Limbo

It was just as he had always imagined it would be. There were birds chirping and laughing children. Everyone knew him, and he knew them all. It was as if he were still alive. Nothing but the weather had changed. It was revoltingly hot there. This made very little sense. They were out in the park. It was a beautiful sunny day, and it was scorching hot! Yet there was no sun in the sky. This must be a dream, he thought to himself.

Beverly traveled at a very slow pace down a long, spiraling pathway - greeting everyone he encountered along the way. After all, he knew them all. And it would have been rude not to; they were all staring at him. He didn't understand why they were staring. His was a face which they had seen enough of, he had been told. He remembered how hurt he had been when Dionne pulled him aside a couple of hours earlier to tell him what a revolting and pitiful creature he was. She was right.

It bothered him that she had captured his essence in so few words. He wondered how much worse it would have been were he born the female baby his parents had been expecting. Would God be so unkind as to give a little baby girl Beverly's horrendous features? His crooked nose; his mismatched, graying teeth; his dark, unkempt hair. No wonder why mom and dad hate me, Beverly thought. I'm a monster.

His parents Mary and Tom weren't bad people. They just couldn't live with him around any longer. His very presence made Mary feverish. She regurgitated the contents of her bowels every time he neared to check on her. She just could not stand the sight of him. It was his fault that she died.
Tom never let the chance pass him by to remind Beverly that he had killed his own mother. The accusation hurt Beverly a great deal, but never so much as Tom's blows. No matter how braced Beverly was for his well-deserved fate, the beatings were never the same. Tom was quite the creative punishment enforcer. Tom was walking beside him now.

"Dad," Beverly started, but fell silent as Tom looked in his direction. Tom's eyes had been hollowed out. There were maggots sliding in and out of the sockets. When Tom spoke, it was with an echoed voice coming not from his throat but from somewhere distant and possibly cold.

"You should have stuck it through, son!" The voice cried and laughed coldly, without any humor.

"You should have waited," said another voice, this one walking on his other side. Her head hung loosely down her neck, held in place by a couple of bloody vessels and rotting tissue. It was his mother. She looked better than the last time he had seen her. He returned home from school on a Thursday afternoon the previous year, to find her hanging from the blue ceiling in the lounge. She had attached blades to her noose, and these had cut deep into her neck.

"I'm really glad you're both here," Beverly said. He reached for both their hands, but both parents withdrew and they all walked forward in silence. The spiraling pathway lead out of the park and into a dark wall between two golden lamp posts. The darkness beyond the wall seemed to stretch infinitely. Mary and Tom now walked ahead of Beverly and held each other's hands. They stood in front of the dark wall and kissed passionately, Tom holding Mary's severely dislodged head in his two plate-sized hands to keep it in place. They stopped, looked back at their son and motioned for him to join them. They crossed the threshold into the dark wall, but did not emerge on the other side. Tom started walking towards the wall himself.

He paused at the mouth of the dark wall and looked around him. Everyone was still staring at him. He knew what he had to do next, and he wasn't afraid. He had always known that this is how it would end; he always knew this is where his road led. As he was about to enter the darkness, a tall, flaming figure came into view as it approached him. The figure grew taller as it neared. His features were remarkably handsome: a toned upper body, an engaging toothy smile and a general air of importance hovering around him. His eyes, however, revealed his true nature to Beverly. They were an unseeing crimson with icy blue pupils. The newcomer towered over Beverly. When he spoke at long last, it was with an uncharacteristically soft voice.

"Welcome, my child," he said and extended a hand to Beverly. Though apprehensive at first, Beverly took the giant man's hand and allowed the stranger to pull him deeper into the wall of infinite darkness.