Part 1: ABBY Part 2: FOOLED Part 3: JUDGEMENT Part 4: SLOB Part 5:PALACE
I’d given the excuse at work the day before that I had been having family issues. Mystery diagnosis with my mother in the hospital, they didn’t ask any questions and I ended up using some accumulated personal days. I was now getting paid to sit at home and wait for the next demonic herald to summon me to Hell, emphasis on “wait”.
It had been bad enough the day before with only a little hope and still 6 trials awaiting me, however today the wait was even worse. It was like waiting through the weekend for a Monday morning job interview. A seven minute stretch felt like a half hour. A week seemed to stretch between breakfast and lunch. In fact I often skip lunch, now I was eating to pass the time. I took a walk but the four blocks I circumvented only killed 22 minutes, my subconscious made me walk faster as if that would help.
Obviously reading would have been a wonderful idea if I’d been able to focus on anything other than nightfall. Ironically I did contemplate cracking open A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens as I noticed life imitating art in my current predicament, but immediately felt a pang of jealousy towards Ebenezer scrooge. Lucky bastard had an ordeal only lasting one night, with three ghosts. I’d like to see that rich miezer take on a demon.
I was on the verge of thinking I’d actually lost the night before and my own personal Hell was now waiting indefinitely to be torn apart by demons. The anxiety got worse as the minutes begrudgingly unfolded into hours as I knew at any moment I’d be taken. Who would come for me this time?
Another animal headed human, or maybe a human headed animal again. Maybe tonight would be the night Cthulhu came and tore the roof off my apartment. After being thrown out a window and yanked through a mouse hole I found it safe to assume that Demons didn’t care much for doors.
With that thought I ended up realizing that, although Hell did not work on the same principles of earth as far as physics and biological possibilities went, if it DID have rules of Its own I may be able to exploit them. In literature a vampire could not enter the home unless invited in, could these demons not enter my apartment by regular means? It was a possibility I couldn’t quite use to my advantage, but it was a start.
I walked to my computer to do some searching. But it ended up overwhelming my mind, it was like trying to diagnose an automobile malfunction or find parenting advice. There wasn’t one good answer anywhere.
One website ended up telling me I could keep demonic spirits away by using salt, another tried to claim that demons were actually time travelers or aliens. There was Hell described as a watered down version of what I’d seen, entire comedic articles by people speculating their own personal hell, Hell being described as nothing but darkness surrounded by the cries of loved ones, Hell being the same as heaven, Hell not existing at all.
I laughed at that one, if Hell didn’t exist I was in need of medication, possibly institutionalization and major psychological evaluation. However with every crazy theory I came across I was able to strike off anything that was implausible, though they were mainly things I wouldn’t have thought of in the first place.
The final thing I found was a site on demonology. It covered a wide range of religions and folklore throughout the ages. Needless to say I had no time to browse it now, so I copied the URL to my desktop for later. I looked at the clock. It was just past six, something would be arriving soon.
But maybe there was some sort of link between all the demons I had faced so far and had yet to encounter. There was undeniable differences between Acedia and Avaritia that screamed for attention. Acedia was sluggish and wore nothing, but Avaritia had been fully clad and had been able to move relatively fast regardless of his lumbering gait.
The thought stopped dead in my mind as a noise from the other room rang out through the apartment. It was a thump, loud and hollow. I reluctantly left my desk to investigate.
It rang out again, the change in volume proving that I was getting closer. I walked slowly forward and glanced into the bathroom, nothing was out of place and it was vacant. Not in there.
Thump! Closer yet.
I rounded the corner into my kitchen. The thumping came again, and I could see my refrigerator visibly lurch forward.
“Don’t open it.” My gut told me.
I had to. I was the idiot that had signed on for this. My hand stretched forward, seeming as if it were being controlled by somebody else. I tightened my grip on the handle and inhaled deeply. I didn’t want to know, I shouldn’t have to do this.
