Topic: Hell Orange, or Orange Raiser

[Grim_Creeper]

I don't know whether its my over-tired brain or what today but I had an idea suddenly, and it seemed like a good one at the time. This has, as you might guess, very little to do with castlevania, except that it's themes are those of a horror story.

The idea that came to me, (ironically while listening to a certain piece of music which name I can't remember), was just this, and its a very simple idea.

What if I took some elements of Hellraiser, and some elements of Clockwork Orange, and mixed them together. I'm a creative type but I like to extract and isolate specific 'ingredients' and use those, along with or as part of an original idea.

I'm not quite sure how they would combine or even if it would work together, but I think its a good idea. Might be a bit to dark for its own good though.

What is your opinion? Is it a good idea? Is it to dark for its own good?

Elements from hellraiser: The box, the Cenobytes, the maze, the existence of bonafide supernatural happenings
Elements from clockwork orange: Language and general landscape in the geographical setting, general decayed situation with regards to civic decency and law/order.

I'm not sure whether this will turn into a story or a WoD like game setting or what. I don't despise ALL WoD, I just hated VtM for reasons I've explained elsewhere. Whatever this idea is, its likely to morph into something in the next little while.

I'm like Dostoyevsky. I seek to pull down all facades, all masks, and all falsities and expose the most rudimentary, basic, and inward level of human behavior. I don't want to drag humans down to a depraved level beyond that of an animal, they can do that themselves, I just want to show my characters [in a storyline or a game] as what they actually are.

Cenobyte 1: Why are we like lake Woebegone?
Cenobyte 2: I don't know, why?
Cenobyte 1: We are what we are.

Its my belief that people think that THE truth is something of beauty and meaning. Well, I often find myself thinking; what if it isn't? What if its something so horrific and beyond all nightmares of disordered conception to the point that the human brain simply cannot handle it and snaps like a twig under the sanity strain, or even worse, so horrifically dark and frightening that humans metaphorically run screaming into the night when they encounter it.

I don't subscribe to any specific 'supernatural theory'. I'm a cosmysticist. It means that my beliefs regarding the general universe go something like this. The universe is a vast area governed by blind and basically uncaring rules which execute their function in a continuous, oblivious repeat cycle, and simply crush anything which happens into their way. There is no religion. The universe simply is what it is, and at the end, (the very end), its a cold, dark, dead void, with ice worlds and dead stars spinning through nothingness in frigid total silence of oblivion.

Though I naturally have no problem with using the supernatural to tell a good story. 

Might make you make a  face though.

Talk to me. Tell me if this is a good or bad idea.

[Mooning Freddy]

OK, so first of all, if you have an original idea just begging to come out, and you want to turn it into a story, you shouldn't ask anyone's opinion. If the story is demanding its freedom, put it on paper. Or virtual paper, whatever.

I'm saying this because I've been pointlessly writing stuff for a few years, I can't say I'm too good at it, but I'm trying to improve.
I'm writing a fantasy novel and until now I wrote around 90 pages, very little considering the fact I've been writing it for around 4-5 years. I am not too happy about what I wrote, because many chapters seem to me quite plotless and boring, and right now I ran out of original ideas. It sucks. Seriously sucks when a writer has no inspiration. 

About your idea, well, I watched only the first Hellraiser movie and didn't like it; and as for Clockwork Orange, always wanted to watch it but didn't get a chance. How about you write down the beginning and show us where it's going?
I can even give you a piece of a story of my own for inspiration. I have an unfinished story called "Night Predator". It's some sort of a  horror-action story about a demon from another dimension terrorizing an old American town. 

[Grim_Creeper]

[Note that words in [parenthesis] will be replaced with dialectic words which mean the same thing but are different from the word in question, this is a test to see if I'm able to convincingly write like this. Also of importance, this is not a continuous storyline, just a foray into the idea].

