Hello Darkness

My opinion, this was Hell. I looked down the hill, watching the shadows of the sparse fir trees reaching up to me, climbing the grassy knoll. The warm glow of the sun infected the ethos, as if decrying my conjecture. I held firm; this was an old trick of Hell. So pleasant and sweet it would be, entreating my pleasure, but I did not forget what the setting sun meant, what darkness entailed.

Before Hell, I had some notion that pain would end at death. Funny thing, to cure death without curing pain. I looked to the immortal evergreens. Season through season their green needles grow, never tasting the wantonness inflicting their brethren.

Placing my hand on the rough bark of the closest tree, I press my soft palm into its unremitting skin. How many rings, I wondered, did it have? How many years were there to count? Were someone to count my rings, for men have rings—we have signs of our ages, faces wrinkled and smooth, backs tall and bent—what would my ring age be? Eighteen? Twenty?

And yet of the years I’ve lost count. Seventy? Eighty? It has been so long. I sigh as the hours fly by, as the warm glow gives way to a cold chill. The twilight world of long stretched shadows covers the land like a black blanket, a web-work of darkness. Hell is at the door now.

Halfway up the tree I decide is high enough, more than enough. It’s curiosity really, that makes me ascend even to this height, and curiosity driving me to go on higher still. Unsatisfied, I keep climbing, feeling the thinning branches bow under my weight. Little matter, I have fallen into pits deeper than this tree was tall.

You can’t give up. No, you’re not listening. I wasn’t trying to motivate you, telling you don’t give up, I mean that you can’t give up. I did fall into a pit, I was there a hundred days before my legs healed. I ran out of food in a week, but starving never starved. Even after the shattered bones of my legs stitched themselves back together, I couldn’t climb those moss covered walls that formed my prison. But every day I got a little higher and a little higher. I’m an excellent climber now.

Balancing myself on the wavering treetop, I put my binoculars to my eyes. Any moment now, now that the sun has set, you’ll see why I say this is Hell. I suppose there has been some sort of leniency in my case, for my torment, though eternal, is spared the fullness of depravity. But I still witness the ultimate degradation of Hell’s denizens.

There’s one now, look you. Look upon the rotting corpse that never dies. It starves, it decays, but it has fallen into a pit with no bottom. Madness grips them in the end. I know not if the disease affects their brains, or if the ever growing torment simply demolishes their minds. Whatever means Hell has, it utilizes.

The shambler sways from side to side, drawing ever closer to my tree. The tattered dress suggests it was once a she, though there was always the other possibility. I used to put them out of their misery, called it my purpose, but then I learned the truth.

In my pit I had a companion, one of them. We were both pretty bad after falling in, broken. But I crawled over, and taking a rock, bashed the snarling monster’s brains in. Once its body stilled, as so many had before, I sat back and waited to heal. Then one morning it woke up. The caved in skull, still dented by my hand, was bleeding a sickly dark ooze. I heard its rejuvenated groaning.

They were as immortal as I. Every week I would take my rock and destroy its head, but still it returned. Named him, only one I ever named, Sid. “Hello Sid,” I’d say when he’d renew his moaning tones. “Now back to bed,” I’d joke. “Back to bed,” I’d say with every swing of the stone. I left Sid in that pit, I climbed out and left him there alone with no one to put him to sleep. What terrifies me is that I miss him; that I dream of him; that I find myself talking to him even now. His rotting broken face is ever before my eyes, his snarls ever in my ears.

Below she adds her voice to Sid’s. Growling at me, they make their entreaties. Earlier, back when I was really the under twenty that my body resembles, they would talk to you. It was funny, the things you said: Come here; I want to talk; Just a moment; Slow down.

I remember so plainly running through the snow. At every footfall the compacted ice threatened to resend my step and let me fall helpless into the cold. It would have mattered little: I didn’t yet know I was in Hell. I ran through my little home town as you all followed in your jerking uneasy gait. Arms stretched out of nowhere, curling fingers hooking onto any scrap of clothing they touched.

I heard all your voices, calling in desynchronized garble, shouting after me to stay. The razor cold made each desperate breath taste of blood. Finally, one of you did get a good enough hold. My running feet found no traction, but momentum carried them forward. Anchored at my shoulder, I watched my spindly legs flying out into the bright white winter sky.

I came crashing down, my head striking the exposed pavement of the well-traversed main road. I remember being preoccupied with the cold as your teeth and hands tore at my coat, then my shirt, and my flesh. As each layer was peeled off, I felt winter’s breath reach deeper and deeper into my bones.

There are more shamblers climbing the hill now. That one in the dress has found my tree. Staring up at me with faded grey eyes, her mouth opening and closing like a fish, she stretches her rotting arms towards me. It’s as if she wants my embraces, as if her soul and body were possessed of a passion for me.

Putting her and the others out of my mind, I turn my binoculars toward the now darkened western sky. I know it’s there, and yet my stomach tightens with anticipation waiting for that flash. Do I dare look away a moment, a quick check of my watch? My contorting gut struggles against these anxious terrors. Finally, I find its faint silhouette against the black sky, an old radio tower.

Half eaten, my frozen blood mixing with the surrounding snow, I lay paralyzed in agony. For three months I had held up, watching the town through my window, and the world through the television. No answers, no slow spreading plague like the movies: One day the world was suddenly half filled with people who wanted to eat the other half. Then finally, on the same day no less, the power failed, and I was out of food.

I didn’t know if there was anyone left in my town, if there was anyone I could go to for help, but I was hungry, cold, and it was the middle of winter. Waiting for those few precious hours of sunlight, I broke from my hiding place, scampering like a rat toward the grocery store. I was already used to their photophobia, planning on it. But you see, they were hungry too. Before I had made it out of the alley, they started calling.

And that’s how I found out I was in Hell. I waited to die, or to turn into one of them, but there was no release. The snow fell, burying me that winter. The snow melted, and from my icy cocoon I emerged whole. It wasn’t long after that when I met her.