Hell found me.
       Of course, I don’t mean literally or even that I have a faith in a place of fire and demons, but that somewhere in the depths of my soul I have found an inner hell. Of course, I have heard this idea of an inner hell being revised and openly discussed by people who have so easily become the masses that those who once experienced a unique torment are now faceless. I have no fear of becoming one of those people because I believe my hell to be true. Don’t they?
       I’m not asking for someone to read this recording of my memories in my path of life that brought me to this hell. I don’t expect anyone to truly believe that I know the truth alone of the meaning of an inner hell. I can’t really expect everyone to believe me when I too am nothing more than just another faceless person, now can I?
       What I am asking is that you bring into consideration the story I am about to relate to you, and understand only the inner hell that I alone have found. Perhaps in the beginning I should have started by saying that I have found hell, and I don’t know why I say this hell has found me, yet in ways it feels that I alone could not have found this place without its own intent to hunt me out as well.
       I suppose it would be easier to start from the beginning so that you may fully understand what has brought me to this place I know inhabit within my mind, but I do not think I can do that. My memory is perhaps best described as an abandoned house with broken windows and cobwebs covering the porch that has long since been over taken by the vines of Mother Nature and is now home to many of her forest dwelling creatures.
       Understand that when you search a house of this sort, you won’t find the memories left behind of what was cooked and fed upon in this house, nor will you find the smiles and tears that the walls watched while the house’s occupants still lived.
       What you will find is the mirror cracked and walked across from others who have searched this house and found the same piece of glass that fell from the dresser years ago. Perhaps it will be the dresses and shoes in the closet covered in dust while moths eat away the beauty they once portrayed on some woman’s form. Likely, it will be the skeleton rotting away in the rocking chair in the living room, although it is only my guess that a rotting corpse would attract your attention.
       Thinking back, I can still remember the way she died in that chair, rocking back and forth slowly while the boards beneath her creaked ever so slightly. Such pleasant memories to drift away into, but I won’t drift too far. After all, I did promise you a story, now didn’t I?
       So as I was saying, the beginning may be the best place to start but you will have to deal with the parts that I do not remember all too well with a bit of understanding. Perhaps I should start from the end and work my way backwards, since I am writing this story to you in this moment in time, and you have come to understand that I am doing my best to accurately portray my experiences for you? No, I don’t think that is too wise in a case like this, since following along as it skips through time will be difficult enough to keep your bearings as is.
       So if we are starting from the beginning, then I believe I should mention that although I did not believe this back then, I now have come to the understanding that this did start before the time when I was born. Somewhere out there on another plane of existence where souls await their chance to be given life and drift in the vast nothingness of nonexistence is where I believe I made the choice to take a life as my own in this physical world and pursue my quest for an understanding of questions that plagued me then.
       I have those answers now, and rest assured that I will share both the questions through out the story, and the answers in the end when you are ready to compare our results and inform me if you have made the same discoveries of truth that I have.
       It was then that I was given birth to, and while I waited the short time in the womb that it took for a body to molded into the shell I would wear for the rest of my life, I cannot say I remember the thoughts that plagued me, yet I do believe they existed.
       I believe now that it is questions on that other plane of existence that decide if you are to be given a chance at life or not, but more importantly is whether or not you want to take that chance at life and find the answers. Furthermore, I believe it is the time in the womb that you spend designing your own fate.
       I understand it may be an unusual idea, but consider it for a moment. In the time you live you often believe some superior being exists to give you a destiny or a path in life.
       Now consider for a moment the alternative that I am placing before you. Could it be that those nine months you exist within the womb is nothing more than an illusion given to describe the period of time you spent defining your own existence? On that train of thought, what if there was no reality as we knew it, and that in this short time, you were actually God designing the universe you would exist within? He did it in seven days, yet perhaps he was only creating the canvas on which you would paint your ideal reality?
       Could it have been that what he created for you was a basic world, and in that world you spent nine months placing identities and designing your path through life that you would take to seek out these answers? After all, there are certain analogies I suppose you could use to explain such a situation.
       A child looking for answers will ask an old man for advice. An adult will research a topic through a book or another source of recordings of past experiences lived by others. Examples of these things prevail every day in society’s progression of life and the pursuit of knowledge.
       If I am right in my belief, then the only understanding you may have of these things is that they were created by your own mentality while you designed the reality you would exist within in order to assist you. Could it be that others seeking to learn would allow you to follow their steps and find the answers you seek in ways you would not have thought of before?