The city was gritty. Really gritty. The rich people who could afford it lived up in the towers, see? Each tower ends in the big half-circle domes where green plants grow and the airs not a toxin laden mix of pollution and chemicals. It had been a long time since the war, my father was in it, but I was to young and they didn’t take me. I never knew him but they say he was something else again to see in combat. But my story isn’t about the isolated rich and it isn’t about my father. Its about me. Its about how I do what I do.

I’m what they call in the old streets a dead body man. Its my job to find’em and take their stuff, see. When my [buddies] find a dead body we all get together and strip it down to the raw meat. Even that sells sometimes. But tonight wasn’t a work night. I was kicked back in the Beggar’s Alley institution we like to call The Social Club. With four full time holographic dancers and you can get knives in a needle for the cheap there. What might cost you a [pound] elsewhere you can get for a pence here. So me and my friends were sitting there in the old [shitty] colored sofas. That is, myself, Billy Club, John Thomas, who we called John Thomas on account of his predilection for the old in and out and away, and Bayou. Nobody was really sure where Bayou was from but he knew his way around a rumble. I had met him during my three and one third lockdown. So we had all gotten together for a sixer, which in those days meant knives in a needle for the lot of us.

Beggar’s Alley was a rough neighborhood and you could never be to jacked up and paranoid to survive it. But the Social Club is a bit of a turn for any traveler, since you have to go through a twisty path over and through and away to get to it. Did I ever tell you about the time, old buddy old pal old good friend of mine, the very first time? It was a sharp shock I can tell you, the sting of a needle and then the whole globey world went to jiggling and changing colors and shitting and bloody. It was a hell of a time for a 12 year old, I can tell you. They told me I had been laid out inside a boys room at St. Finnegan’s Prep. The Head master hated me in those days and I cordially hated him. In those days we would say, ‘Kick in the guts for you gubna?’ to his back when we could. But eh, he was a military sort and we never got around to actually doing it. So there we were, in the dimly lit club, with our Suit’s [clothing] on, see. Yes back in those days I was part of the suit. I in my black trench jacket and so dark its almost purple body suit. I looked like a gimp, I can tell you. And on other occasions I might have been one. But thats another story for another time, old fellow.

John Thomas looked at me with his scoped blindfold over his eyes. He worked in a factory, had since he was 14, and the pollution had destroyed his eyes, so we scrimped for a piece of time, and when the right moment came down to it, knocked over The white street billy boys for their [moneys] to get him a pair of synth eyes. “What say we head around for wang street [good buddies]?” To which Billy Club said that he had been there earlier in the night, for he lived not far from the pornography district in question, which is why we called it Wang street to begin with, and that it was pretty well done over. Bayou split the last vial between all of us. He was always good for that, and did it even when we other three had no or little [money]. Billy Club, who we always called that on account of how he was never -ever- without his billy club, suggested the idea of taking a journey into the foreign quarter. “After all-” he said in his laughing throat, “-if they can’t speak the Queens they can’t tell anybody what happened, eh? Eh?” I’d had some experiences with foreigners and I knew that sometimes it was more trouble than it was worth.

Like this one time me and John Thomas had found a girl walking home from school. She wasn’t particularly bright and beautiful, but when your in the pink its all pretty much the same, isn’t it? The tickle of the stingy needle was starting to kick me in the face. I was, as they said at the time, Knifed Out. We needed some spice in our lives what with all the old pubs closing down and the curfew on account of the politicos all about their public disorders and public safety and civic duty. I must have begun to talk about the girl I wanted for a lovely, because Bayou said in his great big wobbly herpa-derpa voice, “Aw don’t start all that mushy mush then, what are ya, porridge?” Porridge being in those days what we called the sentimental book types who were with the poetry and the flowers and all that.

A fine four we made as we strode out into the maze of Beggar’s alley. No strutting cockatiels us but with the dark suits we blended into the mostly nightish air. Billy Club always at the front and at the ready. We were all ready. Ready for anything but what we found. When we made it out of beggars alley eventually we found our way to the old 16th street kitchen. In the old days it had been a charity and a blessing on the heads of the bums and streeties that lived down that way. Just a quick cut across and through is what we had wanted to do. Little did we know we were walking into a meeting between the White Street boys and the Arab Moon boys, and when I say meeting, old fellow, I mean they were going at it.

