Mike had been a casual addict for something of five years, so strolling through strange and terrifying was something he was used to. But he was giving the habit up. That's why he'd finally dropped himself off on a rehab center. He had many qualifications in his past field that he'd bombed nice and well, but little experience in abject horror.
The twenty-something ex-roughneck sank down into the torn and pen defaced couch. He slid off his boots and propped his feet up on the Christian-text laden coffee table in the day room of Autumn Hope Treatment Center. And wasn't that just a laugh, how pretty and flowery that name was when it was in fact referring to a drug rehab. They were always calling one thing another there. Past 'clients', not patients, had scraped their names and DOCs all over the arms of the chair.
Jake 88' CRANK
93' MARK-O CRACK-O
Hi I'm Smack and my problem is Tim.
Mike stared at the blank TV. The remote was probably locked up in the nurse's station, since it was four AM and TV time wasn't until five-thirty. So here he was, still strung out from the last binge more than a week ago, still crashing and reeling from the loss of job, home, and pretty much fucking everything. He wanted to still be in detox, still, but the fucking staff insisted it he was done with withdrawals and it was time for him to start going to groups. He couldn't sleep for shit, though. They called it PAWS, that good ol' post-acute withdrawal syndrome. Ra-Ra, bless the holy-shit way too happy Indian immigrant, softly whistled as he made his way down the corridors like he wasn't aware that meth shooters had a fucking insomnia problem from hell. That had been Mike's particular drug-of-choice. Ra-Ra wasn't a patient, but a "Resident Assistant". Bullshit, Mike thought. He was a guard without a gun. Who else would check each individual room for both of their patient's throughout the night on the hour, every hour?
A decent camera system and an actual guard might have made that job easier, and it would allow Mike a full night's rest without hearing that warbling whistle get ever closer to his room, door after door quietly opening, before the inevitable vertical beam of light crashed through the opened door. Mike kept staring at the TV. Ah--no use dwelling on it. He was awake and it was bullshit, but a lot of things were at Autumn Hope.
"Hello, and how is Michael this early morning?"
Mike rolled his head up. Ra-Ra didn't understand the concept of a nickname, even if everyone on the floor called him by one. His name tag said Ra and nothing else, but the position of RA was right beneath it as well.
"Tired."
Ra-Ra smiled, creases forming in his dark skin. Always smiling and whistling. Mike didn't really hate him, per se. He was just too perfect the image of the oh-so innocent foreigner, just getting to that point of old age. Ra-Ra was a nice guy, for what it was worth. He nodded and turned down the hall.
"I'll see if I can get the remote from lock-up. Just keep it on mute if you can," he said.
Mike tiredly smiled and nodded. See, not too bad of a guy. Ra-Ra started his soft whistle again. Mike closed his eyes and listened. Ra-Ra really was decent at birding a good melody. And he kept it lower than most people could whisper. Probably a skill he'd honed night after bored night, knowing he couldn't get too out of hand with it. He whistled something slow and rather cowboyish. Something Mike expected to hear on the radio back in the oil fields in Midland-Odessa. Or maybe in the background of an old John Wayne film. Clint Eastwood even. The stand-off. The good, the bad, and the ugly addicts. Ra-Ra opened one last door and warbled into a change of pitch for the next bar of his song.
And then all went silent.
Mike opened his eyes and sat up and listened. Ra-Ra's tune had been so abruptly cut off that he could still hear the echo of that last note floating through E-Hall, where Mike knew some of the harder patien--no, clients, stayed and slept. Ricky 'Stix' in E-7 for one, the depraved heroin addict who had offered the then newcomer Jeremy a blowjob for any smack he'd had on him, despite every rehabber being searched upon entry. "Old habits come back hard" he'd said, grinning with that gold tooth in his mouth, leering. The depths of his withdrawal had made him a different kind of depraved, but it was no excuse. He wasn't the only heroin addict at Autumn Hope, but the only one who wore a golden, upside down cross that he constantly rubbed and whispered to. People avoided him, Jeremy most of all, and Ricky's roommate Adam slept in the day room more often than not. Though not that morning.
