The Journal of Martin Delver

This is long, but only makes sense when read as a whole. Take your time.

My name is Martin Delver. I’m standing alone in the dark right now. You might wonder why I don’t sit and rest while I write this, but you will understand in time. Time is a funny thing, but again I am getting ahead of myself. I can hear strange noises in the distance that I would rather not think about right now, they bring back too many memories and force my fear to the future. I’m writing this journal to recount my experiences over the past couple of weeks. I know I do not have long to live, but you would not understand yet. If I were to tell you in a few sentences all that has happened to me you would think me insane. I never asked for this you know. Well, actually I guess I did in a way. I’ve been told all my life about these things, and at last here I am. In the back of my mind I guess I’ve always known this would happen but you would not understand now. The only way you will ever understand is if I start from the beginning.

I woke up in the dark on my back. Thinking I was at home and in my bed I sat up to turn on the light. I bumped my head on something jagged and hard not three inches over my nose. I could feel the sting of blood in my right eye. Have you ever had an itch that you couldn’t scratch? That’s exactly what this felt like, coupled with the pain in my head. Slowly I reached around my body in all directions as best as I could. I found nothing but cold hard rock by my side and an old stale smell in my nose. I flailed around trying franticly to grasp something of the familiar, but only found that I was trapped in my stone prison.

I’ve never liked small spaces much. When I was a child I had the unfortunate experience of being locked in a tool shed by some neighborhood bullies. I spent hours trapped in there until my older brother heard me screaming for help and freed me. My childhood was full of that stuff.

I forced myself to calm down and held my panic at bay for at least a little while. There was rock on all sides of my head, around my arms, under me and over me. I wiggled my feet and felt no rock. I slid down slowly and met no opposition. I must have slid myself forward thirty feet or more on my back, which hurt a lot, but I knew it was my ticket to safety; to what I assumed was fresh air.

The tunnel ended abruptly after the initial thirty or forty odd feet I crawled. My upper body remained still lodged in the tunnel while my feet and legs I let dangle in what appeared to be open space. I could feel no ground under my feet now and as I waved my legs in every direction they came in contact with nothing. This is one of the more awkward positions I’ve ever been in and you can imagine how difficult it was to get out of it. I lay on my back with my head and chest still in the hole while my legs stuck out over the edge of the exit. The weight of my upper body was just enough to keep me lying on my back. If I tried to crawl out any further the weight of my legs and pelvis would slip down and out while my face would slide up into and across the stone ceiling. Gravity had never felt such enmity.

Another more terrible possibility occurred to me. I was obviously in some sort of cave, so if I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet there might not be any for a long way down. I laid half out of my hole for at least an hour. If I jumped out I could fall to my death, but I could not sit in that position forever. My legs were already falling asleep from being held at a right angle to my body for so long.

I had so much to lose though. You can not appreciate what it is I have yet. I will tell you more about myself in time, but even after I do you will never be truly fit for interpretation.

I decided to jump. With any luck at all I would be wrong about the long drop, though my new thought of sharp objects below was not comforting either. I just hoped that the drop, if there was one, was really long so I didn’t just break my leg and end up crawling around in agony for a week or two.

I inched as close as I could to the edge of the hole without falling out. Carefully, I placed my hands in such a position that when I pushed myself out of the hole with an arching of my back I could catch the edge of the ceiling and protect my face and possibly push off from the wall once my arms were free. I shot myself from the hole, my head just missing the rock above me. I fell four feet and landed on my lower back. I might as well have broken my leg; in fact I think the pain would have been more bearable than breaking my tailbone. After passing a fit of swearing I rolled over slowly and tried to stand up. Amazingly the pain subsided for the most part. I have heard that when you have a broken tailbone it only really hurts when you sit on it, otherwise it’s just a dull pain that lasts several months; there is no way to put a cast on it.

I found myself in a decent size cavern probably forty feet by thirty feet. There were hundreds of tunnels like the one I had just crawled out of that lined the walls, almost like a honeycomb dome. There was no source of light that I could pinpoint, but still there seemed to be a low grey light everywhere I looked. A single huge entrance seemed to be the only way out of the room; I could feel the cold air coming from beyond it.

