ETERNITY

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

My name is unimportant. My life is unimportant. All my work and deeds throughout my short life are inconsequential. In a brief moment, my eternity shifted, and my immortal future was caste into a pit so deep and dark, it would take tens of thousands of lives to claw and crawl my way to the surface.

It was not a single act that fated me, for I was a bad man to the marrow. I had lied, cheated, and stole my way through life. I drank excessively, I used drugs liberally and when my deviant preference of sex was not readily available to me, I took it by force. I lived selfishly and without regard for anyone but myself.

I had loved once or twice. I had even been drummed into the church in a moment of repentance. There were fits and spurts of life where I had made an effort. These had buoyed me to a certain level. I had made a moderate effort.

I was not all bad.

It takes a real commitment to evil to sink to the bottom of the fiery lake. I had an evil in me, but I had never fully committed to it. A lifetime of practice had primed the pump. I was on a path that had an inevitable destination. All I needed was the right set of circumstances to solidify my fall.

And then, the defining moment. My belly full of spirit as I staggered up the muddy lane towards my hovel. It was still early in the evening, and I glanced down the dirt path to ensure that my dinner was cooking. It would be evidenced by the curl of smoke that should have been coming from the chimney. But the chimney was cold, and the yard quiet. My mood darkened. A better man would have worried over his wife’s well-being in this dark and dangerous place and time or had a bit of curiosity for the unusual circumstance. I was not that man, and in my drunken state I was farther from that man than usual. My disposition darkened. My staggered steps increased in their forceful striking of the puddles and mud. The low gate was designed to keep pigs in the yard, but it was held with a scrap of leather hide which tore easily when my boot struck. Where once was a flagstone path to a well-kept home, had long become uneven stones and clumps of weeds leading to a tumbledown and uneven shack. Only a tattered cape of cowhide tacked to the top of the door sill kept the winds and weather at bay.

I could hear them inside before I swept aside what barely passed for a door to this squalid hut. It was not the sounds of casual conversation, but of carnal desire. The grunt of the man and the desperate mewings of a woman. I felt only the raw, feral anger and bloodthirsty rage that was borne in a moment of weakness. It was a perfect storm that would engulf my soul and spirit, immersing me in hatred and violence.

As my eyes adjust the darkened room, I see the undulation and entwining of bodies. Sweat running down his broad, bare back. Her ebony legs wrapped around his bronze waist. I saw the fear on her face as she looked into my eyes, then he turned and offered his black-toothed, mocking smile. Reaction without thought. I was a blur of movement and fist. His body crumpled with the first blow. Then the blows continued. The slap of flesh, and crunch of bone before the gush of life blood erupted from his skull. The light in his eyes extinguishing where he lay. I heard her scream; I felt the slippery wetness of his blood coating my hand. I was not sated, I could not stop, and so I turned to her and continued beating and pummeling until the screaming ceased.

And then I continued some more.

†††

I sat in the warm, red pool until it was cold and caked. My hands flat on the earthen floor, my fingers slipping and pawing through the gore. He was crumpled in the corner where I had physically lifted and tossed his lifeless body. Her head was on my lap. Her face a mask of tenderized meat and hair a mat of crimson stain. As the blood dried, her hair became stiff and brown. My back ached with stiffness and as I pushed myself up, her head lolled to the side and slapped the floor with a thud. My clothing was encrusted with blood and smelled of death. My knuckles were bloody, and the flesh ripped and torn, nearly to the bone. I limped on aching muscle to the outdoors where I stretched and sought to revitalize my body. I could feel the weight of dried blood on my eyelashes as they blinked in the sunlight.

I staggered down to the creek and waded in up to my waist before immersing myself in the cold water. Holding my breath, I stayed under for as long as I could, before erupting from the surface, shivering uncontrollably. Without washing, I strode from the water. Pink stain ran down my body, from my head to my feet. I sloshed water from my leather foot coverings with every step. I was in a daze and unable to think coherently.

I must have been a sight as I emerged from the wood into the village. People stopped to stare as I walked in soaked clothing, covered in blood and viscera. The shopkeeper was first to reach me, looking into my eyes and seeing only the vacant stare. There was no further need for physical violence, and I did not resist as he guided me to be judged.

