Burn Phone

by Thomas Malafarina

  Then Wilson remembered his wife Sarah. “Sarah! I have to call my wife Sarah and tell her. She will be thrilled with the news.”

  “Sorry Charles. No point in calling her, she’s dead.” Showalter said.

  Wilson felt as if a tire iron had struck him square in the chest. “What? What did you say?”

  “Your wife, Sarah. She’s dead. I had one of my creatures kill her this morning. Messy little scene it was.” Once again, Charles sat down in his chair with a thump. He looked across the desk at Edmondson / Drabzat who was making a throat slitting sign across his own neck.

  Within a few seconds, Wilson’s mind was filled with the images of his wife traveling down the road to mail him his phone and he was shown every detail of the horrible fear and subsequent pain she suffered before the beast finally killed her. Tears flowed from his eyes as he trembled, wishing his own heart would stop so he could lie down and die.

  “Oh Charles.” Showalter said, “Don’t take it so badly. It was something that had to be done. People like you and I must be free of the trappings of life such as wives and families. We need to be able to move through worlds unencumbered. You will thank me for this someday I am sure, but it will be a bit tough for a while. I understand that. But if it makes things any better, I should point out that there will be plenty of luscious minions for you eventually that can take whatever form you choose for your earthly pleasures, but to be honest, eventually they will not satisfy you as much as the lust for power.”

  “Sarah. My poor Sarah.” Wilson moaned, realizing that he had just been handed the greatest opportunity of his business life; one that was the pinnacle of professional achievement, while simultaneously losing the most important thing in his life, his one true love. As if a hole had opened up inside of him, Wilson felt as if the very essence of what made him who he really was, flowed out of him, leaving him a hollow, dead empty shell. If this were the tradeoff, then he had just made the worst deal of his miserable life.

  “Alright Charles, lets get on with this. There is no reason to waste time with such nonsense as mourning. There’s too much work to be done.” Showalter said. Wilson sat deep in his chair as if the seat cushion itself were pulling him inside. He stared at Showalter not knowing what might happen to him next and no longer caring.

  “Here is how this is going to work, Charles. In exactly five minutes, you will be taking control of this company and we will begin transforming Edmondson Systems into one of the largest Information Systems companies in the world. In less than five years you will have offices all around the world, and you will be in control of everything.”

  “But, but..” Charles stammered despondently, “Sarah, You.. ki..ki..killed Sarah, you bastard! I… I.. can’t… I … don’t care… I …won’t.”

  “Not a problem, Charles old boy. As I said, you will be as good as new in five minutes.”

  Wilson’s face filled with a rage greater than any he had ever felt in his entire life. He stood in front of his chair, hands clenched at his sides and started slowly walking deliberately toward, R. John Showalter.

  “Uh oh!” Drabzat said from inside of Edmondson’s body. “This isn’t going to be very pretty.”

  “Oh yes, Charles.” Showalter said nonchalantly, as if not even paying attention to the large looming figure of Charles Wilson, approaching him with obvious violent intent. He waved his hand casually and Charles froze in his tracks, unable to move.

  “There is one small thing I forgot to mention. Do you recall how I said that time over on the other side is completely irrelevant to time over here? Well, I forgot to mention that we have a ‘best practice’ procedure over on the other side for developing our future leaders and subordinates. As with your various branches of military service, we find it very effective to take our candidates and break them down. In essence, destroy their ego completely so that we can then start rebuilding them into the entities that we need and want them to be.”

  With that several long fleshy whipping tentacles flew from the steaming portal, wrapping around the lower part of Charles Wilson’s legs. He felt the flesh boiling beneath their grasp, melting and dripping like tallow from his ankles as the horrid tendrils burned through to his bones. He moaned in agony unable to let out a scream then collapsed to his knees.

  “You see Charles. Before you can properly learn to make others suffer, you need to learn about all the different ways that Hell has to make you suffer yourself.”

  Another long thin feeler shot out of the opening and wrapped itself around Wilson’s right wrist, pulling him closer to the opening.

  Drabzat sat quietly now in his Edmondson form, shaking his head side to side as if in commiseration, aware of what was in store for Wilson.

  “And the sort of important lessons that you will need to learn are going to take much, much suffering and will also take a very, very long time; perhaps the equivalent of thousands of earth years.”