I waddled slowly out through the natural archway and saw and felt the impossible. The cavern was huge. It stretched several football fields and its ceiling reminded me of the Roman Circus Maximus tipped upside down. It was frosted with ice and snow. I could feel the fresh powder crunching under my shoes just as I could feel my reasoning being crunched bit by bit in the teeth of some invisible beast determined to maul my senses.

I wrapped my arms around myself to keep out the bitter chill that had just come over me, mostly because such a sight as snow in a cave did not make sense. There must have been two feet of the stuff in every direction I looked. The stalactites resembled icicles more than they seemed made from rock.

I trudged forward noticing icy stalagmites poking up from the ground daring me to slip and let them catch me.

A warm feeling and an orange light visited upon the side of my leg from down in a narrow crevice in the cave floor. Orange light flooded my face and dry heat sucked the moisture from the surfaces of my eyes as I peered into the crack to discover what could cause this curiosity.

I dropped a small rock into the crevasse and watched as it made contact, with what now appeared to be a viscous liquid, and sank slowly down to the depths. Lava just didn’t fit in with the rest of this cavern. Ice plagued this place like rats in old London and survived the dense liquid rock in between? It was a contradiction at a glance. Further more the fact I was here, wherever here was, did not hold to reason. I went to sleep in my own bed the night before on December tenth.

Injured as I was, I cleared a small space of snow with my feet and lay carefully next to a small pool of magma to rest. I was tired from my decent from the tunnel and the heat from the magma calmed what was left of my nerves. I needed some time to think. This place made no sense. Clouds could not come inside a cave to sprinkle down snow, not even a cave this large. Besides the fact there were no clouds at all, the-snow-that-should-not-be came right up to the edge of the magma unmelted. I pinched the snow between my fingers and watched it fall to the ground still frozen as if the stubborn will of this place kept it that way, always the same, conserved and untouched. It was the coldest snow I have ever touched. Each flake felt like scalding water on my skin. Was the snow actually white hot metal bits? I didn’t know and could not know if I wanted to. That angered me. I kept asking myself how I got here, wherever here was, and what everything meant.

The shadows from the flames in the magma danced like imps across the cave walls, tripping over themselves and then falling back to the fire where they came from. If only I could do that I had said to myself, if only this is some sort of elaborate dance that my brain is doing across the walls of my skull as I sleep.

The side of me that touched the cave floor was numb because of the cold and the rest of me was only slightly warmer because of the wind. Wind in this cave was the only thing that in fact made perfect sense when I thought about it. The hot air rising from the magma and the cold air settling made for very strong air currents.

I was tired and wanted to sleep but I didn’t dare to. I’ve heard how quickly hypothermia can sneak up upon unwary victims in the cold. If I fell asleep here I might never wake up.

Keeping moving seemed like the best strategy. I stood slowly, careful not to twist in the wrong way that would put pressure on my tailbone. I hobbled along following the air currents, kicking the snow away from me as I walked. I saw more of the same on my initial expedition. Ice and snow littered the land and in between I would occasionally find a fire bath to warm myself beside.

As odd as it might seem this contradiction was the reason I was alive. If these caverns were filled with just frost and ice then I would surely have frozen by then. On the contrary if I was unfortunate enough to be rowing through the Styx, both the ferryman and I would be tipped into its depths due to my inability to sit.

This was some other hell though, neither the lower nor lowest of Dante’s hells, but something all together different. I was sure I would find no giant man half buried in the ice around the next corner. What I did find were footprints, three-toed footprints that were lightly stamped in a line across the snow.

When I was a child I remember my family went on a camping trip to New England one summer. Early one morning I had come out of my tent before my parents were awake. I was too excited to sleep. I had never been around so many trees in my life and it all seemed like a grand adventure. I had walked along a small path in the brisk morning air and found a set of large footprints that led off into the woods. It would be so exciting to see where they went I had thought to myself. I never even considered what might have made them. I followed them for about ten minutes until I came upon a large depression in the ground at the bottom of a hill where the grass stopped growing. The depression turned out to be the entrance to a mother black bears den. I’d never seen a bear up close before, but instinct and the bears bared teeth told me all I needed to know.