What with the clubs and the fists in the face and a bit of the knife getting an old in and out and away on some unlucky sod. When they saw us though they stopped fighting and turned about on us. Bayou called out, “Come and get your [ballocks] crushed off, you dark faced sand heads, if you’ve got any stomach for getting stomped.” I simply said to Bayou, “Now Bayou old fellow is that any way to talk to our dark skinned friends? Tolerance my boy, tolerance~” This made a great whopping laugh for us all. Ultimately we gave it out as good as it was sent back. We were more elite than the white street boys or the Arab Moons what with Bayou having the synth fists and Billy Club with the smacking and great whackings of heads. It wasn’t very long till some screamy bastard outside the place started wailing away about how he was going to call the police if us kids didn’t quit with the rumblings and the whackings and the great big fisticuffery that went down inside that building. At the end, we four were mostly intact, though Billy Club had taken a nasty knock to the face and had a black eye and we other three had some minor bruises and cuts. The White Street boys threatened death on us and fled, the Arab Moons were already gone. The Arabs had taken the worst of it. Yes our fists had made a great lovely whomping and stomping on them, and they wouldn’t be back to trouble us for this night I can tell you.

Bayou had made good his threat, having thrown one of them to the ground and stomped him till blood came out his ugly flappy yelling mouth. It was decided that we had better check ‘round the place for a quick open eye tour and make sure that we were alone before we relaxed again. My Idle brain began to spin and cook with the idea that perhaps the two were in a turf war. I needed money and I thought that just perhaps this might be a chance to boom some cash up into my pocket. John Thomas suddenly burst through a door and made a great large BLUUURGH sound when he spewed his meat and peas. When he was quite finished and done with that, “Whatever for the throwing up old boy, knives in the needle no good then?” John Thomas shook his head. “I saw... I saw something thats right bloody gross.... right bloody gross...” He pointed to the door he had just exited from. A sight awaited us there. It was all blood and gristle and sliced open body, hanging there just as plain as a ham in a window, great big walloping painful hooks all through it, one in the arm and another through the chest, a third through a kneecap and a final one squeezed off into the head. Really Horror-show grade a lovely stuff and it made me wonder if maybe a grisly lived here, for in those days we called all killers of marked targets grislies.

For you see the organs had been mostly taken out and were no-where to be seen and there was a great shittily drawn star on a wall, the stink of shit and opened wounds filled the room. “Whats this then?” Bayou asked as he picked up a small cubical box like bit of metal. No one was sure what it was, but it had been sitting in a dish surrounded by candles. Billy Club suddenly looked up when he heard a passing patroller, “We’d better away good my lords, I don’t feel the need to end up with the old gas in the lungs treatment.” Which in those days meant execution by gas chamber, a murder was still a murder, and it still brought around a death sentence from the big wigged judges up on their little bench all god and might and justice. We went on our merry way, never thinking that by the end of our long descent, three of us, my three brothers, would either be dead, locked away for good, or screaming in the white pads and straight-jacket. And it was a Long descent. Right down to the very bottom.

[Honestly I'm rather getting the impression that this story is going to be about four people who dress in a fashion similar to Voldo, and their various misadventures in a clockwork orange like dystopia. I'm getting a mental image of a city in which the giant towers mentioned earlier are above an area of almost continuous industrial and environmental cloud cover, creating a false night cityscape environment. False night of course meaning that its 'night' there even when the sun is out].

[Mooning Freddy]

Okay, so I must comment on your story now.
It's very good so far! You're really creating a nice cyberpunk atmosphere, and, needless to say, Cyberpunk is awesome.

As for criticism, I think you're overusing the word "see", to the point it gets a bit annoying. Great job with the street-slang, it add a lot to the atmosphere, even though It's a bit confusing for the reader.

I'd be glad to read more. 

