Chapter 1 - Five People You Meet in Hell

“This light…it’s so bright. I feel like I’m on fire.”
A voice echoed from about fifty feet away. “…ake…u…”
“Huh?”
“Wake up!” The voice was so loud that it could have made someone go deaf.
“Wake up, little Miss. Sunshine!”
Her vision was still a little hazy from the bright red light. “Where…where am I?”
Her surroundings changed. Suddenly, she was in a dirty, gray room with a chair and various tools. A man stood in the corner.
“You don’t recognize this place?” he asked.
She was silent.
“Not gonna say anything, huh? Not going to ask why you’re back here in your own little ‘testing room’? Not going to ask why I’m here even though you watched me die in that chair?” His words were raw and bitter.
“Figures. Well, let me tell you where you are and…refresh your mind about what you did to me.”
Finally, she spoke. “I know who you are,” she said in an alluring voice. “I had a lot of fun with you.”
“Oh, so you do remember me. Good.” The man, a soldier, sounded spiteful. “Now let me tell you where you are. You’re in Hell.”
“Really?” she said with a grin. “This looks like Heaven to me.”
“Well, you may call this Heaven, but I call this Hell.” The soldier glanced at the tools on the table. “Since you remember me, go ahead and tell me how much you remember.”
“My pleasure,” she said sensually. “First, I remember strapping you to that chair. Then I took the dullest knife and started cutting your body—but only in places you wouldn’t bleed out too quickly. Your screams were like music to my ears. Oh, how you made the best little screams. You were—”
“I think that’s good enough!”
“Aww, but you didn’t let me finish.”
Without warning, the soldier was behind her, speaking over her shoulder. “I think it’s your turn to feel what I felt.”
Impassively, she asked, “How are you going to do that? Have you forgotten I love pain?”
“In Hell, I can take that feeling of pleasure away from you.”
In the blink of an eye, she was strapped to the chair. The soldier took a dull knife off the table—the same knife she has used on him—and started to cut.
Something was wrong. This pain didn’t feel good at all.
She screamed in agony and wondered why it didn’t feel good anymore. The soldier paused for a second and then started to carve into her flesh some more.
“What’s the matter? Not feeling like you expected it to?” He laughed hysterically, while she screamed out in pain.
After what seemed like days of torture, the soldier finally put down the blade. There was a moment of silence as she caught her breath.
“I used to envy you,” she said, breathing heavily. “Well, actually, I envied everyone I cut, because they got to feel the glorious pain—and I didn’t get to.”
“This is why you are here. I just gave you everything you always wanted, but you felt it the same way I did, instead of how you would have felt it,” the soldier said.
Suddenly, her injuries rapidly dissipated. The chair straps disappeared, and she was no longer restrained.
The soldier spoke. “I probably should have told you this when you got here, but I didn’t feel like it at the moment.”
She stared into his eyes. “Tell me what?”
“That there are four others waiting to tell you why you’re here. Of course, not without having a little ‘fun’ first,” he said as he was chuckling.
She got up from the bloody chair and said, “In that case, would you mind telling me why you are here so I can see these other four people? I’m quite curious to see who they are.”
“Suit yourself. I am here because of your extreme Envy.”
“Oh, we’re going to do the Deadly Sins?” she said with a humored smirk. “Kind of cliché, but that makes sense.”
The soldier grunted in irritation, and without warning, he vanished along with the chair. The scene distorted.
“That was interesting. I wonder who my next person is?” she asked curiously.
She started walking in the endless abyss that appeared, and an image began to form. “I wonder where I’m going to end up,” she thought. As she walked, her surroundings got clearer.
“Now I know where I am! I’m in my observation room,” she said eagerly. “This is so exciting! I’m glad I get to see all of my excellent work one last time.”
A man’s voice came from behind her. “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.”
She turned around suddenly and saw a familiar face. “Doctor! It’s been a while since I last saw you.”
“Yes.” He pondered the memories and recalled all of the good times they spent together. “But we are not in a place to be nostalgic, obviously.”
She and the doctor observed the thousands of pictures tacked on the wall—what she called her “victims of art.”
The doctor plucked a specific picture from her wall. “I was quite impressed with how straight and clean your incisions were before you killed me. Except for all the blood everywhere.”
“I know how much you liked blood, and I made sure to take extra care of you,” she said, satisfied with her work.
“Yes, I was quite proud of you,” he said, pleased. “Speaking of pride, that’s your next Sin.”
Laughing, he continued. “Personally, I don’t see what’s wrong with being proud of all the perfect cuts you made”—he pointed to the wall—“but I guess that’s why I’m here, too.”
“I had a feeling it was going to be Pride,” she said.
The doctor folded his picture and put it in his pocket. “I think I’m going to leave now.”
“Aww, already? You’re not going to stay longer and play a little operation?”
“I told you what you needed to know, and besides, I heard that the last person you met already played operation with you.” These were the last words the doctor uttered, and then he disappeared. The observation room vanished along with him, and once again, she found herself in a black abyss.
“That last encounter wasn’t very long at all. I was hoping I’d at least have a little fun with my husband.”
“It seems you forgot you’re in Hell. Last time I checked, Hell isn’t a fun place,” a young-sounding voice said. “Then again, it is you we’re talking about. You can find ‘fun’ anywhere.”
