• To Bind a Soul

    It was a pitch black night, I was walking down the street to the taco shop at 3 AM, it was the only place that was open at this hour. I worked a night shift and I had been "selected" to grab the food via the method of "You're a nerd". It wasn't far but it was cold at this hour and for some reason, most of the street lights were out.. I could see the dimly lit taco shop in the distance. I was tired, I hadn't had much sleep yesterday and having been up for nearly 24 hours was taking its toll on me as I droned off.

    "Only three hours left then I can sleep." I chanted to myself repeatedly before I entered the taco shop. I placed everyone's order and after about 10 minutes of waiting I had three big bags of greasy, possibly cockroach tainted, food in my arms. With the bags filling both my arms and resting on my chest I quickly scooted out of the Taco Shop.

    As I lugged my way to the sidewalk I felt a little more tired than I had realized. My vision started to blur as I entered the street. I was J walking a 6 lane road, but it was late, so there were no cars to be seen. As I hit the mid drift I had to stop and catch my breath. My strength was waning. I felt like I had never felt before in my life, as if my muscles were just refusing to go on.

    Shaking myself awake again I took a deep breath and tried to cross the other side of the street, but about halfway across a bag slipped from my arms and hit the ground, spilling everywhere. "s**t..." I muttered as I clumsily leaned over to place all the scattered contents of the bag back in place.

    I don't remember what happened next, not exactly anyway, but I saw a bright light and then a quick sharp pain, and then blackness. An eternal blackness, like being asleep but unable to awaken from. I wasn't dead, so I assumed, because I was still conscious of my existence, but I wasn't alive either. I could feel my arms and legs but I could not see them. I stretched out in the darkness but felt nothing as if floating in space. I screamed and my voice echoed but there was no reply.

    My mind raced as I tried to figure out what this could be. Was I in a coma? Was I a vegetable lying in a hospital bed somewhere? Why could I still feel my body but see nothing? I couldn't understand what I was going through, and as my mind raced trying to come up with a conclusion, time went on. It felt like days, muttering into the darkness before I began to lose my mind. I talked to myself, holding both sides of the conversation. I debated politics that for all I knew may never affect me again.

    I began philosophizing my existence in this darkness. Was I in hell? Was this eternal void, this endless lonely darkness... hell? I had remembered from when I was a child, that I had told my minister at the church that I couldn't believe in a God that claimed to be all forgiving but could easily send someone to eternal fiery torment for displeasing him in the slightest way. His reply was that hell wasn't exactly eternal fire, but eternal separation from god, that you were doomed for eternity to never know god, never be able to understand him or be with him.

    So I spent countless hours pondering my life. What had I ever done to deserve eternal damnation? I never hurt anyone, never made life miserable for anyone else. While I had never exactly been very friendly, and I had few if any real friends, I wasn't a mean spirited person. The more I thought about it the more I began to assume the possibility of my eternal damnation.

    "No..." I said softly to myself and it echoed in the darkness. This I could not accept, I would not be resigned to this fate. Lashing out I began to tear at nothing, to struggle to rip the fabric of this nothingness away. I pulled at my skin, my hair, my eyes... I lashed out at everything screaming, howling into the darkness when I saw it... a glimmer of hope, a faint light off in the distance. I reached for it with all my might, I strained for it like I was climbing up the side of a rocky mountainside. Every inch I dragged myself closer until the light covered me.

    As it did I felt what could be called a vacuum, something pulling me at extreme speeds and as I breached into the light and I was blind once more, but this time by light. Now... a powerful new sensation quickly overcame me...

    My flesh burned like fire, every inch of my body as if I were covered in lava. I screamed, but this time it was different, my screams were not an echo in the dark, this time I could feel the ground below me, the dirt, the grass. This time I could feel my voice resonate and cause the searing hot air to fill my lungs as I gasped.

    Had I gone from the dark void into the fiery abyss?

    No, it didn't... seem... as if this were hell, no, why would there be dirt below me? But then, why would my flesh burn? My mind raced with questions but they were blurred out because the torment would not stop.

    I screamed, the pain was unbearable, the fiery agony unending. However now I could sense something, as if I were connected to something greater. My screams felt powerful, as if they were parting the skies above me. When I screamed and howled towards my feet, the ground cracked and shook below me.

    But now my screams were no longer the only things I could hear in this place. Little voices when compared to my own, I could hear them between my gasps for air, they were circling around me.

    "Hurry, bind him or his shattering will destroy us all!" a powerful voice spoke out. And as the voice commanded, chains began to whip and wrap around me cutting deeply into my ever burning flesh, multiplying the agony, but as I lashed out my blind struggle was met with more chains and suffering.

    The pain was so agonizing that I felt as if the area around me could also feel my suffering. The air began to boil and the ground began to tremble and quake as my screams of agony bombarded the atmosphere.

    Chain after chain was thrown around me, 7...8....9...10 chains I counted in my head. The cries of the voices became more frantic, but I still could not see anything but bright light or feel anything but searing pain.

    "How is this possible?! 10 chains and he has not been bound?!" a voice cried, and another replied "More chains then! Hurry! We have to stop him before they..." the voice cut through my screams. However, as the voice stopped I could hear another sound. It was faint, so I tried to bear my pain a moment and listen, but I could not and my screams cried out once more. However in the brief moment of silence it had sounded like many feet trampling the earth, possibly that of an army.

    "They're coming, hurry, more chains!" the voice commanded. 11...12...13...14 chains now but each one just caused me more suffering, but I felt a distinct pull, something, latching onto me, something holding me to the ground, like I was a balloon and someone was trying to tie a string to me. 15...16...17 chains now latched onto me and I did not think this kind of pain was physically possible.

    The footsteps were growing louder and louder as did the frantic voices.

    "Sir, we have to get out of here or well all be killed!" a single voice plead.
    "We will bind him or we will die trying is that understood!" another voice commanded.
    "Yes, my lord!" resounded the group in unison.

    The voices began to work in unison now as they heaved 18... 19... 20 chains now were tied around every inch of my body possible, I could feel a pulling, as if more than just my body were being tied down. My roars of pain made my whole body shake, as well as everything around me. I could feel not only the ground cracking and trembling, but also lifting, as rocks began to fly from beneath my toes smashing upwards against the chains, as if my very presence were causing this world to cry out in upheaval. Then, finally, 21 chains had been cast upon me and as it landed my body fell backwards and slammed into the ground shattering it and causing the little voices to cry out, and the wave of footsteps to stop.

    The pain had stopped, the chains were gone, and as I wobbled to my feet, I opened my eyes and could truly see for the first time.