I, Hell

by Ben Stevens

  I looked straight at him.

  ‘Help me get off drink, Tom,’ I said, using his first name for the first time in my life. ‘Help me with that. That’s all.’

  He looked back at me, so shocked by what I’d said that it stopped the tears like you turn off a tap.

  ‘Okay,’ he said softly. ‘Okay.’

  That began what’s become a real close friendship. First thing he did was to get me going to church. Said I wasn’t going to be able to turn my life around without the help of a higher power. Yep, I let Jesus Christ into my heart right around that time, and I’ve been the better for it ever since.

  After one church service soon after, before I went to my AA meeting in the evening, I had a meal with Tom, his wife and their son – Todd, is his name. I sat there clean and sober and said grace with them, passed the peas and watched what I said and thought. That felt good. Every time I felt like I might take a drink after that, I just remembered how I was capable of feeling human and decent for almost the first time in living memory, and that – along with regular AA meetings and all the rest of it – was enough to stop me touching so much as a drop of alcohol

  I went back to logging for a bit, but pretty soon found myself working instead as a general handyman. People locally liked me now – it had been well over a year since I’d turned my life around – and, what was more, they trusted me. They’d go out for the day, to work or such, and leave me the keys to their home so I could put up some shelving, fix a sink, or something of the sort. So that became my own little, full-time business.

  I was going to church at least twice a week – got involved with volunteer work too, helping the older folks and such, trying this way and several others to atone for all the damage I’d done as a mean drunk. But I was still sometimes at a loss for what to do in the evenings, now that I didn’t touch alcohol. I never was one for television; but after a while I found I kind of liked to read and then the darnest thing started to happen.

  I thought – What happens if I have a go at writing one of these books myself…?

  7

  I fell quiet for a time, worn out with speaking.

  ‘Yes – and then what?’ demanded the scratchy voice.

  ‘Give me a moment, will you?’ I said irritably. Like I wasn’t talking to someone who’d knocked me out, taken me to wherever, buried me underground in a coffin, and was now in control of the air-supply that could be turned off at any second.

  ‘I know what it is,’ I said suddenly, sullenly.

  There was a pause; then the Voice said almost cautiously: ‘You know what?’

  ‘The reason why I’m here – why you’ve done this to me,’ I replied.

  I waited for the Voice to speak, but there was just silence. Dead silence. Almost involuntarily, I emitted a sob. But when I spoke again my voice was calm.

  ‘I hurt you, didn’t I, back when I was a mean drunk,’ I said. ‘Maybe it was you whose nose I almost bit off, or I smashed your teeth out, or broke your leg…’

  I paused; then finished: ‘Well, buddy – you certainly know how to get your revenge, I’ll give you that.’

  The Voice gave a slight, mocking laugh, and then said, ‘Come along now, Mr. Writer Man. You haven’t yet finished this story and time… Well, time is starting to get a little short.’

  If he’d hoped to cause me yet more mental torture with this final sentence – this veiled suggestion that I’d shortly be dead – then he wasn’t entirely successful. Because this was the fourth time now (or maybe the fifth – hell, who was counting?) that he’d addressed me as ‘Mr. Writer Man’. And this suddenly made me suspect that I’d been way off in my initial suspicion, concerning who’d kidnapped me and stuck me down here…

  Yeah, I think I now knew for sure who it was. Not that I’d ever met the man in person; but still, I think I knew why he might have put me down here. There was some sort of reason – no matter how screwed up this ‘reason’ actually was. It had nothing to do with anyone I’d hurt when I’d been a drunk; it was related to something else entirely. To do with part of the person I’d become now I was sober. Inadvertently, I’d planted the seed of my present torture right there slap-bang in the centre of my tormentor’s poisoned mind…

  And that (strangely enough, you might think) gave me the slightest feeling of hope. I possibly had one card I could still play – just one. If it failed…

  ‘Continue, please,’ the Voice now piped up. ‘As I say, you have but little time left…’

  Maybe you too, smart-ass, I thought. Yeah, maybe you too…

  But if there was any hope of my plan working, I had to start talking again.

