Pieces of Glass

by Cenobite

This is a story looking inside the mind of an explorer denying her own existance for the sake of finding the truth. However, she walked through a surreal nighmare and all what she'd believed in broke down to pieces. The main character isn't based on a.o.

I wasn't willing to give up on life. Just on the contrary, I hated the fact life was taken for granted and the short moment from birth to the grave was wasted either in meaningless battles for predominance or transcedentual theatrical act of fictitious relationships and inexisting feelings in order for the actors to justify their egoism and ulterior motives. I was given a chance to walk the earth on purpose and I knew I couldn't dissipate that great gift in living an illusion like the rest of the mannequins: always the same cliche of a movie script, always the same repulsive smiles of glass ...

No, I wanted a different life, something that would make sense. Something beyond oppressive rules set by people convinced in their obviously existing dominion. Something beyond the cyclic reincarnation of the same untrue ideals. Something beyond the limits of the civilization.

Perhaps I've always had it in me- the difficult child who never gets any satisfaction in anything- stereotyped as a lonely ascetic dark person, living behind indestructible walls to defend herself from the noise and all the jabbering. Why, the Hell, not?

What I wanted was simple, and yet unreachable. I wanted to know the truth. I couldn't believe the meaning of life was to float downstream of something preliminarily built by autority and to self- persuade an illusive picture of a perfect existance. No, there was something more than that, far deeper beyond the realms of life and death. Something that great and perfectly created that a simple human brain couldn't handle, such as the matter of eternity and infinity. That's why I went through all kinds of spiritual studies such as religions, mythology and even occultism. Every single one of those suggested different answers and yet so much more questions and discrepancies. So many years wasted in a game of tag between me and the truth, that I realized one lifetime was insultingly short to actually give a chance for one to win that game.

I wanted to see, I wanted to know... I didn't even realized when that kind of idea went through all possible boundaries to transform itself into a maniacal obsession.

At some point I left home, I left my friends and I quit job. Just like that- at a particular point I cut off the bounds I had with the rest of the world.

Nothing else was of importance to me anymore. Only few things left: the fixed idea of finding the truth, desperation, depression and impossible desires. I couldn't quit, I musn't. I defied my right to live in a happy illusion for this. If I had quit, there won't be anything else left, only destructive emptiness...

However, just before the desperation could take my mind, I finally came across something promising and ,nomatter its abstract essence, it was worth the trying. It could had been just a myth, but it was indeed SOMETHING.

The name of Phillip LeMarchand- I knew I had heard this name once when I was far younger, still unawared of the battle I was about to begin. He was a mass murderer who lived in the 18th Century in France, a dark figure of history, one who had reached his knowlegde beyond limits in order to do the impossible at all cost: to raise Hell. Right then I wasn't actually buying this; before I went deeper into religion studies I didn't even believed in the existance of Hell. Later, however, I tolerated the idea of existing of other dimentions, millions of them, subsisting at the same time and space independently one another. Perhaps that was LeMarchand's Hell. I couldn't know for sure. Due to combination of circumstances I came across some indisputable evidence of LeMarchand's work, a priseless collection of documents and reseach, and a single incrusted with symbols box, by a notable psychiatrist called Dr. Philip Channard, who went missing after an unspeakable massacre in his clinic. After I'd read his reseach notes I was starting to belive he had actually found exactly what he was searching. The truth that was my desired goal, perhaps, was even darker that I thought, exactly what made me even more persistent and impatient in my obsession. I finally knew for sure there was a truth out there, one that was REACHABLE and that was waiting for me to discover. My existance finally started to make sense and for the first time in life I felt relevant and I knew what I had to do. To uncover the curtains of illusion and reveal the true form of reality finally gave birth to my passion and my goal wasn't that blurry and abstract anymore. In fact, the TRUTH wanted to be discovered, it just waited for the right soul to do it. And I wanted to be that soul, that will take the right path being no longer lost between the chaotic hurricane of billion souls.

