A GANDER INTO THE DEPTHS OF HELL

The death just occurred. The spirit in its entirety departs the body, still retaining its sense of self and the
life memories it had. That is right. You have just died and watch as all fades to white, as you are left
alone to float in a massive nothingness. Here, you reflect back upon your life, when you suddenly
notice that the good things you did begin to dwindle. Your moral definitions in life meticulously
deconstruct all your experiences in such a critical manner, that even the good things turn bad in your
mind. Your frame of reference becomes more defined when you notice the souls of others around you
for the first time. Complete strangers, yet you wish to talk to these people in a situation quite similar to
your own. You hear no voices yet see them talking. You find yourself unable to contact them, and are
suddenly shocked to see them all moving away from you. After a few seconds, you realize that it is
yourself which is moving. Moving away from the others. Unable to comprehend the mechanics of the
world around you, you ask a question out loud, in the hopes of events being confirmed by a greater
being. When for the first time, you hear a noise produced by something other than yourself. A light
buzzing noise. The noise's frequency progressively increases proportionally with its volume. The noise
turns to static. An unbearable, completely raw static tearing at your eardrums. Is this the sound of
madness, or the sound of the billions of tortured souls screaming from their confines in hell? The static
rips into your ears and begins to tear apart your entire being; shredding your body to pieces, then
further shredding your remains into smaller pieces, while you are aware of everything happening, yet
remain powerless to stop it. Once your physical body has been broken down into nothing but atoms and
molecules, all of which your mind is still aware of, the sound penetrates the confines of your mind;
shattering memories and thoughts and using the pieces to further tear the fibers and strings holding the
mind together, much like a shard of broken glass severs the flesh of a man. Your soul itself is now
subjected to this brutality, and is broken down until the point that you are nothing but, in your own
perception, a pair of eyes and a set of nerves. Suddenly, your bodily remains are seared by white
flames, which dissolves your flesh into nothing but a cloud of gas. You watch your memories burn into
oblivion as well, before you are tossed away into blackness. This is a different type of nothingness. You
know so. The only memories which remain unscarred are not of your old life, but remain for you to
judge your surroundings. A feeling of motion grips you, and slowly grow stronger and stronger. You
feel yourself to be rushing through this nothingness, progressively speeding up until you rattle; your
being slowly becoming invisible due to the frequency at which its atoms and quarks are violently
shaking. You hear the static again, as it too assails your fragile state. Your former being is gone, and
now you are forced to exist in such a lesser state of being, knowing full and well that things were once
better, but could only grow worse from this point on. You realize that at some point in the darkness, that
you entered a tunnel, for a small white light appears before you and begins to grow in size. Is this an
escape from the torture? The opening grows closer and closer, with every moment bringing you nearer
to salvation. You break through into a vaulted chamber speeding down towards the massive pool at its
base. Your speed is great, and you realize that “pool” is an understatement for trying to describe the
tumultuous, foaming sea beneath you. You pierce the surface of the sea, and are enveloped by a cold,
numb sensation. As time wears on, the liquid becomes more and more acidic. A new feeling of despair
overwhelms you; The sea is of tortured souls, all assimilated into one fluid mass, with all souls
collective. As you enter this pool, you slowly become one with this mass of souls, and become terrified
at the perpetual suffering of all around you; the pathetic nature and melancholy which prevails. The
souls, too, suffer more from the new reminder of life outside of the spiritual cesspit, and you slowly are
absorbed into the group. The pain from the newcomers hurdling into the sea shoots through all the
tortured souls; stabbing like knives into your being, as the acid finds a new place to singe your cuts.