[Grim_Creeper]

I had intended the word 'see' to be used in that way to indicate that the storyline is a narrator's mental log of what is going on around him.

In regards to more story, more is coming, I haven't abandoned the idea.

However it has dawned on me that I do not know enough about either series to go very much further with it, so while it is a good idea, I cannot finish it because I haven't seen the movies / read the books in so long I can't remember anything, though I've got access to all of them and will be watching them.

The idea came to me of a monologue of a soul traveling into the assigned pit of hell that it belongs in. It would be a dantean narrative if I did it.

[Grim_Creeper]

[not a continuation of the above story]

I did not know where I was, but I knew, with unfailing clarity, where I had been. I had been driving my sports car through a dark wood on a rainy, stormy night, when a cougar had suddenly leapt into the road, forcing me to swerve, I had thought to go around it in my daze, but I had ended up hitting a tree.

When I regained what I thought was consciousness, I was standing on a vast plain, in a long line of people. Way of in the distance I could hear a bellowing sound repeatedly. I wasn’t sure what it was and I thought to ask one of the people there near me. “Don’t you know? Your in hell! HELL!” He screamed at me and ran in a seemingly random direction, only to be struck by lightning suddenly and hurled through the air, whole body conscious yet in flames. The stench of burning meat began to assail me, and I did not for the whole duration of that journey, escape it. Eventually it was my turn. I came before a huge, fierce gargoyle, with three pocked, wart-riddled faces, bloodshot eyes, and an enormous fanged mouth. It was strange to me because though he had three faces, wings, and was otherwise humanoid, he had a single huge lamprey like mouth. His voice was like a loudspeaker. “Well your a real winner, aren’t you? Let me see, let me see...” He began to flip through a book on the giant desk. I realized a moment later that he was wearing a judges peruke. “You must be min-” “SILENCE!” The voice screamed at me so loud it actually knocked me backwards. “Greed, gluttony, lust, pride, treachery, hatred, violence, touching oneself impurely, drugs, premarital sex, assault and battery, drunken binging, fraud, larceny both grand and petty... I could sit here reading this for hours but I see your file is marked visitor. Don’t get happy, O sinning soul.” He paused for a moment and I spoke, unwisely as it turns out, “Does that mean I don’t have to-” was all I managed to get out. A fierce tail, full of knots and spikes, smote me so hard I did 5 sideways flips, slammed head first into a rock breaking my neck, and fell through an enormous chasm.

I screamed in pain as my neck forced itself back into joint, and then let loose a howl of sheer, mind-numbing agony as my body impacted into the first circle, which is to say, my body hit the ground, snapping every bone in it, then forced the bones back into position and back together in a shrieking agony of bone setting. I felt a huge weight on me. An overarching, awesomely powerful compulsion to travel. To go to the deeps. I felt a sensation in my mind forcing me to travel. It said to me, and I could swear I actually heard it, “You don’t belong here. You belong in the lower deeps. Thats your home now. Thats where you should be going.” I began to wander in the calm first circle. I wondered where the torments where. Where the agony was. I saw a distant light and began to move towards it. A timeless journey later, I was standing before three ancients, none of whom I recognized, but it appeared to me that I was the intruder in their conversing. They were so bright with a self-produced light, that it brought stinging tears to my eyes and I was forced to look away from them. They spoke, but to my mind, everything they said may as well have been ancient greek. It wasn’t understood by my ear. Not very long later, another shining soul arrived. This one with a sword. He barked commands at me, but I didn’t understand them. I didn’t understand what they wanted till he stabbed me through the heart, forcing blood up through my mouth and giving me a hard shock of pain. He pulled the sword out of me and my body sealed itself back up. One of the women, holding a veil over her face, pointed, she seemed to think I was totally beyond their compassion and it seemed that they wanted me as far away from them as I could be. I looked where she was pointing and I found a trail which lead down the side of a chasm. I began to walk down it.