Gently I tugged on the handle and the entire door flung open violently, crashing against the cabinets beside it. I screamed and reeled backwards, trying hard not to throw up or pass out. The sobs came automatically as I crumpled to the floor. The thing inside the refrigerator was the worst I’d seen yet. Disgusting, oozing, twitching, covered in mold and grotesquely decayed. However it wasn’t just the sight, it was the smell. The moment it hit me I vomited.
Inside the refrigerator was what I’m assuming had been two, or possibly three corpses. It was as if they had been improperly mummified and never dried out. Limbs intertwined and stuck together by gelatinous flesh. Bloated portions stretched skin into translucency, the organs beneath pulsed and gurgled sickeningly. I’m no expert in human biology, but I knew those organs were not supposed to be the color they were presented in.
Slightly offset from the center of the visceral puree was a human head, covered in green and black fuzz and missing an eye. The remaining eye made contact with me and the horrible face smiled at me. I began to plead although I knew I could not stop this nightmare.
“No!”
The head let out a deep gurgle that I assumed was laughter. Without warning it began to twist and wiggle as if trying to move. I pulled open the cabinet next to me and brushed an assortment of pots and pans onto the floor, luckily one frying pan among them seemed as if it would make a suitable weapon.
The center of the vile conglomerate spread open and a feeble hand emerged. The greedily clasping piece of anatomy came for me, propelled on a long and equally feeble multi segmented arm. Before it could grab me I swung the pan, easily knocking the mutated appendage away.
I hadn’t noticed more gaps opening in the moldy corpse orgy, each of which had a similar prehensile limb. It was as if I were Heracles fighting the many headed hydra, the only difference being the hero in that mythology had a real weapon, and the strength of a demigod.
One of the hands snaked beyond my range and whipped back to grasp my wrist. For being so thin and seemingly fragile, its grip was unbreakable. I twisted and jerked only to have my own arm violently bent back towards me. The pan I’d been holding collided with my face and stars exploded in my vision. Another hand grabbed the pan and flung it aside. Well this was going to happen one way or another.
I was now bound like the sailor Gulliver by corpse hands on snake like arms. One of the hands not gripping me reached upwards and opened the freezer door. My kitchen filled with hellish red light. I was lifted off the ground and fed into the compartment that had once been filled with more perishable food but was now clearly yet another portal to another plane of existence. The red light engulfed me and the familiar pins and needles broke out all over my body. Then there was the equally familiar cracking sound and all at once the sensation was gone.
I found myself free of the score of hands that had brought me into this place, and it seemed as if I had arrived into this world by a refrigerator the same way I’d left my own world through one.
The appliance that had acted as the doorway this time stood in a small dank room surrounded by others much like it. However, the doors to the other refrigerators were open and overflowing with all types of food.
Baked goods, pastries, raw meat, cooked meat, rotten meat. Everything edible or had once been edible was halfhazardly crammed into these hulking ice boxes. The only exit to this room was at the top of a wooden staircase, I seemed to be in the food cellar of a person who didn’t understand the basic principles of food storage.
After a few moments in complete silence only broken by the gentle humming of the refrigerators around me there was a loud creak at the top of the stairs. The door was opening and somebody was coming down. I froze where I was standing, of course whatever had just entered the room had seen me, and even if they hadn’t there was nowhere to hide. Surprisingly the being that now descended the staircase was a man.
He was nude, malnourished, he staggered as he walked. At his side he held a round silver object that seemed to be a tray or platter of some sort. When he got closer I noticed his mouth. It was red and swollen, most likely infected, I realized it was stitched shut.
As soon as he reached the bottom of the staircase he looked at me and made a noise that I assume was an attempt to communicate. When I didn’t respond he turned to one of the mounds of food and began to pile it on the tray. There was no order to it, no rhyme or reason, he simply tossed handful after handful of the slop onto the plate and then began to exit the room once more via the staircase.
This man wasn’t the demon I was here to see, he was nothing but a mortal who could barely walk. It didn’t take much critical thinking to deduce he was being punished for something, working around food with his mouth sewn shut. Poor bastard.