Like any normal human, I decided to use my vastly superior intellect to do what I should have in the first place, simply run away. It’s a wonder I hadn’t died that day. I would have, but as I ran a loud shot quickly met by another and another cracked from someplace behind me. I looked back while I was still running, a potentially fatal mistake, but in this case only painful. I was knocked unconscious by a tree I ran into, or so I was told by the hunter who rescued me. I doubt he was lying because I could feel the truth imprinted on the side of my face. He brought me back to my parents and told them the story. They were relieved beyond words and asked how they could repay him, to which he replied that keeping quiet about the bear was enough thanks. He poached his bear and I kept my life. A decent arrangement if I may say so myself.

I decided to follow the footprints in the snow after much debate. I was hungry and needed food. The prints looked to be ten times smaller than a bears anyway. I crunched through the snow slowly, stopping every once in a while to warm myself by a magma pool. The two lights, one from fire and the other grey from nothing and everything, seemed to play tricks with the eyes. I imagined more than once that the shadows were living creatures come to eat me and carry away my carcass.

My imagination has always been great though. As a child the drab and uniform suburbs forced me to use my head to create my own interesting scenarios. One day I would be an explorer of earth, the next of sea, and the next of space. Later on in life I used my talent to get into trouble and most of the time to get out of it too. For example I had a weekend job when I was in high school. Stocking shelves at Marie’s Market which was a corner store in the city.

My boss was Marie, the person who the store was named for, and she earned my hatred every time I came to work. Her round toad face greeted me every day with the same “it’s so good of you to be here, now get to work before I dock your pay again” type of smile. Nothing I ever did was ever satisfactory. Every little thing I did was made into a huge issue that took several minutes to discuss every time, with little ever coming out of it than new orders for more work and occasionally loss of money.

There was this other guy, Mike, who worked there too and was Marie’s little pet. Mike looked very similar to me and hated me as much. He always wore this stupid Miami Dolphins hat too, as if they ever had a chance of winning.

One day I had had enough and decided to even the score. I poured a mixture of milk and vinegar in my boss’ shoes and stole some money from the register. Then I went to the bathroom, plugged the sink with a rag, and turned on the water. I did all of this while wearing Mikes hat which I had hid earlier in the day and waited for him to take his brake. Seeing as we were similarly sized and built, the disguise looked convincing enough when viewed on a six inch black and white grainy security monitor at the end of the week. Mike was fired the following weekend he came in to work, much to his surprise. The water damage I had caused was not that bad because there was a drain in the bottom of the bathroom floor I had left unplugged purposely. My boss’ feet stank enough too. I had my revenge and quit shortly after when I found a much better paying job. To my satisfaction the store closed down in later years, but I will tell you of that in time.

In the distance I began to hear voices, or what sounded like voices echoing through the tunnel. As I crept closer it became clear the voices were in a language I had never heard before, nor do I want to again. I saw two tall hunch backed figures standing by an enormous lake of fire. The amount of light and heat emanating from the lake made it all but impossible to come any closer. The creatures were bipedal and stood what I guessed to be twelve feet tall. They had long necks like snakes that drooped forward down from their high shoulders to the middle of their chests. At last there were the heads with their enormous curved scythes for beaks. Without traditional knees these creatures seemed to be able to propel themselves forward quickly, using their reversed knees to their advantage. Their slender bodies appeared powerfully built but still lightly made for speed. Whatever had made the tracks I followed was now lying dead at the feet of the two snake birds. Their tongues flicked in and out of their bony sheaths to taste the feast. One then lifted its head to sample the air, as if its meal lacked the substantial flavor it desired.

They stopped suddenly, accompanied by a few of the slithering words of their language, and turned my way as if to say, “exotic prey, how enticing.”

Fear leaped up inside me like great gouts of flame from the hearth to the kettle, my head. It spread across my limbs in shocking tenacity to burst from the tips of my fingers and melt the frost that bit at them. The fear crawled and scratched through my chest, thumping at its cage. There was no air, no sound, just a still, empty feeling inside, out. I could feel the void where my heart once beat so steadily. The veins in my arms and legs strained as if clogged with the nightmare that now stared so intensely into my waking eyes.