  So that’s what I did.

  8

  The sort of books I enjoy reading are cowboy ones – strong but uncomplicated plots, definite good guys and bad guys, Mr. Sharpshooter-cleans-up-the-town type thing. You know, the sort of stuff that never wins no highfalutin’ literary awards, but which still sucks you in right from the get-go. I could give you some names of authors, but I doubt you’ve ever heard of them.

  But, also, I like stories that are set in an altered present, or a future where mankind has been affected by some disaster. A massive solar flare, a nuclear war, a terrible plague – you know the sort of thing I mean. The sort of thing that resets the Earth’s clock almost back to the Stone Age, and forces men and women to live in something like a tribal manner.

  Well, basically I kind of just mixed the two things up, right from when I started trying to write my first story. Did so on a computer, which was pretty much the first time I’d ever really used one, and also got myself hooked up to the internet.

  Well, all this ‘apocalyptic cowboy’ stuff might sound a bit strange, but soon I was working on my book (‘cause this was what it had become – the wordcount just kept going up and up as the ideas kept coming) as much as I could. Still gave most of my time to other people and what I considered to be good causes – I knew I still had quite a bit of payback to make yet – but soon as I was indoors, I’d fix myself a coffee, sandwich or something of the sort, and get right on typing. Got so as I could type pretty fast, too.

  I’d started writing fiction just as a hobby; something to pass a few hours on a quiet evening before I went to bed. But as I got more and more into my book, and felt myself beginning to come to the end, I wondered about the likelihood of it maybe being published. Send it off to someone – a ‘proper’ publisher? Try as I might, I couldn’t see what I wrote being accepted by anybody fancy like that.

  But then, having done just a little research on the subject on the internet, I realized how simple it was to self-publish and sell your work as an ebook.

  Mentioning no names, but I guess we all know what the biggest website is for books (both the physical as well as the electronic variety) – along with a whole heap of other stuff. And this website has a special program, just to help people like me get set up and get their books uploaded for sale. Can even make your book free for a few days, if you want, as a way of promoting it. Couldn’t have been simpler, or more straight-forward.

  Well, I had a friend at church who was good at art. She designed me a cover; that was all I needed, along of course with my manuscript typed up as a Word document. I uploaded my book, priced it at a cent under a buck (that was as cheap as you could go) – and then realized, just one month later, that I’d sold almost a thousand copies and earned myself a bunch of reviews, most of which were pretty downright positive.

  You might even say I had me some ‘fans’. They asked me when the next book was out, told me how much they’d enjoyed the first one, that it was good clean adventure, etc. Well. I was ‘suitably encouraged’, as you might say. Soon enough I got back to writing again. Seems I’d found my market, right there on my very first book. The second was pretty much the same sort of thing – if it ain’t broke don’t fix it – but still with enough differences that it wasn’t just a carbon copy of the first.

  Second sold better than the first, I do declare. By now I was
making a bit of money out of the sales – not so much, given the royalty of a book priced at a buck is about thirty-three cents – most of which found its way to some good causes. I was earning enough from my handyman business during the day; I also figured this ‘book-money’ could be used to help repay some of the debt I still considered I owed society. Oh – and I took the lady at church who’d designed the book covers out for dinner, as a way of saying ‘thank you’. (She absolutely refused to take any money, though I did try to offer.) In fact, we started seeing each other. No big deal, everything taken just nice and slow – and that was something else that felt good.

  As I say, I received a whole bunch of book reviews, most of which were four or five star. (Five stars is the highest rating you can get, on the site I use to sell my work.) But there were a few negative reviews; comes with the territory. I was on a roll: two more novels (round about 50,000 words) and also some short stories. And it was about this time that I noticed I’d attracted something of a persistent critic.