And no more sound from the hallway either. No footsteps. No muffled cry of struggle. No more whistle. Mike's hands tightened around the armrest of the sofa.
"Hey Ra-Ra? You okay, buddy?" he said, leaning forward to get up. No answer. With a worried feeling in his stomach, Mike pulled himself out of the plushness of the couch and moved to the doorway. He glanced left. Nothing. He glanced right--well, of fucking course it would be Ricky's door cracked open. Mike saw nothing but darkness through the foot wide gap of the door. Still no noise. Still no one in the hallways. Mike thought about calling out to the nurse's station right around the corner, but knew he wasn't the only light sleeper there. Maybe Ra-Ra was searching around in Ricky's room quietly as to not wake anyone up.
Right, he thought sarcastically, Because you can search a room with the light off.
He walked into the hallway and up to E-7. No movement from inside the room. Mike carefully pushed the door open and let it swing, not taking another single step until the light of the hallway poured in as much as it could. He could see both Adam and Ricky's bed ruffled and unmade. The wide dresser against the wall with its ceiling high mirror. The ankle high wastebaskets with their five-sized too big trash bags stuffed inside them. Other than that--no one. No one there at all.
"Hey Ra? Adam? ... Ricky?" Mike stepped in and flipped on the light switch, but all remained dark inside the room. A quick glance up and he could see that all three light bulbs had been removed from the ceiling fan, which slowly hummed up to speed in the early AM. Mike turned and checked behind the door. No one. The duo of closets equally empty, right along with the bathroom to the right. The window was locked tight. It was not a large room and it had fewer hiding spaces than it did clients. Both foo which were missing. And now an RA. Mike crossed his arms and circled again. He didn't like it. Not one goddamned bit. Maybe Ra hadn't checked this room. Maybe he'd ducked off into another hall, but something in the back of Mike's mind knew it was simply justified bullshit. He was scared, so he'd be looking for any rational and clear explanation.
But honestly. People didn't just disappear. They go places. They walk through doors.
Mike found himself staring at the mirror. Something was off about it. It was slightly off balanced, screwed into the wall by some long ago lazy maintenance worker. But that wasn't it. Mike stepped up closer and saw that the edges had been scraped and carved into, not unlike the faux-leather couch in the day room. But it wasn't names, dates, or DOCs. Intricate, runic symbols surrounded the mirrors edge. Mike looked closer and saw that there was not only one, two, but no less than four lines of the occult-like text. Picked and scraped with precision that seemed near psychotic. No one in their right mind would have spent so much time and effort on any typical graffiti.
But that still wasn't it. Yet still, the hairs on Mike's neck rose as he took another step back and stared. Him standing in the middle of the room. The light of the doorway to the hall pouring in. The three doors behind him. The bathroom off to the side. The edges of the messy and empty beds. The swaying of the ceiling fan at top speed. Mike reached up and turned it off and watched as it slowed to a silent halt. What was it? What was wrong? He turned and looked around him again and then back to the mirror.
The realization stabbed Mike in the gut with a dizzy feeling.
Three doors.
He stepped to the side of the mirror as ice water and sweat ran down his back. Two closets on his left, as they should be. In the mirror on the right, three doors. A pitch black door in the blank white spot that should have sat between the two burgundy colored closet doors. Mike had been standing right in front of it, and one didn't often look for doors that didn't exist right over their shoulder, did they?
"What in the hell..."
A tremor ran through the room that made Mike heavily consider the concept of running like the very wind. This was beyond him. He was just a roughneck cowboy who couldn't get off meth. He assumed that the freakazoid Ricky-Stix had finally done something more terrifying than he could possibly conceive in the darkest corners of his mind. What to do? Run away and forget about it? But Ra-Ra, bless his heart, was a decent happy human being who didn't deserve any kind of harm no how. And Adam, well, Mike hadn't known Adam very long, but knew that the alcoholic had spoken heavily of family obligation in the larger group meetings. He couldn't leavethem to whatever hell Ricky had raised.