The creatures prepared to lunge toward me and all I could do is remain and restrain the overpowering urge to break apart and join the flaked ice around me. The cold rimed the obsidian eyes giving them a mirror like quality; in them I saw myself.

We three sprung in unison, two forward and one back, back to where I did not know. My heart and legs stumbled through the snow in frantic discord. I plowed forward sprinting mindlessly, never looking back. The bones and muscles on every part of my body caught fire and quickly turned to lead held together by ligaments, as if some mad alchemist had found in my body a stash of gold. I could feel the snow the creatures kicked up falling and melting on my neck. Each muscle felt sick and diseased. My fingernails dripped blood from clawing my way around the corners of the tunnels. I thought I heard from somewhere far off a crack. I kept running not caring what else was happening around me. The cracks came closer and I carelessly looked back to witness what I believed to be my end.

Instead all I remember is finding myself immediately lying down on my side covered in dried blood, staring strait into two unblinking glassy black eyes. I recoiled and kicked myself back toward the cave wall which I hit with enough force to send me cursing forward from broken bone, to forearms. I writhed in the snow for the next few minutes not caring what style my death chose as long as it came quickly. The pain passed eventually and upon coming to my senses I witnessed the goriest scene that I or anyone I have ever known has ever seen, something Hannibal Lecter would have envied as a work of art.

Protruding from the ground directly behind me was a series of massive sheets of ice in rows of sharp hedges and cruelly jagged edges. Red pinstripes adorned each frozen face whose white backs were draped liberally with red lace. Steam rose from the snow and was ripped away by the breeze as the still warm entrails cooled. The lifeless eyes of one of the snake-birds gazed back at me with the same heartless stare, its head now cleverly perched upon a particularly jagged icicle. Such a spineless creature could not hope to feed itself, at least not with me, for it hadn’t the guts to hunt me a second time. In fact I imagined it was getting cold feet already, as those were half buried, severed in the snow just over two yards away. It just couldn’t stomach a second defeat. Four small forearms dangled from contorted torsos, the legs of which all but one lay on the other side of me. Fully six feet long, each leg found its own unique resting place. The thick leathery skin that covered the whole of their bodies, now sliced, slashed, and severed, attested to the danger the ice sheets presented.

Why had this ice presented itself in the first place, and why so directly behind me? This worried me more than ever. Not that I don’t appreciate dumb luck, but something as unnatural as this did not sit well with me. It was as if something put that ice there for a reason. Was I a victim superior to my assailant’s devices, or was I a favored toy? Whether mouse or rag doll or just a slowly deteriorating mind, I knew one thing; I had to get out of here. I needed my strength to do that though, and had spent that keeping the only thing more valuable, my life.

As quickly as hunger had left me it returned again. The smell of raw meat filled the air and seemed appetizing. Luckily it could be cooked; I was not yet so desperate as to eat it raw. With some difficulty I freed a long, thin stalactite from a low part of the ceiling near the wall and stuck a portion of the meat on it. Fire was one readily available necessity. The meat was tasteless and tough but it was edible under these circumstances. With any luck it contained some amount of nutrition which I would need every ounce of if I was going to make any attempt of getting out of here successful.

Growing up my family was very middle class, about as middle class as you can get. We lived in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. My childhood as you may have gathered already was not typical, seeing as I was the constant target of bullies. I had a very active imagination when I was young, and I’m sure that is what led to my outcast status. My older brother, Jim Delver, was my body guard for most of my early years. He was always the strong and fast one, needless to say I was not. If I was ever threatened in any way I could always tell him and he would make sure I was never touched in any way save an apologetic handshake.

There were times when he could not be there for me though. During those hours I had to either stay home or use my great creativity to stay out of Paine’s way. No, that is not a figure of speech; Paine was the last name of the leader of a group of seven and eight year old bullies who patrolled the cul de sac where I lived. At the age of seven, myself, I was terrified of Paine’s gang. That incident with the tool shed I mentioned earlier was their doing.

