Dear Diary--A Journal From Hell, Patrick Sean Lee [best novels to read for beginners TXT] 📗

Day One

 

Dear Diary,

 He’s watching me.  He beats me when I cross his path.  I’m so damned depressed.

 I hate this guy already.  Hate this place, too.  How in the name of…whatever…did I wind up down here?  It doesn’t make any sense.  I always thought I was a decent enough soul…or, you know.  Person.

 Oh, it’s a nightmare. I tell you, this place sucks! It’s dark and dreary, except for the glow of the fire way off in the distance.  Glad I’m not there.  Yet, at least. 

 When I got here two days ago—I guess it was about two.  Hell, who can say?  There’s no sun to rise or set.  No stars.  No clocks.  Nothing.  Just miles and miles and miles of the same dreary, gray, narrow, crowded neighborhoods, with tons of ratty-looking people wandering around.  Like me.  In a daze, asking the same stupid questions. “What the hell is going on?  Why me?”  Well, how should I know?  Anyway, when I got here one of them—that ugly stinking demon—met me.  Yes, he had a pitchfork, and yes, he stuck me with it.  No, he doesn’t have horns, but he has a tail.  He met me, and after he punched me and then stuck me in the butt with that trident-looking thing, told me I was in for a “real good time.”  For the rest of eternity.

 Eternity?  Somebody’s joking!  Jesus...Ooof!  That one hurt.  Damn, I can’t get stuck here for that long.  There’s been some mistake.  I’m going to find out what it was before they decide to move me on down toward that fire a million miles away.  I’ll figure it out if it’s the last thing I do, and I’m getting out of here.  And before I leave, I’m going to kick that sonofabitch right between his disgusting legs.  Then stab him with that pitchfork!

 A thought…I don’t know for sure who runs this place—Lucifer, I guess—but I’m going to find him.  They wouldn’t tell me up there why I was being sent down here.  Just said, “Take a hike, Terence.”  Okay, I don’t want to go back there since they seem to hate me, but I’m sure not staying here.  Must be someplace else between the two where I can spend eternity.  I’ll find this Lucifer guy and demand an answer.  That’s what I’m going to do.  I’m giving myself twenty-nine more days to get it done.

 I wonder how long that is?

 Guess that’s all for tonight.  Or today.  Or whenever this is.

 Goodnight dear Diary. 

Dear Diary.  What a joke!

 

I Need a Mattress!

Next entry (because I have NO idea what day it is).

 Damned Diary,

 Yes, I like that better.

 Maybe the worst thing about this place—besides the constant hot drizzle, the bleak sky, the madmen wandering around talking to their hands or a stain on the corner of one of these hovels we’ve been pushed into, the things that look like bats that swoop in and dig at your head when you’re least expecting it, the droves of bad-tempered guards, the complete absence of toilets or sinks or mirrors, the fire pits inside our quarters (in the name of all that’s holy—Ouch!  All that’s unholy, what would anyone in their right mind need heat down here for?), the feeling of dread in the air that’s like breathing used motor oil.  Besides those things, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg, figuratively speaking, the worst thing is there are no stores!  Funny that should strike me as something I’d miss.  But I want a bed!  Or a mattress at least.  Not necessarily a Sleep Number, just a mattress and maybe a sheet.  But then, if I could find a store, how would I buy anything?  There’s no such animal as money here.  Not that I know of, anyway.  Barter?  That’s a spooky thought.  God Almigh…  WHOOOA!

 He missed me.  Gotta’ run, damned Diary…be back later.  I hope.

 Okay.  Lost him.  Where was I?  Oh yes, a bed.

 This thing they call a bed.  I guess it’s standard issue; not sure.  I’ll have to do some “visiting” to find out.  The bed is already getting to me.  It’s hard as a rock.  Which makes sense because that’s exactly what it is.  A slab of rock. 

 Dorothy, you ain’t in Kansas anymore. 

 But, if there was a store here, even a Salvation…Ouch! Army, I could probably find a mattress.  I’d steal it.  My aching back.