You, too, begin to experience the feelings that so depressed your peers, as each newcomer brings
feelings of past happiness with him, further increasing your melancholy. Your mind, or the bits of it
which managed to remain, begins to question why your suffering had to exist. Your reformed mind
begins to question why your suffering had to exist. Your mind begins to question things, whilst the
realizations do nothing but further your melancholy. Purpose... in hell? Meaning in hell? You first
begin to question those things most pertinent to your current situation. Why me? How could this
happen? Ultimately, the man who still has some shred of sanity or logic left in his mind realizes that it
was not God that condemned themselves to an eternity of damnation. Rather, it was through your own
doing that you got here; living a life in conflict with your morals and values, forever to dwell on what
you did wrong in life. Thus, you condemned yourself to such suffering. The vain man would deny the
reality of things as such, but would ultimately do nothing but deny the reality of things as they really
are. Later on, memories of your past life begin to sneak back into your mind. The sins which you
committed in life; the things and events to which you hold grievances and are ashamed of, or the things
which could have been better in the eyes of one's morals. Indeed, you question the severity of your sins,
and say “There are those who have done worse than me. What happened to them?” and yet you find no
solace in the even greater suffering of those men. After a while, from the caustic fluid around you;
From the new coming souls shredding through the sea; From the psychological torture; From lack of
rest, you can no longer handle anything. The sensations you feel have all disappeared, save painful
feelings, as so that your entire perception of being has been so far reverted to a point where it is defined
solely on pain and just bare existence. Further torture comes from the eventual realization that loved
ones in your former life may have to go through the same experience you have had. Alas, all of the
struggles that you had in your old life lost their meaning. Eventually, after an unknown period of time,
long after your mind lost all sense of time due to your “eternal” sentence, you note that despite a
constant influx of souls, the level of the sea has gotten no higher. Which meant that they were either
becoming more dense in regards to the amount of souls contained within the sea, or that the souls are
going elsewhere. A little flicker of cognition, of course. Not a great epiphany of sorts. A shred of hope
pops up in your mind, that you will be spared of your suffering at some point, rather than be
condemned for the rest of eternity. Yet, this little ribbon of hope is quickly whisked away and set alight,
while its ashes are swept away to crevice deep within your mind. After that, your mind is driven passed
its melancholic insanity, to a state of nothingness. No thoughts. From the immortality you have gained
from this eternal sentence, you no longer have instinct, or even fear. You lost dignity in your barren
state of existence, and thus it cannot apply to you so long as you remain in such a state. You simply
have reached a point of bare, raw existence. No essence remains, and your own definition of yourself
has been so far decontructed that it holds no meaning or purpose anymore. You are numb to all but the
sensations of pain, constantly changing as to affect you you with optimal strength and efficiency with
each cut; With each stab; With each burn. You become blind from seeing the same thing everyday, that
your brain has begun to be unable to register change. The constant droning moans of those souls around
you are the only sounds audible, and the raw, reverberating state still pierces your ears and sends a
feeling of thousands of syringes being thrust into every square inch of your shriveled body. Yet, you are
unable to think of things in any other way, since through what seems as eons of the same thing, new
forms of pain, everyday, you have gotten used to the treatment, knowing what to expect with every
passing second. You do not notice your departure from the chamber and the sea, and do not register
anything. Instead, the body of your soul is replenished to its former state as you lay silent; floating
amidst a realm of nothing, as energy reforms itself and reconstructs your crippled soul to its former
shape and physical ability. Yet mentally, all remains lost. With a restored sense of body, your spirit
reconstructs instinct. From your reformed state, your soul registers a slight change in surrounding;
There is no pain. From there, you still lay silently drifting towards darkness, to be reborn in the
physical realm. Your old body has since been recycled. It lies buried in the ground, and serves to be a
source of nutrients to the flora, and indirectly to the fauna. And thus you are transferred to a new body,
to be born from the womb and live and be subjected to sheer chance and underlying factors to which
your soul cannot change. You shall go on, never knowing where you are destined for at the end of this
new life. And that is the true punishment: To be condemned to make the same mistakes while expecting
different results for the rest of eternity, watching as you are free to think and to live, then having
everything in the dream taken away, as you condemn yourself to infinitely perceived years of torture,
because your mind becomes disgusted at the prospect of your life having been lived in a manner that
conflicts with your own morals and standards. Indeed, it was the influences in your life that gave you a
moral system, and it was your own mind which was responsible for your own condemnation, and
carried out the sentence as well. Does that make you the devil, or an agent of Satan? Perhaps yes.
Perhaps no. These elements are nothing more than labels for the evils in one's self. Indeed, it was your
own doing to have acted against your own moral systems, and as a result, your own actions had forced
the soul to reconcile before recycling itself. And oh, the pain that awaits those who fetishize
physicality, for the torture would be physical itself. For those who never felt wrong, they most likely
served some greater purpose, or acted without doubt towards a greater meaning they perceived.