SHORT STORIES

TRIALS OF THE INFERNO

When Tucker was very young, he watched his mother die. He walked out of his bedroom one night and through tired eyes saw a dim light coming from his father’s office. A final goodnight to his father before a trip to the bathroom was his plan, but when he opened the door, his father was nowhere to be found. He peered at a plethora of candles and blood covering the floor and walls, and his mother sitting naked, facing away from the door. She turned to him—eyes cold and blood smeared on her face—and smiled. Fear took his breath as he tried to call her name. A voice told him to run when his legs stiffened from the terror of watching his mother’s back tear in half from something dark and beastly coming out of it. Tucker ran and screamed for his father, who grabbed him and held him while crying. His father also said, “your mother was very sick, but now she will be better.” 

Tucker reminisces on that dark time alone in his old house, free from the restraints of the psychiatric hospital that imprisoned him when he was just ten years of age. The doctors poked him with needles that caused his skin to bruise and itch, gave him medicine that made him sleep for hours that felt like days, restrained him to machines that shocked his brain and made his eyes bleed, and hypnotised him to train him to tell a different story from what he saw that night. Years passed, and he couldn’t take it anymore. Tucker told them whatever they wanted, and eventually, they let him free. 

If their abuse wasn’t enough, they also neglected to tell him his father succumbed to the end of a whiskey bottle, which he only found out from finding his dead body on the living room floor of their filthy home. 

No one ever came for the body. It rots, along with everything else in the house. Tucker despised his father for never believing him and turning him over to the hospital. Every now again, he spits on his corpse and curses his name. It doesn’t make him any less angry, only slightly reduces the stress of being alone and still not having any answers. Since his release, Tucker’s main concern is figuring out what happened to his mother. He will never forget what he saw—a monster crawled out of her! No matter how much the doctors tried to convince him otherwise, he knows there is evil from other worlds lurking in the dark recesses of the city. 

His time is spent in his father’s office reading the numerous books he owned; texts on his mother’s mental illness, books about satanism and the occult, and notes he wrote about his mother’s behavior. She truly was sick. 

Tucker always wondered how his dad cured her. 

He finds a paper note tucked deep inside the pages of a book he’s nearly finished; within it is a list of foreign words. Tucker proceeds to pronounce each one aloud and in order, and as they start to look familiar—flashes of the floor where his mother sat had the same letters— multiple black hands with long fingers and sharp claws creep from underground and grab his legs. He doesn’t flinch or scream. This is exactly what Tucker wanted, a gateway into that world, and after several months of researching in seclusion, he gets his wish: to prove what he saw that night was real. 

A slow, cynical laughter floats past his ear and his eyelids become heavy for a brief moment. The panic sensation of falling consumes his entire body as he’s dragged through a tunnel of dirt and faces that stare at him with his mother’s eyes. Every time he blinks, he sees the monster crawling out of her. When it fully exits and reveals its blotchy and bloody skin and elongated arms and legs, it wears her body like a skin suit and smiles. The image sours Tucker’s stomach; she didn’t deserve a savage death. The hurt of guilt sets in. Perhaps running away wasn’t his only option back then.

The wicked hands release him when the tunnel comes to an end. He’s left free-falling in a dark void, screaming, unable to catch a grip on reality. He lands in red water illuminated by an unknown source of bright gray light. “What is this place?” he asks, gazing at his disheveled and gaunt reflection in the thick liquid. A distant scream startles Tucker to his feet; his frantic eyes can’t focus on the blur that splashed in the water. “Hello?” he calls out. Another person comes falling from the darkness above, and then one more, right behind Tucker. He looks down at the strange woman whose facial expression is the embodiment of his emotions. 

“Wh… what is this? How did I…” she pauses and cleans her face. “Is this blood?” she gasps in terror, staring at her stained hands. 

She almost resembles Tucker’s mother. He kneels down to speak to her, but before he can form words, a sinister laughter pierces his ears. Chains wrap around their bodies and entangle them together, along with the other two strangers that fell. The others panic, complicating Tucker’s process to reach a safe place in his mind. He created a world where his mother still exists and instead of being trapped in this hellish place, he could be with her, enjoying time spent as mother and son. 