Simply walking to a nearby friend’s house was hard enough. I would wear a coat with a hood to disguise my identity and I only risked walking openly on the sidewalks when I had to. Most of the time I would cut through peoples yards, but that left me open to ambush so I had to learn a thing or two to make sure nothing would happen to me.

None of Paine’s lackeys would touch me when they thought my brother was around, so I brought a walkie-talkie with me and pretended to be talking to him whenever I was out. Eventually Paine figured this out and I had to ditch that idea for a more solid one.

I got my parents to buy me rollerblades and learned to skate with the help of my brother. None of Paine’s gang could catch me, that was until a few of them started riding bikes and using skates too.

It was like this all throughout my childhood, back and forth. I would get better armor so they would get a better weapon. That was before we moved to the city though.

It must have been three days since I’d slept and I was exhausted. Truth be told I have no idea how long I was awake. There was no clock, no sun, and no stars. Walking seemed like the best option once again, I could not sleep in the snow anyway, I would freeze to death.

At least an hour into my walk I could feel myself wobbling each step I took. My eyes remained half closed or more always, blurring my vision. I ambled aimlessly through the blue and red frost and rock forest. The lights mingled and made more of the snake-birds appear at the corners of my eyes occasionally accompanied by more terrible creatures. The world was dead to me and even the horrible cold was now gone. My ears rang as my muscles wrung, tight and erratic. I can best describe this experience as a school of fish with an insane leader, organized madness.

As for me, my thoughts, and my body, we stumbled toward the dark room we saw in the distance. What lay beyond it, our body did not care. Our body dragged the other two of us to what it thought was warmth and rest, though it was incapable of thinking.

Our mind had better ideas as to what the darkness in the room might be, and none of them sounded good to it, but it could not make our body understand. Our uncomprehending flesh bag could not be dealt with through mere reason. It was such a horrible thing for our mind to feel, helpless and incapable of using its abilities to save itself, we never want to feel it again.

We felt a certain strong urging from somewhere above suddenly, like a noiseless pulsing sound. Our body looked up above our mind as our mind did the same, we saw our personality. Our personality told our mind that everything would be all right, and that nothing bad would come of going into the dark room. Our mind didn’t believe this but that was expected. Reason halts the advance of the heart. Nothing could seize our body’s movement however. Personality whispered to our body that it would be able to rest inside that room, that it would be safe. Our mind could only watch what instinct told us was wrong; our mind could only hold intuition accountable.

Personality kicked our body head first through the door. Rationale had escaped us, long ago murdered by his jealous elder brother necessity. The three of us together entered the room and fell to the ground with eyes at last closed.

I awoke face down on a hard stone floor which I noticed was free of snow. I stood up gently so as not to put more pressure than I had to on my tailbone. I felt well rested and at odds with the idea that I had survived sleep in these caves. This cavern was different from any other of the many caverns and tunnels I had walked through up to this point. It was most like the honeycomb dome in that it was neither cold nor hot and contained neither ice nor flame. This simple cloister it seems I was fated to find. I could feel a cold draft coming from the single low entrance and the simplicity of one grey light, though the source remained unrecognized, was comforting.

I turned my head to a shadowy corner where I saw something fluttering in the draft. With great caution I reached to grab whatever mystery hid so poorly from me. After bending over proved painful I knelt into the blackness and retrieved a yellowed piece of paper. On it was a hastily written verse. I read it once and placed it in my pocket without a thought as to its significance. I figured I could always use the paper later.

One alone

Encompassed by stone

Two between

Together never seen

Three parts whole

Into undead soul

Four feet fell

Brought to my own hell

Five senses

My recompenses

Six evils spent

My last yet to vent

Seven guilts

I’m blackened by silt

Eight years old

Caves made win’try cold

Nine years die

The rocks in fire fry

Tenth in twelve

And down my soul delved

My hand writing crossed the paper, but I had never written this. The lines scared me the first time I read them, but upon reading them a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth times I was utterly terrified. My hands began to shake and a single tear rolled down my face onto the bare floor. My lip started to bleed; I had to bite it to keep from ripping the paper as my fear turned to rage. I read that paper over and over again; each time previous mysteries became new fears which became new angers which bubbled over frothing into panic. I had to calm down though, I was not being rational. I had to stop, stop and listen to myself, what I was saying I mean, what I was thinking, it was insane. Was I insane, was it all gone awry? Was I dead?

