountered, but without the green fire issuing from their heads. Instead, their skulls were immensely swollen, resembling balloons stretched almost translucent. These globe-headed creatures would fix their glowing eyes on each of us in our three advancing lines, and rasp orders to the baboon creatures in some alien language. Were we being cataloged? Categorized? Judged? Or were these clerks of Hell simply instructing the baboons which brand to mark us with?

  For it was then that we were branded; I had been wondering what that red glow was all about, the increasing heat of the air and the sudden anguished cries, but I couldn’t see past the people ahead of me, at first. As my turn arrived I attempted to bolt, but two Demons seized my arms, one of them locking his pit bull’s jaws
onto my neck to hold my head in place as another leering baboon-like monster, with entirely black eyes like the rest of them, turned from an open forge with a glowing brand in both scarred fists. I heard my skin hiss and sizzle when it was pressed to my newly healed forehead. It is the only wound I have received in this place which has not regenerated. An A…not a grade I have received in Avernus University, but standing for "Agnostic". It is my primary crime. Enough to buy my way into Hades.

  We were then herded along a variety of off-branching corridors, toward the unmistakable rumbling and squealing brakes of subway trains. My group emerged into an apparently underground station with walls scaled in black ceramic tiles. When our train pulled in, one poor fool made a dash for the edge of the platform and dove off into the very path of the engine. If only escape were that easy—we would all jump off such a platform like lemmings. I imagine that after we departed, his remnants were shoveled up so that they could be dumped somewhere to reknit.

  The train looked like something out of the 19th century, steam billowing out of multiple stacks, huge gears and pistons turning and churning, its black metal hide streaked with corrosion. There were no windows, however, on the string of cars pulled by the complex engine. When it had shrieked to a halt, jabs from iron pikes urged us on board. It was crowded, and there were no seats, but some of us, myself included, managed to change into our clothing along the ride ahead of us. The rest changed once we got to our destination…Avernus University.

  At the university, my group was taken to what would become our quarters: an immense high-ceilinged room almost as big as the immigration station where we had been branded and broken up for transport. There were benches scattered about, but mostly the room’s inhabitants lay curled on the floor, or squatted against its iron walls, or milled about in small groups. Sobbing echoed against the cavernous ceiling, like a liquid layer of sound collected up there.

  I fell against a wall, slid down it, wrapped my arms around my knees and rocked, and rocked, and rocked. My head was entirely healed, its pain entirely faded, except for the burn of the brand. That was so hot I thought the tears on my cheeks would turn to steam.

  Later on, some of my human comrades came to shave the heads of the newcomers. I suppose the flying monkeys couldn’t be trusted to do it without taking an ear off. Already, on this sixth day, I am growing a stubble of hair back; funny how my hair grows back more slowly than my skull mended itself together. Mostly it was children and women who shaved our heads. Yes, there were children in that great room. I couldn’t bear their higher pitched wails. The cry of a child brings out an instinct in adults; it gets under our skin, it’s an alarm, it makes us want to protect that child, stop its crying (in sick parents, that instinct to silence the crying can be warped into punishing blows). The cries of these children made me jam my thumbs into my ears. I started wailing very loudly myself, reverting to their ranks. My Father must not have those protective instincts.

  The hands of the woman who shaved my head soothed me somewhat, however. Hers was the first gentle touch I had encountered in Hell. She deftly clipped my hair away with shears, then shaved it with a straight razor without using shaving cream. But as rough as the process was, and though it left a dozen streaming nicks, her hands on my head had made me weep with pitiful gratitude. I was too much in shock to ask her what was going on, what had happened to me; all I could do, oddly, was thank her. And she smiled at me, before moving on to the next newcomer. A smile has never looked so beautiful to me, even though the woman was plain, middle-aged, and branded with a J on her forehead.

  I would find out, once my education began, that she and others so branded were Jews. Jews and Muslims are here because they did not accept the martyred Son of the Creator as their only salvation. But because their beliefs are in the same general neighborhood, they’re spared the fullest tortures of the netherworld, are often made into servants and assistants such as these troops who shaved our heads. For those who follow Buddhism, however, Shinto, Wicca and so on, there is no such limited mercy. They’re treated no better than atheists.

  These human workers keep their own heads shorn, but for the rest of us who are only here for a time, I think it’s just another way to break our spirits, to eradicate our sense of individuality, like dressing us entirely in identical uniforms. Like soldiers. Like convicts. We will grow our hair back eventually—some of the students who have been here the longest have full heads of hair—but it’s done for that initial impact.

  Later I watched more of this servant caste sweep the hair up, so that red hair and black hair and gray hair was all pushed together and blended into ugly colorless mounds.