I followed him up the stairs. He paused to look back at me but gave no reaction. I made the assumption that he deserved this punishment, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him, he was a broken man, a broken spirit. He was not eager to reach his destination with the plate of food, but he didn’t linger as he knew it would make no difference.
He opened the door atop the staircase and I let him leave completely, closing the door behind him as he went. With a deep breath I went along too, opening the door and finding myself in a kitchen.
A Kitchen! An armory of creativity! There were more sewn up humans all around me, all preparing food like clockwork. The food they made was thrown into bowls and onto plates and then carried out of the room. A woman walked past me holding a bucket of shrimp and what appeared to be egg whites and entered the door to the room I had just left.
I searched around empty countertops and saw exactly what I’d been hoping for- Knives. I grabbed a large pot and began tossing any scattered knives I found into it. I was even lucky enough to come across a meat tenderizing hammer. It was covered in blood and chunks of raw meat, but it would still be effective I imagined.
With my pot of weaponry I walked through a large door that led out of the room, and immediately dropped it when I saw what was occupying the next area.
Whatever it was, was not human. I expect something human to show some sort of masculine or feminine qualities, and this thing had neither. Further more, in order to consider any sort of being human I would expect the organism be bipedal, where as the monstrosity at the other end of the room had four legs positioned at equal intervals around its base. The four legs were covered in thin, coarse hair and creased deeply between rolls of fat. Between each of the legs hung even more fleshy pouches of blubber that had long ago given up hope of clinging to any skeletal structure.
I wondered why the creature even had legs. Sure, four legs would help carry the monstrosity around better than two would, but even four had a limit. I hadn’t noticed at first but the creature actually sat on a fancy stool that was barely visible beyond the excess girth. In order to understand just what the body was like you need to imagine the ten most obese people in history and then cram them into one body.
The torso was also covered in every feature you would imagine a morbidly obese person having. Love handles, rolls, saddle bags, spare tires, a muffin top, it was all there. Above every other lard based landmark were to massive sagging breasts that would make even Uncle Fatso cringe. Hell, this creature could probably eat three Uncle Fatsos and still have room for dessert.
It’s no surprise that the creature never even noticed me enter as it was too busy shoveling handfuls of food into its enormous maw. With every bite the fat on its arms would swing wildly and slap against other hanging rolls.
The room was filled with the most nauseating sounds of consumption. Lip smacking, the slurp and pop of somebody licking their fingers, belches, gurgles, and the overzealous moans of somebody enjoying a good meal a little too much.
All around me the stitched people rushed in and out of the room, bringing in more food and then presumably returning to retrieve or make more. The area in front of the demon was so overcrowded with food I hadn’t even noticed that it was sitting on a table. I regained my composure and began to gather the items I’d dropped with the demon addressed me.
“Hey, you must be lover boy!” He shouted, barely understandable through his mouth which was still stuffed full.
I didn’t answer. “Lover boy”, was that my official nickname now?
“You’re the sap who’s going to be my new servant, and you’re bringing me my special meal too right? The girl?”
I pulled out one of the larger knives and clenched it tightly, “So that’s your plan?”
He gestured with his massive arm towards me, “You going to stab me? Is that your plan?”
He let out a hearty laugh as large chunks of food erupted from his mouth and every roll on his body jiggled.
“It seemed to work on your friend Avaritia!” I shouted across the room.
This caused him to stop laughing.
“Avaritia? You defeated him?”
“Defeated him, impaled him, crushed him, and then put a hole in his head.”
The large demon began to laugh harder, quaking in his skin.
“What a fool!”
I climbed up onto the table which was barely visible underneath the scattered food and began to walk towards the large demon. I kept my burning gaze on him as I approached. Suddenly there was a loud scream and I wheeled backwards until I ended up falling lamely on my ass.
The scream had come from just underneath me. I looked over and quickly realized what had happened. There was a man bound to a board. Unlike the other people in this place his mouth was not sewn closed, and his stomach and chest were torn open to expose his innards. I hadn’t been looking and had ended up stepping inside the man’s guts. Shredded entrails still hung around the soul of my shoe, plastered there by partially coagulated blood.
