A Hellish Wait
What is wrong with my eyes? I feel my eyes open and close, but it’s completely dark. There is no light anywhere. There is a rumbling sound coming from somewhere, a sound like the earth is shaking but I cannot feel anything like that. Now there are footsteps? Someone is walking around this place?
-Hello? Hello can you help me?
“Ah yes. Here it is. Unit 12a642, John Bernard, commonly referred to as ‘JB’. Hello sir, I am called Rothbert” said a very chipper person in a British accent.
-Rothbert, are you able to help me, I cannot see?
“It would seem your deficiencies run further than that I’m afraid. You also appear to be mute as well. The eyesight will adjust with use and time. Almost everyone here started out unable to see. Once we leave this chamber you won’t have any trouble seeing, I’m sure of it. As for your inability to speak, that is quite a bit more permanent. I am in an administrative position here which allows a certain number of perks, one being my hearing your thoughts. You will have some tough times communicating until you’ve worked off enough time. But I get ahead of myself. JB, do you know and understand where you are?”
I attempted to look around but my eyes were still not working properly. Turning to my other senses I could hear the rumbling still. It has been a constant noise in the background, not so loud that it forced Rothbert to yell, but certainly enough that he had to speak loudly to be clearly understood. There was a smell that I remember from when I was young. Had to be fire, but a specific type of fire, not a campfire or even a house fire. It smelled like burning matches. Such a strong and bitter smell that wafted throughout the entire space. The air was hot and dry and felt uncomfortable to breathe. None of this truly makes any sense.
-No, I don’t know where I am.
“I regret to inform you JB that you have died. You died on May 16th after several month of battling with cancer. Does that ring any bells?” he asked. Pure shock struck like a blow from every direction. Memories began to flood and take over, receiving the diagnosis from the doctor in Florida, moving in with my brother and his family while I finalize my life, believing that I had accomplished what God had sent me here to fulfill, feeling the life drain out like a leak in the life raft. Which means, that if I am dead, and in a place such as this, I have gone to….”Hell, Yes sir, you are in hell.”
Anger, rage, sorrow, and deep regret filled every inch of me, weakening muscles designed to hold back tears. My mind began racing with all the memories of my life, the pain I may have caused others, all the regrets I carried throughout a life I believed to be mostly good, and the people I loved and would never be with again. Tears streamed down my face and I wailed a soundless cry, which added to the overall torture. Not able to make any sounds, especially when releasing this much pain seemed to undercut the emotional flow. Rothbert could hear it though, and like a seasoned newscaster, he allowed me my time to explore my thoughts while they fired in every direction until they began to wind down. When he began to speak again, he was calm and soothing, his voice pleasant yet subdued as not to energize the emotions I had just quenched.
“I understand your suffering, and hearing your thoughts I am able to tell you good news, the Hell you have grown to know in life is not reality. If you will take a moment to collect yourself, I will explain life here, and the hope you have for the afterlife. Come with me please and I will give you the tour.”
What hope could there possibly be in such a place? I finished my crying and gnashing, cleared the fog that had surrounded the mind and motioned slightly for Rothbert to lead on. “Excellent!” he exclaimed getting back into his chipper camp counselor style attitude. “The very first thing you should know is that everyone here has deformities, ranging from very slight, to complete transformations. The more deformed a soul is, the more sins and evil they have spread across the world of the living. As you can see here, you don’t have much.”
After all the time spent crying and suffering, my eyes were beginning to see details. While everything was still quite dark, I could see Rothbert standing in front of me, in what appeared to be a tiny cell of stone. Everything was slightly red in hue, but he appeared to be a young man in his twenties, with shockingly white hair that stood out amongst all the red and a brilliant dark suit. He was smiling while gesturing to the mirror that hung on the wall only a few feet away. I moved closer, afraid to see my transformation after just reliving my playlist of the worst of life. Still squinting in the darkness, I witnessed the creature in the frame, and was shocked to find few changes. The changes that were significant and large, but seemed to be more inspiring than frightening. My skin had seemed to appear scarred as if I had survived after being burned alive, a long scaly tail had grown out of my back and drug just the diamond pointed tip on the ground, and a pair of dark leather wings sprouted from my shoulders. Instinctively, I flexed the correct muscles and the wings opened and closed a little. The feelings flowing now were conflicting as my sadness waned and excitement grew over having wings.
-I have wings! How is this not much?