The best thing was, I didn't need to start all over again since Dr. Channard had done most of the work, even if lots of his research was missing, perhaps stolen or even burned, but there still was enough to continue with. Besides, I had lost enough precious time already, so that gave me an incredible impetus. The only thing he couldn't do, was finding the right formula to solve the puzzle, probably he had found someone else to do that for him, but there were no records of that. I found it really fascinating, that all the big answers were locked in a little box. It was just that simple. Like in the Greek mytholgy where all the evil in this world slept inside the Pandora's box and, probably that simple idea was exactly whan had driven LeMarchand to build a little puzzle box where he could hide the answers. All I needed to do was to open that box.

Dr. Channard had lost much resources to examine the puzzle structure, creating and solving a great number of mathematical dependences, but as I could see, the puzzle had its own logic and phisophophy. LeMarchand had cleverly build in more of occult studies than mathematical ones.

First of all, the box was a perfect cube of 3 faces, each of which repeating itself twice: Priapus Intaglio faces, symbolizing a rustic fertility god Priapus , protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia; Amaimon Intaglio faces, symbolizing one of the eight Sub-Princes, described as an Egyptian devil whom Abramelin restrained from working evil from the third hour till noon and from the ninth till evening; and the last ones were the Serat Intaglio faces, standing for the ordeal bridge over which everyone has to pass at the resurrection, according to the Koran. Each side had its own hidden logic and sybols, which I needed to decipher for few years. I knew that only in possessing a complete knowledge of all the symbols, I could find the formula, solve the puzzle and open the gate to the TRUTH.

It wasn't as hard as it seemed, after all. The symbols wanted to be read so they led me through their own logic: first I had to circumscribe all the path on the Amaimon Intaglio face, from the ' floor of Chastisment' to the 'entrance to Afar'. It made a perfect sense, since it described the path of a soul towards its damnation. Next phase was to turn to the Priapus Intaglio face and 'walk' all the way from the 'room of Grievance' to the end of the journey- the 'junction to the other world'. Only in completing the pattern, the box had to open the Schism through the traced four forms of Engineers of the gateway. I knew I was ready and I knew I wouldn't fail. I had waited for this for so long, it felt longer than a lifetime.

I made sure the room was completely isolated: the door was sealed with planks, so as the windows. The only light that could let me see in the dark was the pale illumination of one singe electric bulb, hanged from the ceiling with a cable. And when it swinged, it seemed like the room was swinging with it by the same chaotic lack of rhythm. It was silent, since the building was outside the town, so the loudest noise I could hear was the electric cracking sound of the bulb. And there it was- the box- slightly glimmering in my hands under the artificial light, so cold I felt it like cutting the skin off my palms. My fingers started to move instantly as if they had their own personality. My mind was completely blocked, all I could do was watching my hands playing with the puzzle mechanically, not succumbing to my will. Besides, I was too distracted imagining a strange mechanical melody coming from the box, it was mesmerizing and unreal.

I didn't notice what exactly I had done, but I heard a crack noise from the box and I almost dropped it. The box stayed still for a couple of seconds that seemed like hours. My pulse increased its rhythm and I could feel my heart lifting up in my head, like someone was banging from the inside of my skull with a hammer. Simple process as breathind now seemed harder to be achieved and I started to desperately need air. However, my breath was stopped completely when I heard the loud sound of a great bell. Was it just my imagination? I didn't have the time or the concentration to think, since I realized I had already accidentally dropped the box and it had changed its position. It was no longer a perfect cube, it had rebuilt itself into more complex form now. I heard the bell in my head once again; the sound was so loud that its power seemed to be embodied as a tool of torture that hit my skull and I could feel the warm trickle of blood flowing down my ear. Whatever it was, it was already here ...

' You called us.', one single sentence ended all the noise- the bell sound, the hearth pulse and even the one coming from the disturbed electricity. The complete silence made me feel the time and space had suddenly stopped and the only ones who actually proceeded on existing were me and the 'thing' that said these words. Its voice was loud, deep, bass and indeniably not human; it had the power to incise words into my brain.

I still couldn't see who was talking, since the voice was coming behind my back and I felt too paralized to turn around.

'I did', I finally said. I waited few seconds to calm my breating and asked. ' Who are you?'

I didn't have to wait for an answer. I heard footsteps and I realized there were more than one creature in the room besides me. It was logical they were few, since the voice said that I had called THEM.

' You have prepared well and yet you didn't.'- the same voice, even and emotionless had spoken.' Why don't you have a good look yourself and conjecture who we are.'