“Walking on the table was rude enough, you didn’t need to step in my food!” the demon scolded.
“You’re disgusting!” I responded, unsure of just how I had formed words in the shocked state I was in.
He laughed again and grabbed another handful of food. Squish, slap, crunch.
“That’s how your precious Maggie is going to end up!” He shouted through a mouthful of food.
I felt my whole body tighten. Did every demon here have a plan already? Were they so sure I would fail to rescue her that they were thinking ahead? Acedia expected to use her for his own sexual purposes, Avaritia had planned to cast her into molten bronze, but this one, this one was going to eat her alive.
“Abby!” I growled through my teeth, “You sick fuck, her name is Abby and she won’t be ending up like this!”
I stepped closer and threw the knife I’d been holding before reaching into the pot and throwing two more. The first and third knife bounced off his bare flesh, but the second had stuck roughly two inches in, this did nothing but cause him to laugh. I was frustrated now. I began to walk forward as food squished beneath my feet. When the demon noticed the foot prints I was leaving his laughter ceased abruptly.
“Mortal, you’ve had your fun, now get off the table.”
I paused and looked back at the food I had destroyed.
“I’m sorry, did I ruin your food you fat sack of shit?”
I took another step, deliberately stepping on some sort of open faced sandwich. He cringed and gestured towards me.
“Would you useless fools do something?”
He was talking to his servants, the things he planned on turning me into if I happened to lose to him. They all stopped what they were doing and began to walk feebly towards me. I began to laugh at the attempt, they were so small and had been broken long ago. There was nothing they could do to stop me.
I began to stomp around more. The demon before me turning from pale white to red and beginning to sweat even more profusely. The servants began to throw themselves onto the table and close in around me. As they got closer I began to push them away as I destroyed the food around me. In their attempts to stop me they ended up crushing even more of the delicacies at our feet. The table began to shake beneath us as the demons anger caused him to pound on the end.
Another idea popped into my head. I reached down and grabbed a large chunk of meat, a large turkey leg it seemed to be, and I took a bite out of it. He responded by screaming as if he had been the one who’d been taken a bite out of.
“Stop him dammit!”
Clearly he didn’t like other people messing with is food, and he really hated other people enjoying it, which explained a few things.
Explained a few things…
I smiled wildly as another idea came into focus. I dropped the pot full of knives and grabbed the most accessible one with my free hand. One of the servants, a woman, was closing in on me. I swiped out at her with the knife in my hand. The first time I missed and cut just below her eye. I got in closer and slashed twice more, this time I was more accurate as I jammed the blade deeply into the swollen mess that had once been a mouth.
The stitches gave way as she opened her atrophied jaw and cried. An odor that had been fermenting inside her head for who knows how long escaped and assaulted my nostrils. The moment her mouth opened she fell forwards into a mound of food and began to indiscriminately shovel the feast in, unable to stop herself as her crippling hunger was put to rest.
The room shook again as the fat demon roared, now stomping his quartet of feet like pistons on the floor. Another malnourished soul grabbed my arm with the turkey leg in an attempt to subdue me. I easily brushed him away and slashed with the knife, this time accidently carving out an eye in an attempt to slice open the stitches. After three more swings he reached up and pried his own mouth open by the hole I’d created. Some stitches snapped while others tore open flesh as the swollen mound became a mouth once again. He let out a whimpering laugh before falling into a pile of food and stuffing himself.
Now the damned were rushing from inside the kitchen, though it was hard to tell if it were to help their master’s cause or to be liberated. As they approached me I sliced their stitches and they immediately fell back to devour the mountains of food that had been put out for my gluttonous host.
One man I assumed was relatively new to the ordeal as he still sported a bit of a belly. After I cut his mouth free he thanked me before kneeling and eating a bit more modestly. I was no longer keeping track of how many I’d freed, however food was disappearing faster and the crowd began moving towards the head of the table. One person who was shriveled past the point of recognition came too close and was snatched up by the fat arm of the domains master. He savagely crammed the human’s top half into his mouth and tore it away with one bite, flinging blood and shredded entrails across the table top as he pulled the legs free.