“Well, truly this is quite little compared to what we usually find around here. You will see more when we start walking around and I explain how things work here. Come, let me show you.” Rothbert turned on a heel and began walking out of the little nook. He seemed to march very quickly like he was in a perpetual hurry and I felt a struggle to keep up with him. Walking with a tail was obviously a new experience as it had a mind of its own and occasionally one of the wings would open and catch on a wall. The pain of such an occurrence seemed to rip right through me each time it happened. Rothbert however just seemed to flow right along, never really stopping but certainly slowing his pace allowing me to learn my new body. “The purpose of this place, more than any other, is to give a soul the ability to ask for forgiveness, and work off anything that has not yet been forgiven. Some activities in life cannot be forgiven while living, while others were never forgiven because the individual never asked to be. According to your file, you were Catholic in faith, and attended services regularly. And during your life before the battle with cancer began, frequently sought reconciliation for transgressions, which is why there are so little deformities. We are coming up to a catwalk where you will see why I say you have so few.”
Turning a corner from the stone hallway we were in, opened into an enormous cavern which seemed to sprawl on forever. The red glowing seemed to fill the room much more brightly allowing details throughout to be seen much more easily. A stone bridge jutted out against the rock face, turned, and carried along for a distance before re-entering the stone wall again. Rothbert walked out along the pathway, slowing slightly as I took in the cavern and its dwellers. All along the floor, millions of specimens, jostled about as they searched for room from each other. These creatures looked to be the demons that are heard about in stories and fables throughout history and fiction. One creature looked like a chimpanzee with the head of a tyrannosaur, another looked like an alligator walking around on eight human arms. A towering bull with a spiked club of a tail went charging through the crowd, smashing and grinding the beasts below its weighty hooves, stopped by what can only be described as a large mass of flowing fluid.
Rothbert began to speak once again. “This is a common area and a common sight. The majority of the souls in this area are likely to stay here forever. Many of them never asked for forgiveness of their sins and have no desire to clear them while here. It works like this; our souls are tainted and cannot be allowed into paradise, so they come to this place so that we may work them into a clean enough state to gain entry into our heaven. The more deformed one is, the more service they must give to clean themselves. Most souls have no problem working through their transgressions and leave here, this group however, most likely will remain down here forever.”
-How does one work off their sins in a place like this? Do we carve out stone or mine the earth?
“Surely no” he yelled over a particularly piercing screech of an oversized chicken. “Physical toil does little good here. Mostly it comes down to angel duty or administrative type tasks like the one I have. The living have been believing in angels for so long, but they never understand that those angels were actually demon souls. Basically they remain on earth, protecting people as best they can, playing the part of ‘guardian angel’. There are quite a few rules regarding angel duty, and you will be informed of those at a proper time.”
-How long does it usually take to clean a soul?
“These souls here would be near a thousand years of cleansing to become clean enough to move on. Most of them decided to live inside their deformities rather than spend the time ridding them. You on the other hand, have some but not many. I could see maybe ten or twenty years work for you. And with the wings a guardian angel would fit perfectly” he said with a chuckle. “I am very close to being finished, and will be ready to move on here within a couple of months I believe.”
-How long have you been here?
“I died in 1619 as a pirate. I had much to answer for and many years of filth to clean from my soul. Four hundred years I have been here, and will be released to my paradise so soon that my excitement is barely contained” he released between generous smiles and a few happy tears. Four hundred years is so long a time that I couldn’t grasp the idea of it. Raising my children seemed to take forever, how would hundreds of years be? “Come, come, we have another surprise for you JB.” He picked up his pace along the stone walkway and left the cavern once again. We were very clearly headed for a specific place, and Rothbert spoke all the while about life in Hell. He would point out small points of reference like how to navigate the halls and tell stories of angel duty. He remembered helping soldiers in the great world wars and lamented those he was unable to assist. “Mostly I just tried to help people as they were dying. I would give them comfort and ease their pain while they lay bleeding in the dirt” he said with such sorrow that I thought he might start crying.
After a time, Rothbert stopped next to a dark, stone door and faced me. “Often, we will have family members arrive, so we will find as many closely related relatives as possible. Today however, we were only able to find your father. He is just inside here should you like to meet with him.” My heart seemed to lift. He died over ten years ago from a major heart attack, and I never even got to say goodbye to him. I died slowly, and lived out my days saying goodbye to everyone I had met. He died so quickly that no one even knew he had passed for several hours, found by my mother later in the day because she thought he was just sleeping off a cold. Naturally I wished to see him, and Rothbert led us inside. This room appeared like most of the others, stone walls, red hue, void of decoration and visually pleasing items. So the creature standing there seemed to really stand out as it looked like a tree had sprouted inside this strange room. A tree, towering on top of two trunks, and flared twisted and gnarled branches out of what looked like a back and shoulders. Among the branches sat a grotesque skull of an antlered animal like a deer.