       Perhaps when you state that you never would have used that train of thought to solve a problem when someone reveals such a simplistic answer to you that you over looked, that you had actually created that person before your birth as a train of thought to exist in order to remind you that you can think along the lines of abnormal thoughts in order to acquire an answer? If that is possible, then it may simply be that when you were given your canvas, you were told you may only have one train of thought to think along, and must give the true understanding of thinking ‘outside the box’ creation in the appearance of other living entities? Could it be possible that all minds you are destined to meet and interact with are nothing more than aspects of your own mind you would have never believed you could possess?
       Take into consideration the ideas that a human only uses ten percent of their mind, or the glitch in the human race where a single minded human being can develop multiple personalities which exist without the others. Is it possible that based on that theory the people you meet in life are simply other personalities of yourself that you gave bodies to in order to define to yourself while you were alive the prospect of finding answers through an actual quest?
       Consider for a moment when a writer begins to write a story of an adventurer who is beginning a quest for a grail, but in the end discovers that he embarked on that quest only to discover who he was and why he existed. Is this my fantasy adventure in a novel living as not only myself, but as all characters in the story I have written so that my main character who I have deemed as myself would have interactions with others in order to learn these things about himself and about the reality that he believes exists, yet to me is simply a novel I wrote to tell a story to another?
       Perhaps in this way we are all God. On that train of thought, could we all be the multiple personalities of just another writer who has written a great quest?
       I know I strayed off topic for a moment, but it is imperative that you understand this belief before continuing into my story, or I fear you will never understand the reason I am telling you of my own great quest through life.
       So with all of these questions in mind, I understand now that while I was defining myself as being within a womb, I was truly designing the world that I would exist within in order to begin this quest for my own answers. Consider it like a writer sitting down and imagining a story before he writes it. Same idea, since you could say the writer ‘gave birth’ to that story.
       I don’t truly know what I designed while I was drifting in there, but I do know what my suspicions are to this day.
       I only know that when I was ready to emerge from that womb I had drifted inside to be molded into something physical while molding the world around me so it would be waiting for me to be born into it, I had almost lost my chance at life before the moment of my first thought in this new body had taken shape. The umbilical cord had found its way around my neck while I was drifting, and had things gone differently, I would have been born strangled and lifeless.
       I believe in a way that since I had designed the world around me, that in a way I must have designed that as well in a final offering to myself to return to that vast emptiness of nonexistence and relish in the bliss of ignorance while I had the chance to return to that place still ignorant. There are times I wish I had made that decision instead of wanting to know the answers I have found over the time of a single life.
       I was born though, and in being born I had chosen to embark on my new quest to find the answers to my questions. I failed to realize that by being born I was sacrificing the knowledge of those questions and had damned myself to live a life searching for what questions to ask instead of what answers to find.
       That is the importance of the existence of other people and relationships to create and evolve through. It is also the importance of the world all of these entities live within, as well as a history for that world so you may research subjects you would normally have lost along with those questions from before you were born. Needless to say, I left myself some clues so I would remember.
       Those clues were not only in the roles of the people I would meet through my life, but also through the time period of the world I had created, and the history of the world as well. I believe in ways, everyone leaves themselves these clues somewhere along the line, so they may eventually find the truth to their existence. Yet, I have discovered these clues leave many other secrets to be revealed as well.
       If my beliefs are correct, then what could be said of the religious aspects of the world? Is it intended that you are born hearing the name of God so that you will believe yourself lowly and insignificant in order to maintain your grasp that reality is real and continue to search for those answers in a world you created?
       Then what of other religions? Perhaps it is the clue left behind for you in religions that believe in the concept of reality being a dream of some superior being your own way of hinting to yourself that you are that superior being and that this was all your design after all? What about religions that believe in reincarnation? Is it possible that you left clues to remind yourself that you have all the time it would take to find the answers you’re looking for?
       The possibilities of this subject are limitless, but then think of the meaning of such limitless possibilities, and you’ll know why I took the moment to tell you about these thoughts that eat away at my mind. It might make sense to you if you open your mind to such a concept. I mean, it’s not like I’m asking you to believe me… am I?
       I know. I strayed off course again. Ask yourself before you believe if I did do such a thing, whether I really did stray off course? However, I would like to return to the story at this point, so I can further reveal the aspects of my belief in this idea.
       I was born, and I lived. You already know this part of my story, and you know the events leading to this point. I can’t say I remember much about being born, or even what happened in the years to follow. I know I have only one memory of those years, and that memory came at the age of two.
       I was still new to the world and was settling into my rightful place in the physical while adapting to the new feeling of life after an eternity of drifting in that vast nothingness. Yet, that was most likely the exact age that my life had changed. In ways, I suspect that I had planned this when I was planning the world around me and the path I would take to find the answers, because this occurrence in my life was what reminded me of how short a life could be, and that I needed to devote that time to finding answers.
