Project Stapes: Better Late than ...
Terribly late, sorry. But given how much work I'm having to manage this month, it was the best I could do.
Last week was awful, and I was away from email for most of it. So I know that I owe people emails. I'm trying to get to them. I've also been having computer problems this week after updating my virus software, which is compounding my problems five fold at the moment. *sigh* I'll get to you as soon as I can. I'm so sorry.
On to the story: Here's a dark little tale (even for me!) just in time for Ash Wednesday.
In Hell
A certain soul knocks at Hell’s rusty gates. Neither a terrorist nor a dictator, no coppery coat of nations’ blood across her back-which tenses just a little after all. This being Hell.
No, no. She is not so operatic. More a garden variety sinner-common as carrots, really: bored with moral questions; unconcerned with introspection; serial only in lies and adulteries; gutless as a candidate three days preceding re-election. A compromiser.
Her fingers sound like beetles against the chilly metal. Somewhere a steam vent hisses into hoar.
We forgot to mention: Hell is an icebox.
Eventually, the frosted gears chink through the icicles and the door creaks wide, sloughing rime and rust like blood from an incision. A demon stands behind it, tall and thin as icicles herself. But within her twig branch limbs and chest, a ticking.
She is made of glass and steal and steam. That’s how they make the demons nowadays. The first of the fallen were as light made dark-bodies of heat and ozone and hearts sucking in like great black holes. But still hearts, and therefore weaker engines. Later, the chief of lies replaced his platoons with clockworks, who could be more unfeeling, more methodical when spinning out temptation or pricking the human heart to dullness. Precision in all things. That is Hell’s way.
The demon has no words for the damned when they reach Hell. Words are forbidden here; beyond the hiss of acedia, the purr of godhood, her circuitry has no program for speech. She merely gestures forward with a curving claw. Like clockwork herself, this certain soul shudders and follows.
Clinking cold through ice-halls and glaciers paler than the Devil’s own eye, the demon leads the woman to her cell. It is not low as a sewer, or wide as a steppe: space, after all, is a human concept, maybe even our invention. Rather, the oubliettes of Hell constrict and expand like the mind of a dreamer-only as small or deep as she fathoms.
Perhaps it is wrong to call them oubliettes. The damned do no forgetting here. It is wrong, surely, to speak of sleep; for they do none of that, either.
The certain soul takes some time to learn this. Hell is silent, after all, and gives its inmates no instruction-when to eat, when to take air, when to move and when to sit stock-still. It may take a second or an ice age (the same time, either way, it takes for God to parse a dirty prayer), but she is still surprised. Despite the tit-prick cold and isolation, Hell, she thinks at first, is not so bad. There are stomach-pains, of course, and bowel heat, but the clockwork demon brings food and takes its leavings like a butler. The gazpacho soup is the best she can recall. Even the tedium can become less tedious. She takes up calisthenics and learns knitting.
It is not so bad, no not so bad as a bus ride or the doctor’s office. Not Hollywood’s abattoir, or even Dante’s.
But then, when fatigue itches her eyes and her bones weigh down like anvils, she knows it’s worse.
In Hell, it is not quite as Sartre said. Eyes may wink, and blink, and even close, but sleep stays away, like a line of poetry glimpsed, then forgotten. Like the wasping of fluorescent lights, this takes some time to fully notice. First, the body sinks in heaviness, then thoughts grow giddy.
Whatever they have told you about sleep, it’s all bullshit. Mostly. To build up wasting cells; to grow our brittling bones; to fend off the irritation that knocks upon us like the weather. But I tell you, this is incidental, like the microwaves that break down chocolate.
Sleep’s purpose, like all human endeavors, lies in forgetting. As the body falls, so too the mind, into dreams that weave and warp like wool-whether warm or prickly, still agents of estrangement. When mortal shoulders creak under life’s regrets, we cast them off to sleep and wake refreshed and strong-backed as any stevedore. Sleep is like a black hole in itself; it swallows up the griefs, and guilts, the awkwardness and terrors that give most souls a little whiff of Hell long before the grave.
Without sleep, suicides would enlarge both otherworldly kingdoms.
When this certain soul makes this realization, she tries, like all souls do, to bat it back like any awful memory with songs, with stretches, with stories, with the click-clack of her icy knitting needles. For a time she is successful-about as long as it takes God to answer a prayer with silence. But weak flesh is weakened by degrees. And by degrees her regrets freeze her.
And in Hell, there is no end to regret. It is bottomless as a hot pool, as terribly dark and calm. Each lie, each omission, each embarrassment and error-worse, the instances of inaction that far outnumber these-prickle her in that deep place, deeper even than marrow.
A pin prick, a mosquito itch: that is the point of Hell. In a second or a century (the time it takes for answered prayers to hurt), this certain soul is frozen to her bed, her knitting needles splayed across her thighs, her eyes reddened into staring, her memory regret’s own cinema-the doors always open, the reels forever turning.
Remember, Project Stapes is offered free, but donations go towards helping the author pay her bills. Ten percent of donations until further notice also go towards helping s00j take care of some emergency medical bills (for more information check out saveours00j.
Thanks for your donations last time, everybody! So far, I have raised about $2.25 for S.J. (remember, 10 percent of what I receive). Since I don't think it's worth the paypal fees to send her a payment until I have at least $20, I'm holding off until I do. Please consider donating if you liked this story. Every dollar helps.
