Hell

Hell

            Broken. That is the only word to describe the people I saw, if you could call them people. Broken in spirit, mind, and body. Towards the beginning of my meander through the red skies, there were cries and moans of pain, but now there was nothing, merely the scraping of their feet and their stones.

            The pain was caused by them having to drag their stones. Everybody had one, even in life. It was just invisible and weightless until death. Then the stone was either lifted, or made real. All of that depended on the choice of the person in life. Either the choice to release the weight, and allow it to be lifted, or to carry it to death and beyond.

            Each stone had every single sin the person had committed, and every instance of it being committed, carved into it. Some had relatively small stones, with relatively small sins on it. Some just had lie, lie, and lie over and over with other “small” sins thrown in there. Small being used loosely, as all sins are equal.

            However, there were also those with large stones. Ones with murder, lie, lie, theft, theft, murder, adultery, et cetera on them over and over again. Those were the ones dragging behind. They would be the first to fall, which would make everything worse for them.

            Every time they fell, another stone was added. On top of that, the person they loved the most would be brutally beaten in front of them, them unable to help, until they got up and moved. And once they stood up, they forgot that it had happened so that they couldn’t build immunity to it.

             The worst part was that they could see heaven before them, right off in the distance. Just close enough to know what they had separated themselves from, but small enough to be unreachable at all times. They knew fully well that they had separated themselves from the grace before them, which defeated them completely.

            However, I had the worst of hell. For I was dragging a larger stone than all of them, but I never fell, because I had to keep up. I had to tell my family, who were just ahead of me. I had to tell them that the key to unclasp them from the stone was in the chain. What nobody knew about hell was that it was locked from the inside; people were just so distracted by their own troubles and too consumed by their own sins to realize.

            The wages of sin is death, and the wages of death is to suffer. To suffer by separation, to suffer by pain, to suffer by fire, to suffer by all you could not bear. None could bear to go through what I go through, I am stronger than all of them. That’s not pride, that’s fact. I never looked back, never looked at my stone. I couldn’t bear to see what my sins were. And I couldn’t lose sight of my family. I needed to save them.