Hell's Tree

I hear the screams. The tortuous screaming, echoing throughout these chambers. Each one rattling my bones and squeezing my veins. How much more can I manage before I fall as insane as them; before my chords are ripping apart within my throat? The stench of burning flesh fills the air, accompanied by heavily falling ash, tricking the eye into believing there is a gray snowfall. Only the Mindless would throw their heads back and allow the ash to cover their tongues and fill their mouths, thinking they have victoriously escaped the fires. Poor souls; they will always belong here. They knew once, long ago, that there was no escape. The burning has made them forget. Made them into the fragile husks before me. I often wonder how long it took for them to become so. How long it will take me to become the same.

Though time does not reside here. I am aware of its existence outside of this place but not of its track. I have forgotten myself how it is even measured. Perhaps I am closer to the Mindless than I have hoped, for there are many things I have forgotten. Little things, important things; or at least, things I would presume to have been important at one point. Names, for instance. I know of beings elsewhere that hold names. Something individual. Something that holds them to their world and helps them become who they are meant to be. I know I held one myself. It is forgotten.

I wonder if there are others. Others that perceive how there was once a world outside of the fires, outside of this. A world that born true snowflakes. A world that born fires, not for pain, rather for pleasure. A world that gave birth to trees. I recall trees. Just faintly.

The most beautiful image I still hold. It is a tree, standing alone. It is quite proud of its growth, stretching across the sky so far, I cannot comprehend where it ends. In appreciation of its own creation, it births a million children all across its body. Every child bearing an individual color, an individual name, an individual aroma. Some as little as a seed. Some as large as the hand that holds the seed. And, “oh!”, how they dance. Elegant and gentle, they ripple as one body, just as the waves on top of the mother sea. I wish to sit and behold this goddess before me eternally.

Alas, the flames burn. They climb upon my skin and devour me inch by inch. They steal away any images I once held in order to become the center of my world once again. They scream for me to remember my reality. To bask within the unbearable sensation they bring. To recall to myself that I may as well have forgotten the tree along with my name. There are no trees in Hell.