Giant double doors with a pentagram welded on the front appear in front of him, and finally the others become silent. Horrid creatures devoid of humanistic features and made up of unfamiliar shapes and colors, slither out when the doors open. 

His thoughts escape him. He knows he’s traveling, but his mind is imprisoned somewhere else. Fire surrounds him. Monsters from nightmares roam the flames, harsh gurgles and screams are natural here, like the honking of cars and sirens in his dangerous city. He fears where the inhabitants of this world are taking him and the others, but he’s come too far to turn back now. 

If his mother is here, he hopes in death he will see her. 

The destination is an odious arena of bones and dead bodies that make up the center stage and chairs. The pungent smell of death induces sickness in the strangers. However, Tucker’s eyes are much too fixated on the hauntingly familiar, massive creature standing some distance away from him. His heart could burst. The unnerving emptiness in his mother’s eyes, the claw that ripped her apart—the memories return abruptly and merge with the uneasiness he felt back then when his legs became numb. “It’s… it’s you… isn’t it?” he whispers with a shaky breath. It’s the same hideous demon that appears in all of Tucker’s nightmares and taunts him until he wakes up in a cold sweat. Even now it taunts him as it stands like a god, ignoring the suffering of the innocent. 

The chains confining him finally loosen and fall to the damp floor. “What is this place? Why are we here?” asks one of the strangers as they cough up blood. They obviously haven’t spent years of their life strapped to a hospital bed by metal and leather tight enough to leave permanent bruises and scars. “I remember reading an article on my computer… then I ended up falling.” 

Bright red lights illuminate the space and shed light on four flat pillars rising out of the ground. The pillars rotate and reveal a human nailed to each one by their wrists and ankles. Tucker’s knees drop to the floor, his heartbeat and breath become uncontrollable staring at his mother, who isn’t peacefully resting, but still suffering. Before she became sick and clawed at the walls with her bloody stubs for fingers, she was loving and a great mother. He asks himself, why does she deserve such a cruel fate? 

The evil, menacing monster stares directly at him and speaks in a voice that would terrify a person hiking alone in a dark woods, “there’s only one way to save her, Tucker.” 

Hearing it say his name makes him nauseous. As it continues to speak, the reality of actually being trapped in Hell sets in. His mind becomes a place devoid of any other sound except the demon’s chilling voice. In order to save his mother—cure her of the disease that forced her to sacrifice herself, he must kill every other human in the room. The only way to save her is by stopping the rest of them. 

“We have to… kill each other?” The woman’s worried voice gets Tucker out of his own head. He searches the room. They’re all gazing at each other. “I don’t think I can–”

She’s cut off by a man who points out the fact his brother is nailed to one of the pillars. “He’s really important to me,” he says. “I was supposed to protect him!” 

Tucker backs away, maintains a good enough distance to still listen.

“Wait,” the woman pleads. “Maybe, there’s another way.” 

He laughs at her. “Don’t be stupid. We all got here because we saw something we shouldn’t have. My brother was sick, and I tried to help him, but…” The sentence fades as he hangs his head. “I won’t let it happen again!” He grabs the woman by her hair and throws her to the ground. “I’m sorry about this,” he says, stomping her face so hard Tucker can hear her bones crack. 

“Stop this!” yells another in the group. They look back at Tucker, who is staring blankly at the savage attack and hearing nothing the irate person is screaming at him. The urge to do the same—draw blood, win—burns from within. Last time he had the chance to help his mother, Tucker listened to the cowardly voice in his head and ran away. Now, he wants to face any obstacle to rescue his mother out of this Hell. “Aren’t you going to do something?” asks the person clenching Tucker’s shoulders. 

Tucker meets their gaze with cold eyes. “Yes, I am.” He takes their hand and bites down on their finger, rips it off and spits it out. The person screams and falls back, begs to be spared. Tucker doesn’t care for their cries; he kneels down and punches their face until they can no longer speak, then he sticks his thumbs in their eyes and waits for them to stop squirming. He never thought he was capable of taking a life, but, then again, he never thought the opportunity of redemption would ever present itself. 