I didn't have to turn around anymore, because these figures, whatever they were, passed by me like cold shadows and stopped exactly under the pale electric light. To the level of my eyes, since I was sitting on the floor, I only saw the lowest part of their black leather robes. The clothes were covering their legs entirely. I started to feel the loud drumming rhythm of my heart again, and this time I could recognize it's song. It was FEAR.

I slowly raised my head to look up, though my eyes still strongly refused to focuse on their faces.

Even in my worst projection of a sick imagination, I haven't seen anything like this. I wasn't sure if I had to think of those faces as 'faces' at all, they were more like fragments of unimaginably tortured human souls went through a neverednding nightmare of a monstrous punishment. Were they demons?

The creature that stood in the middle, obviously male, had a completely emotionless face behind its bizarre look; I suggested the voice belonged to him. His whole head was carved like a perfect geometrical plan dividing its surface into some kind of quadratic columns. On each point, where the scarred lines crossed, there was a deeply fixed nail, or a thick pin, probably piercing the skull and going through and inside the brain. The whole head of the creature was covered with those pins and yet he was standing there, ignoring the fact that all of this probably hurt like hell. I assumed he didn't even have the ability to feel pain.

The creature on his left, or at least what was left of it, had something that slightly revealed that it was female. Unlike the poker face of the demon with the pins, her physiognomy was disclosing suffering. Somehow I could read desperation in her eyes, however I could had mistaken. Her lips and lower jaw were entirely removed, so a long pale tongue was hanging from her throat reaching her chest. She couldn't speak, of course, but she produced a faint unpleasant gargling sound and little streams of foamy saliva trickled down her tongue, moistening her clothes. Besides that, she was bold and there were hooks piercing the skin of her upper forehead, tightly stretched back with thin chains, hooked on her back. Strangly, the chains imitated some kind of a 'hair-style'.

The third demon, I couldn't suggest the gender of, looked even more absurd than its companions. Its eyes, nose, ears and, probably, teeth were all removed and the slits were sewed with stictches. The creature was unable to see, hear, speak or smell and that deprivation of all the receprive organs suggested its existance was driven by an instinct or a sixth feeling.

Against any logic, I started to calm down. Perhaps it was the expectation of fear that scared me and not fear itself. Maybe for I second, I even pitied those creatures, whoever- or whatever- they were.

' Any theories that your brilliant mind can give birth to?', said the Lead creature with the pins on his head. No matter his perfect lack of emotions, I could sense a strong sarcasm. For the first time in my life I felt so insignificant and small. Whatever I could say would probably be wrong. Who, the Hell, were they ? Yes, exactly!

' Hell!', I finally answered.' Hell is what you are.'

' Well played, but also cowardly', he was right and that was exactly what slashed my ego. Probably that part in me was stronger than any sensible thought, so I stood up and faced that demon. I wasn't intending to give him the pleasure of watching me from above, while I was sitting on the floor feeling hopless.

' We are the Cenobites', he continued, completely ignoring my act of bravery.

' Cenobites'... I repeated that word in my mind. There was nothing about any Cenobites in Dr. Channard's research, or even if it was, it was probably amongst the papers that were missing. What, in the name of all reason, were the Cenobites? Fallen angels? Tortured souls evolved to demons? Rulers of Hell?

' Not that close.' said the Lead Cenobite and to my horror I realized he was in my mind, like he was standing in the middle of a round gallery hall able to have a good vision of my whole painted mind.' We are the logical result of your world. Nothing more than explorers of true pleasures beyond the limits of your pitiful imagination. Tell me, what was exactly that you expected?'

That was a tricky question. I started to understand how his mind of genius was working. He was nothing more than a brilliant perverted soul- sucking manupulator who was just playing with your mind until he got in charge with your will and drags you down to Hell. An incredibly risky game to play, but I wasn't allowded to lose. Not after everything I've lost for the sake of truth.

' All I ever expected was nothing less than the truth.'

There was a possibility the pale light was playing visual tricks for my eyes, but I thought I saw a slight smile on the Lead Cenobite's emotionless face. Did my seriousness amused the damn bastard? There was something in him that really troubled me. I looked at the other Cenobites. Of course, they were silent, never saying a word, just sitting there with their crippled distorted bodies, perhaps waiting for his orders. Were they once people like me? People, like me who had opened the box and he turned them into his mutilated slaves? Was this exactly he was about to do to me? And, also, what made him waiting? A sick mental masturbation of driving me crazy first? Was he THE DEVIL himself?

