A/N (kinda long, please read): Hey, guys! Grace here. Now, I had an idea about my other fanfic, "Not Orlando, but Not Uganda," and decided that Kevin should have a straight relationship with a girl he meets in New York (shocking, I know!). I already planned the whole story out, but I came up with this today. This comes later in the story, but I can't wait for that part of the fanfic, so I have to publish it now. It's told in the perspective of Mary O'Keefe, the girl that Kevin meets and falls in love with. She was a Catholic with her husband, Michael, until he died tragically in a car accident. Mary blamed her husband's death on God, and abandoned Him to become an atheist. She abandoned all her old Catholic values as well, so she made a reputation for herself as a whore, and dated/slept with as many men as possible, just to show God that she didn't care about what He thought of her as a person anymore. Then, she meets Kevin, and develops a serious, genuine relationship with him. This is a Hell dream she has after a few months of dating Kevin. PLEASE read and review!
I open my eyes. The thing that runs through my brain immediately is Hell. I'm in a dimly-lit cave, made of red earth, and there are flames. Flames everywhere. I begin toget nervous. I don't like fire.
"Hello," says a menacing voice behind me.
I turn around sharply, and suddenly I am staring at the tallest man I have ever seen. He has to be at least eight feet tall. With a long, lean figure and pale skin, he intimidates me to the extremes. His face is contorted into evil delight, with slight stubble on his cheeks. I cower back at his image.
"Why so scared? Haven't you been here before?" he asks in a sickeningly sweet, condescending tone. I shake my head.
"Welcome to Hell, then. I'm Lucifer. You might have heard of me." He grins, flashing flawless, pearl-white teeth.
I am taken aback by the sight of the devil before me. I try to ask questions, but no words come out of my frightened mouth.
He grins again. "Let's get started, now shall we?" he asks with a chuckle. He doesn't wait for my opinion.
He points to something on my right. I turn to look, and it's Kevin, clad in his typical white shirt, black pants, and tie. His brown hair appearing just like normal, his dark eyes looking at me with a friendly gleam in them.
"Kevin!" I say. He smiles and waves at me.
"You know this man?" Satan says with an evil smile.
"Yes," I reply, keeping my eyes on Kevin. "Kevin Price. He's my…boyfriend." Which is true, but it feels weird saying it out loud to a guy that creeps me out as much as him.
Satan grins again. He likes to do that, I can tell. "Is he? And just how many boyfriends have you had in the past?"
I think. I have to answer this honestly, even though I almost can't bear to say it. It's been my secret for three years. "Um…eighty-seven." I feel like dying.
"Eighty-seven?" The grin is frightening me now. "Well, isn't that interesting? I wonder how you could have lived with yourself all these years."
I want to punch this bastard in his ugly smirking face, but he's way too tall, so I settle for talking to him. "Who do you think you are, telling me I'm a whore?"
"Oh, it's not just me," he says, making his arms into a sweeping gesture. "Look."
I look to where he is indicating, and the sight almost makes me collapse in shock. There, behind Kevin, is a long line of men. All sizes, body types, and appearances.
"How..." I ask Lucifer, "...how did they get here?"
"This is a Hell dream, sweetheart," he replies. "Anything can happen, particularly the things that you've done wrong in the past."
With him saying that, I finally understand. I'm here in my dream because I've been spending so much time with Kevin, I'm sort of adapting some Mormon customs and attributes, like Hell dreams. And by taking one look at Lucifer and Kevin, I know immediately that Kevin is going to be tortured.
"Don't you dare hurt him!" I shout up at Lucifer, with his agitating evil smile.
He chuckles and looks down at me. "Oh, it's not just going to hurt him. You too, of course. Let's begin, sweetheart."
The first man in the long line steps forward. He's tall, and handsome, no doubt, with his blonde hair is cut close to his head and his baby-blue eyes staring at me. But taking a closer look at him, I recognize him as the first boy I ever dated, in high school.
"Christopher?"
"Hi, Mary." His face has a tinge of hate that I didn't previously notice. I begin to become
frightened.
"What...are you doing here, Chris? It's certainly been a while."
