Under the Arm.

 

It's been a while since I arrived here. It was a just sentence handed down by the highest. I deserved it. I lived for many years without any greater sins than cheating on my wife with peasant women in conquered lands. Then everything changed. I stopped believing in God because I trusted some witches. I believed their foolish prophecies and wanted to do everything to make them come true. She helped me do it. She committed suicide, but was she really? That's how that cheap theater salesman later wrote it down. What was he supposed to write? He didn't know our history well. If it weren't for Lady Macbeth, none of these crimes would have happened, but I can't just blame her. People, don't trust a woman. I'm one of the few men this side of the Styx. Most of the inhabitants of this land are lovers, mothers, and wives who clearly weren't devoted to a single man in life. The witches had a significant influence, but not as much as she. She stained the guards with blood. She was the one who said she wouldn't fulfill her marital duties at night unless I brought her the head of a different victim each day to our lodge, which she wanted to divide in two. She was the one who turned me into a monster. One evening, I couldn't bear it any longer and killed her. It was another severed head of a victim I brought her. But I couldn't break this habit, forced upon me by my wife. I continued to commit whitewashing and defend my power in the kingdom. Every night, I entertained myself with a different peasant woman, brought to me by my servants. I experienced a great shock when one day the forest approached my walls, and a man not born of a woman placed a sword on my neck. My head was beheaded, and with it under my arm, I found myself at the gates of heaven, where St. Peter threw me down with a loud bang, all the way to where he has been for over 500 years. Even Satan has changed his methods since then. He no longer uses the voice of so-called conscience, but computers and cell phones, but one thing that has remained constant is the form he usually takes on earth. Next, it's the figure of a beautiful, young, and wise woman.

Hell—if it weren't for the dark colors, the knowledge I received during my lifetime, and the fact that I'll have to sit here for all eternity, it would be beautiful here. Hell—a land of darkness, untraversed by anyone except Lucifer himself and his close followers. The gate to Hell, interestingly enough, is just as Dante described it in his work—though only a gate. The road to it is long, as it leads across the Styx, where poor Charon tries to collect his paltry obol from some dead man, but unfortunately, no one believes in him anymore, so he has to transport them free of charge to the lair of Cerberus, who awakens only when approached by someone who hasn't been touched by the lips of the White Lady.

The White Lady,

the sister of an old grandfather, is named after time

, which will never know sleep.

The White Lady .

He kisses a person only once,

with a breathless kiss.

The next stop on the road is a gate on which an inscription is carved and smeared with blood, reading:

Through me, the road to the city of affliction, Through me, the road

to eternal

torment, Through me, the road to the nation of perdition,

I am the work of a great, just hand.

I was raised from the ground by omnipotent power.

Supreme wisdom, firstborn love.

Creations older than me do not exist .

Unless eternal, and I am indestructible .

You who enter, say goodbye to hope...

But for me, this is not a city of either torment or perdition. "Life" here is not as hard as it seems, because Lucifer rarely deals with us and has given us free rein on the condition that we promise him we will not run away. He is more occupied with finding new inhabitants for our land than guarding us. Here and there, you can even find flowers; It's true that these are poppies prepared by the Lord of Darkness specifically for drug addicts, so that they can make all sorts of drugs from them, from ordinary opium to a brewed poppy seed compote they call "makiwara"; but they're not so happy about it. The only people you'll encounter with poppies are youngsters who've recently arrived here.

Once, during my wanderings through the underworld, I met a few interesting people, but nothing compares to meeting Eve, a former resident of Eden. I was sitting quietly under a tree, holding her severed head in my lap, when she suddenly approached and asked if the tree was truly permitted and if she could eat its fruit. I looked at her like she was crazy, but then I recognized her. I'd already seen this face on the "wall of fame" in Lucifer's office when I had to report to him on my first day and sign all those papers. She was beautiful, but tired. It was obvious she'd been there for some time. We started talking, because that's all there was to do here besides sleep, to occupy one's time. She told me how St. Peter had thrown her into the depths of darkness after an initial conversation and allowed Adam to behold the glory of the Heavenly Lord. He explained it to them this way: when God created the world, he already knew he would send a savior to earth who would cleanse us of our sins. When Adam, the first man, refused to pick the fruit, the Lord had to send him a woman, Eve, who was the one who committed the sin, but who, in a very cunning way, persuaded her husband to bite the fruit. After being expelled from Paradise, Eve gave birth to two sons. However, God failed to notice that in Paradise she had committed the sin of adultery with Satan. Abel was Adam's son, and the second, Cain, was born of a relationship with Lucifer. After the murder of his innocent brother by his elder son, the spawn of Satan, the Lord of Heaven condemned him to eternal damnation on earth. She now wanders the world as a vampire, sucking the blood of humans and animals to gain the strength to endure until the next night without suffering torment. Eve was sent to Hell not for picking the fruit, but for betraying her husband. After finishing her story, she began to cry. I left. I left her alone.

Quite recently, I met another very interesting person. A young man. He introduced himself as Lendalian. He first listened to my story and started laughing heartily. He told me how he had recently been mistreated by my story, written by that Englishman, and then he told me his own story. He let me read his poems and then explained that they were partly the reason he was here. His poems weren't the best, but some of them were captivating. After he started writing another poem, he realized that life is really just a speck of dust blown by a strong wind. So he finished his last poem, took it to the cemetery, and burned it over the grave, as he called it, of the only person who believed in him. He returned home. His mother sent him for coal, and when he didn't return after a long time, she went out after him and saw him lying in a pool of blood, a heavy axe covered in mud and blood beside him. At the Golden Gate, St. Peter asked him to show his last poem. He was burned, however, and Lendalian was sent to Charon. He told me another story. Before the boat across the Styx, he met a little girl. They had a moment, as she had not yet been summoned before St. Peter, and he was waiting until enough prisoners of darkness were found to make it worthwhile for the old man to sail. After speaking with her, he wrote a poem and gave it to her, but he also copied copies for himself. It went something like this:

A little girl

stood at the gates

of a great kingdom

, but no one would open them

. She knocked one last time.

Silence.

She left.

She had nowhere to rest her head. She

lay down on the forest floor.

She slept in a dark forest.

When she left, she was no longer a girl,

she was a woman.

Even though she didn't want to, it

hurt.

Three boys wanted to be men.

They didn't care about her opinion.

She just wanted to be a little girl.

She knocked on the gate again.

Again, there was no response. Again,

she had to seek shelter.

Again, she would have to sleep in the forest.

Again, it would probably hurt.

She went to the gate

. She knocked one last time.

She let her hair down.

The strap was long,

she wrapped it around her neck three times. She

hung the end of it on the gate latch.

The tiny heart stopped beating.

Now nothing knocked against the small chest.

The gate opened with a bang.

A tall man emerged.

"We were waiting for you."

He grabbed her hand.

They walked through the gate together

into the endless light

. With that, I ended my conversation with the young man.

I met many more interesting people in Hell, but I couldn't find the little girl from Lendalian's story anywhere. He clearly knew what he was talking about when he spoke of passing into endless light. If I've bored you with anything, please direct your complaints to the Lord of Darkness. I have to go to his place soon for some tea and a chat, because he's really not as bad as he seems in all those earthly pictures. Maybe someday I'll have to tell you some stories, but for now I'm very tired, because here too, a person can get tired even if they don't carry their head on their shoulders but under their arms.