Of all, only one thing was unconditionly true- Hell was REAL, and I had found it.

' The truth.' he repeated my last words.' Of course, the truth. Everyone is seeking for more than they could handle, and that's the beauty of it. Pleasure, satisfaction, experience beyond limits. It is exactly that wistful torment, that desire that drives people to search for more. The boundaries set to encircle their existance need to be broken so the truth could be free.'

' I agree.', I didn't lie.

' Do you?', I couldn't understand if the question was rhetorical or not.' Pleasure is what they all seek and pleasure is what they all get. Not your mind, not your hands, it was your DESIRE that called me and I am here to fulfil it.'

There was no time for hesitation. I needed to know the truth, the meaning of it all!

' Show me!'

He obviously didn't need another invitation, because what had supervened was a blackout caused by unimaginable PAIN. I couldn't realize when and how a dozen of chains hooked onto my vertebrae and back side of the skull, piercing my bones deeply, tearing my skin to force their way. It was so sudden, my brain didn't have the time to register it when another group of chains striked my limbs so fast, the hooks unimpededly went through my whole flesh and bone structure as if through a piece of butter and fixed into the walls. I didn't know if the pain was causing me a delusion, but I could swear the room turned upside down and the last thing I knew, I was hanging off the ceiling like a piece of meat, swinging on the chains.

' STOP THIS!', I barely found a strenght to scream, while I was writheing in pain.

' Stop?', his voice contained more of an honest surprise than sarcasm.' Girl, I haven't even started yet...'

I was dreaming. It had to be the worst nightmare in my life, but I couldn't bear the fact it might had been true. I was still screaming since the chains continued striking my already disfigured body, when everything turned dark and silent. If I could ever imagined the Nothingness, that would be it- complete lack of light, colours, sound and life. However, that couldn't had been death, in view of the fact that I was still feeling. I wanted it to end, I wanted to die. That wasn't the TRUTH, it was nothing more than a trickery, a perverted fantasy embodied by this monster who could only bring suffering, but no answers. The idea of the box build by LeMarchand was just a deceit- it opened a door to a nightmarish pain an it all ended with it. No truth, no answers, nothing but physical torture. I hated myself to falling for this, but at least I falled trying. In the end, truth didn't want to be revealed, it just wanted to deceive you.

Suddenly, a flash striked my mind and before my own eyes a hundreds of barely alive misshaped bodies squirmed and whispered shouted themselves horse. Somehow I could sense they were enjoying it. With the second flashlight they were gone, left their bones on the stony ground of a huge labyrinth expanding itself infinitely under my feet. Then there was a huge vibrating rhomboid shadow spreading its anti-energy, consuming the whole matter, so the labyrinth started to collapse and piece by piece degradated in darkness. The majestic shadow started pulsating like a heart and with every throbbing it gave birth to new pieces that were about to form a different labyrinth. With the pieces, new whispering voices appeared, louder and louder. I tried to hear what they said, but another flashlight brought a powerful noice in my ears and I went through another blackout.

The sound stopped and I opened my eyes to notice I was in a room that looked like a cellar. I saw a young beautiful woman with blond hair and full of confusion and regrets bright green eyes. She was holding the box.

' No! Drop it!', my mind was screeming, but when I opened my mouth, not a single sound could come out.

Another flashlight striked my head and in the very next moment, though I was still in the same cellar, I saw a Cenobite with a thin majectic female figure, dressed in black leather. Her cheeks were pierced with a bizarre metal appliance of several very thin pipe- looking bars that stretched the skin of her throat baring her vocal organs from the inside. She was holding a reaping- hook. There was no longer any confusion or any regret in her eyes, turned completely cold and empty. With the pretty blond hair excluded, she was the same girl who held the box earlier. She had finally notices my presence and looked at me, as that look made me shudder. She came closer really slowly, as she knew I had nowhere to run and raised her reaping- hook on the level of my eyes. I could feel the cold metal scratching the soft skin of my lower eyelid; she was doing it really gently as in some kind of a sick game, she had real fun in playing. It happened really fast, the next thing I felt was a sudden burning pain on my cheeks: she had slitted my whole face through my mouth with her weapon of torture and I started to choke with my own blood. She stepped back, watching me with real interest, while scratching her open throat gash with the same blade. And then, another flaslight followed by another blackout.

