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And then they were gone. The boy and his father were gone, and Maureen was left alone in the fiery pits of Hell. She was now left to face her punishment by herself. She deserved it, she knew that, there was no denying it. She’d done absolutely abhorrent things in her life and she knew she deserved a terrible punishment for it. And she would take it willingly, of course she would. Maureen had just been avoiding it somewhat while she helped someone in need, and John David was now free of eternal damnation, at least for now, and would hopefully work on himself to become a better person and avoid Hell permanently. It wouldn’t have been fair for him to stay either, he would’ve been facing the consequences of someone else’s actions. Being wrongly mistaken for her was terrible enough let alone having to deal with the punishment for her crimes. That was something no (mostly) innocent person deserved. On top of that he had a wife and children who loved him, and needed him—unlike her (she didn’t have any family anymore)—he had to go back to be with them. Helping him was the obvious, right thing to do. She wasn’t a monster.
She wasn’t a monster.
She was just led down the wrong path.
It was very easy to end up in places you never intended to be when life throws you under the bus and leaves you to pick yourself up. You do whatever you can to get out, and sometimes what you have to do is throw someone under in your place. That’s what she’d had to do in life, but she wouldn’t do it in death. She would face her punishment head on, like any decent person would.
And she was a decent person.
She was. She had always tried to do the right thing. But sometimes the right thing looks like the wrong thing, and then you land yourself in Hell for twenty murders. Could’ve happened to anyone. Life just picked her.
She hadn’t meant to go down this path. Why would she? No one wants to end up being forced to kill people by a cult. She didn’t have any other choice. The general necessities of life were unaffordable and she needed the help. She hadn’t known it was a cult at first, she wouldn’t have had anything to do with it if she had. They were just an organisation giving money and resources to those had none.
Turns out they also believed in human sacrifice and performed blood rituals.
But that’s how cults tended to work. They put up a front of being an honest group of people doing good things, they lure you in with kind gestures and pleasant words. They suck you in until they are the only people you trust and surround yourself with. Then they only reveal their true nature to you when you have no way out.
Maureen was just trying to survive. She never meant to hurt anybody. Well, she did, but not originally. She only hurt people after the cult threatened her entire livelihood.
Now, people were dead, and it was time to face the consequences.
Maureen turned to face the vibe masters (she’d killed them earlier but death isn’t really that effective in Hell). She followed them willingly as they lead the way to her fate. She never faltered, she didn’t slow when the smell hit her full force, she didn’t turn back when the heat that was already thick in the air began to make her skin feel like it was being peeled off of her bones. She had done terrible things throughout her life, and she would face her punishment.
The lake would’ve looked peaceful, if it wasn’t for the fact that it was filled with blood, with bubbles rising to the surface as it boiled at impossibly hot temperatures. She fiddled with her hands nervously, twisting her finger into knots until they ached.
“Whose blood is that?”
“It is the blood of all the innocents you killed during life,” the master nearest to edge of the liquid answered.
“What must I do to repent for my wrongdoings?” She had a feeling she already knew.
“You must submerge yourself in the blood, you must endure the pain and suffering that you inflicted a thousand times over, you must exist in eternal torment for the rest of time.”
“Ok,” she responded shakily. “Ok, I can do that. I can do that.”
The master pointed his spear across the lake, gesturing for her to get in. Maureen took small, unsteady steps forward. She breathed in deeply (despite not needing to do that any more) and only smelled the ash and rot. She took the first step in and closed her eyes at the hissing pain as it burned her foot.
She was about to take another step in when a force hit her back and she was flung into the boiling blood. She tried to scream in pain but the liquid burned down her throat to fill her lungs, making her chest feel as though there was a fire inside her. She attempted push herself out for just a moment to splutter and cough it up but something came whizzing at her head, causing her to duck back under until she was fully submerged in the blood of the people she had murdered.
She was a murder and this was her punishment. To have the red liquid burn her eyes and cause her flesh boil and her lungs to melt for all eternity.
Eternity is a very long time, longer still when you have nothing to keep track of it with except your skin being burned into nothingness.
The pain was constant and never ending. It was impossible to get a moment of freedom as arrows would be loosed at her head the moment she tried. At some point she forgot what it was like to live without the perpetual burning. She forgot what it was like to live at all.
The burning was all she’d ever known.