†††

The Elder saw the blood on my hands, on my clothes and on my face. I described my actions in great detail and without remorse. I was proud of what I had done, fiercely defending my actions, wishing that I could relive them. I still had the frenzy running through my veins. My mind hummed with the adrenaline, contrasting with the full exhaustion of my body.

There was no hesitation in the verdict. Justifiably, the elder ordered me placed in a cell for the remainder of my life. I took his sentence like the man I was, proud and full of myself. If only I had an ounce of sense. If only I was not so prideful. I should have run. I should have begged on my knees for my life, but there was none of that here. I would not grovel or apologize. I had done the deed, and I would face the penalty. What a fool I was.

The prison of our town was the village well, dug by hand and lined with bricks. It eventually dried up, and rather than fill it in, they capped it with a steel grate for a lid and made it a place of punishment. It was not deep, perhaps twenty feet. A simple cold stone floor and interminable dampness and darkness. When it rained, the pit flooded. When it snowed, the ground froze. The oppressive heat of summer sweltered. This was all I would know for the rest of my days. Once a week, they lowered a pail for me to fill with my shit and meager soiled straw. I would scoop it up with my hands, sopping up the watery mess with the damp straw in an attempt to dry the floor. In return, they would toss in a fresh forkful of straw. I doubt it was for my comfort. The pit smelled awful, and I am certain the townspeople complained. The fresh straw minimized the odor. It also insured that I would not die too quickly on the wet, cold floor of the pit.

It was inevitable that the children of the village would piss down into the pit. Some of the men did too. I did not mind this nearly as much as the pitying looks of the womenfolk. The tsk-tsk of their disapproval and the pinching of their nose to stave off the smell. Still, their will to see me suffer far outstripped their discomfort. They were proud to have the murderer in the pit. I was the pride of the community. A show of their swift and merciless justice. For the first few years, I was the town attraction. Visitors wanted to see the wild murderer in the hole in the ground. They wanted to ogle, and shout down, hoping I would look upward so they may see a crazed criminal. I rarely gave them the satisfaction. Head bowed; eyes closed. Waiting for death

Despite the conditions, I would live many years in this solitary existence. I ate the maggot-infested mush they fed me. I drank the fetid, metallic water when offered, and drank rainwater from mud puddles when possible. I lay for hours, watching the mice and rats, occasionally catching one to add to my meager diet. I became something far less than human, far less than even animal. I was without self. I was alone.

As time passed, fewer people would dare to look down into the pit. What was once a man was now a grimy, wild-haired monster. My clothing had long ago rotted from my bones, which showed in dark relief against the pallid white of my skin and was accentuated by the shadows that fell into the light-starved hole. The smell of unwashed and rotting humanity was unbearable to the casual observer. Even the guards threw my mush in from a distance for the last many years. I now licked it from the floor like a dog. The pail used to fetch my feces had long ago been abandoned. Now it was just weekly straw piled on top of fertilizer. I lay on a bed of rotting fodder and excrement. Children no longer taunted, they crept to the pit on a dare and had nightmares for the rest of their lives. I was the perfect example of why a young man should not commit crimes, though they still would. The women no longer reviled me, now they pitied me and begged the men to either let me free or kill me out of mercy, still, my sentence was written in stone and would be carried out to the letter. Such is the ego of men. Unmoving and with no compassion, lest they look weak.

I would pass slowly in this very cell. My breath gurgling up from my chest. The hacking cough so weak that one would wonder if the phlegm would ever come up. The pustules and sores covered my grimy body. My hair was but a few patches of threads in a scarred and scabrous cranium. My finger and toenails were long and grainy, chipped, and thick. Yellowed with age and caked with grime. I was a bag of bones, left to rot in this Häljō, this Hell.

I welcomed death and wished day by day that it would come swifter. I had hoped that I would pass into unconsciousness and die in my sleep.

I would be disappointed.

In the end I felt my body shake and convulse with the struggle to suck in each breath. My lungs, long filled with liquid, had little left to offer in their capacity to absorb oxygen. Each cough brought excruciating pain to my body. Inside, it was as if I was being torn apart. Outside, the sores and open wounds scraped along the stone walls, leaving a smear of blood and puss with each movement. My last breath was not a relief, it was a horrid and desperate attempt to remain, while knowing it was my last moment.

Then I was gone.