  His user name was ‘Digger’. (You ain’t telling me a woman calls herself that…) Seems he didn’t much like what I wrote – to put it mildly. Everything I published he gave a one-star review, using this strange, old-fashioned ‘Victorian’ - type language. (Really, I don’t know how else to describe it).

  ‘The author sinks to new levels of banality’ was the title of one review, given for my third book. In another review, he wrote: ‘…while attempting to read this appalling tripe, one can almost hear the creaking of the author’s mind, the bland recycling of already stale ‘ideas’ that insult and demean even the most undemanding of readers…’

  Yeah, safe to say Digger didn’t much like what I was putting out. Seems he had a special bee in his bonnet reserved for me, the way everything I wrote got a one-star review from him. You know how it seems some people ‘love to hate’? Well – you get what I’m saying.

  I had my army of readers read to leap to my defense, in any case. They’d mark Digger’s reviews as being ‘unhelpful’, and leave plenty of caustic comments below it. Myself, I never really bothered too much about it – until one day a few months back.

  I’d had a pretty rare day. I was fitting a new kitchen for an elderly lady I knew from church, in her tiny apartment. The kitchen itself was miniscule, and every which way I turned I seemed to bang some part of my body – my head, mostly. Then, while pouring myself a cup of coffee, the lady’s cat shot out from some place and startled me so much that I jolted, and in doing so managed to pour boiling water all over the hand of mine that was holding the cup. I had to go to hospital straight away, to get my scalded hand checked over and properly dressed.

  So I returned home that evening in a bit of a temper. I managed to calm myself a degree with a hot shower and something to eat, and then settled to do some writing. First, I logged on to my author site and checked my sales’ figures. All fine there – reckon about 100 copies of my books, in total, had sold just that day.

  Then – well, I had a quick peek to see if I had any new reviews. You show me an author who doesn’t care about that sort of thing. Anyhow, seems I’d got me another one-star review from Digger.

  ‘Hackneyed and entirely predictable’ was how he referred to the latest book I’d self-published. ‘A dismal, blatant attempt to conform with the current ‘prepper’ fiction trend; the sad thing is, there are enough undemanding ‘readers’ (one uses the word loosely) who will spend hard-earned money on this type of bilge…’

  And so it went on. I should have ignored it, perhaps even laughed it off, just like I had every other time. But on this occasion – maybe because of the day I’d had – it got me riled. So for the first time, I replied back to the guy –

  Let’s face it, buddy (I wrote as a comment to his ‘review’), the only story of mine you’re gonna want to hear is the one where I’m in my grave.

  Yeah, it was a stupid thing to write – didn’t even really make that much sense – and by the time I’d cooled down a few hours later, I went back to delete it. And I found that Digger had replied with –

  Challenge accepted.

  Well, whatever that meant. But still, I think – I really do – that even Digger would have enjoyed my next book. For months now I’d been contemplating it, planning it. I’d even had to re-jig parts of world history in order to accommodate its sheer size and scope. American virtually destroyed by a nuclear war with Iran; Europe now a communist super-state. Yeah, it was sure shaping up to be something. When I thought about that book, actually, I almost thought Digger had been right. Because compared to what I was next set to write and publish, my other books seemed ridiculously childish. This was gonna be it, Jack – my first number one.

  Basically, my new book would start with –

  9

  I abruptly stopped talking about this alleged ‘new book’ of mine. I gave several loud gasps, and banged on the lid of the coffin.

  ‘Hey!’ I shouted. ‘HEY! Turn the air back on!’

  There was silence; then the Voice came. For the first time he sounded irritated, confused.

  ‘The air is on,’ he said. ‘So tell me more about this –’

  ‘Oh please, oh shit, please don’t let me die here,’ I pleaded, tears starting to flow real easy. Didn’t have to do much faking there. ‘I can’t breathe; oh sweet Jesus, I can’t fucking breathe!’

