The Eons: Book Two

Chapter Three

The Eons Book Two-Chapter Three:

Vlad's POV

There isn’t really a good way to describe it, where I am. They call it the pit of unspeakable horrors outside, in here they just call it Hell. You can’t feel happy emotions, only the ones that hurt you, you can’t age. It’s crazy. Unlike most people here, it was my choice to be here. The story is actually quite long and complicated. Days here are filled with toil and agony. Everything burns and smells of death. I can’t feel regret for my choice, I can’t feel anything. The only thing I can do to keep myself from going  insane is talk to the other inhabitants.  Jypsie wakes around 3 hours after me. We can spend hours on end talking about the friends we left behind.   

    “There is a way to get out you know,” Jypsie says, playing with her hair. This was a tense subject. No one ever really talked about it. Hope wasn’t really possible down here. The thought of escape, it was intoxication.

    “How?” I asked leaning on the ruins of a building.

    “The council members said that if someone out there,” she gestured toward the large crack in the ground splitting the Earth that lead to the outside, “sacrifices a soul for you, they take your place down here.” Our only problem was that we had no way of communicating this to anyone outside. Ari was smart, he would figure it out.

Then the day's work began. Down here it was all toil and pain. Lifting rocks to build a statue of our captors, farming hard ground, fixing fences made of magma. If you got burned by the fires, ever spreading around they just patched you up and sent you back. Food rations were given out daily. Tasteless masses of nutritious slop and water everyday. They can’t deny that we must continue to live down here in our own personal hell. We slept in bunks in the barracks separated into guys and girls. The walls are made of cinder blocks no one bothered to paint. The beds are made of plywood with stiff, uncomfortable mattresses.  By the point in the day when I do go to sleep, I think it would be more comfortable to cut out my own heart with a pushpin than to lie down on that mattress.

We are woken up at 4:00 AM, on the dot. The guards never fail, if you aren’t sitting up at first call, they walk into the bedrooms and beat you with their night sticks. They only show kindness or compassion to the girls. That’s how Jypsie gets up  at 7. The guards take their liberties with the girls though. I can see it in her eyes, they’ve ruined her. If you complain it gets worse. The only way to deal with the agony is to bear it. I’ve done this to myself. The fault is mine, and mine alone. Praying like some do on Sundays is pointless, God can’t hear you from down here, or if he can he doesn’t care. Everyone of us deserves this, praying won’t help you now.

There is one of them now, on his knees, asking for relief.

“Shut up James, it won’t do anything for you,” I spit at him with venom in my voice. He glared at me in response. He then returns to his prayers. Rolling my eyes, I jump into bed. Where’s a pushpin when you need one?