Upon his departure from his horrible, sinful life, he was not greeted by fire and brimstone. There was not light, there was not the Devil. He was eternally separated from information, not even a wisp of frequency of light or sound penetrating the dense walls that he thought must surround him for millions of miles. That is, when he could ever think. He could feel. God, he could feel. God, how he could comprehend the millions of tons of atmosphere that landed upon him unforgivingly. He was tasked with carrying the weight of his sins on his back, and he succeeded against his will. When he was alive, he thought he was the strongest man in the world, and he proved himself by withstanding second after second of monumental compression. He was nothing but a miserable soul pressed into singularity by the void itself. There may not have been fire, but there was a heat that surpassed all the known incinerating forces of the sun itself. Wet, wrathful heat. If he had skin, it was skin no more, but scalding slime clinging reluctantly to his bones. The vents below spewed their rage from recesses even deeper in the earth than the black swallow the soul was bound to. He knew not the passing of the time. He wondered if it had been weeks, seconds, or eons since he last murdered, raped, looted, since he first swore rebellion against his good God in Heaven and boarded the Hangman and embarked on his life of depravity on the seven seas. The pirate had set his course for fire and brimstone, as he thirsted for it. No amount of gold or innocent blood could glorify him more than conquering the world from the floor of Hell to the ceiling of Heaven and everything in between, adorning himself with the robes of a defeated Devil and the crown of an extinct God. He was proud to hang by the neck ‘til dead, having proved himself ready for his next odyssey.
God would not give this sea-devil the satisfaction.
Jacob Smith is a freshman at UNT and a horror enthusiast. His favorite works of horror include the movies Pulse (2005), Evil Dead Rise (2023), and Skinamarink (2022), the video game series Five Nights at Freddy’s, as well as the online ARG The Hypnagogic Archive. Aside from horror, he enjoys his time as a frontman for his rock band Dinosaur Data Book and loves to cook when he can. He hopes you enjoy his first dig at writing horror fiction.
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