Wandering down into the next circle, I found myself amongst the lustful. Here men, women, men with women, women with women, and men with men, wandered in a maze of thorny plants whose buds put off scalding smoke rather than any scent. Their they sated their sexual appetites without any decency or privacy, giving way to every and any perversion that their minds could imagine. “Well this doesn’t seem so...” was all I managed to get out before a woman approached me. She laughed in her nakedness. “Doesn’t seem so bad stranger? Are you new here?” I began to get... ‘excited’. “Y.. yes I am...” She called to someone. “He’s a new one then.” People began to congregate and move towards me. They were going to rape me. I knew that face. Oddly the prospect of my fate made me more excited instead of less. Must have been all those asian bukake films I watched. I felt a sharp pain in my genitals suddenly. Then I suddenly burst into flame, and, wild with pain, forced my way through the crowd, running heedlessly over the thorny, hard ground, leaving footprints of painful blood. My flesh, seared and charred, immediately began to grow back again as I stopped running. A burst of light hinted at the bonfire the others had created. Their punishment was to me to light, it seemed. A sense that I still wasn’t deep enough poked my mind hard. Their fate it seemed was to satiate their lusts till their bodies burst into flames. And then reconstitute and do it all over again. I found that one of the plants grew on a cliff. Grabbing hold heedlessly of the vine with the painful thorns, I clambered down it. “Wait! Wait! Don’t go! Don’t go!” One of the women screamed over the edge to me, wildly pleasuring herself. “I want you!” She managed before she burst into flames from the genitals outward. A sharp and painful erection maintained itself afterwards and throughout the duration of the journey.

I jumped off the thorny vine, body bloody, but my body’s injuries forced themselves shut. I walked amidst the gluttons, great wallowing masses of fat. So huge they could barely move their limbs. So huge that many did not stand for it was to tiresome. Salivating acids that ate their own bodies, they were tormented by visions of huge banquets of food which, any time they were reached towards, moved to become unreachable. I thought it best to remain discrete and did not provoke conversation. That is, not till I by chance stepped on one of them. “Hey! Look where thou puttest thy feet, skinny stranger!” He screamed at me angrily. His angry outburst provoked their attentions to turn to me. I struggled and managed to give one a bloody face and another a burst open head, striking violently with a stone, but it wasn’t enough. They were to big, to hard to injure, and to many. I awakened in a pile of manure. They must have ate me and then my body reconstituted. A smell of manure lingered on me as I managed to dazedly crawl, continuing my journey downwards. A sense of hunger overwhelmed me as vomiting overtook me. I wondered what horrors awaited me at my own circle. As I was wondering this, a cliff I had blindly crawled onto collapsed and I fell a long distance, slamming into the ground, body crushed into pulp seconds later by a stone, though my head remained whole. One excruciating seizure later, I was able to move and act again.

 Here I found the circle of greed. Here I could relate to their sins. An enormous, leaden amulet appeared around my neck, scalding hot at first, leaving painful scars everywhere, but gradiently cooling till it was harmless but heavy. So heavy I had to walk with a slouch after that. I wandered amongst the greedy souls, who were engaged in digging in the ground. Forever digging towards gold, silver, and platinum, but whensoever they would pull a lump of the precious metal from the ground it turned to lead. I walked amongst them, searching for anyone I knew, I wondered out loud, “Will any that I know be there?” A harsh, staccato voice answered me. “Be where? Why gawkest thou stranger? Get thee to work!” The crack of a whip. A gang of gargoyles had followed me. All with horns and stinger tails and pigs teeth. “Thy skin shall be a coat of holes if thou cannot be bothered to listen, greedy one.” One of the workers said in between exhausting tasks. “I don’t belong here!” I protested as the demons began to gather around me. One of them raised his tail to sting, when the biggest, who appeared to be their leader, punched him in the face, let loose a wind that made the rawest onion pale, and spoke. “No... No you don’t. You’re for the deeps, aren’t you? Get thee to thy appropriate dungeon. Get thee gone!” He pushed me angrily. They chased me, cracking their whips on me painfully, everywhere leaving discolored painful bruises, before I managed to start down another long downward mountain trail.

