Excerpt from "The Death and Times of Christopher Young"
Prologue
Satan is upset. And when Satan is upset, Hell is less fun than it already isn’t.
If you were to look around Hell during that period of time, you would notice lots of piles of bones and lumps of broiled flesh. The walls would be caked in thick, clotted blood, and the remaining souls would be wispy and clear looking--like the ghosts in Ghostbusters.
If you were unfortunate enough to be close enough to be in Satan’s view, spontaneous combustion would the next on your hellish agenda.
Satan is upset for one reason--a soul escaped from Hell.
This is normally something that causes mild inexplicable rage. However, Satan was feeling extremely stressed, (well, more than usual), and when this particular soul escaped, he snapped. His brain was pushed to the limit with demonic angst, and so he took his anger out on everything--including his own demons.
This is the equivalent of screaming into a pillow or kicking a wall--if the wall is made of every single soul in Hell pressed into sheet-rock, and the pillow is human flesh that bleeds when you kick it.
Hell is very depressing. It’s what you’d think Kurt Cobain was like as a child.
The soul that escaped was that of a man named Christopher, thrust into Hell because Satan was really bored.
Christopher is twenty-four, and his death was interesting, to say the least. The number twenty-four is very significant, and I’ll explain why.
Christopher was walking down East LA, something you don’t do normally, especially at night, as Christopher was doing.
Suddenly, people wearing red shirts and wielding knives and guns jumped out from an alley.
The next second, Christopher was dead with twenty-four stab wounds.
He was pronounced dead at Midnight, or twenty-four hours into the day.
He also died on 2/4/00.
Was this all just coincidence?
Yes. Yes it was.
Christopher is, (or rather was), tall, 5”11, weighs, (or weighed), 112 lbs., and has blonde hair.
He also harbors a secret obsession with Days of Our Lives.
You see, when Christopher made his grand exit from the barrier of the underworld, he was transformed into the body of a small baby, just as it was being pushed down the street in a carriage of sorts.
This baby’s parents were Vegan. Go figure.
Now, this baby is named Clarence, which is the name that Christopher swore he would never name his child, should he ever have any.
Was this coincidence?
No. This was a cosmic joke played by some force that has the first name God.
His situation is made worse, eventually, by the fact that Satan’s demons are constantly after him, trying to get his soul back.
This is the story of Christopher, and why he is constantly rattling his rattle.
Teething? Nope. This is something much worse.
One
Hell is a complex inner working of roads, highways, and interstates, and nearly every hour is Rush Hour.
The laws of hell are posted in the Rabid-Dog Park:
Stay Dead at All Costs
Below that, on the wooden sign they are posted on:
Stay Burning for at Least Three Minutes
Daily
These laws are intriguingly simple, but not easy to follow. This makes Hell all the more Hellish.
Staying dead is one of the hardest things to do in Hell, mainly because the demons are trying to resurrect you. The punishment for rising from eternal damnation is a nasty headache and Satan himself personally eviscerating you.
The second law is impossible as well, as the only way to stay dead is to constantly keep your self engulfed in flames. Thus, killing your self to live.
All this is designed to amuse Satan. This is like playing Mouse Trap, except the pieces are made of bones and you are constantly being impaled.
“This sucks,” is what Christopher constantly repeats again and again daily. “This really freaking sucks.”
For Christopher, who needs constant amusement, to stay remotely depressed, (because everything is amazingly depressing in hell, and depressed is as close as you will get to being slightly happy), he pushes people into the pillars of fire and scratches at their flame-blackened backs.
Hell has made him more, well, Hellish.
He began to grow bored of killing people, mainly because his fingernails were growing blackened with human flesh, and so he began to plot his escape from Hell.
He lay on his bed of thorns and plotted escape.
Christopher, even though he had a 4.0 GPA in college, has little to null decisive skills.
And so, he stayed in Hell, burning other people for fun for twelve more years.
After the twelve years, Christopher finally thought of a plan. It was so simple, that no one really would have thought of it.
He would do what he did best. He would push the demons into the flames, and then float upward.
What, you didn’t think you can float in Hell? It may suck, but you can do a lot more in Hell that you can’t do in Heaven.
This plan was so idiotically simple that no one would have thought of it.
He brought his plan into action.
He grabbed the first demon he saw, one tragically named Frances, a male, and threw him into the flames. Frances did not do much, other than say, “Dammit, this hurts.”
The next demon went with a little more struggle. Christopher was forced to bash his head on a pile of bones.
Once the demons were out of the way, he floated upward. This made him think of Jesus, and he suddenly felt uncomfortable.
Hell can do that to you.
This seemed so pathetically easy. Anyone could get out of Hell if they put their mind to it.
No. Not just anyone. It had to be Christopher. Was it divine intervention? Was it God, Satan, or any other gods?
No. It was a little thing called luck.
No one is that lucky. Except maybe Stephen King.
Two
The human New York is much like Hell, in the sense that every hour is Rush Hour and that there are endless roads.
However, New York has AIDS and Skyscrapers.
In a sense, New York is a much more evil Purgatory.
Christopher does not believe in Purgatory, so this metaphor did not enter his brain at any time.
Christopher was disappointed with New York. He wished that it were not so huge. He also wanted to push the people wearing, “2012 is the End” signs around their chests into pillars of fire.
Instinct told him to do this. Then he saw his hands.