The only other RA on site for the morning was Amber. And maybe Mike was old fashioned like that, but he wasn't about to put a lady in harm's way like that. He sighed and closed his eyes, pinching that pressure point between his eyes.
"Alright now... let's go do something stupid, I guess," he said. But first he went back to the day room and put on his boots, old steel toes he'd had for years. He walked out and then immediately back in. He stared at the Bible on the coffee table for a few moments, the dark, leather bound hardcover with the embossed cross on its front, and picked it up. He also plucked a red painted crucifix from the wall. He loosened his belt and tucked both of them in his jeans against his back. He flipped his shirt over them and went back into D-7. The black door remained in the mirror, just as the wall on Mike's side remained blank.
Mike moved right up to the mirror and stared hard. He tried reaching through, only to find his hand up against the glass. He looked closer at the black door and realized that it did have a knob. Silver, it seemed. Mike took five steps back, staring at the mirror the entire time as he held out his hand. When he got to the wall, he watched himself reach down for the door knob. Stupid, he thought to himself, Not just this. But getting into this mess. Stupid.
Nonetheless, his hand grasped a very solid and real feeling doorknob. Mike had never been religious, but he'd been raised Baptist in that old guilt-bound brimstone and fire sense. Something he'd talked about once before the jokes had started pouring his way. (Hey, Cowboy. Why do you take two Baptists fishing? If you only take one he drinks all your beer!) He began to recall those old prayers, and he silently said one to himself as he twisted the knob. It made no sound, not one at all as he began to pull the black door open. He could feel its weight, though. Even if from the corner of his eye he saw his hand wrapped around nothing, pulling at nothing, he could feel the stone-like weight of the door slowly opening. And he could see it in the mirror opening up to more darkness behind it.
If he didn't act now, he was fairly certain he was going to simply chicken out. He thought of Ra-Ra's happy morning whistle, once so annoying, and Adam's family as he closed his eyes and dove around the door and straight through. Where he should have met a wall, he found a doorway, and a pragmatic side in him told him not to shut the door behind him, particularly if he didn't know what was waiting on the other side. He released the handle and opened his eyes.
The heat was stifling, and he could just hear his mother's voice in the back of his head, You'll burn in hell one day Michael! You'll suffer with the rest of the sinners just like your father and it will burn and you'll cry but no one will listen! Mike hadn't been much of a believer. He'd believed more in hard work and a paycheck. These were things he could see and hold in his hands. But right before him stood a black rock corridor etched out by fire and molten rock, and he could smell the burnings thick on the air. He could hear shrieks, but they came from the rocks, not through the air. The air itself was like a dry heat sauna. It burned his throat, and he figured as much of an alcoholic as his mother had been, it was possible she might be right about that one thing she'd screamed at him growing up.
Glowing coal stones lit the corridor, eight feet wide and high, all the way down around the bend with a reddish-glaze that bounced off the obsidian walls around him. Mike looked behind him and saw, with vague shock, the opposite facing end of the room. The one with the blank, white wall, rather than the dresser and beds that should have been behind him. And looky there--no door knob on this side of reality. He turned forward and said to himself, aloud, "Well, here we are."
He began walking forward. In reality it was a short walk, but every second slowed down to a crawl as the glow in the hall grew brighter and brighter. Sweat rolled down his body. His shirt stuck to his back. Twenty paces in Mike spotted Ra-Ra's plastic badge and lanyard. The plastic was already melted to the ground like a sticky clear soup. He stepped over it and followed the tunnel's slow turn left. He listened and hugged the wall. He began to hear quick and chattery chanting. Fast and quick, like someone quickly speaking backwards. He could also hear moaning.