My shock and horror amplified as it spoke in my father’s voice. “Hello junior. I am so glad to see you again son.”
Rothbert addressed him in his most chipper voice. “JB has a deformity that has rendered him unable to make sounds, meaning he may not talk directly to you. However, I will be able to relay anything he wishes from his thoughts. As of right now he is working through the shock of your own appearance.”
“Ah yes” the tree skull said. There was no jaw attached to the skull, so while it made sounds, they didn’t look like they came from this strange tree. Every word just seemed to emanate from it and penetrate the space. “It turns out that running two of the largest corporations in the world, and making some of the decisions that were made, had more lasting effects than I anticipated. Many more lives were affected by myself than my lawyers and analysts had even considered and so I will be here a very long time it would seem. When I arrived I had leaves. It is quite strange that the first to be cleansed would be the more enjoyable bits of my appearance.” He chuckled slightly at his misfortune which, coupled with the unseen ques of a smile, or a face, created the most menacing sound to bounce around the stony room.
-How much does he know about our lives after his death?
“Oh quite a bit. As guardian angels, they will frequently check in on those left behind” Rothbert answered aloud.
“I looked in on your mother after I passed as well as you children. Thank you for watching out for her the way that you did. I had no idea that leaving your brother in charge of her retirement would be such a disaster. You and Mick certainly made her last few years much more joyful, especially through her depression and recovery.” Until that point I don’t think I truly believed this was my father. But as he said these words I broke down and cried. I reached out, and hugged my dad for the first time in over ten years. At the time of my death I had lived into my early sixties, but at this moment, I was once again just a boy, holding his father, and I drank it in like the barren desert sands soaking up every drop of water. Rothbert had no need to translate the “I love you” repeating in my thoughts. The fierce hug had made its point.
After a time I untangled myself from the branches, and I began the longest conversation I have ever had with my father. Through Rothbert we talked at length about our lives before and after his death. I learned all about the guardian angels from this conversation because both Rothbert and my father had been doing this for a long time, and both were very willing to share their experiences. I learned that my mother was in hell for a short while, and has already passed over to paradise. After what seemed to be hours or maybe even days of conversing pleasantly, Rothbert dismissed Senior, and we continued the remainder of my hellish tour. Rothbert finished the tour in front of what looked to be a long ticket counter with dozens of clerks waiting to assist the masses of souls.
“This is where one must sign up for the guardian angel program. This is not required, and it is not the only way to cleanse the soul to leave, however it is the best and most utilized program available, especially for the newly deceased. If you are uninterested in putting forth the effort to leave here, you may skip the lines and head straight out for the cavern area. You have such little time to work away, I do hope you choose to purify.” With this small bit of advice, he firmly grasped my hand and gave a gentle shake, smiled brilliantly, and left. Immediately I stepped in line right behind a young lady who appeared to have several characteristics of a cartoon dog. She had floppy cartoon ears, a short snout, and little paws for hands and feet. After my time with Rothbert and my father, Hell seemed more amusing than the worst possible afterlife I could imagine.
