Dear Diary--A Journal From Hell by Patrick Sean Lee (top 5 books to read txt) 📕

 We’re camped close to a jagged boulder.  I started a fire and Teresa is snug in my arms, asleep, now.  It’s quiet.

 Too quiet.

March 5

Oh holy-shit damned Diary,

 Jumping Jehosophat and Leapin’ Lizards!

 It wasn’t the devils who I should have been worried about.  Not those damned bats or brain-dead morons back in the town, either.

 It was rain!

 I’d just dozed off alongside Teresa.  Couldn’t help it, I was so tired. I fought it and fought it, but sheer exhaustion finally won out at last—the hike yesterday was grueling.  I don’t know how long I was in Nightmareland, but the rumbling brought me to.  Far away at first, like a hailstorm back on Earth bearing down on a city.  It grew louder.  I woke and looked beyond the rock, watching it as it approached from the far horizon.  Our bodyguards saw it, too, and took off lickety-split. Adios, creeps, I thought.

 The dark sky went totally black in the strange storm’s grasp, except for a fusillade of red, meteor-like streaks racing downward from the center of it.  The rain.  Only it wasn’t rain like I ever saw.  When the droplets struck the ground they burst, like miniature artillery shells.  Fire!

 I turned back to Teresa, yanked her to her feet, and dragged her toward the river.  She was beside herself with fear and shot a flurry of questions at me as she stumbled along, half-asleep, still.  All that I could say was, “Don’t let go of my hand, and DON’T stop to look back!”

 We dove into the greasy, black water, thinking it would be our salvation.  It wasn’t.  I said greasy water, and that’s about what it was.  Oily black water to be more precise.  The minute I tasted it I knew we were sunk.  When the rain arrived at the river, the whole thing would go up like a barrel of gasoline.

 “Swim!” I yelled. 

 And so we did, but it was no use.  Have you ever tried to swim in an ocean of syrupy goo?  I knew it wouldn’t be long before we were part of our first barbecue here.  I turned my head to her as she floundered about and I said, “Take a deep breath when the rain gets to the water.”  Glub.  “Then dive under with me and stay down as long as you can!”

 The fiery rain arrived at the water.  The water caught, and under we went.  I don’t know for how long.  A minute?  Two?  Three?  Teresa started up first, and I had no choice but to go along.  My lungs were bursting.  I wanted to pray, but I knew that was stupid.  Yet what do they say?  There are no atheists in foxholes? 

 I prayed.

 Lo and behold.  An answer!

 We came up right beside a tinny-looking boat, covered over with a huge roof of pocked and sagging metal that blocked the worst of the firestorm.  The little waif of a man who manned it grabbed Teresa’s hand first and tugged her aboard.  I was getting a pelting and a good back-scorching from the blazing river water, but I struggled in right after her.  Teresa was screaming, pounding on her singed hair there in the center of the boat, while I was forced to lay on my stomach so that the captain could extricate the blazing buckshot from my behind.  The fires were extinguished, finally, and a period of relative calm (tinctured with buttock distress) followed.

 Now we endeavor to rest—me on my stomach.  Safe again, I hope.

March 6

 This we discovered about the crusty old man as we waited out the horrible storm yesterday.

 His name is Nathaniel Watt, and he lived in England in the nineteenth century.  Nathaniel’s profession there was steamship builder.  Which makes a certain odd sense, given what he does here.  He claimed that unlike some of the characters found in novels like Great Expectations, or A Christmas Carol, he was an employer of high moral sensibilities, with a truly altruistic spirit.  His partner of many years, a certain Joshua Skuttlebee, had begun to force him out of the prospering business through various deceits, and in the end, Nathaniel murdered him when the plot came to light.  He was tried, found guilty, and then hanged.

 “What else could Saint Peter do but send me here?” he lamented as the vicious downpour passed slowly overhead.

 “Saint Peter?” Teresa exclaimed.  “What does he have to do with it?”

 Yes, what does he have to do with it?  A lot, I guess, as he’s the one who sentenced Teresa and me only a few days ago.  Some job.  The more I hear about Heaven, the less I like it.  Maybe the weather’s better there, but it’s my guess the same management runs it, and it’s tended by the same cruel, pissy overlords.

 We told him of our plan to find Lucifer, which he thought was high-minded, laughable, and foolish, but he wished us luck anyway, and pointed out a possible route across the endless field ahead of us.  The storm was miles and miles away by then, moving to encircle the fire at the center of Hell.

 “Take care not to…” he called out after we had gone some distance, but neither of us could make out the last of what he said.

 The hours passed uneventfully as we made our way across the plain. It seems this part of Hell is absolutely uninhabited—perhaps the landscape is too pleasant for these monsters.

 We’ve set down for the evening beneath a large tree resembling a Banyon.  Teresa has snuggled, again, inside my arms.

 I neither see nor sense any watchers.  I am almost happy.

 Good…yes, good evening.  

March 7

 Nothing much today.  Tall grass, gray skies.  Endless miles of walking.  No rain, thank…God.  Something very strange, however…instead of getting closer, the center of this place seems to be receding with every step.  I wonder why?

 Teresa has begun to chatter incessantly.  I’m getting to know all about her.  ALL about her. From her first squeal outside her mother’s womb, clear through every day till the dreary end of her life back on good old Earth where she did her abusive husband in, and then herself.  So that was her unforgiveable “sin”?  Thou shalt not kill.  Bullshit in her case.  Are those “commandments” immutable?  Chiseled in stone?  The thought makes me ill.  I still have no idea what I might have done to receive this sentence. I told her that.  She drew closer to me and kissed my cheek.

 I wish we just weren’t here in this prison…maybe we could actually…well…maybe not.

Goodnight, Diary.

March 8

More of the same today, except we both saw what looks like a town or a city of some sort up ahead.  I’m not certain whether to enter it or try to skirt around it.  Who knows what “lives” there?  We can’t afford to be sidetracked, or worse, but we are hungry.

 Teresa continues to chatter.  I must admit, I kind of like that.  She’s not particularly brilliant, but she is full of opinions on the weird flowers, the weird rain, the weird water; yes, the trees, and even the “why” of the height of the grass.  Everything.  Including Lucifer.

 She doesn’t want to go into the city.  I think I do.

 We’ll rest outside its walls and decide whether or not to go in tomorrow.  I wonder whatever became of our bad-tempered guardians?  Of any of the nasty bastards who oversee this place?

 Well,

Good night.

Oh. Teresa wants to add her thoughts to you, damned, dear, dumb Diary.  I say no.  Emphatically!

March 9

 Hmm…Diary,

 The drawbridge lowered “this morning”, and so I fretted and fumed and urged Teresa to suck it up and accompany me into the city.  We entered, and to my surprise…my unending shock...

it WAS a real city, with cobblestoned streets, what seemed to be very well-maintained multi-story row houses, trees in abundance—though they are of a different sort than any I’ve ever seen—and a grand park far in the distance.

People, too. Naked, yes, like us (which comforted Teresa), but they didn’t appear to be filled with dread, nor were they babbling like those idiots back in the dump we left several days ago. We approached the first, a middle-aged woman with ebony hair and a pleasing enough face, and inquired about this city, so out-of-sorts, lying here in Hell—and many other