“Come here, don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you, I can’t hurt you. Would I like to? That is a complex question. I have been hurting souls like you for aeons, it is my nature. Like the things with wings that fly, they have them for that reason.” The man with the horns of a ram and the legs of a goat extends a hand toward Silas in the dim, ominous red glow of hell’s light, and Silas sees the long and thick, black nails like claws on each of his thick fingers. “These were made for torture. That is what they know. But see,” the hand claws fast at Silas who is too slow to dodge it, but instead of the feeling of claws in his stomach, there is nothing, “I go right through you. So we can talk, we can be civil. It must all be so horrible for you, isn’t it? And you must be wondering why you are here. Does this mean that when you finally meet your end you will wind up screaming here for eternity? I do not know Silas. I am just happy to have a guest, someone to show the wonders of this place. There is so much of man’s history here you know, it is a veritable museum. Don’t you want to see it? You might as well. You are here until you return to your body, why not learn something?” The man with the horns of a ram walks the length of a rocky corridor and Silas is happy to see him disappear. Even though hell is mostly dark, there is enough light to see the twisted look in the eyes of the man with the horns and Silas does not trust him. But the man with the horns had a point, it was obvious that Silas could not be harmed and he would be in hell until he woke from dozing off in his office after a particularly boring meeting at his job. Why not get a guided tour of hell?
Oedipus Rex
Oedipus is sitting on some mound of dirt, maybe a rock, maybe a pile of limbs still wet and dripping at the ends, maybe a stack of corpses, but he is definitely in Hell. He is panting, the oxygen is so thin there, if there is any. His body is so rigid that he looks as though he may crack soon, or as if he has been turned to jerky. His skin is yellow red, as if a fire rages inside of him. He sits in a rounded spotlight on his mound, head bent, neck extended. He lifts his head and his eyeballs are oozing foul. His face is not as attractive as it once was when the Earth’s winds danced across it; his silky hair does not grace stone hard cheeks anymore. He seems to be melting and exploding all at once. There are deep gashes all over his body and they continuously bleed. Each wound is like a gaped mouth screaming for comfort but, of course, they never find any. His arms are broken back at the elbow, his legs at the knee. He is missing fingers and toes, only his gums occupy his mouth. Every cell in his body screams out agony. But he manages to be propped up on his stoop or stump or pile. And just outside the scope of the light, vague forms gather around him.
It is the man with the horns and a group of lesser demons; Silas hangs back from the group that had amassed around the man with the horns, afraid even though he knows that only the man with horns is aware of his presence. The lesser demons have tails that snake silently in the darkness and their horns protrude invisibly from their heads, hidden by the errant shadows created by the dim light of hell. Their mouths are harsh and black. Their teeth are sharp and grimy yellow. They have hard black horns and skin that ranges from slimy, scaly, to smooth as a baby’s bottom. They smile a lot, a black smile. Do not trust it. It may seem benevolent but it is waiting to eat something essential from your body and watch you writhe in pain.
Oedipus is well aware of the demons; he knows what they look like. They have been ripping him apart for centuries, or if not them, then creatures just like them. There is a funny notion of time in Hell. One knows that the punishment will last for an eternity but still tries to keep track of time, as though the effort alone is a solace in light of the fact that an eternity is not fixed and can never be reached. Oedipus does not have a calendar anywhere; he is not keeping a tally of days on the wall. There is no way of keeping track of time in hell, nothing happens on a set schedule. All Oedipus knows is that it’s been a while, a long while since he heard his fate from the oracle and found himself committing sins against man and nature. It has been so long, too long since he felt any desire satisfied. There was a constant itch, nagging pain, sweltering heat, none of which he could do anything about. There were constant beatings, he was always bleeding, always screaming.
