#i want to put them in a meat grinder and watch their bones scrape against each other

[solacebean]

Doing a silly little dance while I unleash the horrors onto a perfectly innocent character

[newidaho]

13.  Christmas in Hell, pt. 1

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25 December 2054   ///   0550h

For 54 years I have been present on the annual celebration of the birth of Our First Lord and Savior.  For near on 20 years I have been in charge of illuminating Virtual Life with the Word.   Every 25th of December has left me feeling full of Christ’s love.

Until Now.

This dream.  And, upon waking, the memory of my daughters’ transgressions.  Oh, Lord, it weighs heavy on my soul.  And I feel that to lift this weight, I must retread in the steps of Abraham as he raised the knife to Isaac.  If this be not so, Lord, please send your form of angel as you did on that fateful day at the beginning of our human journey.  And praise be to you now and until the 0800h service.

Papa Fred Garland put down his pen.  He had tried to go over his sermon after writing down his dream, but the events of the previous day kept him from focusing.  He felt there was more to write.  And he felt there was more to do.

Papa G had not talked to Gamma after the Christmas Eve service.  His wife had told him that Gamma had simply said she was leaving and removed her mask.  Papa G did not hold it against this wife for not pursuing his daughter.  She was focused on the word of God—and that was something that Frederick could never begrudge.

Garland told himself the decision not to speak with his daughter was because he didn’t have the words.  When he was honest with himself, he understood that this also carried the additional benefit of adding pressure to the situation.  Gamma knew that consequences were coming—the longer they were put off, the more anxious she would become from the anticipation.

What Garland had failed to realize at the time was that this anticipation was a blade that cut both ways.  He knew he had to provide consequences.  Up until now, however, he did not know what these consequences would be.  After his time of prayer, he finally did.

Garland walked out of his office and down the hall to Gamma’s bedroom.  She would be receiving a 0600h wake-up call.  Garland rapped on the door with authority and waited for her answer.  The door creaked open almost immediately.

‘Good morning, father.  Merry Christmas.’  The anticipation was obvious.  Gamma’s voice was meek and directed at her feet.

‘Good morning, Gamma.  Were you already awake?’

‘I always wake up early on Christmas, father.’

‘Good.  Well, before we begin our Christmas traditions, I would like you to accompany me to the Prayer Room.’

‘Yes, father.  Should I change?’

‘Your pajamas are fine.  Come.  We only have so much time before the eight o’clock service.’

Gamma followed her father down the stairs and across the lounging quarters to the tall, circular prayer room.  Upon entering, she noticed her father had been carrying one Lucid Mask.  He handed this out to her.

Gamma took the mask from her father’s hands.  It was apparent that her father did not intend to wear a mask himself.  He did, however, have on AR Lenses—unusual for him at this time of morning.  She guessed it must be part of her punishment.

‘Before you put this mask on,’ her father said, ‘let me preface what is about to happen.  I feel the best way to preface this includes a dialogue.  I noticed you left the Christmas Eve service early.  Is this correct?’

‘Yes, father.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know if I’m right, yet, so don’t be too mad at me.  But you were being so mean last night, I thought that, if God does exist, maybe you aren’t really speaking for God.  So I didn’t want to listen to you speak for Him.’  She had spent all night thinking about how she would respond to the conflict she had inspired—it was evident in the dry delivery of her words.

Papa Garland resisted the urge to touch his daughter.  Had he said something of this sort to his parents, he would most certainly have been slapped.  Instead he moved on from the dialogue portion of the preface, and into his more happily anticipated monologue:

‘Well, Gamma, the realities of God are unfortunately not for you to decide.  If we allowed everyone on Earth to decide the rules of their own God, we would slip deeper into the chaos that has been spreading like a virus since the beginning of this millennium.’

‘But father, isn’t Bible debate encouraged at FuTech?’

‘I was not finished talking, Gamma.

‘You are correct.  Discussion of the Bible is encouraged.  But no one doubts the word of the church’s authorities in such a way that even approaches the disrespect you have shown for me.  It is not in my place to judge those who walk out of our church as you have done, but my heart cries for the judgement that will be placed on them when their final day comes.

