Prompt 1

Prompt: I’d do anything I could to get rid of them.

Prompt by Tumblr user prompts for the struggling author: https://promptsforthestrugglingauthor.tumblr.com/

Written by Roci Herrera

Demons fly like angels of death. Around my room. Around my head. They scream at me that I have killed. The scream about hell. About how I am going to end up where not even the holy one himself can seem to leave.

The demons fly as though they love it. Their wings flash as their gothic features entail each other. The sharpness of each of their joints is terrifying, just as they are. Just as they have always been. I see them like martyrs. They tell the stories of my life. What I have loved. What I have lost. What I didn’t know about myself. They know me better than I know me. I think that if I were to tell anyone about myself, I wouldn’t have such an in depth look into my own soul as any single one of these demons. As I sit in the middle of my room, they seem to gather more, not less. As I back into the corner, they group further together. All I want of for them to leave. I want to leave.

I want to die.

I have died before. It sucks at first, especially when you go to hell, but maybe if  I’m lucky, I won't end up there next time. Maybe I can avoid the demons that followed me out.

In Japan, there is a story that is told of a man who went to hell, just as I did. He was tortured and put through pain. He didn’t have a single hope to make it back out. However, one day he noticed a single spider web that was hanging over his head. He knew the web led to heaven. So he climbed it. He climbed for the hour, straight up the same strand of spider’s web. Just as he reached the top, the cord was cut.

I went to hell and came back. I did make it. But satan did not want me to get away easily. God, what a fucking prick. He sent demons to follow me.

I told them in the hospital. I needed to go back, otherwise, I would suffer a fate worse than death. A fate worse than hell. I would be tormented on earth by demons for the rest of my natural life.

Never before have I wanted to die so badly. Even in my suicide. But not even the demons would allow this.

Loud music. Loud, strange music. I listen to it in my basement, and the demons stay away. When they stay away, I feel normal. I feel saner. I feel like I can move and do things. But then the electric company shut off my power. I told them that I couldn’t leave my house. I couldn’t get a job. I had to stay inside with the music or else the demons would get me. I needed to have the power so I could make them stay away. But they didn’t listen. And now I suffer. For their ignorance. For their refusal.

Nobody believes me. They exist. They beat me. They whip me. I don’t know when it will stop. I don’t think that it will. It won’t, will it? It can’t. I know that they don’t want to stop. I can’t stop them. Not anymore. Not ever again.

They tied a noose for me. They want me to do it. They want me to kill myself so I go back to hell and have it be a bit easier for myself. I would only be tortured every once and awhile, not all the goddamn time. I don’t want this. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to live.

What do I want? I want to be in heaven. That was the point of committing suicide anyways. Our leader said that it would be enlightening, that we would survive God himself coming back to make us pay for our sins. But it didn’t. I went to hell. That bastard. He led me on. He told me that God was vengeful. He told me that I and everyone I loved would die a gruesome and horrible death from god. And that we would be better off this way. He said that we would come back.

I trusted him. We all trusted him. But now, here I am. Alive, sure, but not surviving. I think that it is better if I died this “gruesome death” that he told us about. I think that I would be happier with that. I would rather be killed by the god and go to heaven than kill myself and come back after going to hell.

I’m going to do it. Torture is better in hell. We get tortured for a small amount of time and then keep on the rest of our day. But here, it’s worse.

What if I prayed? Maybe.

Dear god, I pray that you take these demons from my home. Lord, I apologize for my mistrust in your mercy. I beg of you. I cannot withhold myself for these beatings for much longer. If you do not help me lord, I may very well succumb to the thought of killing myself to stop the pain, if even for a second lord.

I opened my eyes. The demons were screeching at me. Screeching louder than normal. They screeched in pain. One stabbed itself in the stomach. I could hear nothing else. I could only hear the screams. It was worse than the beatings. I picked a hammer off a table and began to swing at them.

But then one of them grabbed it out of my hand, and he looked me in the eye. He stared at me. Stared longer than I had previously thought it possible for these horrible creatures to stare. Then he spat in my eyes. “You cannot stop satan!” He yelled at me.

I felt a fool. God himself had forsaken me. He truly believed that I deserved to have this torture be given to me. He truly believed that I should be beaten for the rest of my short life.

I set up the noose above where I was. The demons cheered me as I brought up a nicely sized stool. I stood on top of it, as one of them laughed. Before kicking the stool over, I wrote on the wall in sharpie “Why hath my lord forsaken me?”

End