Hells Gate-Chapter 1

    Had Mitchell Matthews known that going to get his dying wife's medication would ultimately lead to his death, he would have just stayed home. But, she was moaning again. He hated it when she moaned. He especially hated it when she did her, 'I'm in pain' moan. That meant he had to go up to her room, get the special lotion that her Doctor had prescribed for her, and rub it on the leathery yellow substance covering her bones that at one time had been skin. God, he hated her. He hated her almost as much as he hated that damned moaning.

    When he got upstairs, he tried very hard not to gag as he was assaulted by the smell of his slowly decaying wife. She saw him and moaned again. This moan was her, 'Thank God you're here' moan. He hated that one almost as much as the 'I'm in pain' one. He often wondered what her 'Oh shit, he's not coming this time' moan would sound like.  He stifled the laugh that was fighting its way out of his mouth at that thought and went to the bathroom to get her lotion.
         
    "Agnes, why do you have the room with the bathroom attached to it? You piss and shit in a fucking bag," he said absently as he slowly looked for the tube that housed his wife’s relief. He didn’t even attempt to hold back or mumble the hurtful comments anymore. What was she going to do, get up and yell at him?

    “I mean really, you have no use for the toilet." He opened the medicine cabinet and searched. No lotion. He looked in the drawers that flanked the sink. No lotion.

    "Fuck! Now I have to go all the way to the drug store and get some more of that stinking shit!"

    He yelled at her like it was her fault. Of course he realized that Agnes couldn't speak, but that didn’t stop him from venting at her. The disease that was slowly consuming her innards had done away with her tongue a long time ago. He didn't give a shit. He didn't have anyone else to talk to, and it wasn't like she could argue back at him. 
         
    He looked down at her with disgust as she lay in bed, helpless. Her once beautiful face now looked like a deflated balloon. Her yellow skinned, brittle boned, emaciated body was on its last leg. It wasn't rushing towards death mind you, but it was definitely on that track. She only weighed 65 pounds and the last time he'd tried to bathe her, he broke two of her ribs. Now a nurse comes in once a week, even though that isn’t hardly enough. He can’t afford to have her come any more than that. It wasn't that he cared if she was ever clean or that he’d broken a couple of her bones. He didn't. It's just that if she got too dirty she would get bed soars. If she got bed soars, then the horrible stench that already wafted from her person would intensify and she'd start that fucking moaning again. 
         
    The smell oozing from her pores had made him puke on more than one occasion. He'd tried holding his breath, putting on surgical masks, wrapping towels around his nose and mouth, but nothing worked. The smell always got in. It always won. He'd started to think of her smell as a tangible thing that beat him about his nose and mouth area, trying to get into his body. He fought it as best he could, and it always kicked his ass. It ALWAYS won. Pretty soon he gave up the fight and just let that smell invade his mouth and throat. He always felt like a rape victim after he left her room, and just like a real rape victim all he wanted afterwards was to take a bath. There was nothing he could do about it though, except not go in there at all. He’d allowed that thought to weasel through his mind on more than one occasion, and he found that he liked the idea a little more every time.

    He used to brush her hair for her. Though, that was before he became resentful of the position his dying wife had put him in. But, her hair had started coming away in clumps. The last time he’d brushed it, some of her hair came away still tethered to pieces of her scalp. There was blood on the scalp too, but it looked more like a brown paste than the vibrant red flowing fluid one usually gets from having a piece of their scalp ripped out. That incident was one of the many vomit-worthy occurrences that were coming all too frequent the sicker she got. And vomit he did. He screamed like a bitch when he saw that hunk of dead flesh clinging to those brush bristles. He vomited until he was empty. Unfortunately, his body couldn’t have cared less about its stomach's vacuous state, because it kept trying to bring shit up anyway. His abdominal muscles were sore for two days. That was something else for him to be mad at her about.          
         
    "Jesus Jump Roping Christ, you're more trouble than you're worth, Agnes. I swear I'd kill you myself if I thought I could get away with it," he said to his wife, getting as close to her as he dared. The smell you know.