‘But you, my daughter, are not simply a member of the congregation, free to come and go as you please.  No, Gamma, God has entrusted me to raise you in the church, and to make sure that you understand all the lessons the Bible can teach you.  He has blessed you with the opportunity to be present for each of the Virtual Services held in the most popular Virtual Church in the nation.  And to learn and ask questions directly to his faithful disciple who runs the service.  And when you voluntarily leave his service, as you did last night, this transgression speaks volumes greater than those of whom are lost without the beacon you have been born among.

‘Those who so readily give up the influence of God in this way are destined for a long journey into a dark space.  It is out of love for you that I tell you this, for I would never wish upon anyone the journey you have shown interest in taking.  Now, as my daughter, it is with both sadness and duty that I must show you the road that your actions are leading you down.

‘Please put on your mask.’  There was a moment of hesitation, but as strong-willed as she was for her age, Gamma was only 13.  She knew she had to follow her father’s orders.  She put her mask on.

‘Now,’ her father said.  ‘Relax for a moment.’  Papa Garland tapped twice on the side of his Lenses to pull up his home menu.  After navigating through the FuTech menu, typing in passwords at checkpoints along the way, swiping past confidential documents and information, he finally made his way to a menu with a dark red box.  He waved his hand over the box and it opened to reveal one application in the shape of a 16-bit ball of fire—the type you might see in an old Super Mario game around 70 years ago.

From Garland’s point of view, the interface for the application was rather sparse.  The fireball expanded, and inside was one menu option—“Connect”.

Before selecting this option, Papa Garland spoke once more to his daughter.  ‘Gamma, what you are about to experience is a simulation.  It is to be used rarely, if at all, by FuTech reverends.  Very few know if its existence, and after this experience, I ask that you tell no one, lest the secret get out.

‘What you are about to experience is a collaborative effort between the priests and engineers of FuTech.  It is the nearest simulation that we could come up with, through our divinity and study, of Hell.  This, Gamma, is what you can look forward to should you continue to walk down the road you are on.  It pains me to use this punishment on you, but I ask that you remember this is for your own good.  I ask that when you come out the other side, you attempt to be grateful.’

With this, Papa Garland placed his hand over the “Connect” option on the application.  After searching for nearby connections, a ball with Gamma’s image on it appeared floating in the air—her mask had been noted for possible connection.  Papa Garland placed his hand over the sphere, inserted the requested password, and placed his hands firmly on either side of Gamma’s mask.

It wasn’t long before Gamma started to move about, attempting to free herself of the simulation.  It was to be expected—a natural human reaction to the Hell that had been designed by FuTech engineers with the help of Divine Inspiration.

When her father connected her to the simulation, Gamma’s home menu had faded to black.  After a couple seconds, the landscape around her faded in.  She stood on a plain made of dark red metal.  The sun was the only natural body in sight.  All around her were pieces of machinery, ranging from simple to complex, from torturous to productive.  The sun beat down on the metal below her bare feet.  Though she couldn’t literally feel it, she still experienced anxiety that her feet would burn if she stood on the ground much longer.

Of course, Gamma found she couldn’t move.  Her father was holding her to the spot.  Even if he wasn’t, she knew the simulation would not be one to let her explore.  After she got her bearings, Gamma heard a terrifying screeching noise and the machinery began to start up.

It would have been impossible to see everything going on.  It was an environment of overstimulating horror.  Certain machines resembled meat grinders, with human shapes passing between the gears as they ground down the flesh and bone.  Other machines simply scraped metal upon metal in between their gruesome deeds, contributing to the head-splitting symphony.

Gamma’s first reaction was to turn her head away, but she immediately remembered that her father’s hands held her head in place.  Even had she been able to turn, she understood she wouldn’t be able to see anything but what was going on around her.  Instead, she tried closing her eyes.  After one second, bright and painful flashes of light spazzed in front of her closed eyelids and the cacophony grew louder.  Unable to put up with this alternative, Gamma was forced keep her eyes open.

After five minutes that felt like an hour of watching the machines execute their gruesome tasks, a line of adolescent boys and girls walked in front of Gamma’s field of vision.  She was about 20 feet from them.  The line stretched out to either side of her periphery, containing about 30 humans in all.  

