Entry #35

The Gaze
by CW


The door bell jingled as she entered my store.
“Can I stay a few minutes to warm up?”
“If you buy a coke,” I shrugged. Business knows no pity.
She stormed out and the blizzard outside enveloped her. I found her frozen body the next day.


So many years passed, but as I walk through the pitch dark shadows and bloody highlights of Hell, I think of her. I don’t see the screaming bodies that burn and melt in rivers of lava for all eternity. No, I see her stiff corpse and those horrified eyes, bulged as if ready to pop.


My gaze shifts to an eye of fire at a distance: The Portal. Demons say it links back to earth, but the thousands of impaled bodies that guard it assure me no one ever checked.
A young woman stops by the shadowy fields of cadavers. She looks at me and I shake my head. Still, she runs and I don’t know why, I sprint after her.
Demons materialize behind me with their fire swords and skeleton horses. Eyes hang from their human hair necklaces. I run for myself now.
We go up the maze of putrid stenches. I pass her. She screams ‘Help!’. I turn my head back, but continue. They slash her throat like a paper sheet, her hollow eyes still gaped at me, pleading.
I jump into the exit. I’m back to earth. The portal closes.


A woman’s horrified gaze slips my mind. Another replaces it.