Jesus Christ I’m a baby.
His hands were pudgy, and he was wearing baby pajamas.
This sucks worse than Hell, he thought.
He realized that he was moving forward, and then looked around. He saw that he was in a carriage, and when he saw his “mother”, he instantly saw that his mother was a vegan.
Of course. Out of all the parents in the world, I’m stuck with vegans.
His carriage was uncomfortable. He went to say so, and all that came out was a very babyish groan.
“Does wuh baby wantsa dried peachy? Yesh he doesh!”
Stop patronizing me, he thought.
The mother began forcing a dried peach into his mouth. He gagged.
“The baby likesa the peachy!” his new mother squealed.
Christopher was about to say something, but then he saw a black shadow blaze by.
Demons, Christopher thought with disgust.
The demons went blazing by, blowing up the dust and newspapers behind them. It seemed that no one else could see these demons. He then realized that because he was technically still damned, he was the only one who actually could see them.
One flew right in front of his carriage. It looked straight at him, as if analyzing his existence.
Christopher was vaguely reminded of Predator.
It signaled the other demon. It flew over and started analyzing him too.
After a few minutes of this, the demons flew away, muttering something in the language of the beast.
Christopher looked at his arm, and was horrified when he saw cuts blazing into his arm, something that only happens if you’re damned and in the presence of demons.
The numbers, “666” appeared on his arm.
Jesus Christ that hurts, thought Christopher, unable to think of anything else at the moment.
This was not the last time these demons would visit Christopher
That wouldn’t make a very good book if they didn’t, now would it?
Three
Christopher was slowly getting used to the idea that life was going to be different from now on.
For starters, there would be no one to push into pillars of fire.
Other than that, it would be better. As a baby, he wouldn’t have to do anything other than lay down. If he could take books from his “parents”, (always assuming they had any good books), he could read, and he could always watch TV.
And then, it seemed, God created nap time.
Nap time is, in Christopher’s mind, the most amazing thing ever invented.
His brain could not comprehend the idea at first.
I get to sleep at random intervals every day!? He found himself thinking.
As a baby, he found himself having strange dreams.
Why the hell is there a seagull in a pear tree? He wondered.
His dreams had lots of flashing colors, and things were always spinning.
Then he started dreaming about demons.
This bothered him for two reasons. A), because he had only seen the demons once since leaving hell, and B), because Christopher was never prone to prophetic dreams as Christopher, but as a baby, he had quite a bit of them.
For example, he had a dream about his mother cutting herself with broken glass accidentally after dropping a pitcher of water and picking up the pieces.
This then happened the next day. She had to get stitches at the hospital within five minutes.
Another time, he dreamt that his father said a string of four-letter words at the family cat, and then the cat ran away.
This too happened.
It was unsettling to find out that, as a baby, he could predict the future, but as an adult, he couldn’t.
Christopher was beginning to grow very worried of the possibly prophetic demon-dreams. If demons really were after him, then he was in some hot water.
The last time a soul escaped, (twelve years before Christopher escaped), the soul was brought back without a head. The demons had tracked him down for ten days before they brought him back.
Christopher had been out of Hell for nine.
It was almost unreal. Why would demons behead a little baby? Because they knew that Christopher was not a little baby.
He was thinking about all this when his “mother” stepped in.
“Clarence! Time for your supper-wupper!”
Oh my God, my name is Clarence…Christopher thought gravely.
After eating a hearty meal of mashed carrots, mashed potatoes and mashed Jell-O, Christopher, (or Clarence) took his fifth nap.
Waking up at 3:29 a.m. and feeling invigorated, he scanned his room looking for something to do.
His call of boredom was answered when a black mist appeared in his room. His arm hurt.
It’s like Harry Potter all over again. Except Harry Potter doesn’t even 666 carved onto his arm, thought Christopher.
The black mist faded in and out around the room, looking for some sign of damnation.
It then found Christopher. Christopher’s mark was glowing crimson-red.
The demon transformed from its mist-form to demon-form.
For you to understand the ugliness of this situation, let me describe demons.
First off, demons are ugly. Very, very ugly.
Think Nosferatu. Then, shrink him down a few feet. Dye his skin red-black. Give him horns, bee-like wings and glowing red eyes, and you have demons.
In short, they look like bee-gargoyles. It’s something you would probably hit with a newspaper were one to come near you.
Christopher, used to demons, was not terribly afraid.
The demon walked towards his crib, and he instantly recognized it as the one he threw into the flames, (not the one whose head is bashed in).
The demon hissed, snarled, and lunged at Christopher. It stopped for a second, in mid-air, and sneezed.
“Eh hem… Sorry about that,” the demon growled in standard demon-tone.
Christopher relaxed. This demon was dumb.
He shouldn’t have done that, however, because the demon then used the opportunity to lunge at Christopher. The demon began struggling, trying to get his hands around Christopher.
Christopher, on the other hand, had some tricks up his sleeve. Mashed food goes well through the system, but it makes great spit-up.
Being slightly damned still, the spit-up would be very acidic, almost like chemically-made acid.
He had a problem getting it up though.
He clenched his tonsils together, forced his rattle down his uvula, anything to spit-up. The demon was just about to bite him when it came. He spat it up into the demon’s face, and the demon howled as it burned his “flesh”.
Christopher spit up some more, and the demon flew out the open window, returning to mist form.
This is Hell, thought Christopher.