A hand fell upon my shoulder, it was another woman. She pointed at her mouth and I obliged. I was thanked with a twisted smile before she fell forwards as all the tortured souls had before her.
Spots of wood began showing through the mess at my feet. Some people were beginning to lick crumbs and smaller morsels from the surface of the table. As the food depleted further more people were forced to the head and devoured by the pinnacle of obesity that sat there. As he picked off one person after another many of his former servants now turned on him and assaulted him with their newly returned orifices. Among the struggle the demon reached downwards and retrieved a large bell that I hadn’t noticed sitting next to him. When he rang everybody froze and began to scramble off the table which was now almost empty.
Many people attempted to run back towards the kitchen when a swarm of creatures erupted from the doorway. They were much like the demons that I had seen the night before in Avaritia’s palace, however these had arms instead of legs and their tails where thicker.
They loped forwards on their mobility granting arms and using their tails to grant them further leverage. Some crawled around the door frame and scaled the walls before plunging onto the disobedient servants. My heart dropped as one snapped it’s almost completely featureless head towards me and barred its teeth. So far I had been under the impression that the people who had been doomed to spend eternity in this place had never thought to free themselves because they had been broken both mentally and spiritually to the point where revolting against their master was unthinkable. I now realized that the real reason was because of these demons, the overzealous police force of Hell. They kept the people here from cutting the stitches the same way their armless cousins kept people from escaping with their effects in Avaritia’s palace.
The demon that had been fixated on me began to slowly crawl towards me. Quickly it was joined by others, many of which were holding large archaic looking bone needles. Their intentions where obvious. I began to back away from them as they approached and I quickly realized that had been a mistake.
All at once a large hand wrapped around my torso. Pain shot through my chest as I’m sure ribs cracked. I cried out to the best of my ability and began to stab and the hand with the knife I still held. The grip loosened and I fell momentarily before being grabbed by the other hand around the thighs. I began stabbing again but this time he endured the pain and I was launched forward into the gaping mouth of the obese demon. I was face down on a slippery tongue and oriented towards an abysmal gullet. A set of fingers gripped my calf and attempted to push me further into the mouth as my legs still dangled freely.
I twisted and wriggled furiously to turn myself around, all the while still striking out with my knife and stabbing deeply into the moist tongue flesh. I was so invested in freeing myself that I almost didn’t notice the space getting darker or the pressure on my mid thigh.
The snap came so suddenly I didn’t realize what had happened at first, until I felt my leg flapping freely inside the creature’s mouth. My leg had been bitten off. I could feel myself losing blood. My femur was splintered and the pain raced through my body like lightning. I screamed loudly, I had been so close to winning.
I saw myself with a mouth swollen and infected, held shut by thick stitches. I saw myself standing feebly in a kitchen and carving open Abby for consumption by the same demon that had devoured me. Abby would be screaming on the table the same way that man had been before, the man whose open chest cavity I had stepped in.
Well, two out of seven demons wasn’t bad I suppose.
This thought filled my mind as I began sliding backwards. I could hear the distorted laughter coming from the demon thinking he’d won. Those tremors shook me back into reality.
Two out of seven demons was unacceptable. I could feel the demon laughing, I was aware of his thoughts, I wasn’t defeated yet. I still had the knife.
Light entered the mouth again and my disembodied leg was thrown in on top of me. I eagerly grabbed it and pointed it downward, shattered bone end first. The shards sunk into the tender flesh at the back of the demons throat. He gagged loudly as the muscles loosened. The leg slipped sideways as his tongue hoisted my lower half upwards. I balanced precariously on the limb but toppled over sideways. I was now sliding foot first down the creature’s esophagus. The lining of this organ made an easy target for my knife as I sliced a vertical laceration down the back of his throat. More gagging, more muscles loosening to allow the offending morsels easier passage. I shoved my stump leg forward and braced myself against the sides. The walls shuddered loud heaving sounds echoed from below me. All at once the space I occupied clenched violently as a high pressure stream of vomit blasted me upwards like a fire hose. The feeling of this is something I refuse to go into detail over for the sake of myself and anybody reading this. I ended up being forced backwards and found myself lodged from the waste up into an unfamiliar area. The vomit that had forced me here still sprayed upwards and raced across my legs. I realized then that I was now being forced too far backwards, I was entering the demon’s nasal cavity. This would work nicely.
