Downward Spiral

I didn’t even notice I was in Hell my first year. Everyday life seemed the same, minus one particular detail. Nothing good happened… ever.

I had a secure job, relationship, and life. It fell apart. All of those little doubts I had about myself ate away at me until they were full blown paranoia. Then, it became reality.

My company kept suffering loss after loss, until the problems were eventually pinpointed to being solely my fault. After I lost my job, I lost my fiancé to my best friend, and no one seemed to be on my side. Every person in my life was cold and distant.

Even the little things that didn’t matter were awful. Food was always tasted terrible, my favorite shows were cancelled, and something in my apartment always needed to be repaired. Each day was cold with rainy overcast, and the nights were eerily dark, with no stars or moonlight. There is absolutely no enjoyment in Hell. But, the first year is child’s play compared to the rest. 

Silence

During the second year, I came to two possible conclusions. The first was that I had gone completely insane, and the second was that I was no longer in the same world I was born into.

It started in the morning when I powered up the TV. The morning news was on, but I couldn’t hear anything. I turned the volume up to max, still nothing. I set the remote down, and I couldn’t even hear it hit the table. I started to panic, and immediately assumed I lost my hearing. I spoke aloud, but I was able to hear my voice just fine. 

I walked down to the corner store. Everyone stopped what they were doing, and looked directly at me. Everything froze, like time was standing still. My stomach turned. A sea of people stared in my direction, but their faces were a jumble of features. Eyes, noses, and mouths all swirled in a mess of flesh, hair, and teeth. 

Even if I wanted to speak with one of these monstrosities, I couldn’t. They remained still. Dead silence was everywhere I went, and every person stopped and turned in my direction. Always watching my every move with their misplaced eyeballs.

Hell was studying me, and it only got worse.

Seclusion

If you’ve ever wished you could be in complete seclusion, I’ll be the first to tell you it’s not worth it. One day, out of nowhere, I was completely alone. No jumble-faced people, animals, cars, or life in general. The world was a hollow reminder of what used to be. With no other plan in mind, I started wandering. The depression stated to wear on me. Always alone. I had no idea what was going on or where I was. Eventually, it was too much, and the loneliness weighed me down. I gave up.

I jumped off the tallest building I could find.

I felt the entire impact of the fall. I heard my bones shatter, but death never came. After three agonizing days of lying on the cold, black, asphalt, the excruciating pain started to fade, and my body remained in tact. Even though it should have been completely mangled.

Shadows

The suicide attempt seemed to “accelerate” things. But, I was awarded with one luxury, and I use that term lightly. I could hear sounds again. It wasn’t worth much in an empty world, but nevertheless it had returned. But, like everything in Hell, there was a reason.

My hearing allowed “the shadows” to terrify me on unimaginable levels.

I’m not really sure what these things are, but I can try my best to describe them.

You know that feeling when you are walking in a dark room, or going down a flight of stairs in a creepy basement? The feeling that something is right behind you, so you start moving a little faster to get to the light. Multiply that fear by 100.

I would catch glimpses of them out of the corner of my eye. Tall, black, humanoid figures darting quickly behind buildings or trees. I could feel them getting closer. The creeping paranoia consumed me.

One night, I was taking a shortcut through an apartment complex. The entrance doors were open, and a flickering florescent light partially illuminated the narrow ground-floor hallway. Halfway down the corridor, the lights went out, and darkness washed over me. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up, and I had the unmistakable feeling of something behind me.

I prepared to run, but it was too late. With a high pitched howl, one of the shadows had me. It’s cold, dead, hands wrapped around my arms as it sank its teeth into the top of my skull. The pain was indescribable. I thrashed around in agony as more shadows emerged from the open apartment doors. In my fit of pain and terror, I pulled my head free from the fangs and stumbled to my feet.

I ran for what seemed like hours. I learned quickly that traveling in the evening was no longer an option. I barricade myself in any shelter I could find, every night. The shadows always paced outside my doors, until they would leave each morning as the dull, grey, cloud-covered sunlight drove them off.