    "I can wait though," he whispered. "I'm a patient man. All I have to do is wait you out. It's only a matter of time before this disease of yours takes a hold of your heart. It probably already has it. I’m sure at this very moment it’s in the process of rotting that organ from the inside out, until there won’t be anything left. Then, you'll be out of my misery and I’ll be able to collect your life insurance. It’s a good thing you insisted we get it all those years ago or I’d be up shit creek. I’ll be one happy camper when you’re dead. I'm still a handsome guy. I can still get laid fairly easily, but it’s going to be like shooting fish in a barrel with the kind of money I'm going to have, thanks to you. I’ll get some young, tight little girl, fresh out of high school and dumb as a box of rocks. They’ll be all over me, ripe for the picking. Thanks honey! I owe my future to you. I would kiss you, but I'm afraid my fucking lips might fall off."

    Tears rolled down the side of Agnes Matthews’ face as she listened to her husband spew his poison in her ear. There was nothing she could do. She couldn't move her body anymore. Oh, how she longed to ball her fist up and plant it in his face. Her motor skills were a thing of the past though. Once, before she was really bad off, he was being especially nasty to her so she coughed on him. It was the only thing she could do. It was a good cough too, one that shot out phlegm and spit. He screamed like a little girl. (She’d noticed he did that a lot) If she had been able to control her face muscles, she'd have been grinning from ear to ear. The look on his face was hilarious. Well, it was until he slapped her and knocked two of her teeth out. That stupid nurse thought they fell out because of decay. Nothing was ever said about her bruised face. So now she has to just lay there and take it. The only conciliation she had was in knowing that her time on this earth was coming to an end and she wouldn't have to deal with him anymore. She thought to herself though, that if there was a God in Heaven, he'd make him suffer for all the things he’d done to her.

    Mitchell left his wife crying in her bed without even saying goodbye. But, even if he’d known that he was never going to see her again, he still wouldn’t have said it.

    He headed to Cleets Pharmacy where they kept the lotion his wife needed in stock at all times. He pulled into a handicap parking space and shut off his car, but for some reason, he couldn't make himself go into the store. He had a fantastically strong urge to turn his car back on and leave. He tried to ignore his feeling and opened his car door to get out, but was compelled once again, almost to the point of suffocation, to not go into that store. He pulled the constricting shirt collar away from his neck, and shut the door. 

    Accompanying his sudden urge to leave the store was an overwhelming desire to head to the beach. He couldn’t figure out where this came from because he never went to the beach in this town. It was too damn depressing. Even when the sun was shining brightly in the sky, it was still always so gloomy here. If he ever went to the beach, it was always in the neighboring town called Delmar. He went there every now and then to get away from Agnes and look at all the bikini clad asses that ran past him. But, he wasn’t being forced to go to the beach in Delmar. Something was making him go to the beach in town, so he obliged.

    "Fuck it," he said to no one in particular. "Cleets doesn't close until 9 o'clock. It's barely five now. I'll just get the lotion on my way back. It's not like she's going anywhere. Besides, the pain will be good for her. It’ll remind her that she's still alive," he said smiling to himself as he headed to the beach.

    As he drove through town, he began to realize that after Agnes had become worm fodder, not only would he be rid of her, but he would finally be able to move away from this God-forsaken hole. He couldn’t stand this place. There was some weird shit going on in this town. He couldn’t keep count of all the people that went missing around here. And then there were those spooky-ass Nuns. Every time he saw them walking around in their tight little cluster he felt like there was a huge block of ice in his stomach.
He never wanted to move here in the first place. It was Agnes’ idea. She loved it here and said that this was where she wanted to spend the rest of her life.

    "Some people are just born lucky I guess," Mitchell said as he laughed out loud.
    Honestly, he couldn't see what his wife loved about this piece of shit town. It was a rundown dilapidated eye soar. Here was the only beach town in America that didn't get tourists and beach bums in the summer.

    The streets were all in need of repair. There were potholes, cracks, and all kinds of other wear and tear. He hated driving his car down here because every time he did, he had to go and get a front end alignment.

