Hell's Basement

I had always considered living on the farm my haven. My place and chance to get away from people. Little did I know that in one day, my quiet haven would become a hellish prison...
Hell In My Basement
I awoke to a deafening silence. It felt as though the house was holding its breath as a person holds their breath when they feel the presence of evil ascending. I lay awake a few minutes, shivering despite the layers of blankets overtop me and a warm wood-burning stove outside my door. Or so I thought.
I climbed out of bed as silently as humanly possible and walked to my door. I hesitated a moment, my hand frozen only a few inches from the door knob in unspeakable horror. At that moment I wished only to hide in my closet and die. I shook so violently that I imagined the whole world could hear my racing heart.
Fear surrounded me, consumed me, took me into a state of panic. It was that state of panic that rendered me insane enough to grip the horribly cold door knob and turn it. I licked my dry, parched lips and fought against the roaring voice inside of me telling me to release my hold on the door knob, dig a hole, and bury myself.
I have never done anything so physically hard in my life when I inched that door toward me. I could not blink, for I felt as though my eyelids could not stretch enough to cover my bulging eyes.
The smell hit me with the force of a prairie wind. At that moment I accumulated another sense. Smell, taste, sight, tough, hearing... and death. I braced myself against the wall while I retched uncontrollably. The feeling cannot be described in any flowery poetry. Simply death.
I slowly raised my head to face what I had just smelt. I stared in unspeakable horror. What I saw before me will forever haunt me for the rest of my life. I stood, silently screaming inside.
My basement had become a gallery of the dead and a pool of life. Something warm touched my feet and I looked down to see dark-rosed liquid soaking into my carpet. I would have gagged had I not been frozen in unbelief of the picture in front of me.
Every object was covered in gleaming warm blood. The coating was obsolete. It was like looking through red 3-D theater glasses. Fresh blood still dripped from the ceiling, along with the gallery works of art. Each hung from a piece of red twine tied to the rafters of the ceiling. I was looking at a display of the human body.
Whoever did this, whatever evil did this, made sure to display each part separately. Every individual bone hung in suspense in the display while slowly twisting and untwisting in a never ending repetitions. Not only were the bones hanging from the ceiling, but the muscle attached to it, refusing to fall and be drowned in the pool of blood below, was turning leathery from the air around it.
The bones were the most noticeable. Not because they were bigger than the organs, but simply because they could be identified as ribs, femur, and so on. None were broken. Each was whole, not a scratch on one of them. It almost felt as though they were handled with the upmost care that a body-mechanic gives to their vehicle.
The organs hung in the hundreds, each producing a rhythmic sound of the dripping of blood. The organs hung like over-cooked spaghetti that eventually fall apart. But each organ - heart, brain, lungs, and such and so - were whole, like their neighbor that helped support them in the body.
I stood frozen still; my heart beating for every sound of the constant dripping of blood. Instead of crying or screaming like any sane human should, I couldn’t help but wonder where the biggest organ of all was - the skin. The skin that held the body intact and the soul inside.
I searched with my eyes, across the openness of the basement. I could not spot the skin. Nor could I spot any skulls. It was almost funny to think that I should worry about these missing parts. But the fear had numbed my sense enough to make me curious of the situation and scene before me. I stood for what seemed like hours, gazing in wonder at what seemed like this had always been this way and it would never change.
Suddenly, without thought, I looked towards the window to see if there really was life outside. My line of sight was blocked by a curtain of sorts. It was pink with speckles of red on it. I had found the skin. It was draped as a bear-skin hangs from a wall. Everything that was attached to the skin was there. Toenails, finger nails, hair, eyebrows, eyelashes attached to sunken-in eyelids, open lips, nose, and ears. The sex was unidentifiable. It was the perfect shell of the body.
After a few attempts I finally found that my legs would listen to me and I Made my way to the stairs. The first step into the sea of blood was like stepping into thick tomato sauce with little pieces and chunks of tomatoes. I kept on, I was wading past the stove I found it was still burning. I crouched down to look into the flames only to see skulls looking at me. The flames had bleached them white with their sanctifying heat. Flames protruded from the skull’s mouths and eye sockets, licking at the stove’s glass door.
While I stared into the flames, I began to see things. The flames turned into hands. These hands were not grotesque or threatening looking. The hands reach out as a mother reaches out to her your baby, holding her hands just out of reach to persuade the child to come to her and take the first steps of their life. I felt an overwhelming calling from these hands. They looked so comforting, a protection from the horror around me. The hands of death.
In the middle of my trance, my body cried out for me to awake. The smell of singed hair drifted into my nose and told me something was burning. The comfort I was receiving from the flames was burning me, singing my hair, eyebrows and eyelahes in what the flames must thought as a favor.
I opened my eyes to find I was just inches from the glass door of the stove, staring into the eyes of the skulls staring back at me. I jerked back so suddenly that I fell into the blood. I raised my hand, covered in blood, to check what damage the flames had done to my face.