       It was at that age that my father died.
       After that point, I have few memories of my life.
       I would like to make a note at this point that my step father is the man who has raised me since before I can remember. With that in mind, I am used to calling him my father because to me, he is just that. Often times I have told him that if I had the choice to have been born of his blood, I would have made that choice eagerly. Please do not mistake me if I use the term father when speaking of him, but for me, it is a matter of disrespect not to.
       I remember once after coming back from a trip to find quahogs with my family that we had stopped at my grandparent’s house. My step father wanted to share the quahogs we had dug up with my grandparents, so he spent most of the time we were there in the kitchen getting them ready. I went into the kitchen to watch and learn how to properly prepare a quahog.
       It was common knowledge then that I wanted to learn as much as I could, and everybody seemed happy to teach me. I had that youthful energy that could make showing me something into an exciting moment of discovery of something new. Of course, in my own mind, I had always viewed other humans as vessels of knowledge waiting for me to dig them up and shuck them like my father had done to the quahog, and I had every intention of doing so back then.
       In order to open a quahog, you have to use a very dull knife that slips between the pieces of shell, and then work the knife backwards into the shell and pry it apart until the muscles of the quahog were broken and you could leave the shell open. Obviously, some shells are easier than others to open.
       Perhaps the reason I remember this occurrence instead of others is the mistake that was made while he was preparing the quahogs. He was trying to pry open a specifically difficult quahog when the shell cracked at the edge and the knife slipped out of the groove it was supposed to be within. When that happened, the knife came back and sliced open his thumb almost down to the bone.
       I don’t really remember much except for the look of shock, and then the extreme amount of pain that crossed his face as he dropped everything to tend to the cut. I remember the blood that I saw for only a moment before being rushed out of the room so the adults could take care of his injury. I believe that is the first time I had seen someone hurt worse than a scraped knee, and instantly, I was addicted.
       I never would have said anything about my fascination after that point with both blood and pain because I knew I would get in trouble and everyone would treat me like I was weird. No child wants to be the outsider, and I was smart enough to realize what would happen if I gave them the chance to make me one. Yet it was true though. I was fascinated by blood and pain after that moment.
       There was another time once when I was in the back of the van we used to own with my brother and my three sisters, and we were driving to a bowling alley. I was playing with a soda can, which had become a habit for me back then when I realized twisting an aluminum can the right way would cause it to rip like paper, and my parents hit a speed bump. That night, it was my turn to cut my thumb almost down to the bone.
       I don’t really remember much of the night, but I remember my mother yelling at me about reasons why I shouldn’t play with cans when it was obvious to me then that it was right in front of me. I remember getting an ‘I told you so’ and then a whole ordeal to tend to it. In the end, we wrapped some paper towels around my thumb and they bowled in their league while I walked around the bowling alley like I always did and just lost myself in thoughts.
       It wasn’t so much the events of that night that I remember, so much as the way I kept thinking about my thumb and the way it hurt when I had cut it. Blood just kept pouring out of my skin, and I was amazed after a while of watching it. I continued to play with it all night and watch the blood seep out just to be absorbed by the paper towel.
       I was fascinated all night by the tingling that shot up my arm when I played with the cut, or by the way I reacted to things when I did something. Even the pain fascinated me, and I grew more and more curious not only to the way humans react to things, but also the reasons behind such things. In a way, it was the contradiction of wanting to stop myself from hurting, yet the fascination of what I was learning the more I played with it that kept me marveled all night at this new discovery.
       I believe these two memories are important to the eventual mind setting I grew into in my late teens, but I had other memories working to counter such things.
       There was a time that I had been helping my father build an addition onto the back of the house, and while we were working, a board fell on my head. I was older at that time, and a lot more experienced in life, but this memory held a lot of significance for me. The board had a nail in it, and the nail hit me on top of the head. For some reason, I wasn’t cut or injured, and we went back to work on the house after I shrugged it off.
       I believe it was the comfort he showed me when I was hurt that kept that memory so close to my heart. I don’t mean he had never before shown me comfort, but I was a young man then and so thought that only children admitted to being hurt. After all, isn’t it cliché to state that real men don’t cry?
       The way he asked if I was alright and stopped to make sure I was ok for some reason made me realize that it was ok to find a comfort when you’re hurt and someone is trying to comfort you. I think in ways that was one of the greatest things I have ever realized in my life, since pain is something I have grown accustomed to feeling. It helped to show me that with the presence of someone who cares for you, pain can be something you can show because if someone cares about you then they can help you get better.