After two years of angel duty, I had saved children from near certain death from falling out of trees, assisted elderly people safely swallow dry medications that would otherwise choke them to death, and frightened as many cats as possible because somehow cats know when we angels are around. What I didn’t truly learn from the tour my first day with Rothbert, is that the torture everyone receives is not some physical lashing. There are no slave masters burning souls with cosmic energy or continually ripping apart one’s body, only to have it regrow the next day. The true torture comes from watching the living, especially those that were loved ones before death. Some handle their lives with relative ease, grieving the loss, learning and recovering, and accepting the hole that was left behind. Others never really recover from a loss like the death of a spouse, and are keen to follow behind the deceased. My wife was one of those people. I loved her deeply, and she was a shining gem of a person in a field of lifeless stones. Her smile could lift up the mood of an entire room when we would enter. Everyone was enamored with her and would go to great lengths to make sure she was pleased in life. She was hurt very hard by the battle with cancer, my refusal to fight for my life, and eventual death. Sometime during that year she turned to medication to assist her with holding her emotions down. When I died, she could no longer hold back the addiction that had woven itself through her body. Her life went from a beautiful socialite in the upper crust of society, to begging for change to pay for the new habit. I always did what I could as an angel to help her, from dropping clothing down from balconies to warm her or sterilizing her needles before she used them, even blowing out a vein from time to time so she wouldn’t get a full dose from the needle. For two years I was tortured as she broke herself again and again. Until she broke her final time. Laying in an ally, despite all the help I could give to her, she overdosed and died. I was equally tortured and relieved at the passing. Having witnessed her final years, I knew that we would at least be together for a time. I was excited to be with my love again, to hear her brilliant laughter, and be challenged by her amazing wit, even in hell, for all eternity. Just as my father had been waiting, I waited in a small room behind a great stone door. After two years the only soul cleansing I had accomplished was the return of speech. No longer was a translator required and I seemed to bustle at the idea of a conversation with my late wife. When they finally arrived, the horror that stood there was so shocking and breathtaking, I couldn’t believe my eyes. She looked to be a giant black frog that stood upright. Horns erupted from the head and fangs dripped hot saliva on the floor. Sores covered her body and oozed a clear fluid that somehow reabsorbed back into her skin. Despite the transformation, surprise was written in her buggy frog eyes, followed by shame and silent tears.
“How can this be? How evil a life has she led that she be forced into this deep of a transformation? How long about does she have here?” I asked her guide in rapid succession.
“Well JB, as you are well aware, her overall lapse into the depths of the drug realm caused quite a bit of suffering to people, including several deaths. Those deaths were not intended, but they were the result of her actions, not to mention the number of other sins of the world she committed. While they seemed small, they built up over those two years. It is estimated that she will be working for over three hundred years, but we have discussed this already. Her shame has been too great, she will not cleanse herself” the guide said in a very matter-of-fact manner. My own torture began once again. Frustration and sorrow cleared away any excitement I had been feeling, and I felt as though my soul was being hollowed out at the thought of this perfect and wonderful woman, giving up on us, on me. I wanted to plead and beg her to change her mind, to take whatever she could and clean herself so we may be in paradise together. Yet, at that point in time, I knew there was no convincing her. Maybe after some time she might eventually be ready to try, but not right then. So I did the only thing possible for someone loved so deeply.
“I want to take on her time” I shouted at the guide. “I pledge to take on her transgressions as my own and take full responsibility for them.”
“JB, I’m sorry, but I don’t beli…” she began in a pandering tone of voice. Yet, somehow I had stumbled onto the correct phrase, because every bone in my body began to sear white hot as they deformed and changed. Through the pain I witnessed the black frog melt like hot wax before the burning flame that I had become. Everything for which she would be punished was transferring and changing my figure into the more gruesome, and leaving her the perfect soul she had been. When it appeared that every bit of filth had evaporated from her soul, and latched onto mine, a rather large pop and a poof of smoke resounded and left the guide and myself alone in the room. My most beloved and precious wife, was gone, and sent to paradise. I had taken on her life misdeeds, and as such, transformed fully into a slick black dragon, complete with a long snaking neck and flickering, forked tongue. “OH MY! OH MY!” the guide shouted as she ran out of the room. I could hear her running down a corridor shouting to tell someone else what had just occurred.
“Because of that day, I will never see the woman I love with so much passion again, and I ache constantly with how much I miss her. I would see her off to paradise everyday if I had to, but my sorrow fills me dearly.”
“That’s a crazy story dragon man” said the young lady standing on the stone outcropping overlooking the main cavern area. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties and quite lovely save for the many tentacles that sprouted from all over her skin. “How long ago was this story, or how long have you been here?”
“Well little one, I’ve been sitting right here for nearly three hundred years and being the best guardian angel I could possibly have become.”
“WOW! So, uh, will you take on my filth, and let me go to paradise?” she asked in the most humbled tone she could muster.
“My dear, I already have begun. And just like the rest of the inhabitants that used to reside in these caverns, you too will see paradise when I have finished.” A look of amazement crossed her face as she realized that her hideous suit of grime, that looked much like an evil octopus creature, had nearly finished fading. She wiggled her fingers and checked her legs to make sure she truly had transformed back into the young lady she remembered. Just when she looked up and began to smile, a cloud of smoke enveloped her body, and sent her off to the Promised Land.