I found myself spitting blood on the floor of the same room I started the whole thing. The chains and the cenobites were gone, however the silence remained disturbed only the familiar electric sound of the bulb. I instinctly checked my body where the chains were pierced seconds ago and I've noticed huge holes and scars covering my skin. They seemed as they were healed by themselves. Really confused, I also touched my face to realize there was a huge thick scar connecting my ears through the mouth. It meant only one thing- what had happened and what I had seen wasn't just a nightmare. However, it would had taken a lot of time of such deep wounds to heal, so the question was- how long I had been laying unconscious on the floor? I realized I didn't feel any pain, so I stood up and looked around. Fortunately, I really was completely alone in the room, excluding the damn box, which was still there in its opened position. ' Opened position'- did it mean the Cenobites were still here somewhere? I didn't want to know, right in this time my instinct of self-preservation had posessed my whole will and all I wanted to do was escaping that hell damned place. I took a hammer to break the planks that were sealing the door.

In the hurry I forgot to put on shoes, so my feet were slightly bleeding covered with wooden chops. I walked through the hall to find my way out. Initially, I was too distracted to realize the hall was way too long than I originally remembered it. It had too many doors, way more than they were before I had opened the box. When I kept on walking I finally found out the hall wasn't about to end soon, and then I stopped to look around. All I could see was more of the wooden floor infinitely continuing foreward, absorbed by a complete darkess that somehow seemed like slowly moving towards me. I felt a slight puff of cold, accompanied by the same whispering voices I had heard in the labyrinth. I instantly got the horrifying feeling something was coming for me from both sides of the hall. It'd had been a really stupid idea if I proceeded on walking that direction, since it obviously didn't lead to the exit of the building. As it could read my mind, the darkness started coming towards me faster, so I had no other choice but entering one of the hundreds of rooms. I chose the door that was closest to where I was stading and I quickly hid in the room behind it, leaning agains the door on its inner side.

I slowly turned around to check the room, expecting to see another slice of nightmare- like I hadn't had enough of it already- but there was nothing nightmarish to see, at least at first sight. The room was really huge, surrounded by the familiar wooden walls, however, its floor was covered by old dusty mirrors- the dust was so thickly covering them, it stopped the mirrors of revealing any reflection. Also, at the far end of the room there was another mirror, propped up against the wall, and far bigger then the other ones. Was it just my curiousity that made me go there and explore, I didn't care. I just walked through the room and stood in front of and dusted a part of it with my sleeve. In a short second, while I was backing off my hand, I saw the Lead Cenobite's face in the mirror which made my heart stop for a moment, however, the next second I blinked, there was noone else but me in the reflection. It wasn't over. Earlier, the same Cenobite told me that he hadn't even started yet and the worst part was, he had spoken the truth. My mind was completely blocked and I knew no logical solution could lead me out of this bizarre reality, so I decided to just act on instincts. My hand, as it had its own mind, stretched towards the mirror and touched its surface. It felt strange. The surface was pulsing in the rhythm of my heart beat and when my hand still decided to stayed there, the beat felt harder, as the mirror wanted to scatter itself to free its energy from the inside out. I felt my heart was connected with the beat causing some kind of a resonance and then I noticed all the mirrors in the room started pulsing with the same rhythm. When I heard an electric sound, all the mirror surfaces exploded scattering tiny fragments of glass in the air and I instinctly ran out the room, covering my face with one of my hands. I didn't have time to pay attention to neither the sticked glass parts in my skin, or the bood trails I left behind me, because the hall was still there and the darkness surrounded my spot coming faster and faster. The only solution I could think of was to enter the opposite room.