 I would not weep. I was a man. I would face my fate with clarity and without bending to the dictates of that high laws decree. I realized I was gradually walking into a mire of quicksand, but after I sunk to the knees, I sunk no further. I continued to journey, the stench of rotten meat filled my nostrils, the bruises on my back festering painfully till they were open sores emitting stench, but never any further and never healing. A sharp stabbing pain filled my chest and stomach, and transmuted the skin there to reveal a tattoo of an enflamed sword. The tattoo burned itself raw into my flesh, becoming scar tissue in seconds. Filled with anger, I struck out at the first person I saw, slamming her to the ground and forcing her head down into the quicksand. I felt her body go limp and I looked around, continuing towards what appeared to be enormous city walls. I realized I wasn’t standing on quicksand but on the shore of an ocean. People stood on the shoals, bitterly heaping hatred on each other, but none daring to touch the water. One was pushed or fell, and in seconds carnivorous fish were all over them, turning the mostly black lightless water red in seconds. I began to despair of ever getting across as I wandered for hours. I began to run towards a pier that I saw when a rock suddenly smote me hard against the back of the head, bursting my head visibly open but not rendering me unconscious. “I saw what you did there.” The female voice spoke. “We stick together here and you aren’t welcome on my shoal.” I rolled over and made a blind grab for a spike of rock that had been fashioned into a shank. It stabbed into my hand, but I managed to grab it. We struggled madly, rolling back and forth, now me under water, now her, till she was smote hard by an oar.

When I pulled the shank from its injury and tossed it away, the oarsman pointed to a seat. “Get on.” Was all he said to me. I obeyed him. I knew I must. After I was settled in the boat, the speed at which it took off I found most shocking. The oar never touched the water, merely guided the boat’s direction. The boat was moving faster than a speed boat. Faster than my speed boat. “Don’t think on such things. You’ll soon know why.” Moments later we were at the other end of the huge lake, and the sudden stop flung me from the boat head over heels till I landed face down on the shore. As I got up I saw that the ‘city’ I had thought I saw was actually only walls, with an enormous leaden cap at the top. I found a chain with a sign that said. “Ring bell.” I did thus. I was permitted to enter. There, I found people wallowing in hot coals which spoke every and any philosophy but that of christian faith. The coals spoke, for the people, who both wallowed in and blindly carried them about in a huge circling path, said nothing. They couldn’t. Their eyes, nose, ears, and mouth had been removed and sewn completely shut. They navigated by touch only, and each seemed to carry a red hot kettle of coals which spoke their beliefs for them. A tongue of bluish fire approached me and spoke. “Thou that gawkest here. Know that thy path crosses the hottest coals. Be swift, for time is short and you still have much to see. Make not the mistakes of those here entombed.”  I opened my mouth to ask why time was short, and my eyes answered for me. The walls were steadily but slowly shrinking. “Each cycle the ceiling sinks to crush these here. If you are crushed with them, here you will stay.” The bluish flame then moved away from me. Every step was an agony for me, and I only just made it out, but I did make it out. It turns out that an enormous pipe sits in the exact middle, and though I had to dig it out with desperate pains, I managed to make it down, though the blisters that formed and burst never healed. Without a second thought I leapt down the pipe, which grew gradually narrower until I had to wriggle my way down.

