Malevolent

The last moments of my life were spent as a nonbeliever.

“What if you’re wrong?” they challenged me. They say to belief was the safer option. It wasn’t until I lay on my deathbed that the question truly became relevant.

I could hear their cries and prayer as I embrace oblivion.

But to my surprise, I see a shining gate beckoning me to enter. I looked back. I can see them still weep over my corpse. With what lies before me, I could no longer deny all those myths. But as I stepped towards the arch, I started descending.

As I fell through darkness, I looked below and saw a fiery light. To my horror, I realized what was happening: Hell is real. And I was going there.

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I felt the fire burning my immaterial flesh as I wandered through the inferno.

“Why am I here?” I exclaimed.

Not expecting an answer, I was greeted by an entity. “Welcome.”

I gasped. All this time I thought he was an invention to frighten the gullible, an excuse for evil to exist. I almost addressed him by name.

“I’m not the devil” he told me.

“Then who are you?”

“Follow me.”

And so I did.

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“The greatest joke in life is to believe in some of kind of eternal reward in the end” he told me.

“I don’t understand” I replied.

“Look” he pointed over the vast wasteland of torment.

I could see so many others, souls of the damned wandering aimlessly forever sentenced to suffer.

“Why are finite sins rewarded with infinite punishment?” I asked.

“What they taught you was wrong” the entity smiled. “There is no heaven, only hell.”

“No…” I trembled. “That can’t be.”

“Look again” he said. “Behold! All the saints are in eternal fire! Such is the fate of all mankind!”

Madness crept on me from the revelation. Is this our purpose? Is this how life was meant to be? Was hope just a farce to delude us? Were we created to satisfy the whims of a sadist?

“Y-you” I stuttered. “You’re…”

He bellowed a diabolic laugh, a travesty to all of existence. But he wasn’t done. Another sinister smile from him, and I wished to forfeit my existence.

With great mockery, he brought me back to life.

I opened my eyes and was greeted by my loved ones.

“Praise the heavens!” I heard them say.

“Thank God!” I heard another.

But they don’t understand.

Though I cannot prove the events that happened from beyond, I now live the rest of my life in fear of death. For the end means I will be there again.