Hello, I am Silas. The simple man who is made of money. The man who shook off the dust of his past to make something of himself and was determined to make a life that I had glimpsed in magazines. I am a black man, let me get that out of the way. I say that so you can see me, not because it is important; my bank accounts (yes, I have more than one) and credit score have essentially erased my blackness to anyone who matters. I’ll also tell you that I am a very average man by most metrics. I am not particularly handsome, though again, my money warps the general perception and bumps me up closer to 10 than maybe I deserve. I am very well educated which is to be expected; my parents are decorated academics and encouraged the same in me. I’ll give you a list of other inconsequential facts before I get to the heart of this writing so as to avoid curiosities about the man who would bring you such news as I plan to present later:
I do not have close associations with my parents; they think I should use my wealth to improve my community which I think is preposterous considering that my current community is comprised of millionaires like myself who need no help, and I have no associations with other communities that they feel I should align myself with based on the color of my skin. I haven’t communicated with my parents in years for this reason and I do not feel any particular longing to do so.
I am married to a woman who looks very good on my arm in public. This is why I chose her. That and her willingness to speak when spoken to. I don’t view my wife as a docile victim of my masculinity. I think of her as a kind of employee who satisfies specific needs that I have and she is an extremely good employee. This might appall some people, but I think this is the best way to ensure a good marriage; we communicate our needs and expectations very clearly and we agree to honor and respect them.
I have two daughters that I love very much. I am not very involved in their lives, but I am also not absent. I want my daughters to be like me, not like their mother, and my wife knows this. They are both receiving the best education that my money can buy.
What else? I don’t have religious or political affiliations. I donate to charities for the tax benefit. I stay in my lane. I support things that support my own interests and the interests of my daughters. I have a nice house and two cars. That about sums it up.
So, to the real point, I am here to tell you that hell is a real place and I have seen it. Some might say that this is ridiculous, and I understand that, but that doesn’t change the fact that I have walked the dark catacombs and been witnessed to the black magics that punish the wicked for sins perpetrated on earth. I don’t know if it is the christian hell detailed in the bible, but it is a place of fire and brimstone. It is a place that vibrates with the screams and echoes of those whose physical bodies are enchanted to withstand the repeated beatings and mutilations that are deemed to be the necessary cost of whatever transgressions put them there after death. It is a place inhabited by demons; some match the descriptions and depictions that have been popularized over time, and others defy human imagination. I can’t begin to describe them, the horrors of their bodies, their voices, and the sounds of their laughter haunts me in my waking hours. Demons are a tricky sort. I have interacted with one in particular who seems to be a fine gentleman, he is my guide when I find myself inexplicably down under and he tells me that he enjoys the companionship, the conversation. And at first I was as skeptical of all of this as you must be.
I am not dead. For reasons beyond my comprehension, my consciousness — or soul or whatever you would call it — travels to the depths of hell in my sleep. I have not had a dream in many years. I forget how it feels to become lost in the unconscious thoughts that comprise our dreams, unless it’s true that I do not go to hell but I am actually so consumed by guilt for my own perceived sins in my waking life that I have created a hellish dreamscape that I must brave over and over again. That is not the case, I have ways to prove that this is more than mere self imposed penitence. And anyway, there is nothing in my life that I feel guilty for. Some would say that I am a selfish man and that selfishness would be enough to banish me to a torture realm, but I don’t believe that. Tending to one’s own self interests is the best thing one can do for their loved ones. How better to serve them if you are not secured?
Whatever the cause of my constant trips to hell in sleep, I have had some very interesting encounters and I am here now to relate something very important to every reader who is still with me. There is an evil coming. It is rising from that place and there is no stopping its emergence into this reality that we cling to for comfort despite the horrors that make it up. And unless we learn to resist it, it will creep into the vulnerable and ooze their orifices to infect others. But there are so many of us who have left ourselves vulnerable.
Do not mistake this urgent message as a call to religion. Religion will not help those who practice it flippantly. The only salvation is compassion. The thing that is coming rides the waves of anger and wrath deep into the souls of men and women who give into the very common notion that the suffering of others is of no consequence to them. I am a selfish man, but I am not a cruel man. I have looked this evil in the face and repelled it; felt its snaking tentacles creep along my face and slither into my nose, reaching deeper for my heart that it could not penetrate because I am not the kind of soul that it takes. But it grows stronger in the fires of hell, fueled by the calls for its rising that ring out from many of us who take pleasure in the suffering of others, and even those who are so self involved that they fail to prevent the suffering of those closest to them. I am no role model, I am a very selfish man, but if you can believe it, there are those who are even worse than me who are feeding this beast who will be upon us all very soon. Open your eyes, my friends, open your hearts if you can, before it’s too late.
Now you are asking, how do I know all of this? The demon who calls himself my friend introduced me to a very special man in hell who was able to explain it all. The man called Junipero Serra y Ferrer when he dwelt our realm of existence, now called Saint. I met him among the flames as his skin melted from his skelton and he moaned a noise that rattled my eardrums. And my demon companion halted his torture for just long enough for Saint Junipero to tell me of the coming beast who would escalate the cruelty, genocide, and war on Earth.
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