Days later, when they realized I had not moved, they would fill the pit with dirt, burying me where I lay, closing off my earthly body from the world above. If only I could remain in that body forever, trapped and buried. I would endure that fate a million times over rather than endure even the first moments of my new existence. The end is only the beginning. The last breath for me was the first moment of an eternity of pain. Of many eternities.

THE FATES

Men have wondered over the eons about where our spirit goes when we die. There are as many theories as there are grains of sand. I can lay the argument to rest. I can tell you the truth, for I have traversed the levels of the afterlife. I have lived uncountable lives since the one that found me lying on that cell floor. I was given the sight, a rare remembrance of each of my past lives in order that I might tell this tale. For the time is at hand when this all comes to a grand culmination. The end of days is near, and the universe will spill its guts of all its secrets as a last grand fuck-you to the human race.

I am not the only one with the sight. Other men and women are living their many lives and remembering them. Only those of us who have been caste into the lowest levels will remember all. There is a sadistic element to the Universe that wants ultimate misery. A story half-told is only half a story. Some of us learn and fight our way up through the layers, creeping and clawing upwards through endless lives of creature and sub-human, and into the layers of… what? Happiness? Heaven?

Others don’t learn, and they are fated to spits of ascension and the inevitable slide backwards, below mammal and avian. There are many Häljōs far worse than imaginable. They are the cockroaches, the rats, and the maggot. They are eaters of the dying, dead and decaying. Have you ever wondered why there are so many insects toiling in the dirt?

It is because they just don’t learn.

†††

Let me paint for you the landscape of existence of all living creatures. It is a simple formula devised by those entities who use our existence as their game board. Some call them Gods, some call them aliens, some call them good or evil, I choose to call them the Fates, for regardless of what we do, they can determine to change our fate for the sake of their private amusement. We are as insignificant to them as the ants under our boots. They do not give a thought to our lives and struggles, which are simply a form of entertainment to them. Nonetheless, we are trapped in this game, and we are forced to play, for failure to play earns greater pain and anguish. Your only hope is to bear the weight and strive to move forward to a place that may be better. Even then, the Fates could simply change the rules midstream.

Consider the Christian parable of Job. While the story is recounted in Judaism, Islam, Christianity and many other religions with different actors and scenes, the story is indeed true. Earthly religion has just misplaced it with the wrong gods. Job was a good man, with a good family. He had dutifully ascended over hundreds of lives to a position of love and respect. The Fates, in a wager, submitted Job to trials and tribulations he had not deserved, and which were not of the rules normally played. Whether Job survived or not was never important. It was the Fates determination to fracture, bend and break him for the sake of entertainment and profit. His suffering inspired the wagers placed by those who were fascinated with the choices and actions of man.

This is the life we live. It does not matter if we are a flea or a Pharaoh. We are all players in this grand casino called Earth. We believe that we have purpose and choice, but we do not. These are concepts that are drilled into us. It is marketing. It is a sales job that is selling a promise of something better. But ask the parents who watch their child die of cancer, or the young adults shipped off to fight in wars that are started by little men with big egos; ask them what they think. Ask the millions living in poverty, or raped, cheated, or betrayed. Ask a starving child, or a heroin addicted mother if there is something better. Ask them if there is hope. Some will continue to cling to the marketing promise, but most see life for what it is. We are simply here for the amusement of those more powerful and who have greater resources than we. We are pawns in a game of life.

†††

The origin of the fates predates man. They are found throughout the known, and unknown, universe. Among the billions of entities that were spawned throughout the stars, the Fates are the mafioso, the gangland bully, criminals, and terrorists of the Universe. They provide entertainment to an endless outer world for a price. Their enterprise extends from prostitution to chemical addictions. They hustle and own every vice under the stars. They are the managers of sport; for every creature, everywhere, loves a good sport, right?

If you have ever watched children stepping on spiders, or trampling an ant’s nest, you understand the childlike fascination that the Fates have with suffering and death. The crunching of body and shell underfoot holds a grim interest. The power of snuffing out a tiny life with only the slightest resistance before the body collapses ignites both pleasure and remorse in our primitive brains. This conflict creates curiosity.

Now imagine the same fascination held by a leopard as he sinks fang into the neck of his prey. The wild thrashing and pulsing blood. The lust for this moment overwhelms the wildcat. His glory and exaltation as the last breath passes. Then the anti-climax as he drags the meal home.