“So, I guess it’s just me and you now?” says the other murderer, smirking and licking the blood off his knuckles. He runs toward Tucker with a cocked fist. “You should just give up. I’m not leaving here without my brother!” 

Tucker removes his thumbs and readies himself for a fight. After watching what he did to that woman, he will enjoy killing him.

 He gets closer and falls short of punching Tucker in the face. Tucker grabs his arm and punches him in the gut, and lands another shot to his face. The punk sinks his nails into Tucker’s face and pulls down, then pushes Tucker away. Tucker winces from the pain, but doesn’t let it stop him. While his opponent hunches over, holding his stomach, Tucker runs over to the pillars. He pulls one of the thick nails out of a hanging body and steadies toward his enemy, who notices and grins. “Cheater,” he chuckles.

“Whatever it takes,” whispers Tucker as he inches the nail towards his opponent’s neck. They block with a weak hand. Tucker uses all of his strength to pierce through the hand and stab him in the neck. Blood squirts in his eyes and blurs his vision. With the dead woman in mind, Tucker continues stabbing him until his eyes sting from the blood and arm becomes exhausted. 

Maybe his mother would be proud. It’s certainly a change from just watching her die. 

“That’s it. Now give her back!” Tucker demands with exasperated breath.  

A cackle echoes in the atmosphere. The thing that took his mother slithers to him like a worm and babbles loudly in a foreign language. The surrounding arena is changing into a void of sinister and heinous thoughts. None of them are his, yet the sensation of executing each one feels familiar. Tucker takes a deep breath and prepares his mind for whatever treacherous test lies ahead. Bright and dark colors dance together in a part of his mind he didn’t know existed. Through someone else’s eyes he sees himself grow from an infant to a toddler in a fast-forward motion; a bountiful garden of flowers rots and flourishes, a house filled with people burns to the ground and turns into ash, black shadows that have disturbing red eyes and spiked teeth surround a patient in a hospital room, feeding of off of their life —too many visions for his mind to bear. 

The monster’s voice speaks to him, “this is a fraction of what your mother saw every day while she was sick. I have another test for you.” The hoarse voice becomes louder. “Walk through her world. If you truly believe that a life like hers is worth living, then you should live it yourself.” 

Tucker’s body now drifts through a world where skinless beings of obscure shapes dance around different versions of his mother. Her entire life, a darkness has preyed upon her. Her younger self was always watched by these strange creatures. Their dance, almost ritualistic, seems to keep her burdened. And if Tucker knew what could drive them away or stop their dancing, he would sacrifice anything to save her. His father was too weak to bring her back. Tucker is his mother’s only hope. 

Beyond the horrid monsters is a wall of darkness. He enters with closed eyes and a held breath, his hand held outward. It’s humid, yet cold, as if his skin can’t tell the difference. The space is narrow and the walls are crawling with fiery demons reaching out with their elongated arms and sharp claws. His mother always complained she was hot and cold and itchy and burning and that animals were clawing at her skull. Sometimes, she shrieked endlessly about her thoughts becoming trapped in a cage at the end of a narrowing tunnel that she had to sprint down, and whenever she thought she was close to the end, it would close and trap her in darkness. 

He was embarrassed by her— didn’t want anyone to see them together or know she was his mother. Tucker understands her cries now as he sprints into the unknown, fighting off vicious hands and enduring the threatening pain of their attacks. She always felt small inside her own head.  His father always told him to stay away from her and allow her to heal. So he did. Now, he can hear the suffering in her deafening cries. 

He nears the closing end of the agonizing tunnel. Something tall and misshapen with harrowing red eyes waits for him. its ominous presence startles him and when he stops cold, a demon’s hand grabs him and cuts his chest. As he falls, the monster ahead bends down and crawls toward him. Tucker’s heart beats as fast as it did on that unforgettable night. 

Fear seeps in, and the thought to turn back flashes in his mind. 

