Introduction
Let me just start, by saying that I'm not an evil person by nature. No, I'm really not. Evil, true evil I mean, is very rare. And I'm not it. If I was to describe myself as anything then it would be selfish. And everyone is selfish at one point or another. I'm also heavily convinced of my own god complex. Selfish is only a few steps away from egotistical after all. And that's another thing. I never used to believe in god. Heaven, hell, purgatory, body and blood of Christ, take it somewhere else. To me it was one of life's great conspiracies. The great fallacy concocted to keep people like Joe Bloggs, John Doe, Smith and Jones in line. Everyday people, like you, like me, like a billion other people from one side of the world to the other. I mean nobody is likely to step out of line under the constant threat of eternal torment. Eternal torment is a big deal. It's a big threat. I know a lot of gamblers, including myself, and even we'd be hesitant to play a game with stakes that high.
But when you believe that the game is one big lie in the first place it becomes easier on your conscience to see how far you can push the envelope. And I really enjoyed pushing the envelope. Everyone is good at something, and it just so happens that I was naturally talented at being a criminal. That doesn't mean that I'm going back on what I said earlier. Being a criminal, at least in my opinion is not the same thing as being evil. I mean look at Al Capone. It's hard to believe, and I'm certainly no exception to that. I almost didn't believe it when I learned it in school, but Capone, the big bad Capone! The man behind the Valentine's Day Massacre sent flowers to the widows of everyone he'd killed. And when he accidentally shot a woman, he paid for her medical bills, and the bills for her children.
I think that's what got me into being a criminal. The style. The leather. The machismo. I wasn't anywhere near Capone standards of course. It's hard to top that, and it was a different time and place. I can say though, that I was dedicated, professional and above all I tried to have style. I was polite, I was efficient, and I was dependable. I was however, not efficient enough. Not dependable enough. Not dedicated nearly enough. And that's how I ended up dead.
You probably just rolled your eyes. Call me crazy if you want, call me an attention seeking liar, call me anything you want, but I can remember the day I pitched backwards into that dark hole with a bullet in my brain like it was yesterday. I remember looking at my body down in that hole as the shooter took up the shovel from the back of his sedan and started filling in the impromptu grave with practised movements. I knew him. He was one of mine. One of my contacts. I used to pay him a few grand sterling a month, along with a few of the pastries he liked to supply me with information on the local police. He was the brother of a Detective Inspector.
The first grave he'd ever dug was for one of my victims. I scowled down at the back of his neck. He was a small man. Shorter than my five foot eleven. I reached out and tried to grasp his neck. My hand passed right through like he was made of mist. Or I was. Somewhere inside my chest I felt the beginnings of a scream of rage, but I reigned it in. No point now. I straightened the suit I was wearing, frowning at the familiar feel of the material. It wasn't real. The real suit was down in the hole with my body. I sighed heavily. It was a very nice suit. I couldn't move for shit in it, one of the reasons why it had been so easy to get the drop on me. It was hard to fight back when you couldn't lift your hands above your head without choking yourself with your own lapels.
"How the hell did Capone manage all those years," I muttered, "Last time I wear a bloody suit."
"Somehow, I don't think that's going to be an issue."
I froze. That….was not a normal voice. It sent Goosebumps up by non-existent spine. It ricocheted around my brain in much the same way that the bullet had. And even though a deep part of myself understood what the voice had said, the rest of myself couldn't comprehend it at all. I turned slowly. I don't know what I expected to see. Big red demon with horns? An old man in a black suit like an undertaker? Maybe even the more traditional grim reaper. I wasn't even sure what I was seeing. It was wrong. Just plain wrong in much the same way as some of those Lovecraftian horrors you hear about in Cthulhu mythos. Twisted, dark, tentacles. It stood out from its surroundings like a bad Photoshop. This thing did not belong.
No matter how hard I tried I couldn't look away. My eyes were glued to the nightmare as it floated, walked, and wobbled towards me all at once. "I take it I'm not going to the good place then?"
Don't mistake that as bravado in the face of death. I was terrified, and I knew instinctively that this thing could feel my fear. If I had still been in possession of a bladder I would have pissed myself. Saying something glib and off-the-cuff was just my way of dealing with extreme and all-consuming fear. As it was, my words were barely a whisper.