“This is Oedipus…Oedipus, Oedipus, Oedipus. Oedipus has been with us for quite some time. Oh, Oedipus, he never had a chance really. He was not so much a sinner as much a victim of circumstance. And fate always has it that poor, innocent people always feel the sting of Hell. He is guilty, but he was born into it, he had no other way. How was he to avoid it when his father was so proud a king? Oedipus here was one facet of a complex design to punish a confident king, a wicked queen. And in punishing them, as it was his destiny to do, he condemned himself. Poor, poor Oedipus.”
Silas deduces that the man with the horns must be a sort of teacher in hell. He seems to enjoy the sound of his own voice and Silas can almost defect a hint of compassion for the sad Oedipus, who was no longer mythic hero but a sad sack of tortured remains.
“It is a pity that Hell is such a place that delivers so much pain as to render inhabitants mute, for if our dear friend Oedipus could speak, he would no doubt explain to us how unfair his position truly is. By being born this man’s fate was sealed! He is perturbed, no doubt.” The demons chuckle. “It’s almost a pity to torture him. Almost.” The demons’ laughter continues.
“Grab him!” The man with the horns calls out. Oedipus hears footsteps and conversations leaving him, then feels a hook enter his shoulder hot and fast. He falls to the floor and feels himself being pulled, he feels his collarbone separate from the shoulder, but the hook is lodged deep into his flesh and a lesser demon drags him like he is walking a dog. The man with the horns orders the sad body of Oedipus to the hell fire. Silas is stupefied by the gore. He watches it wide eyed, unable to look away and he can feel the man with the horns smiling at him.
Oedipus is dragged over a trail within hell’s catacombs that is covered with sharp spikes that stick up and grab at his flesh and bone. He can feel his back being slowly pulled away from him. He feels warm blood oozing over the parts of his body that remain. One of his ribs snags the spikes and the demon dragging him struggles for a moment to loosen him.The demon jerks hard and Oedipus hears the bone crack and separate. He is a bloody mess and with each step he loses more and more of himself. There is no numbing in Hell. The body never goes into shock when it reaches its threshold for pain. There is no fainting, there is no escape.
The demons walk Oedipus to the black lake of fire and the man with the horn turns his attentions to Silas.
“Where an Earth lake has waves and crests, the hell lake has only flames. Black, smokeless flames that never cease. Flames so hot they could make the Earth sun sweat; they eat up whatever they touch in an instant. When a sinner’s body is so worn from its torture that anymore punishment would lead to disintegration, or when a body has been divided into so many pieces that still feel the agony of their separation, we can take them to the black hell lake to dispose of them. And some evil, black magic produces a new body that appears in the soul’s holding place where the torture can begin again. The soul does not realize this, that it’s body is renewed only to be broken down again. The soul only knows the pain. When the body is thrown into the lake, the soul feels the agony of the incineration. When the body is reformed in its holding place, it can only remember the agony of the fire until the demons bring more torture. The pain only gets worse for them, Silas. While on Earth the body is able to callous and acclimate, in Hell, the body’s defenses get weaker and weaker until we have to throw it into the black hell lake in rapid succession.”
Silas and the man with the horns watch as the lesser demons hurls Oedipus’ body into the black lake and they all turn and walk back toward the stump where his body should be waiting, twitching at the thought of the flames. They pass countless other demons dragging bodies to the lake or torturing bodies in the cruelest ways possible.
The lesser demons are done with their lesson and are too excited to continue their torment of Oedipus to return to the man with the horns who is talking at Silas again.
“The lighting in Hell is so eerie, right? It is as though the Devil dimmed the lights to just detectable. We have incredible vision in this light, though, compared to the light up there where you come from.”
Silas is still scared beyond measure by the whole experience, though part of him is numb to it because he knows that it is a dream and part of him is confident that the whole construct is his own brainchild. But Silas is curious how the man with the horns knows how his eyesight functions on Earth.
“You’ve been to Earth? Were you a person once?” Silas asks cautiously.
The man with the horns laughs. “I am a demon Silas, I was never human. But I have taken human bodies before.”
Just as the man with the horns finishes, the receptionist enters Silas’ office, waking him from his dream, bringing him back to the real world.
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