Tortured Soul

The soul careened blindly through a void where it scraped against the walls of a narrow tunnel, amassing a cumulative friction that created all the heat the devil would ever need to torment it. There was no light at the end, not even a fire. From the bottom a cold wind blew, and the clash of extremities spawned vapors of terror in the deadened and numbed appendage that was this strange, delirious, drunken consciousness.

There was no time here, and no life flashed before its eyes. The soul, in that frozen moment, felt only the sensation of plummeting wildly to its doom down a shute to Hell. It had done nothing wrong! Why should it take the Helter Skelter to the House of Horror?

Like a breath desperately stolen by a man who just crests the water before being pulled into the undertow of a raging river; like a maddened attempt to jump onto a mountain ledge from a crashing airplane; like a frantic scramble up a tree while running from an angry bear; that’s how it felt to escape.

The soul looked down upon the man on the bed, eyes rolled up in his head, seized with feverish twitches, sweating profusely, breathing shallowly. He was about to die. His blood-alcohol level was way beyond what any man should be able to endure. Drinking a half gallon of eighty proof whisky on top of seven or eight stout beers and anything else someone might hand you in a period of less than a few hours

Will

Do

That

To

You!

The soul hated what the man had become: a defective vessel, a machine badly programmed, an automaton who could only consume everything in his path and create waste while contributing nothing of value to the world.

Yet there were quiet moments throughout their life together that the soul understood why the man was this way. He was born into a world that plied him with hero stories, but then turned those very hopes of glory and dreams of meaning against him, trapping him, a mere commodity, in a system which drained his incredible natural strength to power itself.

So many times, the soul almost reached him with the knowledge that he had a grand purpose and could do legitimate good in the world. It knew that though the man’s base instincts were a raging fire, they were strong and noble when unfettered by the web of lies that was this so-called civilization.

The soul knew that above those instincts was a heart as pure as a natural spring which was contaminated with vices as toxic as the unscrupulous pigs that peddled them; and beyond that a mind that could assimilate sorrow and make space for peace.

The man was dirty, filthy, disgusting, but somehow not unclean. For the soul saw all and loved all that the man could be, if only he could escape what he’d become, as the soul escaped its descent into the pit of Hell to witness the man’s last struggling breaths in this shabby motel room.

This was his judgment day, narrowed down to a random minute.

The man’s eyes fluttered open. He did not open his mouth to speak, but clearly heard his own voice whisper in his ear:

“Don’t do this again, motherfucker.”

He ran to the bathroom. On his knees, he offered not prayer but puke.

He lived, but it would be many years before the merciful judgment of that minute would bloom into a full understanding of his ingrateful folly. Next time he courted death, it would be an act of love rather than an attempt to throw hope and life away.