Abyss

Eventually, my nomadic lifestyle was impossible to continue. I unlocked the door of the small 2 bedroom house I had been sleeping in, and walked outside. It was raining, it was always raining. Despite all that I had been though, what I saw took me by complete surprise.

The first change was the gates. Black, iron bars had surrounded the neighborhood. They extended from the ground, and rose impossibly high into the sky. I was trapped.

The second thing I saw were the jumble-faced people. They had returned. Dozens of them were lined up on the street in perfectly straight rows. They were different, though. In groups of four, dressed in black robes, they walked hand in hand towards a massive, swimming pool-sized hole in the ground. Without hesitation, a group of four would fall in, and after a few seconds, the next group would follow suit.

I turned around to head back inside the home, but I couldn’t. The iron bars had somehow closed-in and were just a few feet away. I looked back towards the people and saw the bars across the street had moved in closer as well. It was pushing me towards the hole. I panicked and grabbed the bars with both hands and began to shake them. They didn’t budge. I started running the entire perimeter, looking for any way out.

The bars began to move, ripping through earth and concrete, pushing me closer and closer to the dark abyss. By this time, the rows of people were gone. I planted my feet in the ground and began pushing with all my strength. The bars continued to force me closer to the endless hole, despite my efforts.

After a few moments, it was too late. I was right on the edge. I remember clawing at the ground, begging for help. I accepted the inevitable fact that I was going to descend into the darkness. But, just before I fell, a flash of light blinded me. Electric pain filled my chest.

I woke up in the emergency room back on Earth. According to the paramedics, I was only dead for a few seconds. I began rambling about all that I had seen and been through. No one seemed to acknowledge or believe me.

This story is not a lesson. I am not telling you to change your life or be a better person. This is a warning.

If nothing is going well in your life, it might not be coincidence. You may be in Hell.

Whenever I see him on the screen, I feel my fingers clenching. It’s as if they’re practicing the motion for when I squeeze the life from his small body. And it will happen soon. Finally.

I’ve watched the boy for years. Watched him grow from an infant to a toddler to the preteen he is now. He smiles easily. His heart is innocent and carefree. I will make sure it stops beating.

One of my recent breakthroughs took me beyond the viewing screen and allowed me to transport into his room as he slept. I hadn’t perfected my technique to be there physically at that point, but that was coming. Just my consciousness would travel. I floated over his bed and gazed down. My hatred seethed, and, for a moment, I feared he sensed my presence because his eyes flew open and he gasped.

If he did detect me, he couldn’t have known. He probably assumed it was just a bad dream. I watched as his eyelids grew heavy and he drifted off again. My acorporeal self smirked as I pictured those eyes never opening again.

Through these encounters, I’ve missed my wife. The love of my life had been taken from me by the hated creature so blissfully sleeping in his bed. He had no idea what kind of monster he would become in the future. Memories of my beloved’s soft touch flooded my mind as I estimated how many times I could stab the boy through his face before I’d be forced to stop.

Yesterday, I managed to solve the missing part of my experiment. The first few years I was limited to the view screen. A year ago, I conquered the problem of mind movement. Now, finally, I can physically bridge the span of time. My mind and body can cross over. I can stand, strong and powerful, over the murderer in his bed. His strength will be no match for mine. If he sees me and screams, it won’t matter. Help will be too far away.

I write this now as I prepare to make that temporal journey to bring my wife back into the world. I glow with sadistic glee as I imagine how I’ll do it; how I’ll destroy her murderer. Will I strangle him, as I’ve so often fantasized? Will I cut his soft throat? Will I decorate his pillow with smeared clumps of the brain that later made the decisions that annihilated the woman I loved?

All of it is up for grabs. The most important thing is that the boy must die. He cannot, under any circumstances, grow up. In these last moments, the glee has grown bittersweet. When it’s all over, my loved one will have been brought back. Her life can resume as if nothing had ever happened.