  Over the next few days, school began. Today, on Day Six, I learned that there is no Purgatory, such as Dante wrote about. No Limbo, no gray spot, no in-between. You are either damned or you are not. Yin or yang. There is a Heaven, and there is a Hell, and never the twain shall meet.

  Day 11.

  I’m finding it hard to keep up with writing in this every day. I am too tired, too discouraged, or I can’t find private moments in which to do so. I have to be careful not to be seen by any of those who work for the Demons. One woman stole an apple from a man with an M branded on his forehead (though they don’t need to eat, the human workers are rewarded with humble meals, which they are ordered to eat in front of the rest of us), and he reported the theft to the Demons, who then converged on the woman like a pack of rabid dogs, tearing her apart with their fangs to teach her a lesson about the sins of gluttony.

  She hasn’t finished reconstituting herself yet, and is in pain in addition to having hunger pangs.

  So I’ll do the best I can, writing what I can when I’m able. After all, this place is eternal. If I did indeed write every day, what a great fat book I would need. And why bother, anyway? Who will ever read this? Will I bury it, so that one day when Hell freezes over, it will be found by the children of a more merciful Creator?

  But even when I don’t write in it, I make a point every day of stroking the skin of the book, and whispering words of comfort to that eye. Too bad there isn’t an ear sewn onto the book. Maybe it can fathom my meaning through my touch.

  Today, we received our most shocking lesson yet. Maybe they were waiting for us to be able to absorb it. I thought it was significant enough to record in these pages.

  Today, my class was told that there is no Lucifer. No Satan. There is no Devil.

  There is only the Father. He is the one and only Creator, the master of both Heaven and Hell, the incarnate Yin and Yang. He is the only Satan. If you’re good, He’s also Santa. He is the schizophrenic Lord of all creation and destruction…seemingly with two heads, and only half a heart.

  Day 31.

  I graduated today. I have a degree in futile self-loathing, a masters in useless repentance. After all, it’s not like I can benefit from my lessons. Just a lot of masochism, humiliation, degradation forced upon us, to grind our self-esteem under a cloven hoof.

  Still, I don’t think our education was intended so much to introduce us to the laws and the ways of the netherworld, which are largely unfathomable anyway, but to put the suffering we will endure into the perspective of personal causation. So that we will not all feel like the innocent victims of some horrendous but anonymous tragedy, like an earthquake or flood. So that we will know thoroughly that every pain which lies before us has been earned, deserved, on the most personal of levels. Bought in the currency of the soul.

  This seemingly pointless schooling—in the ultimate theological institute—did achieve one tangible change in me, in that it did convince me of the existence of a deity, which thirty-three years as a mortal hadn’t accomplished. Then again, my first view of a devil accomplished the same thing, without the lectures, the exercises like writing in our books, or cutting similar sentiments in each other’s bare backs with a stylus like an exacto knife. It was hard not to hate the person who was using your back as a blackboard (felt more like a dartboard), but we knew enough to transfer that
hate to our instructors.

  Our graduation culminated in each one of us being crucified, so that we might appreciate the suffering that the Son had undergone on behalf of our sins. Well, I think we’ve paid back that debt now, and then some. You should have seen the rows of crosses, a forest of crosses, in this great iron hall like a jumbo jet hangar we had never been in before. The crosses themselves were of iron, with holes in them for large screws to be inserted in place of nails. A baboon-type of Demon had thrust a pike into the chest of each of us. We all wore crowns woven of barbed wire. My stigmata has healed enough for me to be able to write again, without getting much blood on the page.

  I am a martyr, reborn. I am immortal, like Him. What makes Him so special, now? We are a legion of the resurrected, for we are many.

  I am Prometheus, who stole fire from Heaven…not chained to a rock, but adrift in a kingdom of vultures.

  But you know…perhaps I’m naive about what lies ahead of me, yet I still feel an odd optimism. We have not been assigned to certain circles of Hell (for there are none, at least not in the way Dante envisioned them), exiled to certain specific regions according to the nature of our sins (real or imagined). We have been turned out to find, in a manner of speaking, our own Hells. Just as when college students enter into the scary real world.

  It’s at least an illusion of freedom, isn’t it? At the very least, it feels good leaving Avernus University behind…though it takes the better part of the "day" for me to be far enough away from it to see that sprawling, looming city of a school in its black entirety.

  Many of my classmates went forth in little groups. I don’t blame them, but it isn’t my way. Maybe later I’ll have the yearning for company, but right now I’m still digesting all this, and I prefer to go through that process alone. I did wave goodbye to a few of them, not quite friends, and one man gave me a hug goodbye, tears in his eyes, looking both fearfully hopeful and fearfully fearful at venturing beyond the school’s walls.