Danny's Hell
Danny is his name. Danny lives in the streets of the Sixth World with no home to rest a tired head, no family to belong to, no one to love or cherish or hold. Shifting through garbage to for meager scraps left by a dark world. A world home to demons as real as the setting sun. Of horrors that tear and rip at the human soul like they found some distasteful glee in their torment of the poorest of humankind. To run and hide from the lurking phantoms of the night. The escape the eternal torment they reveal in. The release of so much evil into the world posions every pure thing that could possibly exist.
The world isn't suppose to be like this. Not the Sixth World. A time of the Awakening where the wonder of magic is real and the secrets of creation are just around the corner. Marvels that humankind had only to reach out to touch, but instead turned away with the greatest of ease. To make everything that is good and pure rot away.
This is Danny's world. A world of hope lost. Cowering in the corner, watching the predators of the night pass by. Hearing the chains of their clothes cling together like so many tortured spirits. To curl up into a ball as if by some hope will alone can make Danny so small that the world will just keep passing. Hoping that the world will pay no mind.
This world senses these things. The fearful heart of the street dweller cannot disappear no matter how small they perceive themselves to be.
A quick kick lifts the fear in Danny's heart. The light of the streetlight betrays the poor soul to an uncaring world. The chains of the predators hang above him. The leering grins of those to cruel to give a hand of hope bear down on the quivering soul. As if they took some joy in the suffering of others. To run. To escape. These are the only things in Danny's mind as the cruel hearts reach out with their dark desires.
Legs pumping. Heart racing. Faster and faster. The street lamps pass over head. One. Two. Three. Now a blur as the mind becomes frantic with the sound of the dancing chains. This must be what hell is like. To be eternally chased by demons that seem to real to comprehend. For the mind to be soaked in the pure terror of the moment. The snapping monsters on the heels of the tormented. To run is the only solution. Across the dark street. Past the dark alley. Over the crumbling fence. Perhaps to a place where it all ends in the fast wilderness of untouched forest, but no. Deeper and deeper into the unending hell. The sprawling, unforgiving concrete seems to grow with each step of the foot. It traps the hurting and crying soul in its frigid embrace.
An end is reached as walls of graffiti covered break shoot upwards to the sky. Cornered un such an unholy place Danny must wonder if this is the path that Fate has laid out. Not fated to live in this ending afterlife, but to be sent to a place far beyond.
After all, it is the fear of death that prompts the damned to run. Yet would death really be so bad compared to this kind of life?
The sound of the chains grows near. The predators have found this secluded place of neverending barricades. Their darkness pales against the black. Their desires are as heartless as the place itself. They tear into Danny. The fiery pain and agony of the body bathes the mind in an frothing cocktail of images too horrid to see, but too full of misery to forget.
The soul begs for a reprieve. To escape this mortal coil and this concrete jungle and fly high above the barren streets of a world gone mad. It pulls, even struggles against the animal instinct to live. There is that fleeting moment when it seems all is lost. When the soul looks about to escape. Then the darkness slams in with all its might.
To awaken from this darkness is an eerie thing. One that Danny is most baffled at. To wake up to this world again. Even if the hope was to have the eyes behold a different place, a different fiber of being, than this rotting cesspool. To stand is the greatest challenge of all. As the mind is forced to endure the gauntlet of misery the mortal body brings. Blood on the filthy ground is the only reminder that life is still being lived. It's touch is sticky and wet. Yet warm and almost comforting like an old blanket. It even brings a sense of relief. It gives proof of life for dead things do not bleed.
To be relieved to still be in this world is a parody of existence.
The pains of hunger deep inside is another reminder that fate isn't done yet. The animal instincts return. The hand reaches out, digging in an overturned trash can in search of some kind of festering borth to cure these dull aches.
Hand?
How much can be told of someone's hands? The kind of life they live. These hands, dark and blacked from scratching out some kind of fruitless life. Scarred and coarse to the touch. Bleeding with broken fingernails and bent at odd angles from painful breaks. Bruised black and blue.
Danny walks now. Down the dark prison of monolithic walls which hold the shrieking images of discomfort and torture. The street lays ahead. It's deserted sidewalks stretch out endlessly in either direction. Gone are the sound of the chains. The predators seek their pleasure elsewhere now. Danny is left alone.
Alone?
What a strange concept. Ironic in this place. To be around so many beings of different walks of what's called life. Yet none of them are around. Danny finds the loneliness odd. The biting cold of the wind blows in from the west. The frigid air bites through rags of clothes and stings the skin like a thousand needles digging into every pore. The feel of the ground underfoot is hard with concrete and dirty with the urination and blood of a thousand different people. Each step is just as vile as the last. Almost like some Greek god bathed this world in its own fluids.
Where is the sky? Why are their no stars out? Why is the moon hidden from view? Could it be that the moon knows what things take place in this ungodly place? Does the moon fear this world too much to show its face? If the moon is so afraid how can Danny be so brave? Brave enough to struggle through each day. There must be some easier way. Someplace to be, someplace to go, where this wouldn't be real. Only an illusion that grandparents tell children.
A home now. A place of shelter, little more than a crumbling building with the inhabitants of a lesser life as they scamper across the rotting floor, scavenging much the same living as Danny does. Danny is tired now. Everything inside screams from rest. The tortured flesh yearns for a moment of peace. To sit, slide against the wall, and stay in one place. So tired now. Just need to lean over a bit and rest that aching head. Maybe close those eyes. Yes, that feels so much better, shutting everything out like that.
Maybe I won't have to wake up?