The first line in my own hand writing was referring to me, trapped in the infernal cave, surrounded by stone on every side and lost to hope.

Line two was obviously the fire and ice together, the ice that crept to the very edge of the magma pools. It never made any sense, but it did now because it didn’t make sense. I don’t suppose that has ever happened to you before? Something made sense because it didn’t make sense?

The third line chilled me just to read it. At first I had no idea what that line meant, it did not sound good, but since then I have thought about it and the only explanation I can offer is that the three parts are my mind, body, and personality. After all, isn’t that what makes a person’s soul? An undead soul is something I have had no experience with though, at least not until now. You will understand as you read further. I deserve every bit of it.

When I came to this place from out of that hole in the wall I fell, about four feet. Which would mean this is my own hell, that it is mine somehow. I found my answers more clearly stated to my horror some time from this, but I will continue to tell you of the poem first. You would not understand the rest without it.

My five senses are sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. The only things I have felt sense stepping into this place are fear, anger, sadness and the occasional bit of pain. It has gotten worse over time.

I did not know what the second part of the sixth line meant, but the first made me think of a priest I had talked to when I was a child of about eight. He told me of the seven deadly sins, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. He told me that if I should break one I would have to confess it in order to go to heaven. I had believed for a time, but Christianity held so many contradictions that I stopped. Was I to be found guilty on flawed logic?

The seventh line confirmed my guilt.

The eighth confused me though. I was eight when I tried being a catholic. How was it that I had begun this when I started to follow these rules? The rules were supposed to save me. Did I stray?

I can only assume that “Nine years die” refers to nine years passing. When I was seventeen I left Catholicism. It contained so many contradictions that it made no sense that any of it would be true. The people who I met at church were fake as the religion itself and sometimes worse. Someone like me who actually tried felt alone and betrayed. In the end what was it all for? They were the ones who were supposed to end up here, not me.

Lastly I can only assume that “Down my soul delved” means I died because the day that had just ended when I went to sleep was December tenth.

What could I do now? If I was dead why did I still feel capable of dieing? What was I expecting to feel, some overwhelming sense of immortality? Could I die here? If I did what would happen then? Where would I go if I died in hell? Was this even hell? Was this just all my worst nightmares combined? I felt sick to my stomach. I started to walk, my face to the ground. I pondered my existence, something I had not done in a long time, but something I was beginning to see that I would start doing a whole lot if I could stay alive here, but would I even want to do that?

I found myself on the side of a cliff suddenly. I looked down over the edge and beheld a sea, not of fire and brimstone, but of tents. I could see the outline of millions of the snake-bird creatures on a smoldering flat plane. There were others with more indescribable visages. Some were squat with spines on their backs and large teeth; others had no shape at all and were as black smoke. Some were long with hooked fangs and sharp legs, and some were shaped as humans but clearly were not what they appeared to be judging by the small vestigial wings on their backs. They all then turned to stare directly at me.

No, they were staring past me. I turned around and saw what appeared to be a giant mouth protruding from the rock wall behind me. Held in its jaws was a perfectly round eye the size of a small car. In my head I heard a voice that sounded exactly like mine. Here is more or less what it said.

“Here you are once again, we welcome you. I trust you have many questions as to what this place is. I will tell you in time, you will not understand otherwise, you would think me insane if I told you anything now. Let’s start with that piece of paper in your pocket. Only I know what it really means, and so shall you when I tell you. You wrote it when you first came here. Naturally because of circumstances you also created you have forgotten that. You are correct in your assumption that you are the one referred to in the first line, and also correct about the second, third, forth and fifth lines. This is your hell and you have yet to let go of your last sin, but more on that in a little while.

You are understandably mistaken about the sixth line. You and everyone from your previous life has committed each and every one of the seven deadly sins you were taught, but its not that you committed them that you are here, nor is it that you did not confess them. You believe in them, that is why you are here. Confused? I will explain in time.