Last week was awful, and I was away from email for most of it. So I know that I owe people emails. I'm trying to get to them. I've also been having computer problems this week after updating my virus software, which is compounding my problems five fold at the moment. *sigh* I'll get to you as soon as I can. I'm so sorry.
On to the story: Here's a dark little tale (even for me!) just in time for Ash Wednesday.
In Hell
A certain soul knocks at Hell’s rusty gates. Neither a terrorist nor a dictator, no coppery coat of nations’ blood across her back-which tenses just a little after all. This being Hell.
No, no. She is not so operatic. More a garden variety sinner-common as carrots, really: bored with moral questions; unconcerned with introspection; serial only in lies and adulteries; gutless as a candidate three days preceding re-election. A compromiser.
Her fingers sound like beetles against the chilly metal. Somewhere a steam vent hisses into hoar.
We forgot to mention: Hell is an icebox.
Eventually, the frosted gears chink through the icicles and the door creaks wide, sloughing rime and rust like blood from an incision. A demon stands behind it, tall and thin as icicles herself. But within her twig branch limbs and chest, a ticking.
She is made of glass and steal and steam. That’s how they make the demons nowadays. The first of the fallen were as light made dark-bodies of heat and ozone and hearts sucking in like great black holes. But still hearts, and therefore weaker engines. Later, the chief of lies replaced his platoons with clockworks, who could be more unfeeling, more methodical when spinning out temptation or pricking the human heart to dullness. Precision in all things. That is Hell’s way.
The demon has no words for the damned when they reach Hell. Words are forbidden here; beyond the hiss of acedia, the purr of godhood, her circuitry has no program for speech. She merely gestures forward with a curving claw. Like clockwork herself, this certain soul shudders and follows.
Clinking cold through ice-halls and glaciers paler than the Devil’s own eye, the demon leads the woman to her cell. It is not low as a sewer, or wide as a steppe: space, after all, is a human concept, maybe even our invention. Rather, the oubliettes of Hell constrict and expand like the mind of a dreamer-only as small or deep as she fathoms.
Perhaps it is wrong to call them oubliettes. The damned do no forgetting here. It is wrong, surely, to speak of sleep; for they do none of that, either.
The certain soul takes some time to learn this. Hell is silent, after all, and gives its inmates no instruction-when to eat, when to take air, when to move and when to sit stock-still. It may take a second or an ice age (the same time, either way, it takes for God to parse a dirty prayer), but she is still surprised. Despite the tit-prick cold and isolation, Hell, she thinks at first, is not so bad. There are stomach-pains, of course, and bowel heat, but the clockwork demon brings food and takes its leavings like a butler. The gazpacho soup is the best she can recall. Even the tedium can become less tedious. She takes up calisthenics and learns knitting.
It is not so bad, no not so bad as a bus ride or the doctor’s office. Not Hollywood’s abattoir, or even Dante’s.
But then, when fatigue itches her eyes and her bones weigh down like anvils, she knows it’s worse.
In Hell, it is not quite as Sartre said. Eyes may wink, and blink, and even close, but sleep stays away, like a line of poetry glimpsed, then forgotten. Like the wasping of fluorescent lights, this takes some time to fully notice. First, the body sinks in heaviness, then thoughts grow giddy.
Whatever they have told you about sleep, it’s all bullshit. Mostly. To build up wasting cells; to grow our brittling bones; to fend off the irritation that knocks upon us like the weather. But I tell you, this is incidental, like the microwaves that break down chocolate.
Sleep’s purpose, like all human endeavors, lies in forgetting. As the body falls, so too the mind, into dreams that weave and warp like wool-whether warm or prickly, still agents of estrangement. When mortal shoulders creak under life’s regrets, we cast them off to sleep and wake refreshed and strong-backed as any stevedore. Sleep is like a black hole in itself; it swallows up the griefs, and guilts, the awkwardness and terrors that give most souls a little whiff of Hell long before the grave.
Without sleep, suicides would enlarge both otherworldly kingdoms.
When this certain soul makes this realization, she tries, like all souls do, to bat it back like any awful memory with songs, with stretches, with stories, with the click-clack of her icy knitting needles. For a time she is successful-about as long as it takes God to answer a prayer with silence. But weak flesh is weakened by degrees. And by degrees her regrets freeze her.
And in Hell, there is no end to regret. It is bottomless as a hot pool, as terribly dark and calm. Each lie, each omission, each embarrassment and error-worse, the instances of inaction that far outnumber these-prickle her in that deep place, deeper even than marrow.
A pin prick, a mosquito itch: that is the point of Hell. In a second or a century (the time it takes for answered prayers to hurt), this certain soul is frozen to her bed, her knitting needles splayed across her thighs, her eyes reddened into staring, her memory regret’s own cinema-the doors always open, the reels forever turning.
Remember, Project Stapes is offered free, but donations go towards helping the author pay her bills. Ten percent of donations until further notice also go towards helping s00j take care of some emergency medical bills (for more information check out saveours00j.
Thanks for your donations last time, everybody! So far, I have raised about $2.25 for S.J. (remember, 10 percent of what I receive). Since I don't think it's worth the paypal fees to send her a payment until I have at least $20, I'm holding off until I do. Please consider donating if you liked this story. Every dollar helps.