And there it was- the beginning of the true nightmare. Opposing all logic, there was MY room, the home I had left years ago, in dedicating my life of searching the truth of existance. It was exactly the way I left it- almost empty if we excluded the hundreds of old books chaotically laid on shelfs, one bed and a computer, situated on a small table. There was another door in the room that lead to my sister's one. Thinking of my little sister, I thought I heard her voice coming from her room. She was talking on the phone with some of her lousy annoying friends. I wasn't dreaming. It WAS her speaking. I instantly burst into her room, however her voice started to fade. I looked towards the voice and I saw a pale shadow image of her, sitting on her bed, holding the phone with one hand, and a magazine in the other. Perhaps she was reading her friend an article, that was funny, since she was speaking through laughter. The more I was coming closer to her, the more her image faded away with the voice. I sat next to her while she vanished completely and I started crying. The feeling of desperation broke my own limits. I knew I was going crazy.

Suddenly, the door that was leading to the dark hall opened, but the hall wasn't there. Through my tears I managed to see the outside world of my home town- it was gloomy, though there was still a daylight (the existance of which I had entirely forgotten about) and, more importantly, AIR.

I wiped my tears and I quickly walked outside to fill my lungs with precious oxygen I desperately needed. However, the air was leaving a strangle taste in my mouth. I was in an open space, but I could sense the old dusty smell of an abandoned room. And then I noticed: I was standing in the middle of the familiar street I used to play with the other kids when I was little, however there was noone else but me in the entire neighbourhood. The sense of death was flowing in the air- space, the same repulsive silence now seemed like a loud scream of despair.

My common sense couldn't bear this neverending mind-killing nightmare anymore. I took a breath and I looked around, but I wasn't suprised to see not only humans were gone, but also everything that had life in it: bugs, birds, even worms. The trees were dried up and I could swear if I touched one, it'd probably collapse into a pile of dust. It was as a wave of life-sucking breeze that took away the life of this world, leaving only the artificial phisical matter.

I started hearing my own heartbeat again. Through my experience by now, I knew that would lead to another catastrophy. A loud noise of broken glass sobered me up and I raised up my head directly to the windows of the building on my left and then I noticed the same noise came also from my right. All of the windows were familiarly pulsing and started breaking themselves one by one towards me. More pieces of glass were falling fast, meant to hurt. I started running in the narrow street with the idea to escape this trap and go to an open space, but what was hunting me, was faster.

Just before I reached the end of the street, the last pieces of glass crashed before me and against any laws of Physics, the moment of reaching the ground, they slowly started to levitate chaotically forming a surreal thick wall blocking my way out. I stepped back, but I was so exhausted and disoriented, I tripped up and fell on the asphalf on my seat. The wall concentrated its movement in the center and I saw it was forming a surreal hurricane of pieces of glass that stepped out to detach itself from the wall and quickly started to form a tall human figure. Even before its transformation was complete, I already knew who that was. The Lead Cenobite probably got a thing for the dramatic entrances. If I had any strenght left, I'd stand up and start choking him to death with all the anger and hate that diseased my inner self, no matter the fact he would probably kill me first.

' You really did enjoy all of this, didn't you, you filty freak?', I asked, since I had no nerves left to look at his enjoyment hidden beind his emotinless face.

' Now when you speak of it, I did.', against all my expectations, he smiled for a second. A smile, full of some kind of a sick satisfaction. I really wished to have a hammer and break his teeth. ' Though, isn't that the point of it all?'

' Point of what?', I felt an indescribable anger in my heart.' Perhaps for you the whole point is to torture mentally and physically everything you could lay your filthy hands on. But it has nothing to do with any answers I asked for.'

' I DID give you all the answers.', he said calmly.' But I don't remember promising you would like them. What a pity, since you cannot just enjoy the beauty of suffering, your mind is utterly closed to whatever tries to enter.'

' What the HELL are you talking about?', I had the strange feeling we were talking about two completely different things over one and the same topic.' All you did was putting me into a surreal nightmare and driving me CRAZY!'

' I don't see you differently than the last time I saw you. Have you considered the possibility you might had been 'crazy' all along? Or you prefer the easier manner to blame ME for your own mistakes first.'

Had I considered the possibility of being crazy all along, I didn't.

' Is this real?', I asked.' Am I currently in a mental hospital, drugged with pills, entirely halucinating all of this?'

' No, you are not. This is real', he answered emphatically.' This is your long desired TRUTH you asked for. Perhaps it isn't as fancy as you have expected. But it have never meant to be that way.'

