underworld

With every passing week my life seemed to improve. The days were bright and sunny, people were always smiling and at night the moon shone like a silver coin on a peaceful urban landscape, streaming gently through my window. I always felt a certain closeness to the moon, because during the silent nights I would sit alone in the dark with nothing but moonlight as my aide. Though I lived close to the city, the pollution never jaded the beauty of the midnight moon. And it would never fail to take me away from the worries of my hectic life.
I lived in a townhouse with my family. This included my mother, father, two sisters and a brother. I was the middle child, so I never received as much attention as I would have liked to. Never the less I was too busy with high school to worry about petty things like that.
One day I was doing research for an assignment on the Greek God Hades, I was searching the net high and low for a good site when I decided to broaden my search, and so, typed in the word Underworld….
Almost immediately a black backdrop appeared on my screen and in large glowing orange letters the words Underworld Inc. were written. I noticed that this site was not about Hades or, in that case, about anything to do with my assignment. But still, I figured I deserved a short break, and this site looked interesting enough to take my mind off the work. The site was like a business created by Satan himself. I noticed the most recent update to the site was the ability to sell your soul online. I looked into it further and discovered that it was free. So I filled out the form and sent it off to the “Underworld” in order to receive the rather attractive certificate print out. The moment I sent the form off a pale grey certificate fed out of the printer. How this happened, I never knew, but still I proudly stuck the novelty paper on the back of my school folder.
To hold the certificate in my hands was a strange sensation. Its cold paper sent a chill down my spine as if I was being reminded of the unholy deal I had just made.
From that moment on my supposedly great life began to fall apart before my eyes. My friends abandoned me; my schoolwork took a turn for the worse and I felt that a part of me was missing.
One Saturday morning, after convincing myself to crawl out of bed to face another painful day, I decided to go shopping to alleviate the remorse of my otherwise pointless life. I decided to go into town. Through the streets I walked, slipping by unnoticed, blending in with the 24-hour shadows of the city, which seemed to make themselves permanent fixtures among the dark streets and narrow alley ways of infinite dirt and filth. Narrow streets and dark shortcuts, which I had never seen before, seemed to appear on the daily routes I thought I knew so well. Growing bored of shopping, I decided to see where an intriguing unseen alley would lead me.
I was crossing the busy road in order to get to the alley, when I noticed a man in a red jumper standing far back in the shadows. His blood red jumper was torn and dirty and he seemed to be looking straight at me. I could do nothing but stare back in a trance. I walked slowly towards him, oblivious of the oncoming traffic. I could not break the stare that this man had over me, it was as if he knew I was missing something unexplainable and was instead looking straight through me. No sooner had I realised this, I felt the impact…
A bus had run straight into me and in that split second which I realised what was happening I felt the pain of the impact, but through this final pain, I was being released from the misery of my life that had become ever since the deal with the devil.
Silence. Silence so pure that it hurt my ears. I wondered how it was that I could hear, or in that case, open my eyes. As I opened them I saw that it was night, the streetlights sent a sharp pain through my sore yes. When I finally came to my senses I noticed that I was lying in the middle of the road. My recollections of the previous events were quite vivid, though I wish they weren’t so.
I got up slowly, looked around the empty streets and started to make my way to a nearby bench. As I sat there quietly, my mind running a hundred miles an hour, everything then began to make sense the more I thought about it. The mysterious certificate, the feelings of emptiness and life going downhill… I had in fact sold my soul…but for what?
I remembered the certificate at home; buried under the academic mess I had lost control of within my final days. So I made my way home.
Arriving there, I had knocked at the door and soon enough my mother answered. She looked around blankly for the person who had knocked on the door, and yet I stood in front of her. I quickly entered the house and made for my room. I had no need to search for the piece of paper because something about it made it stand out to me, some sort of dark radiance.
I picked up the piece of paper and read it seriously for the first time. In exchange for your soul you have been granted a final hour after your initial death to do with it what you please. As I read these final words, cold tears welled up in my eyes as I came to the realisation that I had died. I was dead. I now had one hour to say goodbye.
I made my way to the living room where my family gathered. Everyone dressed in black. I walked through the room and noticed that everyone whom I brushed up against would get a cold shiver. I heard dull murmuring throughout the room but I didn’t want to know what they were saying because I already knew they were talking about me. Speaking of my existence in the past tense as if I was only a distant memory to them. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to get out. I sat on the stoop in front of my former house. It was peaceful out there. I looked up at the moon, but this time it provided me no comfort. It was no longer looking on with me but looking down at me.
I had been sitting outside for quite a while now and decided to say a final goodbye to my family. I saw them in the middle of the room. I saw that my mother was crying, her mascara had run down her face and was smudged into her cheeks. I wanted to comfort her, to say that I was there by her side and that it wasn’t her fault. I reached over to hold her hand and comfort her the only way I knew how, but I felt a cold firm hand on my shoulder.
I spun around and to my surprise, the man with the red jumper stood next to me. I got a good look at him. Though he wasn’t very old his face was dirty and his hair oily. I looked into his black eyes in which I saw no end.
He beckoned me to follow him, no words were needed, I knew that I had to go now….