I woke up in Hell. I felt as if I was strung up by my veins and arteries, transparent, the rest of my body aching as blood pounded through it at a thousand miles an hour. My heart was an animal, running endlessly through the forest of my body and ripping me into pieces. It rang in my ears and my brain and my soul, and I wanted to tear it out and throw it on the ground. But when I tried to move my hands, I realized they were cuffed to a web of chains.
I screamed. I screamed for my life, for my soul, until my throat was mangled and torn and bleeding. I couldn't let out anything more than a whine, and I was choking on my own blood. One more part of me was ruined. Every time I swallowed, my esophagus filled with blood even more. I sat there, strung up and gagging, but I just couldn't die because I was already dead.
The cuffs around my wrists dug into my flesh, burning and itching and swelling with blood. There was nothing below me but hellfire, and nothing above but darkness as far as I could see. I would be limp, unsupported, but the chains pulled me taut, strangling my lungs and making my legs burn like the very flames below me. My sides ached, and my whole body was slick with sweat. My face was wet with sweat and blood and tears, and my mind was both dazed and on overdrive.
Just days before, I didn't really think I deserved to be down here. Sure, I killed people- things- but I wasn't a killer. I stole, but I wasn't a thief. I lied, but... I wasn't really a liar, was I? I didn't used to think so. But now some part of me thinks that...maybe it didn't take a crossroad deal to damn me. Maybe this is what I deserved all along.
The air was filled with the smell of blood and rust, and I could hear thousands of people screaming, yelling, sobbing. I couldn't see any, but their voices echoed in my ears and almost drove me insane. Some of the voices, the loudest and the closest, were sickeningly familiar. I had never heard my father scream before.
You hear something new every day.