Below me I felt spasmodic blasts of air soaring upwards and short bursts of suction as the demon struggled to breathe through his fit of gastral evacuation. I placed my hands on the sturdiest internal structure I could find and heaved my good leg between them. I quickly realized my missing leg was actually a blessing in disguise as the splintered bone protruding from the end helped cling to the mucous lined walls as I climbed upwards until the area around me became too cramped to allow further passage. I jammed my leg deep and began cutting all around me. I had no idea where I was in relation to any exits, but I imagined my presence inside the demon’s body was bad news for him either way.
That’s when he began thrashing. I could feel the motion but was not affected in any way apart from getting a bit dizzy. My skin and clothing began to get slippery as I was drenched in an unknown amount of various bodily fluids. Loud ripping sounds like fabric being torn sounded every time I dragged my knife through an intact piece of tissue. I could even feel what I assumed were chunks of fat sliding through the openings as I created them. This biological mudslide caused seizures of coughing and pressure below me as the demon struggled in vain to pull me downwards, however this only caused my stump leg to dig deeper and hold me more firmly.
This violent fluctuation in pressure caused ragged tissue to be torn away and get sucked downwards. How much damage did I need to do in order for this hellish fiend to finally die? Acedia had been beheaded, Avaritia had been stabbed in the eye. Deep in the eye.
The brain! Could a demon function without a brain? There was only one way to find out. I plunged my hands into the mess of gore in front of me until I felt what I was looking for, the spine.
I pulled myself close to it and began sawing away. I was thrown back and forth more violently as something burst against my hands. I heard a loud roar of anguish as my progress became apparent. I was doing the damage I had hoped for.
The area I had removed was large enough to loop my good leg through. I struggled for a moment before I was able to pull myself through and end up plastered against the swaying mound of bone. Better yet the tissues around me gave way easier than they had before. I plunged the knife deep and dim light shown through onto my face. I wriggled through the hole and found myself sticking out of the base of the demon’s neck. With my good leg still wrapped around the spine I leaned forwards and cut away the sweaty flesh to expose more of the vertebra.
Over my head the chunky hands waved around to dig me out. However the arms they were attached to lacked the flexibility to reach me. I laughed at the struggle as I brought the knife down one last time and broke open another disk. It covered me with lubricating fluids as it burst. I stuck my knife in a spot of flesh and reached in with both hands, wrapping them tightly around the delicate spinal cord that was now exposed. The moment I arched my back and pulled upwards it snapped in my hands and the demon ceased to move all at once beyond what the gravitational forces on his body allowed.
I was along for the ride as the behemoth toppled forwards and crashed onto the table, splattering food in all directions upon impact. The room had gone as motionless as my adversary as I sat still half way enveloped in the mess of shredded muscle fiber and lacerated blubber. It was as if I had been reborn but taken a very wrong turn in the birth canal. Before I could dislodge myself I was launched across the room as the corpse violently burst below me.
I remember a story I had heard about a dead whale that had been hauled through the city streets and ended up exploding due to the gaseous buildup caused by the carcass decaying. Though I hadn’t witnessed that explosion nor truly seen the bloated corpse below me erupt I find it safe to assume the two incidences mirrored one another quite accurately.
Luckily the organic debris wasn’t enough to cause further injury to my already broken body and I hadn’t been launched violently enough to suffer from the fall. Before I could get to my feet I was rushed by remaining servants who helped me to stand on my remaining leg. I draped my arms over their shoulders and they began to carry me towards the kitchen. During this time the legless demons that had been attempting to enforce the rules of this domain scowled and hissed. To me these sounds of disapproval sounded more like fan fair as I had seemed to survive another trial, though this time just barely.