The mouth of the tunnel opened up before him with a few more steps, and all doubt was removed. He was in Hell, or at the very least, a section of it. A massive roiling cavern of molten rock spanned past the ledge before him, nearly two hundred feet tall, complete with dark and twisted spires that rose up from the depths. Giant flows of lava fell from moving rivers of fire that poured in. Every now and then he could see something fall from a crevice high up in the cave roof. Twisting forms that flailed through the air as they fell. Mike finally connected them to the screams that echoed throughout the cavern. They never ceased falling, and each one hit the layer of lava with a squelch of tortured shriek of panic and pain before tapering off. A new layer of sweat from pure fear poured through Mike's skin.
On the ledge before him, Ricky Stix hummed a tune. Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire, from what Mike could hear. In front of the depraved, duster clad man was a circle of red wax melted into the shape of a pentagram. Red candles taken from the chapel of Autumn Hope, Mike saw. In front of it was an upside down cross in full size propped against a sheer cliff face. It was at least seven feet tall and four feet wide. Where Ricky had gotten the twisted hunks of wood, Mike didn't know, but he knew where he got the bloodied and naked body nailed on it. It was Adam. The skinny, red haired family man was skinned from his crotch on down to his chest. An empty and red slicked cavern lay where his bowels once had, and he could see the white bones of his ribs protruding through the muscles of his chest. Both eyes had stakes hammered into them. Blood dripped from the wooden tips.
"And it goes DOWN DOWN DOWN, the RING of FIRE, the RING of FIRE!" He laughed, running off rampant excitement and adrenaline. "HEY ADAM!" He ran over and kicked the man in the head. Just for fun. Adam, still vaguely alive in a blind, inhuman sense, began to yet again moan. Mike froze and blanched. He could feel bile and the previous night's meal begin to crawl up his throat. He could see Ra-Ra bound and kneeled next to the pentagram, staring at the ground. A red bandanna was tied tight around his head over his mouth. Mike could see that he'd been crying.
"So far as sacrifices go, you were a pretty poor choice, sport! I guess, in the sinner versus saint since, you don't stick out here too much, methinks. Can't attract moths with darkness. Or demons. You really can't help me. You came off as a pretty nice guy, but I guess you've got too many skeletons in your closet," Ricky said, reaching down to pick up a ten-pound hand sledge Mike recognized as stolen from the maintenance building. "And so for that, I'm sorry. But! At least you have an idea of where you'll be headed. Or I don't know. You cried for your mother, not for forgiveness. But who's to say you need a tongue to pray? Take a well-deserved rest, Adam. You've earned it! Make your last rites, if you so wish."
From the cross, Adam began to wail. A childlike, piercing wail that spoke of pain induced insanity and vague recognition of the hopeless state of his body. His mouth vaguely worked some amount of words into them, and Mike realized that Adam was trying for his mother. MUUUMA. MUUUMA. The sound pierced through Mike's being. A sense of relief flowed through him as Ricky Stix swung the mallet into Adam's temple and put the tortured man from his misery. The sacrifices cry halted mid-shriek, not unlike Ra-Ra's whistle down the hall.
Ra-Ra would probably be just the altruistic soul he needed, Mike figured. He looked around for some way to sneak up and saw none. He tried to think of a clever way to solve the situation, but thought of nothing. He was just a regular man. He would readily admit this. He had nothing but the Bible and crucifix of Jesus tucked behind his back.
So he just walked out of the tunnel.
"Hello, Ricky," he said.
Ricky whirled. He had the sledge, and in his other hand he pulled a crude obsidian dagger with a washrag wrapped handle. It was deeply stained. Mike stood before him with his arms crossed, legs wide. A bar fighting stance, his father had once called it, before disappearing from his life a long time ago. As recognition crossed Ricky's face, the surprise left and was replaced by a feral glee.
