Stuck in Hell

I am not a believer in the supernatural, nor the divine. Though I tried some magic ritual revolving around a magic pill with my sister when she was dealing with her leukemia, ironically after that she’s started getting better. Anyway, I don’t believe there is anything beyond this existence. Once you die, that’s it. No more chances, no eternal suffering or endless bliss until the end of time. Once the figurative “game over” tagline floats before your eyes; you’re out of the game for good. I‘ve known this much throughout my entire life. I've also been dead, well, brain dead for two minutes. I‘ve nearly drowned during a trip into the ocean. Now, I experienced a near-death experience as a result of my anoxic brain injury. I suppose they can feel a kind of different when you know they are just in your head. My NDE wasn’t exactly pleasant; and it’s not like I‘ve been an overly pessimistic person or anything. I don’t really know why I saw those things. I don’t come from a hell fearing religious family. The whole concept of a fiery domain filled to the brim with fire and suffering wasn’t really occupying space in my mind. That wasn’t even what I saw when I was oxygen-deprived. Anyway, I have to admit that I‘ve changed my outlook on life (kind of obvious, after almost dying) and on myself as a person, or rather on the human experience.

It all started with me falling out of the cruise ship and smacking my head on my way into the water. Once I fell into the ocean, I felt everything turning and twisting in unnatural angles around me. I was completely disorientated, robbed of my ability to navigate my body around and swim. My vision was blurry at best at that moment, and my insides were turning the last thing I remember before being completely submerged is the screams of people coming from above and a wave making its way towards me.

Next thing I know, I'm weightless and sinking. I am pretty sure my eyes were closed because I couldn’t really see anything. I was feeling increasingly light-headed, but I guess being concussed annulled my survival instincts. I was just letting myself sink like a rock. I was eerily calm at that moment. I think I knew I was done for, but I didn’t resist the notion. Excuse my lack of memory on the matter, brain damage tends to do this.

Everything was quiet and dark, pleasantly so, for the longest moments, it’s like a part of me was still trying to stay afloat, mentally that is, but the rest of me was gone and that's probably why my perceived passage of time slowed down so much. As I was sinking towards the ocean floor, I slowly began to sense a warm feeling emanating from beneath me. It felt weird but somewhat welcoming, I attempted to open my eyes, but couldn’t. I knew I should’ve been worried, but I wasn’t, the calmness persistent, and with it came a bright reddish light from below me.

The next thing I know, the light is above me, and the back of my head started throbbing something awful; as if someone was trying to pull out my skull through the pores of my scalp. I became so bad I thought I was going to hurl the contents of my guts and swallow in lethal amounts of water. My eyes shot open and much to my surprise, or lack thereof, actually. I was in a different place. I wasn’t underwater anymore, that much I knew. Other than that, I had zero ideas as to where I‘ve been.

I was floating upside down above some sort of wavy sickly green surface riddled with trees that looked like they were made up of hollowed out bones. There were no leaves to speak of, though after a few moments I began to notice something on these trees; there were naked corpses attached to their branches, all of them twitching and twisting as they swayed in the wind.

The sky above me had a disgusting reddish-orange tint to it, and everything seemed kind of still and lifeless, that includes me. I didn’t really feel anything, even though deep down inside I know I should’ve felt something. I was just kind of floating there, not resisting the almighty current of the river of destiny.

Everything was dead silent, at the beginning at least. After a while, I’ve seen something fly by me. Something ugly and unnatural; a beast that had the appearance of a mutated gigantic bat with no hair and a face disturbingly similar to that of a human. It let out an ear-piercing shriek and descended onto one of the bony trees and began eating away at one of the corpses. It quickly turned out that it wasn’t a corpse but a rather lively human or humanoid thing. I probably won’t ever its screams as the beast tore through its body. The screams filled my ears and soon enough it became clear that this occurrence was pretty common in that place. I was just oblivious to it up to that point.

The screaming would only get worse from there on, I wasn’t really bothered by it, however, somehow.

I mentioned the experience made me change my outlook on things, that’s one of those things that still bothers me to this day; how could I just observe while people, sentient beings are being torn to shreds and feel nothing?

I was just floating there, seemingly aimlessly.

I don’t remember all the details of the ordeal, but at some point, I was floating above a field that looked like it was taken straight out of a corrupted negative photograph. The grass was black, the rocks neon green and there were guts and other animal parts strewn about all over the field. In the center of it, all was another human, once more naked, and it was surrounded by a pack of other humans; these were somewhat oddly shaped. Their heads elongated like a muzzle and their joints were located in odd places. They all stood on four and were erect. What came after they had pounced on the poor thing was something I‘d rather not go in detail into. He was violated, and his insides were probably rearranged is all I’m willing to mention.

Again, I was just floating there, watching that whole horror show going on, but I wasn’t affected at all by what was going on in front of my eyes. I still remember what it looked like and now every time the scenery pops up from the depths of my mind, I feel reviled and miserable, then, nothing. I felt nothing at all.

