2 Hell

"Under the basic principles of English Law, every man is innocent until speculated guilty."

^ Paedofinder General

I couldn’t even rest my eyes, my senses aggravated with the pervasive stink. So I was not surprised when during the night, I spotted a familiar scapegoat crawl towards me, battered in body.

“Hey man, you gotta help me!” Blake said to me, desperation in his voice. I recall being on edge then as I was forcibly awoken, as he was hounded by the rest of the prisoners. “That goon lied! I wasn’t arrested for fucking children, but for protesting against injustice!”

He was clearly venting his fears onto me, as he clung to my chest. I was panicking over being gripped, when he was forcibly dragged away from me, by more menacing prisoners. Who looked ragged with hate in their eyes.

“He-” A stained pipe slammed into his face. As a bearded man, with muscle stood over the knocked down rapist with blooded steel raised by his hand. “Rapist scum like you, are undeserving of life. Especially for child molesters like you!”

That guy slammed the thin pipe down the crown of Blake’s skull. Slamming that iron rebar on his head again and again, as it began to crack and spill blood and brain matter. By the time the thug stopped pounding that bar down that body, it was when there was no head left to see, as his body, covered with visceral blows that I was sickened by.

As the man with the bloodstained iron stick rested the bent bar on his shoulders, glaring at me with his curly beard and hair. “Dispose of that scum, to the shit pit.” He was done, smashing that desperate man, until his body was more a mashed blob of flesh. The thug walked right in front of my tired face, whom I feared as a malice wielding killer.

“I’d ask your name, but you’ll probably die by the first round. So ‘til then, call me Harper.” That man spat at me, with a murderous grin on us surviving lot. “For the fresh meat still awake. I’ll be laying some ground rules. Don’t fuck with them, or you’ll be given a tender pounding, to my bloodthirsty lady.” Harper kept patting his stained bat with a smirk on his face.

I looked at the battered corpse, being dragged outside by Harper’s henchmen without fanfare. Even when I flinched by looking at the dead Blake with the same hatred everyone else, doubt lingered in my mind then...

“I don’t run this shit pit, I man it. And if I see anyone, think they can fuck anyone’s asshole, unwillingly? Then my lil’ slugger is always itching for more blood.” Harper said, marching around us lot as if he were that hateful Sergeant I woke up to. I even spotted someone winched, when Harper pointed his stained pipe at his head, though it could have been me.

“Oh, an’ another thing. Have ya heard of it? That painful buzz that spikes through your head, and never goes away? It makes you strong, makes you powerful...” I couldn’t recall any noise, bar the lingering buzz of gunfire as the goon talked. “You’ll get it, when you kill and main. Bleed and suffer. Maybe, you can bleed more, or smash more...”

Harper took a breath, looking at me, and at the time, the new ‘lot’ discarded here. “But if you think you can pray to some fucking power fantasy, out of some invisible sound? Well, hate to break it to ya. But such grand delusions, will make you prey to my lil’ slugger, or the death goon’s assault rifles. Ya got that?”

“DO YOU!?” He pointed his iron rebar at us. Us lot eagerly nodded to Harper’s gesture.. “If you want to survive. Stick by me during our raids. You stick by me, maybe we’ll live to see another day. Don’t do that, and we’re leaving you for dead. You got that?”

I nodded slightly to Harper. As he walked around his surviving gang. “Oh, and one last thing. Do some exercise, like push-ups, sit-ups and squats. Before those goon’s think of another murderous challenge no different from a bullshit game show contest. Fucking Challenge!”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“One more thing. You see a wizard, kill ‘em. Before you end up like poor Jack, who became nothing but charcoal. Jus’ friendly advice, on how this new world is a fucking death world.”

“Think I said everything? Past how this fauna’s fucking weird. Don’t touch it. Now, unless anyone has the balls to ask a thought? I’m going to my bunk, pounding some meat for my itchy bat.” Though I nodded then. I had one doubt still in mind then, on how that guy was summarily executed, not by our murderous military, but ourselves.

