“Fuck.”

 

His head was splitting as he began floating up into the air. One hand rubbed the spot before his hairline, where he could feel some wet crevice, but when he pulled away his fingers there was nothing. Just a misty grey space where his hand should be.  Looking around he saw buildings twenty feet below him, but the distance seemed inconsequential. The fear he associated with his body was bizarrely absent.  He was an ethereal mass drifting into the cosmos from his earthly sentence. 

 

He became aware of strange sensations: lightness, energy, shooting sparks of electricity coursing from the place his head had been. These bolts of nonphysical energy jumped down the outline of his former self and connected with the air around him-- wet and heavy.  As he rose into the clouds a very peculiar sensation began to surface-- a sense of irony. 

 

“I am not myself.” 

 

He thought for quite a long time, or at least it felt that way, whether or not he could remember ever floating like this before in his life, and to his surprise, he couldn’t remember anything at all.  He couldn’t quite bring himself to panic, as this sense of unknowing was so natural. He was nothing but his own thoughts, ever rising in a quiet, non-existent levitation. 

 

His awareness grew. The scope of earth he could survey continued to widen until slight curves began to appear at its edges. He felt another pang of strangeness. This was wrong. This perspective was foreign to him, and he did not belong here. 

 

Blinding

 

White

 

Light

 

Erupted and interrupted his vision. It completely consumed him. He could feel cold, clean energy coursing through his vacant chest. This was a place of absolute power. He was injected with it. It was rippling through his essence, stimulating the edges of his consciousness. 

 

An all-present voice spoke,

 

“WHAT MANNER OF BEING IS THIS.”

 

And there was only silence.

 

“Should I respond?” he thought. “Suspended here, in a static state, this voice speaks to me?”

 

He knew the answer, but felt small and afraid. He may have lived a thousand lives, but no experience compared to this. Why would such a powerful presence be addressing him? Does the ocean speak to the fish? Does the sky speak to the moon? Would a fox answer to--

 

“SPEAK.”

 

In that moment a small light appeared in his chest-- or rather the space a chest would occupy. It was a faint reddish-orange, like a nectarine.  He stared-- eyes fixated on the only point of light he could distinguish in this blank, swimming mass. The light took the shape of a triangle, upside-down, and began to extend from his chest, piercing the whiteness around him.  The beam grew, and so did his horror at the sight of this unspoken testament to his being permeating the bright energy around him. 

 

“SUCH AS THIS IS, SO ARE YOU.”

 

And in an instant he was gone. Sucked into a rushing continuum-- it could’ve been down or up or away, but it was undoubtedly fast. Wherever it was he moved to, he was headed there quickly. He could see long streaks of light permeate the peripheral walls of his motion. He could sense time stretch in proportion to his journey. It was an uncomfortable thing to be aware of, but it paled in comparison to the foreboding he felt ignite in his core. This was a punishment. 

 

The ethereal state began to erode, and was replaced by crawling and itching. It moved down his skin-- he looked at his hands and saw skin. This skin was rotting-- sickly, infected tissue hanging from deep lacerations. He groped his face, horrified. With this repulsive new body, he found his memories. He hesitantly reached for his forehead, and felt the deep gash where the shovel punctured his skull and buried itself into his brain. Curiosity led his fingers inside of his own head, as he felt the wet, lumpy mass that he knew should kill him to touch.

 

“Are you done playing with yourself?”

 

He was shocked into the present; he had a body now, and with a body comes responsibility. He was sitting on rocky ground, like scattered shale, but black and brittle. He was naked, and his skin seemed to be in a similar state to his head and hands. How long had he been dead?

 

“Surely, I am dead,” he spoke quietly.

 

“Yes, you are certainly dead. But, by no means does that mean I have to take care of you.” 

 

He turned his head stupidly to see the voice which spoke to him. It was some nobody. A vacant empty face whose words carried a weight to them, but whose face held no such authority. This demon was emotionally uninvested in the torment which he was feeling, sitting and watching with a sickeningly patronizing apathy. 

 

He felt another surge of memories. He had been running from someone. He stole something important from them. What was it? He remembered fear. He remembered tearing through thin, towering evergreen trees. Soft, red needles blanketed the ground. He had been caught somewhere-- the place he was running from, maybe? Yes. A house on a plot of land. A farmhouse, tidy and well-loved. What had he taken?

 

More memories-- now painful. Each one a steel nail pounded into his head. Specific points exploding in sharp and shameful pain. He saw a hammer in his hand. A wood-handled framing hammer, 24oz and eager to be used. He saw blood on its stainless steel head and a pulpy, wet cavity on the floor of the barn in which he was standing. This was their son-- the people who chased him. He had killed him for a reason which now eluded him. All he could see was that perfect steel and that collapsed skull, pulsing around the edges of his vision. The horror of his crime had a vibration. It was was musical to him, and his terror grew.

 

“It seems like it’s coming back to you now. Usually the people who end up here aren’t quite so stupid, but I guess we always have exceptions.”