I was just watching as an atrocity was taking place, and it went on for a while until the ground shook underneath what I can only describe as a cyclops covered in a litany of cancer tumors. The beasts tried to scatter upon the arrival of the giant but it was too quick for them, it grabbed the whole orgy of humanoid mass and smashed it into a pile of blood and black mass in the palm of its hand and then stuffed the gooey remains into its mouth producing disgusting crunching and gulping sounds as it chewed.

Screams and cries of agony filled my ears from all over as I kept on floating through that morbid domain there were a few other horrible things I‘ve seen as I was floating in that space that I sort of vaguely remember. The most profound one was the appearance of a few shadowy things emerging from the ground producing some corrosive substance from their bodies and latching themselves onto one of the bigger hell-spawns I‘ve seen there. The thing wailed like a broken siren once these things came into contact with it.

For the first time, I‘ve felt fear when one of those things noticed me. Actually, I should say, it looked at my direction. I saw its white orb featureless eyes and that stick drawn mouth and my heart sank. I felt a chill course through my body and I felt myself getting stiff. The thing turned back to its prey but the sensation wouldn’t let up.

Especially since I was nearing the end of my journey when that happened and I saw what awaited me at its end. My headache was getting worse with each passing moment. I remember seeing this massive shadow devouring the horizon and something massive was casting it.

I only caught a glimpse of the thing because I was floating with my feet towards the gargantuan shadow. It was cast by a sort of skeletal centipede the end of which I couldn’t see. The front of which consisted of a massive bony reminiscent of a rib cage with a fleshy mass that has many arm-like appendages with tube-shaped extremities that extend to no end, one of those tube-like things was connected to the back of my head. I’ve only seen that because the tube connected to my head flopped suddenly in front of my face.

The realization worsened my ever-increasing sense of dread. The screaming had gone quiet, replaced by the increasingly loud sound of beating war drums that came from within me. I was panicking, drowning once more, this time in fear. I couldn’t do anything. I was stuck, forced to endure whatever that thing wanted to do to me. By the time pounding in my ears had turned into the symphony of machine-gun fire, I‘ve noticed the abomination had a head hanging at the bottom of the fleshy mass, it looked sunken and hollow like a dehydrated corpse would. The head seemed to grow larger and larger with each passing moment. I knew what was coming, this thing was going to swallow me.

Pins and needles poked all over my body. My spine and shoulders caught on fire. The noises died down, the colors turned dull and a rain of body parts showered my entire vicinity. Before I knew it, my vision had completely been fading, I was completely fading, I felt like I was being torn apart, it wasn’t painful rather felt like I was just losing parts of myself, getting erased out of existence.

Then the pain came, I felt my legs being crushed with a sickening crack, then my lower torso. I heard myself scream, dully, the pain felt as if I was submerged in magma. I came to my sense when something grabbed a hold of my left arm.

One of those shadowy things, it held onto my arm and stared with its empty, barely distinguishable face at me, through me. I felt like everything had turned ice-cold for a hot second like I was thrown into cold water. I felt a painful pressure build up in my chest and my arm felt as if it had caught fire. I remember seeing the exposed muscle tissue just below the shadow‘s grip.

Then came one last crunch and everything turned black again before I woke up on the cruise ship once again, surrounded by onlookers and medics.

I was resuscitated, and there was some brain damage apparently… Nothing too noticeable, I guess, a few memory problems and the odd nightmare or awful daydream but other than that nothing out of the ordinary. That is, excluding my occasional self loathing over the fact that I managed to be so apathetic to unimaginable horrors, or even create them in my mind for that matter. Though, actually… I occasionally see a shadow lurking in the corner of my vision, one that looks like a humanoid-shaped flame with a face drawn on a stick figure. White orbs for eyes and a jugged line for a mouth. It just stands there before vanishing. Looking at me… or rather through me. Every time it does I feel like my body freezes, in the literal sense, like I’ve been submerged into ice water. I get cold and I can see vapors coming out from my mouth.

I‘m not sure if it’s some sort of hallucination or something else. I mean, they’ve told me I‘ll suffer from neurodegeneration sooner or later, probably sooner.

I‘m not really sure, to be honest. I mean, everything looks just like before the accident, my life‘s gone on as usual after all the hospital visits and the treatments. Everything seems to be just fine, but sometimes it seems like… Honestly, I‘m pretty sure I‘ve already mentioned this but the thought creeps up on me from time to time. It makes no sense whatsoever, and it‘s highly unlikely. What if I‘m actually a little off since the accident and nobody’s told me? This could be the case, though again, I don’t know. Everything seems perfect… a little too perfect, I guess.

What if I’m actually dead and still stuck in hell? No, that's highly unlikely. The more probable explanation is that I’ve left a piece of my mind, a piece of my sanity in hell.

Yeah, that's more like it.