The Soothsayer - Cigarette

Notorious serial arsonist Nongchai had been acquitted in 1846 for his responsibility in causing harm to twenty-one people and four deaths in one of his fires.

Seven months later, he was decapitated in a boating accident.

His new life began.


Perhaps the greatest horror in this place was it's unyielding tolerance to succumb to expectations.

Many people would say that the sufferance of the flesh marked the focal principality here. Then those many people apparently had never been here. Not yet. For the pride of the local taskmasters had dedicated the punishment to the human psyche. Because the mind could fine tune and blend the flesh to endure any harshness, with due time. The mental immunity. The habitual instinct to adapt. Therefore it was only rational to remind and reeducate the human minds in every cherry minute that they had came here to suffer the worst and nothing less.

Nongchai opened his swollen eyes, a thin line of visionary field. The three suns took turns to boil the air with intense violet and sulfur gases. He felt for his body. Intact. There was a time where they taped his head onto the arse of a two headed ox for eons. Nongchai had passed out for some time. Someone did something to him. Nongchai would remember soon, for unconsciousness was a myth in this place. No one could sleep nor black out here, no matter how tortuous the routines gotten. They had to make sure everyone suffer every cherry waking second in this place. The seas of volcanoes made entirely of mankind erupted, washing erosive lava downstream to the million angling bodies. They screamed like neonates.

Some thought that with enough sufferings, the nirvana of redemption could be ultimately attained. That was ludicrous. Redemption was a concept only available in the mortal world. Besides, giving such hopes would only encourage the sinners to accept their punishment more readily. What kind of Hell would allow that? The mission of the local taskmasters was to kill any form of acceptance in this place. For without acceptance to one's peril, only can one truly agonize without ever learning how to cope.

Nongchai proceeded to move. It was everyone's motivation here to turn away from the suns, hoping to seek shade of some kind. The air was frying his skin. There were people everywhere. Hell was made up of sinners literally. The landscapes, the suns, the infrastructures and even the devices meant for punishments were made entirely of people. Underneath his weak feet, the earth of sinners stacked flat in gazillion bodies. Nongchai snipped his left toe into an eye of a sinner on the floor. Nongchai turned to look at the blood on his toe. It was not his.

Every sinners that died would drifted through the Valley of Passing first. The passage acted like a filter, removing certain human qualities while intensifying others. They would be immortals, but they couldn't recover nor heal damages to the flesh at all and they felt hungry and thirsty all the cherry times. When a sinner lost his arm, he could sew back on if he wanted. Could he still be able to feel that arm? Yes. For the intolerance to pain was so intensified that they rather not kept that rotting limb at all. Sometimes, sinners would appear with foreign objects attached to them, like a tree branch or another sinner's head, a consequence of the merry making by the local taskmasters.

And someone put something inside him, Nongchai was sure. Soon enough, a pack of humanoids were chasing him into the jungle of skins and hair. Nongchai ran with his nimble legs and tried to hid in some trees made of sinners. The trees were subjected to invasions by the eyeless birds, the insects made of sharp fingers and the hacking from the local taskmasters. The tree betrayed Nongchai by shrieking out to the humanoids. Nongchai kicked the tree and began to run again.

Contraband were sometimes leaked to the sinners. Be it a tiny flask of water, a piece of writing or a coin to play with, the voidness of any pleasure in this place would create a savage war with such contraband in-situ. There it was logical to realise that these contraband were placed by the local taskmasters to make a show out of the sinners.

Nongchai sat near the stream of blinking eyes, panting. His lungs weighted piercingly against his shrunken heart like a rusty spear. His head sweltered up as he felt a rush of nauseating turmoil inside. Something was inside him and those humanoids wanted it badly. Nongchai felt for his old wound site at the top right side of his head. It was chewed off some years ago. He put his fingers inside to assess the wound, and he dug out wet yellow tissues with a handful of maggots. The tiny insects each possessed a human face squirmed and wiggled restlessly. Nongchai crushed them in his fist and wondered what the humanoids wanted from him. The humanoids were of course sinners like him, but they came and stayed way longer than Nongchai. Things in this place do stuff to your mind, thought Nongchai.

Hunger had always been an issue around here. A starkly need that was strongly deprived. Nongchai had been tasting his intestines for months now. A small bite each time when his hunger pangs struck badly. At first he kept hitting his stomach to make them stop, until he punctured a hole in it. The pain was insanely mesmerising, yet the hunger never ceased. Nongchai had saw other sinners eating themselves or at others and he decided to try. It was a funny experience tasting your own flesh. It was then Nongchai had decided he had long abandoned what was left of his humanity.

Nongchai heard his vicious attackers closing up again. It looked like they would not stop hunting him until they had gotten what they wanted. What was that they wanted? Nongchai decided it was best to find out and surrender to them. After all, there weren't any places to run in this place.

Nongchai felt for what it appeared to be a shard of sharp bone in the mud of skulls and felt for its sharpness. He then touched his wasted skin, trying to decide where to violate himself. He dug deep inside his craved belly, crawled his fingers between his guts with stabbing tenderness. It was not in his guts. Nongchai breathed out a tremble of hot air as he felt for his back where the kidneys were. Using the stream water as reflection, he began to slice the dry bone into the side of his waist. Then he dug with his fingers again. Each turn of the index and the middle finger made him sweat pain in his eyebrows and winching in jumpy agony.

No. It was not in his back. Nongchai heard them coming. It seemed that they had gathered more of their clan. He could smelt them. Their shadows fell on him like vultures as they shrieked in maniacal glee.

'No! No! No! Please!' Screamed Nongchai.

The mishapped humanoids tore Nongchai up like a laundry basket. Blood flew and colon uncoiled. They dug deeper and snapped away all his ribcage with their teeth. Nongchai cried and cried. The sinners upon hearing his cries, could only weep along with him, for pain was their only prerogative here.

They could not find what they wanted in Nongchai.

Then it was all silent.

It was strange that Hell could be silent. Not a sound was heard. It was like waiting for the rain to fall.

A distant long horn was heard. Two long horns and three short horns were blown.

The humanoids scampered away in fright, leaving Nongchai with his entrails exposed helplessly.

Another sharp fast horn was blown. The call for arms.

Nongchai then saw thousands of demons in battle armors flew in the burning horizons on gargantuan locusts. The skies turned black with their passing.

Nongchai touched the wet insides of his chest and felt for the circumference of his tattered heart. It was a mess. And through the bloody mess, he pulled out a cigarette. A contraband. It was what they were looking for all along. It was hidden in the cave of his pinkish heart. His trembling hands took the cigarette, dipped it in the water and had it sizzled in flames. With his broken back still on the soil made of skulls, his insides sunned, Nongchai smoked the cigarette and thought about his predicament.

Nongchai howled and wept at the eternal violence of this place.



To be continue...