Personal Hell

From the time we are born, we are all fed preconceptions of good and evil, right and wrong; and most famously, heaven and hell. In truth, I have never seen heaven, but I know exactly what hell is. It isn’t a place as most people believe it to be, and no one burns for their sins as most people would expect them to; however, they do pay for them. As a kid, I was an idiot. I always did as I pleased and I didn’t give a damn. It was this same mentality that would get me into trouble as a twenty-two year old “boy”. My two friends and I decided that one day, we would go on a joyride, so we staked out this nice looking sports car, hotwired it, and zoomed off down the road. It was great and we were having a ton of fun, especially me, who took the pleasure of driving that little beauty. Still, there was the major issue of the wet roads which we hadn’t considered. As I rounded the corner, a child had just started crossing the street with her bike. I slammed the brakes and swerved, thinking I would miss her, but the car’s rear slid straight into her. What have I done? What have I done? I thought to myself as I frantically struggled to regain control of the car.

I thought too soon. Just moments after we hit the girl, an eighteen-wheeler that was coming the other way t-boned the car. The airbag hit me hard in the face, and I could hear and feel my nose crack. My vision was blurry, but I could still vaguely see. At that moment, all I could think about was getting away so the cops wouldn’t find us. “Hey guys, we need to—” I stopped cold as I saw Zack halfway through the windshield; his lifeless body dangling there like a still life model in an art class. I gasped and turned my head to see Ray slumped over. I unbuckled my seat belt and pulled him up, but quickly screamed as I saw his neck bent at an unnatural angle. Both of my friends were dead. I should be with them. That was my next thought. “You will be soon.” A voice called to me from inside my mind. In a state of shock, I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror and almost instantly passed out as I saw a piece of metal boring straight through my skull.

I woke up to the sound of a mother. My mother? It can’t be… “Ashley, wake up! You’re going to be late for school.” What the hell? Ashley? “I’m coming!” I said in an agitated tone of voice. All that came out was the high-pitched squeal of a young girl. As I walked to the mirror, I saw the same scared face of the girl I had hit that night. I checked the date and time. It was the same day as the accident, but way before it happened. “First, you shall atone.” I heard inside my mind. For that whole day, I was a little girl in the second grade, who lived in a neighborhood that was considered to be safe. Throughout the entire day, guilt weighed down on me like shackles that were attached to my soul, and I would learn only later on that the shackles would just get heavier. It was at the very end of the day that my friends, or rather Ashley’s, invited me to hang out with them at the park nearby. I put on my helmet, got on my bike and rode after them, but I was the slowest.

A dog barked at me and jostled me a bit, so much so that I failed to hear the sound of the sports car that was racing down the road. I crossed the road and my eyes went wide as I saw the bright headlights quickly approaching me. I desperately tried to pedal faster to get out of the way, but lucky for me the car swerved, barely missing me, or so I thought. The problem was that it was a long bodied car going fast on a wet road, so the back end of it barreled into me, knocking me into the other lane where the eighteen-wheeler hit the car. Then, unable to stop, it hit me too. The last thing I heard was the sickening crunch of my bones. The last thing I felt was the dull burning pain of the tires rubbing against me, as well as the sharp, shooting pain as my bones snapped. I died of shock.

I sat up quickly in bed and clutched my head before feeling my body in various places to make sure I was myself. I seemed to be a man again. I breathed easy and looked at my surroundings. I seemed to be at Zack’s house. Damn… I must have been wasted and stayed the night here. I denied. Still, my fears would not be assuaged until I looked into the mirror. They were the opposite of assuaged as I saw the panicked expression of Zack, staring at me and matching the exact emotions I was feeling with his facial expression. “No…” I begged. I raced over to his computer and checked the time and date. It was still today. I had a complete mental breakdown. I refused to do anything. I sat in bed, held my knees against my chest and cried. “Please, I’ve had enough… Please stop. I’ll do anything. Please stop this!” I begged whatever entity was doing this. “Why? You should be lucky, you know. That girl didn’t even have enough time to beg for her life.” I still refused to move, so the entity, whatever it was, moved me. I spent the day as Zack had, and at the end of it, I met up with Ray and we waited together for Mitch, or rather, my true self, to arrive. That’s when I realized, I needed to do something to change it all.

“Hey, maybe we shouldn’t do this, guys… It doesn’t seem like a good idea. Plus, it just rained, so the roads are horrible.” I declared as Mitch arrived. The person, or whatever it was who was acting as “me”, walked over, and looked me in the eyes with a devilish grin on his face. In his eyes, I saw nothing short of Death. They were cold, dark, and lifeless, yet at the same time, understanding and non-biased. His eyes were wise, almost cruelly so. “Oh, Mitch… Nothing can change what has already happened, you know. The sands of time always flow. Please don’t mistake my words as pity because I pity no one. Such is Death though, I suppose. It is honest, swift, and mostly unforgiving. Though for you, hope still remains. Still, are you so sure you want that…hope?” He asked. What does he mean by “that hope”? Even so, any hope has to be good, yeah? Before I knew it, we were joyriding in the car. I sat there in the passenger seat dazed; stuck in a dreamy sort of haze because of the knowledge I had of what would happen next. “Slow down, Mitch.” I warned. As expected, the entity said exactly what I would have said if I were driving. “Hell no! We need to see just how fast this baby can go!” He shifted the car into the highest gear and yelled excitedly at the speed change. Then, the events repeated, and I was launched forward out of my seat and through the windshield. It bashed my head as I went through it and a shard of glass sliced my throat. I convulsed and passed away, my sight fading quickly.