Larger still as the elephant swats a human across the zoo compound. The sweet release as his monstrous flat foot presses against the man’s chest, then pushes downward, snapping ribcage and turning organs to mush. A moment of ecstasy. A redemption. And then it is gone until the next rapturous moment of defiance.

This is the game of the Fates. The planet Earth, like so many others, is a pen full of white mice. Place the mouse in a maze and watch it try to find the cheese. Place the same mouse in a terrarium with a snake and the tables turn. Instead of a hunt for food, it is a frantic search for escape.

Cleave open an ant hill with a shovel, and watch the ants scurry to save the colony, then rebuild. After millions of ant-lives and months of work, they rebuild to resume life. You rent the nest open with your shovel again, leaving them to rebuild again… and again, and again. A never ending, relentless game for the entertainment of those who are bigger, stronger, and smarter than the weak beings of this insignificant planet.

If the ant has no memory, thought, or recall about the destruction of their nest, where is the emotion, drama, and action? They must understand that this is a tragedy. They must want to fight back with their tiny little bodies and brains. The fates allowed evolution to provide these tiny insects with powerful and painful jaws. Even the mighty, intelligent human could be reduced to tears by the painful bite of this tiny creature. The Fates gave snakes fangs and wasps stingers. They gave ivy the ability to chemically burn and blister. They created a world where each creature could protect or evade.

Now the game was getting interesting.

Not satisfied, the Fates made an entire planet that attacked. Volcanoes of fire, cyclones that could level entire landscapes. Wildfires that burn everything in the path and floods that drown everyone in its icy depths, then recedes, dragging body and building into the oceans, and leaving behind mountains of death to rot in the sun.

The Earth is a grand sporting place for entities around the universe, managed and moderated by the Fates, who would become wealthy beyond measure on the suffering of this small world.

Do you think this is far-fetched? That this is fantasy? Let me show you your own aquariums and terrariums. Let me walk you through your zoos and wild animal parks. Humanity does not think twice about using other creatures for their own amusement. Humans are the most violent, sadistic, and despicable creatures in all worlds. That is what makes this game so sweet. We believe ourselves to be enlightened, intelligent creatures. We have captured and enslaved every species on earth for our personal amusement, completely oblivious that we are subject to the same forces ourselves.

We are pathetic creatures and the entire Universe revels in our stupidity and violence. We are the asshole and armpit of all worlds. If it needs to happen somewhere, why not Earth?

†††

Primordial Earth did not understand that it was fodder for a universal cannon. It did not understand why or how these things were happening. As humanity began to evolve, it learned that there was a distinct unfairness about the path of life. In an effort to assign a name and face to this unfairness, we told stories. When you died, you must be going to a happier place. There must be a place where the wild animals did not drag your children off in the night. There must be a place where illness did not wipe out most of your tribe or community. There must be a place where you did not starve in winter and bake under the summer sun. There must be a better place. Death changed from a natural event to an escape from the trials of this life.

Just as the Fates had planned.

Eventually, your goodness would earn you a place in a beautiful afterlife. It has been called Tian, Jannah, Valhalla, and Heaven. There are myriad names for this place of peace and happiness. It is the Shangri La of luxury and spoil. We get streets paved with gold, two hundred virgins, mansions, and superpower. We become gods ourselves.

But every Yin has a Yang. Every black a white, the day and the night. What happens if you did not earn a coveted place in a glorious afterlife? Where do you go to be punished for a life poorly lived? Where is this abode of eternal death and dying? The place where you can neither eat nor drink? You have neither rest nor comfort?

A place of eternal sadness and pain exists in every culture and religion of the world. Indeed, rumors of an underworld of fire and agony persist with names like Purgatory, Tartarus or Niflhel. Still your heart reader. Know that the truth is far worse than you can imagine. The place of eternal fire and pain is called Häljō, and it is ruled by the Fate known as Hel. If you thought you understood punishment, you have much to learn.

This is where our game takes an abrupt turn. This is where the game becomes ruthless.

†††

Every life on this planet has been here since the beginning in one form or another. As we die, our lives are recycled and returned to the playing field. Each life we live in any of these levels is weighed and measured. We advance or descend as determined by our actions on earth, in balance and to the whim of