Helga (unedited)

Chapter 15: No Mercy

‘They went out that way!’ yelled one of the demons; his voice echoing in the passages of The Devil’s Little Sister.

The ‘they’ that he spoke about was the three of us (Ngi, Anastasia, and me). We had scorned the Sister and we had Hell to pay. You’re probably wondering how we got out, and so shall I tell you...

Manual had taught me to observe not only with my eyes, but also with my mind. ‘Intuition’, is what he said. Ergo, when we couldn’t find much of a way in the walls, we had to find another place. We consider breaking through the cells, but that was far too dangerous. And we weren’t strong enough.

The problem with us people is that we like going to war alone. War is an epic dispute with many smaller battles, challenges. I can safely assure you that one battle takes up some of your spirit and thus: you cannot fight and win each battle; you need help. In our cells we were three separate units, but once we broke the walls between us, we became a tri-factor. As a tri-factor, our battles were divided amongst three. We each had more spirit to fight on. The war was won! The cell caved in and we were out (We used Ngi’s cell).

Before we disappeared into the greater darkness of the passages, we all took our twelve candles. The one that I’d already lit had become stubby. As we more, we kept turning our heads in all directions. One had to be about one’s wits then.

‘Don’t get too close to the cells,’ said Ngi. She was wary that if the other prisoners saw us, they would cause clamour that would summon the demons. We could’ve taken about twenty people more, but twenty more people meant twenty more problems. Ngi’ve done it, but I challenged her good heart then.

The passage was black and unending. The more that we went in is the more that we lost each other.

‘Light the candle,’ said Anastasia.

‘What are you nuts?’ reprimanded Ngi ‘that will bring out the other prisoners. And the demons might I add.’

I must add that when we left we didn’t exit in the direction that we’d come from. The demons, when they dropped us off, took that direction. It was probably the direction of their ‘offices’.

There we were in the oblivion of confusion, trying to make it to the light. The odd thing about being in darkness and knowing it, is that the only thing one wants to do is to quickly find the light and nothing else. Light there was none.

We had roughly six days left to manoeuvre our way out of Hell. I was satisfied that we’d survived stage one. But that’s like being glad you’ve played until half-time in a soccer match. Half-times don’t ensure victory, full-time does. Our full-time was lost in the darkness. Our trek, yes, that’s how long it felt, abruptly came to an end. We hit a dead end; another, larger wall.

‘It’s good that you tried,’ a voice spoke out ‘then your death here will have adventure.’

The voice was that of a girl we identified as Calypso. She considered herself to be able to tell the future.

‘So, like a prophet?’ we asked in whisper.

‘No, not like a prophetess,’ she modified our question with her answer ‘Prophets and prophetess are close to other spirits which tell them the future. I just know the future.’

My time in Hell was sure interesting. The characters I made were fantastic and mysterious for my liking. I’d’ve destroyed for saying such thing, but after having met Manual, all things were possible: Calypso included.

Her voice wasn’t like that of any other Mercurial girl, she sounded as if she lived in solitude by the rivers. I may not get to tell you this later on, so I shall do so now. She had tattoos that covered every inch of her skin. The markings were of ancient people in ancient times. The markings were written in ancient languages. She mentioned holy languages called: Amharic, Arabic, and Greek, amongst others that I unfortunately cannot recall. These were Earth languages. Earth surely had a lot of languages in its time. No wonder conflicts broke out on a daily basis.

‘To escape Hell, one must go through Hell,’ she said.

What she meant was that we were not getting out of Hell without going through the other stages. That made me very nervous, I must say. Calypso had predicted my death and stage two was the scene of many deaths.