I found myself in the bodies of several others next. First in the body of Ray, then in the body of Ray’s Aunt, the only person he had left. Apparently, the same could be said that he was the only person she had left, as she cried herself to sleep. Next, I was thrown into the body of Zack’s parents, one at a time. Then, I went into the body of his younger brother. I realized that these “body jumps” I was experiencing seemed to exist in a space surrounding the time after the crash. After being in Zack’s little brother, I was in the body of Ashley’s mother, a single mom who struggled daily to make ends meet, all for her little girl. I had ruined every one of these people’s lives. Finally, I appeared in a completely unknown place. I was a man, but I didn’t have any desire to see who I was or even where I was. I simply wished for all of this to stop. I had experienced each person’s agony and pain over and over again, and with each person I stepped into, the pain worsened. I couldn’t take anymore. “Please… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry… No more… No more..!” I begged once more. Suddenly, my “real” body appeared before the one I was in. I saw myself, Mitch, staring at me expectantly. He shook his head as he neared me and then he held up one finger at me as he pulled the cellphone out of his pocket to check the time. He sighed and looked back at me. “Don’t worry, Mitch, or should I say Kyle?” He laughed for a moment at his little inside joke and then continued, “Only the dead can remain here. You only have one more life to lead. This is Kyle.” He held up a mirror of sorts and in it, I saw the face of a handsome man in his late twenties to early thirties. He was sitting there, dressed in plain clothes, on a bed, with a gun and a folded note at his side.

Suddenly, Kyle’s thoughts filled my head. I’m such a failure… such a failure to everyone. I couldn’t even sell the car right. That car was the only thing I had left that I could sell so we could keep our house, but I let it get stolen! I forgot the damn alarm! The insurance wouldn’t pay to get it fixed. Ha, who would anyways? Now, because of me, my wife and I will be living on the streets… This is the only good thing I can do for her, it seems. I’ll leave this world so that she will find someone more useful to love. Tears fell down my face as I shakily grabbed a gun that was next to me on the bed, and put it against my head. I wasn’t the one controlling Kyle’s body now. I was just along for the ride. The entity “Mitch” came closer to me until he was face to face with me, and in a coarse, venomous and remorseless voice, he whispered, “Ever hear of the ‘Golden Rule’ Mitch-ey boy? I’d say it’s high time you started living it because if you had been doing so in the first place, none of this would have happened. Still, justice has been served here, and it will be served throughout your lifetime as well. The pain will never stop. The pain will never end, and if you try to make it end, we will see each other again...” His voice suddenly changed into a distorted growl infused with what sounded like nails on a chalkboard as he finished, “and we’ll relive every single one of your bad choices that you’ve made from the age of fifteen!” I heard a bang. Where the entity “Mitch” had been standing, there was now a shroud of smoke that took to the shape of his outline. Then, another bang sounded, followed by another, and I once again saw the crash and the many lives I had affected flash before me. I knew what was coming next, and on the next bang, I pulled the trigger.

When I awakened, several doctors and nurses were standing over me, trying to keep me stabilized. My head seared, and the pain and the guilt racked me with torment. As I fully opened my eyes, I saw the one doctor standing over me, along with Zack, Ray, Ashley, and even Kyle. Gosh, he’s gonna be pissed at me about the car! I need to tell him that everything is gonna be okay, and not to take his life. Strangely enough though, none of them seemed angry; they were all just watching me. It was all a bad dream, I guess… My doctor, however, seemed to be utterly disgusted with me. I tried to greet my friends, and even apologize to Kyle, but the doctor stopped me. “Don’t say a word, Mitch… You’ve just been through a seriously traumatic event. You were lucky. We rushed you into surgery for the piece of metal that had been lodged into your skull, and we successfully removed it, but because of the amount of blood you lost, your heart gave out and you actually died. We were able to miraculously revive you though. I can’t say the same for your two friends, or the little girl you killed, but—” “Doc, what do you mean? They’re right next to you.” I murmured weakly. The doctor frowned and replied, “Yes, I was getting to that… The piece of metal pierced through your brain and though it hit other areas, it only caused irreparable damage to your Visual Cortex. You’ll be having hallucinations for the rest of your life. Some people learn to live with them, but…” he trailed off as I focused now on the faces of the other people who stood over me.

Their bland expressions were exchanged for cold, malevolent, unforgiving smiles, and a voice rang out in my head. “Justice has been served here, and it will be served throughout your lifetime as well. The pain will never stop. The pain will never end.” As I stared into the eyes of the people standing over me, I witness the deaths, the pain, and the torment of each person just as I had in that other place. I know knew what that entity in the other place had meant when he asked me if I was sure if I wanted “that hope.” He meant the hope of living once more. “Mitch,” I heard the doctor’s voice cut in, “are you seeing something now? Or someone, perhaps?” Then, a smile equal to the others standing around my hospital bed spread across his face, and I realized that the only Hell that truly existed was the one we made for ourselves.