“Coward,” taunts the demon. 

He’s trapped in his mother’s negative beliefs about herself, unable to walk normally and short of breath. But the walls are closing in. He doesn’t want to remain in her dark void forever. Seeing her smile again and a second chance at helping her gives him a bit of strength, enough to break free of the arms holding him back. The tunnel’s dim redness starts to fade to black as he nears the end of it. The demon welcomes him with open arms, and, screaming with his eyes closed, he enters them, ignoring the greedy demons that tear his flesh.

Tucker now stands face-to-face with the hideous fiend that claimed his mother’s body. “Enough games! I surpassed your wicked tests. Set her free!” he commands, his gaze unwavering from the demon’s haunting eyes. 

It cackles. “You’re right! Turns out your pathetic human flesh is more durable than I perceived. But…” The darkness slowly changes into the putrid and vile arena where Tucker murdered two strangers. “… there’s one more test!” 

“Tucker! Tucker!” His mother cries out to him. 

He turns to her–nearly collapses from hearing her voice again. Unlike before, he’s running toward her, ready to free her from whatever evil haunts her. 

“Catch!” laughs the demon. 

“What–” Tucker stares in awe at the fire pit beneath him. 

The nails restricting his mother, and the other victims, disappear and they all fall toward the flames. Tucker screams as the anonymous force keeping him afloat vanishes and sends him free falling like the others. 

“Help me! Help me, Tucker!” He hears his mother’s cries among the screams and wails.  

Tucker doesn’t let the burning children and their cries for help distract him from his mother. His skin blisters from the flames, but he’s so close to grabbing her. 

“We’re not going to make it!” she screams. 

He grabs her wrist and pulls her closer. “I’m not going to let you die!” He hugs her tight and shuts his eyes to his nearing death. “Not alone. Not this time. I love you.” 

To his surprise, instead of burning in the flames of Hell, he’s floating in a dark void, holding his mother’s hand.  

“What is this?” she asks.

Tears fill Tucker’s eyes. “I have no idea. But I’m glad you’re here.”

Suddenly, the darkness becomes a fluorescent beam that blinds him. When he opens his eyes, he and his mother are sitting on the floor in his father’s office. He stands quickly to his feet; touches everything to ensure it’s real, runs to the living room to see his father’s rotting carcass. He returns to gawk at his mother, who still looks as young as the day she died. “You really are here.” He cracks a smile. “This is going to be harder to explain than I imagined.”

She tilts her head and says, “I guess you had enough for today. Don’t worry, we’ll put you to sleep soon.”

He gives her a puzzled look. “What are you talking about?”

***

“Seriously? What’s he doing now?” 

“He’s just babbling like an idiot. Nothing we’ve done today has worked. More tests and we might fry his brain for good.”

“Poor kid. What are we going to tell the parents?”

“The same thing we’ve told them for the past ten years. Until their kid shuts up about demons and monsters, or whatever else his imagination can come up with, he stays here. The public is too skittish for someone like patient Tucker to roam the streets. 

“I suppose you’re right about that.”

“I am. Now tell his parents they can come in. They’re right outside the door. The least we can do is let them speak to him before he undergoes more testing next month.”

“Yes, doctor.” 

Tucker’s parents walk in the room and receive news their son is still unable to speak coherently or follow any basic instructions. They are allowed a few minutes alone with him before he’s kept away for months. 

The father kneels down in front of him and places a hand on his knee. “Son, I’m very sorry. I know you love your mother just as much as I do–sacrificing you was the only way to make her better. I can’t imagine the Hell you’re going through, but I know that if you saw how happy your mother and I are now, you would understand. For months we waited for you to appear during a ritual, and when we finally got our wish, I couldn’t help but to hug you.”

Tucker’s mother kisses him on the forehead and whispers in his ear, “every minute that you suffer here, I regain my life and consciousness back, Tucker. One day, when I am whole again, I promise to save you from that place I once dwelled.” She grabs his chin and stares into his vacant eyes. “But for now, you’ll just have to live in the inferno.”

 THE END