Shrouded Perception

The darkness engulfed her as she fell freely through the abyss. Her arms and legs flailed under her; she couldn't even see her own hand as there was no light for her eyes to adjust under. As she tried to scream, she realized no sound would emerge from her throat. “What’s happening?!” she screamed within herself. With a sudden and painful crash, she landed.

She glanced around but she saw nothing. Slowly she attempted to stand but she felt a weight pressing down on her shoulders not allowing her to rise. A strong pungency engulfed her senses and she began to cough. The cough deepened and she struggled to breathe through the odor, a mixture of ash, rotted eggs, and burnt flesh. As she tried to stand once more, someone or something shoved her backwards.

“You have no control here,” an ominous voice spoke.

Still unable to see, she tentatively asked in a shaky voice, “Where am I? Who are you?! I want to go home!”

Without warning, light flowed into the area and she found herself now chained to metal poles.

“You are home.”

“But- no-“

“It’ll all become clear, sweetness,” he breathed. From his side, he drew a sickle and with a flash, she saw the blood before she felt the pain. The slice went through her flesh with ease from her left shoulder to her right hip. A scream erupted from her like lava from a volcano. As she screamed, his laughter echoed in her ears. Again he drew his sickle and sliced from the right shoulder to left hip resulting in a blood soaked “X”.

“You are a marked one. This is now your home. You now belong to me,” he said. “The name given to you by your parents was Maricela Hannah Phelps. That name is dead. You will now answer to the name Sonolan. You have no control here, know this. You have spent the last thirty years acting as the dominator. Your greed was heightened with every deception. You crushed people beneath your feet. Your words became barbs that went straight for the jugular. You took the life of several humans acting as their god. You destroyed anyone that came within your grasp and then would beg for forgiveness from them only to repeat your deceit. I have watched you for many years. I have seen the scars on your body from the blades you used upon yourself. I have seen the chemical mixtures that entered your body. Every time you arrived at the hospital just to be revived once more, I was there. I saw the damage. I saw the annihilation you put yourself in. You are now mine, Sonolan. I shall watch no more."

“Please just kill me,” she begged. “Please get it over with.”

He laughed an eerie laugh that echoed throughout. “Kill you? Don’t you understand? This is not about death. It is about wrath. The wrath you inflicted on yourself. The wrath you inflicted upon others. You have had all the control- over yourself, over emotions, over souls. You suggest that I kill you. Again, you try to control the situation. You have no control.”

He raised the sickle up above her head and she cried out. With a swift motion, she fell from the chains that held her. Instinctively, she covered her bleeding chest and doubled over from the pain that shot through her.

“Rise, Sonolan."

“I can’t," she said sobbing.

”I said, rise." When she didn’t move from the floor where she fell, he put a hand around her throat and lifted her.

“You are to obey. Do you understand?!”

Struggling to breathe, she attempted to speak. When he tightened his grasp, she felt her windpipe crack. Terror struck, she nodded slightly and he released her. Like an old rag doll, she fell to the floor in a heap.

Grabbing hold of her unwashed hair, he dragged her along, scraping the ash covered floor in the process. She twisted and writhed under his grip screaming hoarsely in torment and agony yet he only gripped tighter. Suddenly he stopped. He pulled her to her feet and there she stood on the edge of what looked to be an endless pit devoid of light.

“You have a challenge before you,” he intoned. “For punishment of your repulsive behavior these many years, this is the sentence cast before you: using your own resources, climb your way out of the hole of which you will be prisoner. If you make it to the top within the day’s end, I will release you. If you don’t- you are forever mine.”

Without warning, he shoved her into the darkness. She heard his laughter ring from above as she plummeted at a tremendous speed. She slammed into the bottom with a sickening thud. With broken bones, a cracked windpipe, and an X slashed into her skin, she clamored with the quickness of a fox to stand. She had to get out of there, she had to survive. All those years of wanting her life to end, of destructive behavior, of overindulgence crept into her thoughts. She would not let this monster win. She would not let him beat her. She could only imagine the torment that lay ahead of her if she did not make it to the top, if she did not win her precious freedom back.

She was visionless in this domicile and would have to rely on instinct of how to emerge. As she began to walk searching in the blackness for a wall in which to climb, she felt the remnants of broken glass slicing into the tender flesh of her feet. She winced at the pain but pursued. She thought she felt something graze against her leg and reached down out of habit to brush it away and when she did, a large hissing cockroach climbed through her fingers and onto her arm. She screamed in terror and attempted to remove it. The faster she moved, the faster it crawled making its way up her arm, over her shoulder and onto her back. She ran helplessly in vain attempting to get it off her. As she ran, hundreds of tiny cockroaches invaded her, crawling up her legs and into her crevices. She screeched in revulsion and darted ahead smashing into a wall. With hundreds upon thousands of roaches climbing and biting her flesh, she scrambled to climb the wall.