I became stuck more than once, and with my health in such a state already, the pain was beyond description. I found that the next area was a series of holes over which enormous mechanical demons sit. Each heretic confesses their heresy there, is chomped and chewed most fiercely by the robotic demon’s mouth full of huge razor blades, and then is excreted out into a pool of acid, where they gradually dissolve while still conscious. Keeping my head low, hardly daring to look up, I made my way past this, ears inured to the horror and screaming pains of the heretics. Hiding from fate, I found a heretic there who begged me not to tell of his hiding. I falsely agreed that I wouldn’t. When the appropriate moment came I pushed him hard and he fell into the acid whole. “Whats this then, traitor? You think to exercise your own devious amusements here? Go! Go where trust is but a commodity bought and sold! Go down into the lower deeps!” The absolutely tremendous dragon that spoke the words, or rather, that I thought spoke, for the voice came from his mouth in a gust of black smoke, was huge, scaly, hairy, four-legged, with wings like a bat and three long necks with three crocodilian heads. Two heads bit me, one on the legs, one on the arms. “I spit in your face, dragon! What more can you do to me!” The Dragon’s eyes glinted and he began to wing his way down through a vast chasm where it was revealed to me that the acid pools are only the first part of the torment. Afterwards, each is burned alive in pipes to power the mechanical monsters.

 He flew me over a vast battle plain where demons conduct military exercises, the violent there transformed from soul to weapon till it should be destroyed, then back to soul. Every weapon that has ever been was there, and every military practice that has ever been, was there. The souls were forged by being cast alive and raw into pools of magma, which poured forth into great molds, the pounding of industry audible to my ears, so loud my ears bled and I was deafened. He dropped me as he winged his way back towards his own stomping ground. I landed in a rankly foul ditch. I shuddered as my body became hot and feverish. The burst open bruises and blisters on my body spread as I instantly became a leper. My field of vision suddenly changed as my face became partially split. A sense of spinning delirium overtook me as I contracted a fever. I began to crawl feebly around. “What brings you down so low?” Someone asked. It was hard to tell who asked it because the world around me kept spinning and changing. Hallucinations plagued me and for a time I was probably insane. When I regained enough sanity to be aware of my own existence, I found that I had torn a bone from my useless leg, for they were both shattered beyond repair or reconstitution by the fall, and had used it as a shank to protect myself from threats real or imagined. People kept a respectful distance from me as I wondered through the stinking cesspool, for it was a pool. A shallow layer of effluvia colored the ground virtually everywhere, stinking, rotten bodies of falsifiers lay everywhere, some against each other, some against the walls, and others against the ground. Some with the dropsy, some with the plague, some with leprosy, and the very worst with syphilis.

Just when I had settled into a pattern of delirious wandering, it got worse. As it turns out, the convicts there aren’t supposed to be violent towards each other, and it is against the rules. A weapon was of course contraband. But what was REALLY contraband was the fact that I had thought a demon was coming to force his way with me and had shanked him in the genitals in delirium. Hardly able to even see because of how hard the world was spinning and unable to command my body to move from the leprosy’s numbness, I was hauled over, in what amounts to a large wheelbarrow, and poured down a hole. I fell into the deepest pit, where the ice strangles all sentiments, where the wind is so cold it turns the skin completely blue in seconds. The icy darkness claimed me, and I lay there, still diseased but no longer delirious. “Perhaps this will cure your violent persuasion?” A demon had asked laughingly as they dropped me down the hole. I was one of the lucky ones, I guess. I had landed so that my left arm, shoulders, part of my chest, and head, were free from the bloody, razor sharp ice. Another near me only had the shins and feet sticking out. My pain did not decrease, but only increased, for it was so cold that the blood in my wounds froze solid, forcing them even wider and dripping chunks, my field of vision distorted so that I could see to the left, the right, and some in front, but not directly in front. Berating me for landing here, none were friendly, none bothered making any attempt at hurling anything but insults and violent hatred at each other. I saw there two who were squeezed into a pit like one, biting each other furiously, tearing bits and pieces from their bluish flesh, and headbutting in madness and anger. I turned to a weeping woman to speak, but I felt a sharp shock suddenly.

I opened my eyes in a hospital room. “Its damned lucky we found you when we did. You would have been dead within the hour if we hadn’t. A park ranger was searching for the man-killing cougar you swerved away from and found you. My prognosis is that you will make a full recovery, and, if you lay off certain substances, you should live a full, healthy life.” The doctor left the room. I looked around. I smiled. I don’t know if I said it out loud or not, but I surely thought it.

“I was cured alright.”