So this is a most recent story I wrote for a special person who is a Catholic, and yet in spite is in complete love with me. Feedback can be sent to the email located at the bottom of the page if you wish. Enjoy.
(Note: Title is taken from a new Liz Phair song that can currently only be purchased at Liz Phair's Official Website.)
By Jordan "BluntJoey" Adorno
Ephesians 2:8-9: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast."
**
Jill Smith walked quickly down the snow-filled sidewalk on Fairview Avenue at the midnight hour, as usual forced to pass the outskirts of Downtown Nashcago and its empty office buildings and modest apartment complexes. She was a "working girl" to her great shame admittedly, a 17-year-old "Queen Prep" at Lake High (if such entitlements really existed) transformed into, amazingly, a prostitute after having to run from his hands; rather, it was from the man she should have been able to trust first and foremost that she escaped from —
Jill kept losing sight of herself these past six weeks homeless, her mind encased within torturous, undecided thoughts that drew her in-between regret and relief. Sometimes her frustration, all that built-up anger and sadness ripping her insides, left her wondering some nights how it was she had willed herself to survive these "short" first weeks. But to her own great solace, every time this happened Jill was easily quick to remember that this was paradise compared to 12 years of continuous abuse (as far back as she remembered, anyway); the majority of her life had been a sentence of her dad's overpowering silence and domination over her, his hands those which never stopped clutching her in private places no one ever has the right to. Indeed, this was paradise compared to 12 years of tearfully begging her dad with all her might to stop touching her, yet he never would...
But Jill wasn't dwelling on that this midnight moment, having learned from the start to focus only on making it from point A to point B safely when on the night shift. And so of course she was careful as she scurried passed, now, Apple Garden Hotel, Mama and Pop's Breakfast Buffet, Candyland Park, then finally Kaiser Lake, the overshadowing body of dark water expanding beyond the naked eye’s reach...
But Jill wasn't being any more careful than on usual nights, and tonight she unknowingly wouldn’t be any better off even ten times more cautious...
A dark figure suddenly crept out of a subtle alleyway, a six feet tall, deathly pale man of about 170 pounds appearing like out of thin air a quarter-mile ahead. He certainly seemed to flaunt the fact that he was likely up to no good, covered head-to-toe in a long black trench coat and a large hood over his head that barely offered a glimpse of his death-pale face. The scene of this newly arrived character spelled danger in bloodshed-red obviously, and Jill felt grateful she wasn’t stupid enough to keep forward as she half-scurried to the opposite sidewalk across the asphalt road which during daytime hours was rampant with traffic jams. Although she sped in her pace, Jill remained watchful, increasingly relieved every time she looked back to see that the seemingly unfriendly stranger appeared to be still unaware of her.
Once Jill approached Dean Road, the next huge intersection, she again surveyed far backward at the man - only to find him standing like a statute in the precise format as when he first manifested from the shadows. Severely spooked, Jill sped up faster in panic without thinking twice, focused on making it past her last four turns in one piece. But then, just when Jill's lungs and legs accelerated her beyond the final turn....
A trio of identical-looking men in dark trench coats and chilling hoods paraded horizontally across the street and blocked her path. Hotel Borrego was just ten feet beyond them, its abundant lights surging bright patches of illumination throughout Master Way Avenue's every direction. Mister Adam Boucher awaited her services in Room 271 right now in fact -
But meanwhile Jill suddenly became flooded with a suffocating, defenseless fear that swept completely through her. Her heartbeat felt intensively sped up, so much so that it was almost like it was going to blast through her chest. And as her entire body blanched nervously in front of a scene so insane it left her icy with goosebumps, Jill couldn't stop herself from revealing a gaze fixed in flinching horror. Worst of all, she realized her legs would not move, physically couldn't somehow -
"Jill, oh young Jill, your true destiny awaits before those pretty yet desolate gray eyes of yours," hissed the man in the center darkly, and as he slanted his head her direction Jill witnessed his unsurprisingly also death-pale face. His wretched tone echoed throughout the surrounding perimeter scarily as his two minions together closed in on either side of him. Off-setting her into shrieks, altogether the three men threw back their hoods and revealed the deformed structure of their pale faces, smiling their pointy, black-stained teeth at her. From moderate distance they looked completely clone-like to Jill.
And then Jill snapped instantaneously from her plight of paralyzing restraint, right away turning 180 degrees with the intention to storm off at light speed, but then fell spellbound again under what she couldn't pretend was not true paralysis. The only sensation she knew at this moment was powerlessness, incapable of directing her own movement. These impossible attacks on her body weren't possible physically - so how could they truly be happening!? Jill let out an impetuous scream, a loud and threatening one in her beyond frustrated moment of breathtaking rage. But even that simply could not penetrate any body movement. Was Jill trapped in the climax of the worst nightmare of her entire life? It had to be so, had to be as she uselessly tried to cry out for help only to find her surrounding area silently unperturbed in her voiceless spite, this but another of their otherworldly, impossible physiological intrusions, apparently...
Then, very suddenly Jill forcibly took four huge steps toward her three attackers without any volition of her own self-will. Terrifying her again, the leader took a step toward her centrally while his two minions maintained their guard on his either side a pace behind him. Then he beckoned a reaching hand at her and hissed, "Jill, give in! You can't run from the Gates of Hell for very long. Dare you underestimate your new guardian, Father Lucifer, despicable sinner?!"
Before Jill could react beyond the skipping of her heartbeat, his left-hand man stepped forward, pointed his hand toward her, and then hoarsely blathered, "Your fate is too strong, far too definite to pull from now, naive little girl." A malicious smile awarded her a second shot at his filthy, black-stained teeth.