“Here? Where am I?”

“Well, I bet if you thought it through, you might just be able to put it together.”

“You said that I’m dead.”

“Yes. I did say that.” The looking on the demon’s face was one of impatient annoyance, not of sadism.

“So I am in hell.”

“You are well on your way, you twisted fuck. Unfortunately, such a privilege is not something I am willing to extend to just anyone.”

 

He began to feel nauseous. It might have been the rapid state of decomposition which was suddenly forced on his decaying corpse, or possibly the absolute dissonance which was attacking his consciousness. He felt two completely contradicting states of being-- he was eternal and dead; aware and absent; confused and convicted. Rage began to boil out of his disease-addled mind and spilt out on to the shale. 

 

He vomited a mucousy-red mixture on to the ground.

 

“That’s… cute.” The demon now seemed to take an interest in him. As his state of mind began to deteriorate, the demon’s curiosity began to pique. Perhaps this demon was every inch a sadist.

 

The dissonance grew. He felt tearing in his conscious mind. He was being ripped-- torn between two worlds. This state of suspension was volatile and would result in his obliteration.

 

“Let me in,” he mumbled. In? Why did he ask this? There was no doorway, no entrance the eery psychopath was guarding. They were alone in this vast expanse of sharp, black fragments of rock and metal.

“I don’t think I can do that.”

“If you don’t, I am going to die.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? You are already dead.”

“I don’t fucking know! My mind is splitting in the middle. I am half in some place and half in another.”

“Well, wherever you are, you look totally fucked.”

 

He imagined this was true. He knew he seemed a subhuman piece of once-living flesh, but this monster was impossible to argue with. It was mainly due to the fact that he didn’t exactly understand what it is that he was supposed to be arguing. He had a feeling that this prick had some solution to his problem, that he was guiding him somewhere, but he didn’t know what the problem was, or where it was he needed to go. He was torturously lost and there was no one to turn to, so, the torture continued.

 

“Tell me why I’m here.”

“I won’t tell you anything. If you can’t figure out why you’re here, then you don’t deserve to know.”

“But you have to tell me. I have to know. I can’t stay like this.”

“I am okay with watching you try.”

“Alright, I am here because I killed that farmer kid.”

“Almost. You’re not up there because you killed that farmer kid.”

 

He looked up, but he couldn’t see that bright cloud which the demon referred to. He saw a hazy, red hell above him, and lowered his vision to the sharp, black hell below him.

 

“Then why am I here?”

“Cause you’re a real piece of shit.”

 

He felt rage again. These non-answers and the demon’s incessant uncaring were unbearable. He realized rage was the only emotion he was capable of feeling in this place. He was truly blind. He could see only the shale, the red sky, and this departed soul.

 

“MALIK.”

 

The resounding voice knocked him back from his knees, and sharp rock cut into his rear.

 

“You are Malik.”

“I am the King.”

“You are the guardian of this place.”

“I am here to protect my kingdom from the unworthy.”

“And I am unworthy.”

“Yes, you are unworthy.”

“I didn’t ask to be here. I want to go home.”

“Where is your home? If you can remember, I will send you there immediately.”

He could not remember. 

 

“I don’t know. I just don’t think I’m supposed to be here.”

“I agree. You are too pitiful to be here. You are weak and sorrowful. You are excuses and confusion and I am tired of dragging out this conversation.”

“I don’t understa--”

“Your act of selfish destruction, while sufficient to deny you access to Jannah, will not grant you access to my kingdom.”

“I don’t want to--”

“You have forfeited your right to the Garden, which means your only chance at eternity lies with me.”

 

While he contemplated this, the demon stood, surveying the ground around him, non-committally kicking pieces of black shale.

 

“Then I will stay here.”

“You will not stay here. You have been here for only a moment, and you retch and cry as though it will bring you any comfort. You think the gates of my kingdom hold torment-- the real torment is in your division. A thousand lifetimes of ripping and tearing of your mind and your body until you disappear, and only your pain remains.”

 

He measured this in his mind, balancing his options against the gruesome offer proposed to him. 

 

“Fuck you.”

 

Malik laughed. It was a splitting, cancerous laugh. It echoed in the vast expanse of his prison, and the horizons echoed in a cruel, harrowing chorus. He stood to rise, and felt a wound on his throat stretch and open, spilling blood down his throat. He coughed on to the shale and spoke.

 

“So what then.”

“I’m sending you back.”

“Back to where.”

“Back to where you came from.”

“Why.”

“Because you’re gonna earn your keep.”

“What does that mean?

“Figure it out.”

 

In that moment he became aware. He was standing in the jungle with fresh, clean skin, and a machete in his hands. He felt nothing but the rage he brought back with him from his time in between. He saw forests and trees and people, and felt nothing for them but a sense of lust and duty. He felt cold steel hanging from his hands, and wished that he wondered if it was a dream. He felt no remorse for his actions-- just the dark, dangerous conviction of impunity.