Seeking Forgiveness

I can hear my feet pounding on the pavement, my heart thundering along in time. Blood speeds around my body like liquid fire, nourishing muscle, urging me faster and faster. I have to get away.
 
My breathing is shallow and fast. My lungs burn with exertion, pressure in my chest and neck. But its not hurting enough, I need it to hurt more.
 
Someone once said that you only feel one point of pain at once. I hope they’re right because I can’t stand this pain any more. My heart bleeds, more than the blood on my hands. I must have cut myself.
 
Screams in the back of the memory. There is something there. Something stirs in the dark of my consciousness. I think I want to forget it, I don’t know. But the screams echo relentlessly in my ears like thunder striking my brain, trying to make me remember but destroying me at the same time.
 
Where am I? I’m not sure, but I don’t think I care. Faces rush by like meaningless fragments of an old life. The life I am running away from? I just can’t remember.
 
My legs ache. That’s good. This physical pain is soothing.
  “I don’t mean to do it!” I hear myself gasp. Didn’t mean to do what? I think I did something bad, something terrible.
 
Maybe if I stop running I’ll remember. But if I stop running, this thing might catch me and consume me. Knowledge is a blessing and a curse, would this knowledge open my eyes to something important, or shut them tight forever…
 
Like a half-remembered dream, I can see the knife in my hand, feel the coolness of the handle, and see the glint of cold steel. And the anger in me; the hate blinding me. Stop me. Stop me!
 
My breathing is laboured, I stop suddenly and slump heavily to the ground, tears seeping from my eyes and trickling down my cheeks and over my nose. My eyes gaze from beneath my lank strips of hair like veiled stars. Searching; searching the darkness in me.
 
I killed him, I killed Kain. Like a wave it hits me, slamming against my mind, making me want to scream, making me want to vomit. I can feel the black knowledge washing over me, threatening to drown me, dragging me down, and pulling me away.
 
I know I didn’t mean it. I loved him too much…I loved him to death. But he loved her and that wasn’t right; it should have been me. I told him and he…laughed. “Don’t turn your back on me! I won’t be ignored” and he laughed. I would have given him everything but he made me feel like I was nothing. So I returned the favour. Now he’s nothing, nothing but worm meat.
 
But oh God, I killed him. His blood is dry on my hands. I scream. As loud and as long as I can, until my throat is raw and my lungs feel like they will burst. I can’t live with this. I know he didn’t deserve to die, I do.
 
Spittle flies from my lips, my hands clawing at my face, scoring my face with raised red welts. This guilt, poisoning my insides, clawing up my throat and spilling out as guttural sobs.
 
If I could forget. If I could live with what I’ve done, then heaven good-bye. I want forgiveness but I don’t need it from God, I need it from the devil.
 
And then I feel it recede, the guilt and hurt until there’s nothing; I’m numb. But as it goes away, it takes me with it. My body doesn’t feel like mine any more. I cease to exist, I feel like nothing more than a thought, an idea.
 
I raise my head and I see gates rising up before me. Immense wrought iron gates that twist cruelly and glisten like polished jet, as though they are wet. They seem to be forged from the darkness itself. I see them drawing closer but I don’t remember standing, I don’t remember walking to this place, wherever it is.
 
They swing slowly inwards like great jaws trying to swallow me. I look down and see that I am in a boat, the rough grain of the wood harsh against my skin and we bob in the endless pull of the current.
 
I reach my hand over the side and let it trail in the water, which caresses my skin with a warm oiliness. Not water; blood. I snatch my hand back and watch as dark red rivulets drip from my fingertips.
 
As my gaze travels upwards, I see the gates looming past on either side of me and gargoyles with warped features, that leer crookedly at me and have burning red eyes that pierce me.
 
And I can see others in the river, a tangle of pale limbs, thrashing against each other, blood blossoming across the surfaces as their heads duck and weave beneath the waves. Heads with hair that is tangled and matted with congealed blood, glare at me with eyes like milky orbs as they endlessly drown, but never sinking, never dying. What is this place?
 
My small boat comes to rest on a shoreline that is white, not with sand, but little chips of bone. A wizened hand reaches out and grasps my wrist in an iron fist. “The one you seek, lies beyond” his voice rasps, as though his vocal cords have all but rotted away.
 