    A bunch of the stores in the area that was laughably referred to as ‘downtown’ were boarded up and abandoned. Everything was dingy and gray. There was nothing in the whole town open for business except Cleets Pharmacy, The Diner, (That was actually the name of the place and Mitchell scoffed at the owners imagination.) a skating rink, the Church where those creepy assed nuns lived and a bunch of decrepit old beach cottages. There were a few decent cottages that were right on the sand but they were extremely expensive and none of the town people owned those. The more he looked around, the more appalled he became. He always knew the place was a dump, but what he was seeing as he drove to the beach had stunned him. It was like they were all living in a ghost town.

    "This place is a shit hole! I can’t believe I never noticed this before?" he asked himself.

    'That’s because you are on your way out' something whispered to him.

    Mitchell lost control of his car for a minute and had to fight to keep from jumping the curb. That voice scared the shit out of him. It didn’t come from inside his head like usual. It sounded like someone was actually in the car with him. And that someone was Agnes. His rotted out shell of a wife, whose voice he hadn't heard in almost a year, because her tongue, or what was left of it at that point had fallen out of her mouth and onto her stomach while he was trying to feed her some soup. (He’d ended up vomiting in that soup.)

    When he did get control of his car, and his bowels, (there wasn’t shit he could do to control his heartbeat) he saw that he'd already made it to the beach. He hadn't realized that he'd driven that far. He parked his car and shakingly shut off the ignition. God, he was like someone with full blown Parkinson’s disease.

    "What the hell is going on today?" he asked himself. He suddenly slapped his hands over his mouth when he realized he'd asked a question loud enough for whatever that was with his wife's voice to answer him. He closed his eyes tightly and waited for the answer. None ever came.

    His heart was beating a mile a minute. He slowly cracked his eyes open and looked over his shoulder even slower. He fully expected to see his wife back there since that’s where that voice came from. It was like she was whispering in his ear. Of course there was no one there and he let out the lungful of air he didn't realize he was suppressing and laid his head on the steering wheel. He hated being scared. It made him angry, but this time he didn't know who to get mad at. Maybe Agnes for scaring him even though he knew that wasn't rational. That voice may have sounded like her, but it wasn’t her he told himself.

    Besides, even though he didn’t know it, Agnes was currently, deader than disco.

    "Mister, are you alright?" came a muffled voice from outside his window.

    "Yeah, I'm fine." he answered as he raised his head. What he saw was by far the most beautiful girl he'd seen in a long time. He openly gazed at her, moving his eyes up and down her body. She looked to be about 5'8", 115 pounds, and she was perfect. She had good muscle tone without looking like one of those freaks on TV that sacrifice their dirty pillows to get more muscles. No, this girl had a perfect combination of muscles and curves.

    The plain white bikini she wore covered her breast, but he could still see her rosy pink nipples trying to peek through the wet fabric. It was as if they were desperately trying to get him to notice them. The bikini bottoms stretched tightly across her ass, barely covering it. He wanted to eat her alive.

    She stepped back to give him room when he got out of the car. As soon as he was out, she stepped up close to help him if he fell over. He could smell her hair. It smelled like peaches. It was the best thing he'd smelled in a year. After smelling nearly dead flesh all that time, he couldn't help himself when he bent down and stuck his nose in her hair. He inhaled like his life depended on it. Then he opened his eyes, not even remembering when he’d closed them.

    "Shit, I'm sorry," he said as he stepped away from her. "I don't know what the hell is wrong with me today." He waited, for her to start screaming bloody murder, but she didn't. What she did surprised Mitchell. She moved back into his personal space and looked up at him with her huge green eyes.

    "It's okay Mitchell. Are you sure you're alright?"

    "Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. Thanks."

    She walked away and crooked her finger at him to let him know that he was expected to follow. He does, and never once wonders how she knew his name.

    "Hey, where are we going?"

    She doesn't answer. She looks seductively at him over her shoulder and keeps walking. Mitchell knows in the back of his mind that he should not follow this girl, but for the life of him, he can't think of one reason why. He jogs to catch up.

    "Where are we going?" Mitchell asks again.

    She still won't speak, but she points up at a cave that loomed overhead and made her way towards it. He continued to follow her.

