A Life Worth Living

“Doctor, please spare me.” The pallid creature on the floor begged his master.

“I’m afraid I cannot do that, Erlik. You’ve had one rule to follow, and you have failed me. Murder was strictly off the table. You know it is the one sin I cannot forgive my subordinates for,” the scientist answered coldly to his subordinate.

“But that man attacked me,” the pale thing pleaded.

“And? I could’ve fixed you any time. It’s not like you could die unless I wanted you to. Even if this man could somehow tear you apart, I would’ve just reassembled you back again,” the scientist sneered. “Yet you chose to defy me, and murder a member of my community and now you are begging for mercy? I would’ve forgiven anything else! Anything!” The scientist’s voice boomed throughout the room as he spoke.

“Doctor, please, I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to return to the pit. Please, just this once, let me go, I promise I’ll never fail you again… You don’t understand just how terrible it is in the pit. Doctor, do you know what it’s like to spend an eternity in that place?”

“Well, enlighten me then. If I find death to be a fate too cruel for yourself, I might spare your deathly life,” the doctor relented.

The pathetic sack of flesh on the ground looked its master dead in the eye, with its one remaining eye, sighing as it recalled the awful environment of its resting place.

“The pit is filled to the brim with impenetrable darkness and unbearable emptiness that shatters minds through torture far worse than any physical torment imaginable to the human mind. The dead do not rest in the afterlife, Doctor, they suffer. Impaled on the jagged branches of a perpetually growing tree of bones. Softly dangling in dead space. Subjected to the insatiable hunger and lust of incomprehensible abominations that defile and devour the souls of the dying, piece by piece, until nothing remains before reforming in a torturous cycle of agony and rebirth.

“The beasts only ever stop their chewing and biting once the sharp winds blow from the east. These metallic gusts of toxic air tear through everything in their path. Tearing the dead to shreds by the winds, slowly losing skin, muscle, and bone. Even chunks of the bone tree sometimes collapse, filling the space with terrible shrieks and moans that tear through the unbearable silence. Occasionally, fire rains upon the hanging dead from above; dissolving their forms with each acidic raindrop. Slowly, the flames eat away at the dead before nothing remains and they experience the cruel punishment of rebirth.

“The process of reconstruction is agonizing beyond measure. Each new cell remade within each fiber, each nerve, each muscle, and each bone. The pain of it all alone is far worse than anything in this world, yet it gets even worse when the beasts are trying to devour the dead while they reform. Birthing an ocean of suffering in its purest form.

“The pit is a place where the self and the agony become one in perfect unison. I’ve been there for six hundred years, and I refuse to return there. Doctor, don’t subject me to this fate again. I’m begging you. I don’t want to experience decomposition at the hands of these beasts while my body is rebuilding itself ever again. Master, please give me another chance.”, the pitiful thing cried.

Without a change in his expression, the doctor rose from his chair. “Very well, it sounds bad enough, so I’ll let your soul remain in this world.”

Rejoicing, the decaying corpse rose to its feet. “Thank you, Doctor, I won’t ever fail you again…”

Just as it finished its sentence, a sharp pain traveled across its neck, and its vision shifted rapidly across the room. Its eyes moved beyond his control. The creature suddenly found itself faced with the doctor’s feet, no longer able to feel the rest of its body.

"Did you really believe I didn't know what Perdition is like?" The doctor laughed before continuing to address the decapitated head. "I pulled your worthless little soul from the branches of that tree. Of course, I know what it's like down there, and trust me, Erlik, you were one of the lucky ones, so far away from the real carnage, so safe from it." The scientist picked up the head from the floor before concluding, “I have a reputation to maintain in this town, and I can’t let you run around after committing murder. So, while I’ll let you stay here, your new life is going to be very different from now on.”

Erlik could only watch in horror as his master handed what remained of his form to the hulking figure behind them. Leathery cold hands grasped at the back of his head as the doctor exited the room. The sound of the scientists grew distant in the ears of the dead man’s head.

“Feed the body to the others and make sure the head sees everything. Make sure he’s properly entertained. I want our friend here to have an eternal life worth living. He’s been through so much in hell.”