I looked around. All I could see was desperation and the absence of life. Complete loneliness that sucked the colours of all that existed. Was I locked inside my own mind?

' Probably.', I had forgotten he could read my mind.' You are indeed locked, but the place is your own hell, embodied by your own mind. It is indeed your OWN truth.'

' No! This can't be it! I sacrificed my whole life in searching for the truth. I had to know the meaning of existance. Are you trying to tell me, that our souls were meant to be alone, separated one another, charging themselves in human bodies in an illusive world, when in the end the only thing that happens is eternal exile? I won't believe that! I won't believe the whole point of the existing of a soul is just suffering. It makes NO SENSE!'

And then his disgusting smile appeared again.

' You are so confused, aren't you? Let me help you in solving that puzzle. All your life you were so full of yourself, convinced of being so much levels above the other humans, such a perfect idealist born like a shiny diamond amongst the dirt of the materialistic ignorant ones, that you have never considered you were walking the wrong path from the very beginning. You know I am not lying, I know you do.', I couldn't distinguish his perfect ability to manipulate facts through his sick mind and pouring them back like a rain of mental pain, from the fact there was indeed truth in what we said. I have always thought of myself as an enlightened, as someone much worthy than the other people, whose life was full of insignificant acts of wasting their precious lifetime. However, what was wrong in the path I've been walking? What's wrong in being idealistic and trying to raise your soul like a phoenix from the ashes of illusive matter.

' I sense you're starting to lead your thoughts into the right direction, however in a wrong way. Idealism. What is idealism? Something so abstract, so unreal, something you've never seen or experienced even a slight amount of and yet you strongly believe in it.'

' What's your point?'

' You're lost in transcedentual expectations. You're so obsessed with the idea of your soul trapped inside your flesh, that you completely renounced its physical existance. In denying your flesh and all the pleasures that's being offered to you, you denied yourself.'

' There is NO flesh!', I finally participated. 'It's all an illusion. How do you explain the fact PAIN is only an idea that happens in our mind. In fact, pain hurts only when we believe in it and our physical bodies are nothing more than another idea.'

' Oh, I see you're quite familiar with the matter of PAIN.', he didn't intend to hide his sacrasm.' However, it is our minds that deceive us. PAIN does happen in our flesh, but it's up to the mind to decide if it's a matter of pleasure, or suffering... or both. There is ONLY flesh and million ways of indulging its desires.'

' Then what is the point of living if I follow your logic? Being hurt?'

' Pleasure. Pure physical pleasure. The only obstacle between you and pleasure, is your mind.'

' I won't buy this!'

' Of course, you don't. You were never ready for this. For all those centuries, people who had opened the box were seeking only one thing. They were oversaturated with the earth pleasures, so they wanted to break the limits and experience even more. But not you. You even wasted your time breaking the code to solve the puzzle instead of letting the puzzle open itself. A person, who had locked her physical true self, who had denied her flesh and who was born with a surgically removed ability of feeling pleasure can never be ready for what the box will offer. It's like you have never believed in the existance of water and yet jumped into the ocean with no hesitation. Too much for your fragile mind to bear. Now face the concequences.'

' Then... what about reincarnation and purifying carma?'

' You have turned to the wrong God for that answer. The truth Leviathan can offer is the truth of FLESH.'

Little by little I've lost all the glass pieces of the crashed mirror of my world. I had finally started to understand the meaning of all these fragments of nightmares. They weren't nightmares- they were me.

I wasn't lost because he had lead me to the wrong street, I was lost because I had found myself on the right one, and it seemed so unknown.

' Now... what will happen to me?', I needed to ask that last question. The truth had a price I knew I had to pay.

' What do you mean? You came here to stay. Forever.'

' Is there another...'

' There is no other way, you've opened the box and that it's an irreversible process. You got what you wanted, so you have time to learn to enjoy it for whole eternity.'

I felt nothing. Not even anger, not even suffering, and that was what scared me the most. The Lead Cenobite had mentally sucked my soul leaving only a pile of flesh. Emptiness.

' Kill me!', I said.

' Stop living in denial.'

And with the last word, he crashed into small pieces of glass and disappeared, leaving me in my own Hell

Oh, Hell does exist- it's your own damn mind.