HELL ARRIVES FIRST CLASS

IMPALED ON DARKNESS

How can you fail something you don't to study for? Thank God I didn't study death and flunked this course.

Maybe death wouldn't take me because my breath was stankin' like two dead bodies in the trunk of a mobster's Lincoln, after having my face pulverized. Now that I was beaten so raw I could be a prime rib rare dinner at an undercooked buffet in Switzerland, I needed to survey the extent of the damage. I had other things to worry about --

Well, if you're dead, that's something to worry about.  But just as scary is when the curtain of the great divide parts and you can see beyond our normal electromagnetic radiation spectrum of vision. Seeing beyond what we're not meant to see. What we're not supposed to see. When the things that go bump in the night that have always been around you, but out of sight, out of mind -- appear.

PRIDE -- it's a deceiver.

I refused to let those two clowns, dumb and dumber, escort me home. The greatest dread was showing my Aunt that I had gotten in a fight when I was supposed to be playing basketball. When I got home, I went around the side with a basketball to disguise the wound if she saw me going down into the basement. She didn't. She was glued in the stupid tube.

Funny thing is time seemed to crawl to a standstill. The beating took all of five minutes. My brother was going into the shower when I left. Fifteen minutes later I was at home and he was coming out.

I passed by wall length mirrors, and I refused to look into them. All the lights were off. Good. My face on the other side couldn't come alive and laugh at me. I went down in the subterranean basement, laid on the couch and faced the pillow side, back to the room. My brother launched downstairs turning the lights on -- I mumbled for him to turn them off. He did. I was working a summer job de-tasseling corn at the time. He reminded me he'd wake me up at the plumber's butt-crack dawn . I was so delirious I agreed. I had no idea the extent of the damage.


KNOCK KNOCK - IT'S HELL, LET ME IN

This is when reality split – the drab tentacles of darkness swirled and twirled, painting a rapid design of death's forthcoming. I had no idea how long I laid. The first was a gut-twisting stench. Tires burning? Acrid. The kind of smell that sticks on you. It was a mixture of sulphur like iron. The iron was my blood dripping down my own throat. Tasting it like some vampire cannibal carnivore about to taste his own flesh.

The door to the top of the stairs opened slowly. I was scared to death it was my Aunt. Low thuds began to reverberate. And then a slow march. The room begin to take on an orangish hue. The flickering of flames danced across the couch and room. To shout reason was to be a fool -- but I told myself someone was playing with the lights. It was one of those circle knobs you could increase or decrease the lightning by twisting. Maybe my cousin was playing tune in Tokyo on the knob. It felt cold. Flames and cold are antithetical to each other. My brain lost reason - departing like some phantom plane over the Bermuda Triangle. IT JUST VANISHED. 

These shadows were racing and darting in and out of sight beside the realm of my battered peripheral vision. One eye literally gave me tunnel vision, I could see like Mr. Magoo in a dark alley – barely anything at tall(British affectation).

The thuds. The footsteps were more than one. But they walked in a synchronized succession. All up, feet down. Feet up,  all down. What was I thinking? What could I think? There was nothing left to think. Maybe it was my Aunt, brother, and cousin. Why'd they'd all march down the stairs at the same time is in the land of logic, and that was gone. I feel the room being filled. As if these with the solemn foots were expanding beyond the dimensions of time and space. 

There was only one emotion left -- FEAR >>>>

I garnered as much strength as I could muster to peer over my own shoulder. Three shrouded shadows, big in stature, walked in a slow march down the stairs. All moving in a row. All moving to the next step below. I did what anyone brass balls tough guy would do -- I SCREAMED LOUDER THAN A BABY!!!

My brother bolted out of his room. Yes, he lived in the basement because he had troll qualities anyway. He's the guy that hides under rocks and makes you pay for crossing a bridge you built.

He turned on the light. The orange flickers were gone. Only the dripping iron was left in my nostrils. Were they gone? Could he not see them and they're still coming for me? No. The soft thuds had stopped. Was this a traumatic hallucination? Lack of oxygen to my brain? Or a real vision into the fourth dimension? I would find out later in life --but not this day. 

Now it was my brother that had the look of horror on his face. He was a mirror for me. His look showed me what I already knew -- I had singlehandledly been beaten to be a stand-in double for the Toxic Avenger. 

My brother was mad. He was emotional. And he was going to get my Aunt -- errrrrrt. Stop. I pleaded that he couldn't. The trouble I'd be in with her would ruin my summer. 

My brother now noticed I had lost all reasonable thought as well. But it was just a beating. That's all. So I thought. Swelling was coming up now. And that's what hid what was really going on. The damage that was really brewing. Each hour I allowed for this go untreated -- was pushing me toward dire consequences that would sling shot me back into the bony hands of death. 

This is where we shall be next post...