“You know, just a thought. What if that guy you killed wasn’t a paedo?” The pipe wielding man glared at me. His stained hand, pointing that iron rebar at my head.

“You fucking defending that monster?” Harper yelled at me. I just shrugged, not even looking at the corpse, that I prayed was still a dream.

“Jus’ saying as a thought. Is a-” I was interrupted with Harper’s bat clashing at my skull. I flinched at the pain and braced for further assault. But the further pounding never came, no further pain. As I felt the stained iron, press heavy at my neck instead.

“I don’t fucking care if that death squad lied about him, if he’s some rebel or heck; a fucking saint. Thing is, it’s my moral obligation to smash the brains of any accused paedo, in our hell. And anyone who has the balls to protect such scum here, will also be fucking smashed, until they’re nothing but monster mash. Do you all, fucking understand?”

I kept silent, still reeling from the pain ringing in my ear. I could only stare at Harper, cradling his bloodstained rebar with malice. Blood, I shuddered having made contact with my head.

“Good…” That goon, Harper walked back from me. Resting his bloodstained bar on a shoulder, he rested a shoulder over a familiar looking guy, who pulled Blake away from me.

“Hoy Clyde, is it? Good job on dragging that paedo out of that fresh meat.” Harper spoke to that plain stranger, who didn’t seem that much of a criminal thug, compared to everyone. If one discounted how we’re all stuck in orange jumpsuits out of the way.

I shuddered, as Harper pointed at me. “Do us all a favour, and keep an eye out on that new guy here. Seems really inquisitive, for fresh meat. The sort that’d get himself killed, if he makes so much a sound to those gun happy goons.”

I shuddered at how I won’t want to raise my voice, to that murderous death squad. Even as my head spun in ringing pain, from that beating. When a hand rested on my shoulder.

“Welcome to Hell, stranger.” I looked at Clyde, who seemed rather ragged, with a scarred stubble on his face. “If you’re lucky. You’ll die by the fauna or murderous knights, in this god forsaken fantasy world.”

He looked exhausted, weary the more I looked at Clyde. Even as he stared at me, with his dead eyes. “You really think this is a fantasy world?” I inquired then. I recalled Clyde laughing darkly at that comment I made to him.

“Fantasy my arse. It’s fucking colonial shit, all over again. And we’re the slave labour, set to die.” I think it was then, I also laughed bitterly. On how my nightmare had become more fantastic, than impending doom. When he inquired about my name, occupation, loyalties and such.

Honestly, I still can’t help but think of Clyde, over the dead lot. As in the end, we were pretty similar in nature. Unemployed twenty-or-thirty summers young, without any prospects of gaining employment. And how one too many lost chances led to falling under the ‘protection’ of a murderous punk, leading us disposables with anger issues on his bloodstained bat.

I recall then, as I thought back to the pain in my head. How this wasn’t a nightmare, but a bloody reality. Especially when I looked back to Clyde, his eyes so dead, it looked like he was a walking skeleton, waiting for his turn to die.

Still. It wasn’t all bad then. After our talk about our ordinary occupations as unemployed for little reasons. He brought me to a side of our shed, where a few veteran survivors were crafting things out of harvested wood and stone

“Here, let me show you where we get our tools, the guardsmen won’t supply us with. Nobody wants to die in the wilderness when we get dragged for scouting duty.” Clyde said, chuckling darkly as everyone didn’t care about who we are or names. Just “fresh bodies” at most.

Though I thought this was the first; hindsight only mercy I’d get in this forsaken nightmare. Free advice to not be a corpse in a foreign world and all. I couldn’t grasp how fragile we were here, when the deaths we suffered during our first farce of a training mission. Were nothing compared to the casualties inflicted upon us by malicious, forlorn hopes of our psycho military. But even that thought was nothing, compared to the horrors of the outside world…

And how even with some smuggled crafting. Even the survivors were not prepared for the ‘disposable’ raid that saw more of us die, before I bitterly recall how peer pressure could strangle hopes for escape more effectively, than the hangman’s noose…