The right-hand henchman then finally stepped a pace closer to Jill, too, but when he reached out his vein-covered, sickeningly pale hand she found herself half tripping a quick five steps forward without any self-will whatsoever. Now in face-to-face proximity, the pious man gently brushed the tip of his long, flexible index finger against the side of her face, his disgusting three-inch fingernails leaving a stunningly freezing sensation all-throughout her. He called out to Jill pleadingly in a strong, overwhelming deep tone, "Jill, how dare you think to defy the laws of retributive faith? The Gates to Hell are wide and ready for your entry, young girl, and the blazes of Lord Lucifer's fire sparkle in your forthcoming."
At this exceedingly demented announcement, Jill unleashed a blast of shattering screams that provoked the three strangers to laughingly animate their arms outward in embrace. Shaking her head desperately, Jill cried out, "Who are you? What the fuck are you talking about? Why do you want anything to do with me, what have I done?!"
All three compassionless men carried out a cruel spite of exaggerated laughter right in front of her face. United formidably, the three frightening strangers impatiently demanded of Jill, "Follow us to your fate - it cannot be escaped!"
"What the hell are you freaks on about?! You're fucking lunatics, fucking delusional madmen! You make no sense at all - this can't be real - what do you mean to do to me?!" Jill begged tearfully.
But regardless of anyone's sanity or lack thereof, Jill's life could at any moment end in the bloody hands of these mysterious enemies. She again found herself unable to physically move herself, incapable of stepping back away from them and running for her own life; there was an invisible, yet also invincible force arresting her defenseless it appeared - which made no sense.
Momentously, all the sudden the three men clutched their veiny, bony hands around her neck and began strangling her. Exceeding her excruciating pain, that man from the subtle alley, the very first suspicious figure she'd seen, out of nowhere appeared and immediately wrapped his icy, hardened hands around her neck, too...
The last thing Jill knew in her life was the ghastly beast that is torment, that is agony, that is the unbearable force of being suffocated by four monstrous grips; as her mind dizzily lost its last fight for consciousness less than forty five seconds later, the last thing she thought of was her father, the bastard who placed her in this mess to start with....
And then alas, Jill Smith died.
***
Jill freed her eyes open from their burning, vibrating sensation in that flashing moment of darkness when she felt her own body evaporate (or so it seemed) from the scene of what should have been her death. Too ironically, she did almost die at the sight now before her, however, because it was a flawless enactment of the greatest and most common supernatural nightmare:
Hell.
Jill had magically reappeared inside an insurmountable lake of fire, a live and quite vivid portrait of Hell, here within what appeared to be a huge cave. She was crouched on a huge boulder but the egregious rise of boiling blue flames was molting her makeshift raft to ashes, misfortunately. Screaming and screaming endlessly, she guarded her hands over the short hair on her head, a poor shield from the flames torpedoing midair from beneath the lake's surface. Barely able to breathe beyond her overwhelming crying during what she feared were her last dying moments, ironically the pertinent question (though she had no time to contemplate it) was whether she was dying for the first or second time. "OH MY GOD, WHAT'S HAPPENING?! WHERE AM I?! I HAVE TO WAKE UP FROM THIS TERRIBLE NIGHTMARE - NOW!"
Spontaneously, a misty male voice interjected from high above her, saying plainly, "...This is no nightmare, Forsaken one."
Jill froze as she looked up and saw a new apparition: spreading two large golden wings fifty feet above her was a golden-haloed angel who, in the likeness of a beautiful, tall Arian clothed only in a long, glowing white gown, exercised inattentive flight; unbelievably, her ascendant looked undisturbed as his two crestfallen, ocean-blue eyes fell upon her depravity in the fire. A moment later, the cherub descended forty feet, outstretched his Holy Cross necklace onto his two openly cupped palms, and shined in front of Jill the replica with compassionless indifference.
Jill nearly fainted in disbelief. "WHAT?!" she screamed, pleading for mercy in what she dreaded were the last fleeting moments of her life. "What did you say!? Please, save me, help me! I'm going to die!"
The angel swayed his head indignantly, letting his necklace fall back onto his tunic as he shook an index finger. Unabashed by Jill's horrified screams, the angel smiled each time she almost bounced off the deteriorating boulder into the large waves of fire. "Forsaken one, you are already dead. You were killed at eleven thirty on the first of November in 2010 by your father after he found you at Hotel Ashway," the angel corrected plainly, not even seeming to acknowledge, much less sympathize for, Jill's suffering below him.
"No, NO! That can't be true, you're lying!!" Jill lashed out in furious denial, but within a millisecond her entire body was slipping off the boulder into the lake of flames...
And then the excruciating pain that would corrode Jill forever officially began with a brief appearance from her father.
Watching her drown in the agony of Hellfire, he appeared next to the angel in plain sight as she struggled to keep her head above the flaming surface.
And then he boldly looked down upon Jill and addressed her in a flat, somehow blissful voice. "Oh Jill, my pitiful daughter, I always warned you to come to the Lord, to ask Jesus Christ for his forgiveness. It's such a shame that I died so shortly after you in that awful car crash, but at least I've got my place in Heaven; you, however, must burn forever in this abyss with unrepentant fools like you: Hell." The voice of her own father was not hinted with the slightest indication of compassion, not at all. He and the angel just stared sadly, more condescendingly really, as the fire burnt Jill to a vessel.
Then, faster than a thief in the night, than a speeding bolt of light in the day, the compassionless two harmonically returned to Heaven, their awarded home...
The End.