    Mitchell barely noticed the fetid rancid pong that saturated the air surrounding the cave. He barely noticed the eerie red glow that seemed to reach for him when he got closer to its mouth. If he had, he would have turned and run for his life, because Mitchell Matthews’ mortality was waiting for him in that cave, only he was too distracted by the scantily clad lure to take notice.

    Death for Mitchell, took the form of the things that were in the cave hiding in the shadows, waiting and watching. They were well over 7 feet tall and the color of black ash. Their skeletal bodies looked almost feeble at first glance, but on closer study, which no one got too often, one could see that they weren’t feeble at all, but in fact looked very strong with their wiry muscles. The scaly and seemingly paper thin wings that pushed through there backs had a span of at least 12 feet. At the end of their, ‘hands and feet’ were claws that tore through the sides of the cave as they became impatient waiting for their meal to be delivered to them. Pretty soon they could hear them coming though. They would get to feed soon. They melted into the cave walls and listened.

    “I don't even know you," Mitchell said as the girl pulled him into the cave.

    "What's to know? I can tell you want me. I can feel it," she said as she used her body to grind against his erection. She was slowly robbing him of the little bit of blood he needed for his brain to function. She smiled at him with her heart shaped, pouty lips, she pulled her bikini top off and tossed it at him. It landed at his feet, and any questions he might have had were blown away with the wind.

    He followed her deeper into the cave and began pulling his clothes off, leaving them where he dropped them. He kept his eyes on her as she bent over to pull her bikini bottoms off. Finally, she stood naked and laughed as she watched him fumble to get the last of his clothes off. After he’d stripped down to nothing but his socks, he walked over to her and grabbed her by the waist, fully intending to bend her backwards and cover her mouth with his. Instead she put her hands on his shoulders, and began to push him down to the ground.

    "On your back." she commanded.

    He didn't even question her. He lay down and prepared himself for what he thought would be the sexual ride of his life. Oh, he got a ride alright, but it was nothing like what he expected. Or what he wanted.

    "You ready?" she asked him.

    "Oh yeah. I'm ready. I've been waiting for something like this for over a year." He closed his eyes and relaxed as much as he could when he felt the wet heat of her mouth surround him. He almost let go right then, right down her throat. He'd never felt anything like that before. Agnes would never do it for him, no matter how much he begged. He was living one of his greatest fantasies.

    He quickly came back to reality when she bit his dick off.

His eyes flew open and there she was, hovering over him, with his junk still dangling from her lips. He was in shock. He couldn’t find his voice to scream. In a daze, he went to reach for his detached penis, because she had no business with it. It was his, he was telling himself. But, that cute little teenager, with the waist length red hair, that made him lose all rational thought not 10 minutes ago, growled at him now, like she was some kind of animal that was having its food taken away. As she bared her teeth at him like some kind of crazed Pit Bull, he couldn’t help but notice that they were at least a half an inch in length and looked sharp enough to cut through bone. He didn’t remember them being that way before, he thought in his bewildered state that was caused by extreme blood loss.

    She turned her back on him, which now had two long and bloody gashes down either side. They weren’t there earlier and he didn’t want to think about what was going to emerge that caused that kind of damage. The same way he didn’t want to think about the sounds she was making as she chewed on his penis.

    He looked down at himself and saw that all that was left of his most prized possession was now a gaping, bloody void.

    His voice finally came out of hiding and he started screaming.

    It was like the dinner bell had sounded, because the creatures descended upon him like a pack of wild dogs. There were 14 of them, all moving swiftly and collectively to get their share of the feast that had been presented to them by their brother.

    One of them grabbed Mitchell's face and in a sick parody of the kiss he had wanted to plant on the cock thief a few minutes earlier, covered his open, screaming mouth with its own. But that is where the parody ended as Mitchell's tongue was sucked into the demon’s mouth and then torn out of his head. No more screaming. Blood filled his mouth and ran down his throat. Now, he could only gurgle and moan. He hated moaning.

    Mitchell could feel himself slowly slipping away. ‘Death’ he thought. ‘This must be what it’s like.’

    “Only for you,” someone whispered to him.

    “Ah…Ah,” he murmured, trying his best to say the name Agnes even though he didn’t have a tongue. It was the same voice he’d heard in the car and this time he was sure it was her.