“Who might you be?” she asked. “Wait, I think I recognize your whiny voice. You’re the one who gave me such great pleasure with those weapons you had. Once I realized you had great potential, I took you under my wing.” She smiled as she thought of her memories. A young man suddenly appeared in the abyss in front of her.
The man looked at her and cried, “More like you made me your boy toy! You used me for your own personal reasons. You used me to satisfy your need for lust.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“You turned me into a monster!”
“I didn’t turn you into anything you weren’t already. As far as I’m concerned, you were already a ‘monster.’ I just gave you…a little push, that’s all.”
“I didn’t want to become like this, but when I look back, I was scared of everything before you came into my life. I was afraid to take risks,” the young man said thoughtfully. Then he admitted, “I was glad you made me cut you. I felt so good while doing it.”
“It seems I wasn’t the only one satisfying my lust. You were the best at making me feel sweet pain. It’s no wonder I craved you.” She sighed and shuddered with satisfaction. “The way you grazed me with your blade. The way you struck me with your hand. It was just too good to pass up.”
The young man nodded. “You made me who I was. At first, I resented you, and that’s the only reason I did all that to you. After a while, I realized I got some sick satisfaction from it, and I began to look forward to hurting you. It just felt so good.”
“Of course you felt good doing it. I wouldn’t have picked you if you wouldn’t have liked it.”
“And I thank you for that exhilarating experience.” The young man paused for a moment and moved in closer. “I assume you know which Sin this is?”
“Of course I do. Whisper it into my ear anyways.” The young man leaned in and whispered “Lust” into her ear, then disintegrated into ash.
“Once again, walking around aimlessly in the dark abyss.” She wandered for a minute or two, and then heard another familiar voice.
“You’re not taking this seriously, are you?”
“Ooh, another guessing game. How fun!”
“I’m going to take that as a no…” A man’s shadow approached out of the darkness. “Nonetheless, I’m here. Yaaay,” he said sarcastically.
“Oh, hey, it’s Mr. Nazi!”
“Yes, yes, I’m a Nazi, you’re a Nazi—I thought that was made clear when Hitler appointed you as head nurse, blah blah blah.” The man sighed. “I still don’t know why you keep calling me that, anyway.”
“Because you’re my favorite supplier. You used to bring me such wonderful people to experiment on.” She smiled as she recalled the fond memories.
“Speaking of bringing you people, that is why I am here.”
She had a good idea of where he was going with this. “Let me guess, Greed.”
“Yeah…”
“Man, I’m good!”
“Uhh… Anyway, yeah, Greed. You demanded more people, and I got you more people. People, people, people—always demanding people. Well, sometimes weapons.”
“I remember you used to bring twenty or so people,” she said with a laugh.
“Yeah, and then one day, you shot me in the arm,” he reminded her, resentment evident in his voice.
“I told you I needed more, but you kept giving me too few. I needed more. Lots more.”
“Even if I’d given you a thousand people, you still wouldn’t have been satisfied,” the man said with a sigh.
“They did like to die quickly.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the man said. “Anyway, I’m done here. You already know what this lesson is. If you even want to call it that.”
Without saying another word, he vanished into the darkness just like the others.
“Well, that was brief,” she said, surprised. “Oh, well, one more person!”
As if by cue, grass grew out of nowhere at her feet, and houses appeared around her.
Her cheerful mood quickly dissipated. “I…I remember this place.”
“You should.” A woman approached her with a scornful voice. “This is where you grew up.”
“Mutter, it’s you,” she said nervously, backing up.
“Of course it’s me, you little twit. Who did you think it’d be, the Tooth Fairy? Don’t be so stupid!” The woman drew closer and closer to her.
“Just don’t hurt me, Mutter!” she cried out, covering her face. “I’ll be good, I promise!”
“Still a feeble little child, I see. Let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?” The woman grabbed her hands and moved them away from her face. She looked her in the eyes and said coldly, “You killed me, right?”
“That was only because I wanted the hurting to stop.”
“Don’t give me that crap!” the woman yelled. “I saw you. I raised you. You liked getting hurt. The way your face looked when you fell and scraped your knees—you liked it!”
“Th-that was different! Moms are supposed to be loving and caring. You were mean and hateful!” Her lips were quivering as she spoke.
“So you took your anger out on local animals,” the woman reminded her. “I saw what you did to them. You captured them alive and cut them open until they stopped crying out.”
“I always knew you were watching me,” she admitted. “And still, I didn’t stop. I wanted to show you what I was capable of, and I hoped you’d be scared of me instead of being angry.”
“It didn’t work, did it?”
“No, instead you beat me harder. I…I hated you so much.”
“So much that you would kill your own mother.” Cold-heartedly, the woman gazed directly into her eyes.
“You—you gave me no choice! You had to be stopped.”
“And I became your first human experiment.”
“I…I liked the way the knife sliced your skin, the smell of your burning flesh when I set the house on fire…” She spoke passionately. “I savored the moment as I watched your face in that window. I loved every second of it.”
“Wrath.”
“Excuse me?”
“Are you deaf?! I said Wrath! That is your last Sin. This is the Sin that started it all.”
The houses around them burst into flames, and the grass wilted, turned brown and died.
“Stop!” She dropped to her knees and clutched her chest. Blood started to gush out of a bullet hole in her chest where she’d been shot. Flashes of memories rushed into her head, overwhelming her. The ground sunk beneath her, and she was sucked down into the dark abyss.
Her mother looked on as she fell and whispered mournfully, “I told you I’d see you in Hell…Ulrika.”

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