"Oh, I'm not here for anything special. Just here to punch your little new boyfriend's brains
out." He takes a violent lurching step towards Kevin, who looks as frightened as a five-year-old who broke his arm falling off a swingset.
Chris reaches out to Kevin and grabs him by his tie. With Kevin at his mercy, he begins to punch him numerous times in the stomach.
"Stop!" I scream. "Chris, no! Stop it! Please!" My begging is useless. He just keeps punching him while I watch, helpless.
I know in my mind that it's a dream, that it's not real, that Kevin is sleeping right now, safe and sound in his little apartment with his friend Arnold. I tell myself this over and over. But it all seems so real.
Finally, after what seems like forever, Chris drops Kevin to the ground. Gasping for breath, Kevin lays motionless for a second, then stands up bravely and approaches the next man in line, whom I recognize to be Steven, my old co-counselor from the summer camp I used to volunteer at. "Steven, don't hurt him!" I cry out to him, but Steven doesn't hear me. Or he does, but ignores me. Steven kicks Kevin in the stomach, which knocks him to the ground, and continues to kick him until Kevin screams in pure pain, with blood streaming from his nose and his mouth.
"No!" I yell, trying to run to Kevin, to hold him, to try to take away his pain, but I can't get more than two feet away. I realize that something is holding me back, like a forcefield or an invisible wall.
"Nice try, sweetheart, but he's gotta get through every person in line before you can talk to him," Lucifer says, confirming my suspicions.
"He's going to die!"
"No, he can't die, actually. He stays alive for each and every torture. Then you can talk to him."
I feel a sobbing fit coming on. "But...you can't just do that to him! I love him, I can't bear to see him in pain!"
Lucifer laughs a cruel laugh. "Oh, you love him, do you?"
"Yes," I reply, sounding braver than I am.
"Well, sweetheart, let's see if those words still hold true when they're done with him."
I think about his words. I then realize that for every man in that line, all eighty-seven of them, I have been attracted to their looks, not their actual personalities. But Kevin's good cheer and friendly demeanor, not just his appearance, keeps me wanting to see him again and again. Lucifer, however, is torturing me in this Hell dream by reminding me how much of a whore I am. And it hurts. No matter how much I try to deny it, it hurts.
I watch through ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty tortures, never allowed to turn away or close my eyes. The memories flash by. Drew, from Notre Dame. Wesley, from my first job. Pete, from the community theatre play. By the time Kevin has been beaten by the sixtieth guy I've dated, someone from college named Bryan, he looks more like a slab of bloody meat than a person. I begin to bargain with Lucifer.
"Please, just let him die. Put him out of his misery! Please, he can't handle this! I love him too much to see him in so much pain!"
Lucifer grins that agitating grin. "They're almost done. Ten more."
I sink to my knees in helplessness, because there's absolutely nothing i can do.
Nothing.
Finally, after three full hours, they're done with him. All the men vanish. And Kevin is left alone.
He can't walk. He can't stand. He can barely even move. I run over to him, and this time Lucifer doesn't stop me.
"Kevin!" I scream. I kneel beside him and take his hand in mine. "Oh, my God, Kevin, just...Oh, God." His whole body is covered in blood, and his white shirt is splotted with red. His clothes are ragged and torn, and his nose is deformed. Scratches adorn his skin, one on his arm that's so deep and bloody, I don't know how he can stand it. One eye is swollen shut, and the other is bloodshot. It reflects pain, raw pain.
I start to sob. A tear falls on his face, running down his cheek, leaving a clean patch of skin where it rolls. "Kevin, this is my fault. I'm...I'm sorry. I abandoned God and his values after my husband died, and now he's punishing me for it...I'm just...I'm so sorry, Kevin."
I kiss his forehead, lay down beside him, and close my eyes.
"I love you, Kevin," I tell him, whether he can hear me or not.
He gasps in reply, and he loses his grip on my hand. It falls limply to his side. I place a hand on his heart. No pulse, no heartbeat, no life.
I wake up in my room with tears streaming down my face, screaming his name.
Tell me what you think in the comments! Again, sorry for the long author's note! Thanks a lot, love you guys!
