Hell

The base of the huge grandfather clock stood stark and ominous against the night sky as a supermoon glowed eerily beyond the horizon. Tonight, my mind played tricks, for my reality had seemingly begun to lapse into the absurd. In my confused and disoriented state, the moon appeared sinister, brooding and terrifying as her light shone a fearsome orange glow upon the dreary night.

For a worrying moment, I seem to have forgotten who and where I am.

Something deep within me stirs, like remnant traces of ghostly memories. I remember the haunting eerie evocations of being groomed from birth in the reactive consciousness of sentient beings. I seem to have forgotten the where, and the why of it all. My sanity hung like a compendium, an assorted garland of miscellany around my neck, weighing me down to the pits of unconscious thoughts.

Yet, here was this great clock in the middle of a living, reactive and moving jungled wilderness. Why the clock...Did time somehow matter in the grand scheme of things? My mind was a potpourri of torment.

The hands on the two great ancient clocks warped menacingly, causing the duality to appear as the eyes of monsters in all their veined glory. They twitched and jeered, sending shivers up my spine. I cowered in agony, fear a palpable thing, as everything this night was out to get me. The spaces between the grates below the clocks were like bared teeth, waiting to tear at the flesh of its enemies.

The night smirked evilly in diabolical satisfaction as it watched me trying to approach the darker side of myself, and the darker side also trying to approach my real myself. Or was it the other way around? I was incapable of perceiving which!

I shook myself in fearsome wonder, trembling at the turmoil of my inner being. Well, what of my other self...Why is there another self. How did we come to be? I felt as if there were cobwebs entangling my entire being, causing me to move in a surreal slowness of motion, over which I had no control whatsoever. My other me seemed to be somehow undergoing the same sensations, as it too seemed unable to catch up with me.

I was terrified of the madness of it all!

Why were there two of me. Why was One was coming while the Other was going. The closer I tried to get to my other me self, the farther the distance became. I closed my eyes, maybe on opening them I would become sane again.

I opened them and screamed without sound, a silent agonizing, tortured agony, reaching for help from someone...anyone!

Noooooo! I was descending into a bottomless pit.

Was I experiencing Dante's Maundy Thursday, that Thursday which preceded the early morning dawn of Good Friday, as a prelude to myself plummeting into the nine concentric circles of torment in Hell. Could I be now located within the Earth. Had I fallen into the "realm ... of those who have rejected spiritual values by yielding to bestial appetites or violence, or by perverting their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen". Am I an allegory to the Divine Comedy which represents the journey of the soul toward God, with the Inferno describing the recognition and rejection of my sins.

Had this all been but a mirage?

For now...Suddenly, I realize that I am encircled within a dark woodland, with beasts on every side. They prohibit my every movement as I try to climb up the sides of the many sided mountains in search of answers. Every growl carries a foreboding message. I can hear and understand the monstrous things as they draw even closer. I know not why or how I came to be here. The forest, the trees, the animals, everywhere were glowing eyes peeking out, hunger emanating from the depths of their soulless mourning.

The beasts try to drive me back, back to where the sun is silent, into the bowels of the despairing darkness of my mind. Alas, I am lost in the bosom of a menacing and agonizing woodland, with no escape route from the confusion of my mind and body.

I blink away the fog of my fuzzy mind as a tree detached itself from its family of glittering fire breathing ilk. It stalks waveringly over to me on wobbly legs which transforms wholly human as it reaches me.

"Come forth". It orders without speaking, from lips transforming between wood and flesh as if still confused to which is which. It reaches forth a hand of skin, limbs and leaves as I stand in awe of my imminent loss of a grip upon my sanity.

I hesitantly follow, my choices limited to death or maybe more death. We enter a gate which bears an inscription ending with the ominous phrase "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate", most frequently translated as "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here".

I was outwardly undergoing a hideous, yet beautiful metamorphosis, as my soul yearned for clarity and peace. I was becoming limbs and leaves, trees and demons, serpents were entwining my head, much like Medusa of long ago. That deadly, yet bewitching Greek gorgon goddess with snakes for hair, who with one stare, could turn anyone into stone.

My inner demons were raging against peace. They wanted blood, mayhem and murderous revenge for a life of pain and misery.

"Why do you seek peace"? The voices raged on in my head.

I tried my best to not listen...to calm their roaring...but they were insistent and violently angry, I feared that I could not long keep them at bay.

"Fight them". The silent trees shouted within my mind.

I was going mad. There was no help for it now.

The nine circles of Hell converged, bombarding my mind with all of the burning fires of the underworld.

The first three Cantos

First came the monsters and madness.

Second Beatrice sends the symbol of Divine Love of a contemplative life.

Third came that message of the abandonment of hope. The rest followed.

The nine circles of Hell

I went through these circles amidst a sentient forest which existed solely within the confines of my mind.

Limbo. Lust. Gluttony. Greed.

Here, too, I saw a nation of lost souls,

far more than were above: they strained their chests

against enormous weights, and with mad howls

rolled them at one another. Then in haste

they rolled them back, one party shouting out:

"Why do you hoard?" and the other: "Why do you waste

Wrath. Heresy. Violence. Fraud. Treachery.

The three faces of Satan

... he had three faces: one in front bloodred;

and then another two that, just above

the midpoint of each shoulder, joined the first;

and at the crown, all three were reattached;

the right looked somewhat yellow, somewhat white;

the left in its appearance was like those

who come from where the Nile, descending, flows

In a moment of clarity, I recall Dorothy L. Sayers notes that Satan's three faces are thought by some to suggest his control over the three human races: Black for the African (the race of Ham), yellow for the Asiatic (the race of Shem), and Red for the Europeans (the race of Japheth).

The Inferno overtook my mind. It burned with the intensity of lava from a blood-red, hot volcano.

I became the Satan with the power of the Black African race of Ham. Seeking vengeance against the other heads with a burning anger needing quenching, I turned and ate up the other two heads. I chewed the meat and spat out the bones. From these bones will rise new devils to haunt humanity forever.

In a fevered insanity, I turned my attention to the animals and beasts of the surrounding tree world. They felt the approaching danger and bolted left and right. Being no match for my new found powers, gleaned from the ingestion of the powerful heads, I devoured them whole as blood dripped from my mouth, painting the forest floor crimson red. The trees dripped tears of blood from their leaves.

I now understood the mirage. One of me wanted to be good. The other stronger version of the me self yearned for the bad.

Sorry Dante. The inferno is now beckoning me into the world of mankind. The forest can no longer contain the Head Of Ham.

Stomping purposefully through the blood-soaked wooded wonderland of crimson soaked leaves, I now journey into the outer world.

Deep, deep within the madness, a struggle ensues as sickly Good still vies for control of the Evil which has transformed my psyche.

Will you hold your breath and pray that Good wins over Evil before it is too late?

We shall see!!!!!

.......................................................................................

The prompts

Poems taken from Inferno Cantos.

Ham, Shem and Japheth are the sons of Noah. References are from the Bible.