She’ll never know, though. She’ll never learn about the sacrifice I’m making. Her death had been an accident – a terrible, careless one by a young scientist too egocentric and arrogant to use caution. But that accident is about to be reversed. In a few seconds, I’ll be going back in time to ensure it will never happen. The thought of her reappearing somewhere, safely, when I’m finished, helps make the prospect of killing the child all the better.

Even though it means my wife will have never known me at all.

Even though it means I will blink out of existence.

It’s time to go. Everything I’ve worked so hard to do is coming to fruition. Should this note remain, let it be the only record of my life after the age of 11 — the age I was murdered by my future self.

I went to visit a friend one day. She had recently dropped out of college and wanted to get as far away from her family and their judgement as possible. She decided to move to a small town practically in the middle of nowhere. This was the kind of town where everybody knows everybody, and everyone knows everything that happens. It had a kind of an eerie feel to it, but from what I’ve gathered through travels, most small towns feel that way.

I arrived to her house after 13 hours of nonstop travel. Driving into the town was odd. The sign said “Welcome” but I didn’t feel as though I was.

As I passed the sign, I felt a chill run down my spine. Strange. I pulled up to the address my friend had given me, slightly confused as to how worn down the house looked since she had told me she fixed it up. It was just past 7pm and it was dark outside. No lights were on inside the house. I pulled the keys out of the ignition and started towards the front door. I rang the bell. Nothing. I waited for a few more minutes, occasionally glancing at the road for any signs of headlights. Nothing. I knocked on the door and rang the bell once more before deciding to go back to wait in my car. I pulled out my phone to text her as I sat down. She responded telling me that she was really sorry and that she had stepped out to go to the store, but would be back shortly and that the door was unlocked if I wanted to go in. I did.

When I opened the door, a strong, musty scent washed over me. Switching on the lights, the dusty interior of the home was revealed. It didn’t seem like anyone had tidied up in quite a while. Being a bit of a neat freak, I looked around for something to clean with. After looking for a few minutes I found what I thought was the storage closet. Maybe there’d be a duster or a mop or a broom or something. I put my hand on the doorknob and instantly pulled away. It burned. I looked down at my palm and it started to blister. Fire. Panicking, I looked around for an oven mitt or a dishtowel so I could open it, and a fire hydrant to put out the fire when I got to it. I found a pot holder and the extinguisher under the sink and prepared to open the door, tying a dishtowel around my mouth and nose to protect me from the fire. I slowly approached the door, extinguisher ready, and turned the doorknob, pulling the door open as quickly as possible and extinguishing the fire.

I stood in the doorway, waiting for the smoke to clear. When it did, I was horrified. The room was metal on all four walls. The inside of the door was as well. The floor was linoleum. That’s not what scared me. What scared me were the bodies. Some chained to the wall, others strapped to what looked like operating tables. Some just lying on the floor. The scene was gruesome. Charred bodies. Some of them still had identifiable features. The fire must have been started recently. All of these people were gagged in one way or another. Some of them with rags, ball gags, bits, socks. A few of them naked. Some clothed in latex. A few of them cut open. Some seemed as though they were still alive. They were. I made eye contact with one of the bodies on the floor. Tears were streaming out of their eyes, their mouth still blocked by a rag. I stood there. Shaking. I tried to speak, but nothing came out. I tried again.

“I’m gonna….I’m gonna call….c-call for help,” I choked out. They blinked at me and nodded, their face contorting in pain. I pulled out my phone and dialed 911. After the call ended, my friend sent me a text.

It read: I’m home. Where are you?

I looked at my phone in shock and slowly walked to look out the front window. Nothing.

I sent her a text: What do you mean? I’m in your house. 47 Walnut Road.

She called me. “I live at 47 Walnut Lane, you dummy,” She chuckled. I didn’t respond. “Luna? Are you okay?” I still didn’t reply. “Hello,” she sounded concerned. I took a shaky, deep breath and looked down at my burnt hand as I saw the red and blue lights flashing.

“I’m gonna have to call you back,” I choked, “I don’t feel so good.”

“What do you-“

I hung up the phone and crumpled to the floor, finally letting out a sob. The police barged in the door.