Memories

Hell and Back

Chapter 1

 Night crept through the sleeping city while the few restless occupants stirred. Some woke up drowsy eyed as they prepared for the coming day, as others settled in after a long, exhausting day. There were the particular night dwellers who took to the darker hours to participate in illegal and repulsive habits. But there was one person who was not any of the people suggested, one who yearned for the nighttime for reasons ordinary people couldn't ever fathom.

 The man walked the streets searching for nothing but cold and darkness. He clung to the shadows not hide from others, but to lose himself. As people approached the man they would be compelled to skirt around him or crossed a dimly lit street to avoid any contact with him, suggesting that he had some horrible disease that was extremely contagious. Although, he never possessed any interest for their evasion as his only focused was the numbing the pain inside. No one gave him a anything more than second glance, and they had no reason to rationalize being concerned with him.

 His exterior was like any ordinary man. He was to no extremes tall nor short. His shape was neither a slim silhouette nor an overbearing width. There was no heart stopping appeal to his appearance, nor an impulsive need to shudder away. He had no sharp defining features or soft warming curves to his face. But his eyes lacked any shine or shimmer that gave a sense of humanity as they only held blankness. A blankness that left the viewer with a feeling of unease. Overall, his appearance and anonymity were a shell he used to hide what inside. Inside was not a soul. Really, it was anything but.

 Every night the soulless man walked the shadows, as one would walked among friends, inviting and grateful. He was soothed by their icy touch and was enveloped by their silence, somewhat entranced by it. It was the complete opposite of what he had endured for years and years before. Now it was the only thing he could remember, his only memories.

 Pain.

 Terror.

 Rage.

 It had never ended, until he escaped. He shouldn’t have been able to. Because no one escapes Hell. Now all he had were remnants of the pain.

 Pain that burned and singed him to the bone without leaving its gruesome mark. Pain that throbbed in every muscle in his body and that pressed against the confines of his skull. Pain that stabbed through his torso and limbs with a dull, serrated blade. Pain that ached in every joint and ligament without end.

 The man could still feel every single one of his bones being broken and re-broken simultaneously, and the fire burning its way through his side. He had no memories of anything else; only that there had been a sudden explosion and a hole had appeared above him. He broke his own wrists to free himself from the shackles and slowly dragged himself through the hole. But to his dismay, once he passed through the hole he no longer had a body, just pain where his body should have been. From this moment on, he haunted the world above as a daemon.

 Others had escaped as he had; now free to roam the world above without torture. He saw how they seeped into human bodies and gained a brand new chance at life. He followed their lead and found a body to quickly inhabit, but as soon as he took the controls he was overwhelmed by the man’s memories of family, friends and life for just a moment. The last memory he saw was the strangest; a smiling woman looking down at him with her hair fluttering in her eyes. But the daemon pushed it aside due to the guilt that overwhelmed him as every image flickered. He had stolen the man’s life from him, but he needed a sustainable body to keep him from Hell.

 With the fresh wounds on his inner spirit so deep and bloody from Hell, he felt a need for revenge and was blinded by his rage. The daemon used the man’s body as a tool to find, torture, and kill people he saw as “unfit” to live while he had been tortured. He had seen other daemons murder many humans, by the thousands even, while he only killed those that wasted their lives; criminals, welfare drainers, or even workaholics that neglected their families. He would show each and every one the pain of what waited for those who wasted their lives then, when they begged for it to end, he mercifully ended their life on earth.