I now had a receding hair line with the occasional burnt hair still clinging to my blistering face. My eyebrows, eyelashes and my entire face were burnt. The hair was burnt from my face and my skin had the feeling of pizza dough. I managed to shed a few tears from my blood-smeared eyes in the mourning of the loss of my face.
I no longer cared about my body, the shell in which imprisoned my despairing, damaged, and battered soul. I needed out of there. I’ll be damned if I die in this hell that had once been my basement! I ignored my broken body and got to my feet. I strode with a new ignited determination towards the stairs. I ascended the stairs from hell, leaving a trail of red foot prints to mark my departure.
I got to the top of the stairs not daring to turn back in fear of dead hands reaching out to pull me back to drown in a pool of red. I turned around the corner and ascended the remaining 3 steps to arrive on our main floor. I had returned to the land of the living.
“What would you like for breakfast dear? You hardly ever eat anything for breakfast so if you don’t have any suggestions at the moment I’m afraid that you’ll have to find something to eat yourself. I’m sorry I’m in such a rush, but you dad and I are taking the kids to town. We need to get groceries and then we’ll visit Grandma. We’ll be back later tonight. Bye!”
And with a sudden bang of the door, my mother was gone. The brief encounter of the living did not assure me that everything was OK. Rather it made me all the more confused. How could she have not noticed my burnt and bloodied body? A million other questions came to mind but none could be answered.
I walked into the nearest washroom to see what I had become, to see what only a mirror could tell me. I turned the knob and pushed the door open. I saw the silhouette of the shape of my body in the mirror. I reached up and felt for the light switch. I flicked the switch on, power the lightbulb that would turn on and hopefully give me an explanation of... well anything it could. I turned the light on.
When I stared into the mirror I became stalk-still, more terrified than everything that had happened, at what I saw reflecting in that mirror. My mind and body groaned in frustration of that reflection. Everything that had happened in that dreadful basement did not fit with the image in that mirror. The image I saw was none other than me.
I stared at the girl looking back at me. She had a full head of long red hair, eyebrows the shape of the out-stretched wings of an eagle, and long flaring eyelashes. Her skin was pale but un-touched by fire. The only thing that was radically different about this girl was the look in her eyes. It was like looking into an infinite empty well with millions of despairing souls longing to cral their way out, only to fall back to the bottom. One could get lost in those eyes.
Finally I crumbled. I fell to the floor, my soul and body reaching a limit of exhaustion. I lay there, curled up as a baby lies in a mother’s womb. I sobbed for the literal hell I had gone through. For what it had roobed me of. I would forever live with this aching feeling in the whole of my soul. Only death and oblivion would free me from this.
I thought with strain over the entire event that I had gone through. The bloodied basement, the short conversation with my mother, and last of all, my nearly untouched reflection. How could my body have survived as it had without any physical signs of damage? I had felt the pain, the agony. I felt the warmth of blood. Was it possible that it was not my body that went through it, but... my soul?
I thought of this new paradigm. Was it possible that my soul was keeping my body prisoner? Who had done this to me? For if my soul kept my body intact, it could mean that I can’t die. I was torture. I would never be released from this nightmare. I screamed at my new fate.
In the midst of my piercing cries, I heard laughter. Male laughter. A deadly foul smell hit me and I reeled around to see what I had to face next. As I faced this new terror, I closed my eyes before I saw it, bracing myself.
“Look,” said an acidic voice.
I responded to this command in an instant, almost willingly. I opened my eyes to see a phantom-like form, evil emanating from it. The phantom was 6 feet tall and ahuge ebony black tattered robe prevented it from revealing any physical features. The hood shadowed it`s face.
“Having fun?,” it said with a snarl. “I sure hope so, cause you’re mine now.”
“Wh-what do you mean?”, I replied in a voice trembling with fear and uncertainty of the demon’s purpose of all this.
“I want your soul. I reversed your body and soul aura. It is of no use to you now. Give me your soul and I will give you eternal oblivion for which I know your soul craves. ‘Cravings are the root of unhappiness’. Or... you could remain in this hell for the rest of your life, living in hear and pain.”
I thought about it. I actually thought about giving away my own soul! Everything I had gone through was for him to make me weak. He needed me only to willingly give up my soul and he won.
How I found the strength to stand up to this foul demon torturer of mine, I would never really know. I looked at him with a look to kill, my anger flowing from me like a spring. He blanched away.
“My soul, my body, is MINE!” I shouted defyingly.
Frustration overwhelmed him, rage glowed from eyes from where hell’s burning furnaces lived. Suddenly he smiled. For even though he did not get my soul, he had scarred me for eternity and he new it. He left me with a burning brand mark on my soul and vanished. That brand was my freedom. I knew not how I knew this, but the brand protected me in a way. I had survived hell’s trial and had to live with it in pain and suffering.
As I stand there, no longer covered in blood for the horrors had left with the horror-maker, I smile knowing that I beat the devil. ‘I am strong’, I said to myself. I crumbled to the floor to sleep, exhausted from the mental and emotional strain, and lived the horror all over again...