Gamma felt her head turned slightly to the right.  Approaching this side of the line was a large, hunched, grayish-black humanoid creature about twice the size of the humans in the line.  It wore no clothes, though his body had no features of male or female genitalia.  It was also completely hairless, and its facial features were unreadable under the shadow cast by its brow.  He retrieved what looked like a large serrated knife from somewhere behind him.  He fluidly moved the saw so that its teeth met the front of the first victim’s head.  In two harsh motions, the creature pressed and dragged his knife across the boy’s head back and forth, completely removing the top of his skull.

The sound of the saw cutting into flesh and the subsequent guttural screams from the boy were too much for Gamma.  She closed her eyes again and the sounds became ever more aggressive and unwieldy.  As she opened her eyes, she could see that the creature in front of her had not moved on—in fact, he appeared to have been staring at her with unfeeling eyes the whole time.

Upon seeing her eyes open, the creature kneaded his fingers around the sides of the rim of the hole it had cut in the boys skull as though the edge of the top of his head was a pie crust.  The creature worked its way around the top of the boy’s head until the skin and bone resembled a funnel being fed into the top of his head.

Gamma watched the creature go about a similar process for each adolescent in line.  It didn’t use the same instrument every time.  Sometimes it used an ice pick to make a hole and cracked the skull apart with its hands; sometimes it bludgeoned the top of the head with a metal hammer; only once did to use its mouth to bite the top of the head off of one of its victims.

When each human in line had been properly disfigured, with a funnel of skin and bone being fed into his or her head, a gang of half-sized demons the same make as their master dragged a piece of heavy machinery behind the line of humans, the contraption making a nearly unbearable scraping sound as it was dragged across the red metal ground.

The machine stood about as tall as the original demon, with three downward-facing nozzles protruding from its front.  As the machine was dragged behind the first three humans, Gamma could see that the nozzles were spaced perfectly apart so as to hover directly above the heads of the victims.

The original demon walked up to the machine and emphatically turned a wheel on the back of it.  A mixture of what looked like concrete was then dispensed into each victim’s open head as their screams increased and their faces morphed from a horror that Gamma couldn’t possibly understand.  As soon as the first of them keeled over from the heaviness of the concrete, the original demon grabbed him by the legs and effortlessly swung him into the air and smashed his head on the ground into a shattered, bloody mess.

The beast followed the same process for each human being.  By the time the rest of the line realized what was going on, some naively attempted to preserve their life by standing, but none could withstand the concrete.  One slightly stronger boy managed to remain upright until lines of wet concrete began dripping down the front of his face, his legs quivering under him.  Eventually, he buckled and met the same fate as his peers.

After finishing with the line of humans, the creature predictably approached Gamma herself.  As he approached her, the screen went blank, the noise stopped, and she once again felt free to move her head around.

‘You can remove your mask,’ her father said behind her.

She removed the mask and looked around her.  For some reason, the room felt different than when she had entered.

‘What time is it?’  Gamma asked her father.

‘Thirty past the hour of six,’ her father replied.

Gamma nodded.  She wasn’t surprised it had only been thirty minutes, though it felt to her like the sun could have risen and set on Christmas day by the time she had opened her eyes.

‘I am preaching in an hour and a half.  Do you plan to stay the service?’

Gamma nodded.

‘I expect to see you there.’

‘…’

‘I don’t feel happy for having had to put you through this.  I prayed, requesting God send me a sign that you didn’t need this treatment.  It would appear that it was his will that you go through this experience.  I know you have a strong soul, Gamma.  You will get past these feelings of horror in time.  But you will never forget.  You will never forget where you may end up should you slip up.’

‘…’

‘Do you understand?  Do you understand that I love you enough to put you through this?  It is because I don’t want you to go through the real thing, Gamma.  Many parents do not love their children this much.’

‘Yes, Papa.’

Papa Garland took a long breath and nodded.  ‘I must prepare for the eight o’clock service, Gamma.  I hope to see you there.  I hope you learn something.’

‘Yes.’

‘And Gamma?’

‘…’

‘You will not be sitting next to this boy, will you?’

‘No, Papa.’

When the time came for the virtual service, Gamma found herself almost sickened by the thought of putting the mask on again.  But she didn’t sit with Charlie.  In fact, she didn’t even see him in the first service.  The same was true for the 1000h service and the 1200h service.  She made sure to take a comprehensive look around her, disguising her curiosity as as a sneeze or a stretch.  But she was sure she hadn’t seen him at all.  As far as Gamma could tell, Charlie Johnson hadn’t been to any of the Christmas services.