       This of course at eye level seems to contradict with a memory from around the same age that I have of working on my tree fort. I was building something extra onto the outside wall of the tree fort, and since I didn’t have a ladder at the time, I had to take some risks.
Climbing on top of a plastic fridge my sisters used to play house, I grabbed a branch of the tree and hung upside down by my legs while nailing in a piece of wood. Before I climbed up, I had neglected to move the pail of broken two by fours with nails and spiked edges beside the fridge, and realized it was too late to do anything about it when I was already hanging upside down and working.
       I don’t really remember what it was, but something spooked me for a moment when I was hanging there, and I lost my grip on the branch. As I fell, I remember trying to draw in a breath, but it was knocked out of me as soon as I hit the plastic fridge. I had landed on the fridge on my back, but the top of the fridge was only big enough for just my back, so my legs, arms, and head all snapped down from the impact and left me with the wind knocked out of me while the world was spinning around me.
       As I started to get my bearings, I tried to roll over to get off the top of the plastic fridge and had forgotten about the bucket of spiked wood and nails. Without thinking because I was too busy trying to get my head back together, I rolled right into the bucket and tore my shirt to shreds. I had earned myself a couple of good cuts that day, but that’s not the reason I remember it.
       I remember that day because it was the day I learned the contradiction to the memory I just told you about my father. That day, I was alone while I was laying on the ground and curled into a ball in pain. I wanted nothing more to have someone there at that moment to comfort me and make the pain go away. Nobody was around.
       Where one day I learned that it was ok to show pain in front of someone who cares for you and can comfort you, I learned on this day that when nobody is around, pain can be a very powerful opponent. I learned that while people could help comfort your pain, only you could ever defeat it. I eventually forced myself to stand and start working on the tree fort again, but the lesson I learned that day would follow me forever.
       In part, I think the two lessons I learned at that age influenced the eventual maturity of becoming a sadomasochist. I had never truly been a masochist, but I am as much a sadist as I am human.
       It was the first female I had been with who was the first and last person to ever experience the part of me that enjoyed pain. Her fingernails had torn into my flesh while we made passionate love through the night, and her bite marks remained on my shoulders and neck for days after. Yet, it wasn’t long after that part of my life that the feeling of pain was no longer pleasurable. I had matured into a full sadist.
       Now I have probably bored you to the verge of death with this recount of the past, but you need to understand the vital importance of how I matured into the man I am in order to understand how I found the answers I did in life.
       There really isn’t much to mention about memories for a good many years between the age that I matured into a full sadist, and then results of my secret pleasures that years later began to reveal themselves. So just to cut out all that wasted time in between, most of that time period of my life was spent locked away in my room thinking.
       Later in my life was when I began to realize that all of my ideas and beliefs were coming together to reveal a great truth to me. If all of these ideas are true, then killing another human is nothing more than killing an aspect of myself. If that was true, then everything I did to myself would be ok, because it didn’t harm anyone else.
       It was when I began to realize this that I had met a beautiful young woman. She was a masochist, and believed in many of the same ideas as I did. We matched almost perfectly. That was until I began to understand these concepts of reality I had formed.
       So I waited one night while she was at the store, and I was flickering through the channels on TV. In boredom, I began to let my mind wander into my sadistic little world where I could take pleasures from another’s pain, and while doing so her family came home.
       The ideas were suddenly to powerful to withstand, and the knowledge of all these beliefs had suddenly made me realize that I wasn’t wrong for wanting to do these things. So I waited until they were all settled, and as always, everyone went their separate ways.
       Her mother went into the kitchen to cook dinner while the father went to go lay down in his room and take a nap and her sister went upstairs to her room and cranked the music until she had drowned out the world. How perfectly natural it all came that night when I got up from the couch and went into the bedroom. It was just too perfect of an opportunity to pass up.
       Walking over to her father, he looked up and asked me if I needed anything. They were comfortable enough with me by now that they trusted me when I was around. Reaching down, I remember the rush I felt as I grabbed his head from both sides and twisted. It was the first time I had killed a real human being. The rush that followed could have rivaled the bliss of heroin.
       Setting him down in the bed again, I made sure he appeared to still be napping, and made my way out of the room and up the staircase. The feeling of excitement and anticipation as I took the stairs slowly and silently had my adrenaline pumping until I could hear my heart thundering in my chest. Even if it had been my first kill, it had been much too short. I promised to make this one last a bit longer. I wanted to enjoy the pain before they died. I wanted my pleasures.
       Stepping into the sister’s room, I smiled and motioned for her to turn the music up. There wasn’t any questioning as she did, since she was used to me coming upstairs to hang out and listen to music with her. While she laid on her stomach on the bed, I made my way over to her and sat beside her on the bed. A smile was all she gave me.