Two more servants hoisted my lower half into their arms and granted me safe passage down the stairs. I noticed that one of them still had an open mouth though in the rush of cutting the stitches I hadn’t even registered their faces. I recognized the woman to my right however as the first person I’d broken the stitches on, however she had clearly been re-stitched at some point during my attempted ingestion.
Once we cleared the bottom step they opened the door to the refrigerator that I had entered through and slowly inserted me foot first. This time as I entered the mortal realm once again the pins and needles feeling intensified once my stump leg cleared the boundaries between dimensions. Suddenly I was torn from the arms of the servants that had been holding me and launched back into my apartment. In the blink of an eye the world warped and I was falling through my refrigerator, dislodging shelves and dumping its entire contents onto the floor.
I slid in a puddle of milk from a burst gallon jug and my leg, the one that had been regenerated, shot forwards and kicked at an assortment of jars across the room. I got to my feet and leaned against my countertop. The leg was sore, but I couldn’t complain. Clearly Hell is like Las Vegas, whatever happens there stays there, and I could only hope that upon my return my leg wouldn’t be missing any longer. After all, the night before the trial of Acedia I had witnessed him being sliced open and hurled through a window only to be perfectly fine during his trial as well as my trial against him.
I looked down at myself. I was no longer covered in blood and vomit but I was still drenched in a cold sweat and covered in whatever food had been freed from its container upon my reentry. I undressed as I left the kitchen, stepping out of my pants in the passage from my living room to bathroom and began to run the shower.
The buildup of pressure in the pipes was music to my ears, as was the initial expulsion of water from the shower head. My skin tingled as tiny drops of water ricocheted from the walls and surface of the tub.
Imagine the hot shower you’ve been longing for at the end of the longest day of your life. That was this shower multiplied exponentially. Although I was no longer the mess I had been when I’d left hell the memory still clung to my mind and I could psychologically feel it on my skin still. I hit the stopper on the drain and decided against showering as I turned the dial and diverted the water flow into the main faucet. I rolled over the wall of the tub and splashed into the shallow reservoir that had accumulated so far.
I felt as if I were melting and becoming part of the water itself as every ache in my replenished leg as well as the rest of my body faded into nothing. The water continued to rise and cover more of my exposed skin. Its temperature was trivial, the comfort that came from the cleanliness that was synonymous with water could not be measured in degrees of any kind.
The tub filled until it was on the verge of overflowing and I stopped the flow with my foot. I have no idea how long I stayed in the tub this way, I was content and I could have stayed in it all night had I not been paranoid of drowning once I inevitably passed out.
No energy went into washing myself, however I still felt clean once I was submerged and curled into a fetal position. I closed my eyes and focused on the ecstasy. I didn’t think about the trial I had endured nor any trial that was yet to come. It was as if I’d ceased to exist. I’m actually sure I did nod off at one point, which caused me to begrudgingly exit the tub. As I stood up I noticed my reflection in the mirror. My skin was flushed red as I assume the water had been a bit hotter than I’d normally cared for, and I noticed the dark circle that enveloped my right eye. Black eye? Could have been worse, probably got it during the preliminary struggle with the rotten men in the fridge.
I wrapped myself in as many towels as I could pull from the cabinet and fasten to my body before leaving the bathroom. As I walked through the living room I pulled a quilt from the back of my couch, probably the cleanest piece of bedding I owned. God only knows how long it had been since I’d washed the sheets and blanket on my bed. I was clean, the last thing I wanted was to be exposed to my own filth again. I wrapped the quilt around me once I made it to my room and fell face first into my pillow. I had a fleeting thought pertaining to the state of my pillow case and contemplated pulling it off in order to rest my head on the cleaner pillow inside, however I ended up in a deep sleep before I could act on the impulse. Three trials had been completed, and I slept another dreamless night.
Submitted July 31, 2016 at 11:52PM by Human_Fly13 http://ift.tt/2aGTbCj nosleep
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