"Mike? It's really you! You clever dog you! I would have never expected to have been blessed with your presence at this very moment," Ricky said, spreading his arms wide. Like Mike, sweat coated his body. "If anyone at that shit-hole would have figured out the mirror trick, I'm certain it would have been you."
Mike shrugged. "You might say that."
"I do say that."
"You know, most people wouldn't want a witness to something like that," he said, nodding to Adam's corpse on inverted cross propped against the boulder. Ra-Ra glanced up, but made no sound. Ricky pointed to the cross over his shoulder.
"Oh what? This? This is nothing. This was a sacrifice. Or, I suppose, a murder, I guess. Since sacrifices usually have a point. This ended up pretty pointless in the end," he said, staring out over the magma pool, "Nothing seems to be showing in the end. Darkness is attracted to light, and Adam had too much darkness. I just want to meet something from this other side here. I mean, finding this quite literal slice of hell was one thing. But that got boring quick. I want to see something far more interesting than a few lost souls plunging into their next form of torture."
Ricky's eyes followed the bodies down. He motioned for Mike to look over the edge, but he didn't move an inch. Ricky didn't seem to care.
"See, they stop screaming, but if you can look down there, you can see the fire moving. Arms reaching up through it. Occasionally a burning face peers through," he said, smirking, "You can only die once, you see. Hell is no different. But they're still down there trying to escape. Floundering over each other in their lake of fire, unable to scream because of the magma caught in their throats. But they're still down there. They still suffer. I used to come here and watch for hours. I once watched a man nearly climb out, way over there, right before falling back in. Naked and charred, but almost like the only part of him that would burn was the parts of him that could feel pain."
Ricky Stix giggled and turned back to Mike.
"Isn't this place fascinating? I so desperately wanted to show it to somebody. To talk about it. To discuss. That's why I'm enthralled that you found the door in the mirror. You can be that somebody to share it with," Ricky said.
Mike nodded. "Well, I'm flattered."
"You should! To witness the summoning of an honest demon, to make the proper sacrifice and be able to ask for your darkest desire, it's simply--"
"But I'm afraid you're insane," Mike said, calling it exactly as he saw it.
Ricky frowned and circled around the pentagram. He stood ten feet from Mike, but not a step more. He kept both the sledge and the dagger in his hands.
"Now why do you say that? I'm a genius. Look, so I got bored. Okay? Heroin, god, that'd been a blast, but I couldn't keep chasing that forever, you know. Why I ended up here. But this? This 'raising hell' so to speak? Oh, consider it my antidrug. But not only that, I've discovered the answer to death. We all end up here, Mike. I've seen it. I've seen nations drop through that crevice. I've watched children drown here too. Tell me, Mike, what does that mean when even the innocent suffer in a lake of eternal fire?"
"I don't know. All I know is that you're insane. Only insane people enjoy hurting others... Or seeing others hurt," he said, crossing his hands behind his back, "So I know you can't be trusted."
Red light glinted in Ricky's eyes. His grin deepened, but Mike also saw his hands tighten around the dagger and the mallet. Ricky alternated his grip, undecided on his weapon of choice.
"Do you really believe that? Is there a part of you that believes that I may be right?"
"Explain it," Mike said, taking a step forward. He noted with vague satisfaction that Ricky had jerked back a step into the pentagram. "I don't get what you're getting at."
Ricky Stix took great glee in explaining himself. He didn't notice Mike's arm tensing as he grasped the Bible.
"Simple logic, Mike. Simple, simple logic. If even the innocent end up here, then what else is there? I've sat here many a night and watched and this is the conclusion I've reached. Nothing. Nothing at all. There is no heaven. Only hell. And a lot of it. An eternal one. And boy, is it hot here," he said, leering. Mike very much wanted to punch the look off his face, but didn't want to chance a knife to the gut. He'd been stabbed once in the lower back. It'd missed his liver by inches. He didn't want to repeat it.
He took one more step and realized he was about to do something very stupid.