       I didn’t want a smile. I wanted to relish in her pain! How could she deny me something so pleasurable at a moment like this? I was about ready to scream in rage and demand that she did as I commanded! Yet I remained calm while my insides where fluttering with anticipation.
       While being drowned out by the music, her screams as I held her down against the bed were unheard downstairs by her mother. Taking my time, I made sure to bleed this moment dry until I was satisfied with the amount of pain I could see in her eyes. She screamed and she tried to escape, until that moment finally came. The moment when I finished within her and everything was over.
       At least, she thought it was over. She didn’t know about my other pleasures, and I had every intention of taking those as well. It wasn’t long before I had her sewing kit in hand while she trembled on the bed with such a beautiful fear in her eyes. Sliding the thin needles out of their compartment, I threaded one and held it up to be sure everything was perfect.
       Stroke by stroke I began to sew her lips shut as she struggled. Her struggles only made it worse when her lips tore apart in places or the needle pierced in the wrong spot. Nonetheless, I finished the task eventually.
       Watching as she screamed without being able to open her mouth, I began to laugh in ecstatic glee for her pain. Tears stained her face and pillows as she fought against me still. There was something even more pleasing in the way she fought even after despair had her in its grasp. That was… until I pinched her nostrils shut.
       Every moment that passed only served to increase the passion of the moment as she tried to escape the suffocation that bled her life away.
       Then it was over.
       Sighing in satisfaction, I rolled over and went across the room, lifting the dolls from a pile and carrying them to her bed. It took a moment to right her up against the headboard, but it was worth it. Spending quality time with her was delightful!
       A bit of the night was spent moving her dolls onto her bed and setting them up around her. I wish I had a camera that night, because that is a picture I would have loved to keep for sentimental reasons. The memory is still burned into my mind though, and I doubt I’ll ever forget the perfect detail of her sitting in bed lifeless, lips sewn shut, and sitting in the center of her pile of dolls.
       That was when I knew I had to satisfy just one more pleasure. I had my thrill, and then my pleasures, and even my pain. Now it was time to sate my curiosity.
       Making my way back downstairs, I joined the mother in the kitchen while she was setting the table. I remember joking with her about the shirt I had borrowed from her daughter because of how cool it was. She thought it was a riot, and reminded me not to forget my shirt at the house.
       While taking my time with her in the kitchen as well, my curiosity ate away at me while I wondered what the inside of the body truly looked like. What did it feel like? Then the wicked smile crossed my lips again, and the steak knife I was supposed to be setting on the table slipped across her throat.
       Dragging her into the bathroom, I could barely restrain myself as I carefully placed her in the bathtub and opened her stomach. The rest of the night was spent in that room with my hands within her body. Pulling out organs and inspecting them before placing them on the sides of her in the bathtub, I discovered a good many things about the human anatomy.
       Of course, it wasn’t long enough to find everything I wanted, but I had to prepare for my beautiful mistress to return home once more. When I came out of the bathroom, I saw her pulling up, and waited at the door. It was a beautiful night out, and I took a moment to appreciate the moon against the dark of night. So did she. I told you we were almost perfect together.
       When she came inside, I brought her over to the rocking chair in the living room and sat with her, talking while she waited for mother to say dinner was done. I told her to relax and I would bring her back a hotdog to snack on while we waited. Sometimes, I wish I had never done that.
       When I came back in the room, I gave her the hotdog and we kept talking. She was a fit of laughter all the while, until the conversation ended while I was about to make my move on her, and carve her up real nice as well. Of course, it couldn’t happen that way. Nothing ever does happen the way it is planned.
       Watching right before my eyes as my final pleasure was supposed to be extracted from her while she begged to please me, I fell back in shock. She was shaking and gasping for air. Before I knew what else to do to stop her from dieing without giving me pleasure first, she fell limp in the chair and her eyes closed.
       She had choked on the hotdog!
       Isn’t fate ironic? I laugh about it now, but boy was that a shock back then.
       I know. I’m a monster, right? Well, remember all that stuff we discussed before? Ask yourself this. Can I kill myself and be a monster? Can I rape myself and be a monster? Can I enjoy the pain I give myself and be a monster?
       Now ask yourself one more question. While you figure out the answer to this last question, I’m going to stick this nine millimeter in my mouth and pull the trigger. Ready?
       If I am right about what I believe, then I had already previous to my birth planned out that these people exist only for me to be the monster I was to them, and yet I can’t be a monster for doing those things to myself if I had planned it all out when I planned out my reality while floating in the womb, right?