Hell Burns Cold: A Horror Anthology

Hell Burns Cold

TRIGGER WARNING: RELIGION, DEATH, STUFF THAT WOULD PROBABLY BE PSYCHOSIS TRIGGERS SO PLEASE READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION

MISSING

$10,000 CASH REWARD

37 year old male

Cassius "Cass" Michaelson

Description: 5 feet, 11 inches tall. Slight athletic build, broad. Black hair, brown eyes. Trim beard and moustache. Has a tattoo of a portrait of Jesus on his upper bicep. Last seen wearing work boots, boot-cut jeans, and a red baseball style t-shirt. He was last heard from just before going to work on Monday, November 7th at 3:00 P.M.

If anyone has tips on where he might be, please call the local police station or this number here.

--

I found another one of my missing persons posters today. I threw it into the lake as soon as I got back. The ink began to bleed as the paper dunked below the surface. 

I miss bleeding. I don't know how long it has been since I left.

The whole thing was a lost cause.

They're never going to find me again, and even if they did they would not like what they find. I can barely find me these days.

It's wintertime now, and my bones ache so much inside the wreckage from the chill. It's strange how I can still feel it. I became curious about what became of me, so I took a dive below the lake's surface. I went deep until the light almost didn't touch anything, at the bottom. My truck was still there and I was still strapped into the driver's seat. I looked deep into my hollow eyes, watching as fish continued to pick my bones clean. None of the thousands of dollars I spent on anything in my life mattered anymore, not down here.

You know, I was a Christian before I died. I thought Jesus would save me from Hell. That's what I was told, and I held onto that. I became too comfortable, and I used the God Card as a cop-out. I was a shitty husband, and an even shittier father and son. I don't deserve the funeral they had for me if they haven't given up by now and had one at all. I was a bad person, and no amount of getting "saved" every week could fix that. I was so concerned with tormenting people begging for help and sympathy, warning them of righteous judgement. I was so concerned with who had sex with who, my marriage crumbled and my relationship with the God I claimed to worship... vanished.

They told me from boyhood that Hell was a lake of fire filled with screaming, torment, and the gnashing of teeth. But Hell--my Hell-- is lonely, and cold, and forgettable. And I'm here forever. They were right about one thing about Hell though. God's presence abandoned this place a long time ago, and I felt that terrible empty feeling when my final breath escaped my cold body and bubbled weakly up to the water's surface. 

There is no relent to the torture, and the silence is deafening. The cold is painful, and there is no respite brought by hypothermia-- there is nothing to trick me into thinking I'm warm before drifting into a warm eternal sleep. I would give anything for my Hell to be hot.

I would give anything for a second chance, to see my family again, and to be a better person instead of cowering behind a cross and selling my soul to politics when I claimed it belonged to my God.

But I can't.

I'm lonely.

I'm cold.

I want to die... or die again. Less painfully.

I curled into a ball on the hood, still staring into my unblinking face. My skeletal smile mocked me as if it were telling me some unspoken sick joke, and I wanted to punch through the windshield but the defeat I felt from knowing it wouldn't affect anything stopped me from doing that. I wouldn't even feel it, only more cold.

I want to go home.

I wish I could go home, but Hell is my home... and Hell burns cold.