"Well, I mean, I've yet to see a single kid fall through that hole. How do I know you're not lying?" he asked, "You could be trying to trick me. That's simple enough for me to get."
Ricky didn't move. But he didn't say anything either. Mike looked off to the side and stared at the steadily falling bodies. They were of every race and creed. Man and woman. No children, though. Not that he could see. Mike squinted his eyes and stared harder.
"Huh. Weird. Did you ever see a dog fall through there?" Mike said, trailing his eyes downward on a falling woman with stark black hair.
Ricky blinked and surprised and turned.
"What? Dogs don't--"
Ricky Stix's forehead mated with the sharp corner of the day room Bible with the fluttered thwap-thwap of pages trailing through the air. Ricky had spots in his vision as he hit the ground. Mike sprinted the space between them and jumped down on arm that held the obsidian chipped knife. The limp snapped with a muffled sound. Ricky screamed. Mike swung his legs again and booted the ten pound sledge from his remaining grasp. The steel toe beneath the leather weathered the impact and sent the mallet flying over the edge. It shot through the top layer of magma into the churning depths with a puff of acidic smoke.
The lake of fire began to tremble and shift. A large hump rose in the middle.
Ra-Ra had finally begun to make noise. He tried to get up and fell onto his side instead. Mike reached him and realized he'd forgotten the knife over my Ricky, who was crying with fury as he tried to weather the pain. Screw it, he thought. Mike kneeled down and picked up the Indian man and threw him over the shoulder, just as he'd done miles worth of pipeline in Texas oil country not so long ago. Even the heat was reminiscent of those back breaking days. On a cool day the roughnecks called it God's country because no one else wanted it. During the heat of the summer they just called it Hell.
But now he knew better. Invisible ropes tightened around his chest. The sight of the black tunnel in front of him blurred and wavered and it wasn't the heat waves. Heat stroke. Or maybe just an old fashioned heart attack. His left arm and back began to ache. He ran harder, nor or never, as a deep, colossal rumble echoed around him.
Ricky Stix pulled himself up in a fit of rage. He'd never fought before. Killed, maimed, yes, but never fought. That dumb fucking cowboy would ruin it all, wouldn't he? He stood and thought how he might get back without arousing suspicion. With Adam dead and two witnesses alive...
"FUCK!" he swore, stamped his foot on the ground and stared out and over. He'd have to try and poison them. Use the mirrors to get back and around everyone's backs. He could, he knew it, and--
The magma in front of him churned with raw fury. The charred bodies of the tortured rushed along with the currents of roiling liquid rock like rubbish in colliding currents of a sewage system within the bowels of a filthy city. Arms and legs flailed and kicked. Cries of confusion mixed with centuries old pain. Waves of lava slammed up against the walls in explosions of spark and fire.
The hump in the middle of the cavern rose suddenly, and the surface finally broke with the terrible form Ricky Stix had so desperately wanted to see. A demon. The titanic fiend's ram skull head pierced up through the magma. Fleshless. Bloodless. Sightless bone hollows with terrible dark red light for eyes. The massive curl of horns from its head spilled and flung liquid orange fire. The tortured clung and fell from its skull. Some caught in its gnashing jaws, souls jammed between the gaps in the red hot fangs. Its bottom jaw worked constantly--chewing. Feeding. Devouring. As it rose the flame ridden body revealed a blackened and charred set of shoulders, rib cage, and arm. Screams emanated from the belly of the beast. They were a thousand times more numerous than the ones that had simply swam the surface of the lake and they drove into Ricky Stix's mind in full force the realization that this one beast had a millennias' worth of souls to feed the utterly unsated appetite of the beast. When it finally stood, swaying its head to focus down on the single live bit of flesh in its domain, it nearly filled the cavern. The heat swelled to lung searing proportions.
Ricky realized he knew nothing about demons and ran away.