    “No Mitchell, I’m not Agnes,” the voice said to him.

    Mitchell wanted to ask, ‘Who in the fuck are you?’ and at the same time he wanted to beg ‘Please make them stop’, and he probably would have if at that very moment one of the creatures that were eating him alive hadn’t ran an extremely long and sharp talon across his stomach. The talon was so sharp, that he almost didn’t feel it when it cut into him. Almost. He managed a gurgling wet bloody scream when he saw his stomach open up and his intestines spill out. He instinctively reached to push them back in but they were too slippery. The more he pushed in, the more they spilled out. He started to cry. He’d all but forgotten about the mysterious voice, because at this point he could really care less who it was.

    He could only watch and moan as four of the creatures reached into his opened belly and pulled out their own section of his guts and turn their back on him as they started to eat.

    As his vision became darker and darker and he was slipping further and further away, he thought of Agnes. His wife, who was at that very moment was dead herself. She was the woman who he had wronged in so many ways since she became sick and unable to take care of herself. His wife, who….

    He died before he could finish the rest of that thought.

    Outside of the cave, the seagulls were crowding around the entrance. They could smell the death coming from the inside. The screams inside the cave were muted by the screams of the huge white birds. They got as close as they dared to the mouth of the cave. Even though they were drawn to the carnage inside, they would not go in. It wasn’t time. Still, they came in droves. Hundreds of birds all converging on the mouth of that cave, all salivating to get at what would be left of the massacre inside.

    The very few people that decided to go to the beach that day got a real treat. Never had any of them seen that many birds in one place all at the same time.

    Ryan Reeves, an 11 year old boy that came to the beach with his mother, was at first amazed at the sight. But the more he looked, the less exciting it got and the more uneasy he became. Pretty soon, he decided he wanted to leave and begged his mother to take him home.

    “It’s just birds Ryan,” she said trying to calm him down.

    “I don’t like it,” he whimpered.

    She was about to tell him that everything was going to be okay, but when she looked at her son, she could see that there was true fear in his eyes.

    “Okay sweetie, let’s pack up.”

      The relief on her child’s face at her words made her pack up faster. She suddenly felt that she absolutely had to get him out of there. Michelle Reeves had never seen her little boy quite so afraid.

    Other’s started to notice the frantic movements of Michelle and Ryan, and one by one, they all started packing. It started to dawn on them that, that many birds were not commonplace. There was something very wrong at the beach and the smell that started to waft towards them only made them move faster. Every one kept glancing uneasily at the flock of seagulls that seemed to grow more enormous in size every minute. What had amazed them a few minutes ago now began to scare the shit out of them. It was started to seem very unnatural.

    They all started running to their parked cars. There were no screams except for the ones coming from the birds. No one fell down. There were no lone children left crying in the sand because they’d lost their parents as the adults ran around them trying to save themselves. All in all, it was a very organized escape that took place, which if anyone would have stopped to think about it, was unnatural within itself. But no one stopped to think. They just wanted to get the fuck away from there.

    The screeching of cars speeding away from the beach almost drowned out the raucous screams of the birds at the cave. 

    In everyone’s hurry to leave the beach, no one noticed the one car that remained, and no one cared.

    The next morning, before the sunrise, that flock of seagulls’ number had risen to well over 1000 birds. They were still there, waiting. Some were sleeping. Some walked slowly to the mouth of the cave and jumped back quickly as if they were afraid something from inside was going to grab them and drag them in. Most of them wouldn’t take their eyes off the cave though. They wanted what was inside, but just not bad enough to venture past the entrance.

    Then, as if someone had walked behind them and shouted, all the birds startled and flew away. Something had scared them. The only noise one could hear, if someone would have been there to hear it, was the sound of wings franticly beating at the wind. It sounded like a soft applause, and then they were gone. There was no indication that over 1000 birds had camped out in front of that cave all night except for shit and feathers.

    But, it didn’t matter because once the people who were witnesses to that strange phenomenon woke up and started and getting ready to begin their day, they wouldn’t even remember it happened.

    No one, except for Ryan, and who would believe him anyway?