Chapter 5: The Elevator Ride

No two objects of mass can occupy the same space at the same time, and yet, just as it was at my sentencing, I become partly conscious of other people undergoing the torture along with me. Apart from my own, I can hear wails screeching into mad laughter as we’re all, slowly but confidently, dragged towards our darkest nightmare.

Our backs slam against the back wall of the elevator and stay there as though we were in the rotor ride of an amusement park. As much as I want to glimpse my fellow victims, I can’t even turn my head as I hang restrained by all the weird g-forces and the superfluous chains that smell of either rust or dried blood.

There’s an elevator operator who calls out each floor, all of them going downwards and deeper to the true essence of terror. Only it doesn’t look like there are buttons to control the box; instead, the operator manipulates ropes that disappear into a hole in the ceiling. Eventually, no matter how hard my sanity refuses to accept it, the thing that’s carrying us proves to be less of a modern machine and more of a bucket in a well. Worse, what I thought were ropes leading to an unseen pulley overhead is looking more and more like intestines spilling out of the elevator operator’s punctured stomach!

“Sub-level 2,” shouts the poor tortured man, who has his back turned and his head covered with a bell-boy hat. “Souls driven over the edge by passion. Pervs, pedos, rapists, white slavers and cyber-stalkers.”

The voice is drugged lethargy mixed with the most potent dose of despair. The doors open and a howling gale blows inside as though from a tempest battering a ship and whisks several individuals away. I glimpse an unimaginable number of people outside being tossed back and forth like rag dolls in the air, their feet never touching the ground. Then, thankfully, the doors close.

Without batting an eye, the elevator operator continues: “Sub-level 3: The gluttons and those who gorged themselves while others starved. Junkies and escapists…”

The elevator bell dings. This time the doors let in an icy gust packed with fly-infested black snow and rock-size hail. It plucks the bulkier of my companions off the walls like they were weightless then dumps them in what I believe to be fields of rotting corpses stretching endlessly. The stench is enough to make a grown man’s stomach turn but, miraculously, the automatic doors shut and cut it all off.

I’m painfully confirming that Hell is indeed patterned after Greek mythology, and Dante.  It’s divided into nine concentric circles, nine underground layers, the next more vicious than the one above it and continuing down to the burning core of the planet itself, where judgment is meted out on the devil himself, Lucifer. Every sinner receives punishment equal to the chief sin they have committed, in an ever grislier dose of poetic justice.

I know I’m going to faint any second so as soon as this thought occurs to me, tiny pieces of wire creep delicately under my eyelids to keep them from closing. Insistent electric charges also zap my vision right back into focus as though to remind me not to look away or I’d miss the show.

“Sub-level 4. Money-hoarders, squanderers and corrupt politicians. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where gentlemanly Death shall come like a thief in the night and all that.” 

In addition to the chains, leather collars with long spikes materialize out of thin air and snap like cobras at a great many necks. Then all the chosen ones are yanked out of the elevator by their leashes. They are flung against gigantic, cartoony bags filled to bursting and alight with gold coins. Brief, steam-like hisses accompany the repeated sound of nail guns punching, as the inverted collar spikes sink into human necks, drawing blood and forcing the new slaves to start pushing the huge money bags along.

“Sub-level 5: Child-killers, mass murderers and random shooters. Those who bullied the weak. Also the slothful and the morose. If you look to your right, you might catch glimpse of the abominable River Styx.”

I smell something like sewer gas and before anyone can scream “God have mercy,” a tidal wave of some nasty liquid has engulfed the elevator. I savor a few precious seconds of peace thinking how like a blessing it would be to finally die in the intangible hands of the element I first chose to be the end of me. Now already on our third encounter…

I should’ve known better than to hope. The water subsides as rapidly as it has come and I notice more of us have gone missing. I take big, hungry gulps of air while the elevator operator carries on as usual, ridiculously unfazed with just the daintiest trace of algae on his cap. My eyes follow the swampy river as it ebbs back to its original course. On the reddened banks, a sea of people are locked in a perpetual melee because everyone rises back up like rabid berserkers despite their mortal injuries.

“Sub-level 6: Split-level practitioners, the hypocrites and the intolerant…”

The elevator dings and right away my bladder empties again, releasing a warm, even flow inside the legs of my wetsuit. A giant hand made entirely of roaring flames squeezes in and pinches people between its thumb and forefinger, instantly roasting them and singeing everyone else around. The obscene smell of burning human flesh fills the elevator, then the spirits are lifted away and locked in flaming coffins.

I’m terrified out of my wits. The next will be my stop, the Seventh Circle, where all suicides are punished. And I can’t for the life of me remember…

Another hand, thankfully of normal size, pokes in at the last moment and catches the closing doors. I become fixated on the fact that this hand is suggestively human and wearing a ring on every finger; rings of all gothic themes, particularly a skull, scorpion, talon, jester’s cap and cat’s eye.

When the elevator doors reopen, another character steps in wearing a black ankle-length overcoat and a wide-brimmed leather hat that completely hides the face except for a long predatory beak. I instantly recognize the character from my persistent nightmare and chills race each other up and down my spine.

For a reason unknown even to my enhanced psychic abilities, this newcomer is carrying a guitar case. His identity, however, is readily clear to me. He’s the muse of heavy metal. Not Satan, contrary to popular belief. Even the Devil comes and goes whereas the one in front of me is the most constant deity and the most elemental plague of humanity: King Death.