You Are In Hell.

By Junaina Naveed

You open your eyes. You blink. You close your eyes tightly for a moment, and then you open them again. You see, nothing. You try to raise your arm, but you can’t. You try to lift your leg, but you can’t. Gravity overpowers every bit of strength in you. Or perhaps, it’s something else taking control of your body. Your body, but not your mind. No. It wants you to feel everything. Or at least, have you believe that you feel everything.. 
You want to scream. But your jaw remains idle. Your heart palpitates. 
Black. Everything is pitch black.. Until in front of your eyes, streaks of bright white start to appear. You cannot look away. You are paralyzed as the streaks start elongating and weaving themselves into a web. Abruptly, you are lifted up off your feet and thrown into the web. The white streaks start to warp themselves around every inch of your naked flesh, tighter and tighter. They pierce your flesh, gradually cutting all the way through your mass to your veins, till they feel bone.
You want to scream. But no, you cannot. 
Red. The white is now stained by a single drop of red. The tiny red dot, starts to expand before your eyes. It expands just like the blood on his shirt when you brutally stabbed him.. Suddenly, all you see is red. It takes over the white and surrounds you. It enters you like thick smoke and grasps onto every organ inside you. Chokes it. Suffocates it.. You fall, and you keep falling. The pressure by the fall, whips your face and your body. Whips it harsher than the belt you beat your child with.. You fall into water. Or is it water? It is blue as midnight. But it is dense. Thick and gooey. You sink through it to its depths. And you lie at the very depth, carrying the weight of the entire sludge upon you. 
Green. You see two small beads of vivid green in the distance, making there way towards you. They edge closer and closer.. Eyes. They are eyes that belong to a face. A face carved with perfection. Carrying luscious lips. You see curves, decked in purple satin. You see flesh. A walking form of lust, now inches towards you. You welcome it, as it caresses your face tenderly. Hands travel down your neck and your chest. They stop. They slice your flesh with their long nails and tear it open. They pull out bit by bit. And then relish it. The creature breaks off each of your bones. One by one. And chews on them. Its face contorts into the face of the woman you raped.. And the next. And the next. And the next.. Its face is a blur. 
You want to scream. But no. No, you cannot.   
Yellow. All of a sudden, nothing but bright yellow. You try to focus. You look carefully. There are mirrors all around you. The mirrors are what reflect the yellow.. The wrench of burnt flesh starts to encompass you. You look around you, into the mirrors once again. You, are on fire. Every part of your body, is in flames. The intensity of the heat sinks in. 
You want to scream. No. You cannot.
The fire extinguishes. Leaving a gray silhouette of your body, that you stare at in the mirror.. Ice. Your insides turn to ice. The delicate kind, that breaks easily. Every muscle, every nerve, slowly freezes. In pathetic attempt, you try to flex your frozen muscles, even though you know you cannot. And you crumble. The gray figure of frozen ash that stood before you in the mirror, crumbles to the ground. Each grain, each molecule, separates itself from the others. Separating you. Separating your mind, into millions of independent existences. Each existence, now feels each and every atoms worth of torment, separately.
You want to scream? 
You are in hell.