The stench that rises from his bent form is intoxicating and as he raises his grizzled face, cloaked with a mane of limp hair, I see small bodies writhing across the surface. I realise they are maggots and biting my lip to stop myself from screaming, jump backwards. But I do scream as I feel the bones beneath my feet crunch and slide so that I slip and end up plunging into the river of blood.
 
I taste the metallic tang as it fills my mouth and nose, my head dipping beneath the waves. As I surface, my eyes fly open and pink stains my vision, I can taste blood in my mouth and the scent makes my retch, bile rising at the back of my throat.
 
I thrash against the current until I feel something solid against my feet and throw myself forward; clawing at the clusters of bones and feeling them dig into my skin as blood pours off me.
 
I’m half walking, half crawling along now, my feet drag and my hair lies flat, plastered against m face with dried blood. There is a child in front of me; I see her crying over her mother’s dead body. Her shoulders shudder as she buries her face in her mother’s neck. Then she hears me and turns, a wild animal lust in her eyes and hunks of flesh dangling from her bottom lip. My God, she was feeding! An unearthly cackle erupts from her lips, flesh spilling on to her feet.
 
Fear coils in my insides and I try to run but instead pitch forward. I can see the creature cock her head to one side and then slowly creep forward. I’m crawling forward, whimpering. I feel the thing suddenly spring forward and its mouth clams down over my left leg, tearing the flesh. I kick out, crying in agony and it flies off me. It doesn’t stir. There is silence.
 
But drums suddenly swell in the silence, loud and low as though drumming a heart beat. A procession of the dead comes marching in my direction. Seeing my chance, I duck into their ranks, falling in with their loping stride. Eyes down. Mouth closed. I suppose I must look dead myself.
 
The endless ranks of decaying corpses marches on and I begin to tire but daren’t stop. Enormous bull-like men canter along beside, swinging cruel-looking leather whips that occasionally cleave meat from bone as they swing in to the ranks urging us faster.
 
The horizon is alight but not with the setting sun. Fires rage in the distance, black smoke belching from the heart and billowing above in a haze. I can smell the smoke but also the acid smell of burning flesh; human flesh. My insides coil with dread and my eyes glaze over with fear, staring maniacally into the gathering darkness. There are people on enormous spikes being slowly turned like pigs on spits, mouths wide and eyes staring as their flesh tans.
 
Small hordes of creatures sit around and jeer at one fat man who sits bound and tied down, writhing like a beached whale as they try and feed him the human flesh. I want to scream but the sound sticks in my throat. This is beyond horror, beyond any nightmare.
 
Unaware of how close we were to the fires, I suddenly feel heat snapping at my ankles and flames licking up my legs. I stop suddenly in horror and start jumping around, trying to douse the flames that have caught at my clothes. My companions, who had marched along with me, make no attempt to avoid the flames, just stand as they are consumed, heat rising off their bodies in a wavering haze.
 
The temperature is so intense, that I can feel my skin bubbling and blistering. My hair smoulders and falls from my head in wisps. My eyes bulge from the pain exploding across my body and forgetting everything, I turn and run, paying no attention to the hot air that burns my lungs and hot coals that eat away at my feat.

Exhausted, and pain shooting through my body from everywhere, I know in my mind that I should have at least passed out by now. But no, I am completely aware of everything. And it is then that I know where I am. I have found my way in to hell.
 
If I am here then there must be a reason. I must be seeking the devil. My eyes open, though I was never aware of closing them and I see a forest of dead and blackened trees before me. Their branches twist and rise upwards as though clawing at the sky and the bark is burnt and maimed.
 
More horrendous though, are the people I can see, swinging from the trees by their necks. Their bodies convulse and eyes are wide as they stare at me begging for help. But they are too high up in the trees, I could never reach them. Guilt clutches at my heart as I drag myself on below, their cries and moans slicing into my consciousness and making my throat ache with unshed tears.
 
Then I see something. Up ahead, it shines in this place where there is no sun and no moon. It is oval, spanning from the floor to beyond my head and its surface is flat and smooth. As I approach, I can see myself in it. In the mirror, I see what the fire and blood has done to me. I see what is left of me. And I know; I know that the devil I had sought to see, is the devil that is me.
 
This is how I will pay for my crime. By becoming what once I had feared.