  A final limb shot out and wrapped itself tightly around Wilson’s neck as the flesh of his throat began to bubble and blister. Hundreds of spider-like creature with human faces resembling John Showalter began to skitter down the carpet of undulating tentacles making their way to Wilson’s body, where they began to slowly, and methodically devour him as he was dragged ever closer to the opening.

  “So, as I said earlier. In about five minutes you will return to take your rightful place as leader of this company, but in the meantime there is a millennium of suffering for you to experience and learn.”

  All of the remaining tentacles converged on Wilson as one, encircling him, dragging him howling into the Hell fire and blackness of the abyss.

  Chapter 29

  Charles Wilson sat silently, unmoving, his eyes closed tightly. As was true of the countless times before, he was terrified to open them to discover what new horror, what new torture, what new pain might be waiting for him. He had lost track of how many times he had suffered and died over, and over, and over again; each time being reborn, only to once again undergo a more violent, more horrible and more unimaginable death then the last. In his wildest of imaginings, he had never fathomed the depth of revulsion and misery that existed on the other side.

  Charles had stopped counting after the first several hundred times that his body was battered, ripped to bits, his flesh systematically flayed and devoured while he suffered helpless in completely physical awareness, each of his thousands of nerve ending exposed and vulnerable to the agonizing molestations. He suspected that the torments that he suffered had lasted for what would be the equivalent of several thousand of Earth’s years. He had no true idea how long it had gone on, since there was no measurable meaning of ‘time’ in Hell. Likewise, he did not know how long it would continue. He was beyond wondering, beyond caring, he was simply enduring; not that he had any alternative.

  Moreover, he was forced to remember every single detail, every nuance, of every moment of every torturous event. Although some might have been considered much ‘worse’ than others, if such a comparison could actually exist; the ‘best’ or ‘lesser’ of these horrors were far worse than what he could have every possibly imagined; whereas, the worst of them were by far, beyond the intellectual understanding of any living human.

  Among the most ghastly, was one particular scenario, which Charles was forced to repeat, against his will, many thousand times. In this setting, he was forced to take the place of the demonic creature that killed his beloved Sarah. Permanently burned into Wilson’s consciousness were the details of the thousands of times that he had not only watched his sweet Sarah die, but had to actually be the creature that killed her. He recalled the terror in her eyes, and the agony she felt as he had to rip her to pieces and throw her broken body through the air, impaling her on that accursed tree branch. Wilson would have gladly volunteered to have his flesh torn from his body a million times rather than have to endure the anguish of being forced to kill his Sarah yet again.

  There was a time when he thought he might not be able to take an
y more of the suffering, and might just shut down; but doing so was never an option. There was no giving up, no shutting down because after every unimaginable death there was complete rebirth; there was always the next time with more pain, more anguish, more torture; never ending agony over and over and over and over again and again. Charles learned his lessons well and learned exactly what the word ‘eternity’ really meant.

  So here he was once again; waiting to open his eyes, waiting to see what horror was in store for him this time. What unimaginable little corner of Hell he would find him self in; what tortures he would have to endure next, and for how long. What new form of evil would be forced upon him this time, what demeaning sexual act, what inconceivable indignity? He knew there was no limit to what he could be made to suffer, because he had reached and passed his limit many thousands of times over and yet there would always be more.

  As he sat, eyes closed, he tried to take in the scents of his surroundings. It seemed somewhat familiar to Charles, not unpleasant on the surface but underneath, he could detect some foul aroma that he recalled from his childhood and yes, he recalled that odor again from that strange store where he first come in contact with the relic, the phone, thousands of lifetimes ago. That stench of death, old age and decay that had surrounded the old man in the store; the man that Charles later learned had been the demon Drabzat. That foul reek he had recalled from his own childhood that clung around his dying grandfather, now seemed to exist nearby as if taunting him once again.

  Charles tried to move and noticed that he was not able to do so. He seemed to be paralyzed, but nonetheless was not frightened or concerned. Compared to what he had been through during his time in Hell, a little paralysis might be considered a welcome relief. After all, paralyzed people could not feel things, and he certainly did not want to be able to feel a thing if he were going to experience yet another agonizing situation.

  “Charles? Are you in there?” Wilson heard a voice; a familiar voice that he recalled from the past, but in his confusion could not quite place. It was a voice from what seemed like several millennia ago. Then a face began to swim into his memory to accompany the voice, followed soon by a name as recognition took shape. The voice he heard was that of the creature that sent him into Hell; the voice of the man, R. John Showalter.