You were correct about the seventh line, but the eighth line is true because you began your belief at age eight. In line nine you are correct that at age seventeen you ended your belief, or so you thought. A part of your mind held on to those ideas, a part of you kept believing in these cardinal sins. During those nine years of faith you were strongly affected by those teachings. It is very hard to let go of such things, your subconscious tends to grasp onto anything it once held dear.

Line ten is obvious; we are not so stupid as to overlook the day you died and the date in the verse. I say we because really we are I, or should I say that I am us? Really you are us too. We are the same. You created me actually. I’ve seen you a thousand times since then at least. I don’t know how long ago it was actually, you didn’t bother to include time or anything fancy like that. You created the snake-birds as you call them, and you also created the never melting snow. You created your safe havens so you would not die too soon, and you also created your ultimate demise.”

At this point the eye indicated the mass of creatures on the plane below. “This entire place and everything in it is a subconscious projection of what you thought would happen to you when you died. Don’t look so surprised. When you dream you see strange things never known to humanity so how is this any different? You are haunted by what you did aren’t you? You are still terrified by your crime, your murderous rampage? I can’t say I feel any different because I really can’t feel any different! When you moved to the city your childhood weighed on you didn’t it? Your brother couldn’t protect you any more so after a few years you exploded.

The worst part is that you murdered an illusion, several illusion in one great big one, all your own creations too. That life was just as this one, a projection of your deepest beliefs. I’m happy to say that you are trapped by your guilt, as it is all you believe in now, and so you are also glad.

You murdered Marie the store owner, Paine, the priest, and most of the other people in your life that had caused you great trouble. Such intolerance, but then who am I to say? You always knew you were going to hell. Well here you are, your own hell created by your mind for your soul, happy now?

A sense of irony is something you did give me, though I do not know why. Perhaps so I could mock you every time we met again? You have one last so called evil to expel from yourself and then you are perfectly free to leave this place. You won’t ever do it though. Pride is your chain to this place. You feel that those people deserved to die. In this you are remorseless. You find your guilt in your belief of the seven deadly sins you were taught. You are trapped here because you commit the sin of pride every day you can’t admit that you may have been wrong about those people who you are still so sure should have died.

You told me that I give you a journal so you can write down whatever you wish in the next week. Then you will be killed slowly. Yes, I know what you are thinking, but that is what you created me for, and I can’t go against your rules even though I would like to. My will is bound to yours, and no, there is no such thing as freewill here, you never bothered to give me it.

After everything was made you did one last thing, you made it so every time you died, you were reborn in what you named the “honeycomb room” with no memory of what had transpired other than you had just gone to sleep the night before on the tenth of December. Stop complaining to yourself that you are here; you wanted to be here from the start. If you had wanted to be someplace else you would have thought you were going to end up someplace else after you died. You had to let your guilt root itself this deep?

Go now and spend your week how you like, not that you gave this place many amenities, not even a name.” At this moment a leather bound journal and pen fell at my feet. Confused, angry with myself and with a strange sort of peace I took the book and pen and walked back to the cavern where I discovered the poem.

My name is Martin Delver. I am standing alone in the dark right now. You might wonder why I don’t sit and rest while I write this, but that is because you don’t deserve to. I can hear strange noises in the distance that I would rather not think about right now.

I have remained here for the past week. The hour approaches when I will be taken. I think it is the right day, is it tomorrow? Am I an hour off? How many minutes until they come for me? Wait, not yet, I have one last thing to do. I have to put the paper with the poem written on it back in the corner. There. I’m done now. All I can do now is wait.

The sounds are getting louder. I can hear the sound of a million feet moving in my direction, what do I do with this journal though? Surely I can do something original with it before they take me? Surely something worth while can be done with these pages? Ah, at last I understand. This journal will reach the right people, I know it will. I honestly believe it will in some form or another.

I know that I exist, but just in case I don’t, ask yourself, are you the illusion? Surely you’re not the product of someone else’s mind, a character in a poorly written story. Is the world a product of your mind instead, that when looked at closely reveals your deepest beliefs? Is the world your illusion? They are here for me at last. Farewell.