 I’m going to take a walk tomorrow.  I’d like to check out some of my neighbors; see if any of them aren’t raving maniacs.  See if any of them have mattresses, or bake cookies.  Find out where the road is that’ll take me to old Lucifer.

 Good…Ow!  Lay off!

Night

A Friend?

March 3

 

Damned Diary,

 I need a point of reference, so this is officially the end of March 3rd  for me, although for all I know it could be New Year’s Day.  I’m getting organized; in the groove.  The more I get it together and stay busy, the less the despair seems to fester inside me.  Today was a good case in point.

 I got up “this morning”  (my back was killing me).  I skipped my shower—because there isn’t one here—skipped the breakfast that creep had brought in and tossed onto the rock table across the room by the fire pit.  It looked like a piece of barbecued shit anyway, and smelled worse.  Went outside to scout out the quaint little village I live in, and there they were.  About two hundred zombies, like the dead people in a John Carpenter movie.  I didn’t think they’d hurt me, although I was a little tentative in approaching them at first, but soon enough that fear was driven off.  They were simply stumbling around with absolutely blank eyes.  I could have been Saint…whoops!  Careful, careful.  The guy from up there who keeps the books, come down to spring us all from jail, and none of them would have noticed, I’m certain.

 So…I started off on my little reconnaissance trip while they went on babbling to themselves and running into one another.  Soon enough I came across a woman about my age.  I mean, I think she is.  She has blond hair, and a body that isn’t all blackened and bruised yet.  There she was, standing alone outside a doorway, trembling, her arms covering her breasts—though I don’t know why.  None of these idiots seems to be interested in sex; only rambling on in their own private, neurotic worlds.  Not so with the jail keepers, though.  A couple of them were scratching and pawing at her, and I could see that she was scared out of her wits.  I ran up to her and kicked the one that was on his hands and knees in front of her, right in his scrawny butt.  It surprised the hell out of me when both of them got this shocked look on their faces, and then hightailed it down the street, screeching and cursing!

 She went back into the house immediately, and I followed her.  I felt sure she wasn’t nuts like the rest of them, but if she remained here for too much longer she would be.

 I found her all curled up in the corner beside her, yes, bed.  One just like mine.  I took the advantage.

 “It’s okay.  I don’t want to hurt you.  You can get up,” I said.  I put my hand out.

 Well, that’s how it all started.  She’s a new arrival, too, and after she calmed down much later, after our nervous introductions, we decided to go back out and look for a mattress store together.

 Outside, I confided to Teresa that once I got a decent night’s sleep or two, I was headed downhill toward the center of hell, to find Lucifer and demand I be allowed to leave.  She has a very pretty face for a damned girl—or I should say a girl who is damned—and she smiled at the idea; asked if she could tag along.  Staying here all by herself was a frightening proposition, she admitted.

 Sure, why not?  The company would be nice.

 We never did find a mattress store, but I don’t think I’ll mind so much tonight.

 Yes, Goodnight.

 Finally.

We're Off To Find Him

March 4

 

Dear damned Diary,

 Teresa and I left shortly after daybreak this morning.  Okay, when I woke her.  She was crazy to find a rag or a big leaf—anything to cover herself with.  I looked down at myself, then back at her and smiled.  “Who gives a good damn?” I laughed at her modesty.  “We’re all in the same boat, besides, the only people who seem to be interested in you are the goons.  I’ll see if I can’t find a club or something to protect you with.  Just stick close to me,” I told her.

 “But who’s to say that down there the damned are the same as they are here?” she asked.

 “I guess I’ll find out…you can stay here if you like.”

 She came right along.

 Her personal demon and mine have shadowed us.  Twenty paces or thereabouts behind us, but they’re here.  I have no idea if they’ll try to stop us somewhere up ahead, or just let us go deeper, laughing those guttural laughs at our stupidity for leaving the relative paradise of our old homes for whatever horrors await us down there.

 The landscape is beginning to change.  There’s a river ahead of us, dark and foreboding.  A wide, angry snake of steaming black that coils in from our left around a rise in the rocky hills.  It widens directly in front of us, one or two hundred yards away, onto a plain.  If I didn’t know better I’d say there is grass on the