  Wilson slowly opened his eyes and found that he was back in the office of T. Martin Edmondson, CEO of Edmondson Systems. He still could not move, but nonetheless was happy to know that he was no longer on the other side. He could hear distant moaning, indicating that the portal to Hell was likely open somewhere behind him. He thought he could hear the frantic whipping of the tentacles and the skittering of the spider-like things. He could smell the sulfurous odor coming from the opening and could feel the heat radiating against his back.

  He forced his eyes downward to look at the desk calendar and noticed by the date, and the time on the desk clock, that it was still the morning of his eventful return to Pennsylvania, and that only a few minutes had passed. He recalled Showalter telling him about the temporal difference between earth time and time in Hell. Although he had been away for thousands of years of pain and torment, he was now right back in Edmondson’s office, just a few minutes from when he left. He could still not comprehend how he could have suffered and died thousands of thousands of times over, yet it was only now a few moments later then when he left to begin his ‘training’. He looked straight ahead and his eyes met those of R. John Showalter.

  “Welcome back Charles. I hope your stay was a pleasant one.” Showalter said, knowing full well exactly what sort of stay Wilson had experienced. “I hope your training was everything you expected and more. I feel like I haven’t see you in a thousand years.” He laughed knowingly.

  “Now that you have been properly indoctrinated into our little fold and you have gotten to see just how bad, bad can be, I think it is time that we get back to the business of building this company. I have taken the liberty of immobilizing you for a little while until your body acclimates itself back into the environment in which you currently reside. Plus I have some issues to take care of that should be making themselves known right about…….now.”

  With that, the squawk box on the top of Edmondson’s desk gave a squeal then Wilson heard Edmondson’s secretary Betty say. “Mr. Edmondson, sorry for breaking in on your meeting but I have a very important call for Charles from the Pennsylvania State Police. They want to speak to him immediately.” Charles was not sure what was going on at first, and then remembered that his wife, Sarah’s death had occurred that very morning.

  Showalter pressed the 'talk' button on the squawk box and said in a perfect imitation of T. Martin Edmondson, “Thanks Betty, dear. Will you be so kind as to transfer the call in to my phone?” Wilson could imagine Betty gushing over hearing the term ‘dear’ in Edmondson’s voice. If she only knew that the old man she was in love with had been a walking zombie for the past year.

  Next Showalter answered the phone in Wilson’s voice. “Charles Wilson speaking, how may I help you?” Showalter sat with the phone at his ear then in a panicky grief filled voice he shouted, “What?... Are you certain….Oh my God no! Not Sarah!...” Then he issued a garbled noise that sounded as if he were in physical distress and hung up the phone. With a wave of his arm, Showalter freed Wilson from his paralysis while explaining the final part of his strategy.

  “I am going to be leaving you now Charles. However, as I said, I want you to take your place in command of this company immediately. I will be back in contact with you shortly with further instructions. Remember your time on the other side and remember that I will be watching. Any attempt by you to do other than what I require will result in another special orientation session, if you get my meaning.” Showalter stood and strolled across the room, walking up into the still open portal to Hell and disappeared as the opening closed behind him.

  Wilson did not know what to do. He was still not completely oriented to his surroundings and was a bit confused. His muscles ached and he felt as if his bones were racked with pain as well. And there was that awful smell again; aged, foul, decaying.

  Suddenly the door to the office burst open and Betty followed by several office workers raced inside. “Oh My heavens no!” Betty cried. “Poor Charles. That poor man! The strain of learning about Sarah must have been too much for him.”

  Wilson looked at the woman as if she had lost her mind. What was she talking about? He was sitting right in front of her looking directly at her. Then he looked down on the floor next to the front of the desk and saw his own body laying prone on the floor, his skin ashen, and his lips blue. His hands appeared to be gnarled in a claw-like shape clutching at his chest. Charles could not understand what was happening. How could he be lying dead on the floor yet standing looking over the desk at his own dead body?

  “Oh. Mr. Edmondson. This is so tragic!” Betty said rushing toward Wilson, hugging him tightly with her withered scrawny arms and pressing her sagging breasts against his chest and her bony nose into the crook of his neck.” Wilson could feel Betty’s tears against the side of his face.

  Then he understood it all. As Showalter had promised, he was now the owner and CEO of Edmondson Systems. However, he now resided in the dead moldering body of T. Martin Edmondson. Somewhere deep in the darkest depths of Charles Wilson’s mind he cried a scream of anguish for the many mistakes he had made, knowing that his eternity of suffering had just begun.