Then the thing reached out with a tentacle and lifted me into the air. Behind me, I could still hear the Inspectors brother filling in my grave. "Help," I choked out, trying to get his attention. He had the Browning High Power he'd used to put that bullet in my head. If I could gain his attention somehow, maybe he could help! Maybe he could distract the thing so I could get away. Silly thing to hope for, right? This thing was probably just as incapable of being perceived by the living as I was. Grasping at straws I guess. Guess they were made of mist too, because none of them helped.
Suddenly, the ground started to crumble underneath me. It crumbled, fell away slowly to reveal another pit. This one was dark, but not in the same way as the darkness of the pit my body had been dumped in. This was so dark it almost looked solid. I would have believed it was solid as well, if the other things hadn't taken a peak out to welcome the newest resident. More of the Cthulhu lookalikes, and bleached white sunken faces of other damned souls. Tentacles and stick thin arms reaching out to welcome me into their fold. I screamed at the Inspectors brother, asking him, God, my mother, his mother and anyone else I could think of for help. I looked down into the Pit, The Pit, the eternal torment and depths of Hell itself, and into the sunken eyes of the damned. I didn't find malice, or some sort of hellish anger directed at me. I found a desperate plea. They were desperate to escape. And they were looking at me with panic in their dull eyes. Help us!
Then I felt the tentacle holding me release its burden, and I fell, my tie streaming out above me. I fell onto the sea of hands and tentacles. The hands tried desperately to escape, pulling at me to try and gain leverage. The tentacles however, were having none of it. They clamped down on them and me, and pulled down. The darkness closed in around us, and I screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
I'm not entirely sure how long I was down there. It felt like an eternity. But an eternity is an eternity, its forever. So it couldn't have been. You and I both know that, because if it had been an eternity, I wouldn't be writing this, and you wouldn't be reading.
What was hell like? Well, not what I was expecting. You'd expect fire, brimstone, sulphur? Whips, knives and razor wire? No. The best way I can describe it is a maze. Not a three dimensional one either. It was confusing, impossible and just plain unsettling. And around every corner, terrifying things lurked waiting to drag you away and torture you until you couldn't speak properly. Not that speaking mattered down there. That place twisted everything. The sounds coming out of your mouth were never the ones you intended. None of them made sense. It was a realm of fear, pain and regret. I can't count the number of times I prayed. The number of times I begged for some kind of forgiveness.
I never forgot what being alive was like however. Some of the others did. I didn't know their names, and I suspect that neither did they. They just lost a part of themselves. Down there in the darkness of the Pit where names couldn't be spoken to one another. They ceased to matter. Drifted away along with your sanity. Me? Sometimes I had to think for a bit, but I still remembered in the end. Always kept alive the hope, that there was a hope.
Then….it happened. I was lost in the maze, dodging the things in a futile attempt to have a few minutes of reprieve. Or what I thought were minutes. No concept of time left. I saw…the most glorious thing in the world. It was the gate!
The one I'd come in through. Or one very similar. I did what any former criminal would do. I leapt at it, and started feeling around. I'd cracked safes before. I'd cracked doors and vaults. But there was nothing. No keyhole. No frame. No tumbler. Nothing to signify that it was a door at all. But I just knew that it was. Something about it was so familiar somehow! I began punching it. Hard enough that it would have broken my bones if I wasn't already very aware that nothing that existed in this place was physical in nature. It was all weird, but my body was buried in a hole somewhere in the UK. I couldn't really get hurt here, I just felt the pain. And the pain of slamming my non-fist into a section of non-door was not half as bad as the pain those things could inflict.
I hammered and hammered, hoping that something would give. I could hear the things, attracted by the twisted sounds of my futile escape attempt. Or at least I thought it was futile. That was until I, hope against hope, felt something give. I felt progress. I sped up, and put more power behind my blows. Then it gave way entirely. I fell forwards, through the door.
And suddenly I was surrounded by light. Voices and sensations I hadn't felt for ages upon ages. I saw faces, and doctor's coats. I saw a woman's face, staring down at me in exhaustion and happiness. I could feel cool air on my small body, and the untwisted sound of what seemed like Japanese. And childlike laughter. The woman's eyes had gone wide. What was she looking so surprised about? It was beautiful sure, to hear a child laughing after so long in the Pit. So pure, so innocent. Then I realised. It was me. I was the child laughing. I could feel the twang of my new vocal cords. And I was laughing joyously. It was finally at an end. After so much suffering and pain, I was free. I'm out! Eat that hellspawn! Stephen Aldridge is OUT!
