quake
by rob bexley

track i

i've been awake for eternity. it must be that long, for there is no time in hell. the pain comes in waves. right now the pain is at full blast. the hooks tear into my oil soaked skin. my bowels are pulled endlessly by scores of hooks, each one burying itself deeper than the last. yet there is no end. never is enough skin ripped from my muscles and my intestines are as long as infinity. the pain subsides for the moment. that is another of the horrors here: the pain ceases so that the next wave of pain hits twice as hard. when confronted with eternity, insanity sets in quickly, but insanity becomes your intelligence. that insanity is the quietness that allows you to think. oh and all the things i have thought. the dreams i see here. the lies i realize. the first lie that you realize is that there is no escape from oblivion.

track ii

escape is easy, but only for those willing. will power is always the key to any success. can you withstand the pain long enough to unleash your self? are you able to take the hooks by your hands and wrench them from you flesh? after eternity, will power ceases to mean anything. self-inflicted pain is a means, that is all.

track iii

releasing yourself is the easy part, it is escaping that is such a challenge. temptation from the trees. all around are the trees. and they tell you things. all sorts of wonderfully horrible things. they tell you of what you can have and what you fear. they reach out for you with their human hands. the harpies watch on from the branches. the men of wood and the women of feathers. they all want more than the taste of your skin and the warmth of your blood, but you mind as well. the one thing that they cannot take but have to be given. that glorious delicacy. they call you and tempt you. the harpies swoop down and look at you and tell you of what loves you have given up on, and how they can replace them. they're breasts swell with lust and the sweat on their beaks tell you to touch them. to feel them. to fuck them. to satisfy them. to whisper sweet secrets in their ears.

temptation has always been hell's biggest advertiser. no matter how many harpies you kill, no matter how many times you eat from their chests and run your fingers across their swollen ribcage, they always return with more voices. you push through this forest of temptation. past the trees with anguish in their tearful eyes.

then the discomforting silence. but it is never silent here. even in darkness, there is still the hum of something watching.

track iiii

after the forest, no matter what direction you go, is the pit. made of stone it leads deeper into oblivion. steam from some boiling river bellows from its depths. echoes of vague creatures, maybe crickets, maybe men, flutter up, bouncing off its infinite walls. that is the horror of this site: an expanse that has no end. it may be four feet across or the universe may tumble down it like a marble in a canyon. you'll never know. blood creeps up its wall by where you stand. it pools up around you feet. from this spot the another temptation known only to men crawls up your spine. suicide. plunge down deep into it. and why not. no one has ever seen another edge aside from the place your feet are at. at least i have never seen another edge. faced with utter ominous oblivion your choices are limited. i've always plunged.

track v

the odd thing about the pit is that you always fall for a portion of a second. the bottom is right below the edge, but the edge is infinitely above the bottom. the bottom isn't really even a bottom. it is more like a pleasure people never get to enjoy on earth. that pleasure is that of breathing blood. all around you a black and red streaked mass of coagulated blood. it flows in your ears and up your nose. you choke on it as it gurgles down you throat. but it isn't as awful as it seems. but i suppose that is the awful part, is the pleasure i derived from it. i always loved it. the warmth the blood put in your stomach as it forced its way through your intestines and eventually out your anus. eventually you totally subside on the blood. you become as attached to it as you did air, but air fortunately never tasted so salty sweet. that is another part of the irrepressible desires in hell: cannibalism, the sheer desire to consume flesh and swallow blood is so constant that it is maddening in of itself. through it all, however, is a pulsing machine that reverberates through your ears.

eventually you become so immersed in the blood and so fulfilled by its glorious flavor that you become totally oblivious to the fact that you are slowly sinking. then you fall to the ground through the ceiling of blood. it doesn't drip, but it just sits there, suspended in its magnificence.

track vi

after subsisting, subsisting in every sense of the word, on blood for so long, eating and breathing and drinking and excreting it, the shock to the system is intense as your soaked corpse plummets to the floor. breathing air after living off of blood is like drowning, only far more painful. the pain hits the body as much as any pain i've ever felt for it is not drowning but living that is painful. eventually though you either vomit or shoot blood from your anus so that your body can once again adapt to the air. the body's heart seems to be extremely loud, as if you are hearing it from the outside of the body instead of from the inside the eardrum. then another realization sets in: you aren't listening to your own heart.

the machine was the huge pumping of a gigantic Heart pumping blood through tubes extending out into darkness. the Heart is huge even at such a distance, for it is very far away. you get up and cannot help but to be attracted to it. it's constant, steady echoes and vibrations. mesmerizing and hypnotized you move towards it, but never getting any closer. however, the Heart does become clearer. demons crawl all over and in and out of it through pores and openings that are far to small to see. they drag rotting corpses into the invisible openings but come out with nothing. like a enormous anthill. is the Heart the home of the queen? or is it the queen? terror and love have never been so intricately intertwined as in the sight of such an entity. warmth and bitter cold. the skin melts and wrinkles. the eyes smoke and implode. the ears bleed. this is the ecstasy. this is the agony.

track vii

in your trance, you never realize that your are being pulled into the Heart by a demon. the Heart is a living machine. a work of art like none that any mortal or non-infinite being could ever conceive. in it you see your end, your beginning, what ever was, what is, and what ever will be. faced with infinity you claw your eyes out. your finger tips pierce the delicate and fragile outer lining of the eye and dig into the muscle that attaches it to your ocular cavity. with a light wrench, they come out with an audible pop. you open up your hands and realize that you can still see into the infinite black light before you. your eyes float up from your palms and stare at the light that illuminates nothing.

track viii

you stare at the child of light. the one that wanted to be god. throughout your childhood and worthless life, horned and pitchfork laden men always represented a word that should never have existed. to say Lucifer was merely a word without substance, to look upon Lucifer was existence without substance. you open your sunken eyelids to realize your eyes are back in their sockets. you are no longer in the presence of it any longer. it's odd: i can never say its name out loud or speak its name, but that blackness you never forget. it never leaves your memory. if nothing else were to slice my flesh or pierce my skin or consume my bones, that absence of light, that momentary glimpse of all that used to be pure, is the worst punishment that any entity should ever experience.

track ix

i always end up standing in front of two unmarked passages carved into a wall. wind rushes out of the passage on the right, blood drips from the other. the sweet smell of honeysuckle and irises flow from the right, maggots drip from the ceiling of the other. you stand before both paths. one leads to light, the other to obliteration. however, as you slowly drift towards the warmth and comfort of the right hand path. a calm comes over your flesh. a sudden, final realization.

track x

i always make the same decision. of the uncountable times i've arrived at this point, my feet have never failed to tempt me back to same path. i slowly walk down the left hand path. maggots and other creatures of decay and death drip down from above me and fall over my naked flesh. they crawl and bury into my skin and travel through my muscles and chew through my bone to rest in the marrow. i lay down on the ground and face the ceiling that lived. i open my mouth to accept my final meal. i cross my legs and open my arms. i am once again crucified with chains that pierce my wrists and ankles. the hooks once again dig into my stomach and spine. my eyes are once again dug open by the worms. i have once again entered my peace.

end transmission.

this short story from the music to quake was inspired by the following:
2001: a space odyssey
event horizon
hellraiser and hellbound
the song "fist fuck" from the nine inch nails ep fixed
dante alighieri's divine comedy: inferno


if you like this story, then you'll love this short storyby my dear friend alexa.

mucho gracias to mistress alexa for the pretty pictures on this page!

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