  ‘The air’s on!’ returned the Voice, now real agitated. ‘Continue with what you were saying or – ’

  I hammered hard as I could on the inside of the coffin with my hands and feet. I screamed and shouted, begging for help – for mercy. Then slowly my blows got weaker, and my voice faded away. The last thing I said, almost in a whisper, was –

  ‘You son of a…’

  And that was it. Just silence and blackness left.

  ‘No,’ came the Voice, now kind of breathless and distressed. Gone entirely was the sort of mocking tone of before. ‘No no no – the story, and… You need to know who put you here, and why, before you die…’

  I know full-damn-well ‘who’ put me here and ‘why’, you dumb son of a bitch I thought to myself. But the Voice – or ‘Digger’, as I should call this psycho – hadn’t yet had the satisfaction of telling me all this himself. All he knew was that I’d apparently died thinking that someone I’d hurt in a barroom fight had been the cause of my demise. And he didn’t like that at all.

  Also, for whatever reason, I think Digger had been hoping I might say a bit more about this supposed new story of mine. Which, strangely enough, had had one hell of a build up right before I’d suddenly started screaming that the air supply had stopped…

  Kind of left things on a cliffhanger, as it were…

  Actually, I thought I’d blown it when I mentioned about the comment I’d made on Digger’s review of my book – and the comment Digger had then posted in reply. But I don’t think he had a real high opinion of my intellect, and I’d quickly blundered on like somehow I didn’t get any ‘link’ between the silly comment I’d made about how Digger would only like the story of me being in my grave and that comment he’d posted straight back: Challenge accepted.

  And I’d flattered him; stroked him just ever so slightly. Made out like I almost kind of agreed with what he’d said about the stories I’d self-published. I figured that would help my last, desperate plan just a little bit more.

  And now he thought I was dead or unconscious or something and that was causing the certified nut-ball immense mental distress. Good; that was the one card I had left to play. That he’d get so angry or upset that he’d…

  Doubt suddenly overwhelmed me and threatened to make me cry out in real, final despair. It was so, so quiet – what if he’d just turned off the speaker? Just shrugged and cut his losses, as it were, slightly confused about the air supply randomly cutting off but not really all that concerned? Like he’d had his sick bit of fun, but was mildly annoyed that it hadn’t lasted all the way right to the end… That is, when he’d finally planned to announce tha
t I’d told him all he wished to hear and so was now turning off the air, as he then laughed at my screams, and reminded me that I still had my knife if I wanted to end my own life just that little bit quicker…

  …I don’t know how long I was laying there for, thinking such thoughts while my ears all the time strained for any noise – from above. That was my one, solitary hope; my plan, you might say. Namely, that Digger would be so enraged by my premature suffocation that the son of a bitch would actually come and dig me up…

  Comeoncomeoncomeoncomeoncomeoncomeon…

  Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease…

  Wait… Yes, there was a faint, muffled noise from above! Oh, dear God –

  please! Tears streamed from my eyes, and I fought to control my breathing. It was the sound – still very faint – of something being repeatedly stuck into the ground. Yes – YES! Digger was living up to his name, and was wielding a spade for all he was worth.

  And when I got a hold of that piece of –

  Watch it now the very toughest, most resilient part of my character instructed the rest of me. It’s not over yet – you make the slightest bit of noise, and you’re done for. He’ll hear and know you’re shamming. He’ll fill your grave back in and go back to wherever he’s been sitting and laugh at your final screams. So you just lie nice and still like you’re real dead. Don’t even think any more than you need to. But then once that coffin lid gets lifted off, you just move as fast and as hard as you ever have in your life…

  OK, got it, the rest of me replied in confirmation.

  Darkness. The wmph of a spade being stuck in the earth, again and again. Slowly getting louder. The earth must still be loose from where he’d filled my grave in – however many hours before. Day or night up there above? No way of knowing. Please dear God I was soon to find out.

  Then I thought – supposing Digger had some sort of weapon on him? A gun, perhaps? I didn’t want to spring out of my coffin the moment the lid got opened, only for him to blast me back down again. Or perhaps cleave my skull open with that spade of his.