Incubus

A shriek of terror splits the silence, followed by gasping pleads for mercy, gut-wrenching bemoanings and screams of un-terrestrial horror. As you force yourself to sit up every muscle and every inch of your body is wracked with an abnormally intense pain. Your head is throbbing with an ungodly ache, or maybe- yes- those are drums you hear…. Darkness so thick that you can barely breathe is all about you, and you can see nothing ahead. But what you can’t see is made up for in what you ears are forced to witness. The sound of the dying being tortured in ways beyond all human comprehension or bearing, the insistent wails of agonized souls, the nauseating crunch of stone against flesh, pathetic weeping, and those damnably persistent drums is more that your fragile body can take. Covering your ears you scream for it to stop, but the caustic cries of piercing quality only grow more vivid, the sounds more gruesome, the smell of toxic fumes grow only more poignant and those drums, the drums!1

Silence. You slowly become aware of a steady rhythm, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum… With a sigh of grateful satisfaction you realize that it is only your heart. Forcing yourself to open your exhausted eyes you discover your self in a seemingly endless corridor with an architectural style reminiscent of Ancient Babylon. High on the towering ceiling statues of every fearsome beast ever imagined poise as if to leap down and devour you, body and soul. Your every muscle tense and your mind on the verge of obliteration, you summon every ounce of your willpower and take one shivering step forward, the amplification of every footfall resonating throughout the stretch of towering bronze and steel. You walk slowly down the great lyceum, when a sound other than your gait greets you. Spinning around, you glance fearfully about, searching aimlessly for the source of the noise. Nothing. 2

With a shudder of dreadful foreboding you continue on your trek down the arched hallway. You walk in silence for what seems like hours, occasionally casting a glance over your shoulder at the sound of an imagined pursuer, or, perhaps, an existent one. Suddenly, the poisonous effluvium that had marred your nose in the overwhelming blackness hits you with a disgusting brilliance. You pause as if to turn back, but something, like an invisible magnet, draws you further down the ancient corridor. Shortly you hear inhuman screams combined with the increasing sound of roaring flame. 3

Coming upon a large door you find the origin of the chilling cries. There, in a vast lake of flaming water, were thousands of wailing people engulfed in flame. Those who attempted to dive under the water to escape the flames faced another terror. Horrific monstrosities that fed off those who sought relief from the flames, came and tore the bodies until they were mutilated and shredded into pieces, sullying the water with blood. But even in death those in the lake earned no deliverance. The dead returned to be burned or eaten again, endlessly, in a perverted resurrection.4

Nauseated at the appalling fate of this mass you turn away and stumble down the hall. Coming upon a second door you are so revolted that you vomit throughout the hall. A sea of blood littered with arms, legs and heads with expressions of terror and pain still etched on their faces. In revulsion you gape at the cause of this atrocity, a grotesque goblin-like creature covered in spines, almost surgically inserting its long fingernail into the spine of a shrieking victim and tearing their back open maiming the body and slicing off the head. You flee down this echoing hall of nightmares trying to escape only to be stopped by another gruesome sight. A weeping woman stood there covered in bloody gashes and festering wounds as more of the creatures lunge at her, removing strips of flesh and exposing muscle and bone. As she wails in pain crying for mercy, a laughing creature walks up and slashes open her stomach spilling her innards onto the floor. Laughing maniacally, they leave her for dead. You stand, gaze fixated on the atrocity in front of you; the woman looks at you with glazed eyes and gasps in pain before falling over in a pool of her own fluids and blood.5

You flee back down the endless corridor the way you came, but the hall metamorphosed and falls away into an abyss. Begging to wake from this incubus you flee down the only way remaining. Running, running as fast as you can, yet feeling as if you are crawling, nothing can get you out of here fast enough! Why can’t you run fast enough? Pausing and gasping for breath in the putrid air you see an empty room. Glancing into it you see no sign of the loathsome creatures or of tortured humans. Seeing a glass door that appears to lead to the world that you live in, you lunge into the room and dash crazily to escape. Twenty more feet, fifteen, ten, five, you reach for the door handle… the illusion vanishes and you scream in panic and sheer terror. The entrance through which you came slams shut behind you with a dark finality in its dull tone. Whirling around in a dazed hysteria you behold one of the goblin-like creatures staring at you with a psychotic gaze. Licking its long nails it advances toward you, towers over your cowering form and says, "Welcome to Hell."6