Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-32071678-20150509215902

Many people think they know what hell is. They picture it being a place filled with searing flames, where the Devil resides, pitchfork in hand, waiting to bring misery upon sinners. They think it’s where evil and tortured souls travel to when their temporary bodies finally give out. Or some simply say hell doesn’t exist, it’s just a place made up by delusional Bible-lovers in an attempt to scare people into being good.

All of these views are wrong.

Hell isn’t filled with searing flame. It isn’t hot with the fires of punishment. It is as dark as the blackest night, as cold as the Arctic, and as hollow as an empty nesting doll. There is no Devil here, but many demons. They all hunger for me, tease me, drive me to insanity. There are no tortured souls here except my own, but before this I was what many would call a “good person”. I wasn’t who you would think would go to hell.

But if I could choose to be in a place of fire and heat, or this nightmare of ice and darkness, I would choose the fire in a heartbeat. I’d much rather prefer a know Devil, stabbing me with his pitchfork, versus these unseen monsters, slowly wearing away at me.

When the howls start my sanity ends.

They begin quietly, like little whispers clawing at my ears. If I try hard enough I can drown them out with my shaky thoughts. Thoughts of life before, of happy words and sunny days. But slowly they grow in volume, louder and louder. Soon I can no longer ignore them, and instead images begin to flash behind my eyes. Blood and gore and destruction, my swift and brutal demise, replaying over and over in my lonely head.

Slowly, I begin to feel something warm on the back of my neck. The sound of shallow breathing begins to fill my ears, and heat my chilled neck, mingling with the howls and creating a twisted symphony.

My body tenses up, and I stare into the darkness straight ahead of me, where lights are beginning to glow. Just keep calm. I take deep breaths in an attempt to steady my wildly beating heart. I can smell it if I breathe a little too deeply. It smells of rotten meat and blood mingled with lavender and honey suckle. It’s a bittersweet smell, reminding me of nightmares and home.

Then, without any warning, a long thick tendril wraps around my throat, slimy and writhing. It begins to choke me, but I cannot make a single noise. Even when stars begin to clutter my vision, filling the darkness, I keep quiet.

The lights grow a little brighter, a little bigger.

Claws dig their way into my back, but not deep enough to kill, just deep enough to draw blood. I feel the warm liquid begin to trickle down my back in lazy rivers, following the contours of my stiff body. I bite down on my tongue, trying not to hiss in pain.

The lights are getting closer by the second.

On and on the agony goes, until my ears are bleeding from the howls, which are now deafeningly loud. They’ve begun to take on a human sound, the screams of those I had loved echoing through the void.

Closer the light gets, snaking towards me in pairs, hundreds of glows.

   I have begun to lose consciousness, and my heart is stilling to a stop. My mind is slowing, thoughts tumbling against eachother.

''I can tell now that those glows aren’t lights, but eyes. Maybe forty feet away.''

<p class="MsoNormal">My blood is close to drained, and everything seems to be collapsing in on itself in a flurry of death. Déjà-vu, my muddled mind whispers.

<p class="MsoNormal">30 feet…20…10…

<p class="MsoNormal">At the last second I shut my eyes, too tired to keep them open, and the glowing light sears the inside of my eyelids, everything becoming a bloody red.

<p class="MsoNormal">Silence. Breath. No pain.

<p class="MsoNormal">The horror simply ceases, from one blink to the next. Nothing to signal it, no gradual stop. It has simply left me behind, determining that I’m not willing to play its sick and twisted game. But it will come back, again and again. It always comes back, every day since I got here. The hell will continue, until one day I’ll have no choice but to give in and see what will become of me then.

''So I made my opening more unique, I scrapped my old weak ending, and I haven't really changed my writing style. I also gave this a better name. Any other suggestions or ways I could make this better?''<ac_metadata title="Hell Isn&#039;t Hot (Reviewed, formerly name Glow)"> </ac_metadata>