There were divots and small holes in the wall that she grasped and used to pull her weight. Her feet kept traction well against the rough cement. She struggled and screamed but inched foot by foot up ten feet of the wall, shaking spiders from her scalp. As she raised her left hand to clasp onto the wall, she pulled it back quickly. Where she had been feeling rock and cold cement she now felt heat radiating through. She put her fingers on the wall feeling for a divot and instead felt the heat rush through her fingers inflaming them. She jerked her hand back and nearly fell from the progress she had made. She felt the heat go through her legs and then through her feet and realized the further up she climbed, the hotter the wall became. She proceeded onward, determined to win. She was determined not to let this be the last task she failed. It was as though the wall itself was incinerated and what started out as warmth was now a shrouded flame. She could feel the skin peeling from her hands, from her arms, from her legs, and from her feet. For just a moment she feared what she would end up looking like. Through the shred of vanity that remained, she could picture the disfigurement that was taking place. That thought was only fleeting as her flesh decorticated from her and she felt the cockroaches begin to bury their way into her ear canals. From inside her head she could hear the scraping of the legs on her eardrum and she screamed fearing she might go mad.
The laughter she had been hearkening since this hell began sounded closer.

Momentarily, she wondered if it was only an auditory mirage. Maybe she wasn't getting any closer, maybe she never would. She put the paranoia out of her mind and held faith that she really was nearing the top and that there was no delusion in it. Her determination preceded her pain. As she struggled and pulled, she heard an ominous sound come from inside the enclosure. The opposite wall was moving slowly towards her as if it was a trash compactor and she was nothing but garbage.
She cried out realizing that if she didn’t make it to the top she would be crushed. Grabbing each rock, digging her fingers into each hole, she climbed. Without haste she climbed and the wall continued to move, slowly as though it was on its own time, as though she wasn’t fighting for her life and her freedom. The sliced X in her chest was now branded onto her from the cauterized wall, the spiders were scraping her eardrum causing her hearing to weaken, her body was broken, damaged, and scarred. Then she felt her fingers grip the top.

Euphoric relief washed over her. She felt the heat disseminating from the opposite wall extend to her back and she knew it would be only a matter of minutes before she was crushed beneath the weight. Only a mere five or six feet under the surface and she realized that there were no more divots in the wall to use to pull herself up, there was nothing else to grasp and she would have to rely on sheer strength to pull herself up. She twisted, thrashing her body, feeling the fire of the wall touch her back, she continued to inch forward; stopping as it pressed her up against the wall. Caught between the two slabs, she fought to fight off claustrophobia as it began to overtake her. Her breaths were short and shallow as she gasped for air breathing in dirt and ash; her chest was tight and her throat was closing off. Her eyelashes and eyebrows were singed off and the hot tears that rolled down her face were agonizing on the raw areas where the skin was peeling. She hung by broken fingers on the edge of perdition. With a single shred of willpower that remained in her soul, she pulled herself to the top.

She crawled over the edge and collapsed regaining some breath through the cracked windpipe. Her ordeal of countless hours was at an end.

“You have achieved your conquest, Sonolan. Now rise."

Wearily she stood before him, “I did what you asked. Please, let me go.”

He laughed and shook his head, “Foolish girl. You have spent your life as a liar. Do you not know the presence of another liar when you come upon it? Allow me to introduce myself. I am Lucifer and you, sweetness, are home.”

***

“Come on, Maricela. Come on back,” Dr. Wheeler murmured performing his last attempt to restart her heart.

“It’s been thirty six minutes, Doctor. Call it,” Chief Resident Vento instructed.

“Time of death is 11:28am. Cause of death is apparent suicide by way of lethal overdose,” Dr. Wheeler stated for the record.

“If you ask me,” the nurse responded as she covered the body with a sheet, “it’s just one less menace in our prison systems and on our streets.”

The other doctors shrugged as one called the morgue to remove the body.

***

The darkness engulfed her as she fell freely through the abyss. Her arms and legs flailed under her; she couldn't even see her own hand as there was no light for her eyes to adjust under. As she tried to scream, she realized no sound would emerge from her throat. “What’s happening?!” she screamed within herself. With a sudden and painful crash, she landed…