A Pooh In Hell

Pooh woke with a start. The ground was shaking, making his house tremble.

Piglet knocked at his door, as anxious as ever. “P-P-P-Pooh, wake up! Oh it’s all coming apart!”

Pooh yawned. The air tasted of metal and sulphur. He put on his red vest and no underwear – as was his custom – and stuck his head outside.

The beehive had fallen on the ground. A thousand bees squirmed amidst the shattered comb, drowning in the mucus of their protean offspring.

“It’s Chr-Chr-Christ--” sputtered Piglet.

“Christopher Robin?” asked Pooh.

“He’s dying!” Piglet was running in tight little circles.“The Hundred Acher Wood is being swallowed up!”

“Gather yourself, little Piglet," Pooh cajoled. "I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

“F-f-follow me, Pooh. Qu-quickly!” and he rushed off.

Pooh followed, noticing the sky was a curious shade of dead.

They ran past the Six Pines; only three still stood, the others were sinking into liquefied black soil which rumbled and churned.

They found Eeyore on the bridge, sobbing quietly. The river was raging a deep infernal red. Blind and monstrous fish swam below its troubled surface.

“Look at these awful rapids,” Eeyore moaned. “No good for Pooh-sticks.”

He tore off his tail and dropped it into the river, where the shoal of faceless fish fought and snapped over the bony morsel.

“This is the end of the river, and the trees, and everything we love...” intoned Eeyore, lugubriously.

He threw himself off the bridge and the noose around his neck snapped taut. His body hung in the water where the blind fish stripped his flesh.

“Oh dear,” muttered Pooh.

“H-h-hurry!” stuttered Piglet. “No time!”

They ran into the depths of the Hundred Acher Wood. The treetops reached to the blackening sky where the stars were vanishing into a great cosmic rift. “It’s already begun. The Ancient One is ceasing to dream!”

“Whoo-oo are yoo-oo?” came a hoot from a high branch.

“Owl!” called Pooh. “Is that you?”

“Are you also fleeing?” asked Owl. “All around I hear my woodland friends escaping.”

“Come with us!” said Pooh.

“I can’t,” Owl said, as he emerged from the shadows.

His huge eyes were white with cataracts and wide with fear. “I am blind and cannot see to fly. But even if I could, it would be in vain.” He clawed his way back into shadow and spoke no more.

“H-h-hurry, we cannot dally!” called out Piglet, who was already a distance ahead. “There is only one path out of here, at the House of Chr-Christ-Christ--”

“Christopher Robin?” panted Pooh, running after him.

“Yes!”

They burst from the wood into Rabbit’s field. Tongues of flame licked from every rabbit hole and small corpses littered the ground. Out of fresh chasms, tall tendrils of flesh and fur emerged, flailing towards the rays of the collapsing sun.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” whittered Piglet, his mind overwhelmed by the hideous vista.

The tendrils swung towards them and on the tip of each was a set of whiskers which sniffed and twitched at the travelling duo.

“Please, Rabbit, can we cross your field?” Piglet begged. The tendrils paused, then they began to shake a firm denial. “W-w-we have no carrots or cabbages to give. What can we offer?”

The tendrils opened, revealing tiny mouths with sharp teeth, and they barked a single word: “PORK!”

They dived at Piglet and began to tear the flesh from his body and grill the pieces in the flames of the burning rabbit holes. Pooh did not linger. He ran between the squirming nightmares, and kept running until he could no longer hear his friend’s dying squeals.

Ahead lay the Creator’s house. The door was closed but the windows flashed as if it contained a hellish maelstrom. Pooh could not imagine the dimension where the human boy dwelled. He knew only that it was a place where things aged and decayed, unlike the eternal idyll of the Hundred Acher Wood.

He started up the front path, but found his paws frozen by some eldritch force.

Then a boy’s voice, but deep and broken, echoed inside his cotton-wool brain:

What exactly is a Pooh but a figment of delusion? The animation of humanity’s innocence, inevitably to be dashed and lost. All past civilisations, known and unknown, shared common dreams from the pre-knowing, delusions of unformed consciousnesses, of which the P’hu, the W’nee, the E-ey’awr... These are but atoms.

Pooh didn’t understand what the voice was going on about, but he knew one thing: “I’m a real bear! I have four paws and a nose,” he said, booping himself for reassurance.

Then he saw the Creator loom over the hillcrest: Christopher Robin.

My, thought Pooh, he has grown.

The voice rumbled again, making Pooh clutch his pudgy ears: Even a dream has dreams. And those dreams have dreams, infinitely down into primordial madness.

“Oh dear, this is perplexing,” said Pooh. “I wish I had packed some honey.”

Very well, the ambrosial nectar shall be your blood.

Pooh felt his seams stretching and a sticky residue began to ooze between his stitches. He tasted it. “Mmmm! Yummy yummy honey!”

As his wounds widened and multiplied and he lapped at the viscous suppuration, he felt himself becoming dizzy. He collapsed to his knees. “Oooh I might have overdone it. I think I'll take a nap.”

The godhead spoke to him gently: The aeons welcome you, traveller. Join us now in the infinite.

It took control of Pooh’s fuzzy form and transported him towards the cottage. The front door opened and Pooh felt himself disassembled by the maelstrom.

*

Alan and Dorothy Milne watched helplessly as the disease sapped the last drops of their son’s life.

Alan put down the notebook where he had been transcribing the stories his son had spoken during his delirium. Tales of talking toys and fantastical woodlands...

He didn’t know what realm Christopher was slipping into, but he knew he would not be alone.