wingedbeast

I self-published this little thing through Amazon.com. It's 2.99 and I'm actually rather proud of it.

The story is set in a version of Hell that takes an alternate view of certain philosophies and biblical stories. Here's the link https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XN6H17L and here's a small sample.

Day 1
If you asked an ancient Roman about what a lake of fire meant to them, chances are you’d hear them say that it meant the place where a society throws its refuse. At the time, the vast majority of trash was safely, if not pleasantly, burned away. Those with the job of tending that fire might mention danger, but not malice. The entire purpose of their lake of fire was for something to be thrown away and forgotten as it turned to ash to be scattered on the wind.

Now, imagine someone took that idea, but threw conscious people into the fire. Next, imagine that someone then bid that the burning should last forever, such that those who were tossed into the flame would never stop suffering from the flames. What would you say about the kind of person who would come up with such an idea? What I felt, at the time, was betrayed.

That was a long time ago, though. At the point of this story’s beginning, I stood at the shore of The Lake. Dark clouds above, a swirling and agitating mass of oranges and reds below, the streaks of yellow, red, and the rare blue. If you didn’t know that the forces of heaven were throwing conscious souls into the lake, you might call it beautiful.

Someone wanted these souls to suffer into eternity. And, often times I have been described as existing in opposition to that someone. In that capacity, I pulled in on the nets. All along the beach, others were pulling on those same nets, all of us wearing our protective gloves, because the Lake would leave a spiteful sheen on the netting.

The others on the nets all came from different backgrounds, even different eras. They were men and women, died at different ages, lived at different places. They all had two things in common. The first, is that they had all been thrown into lake, themselves. The second was something I was aware of as I slipped on the silt of the beach.

I was aware of a feeling a shock of pain up my backside. That was just before I became aware of the graver feeling of my legs slipping into The Lake just shy of some very important, if mostly unused, parts. Throughout all of that, I was aware that all those along the beach were in much better shape than I, myself. We’ll see how they all fare when they are more than six thousand years old.

The two on either side of me pulled me from the lake and applied the damp towels to rinse the residue from my legs. I must say, they did so with such amazing efficiency that my legs were clean within seconds of my slip.

“Thank you both,” I said, automatically polite. “That was a perfect example of-” I stopped mid sentence. In that short moment, I had just realized that something I felt was not netting. “That wasn’t all netting! Ready more towels!”

By the time I finished that sentence, I had turned to a far older form, not unlike the one I had when I spoke to Eve so long ago. It had a sinuous form, good for swimming. It had scales, to add some scant protection against The Lake. It was cold-blooded, which meant that it could even accept some of the heat of the Lake rather than feel its full brunt. It did not have any limbs, which could have come in handy.

Having neither arms nor legs, my only option was to slide in head first and, for whatever time I maintained my focus, feel around.

You might wonder why I would jump immediately to going personally into the tangible manifestation of God’s desire that I suffer eternally and otherwise be forgotten. A soul near the beach, even one brought close by the netting, can be pulled back to the deep very quickly. Merely pulling on the netting would provide no guarantees. So, time and focus were both of the essence.

It took me somewhere around five agonizing seconds, but I did find the soul deeper along the shore. I wrapped my body around him and, for an additional somewhere around ten seconds, pushed us both back to the dry land.

He, and it was only just knowable that the soul was male, looked like any other soul pulled from The Lake. The emaciated appearance, the sweating and shivering, the sunken eyes; The Lake burns so much from you.

If you still need to ask why I went in, I fear we may have nothing to discuss.