"All aboard and buckle your seat belts" yells the alcoholic looking guide. He seems rude, he is short and beyond that, he is unimaginably ugly. I cringe as I pass the smelly man, I walk towards the rear of the bus passing the other passengers. "They could all use a bath, a bath and a plastic surgeon" I scoff as I look at the odd collection of misfits and oddballs, trying to find a seat by myself. Climbing aboard, the guide snarls and yells: "take your seats and buckle-up!" I start to get up, to protest his rude behavior... I start to get up, but he speeds off from the curb and I fall back in my seat. I've never seen anyone drive a bus like this, I've never seen a bus go so fast. Everyone stops talking, everyone falls quiet. I try to relax.

My seat is harder than usual, the window is dirty and seems to be smeared with grease. There are finger prints, no, they're more like hand prints, like hands trying to get a grip, trying to climb on the bus. Turning my head back to the aisle, I think: "who'd want to climb on this bucket of bolts?" I yawn, I lean my head back, but I can not sleep, I can not relax. The further we go, the faster he drives. The further we go the more uncomfortable my seat and the hotter it seems. I want to complain, I want to get off the bus, but, we're going too fast. The driver starts to laugh, he starts to cackle:

The other people on this bus start to laugh, they start to cackle: "Hehehehehehehahahahahahahehehe..."

My eyes widen with an eerie fear, I look out the window, but everything is black. I look down the aisle towards the door, but the other passengers leer back at me. I can tell they won't let me pass, I can tell that they're a part of whatever this is, whatever's going on. They're laughing, they're cackling and I don't know what to do. Come to think about it, I realize that I don't know where we're going or what I'm doing on this bus. I don't remember buying a ticket, I ask myself: "am I dreaming, have I lost my senses?" Ready to scream, I'm stunned by a brilliant flash of bright colors in the window and the sudden stop of the bus. People, fiends really, climb aboard and start dragging the passengers off. The other passengers aren't laughing now, they're being dragged off kicking and screaming! Fiends and ghouls are barking out orders, they punctuate the screams of my fellow travelers with the cracks of their whips and the locking of chains around the ugly necks, wrists and ankles of these poor, wretched souls!

Slowly it dawns on me as the distressed bag lady in front screams at her attackers, slowly I realize where I am. "This is the netherworld, the Pandemonium, my God" I thought: "I'm in hell!" "That's right" shouts the alcoholic looking guide before I can finish my thought. He's standing in front of me, grabbing my arm. "Let go" I scream at the top of my lungs: "Let go!" Cackling out his bone chilling: "hahahahahehehehehehahahehehahe..." he gags and chokes, coughing up some yellow-greenish flem. "Haplume" he spits to the side. Repulsed, I pull back. "Come with me" he demands grabbing at my arm. Pulling at me, dragging me down the aisle, he laughs and coughs, he spits and laughs, mostly he laughs.

He takes me through caverns, caves, and tunnels. Deeper and deeper we travel as he grows more somber (only giggling occasionally). He tightens his grip, his wart plagued hand closing tighter as I try to escape from his hold. What flesh I thought I felt, aside from his warts and festering sores, was cold, lifeless and hard. "God, my God" I shout: "what have I done?" "Silence" he shrieks at me in a shrill voice, driving a spike of pain through my skull!

"This, this is what I am supposed to show you" he screams at me: "look at this wench you worthless and vile human!" "Look" he screams again, with a painful twist of my arm. A woman stood before us, she was chained to a wall and next to her, a man was chained in a like manner. Her name was Mary, my guide explains, then pointing at the man, he says: "this, this piece of wasted flesh, he went by the name of Rob." "They conspired together, they robbed her husband, they tried to keep him from seeing his child...they were evil" he continues: "the Master himself inspired them and they obeyed so well." I watch as demons torture the wench Mary and her consort Rob. They take turns whipping and flaying, poking and prodding. One demon, dripping sweat from his difficult work, runs up to the wench Mary with a handful needles, he stabs her in her open eyes, she screams and begs for mercy. Another demon runs up to the consort, he drives a red-hot rod of steel up between Rob's legs. Still another demon demands his turn at the unlucky dyad of adulterous souls. I turn and try not to look, I don't want to watch. "No, you must look my friend, you must learn" the guide tells me: "you must write this story and warn the others, you must see..."

We stood like ghouls, we watched for hours as the wench and her consort suffered the tortures of hell, too obscene to describe. We watched a former politician, a former president and his troupe of advisors licked the ashes from unused furnaces. He looked up at me, the former president with a now deformed face, he asked if we still thought of him as a saint. Pity led me to say we did, although I knew we had begun to forget him and that many of our children barely knew of him. Next we came to a singer who led many to idolization and drugs. He once said that he was the new messiah and as famous as Jesus Christ. The singer's voice was now a hideous shadow of what it had been. Knowing my thoughts, the guide turned to me: "He bought that voice at the cost of his soul." My guide smiled: "only his immortal soul!" Then he broke into laughter, that eerie laughter once again... with the cackling, the choking and the coughing-up of yellow-green flem. The former singer scampered at our feet and greedily lapping-up the guides flem from the filthy floor.

There was a level reserved solely for the members of the clergy who had sent others astray. It was so hideous, so horrible as souls found themselves torn in halves and quarters. "Some did it for money, for glory, for fame..." my guide informed me: "it doesn't matter why, they're here and they're the master's special subjects." The priests, the rabbis, the ministers and some I couldn't recognize were all begging Almighty God for mercy. Demons like the ones torturing the wench and her consort raced from here to fro. The demons struck some of their charges, others they whipped with hideous leathern whips. The screams, the howls, I swore they would drive me mad, mad if I wasn't already insane that is. The sulfuric odor was getting to me, I was feeling the heat, I was dizzy as the cavern we occupied started spinning. I was dizzy as the demons laughed, as their prisoners screamed, as my guide spit out a little more flem for some poor soul to enjoy licking from the putrescent, ashen covered floor. I felt him reach for me, his wart and sore covered dead hand grabbing my arm. I felt him and then it all went black and colorless, neither hot nor cold. Then, sweet silence, euphonious quiet, as all the screaming, howling, laughing, cackling, choking, coughing and spitting stopped.

I just woke-up, I'm at my typewriter, typing this yarn about what I saw. I'm telling this story in the best of my words. My warning to all the wenches, consorts and phony leaders. My warning to just be equitable and decent. Everything else will just take care of itself, and I think it better to suffer a little here than to undergo what I saw and to have to lick the flem from hideous creatures off the floors of Hades. Better to suffer a little here than to face what awaits Mary and Rob in the depths of hell.

Created: October 29, 1999r.
Last Updated: May 23, 2005r.