Everything was black. There was silence. And then a tunnel of red and orange light appeared in front of me and solid ground below my feet. I started walking on this rocky, dirt pathway towards the source of the light at the end of the tunnel.
Up ahead I could see a dense fog clouding my view. I could make out within it the silhouettes of two figures in the distance also walking. As I got closer I noticed that each of them was carrying a bag. Then I realized that I too was carrying a bag. I examined it. It was burlap and tied closed with a rope. I didn’t care what was in it. I just had this urge to keep walking lest the dark return.
Soon I came upon boulders and rock facings on either side of me, then a strange landscape faded into view at the end of the tunnel. There were barren mountains in the distance and cliffsides. Everything was burning. I thought for a minute that I was in a forest fire. In the distance the sound of people screaming and moaning in pain created a disturbing melody.
When I arrived at the end of the tunnel I saw a ghastly sight. The two men had stopped walking and were waiting at a small stone altar. It was decorated with sculpted skulls and screaming faces.
Standing on the other side of the altar facing them was what can only be described as the decaying corpse of a demon. It had curved, yellowed horns and claws and a tail, but it’s maroon colored face and body were withered, wrinkled, and rotting.
It looked over a page in a thick old book that it had laid out on the altar and ran its finger across the browning parchment. Then it focused on the face of the first man with its solid bulbous pine green eyes.
Then it spoke in a deep gravelly voice. “You’re here for murder according to this. But if your death was worse than your crime then your life will be restored. Tell me your story and then place your offering on the altar so I can judge your rank.”
The man explained that he was one of the owners of a wax museum. The museum had figures of all the most famous killers, historical figures, and characters from literature. It also had a torture chamber with all the familiar and traditional devices on display.
Business was good and so he had married and was looking forward to starting a family. Then one day, one of his employees told him that his wife was having an affair with one of his business partners. He didn’t believe it at first so he secretly followed his wife whenever she left the house. One night she had told him she was going to the grocery store and instead she went to the wax museum.
It was long after closing time and there should have been no one else in the building. However, in the parking lot along with his wife’s car he found the car of one of his business partners. There was no mistaking it. This particular partner had a very rare car that he had to have imported and it had a bumper sticker on the back for the museum.
He became enraged. After all he’d done for his partners and all he’d done for his wife. He gave her a home and a good life and he gave his business partner a career. And this is how they repay him?
The man said he went inside the museum to confront them. Once inside, he found the man in the office but couldn’t find his wife anywhere. “Where is she?” he demanded.
His business partner claimed he didn’t know what he was talking about and said that he had just come to the museum to finish up some paperwork that he hadn’t had time to complete. The man flew into a rage and grabbed his partner by the front of his shirt, shouting that he had followed her there and that her car was in the parking lot. Still he would not confess.
So the man drug his business partner into the torture chamber of the wax museum and began a medieval interrogation. First he put the man on the stretcher. After knocking the wax figure off the table to the floor, he bound his partners hands to the holds at the head of the table and then bound his feet to the footholds at the other end. “You still won’t tell me where she is?” he shouted.
His business partner gazed at him in confusion and pled. “I swear to you I haven’t seen her. I’ve never even been in the same room alone with her.”
“Liar!” the man screamed as he turned the wheel on the device, pulling the man’s body in two directions at once. His business partner let out a blood curdling wail but he did not change his story.
Next, the man put him on the rack and proceeded to whip his bare back until the streaks from the lashings bled. Yet still his partner insisted that he was not having an affair with his wife.
Frustrated and insane with rage, the man cleared a wax figure off of the guillotine and tied his partner down face up onto it’s terrible plank. He told his partner that he’d had enough. If he didn’t confess then he’d drop the blade. His partner was bawling like a child yet continued to maintain his innocence.
Then in a single moment the man flipped the switch and the blade fell, slamming like a hammer into the oak stop below his partners neck. The head rolled back and dropped like a rock, swallowed by the wicker basket below.
At that very instant he felt strange himself for some reason and everything went black. He told the demon he had no idea how he died and then he opened the burlap sack he was carrying and reached inside. He pulled out the head of his business partner and placed it on the altar.
The demon looked it over and then fixed his gaze on the man’s face. “Your offering is acceptable but unfortunately for you, your crime was far worse than your death. You will live in the cavern of tears where stalactites will occasionally fall down onto your body, piercing it over and over, yet never will your suffering be relieved by death. The demon pointed off to its right with its arm extended and the man walked in that direction out of sight.
The second man moved forward as the demon flipped through his book. The creature glared up at the man suddenly and began its own interrogation. “What about you? Explain the circumstances of your crime and death.”
This man said that he had been stealing money from his employer to pay a hitman whom he had hired to kill his wife. He’d paid him already and the deed had been done, but the hitman was demanding more money.
He was supposed to meet him in the Romeo and Juliet room in the wax museum to give him the final payment. He said he had taken it from the till already and was busy altering the invoices and ledgers to hide his theft when he heard something. Thinking the hitman had come early, he opened the door to his office. Only it wasn’t the hitman, it was one of his business partners who immediately started accusing him of having an affair with his wife.
He tried to tell him that it wasn’t true but his partner wouldn’t listen. Then he was forced into the torture chamber of the wax museum and mercilessly tortured by his business partner.
A moment before the guillotine blade fell and removed his head, he got one of his hands free, reached over to his right, and grabbed a double headed battle axe off the wall next to him. Then as the blade dropped, he threw the axe with all his might at his business partner.
The last thing he remembers seeing as his head toppled over was the axe slicing his partners head clean off and then continuing through the air and into the adjoining room: the Romeo and Juliet bedroom display.
The second man then opened his bag and removed the head of the first man and placed it on the altar.
The demon examined the head and then announced its ruling. “The offering is sufficient, however even though your death was horrific, your wife was a woman of great character and compassion. Her death was not only a tragedy but it also prevented her from saving the lives of dozens of children in the future which she would have done through her charity work had she lived. So you must stay here and live in the pit of oil where hot fluid will pour onto your flesh and burn it with everlasting agony.”
The demon pointed off to its left and the man walked in that direction and disappeared into the dense fog.
Finally I stepped forward and opened the burlap sack I was carrying. I pulled out a head and placed it on the altar. It was my own head.
The demon read through some lines in his leather bound book and then looked up at me. “Your death was certainly worse than your crime. You may go back to earth to live out the rest of your life. But first tell me, what happened to you?”
“Well,” I said with a hint of shame, “I was making love to my boss’ wife in the wax museum when… “