The air was getting hotter. He wasn't sure how it was possible, but in the seconds before he reached the black door back to Earth, Mike felt his back sear with a sunburn-like heat. He began to scream with effort. Over the pain. It seemed so much further back than there. A trick of hell. Ra-Ra began to sob, a frantic murmur through the bandanna that gagged him. He could see behind them Ricky Stix swallowed in flames running, not chasing, but running from the wall of glowing orange magma that filled the tunnel from top to bottom.
Mike slammed his shoulder into the door--
--and fell over the ledge of the dresser against the wall of the room and onto the ground. Ra-Ra rolled over him and smacked his head against the ground. Pain lanced through him, but still yet he tried to scream and yell through the bandanna. Mike looked up at him in his own pain. He clutched his hand to his chest, the stabbing pains undeniable. He'd always been healthy. No heart disease ran through his family. He was young. The drug that'd brought him here was finally taking its toll.
Through the red haze he saw Ra-Ra's frantic motions towards the mirror. He snapped his head back and saw Ricky Stix, far back in the mirror through the still open door, but nearing quickly with the wall of fire and lava behind him. His face was that of terror. Pure, repentant terror. Pain too. His clothes and hair were ablaze from the sheer heat that chased him down. His face was a silent scream through the mirror of perdition.
Mike grimaced, something of a grin, and stood up. For his last and final effort, gasping as he struggled for air, he brought his fist back. From Ricky's end, the doomed man saw it all through the black doorway. The cowboy dope fiend from Midland Odessa threw his fist forward right into the center of the mirror. A hallowed scream of incantations shuddered through the air as his hand punched through and past the sheet rock behind it. The mirror shattered into long, jagged shards that sliced up and down the length of his arm. Long red rivulets painted Mike's limb as he pulled back and fell onto the ground.
His chest shuddered once. Then twice.
And stopped.
Ra stared out the window of the hospital. There had been too many questions for him to answer. He had feigned confusion, which wasn't difficult. Heat stroked and dehydrated, he'd been taken to the Methodist County Hospital where he'd been promptly hooked to an IV to restore what had been lost. He'd raved there for a bit. About doors in mirrors and visions of hell as the night nurses tried their best to resuscitate Mike. He'd been adamant about one thing--Ricky Stix had taken Adam, and Mike had saved Ra from the same fate.
He glanced to the bed next to him where Mike laid. Monitors beeped and hummed with his steadied heartbeat. Thick gauze wrap covered his right arm, starting at the wrist, all the way up to his elbow. He'd cut tendons, the doctors said. And many a vein. He was lucky to be alive. He slept soundly in the sleep he so very deserved.
What the authorities and, most importantly, the treatment facility director had wanted to know was how two men had gone missing in a closed off room. Cameras from the hall showed four men going in. Two pulled out. No alarms set off and the outside cameras failed to pick up anyone leaving the building. The doctors, on the other hand, wanted to know how on Earth one man had suffered a heat stroke and the other a heat induced heart attack in a full air conditioned facility. Why was Ra's face covered in burns? The nurses had passed Mike's boots around, shaking their heads in confusion at melted, disfigured, and still warm soles that had very nearly burned the paramedic who had removed him.
Ra couldn't answer them. How could he? He hadn't understood half of what he'd seen or--No. No, he had. He knew. He himself read the Bible just as his father had in India. Ra just wasn't sure if he was ready or even wanted to comprehend the shocking truth. He still remembered Ricky and his evangelistic claim. His rant he'd screamed at Mike. Would a god do that? Would a god truly damn those who were too young in innocence to yet claim Him as a higher power? And if so, what of the people who simply had not heard of him? Truly, such an entity would be a wrathful, vengeful god. Petty as well.
Had Ricky been lying? Or worse--did it even matter? In terms of all the creations of Earth and otherwise, Ra knew this: God had created Heaven. But he had also created Hell. God had knowingly and willing created hell. That awful, eternal netherworld of fire and suffering. Of pure agony.
Ra rolled over in his bed and shuddered.