Hellbound - 001/Henry Creel/Peter Ballard

024

WARNING MATURE CONTENT!!!

Henry Creel

Some people wonder what Hell will feel like for them. They wait for death, watch their life fly out of their grasp and wonder about something that hasn't proven to be real. Others live in fear of that place, in fear of accidentally going there for an eternity.

However, that was never the issue for me. I knew where I would be going after my death. Nowhere. Death was death, you were created from the chemical compounds of the earth and you returned to them once again. You start from nothing and you become nothing again because that's just how the world works.

But despite all of that I seem to have proven myself wrong. There is a hell, it might not be a terrifying place that boils your skin off and replays your worst nightmares over and over again until the torture seems infinite, but it's a real place nonetheless. There is a hell, but it's on earth, disguised from all of us as love. This is what people were so afraid of and this is what we're protecting ourselves from. Hell is not after death, it's after losing a part of you to someone else, losing a part of your life until you're half alive and half dead.

My life right now is utter fucking hell.

I never knew how much I hated the thought of losing Eve until I did. I never even contemplated my life without her until she left and I was forced to fix my bullet wound and stand on display for everyone to pick apart.

This is the hell that everyone talked about, this is the hell that everyone was so scared of that they lived a life of 'right and wrong'.

My hell is downstairs, cooking - or more likely burning our kitchen down - while I remain barricaded in my room, afraid to even take a step out of it.

She talks to herself angrily, probably at her lack of skills, and as much as I want to go downstairs and help her before she injures herself, I have to restrain myself from doing so.

I sculpted this hell for me, I was the creator and I should now lay in it. I gave her the knife to drive deep into my chest, held the cruellest words in my hands, and shot them all at her.

It's pure torture, and yet I still think that this hell of mine might be heaven too. I'm still with her, regardless of our distance. She's just a few seconds away from me physically and at any time I can crawl to her, and beg her to take me back. 

I can still hear her voice even though it's no longer whispering sweet words in my ears but rather cursing everything that she stumbles upon and I still feel the vibrations of her steps all over me even if it's not to walk towards me but farther away from me.

It might be hell but it's not the worst version of hell I could have and it's no way close to the hell I deserve, and for that I am thankful. 

"Fuck no!" I hear a scream from downstairs and every bone in my body urges me to help her with whatever she is struggling with, and it seems like my legs have a mind of their own as they fling me upwards and make me burst out of the door and fly downstairs in a flurry of a few quick seconds.

"What's wrong?" I ask her, distressed at the sound of what she sounded like mere moments ago.

So much for giving her space to heal. 

She looks at me, and I wish I couldn't read her eyes or that she was a better actor than she is. Her eyes flash with relief and love before realising all that has happened and hardening back to hate, but that chip in her icy demeanour is enough to get me back on my knees for her.

She looks panicked and dishevelled, almost scared if not for the rage she's swimming in.

I drift my eyes away from her face, unable to look at her any longer and settle for the mess she made instead. A knife stands upright on the floor between her feet with the blade sunken into the hardwood, and a pan full of sizzling food spilt on the floor next to her.