Frozen in Ninth - 1/1
Frozen in Ninth
Rating: R, Gen
Characters: Dean, Alistair
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchester dolls for the purposes of general amusement. Sorry about the holes!
Word Count: 2,171
A/N: Door 9 in my SPN Advent Calendar
A photo essay from Hell (2008 - ∞)
This is an experiment: in form; and tense; and to see if it is possible to tell a viable story based around a series of pictures - let’s call it the Poliakoff test *G* (though I’m not sure I passed)
Warning: Lots of graphics. This may take some time to load.
Summary: The worst thing of all is when they take the memories.
They used to say Hell was made up of circles, different levels according to your sin. They said Hell was a pit, a fiery furnace of eternal damnation. Now they just say, “Hot as Hell,” “When Hell freezes over,” and “Hell on Earth.”
They’ll tell you, “Life is Hell.” Well, no matter how bad it is, it’s not.
Nothing’s ever like you expected it to be, but this much is true.
They take everything away.
Earthfall, The Rail
You don’t notice the big things as much as the little ones. The details are what interests you, always have been.
The way that concrete and stone crumbles at the edges, the cracks forced ever wider by lichen; strange ferns, and coastal grasses dried to bone; and the careful sigils of graffiti, visible to all, intelligible to none but its maker. You notice all of that before you see the tension on the wires, screwed deep and never letting loose. The doorway you don’t even see until you’re through it.
The rails diverge ahead of you, but you walk the main line-undergrowth already reclaiming the side line, so you ignore the pebbled track that veers alongside it, sure that it has an end that isn’t yours. The coarse hinterland bracken catches deep as you pass heading up the incline, leaving bloody trails on your skin that are nothing. You haven’t felt pain in so long you almost miss the security of it.
It’s nothing.
You’re being wrapped around the hill, earth falling away to your left, and though part of the railing looks recent, you hug the rock face. You’d call it a mountain, but you don’t dare. That’s another thing you lost at the beginning.
The trees are reaching up for a grey sky you can feel, but not see. You don’t ask how tall they are, how far they’ve come. You don’t look.
Someone’s erected a flimsy hinged strut overhead; you could touch it even without stretching. You don’t. It’s not enough to hold back the earth.
There’s no choice here; the rail goes through. You tell yourself you can see that light at the end, that it’s real. You keep telling yourself, once, and once again before you duck your head, cringing unnecessarily, and you’re in.
You saw that light. It was real. It was in front of you, then gone, and you’re through. That’s a journey you should have remembered, but you can’t.
You know not to look back; you didn’t lose that. You know, but you do.
The gate wasn’t there, when… It wasn’t there. If you weren’t standing a bare ten feet past the opening, head still turned, you’d be almost convinced it was another tunnel. But it isn’t. Can’t be. So it’s not.
There’s a figure beyond the gate, and you should… But you don’t.
Smokefall, The Gorge
There’s a reason you don’t look. A hundred reasons falling down into the gorge, along with the scattered needles of tree trunks more than forty-feet long. Rocks, water, wind, time and intention brought them down, and it’s a reminder of how easily you break now.
If it weren’t for the path, you’d be a pioneer in this wilderness. You can’t be.
Something made that path.
You feel safer alone.
A million reasons. This sure ain’t no hill, but you still don’t rename it. That was one lesson.
You’re wearing a coat of earth-granite, shale and more now. You try to convince yourself it’s light. You’re a fool, because it only lifts for a minute before settling more firmly on your shoulders, shortening your breath.
And there’s a bridge that won’t ever be crossed.
There’s a bridge.
At Dawn, The Vents
It’s worse, the closer you get.
The earth is cracked, dry to its core, but still strangely turgid; swollen with something desperate to be free. Mud. It’s mud. Could have been a river through here in another time. This is what remains. Only the cold khaki surface crumbling to dust.
But it’s not. It’s still alive, moving so slowly he keeps missing it, till a few slow bubbles roil sulphurously, and burn themselves a new course.
Nothing can live here.
Except the mud.
And him.
He’s wrong. He keeps making mistakes. Expecting someone to be there. Something’s wrong.
Where he is now? There’s just a horizon, and smoke. Some fool’s burning fires! The world is on fire. Fire. Fire means something. He knows fire. He remembers how to smell, and there’s no acrid taint to the breeze. It’s wet, and warm, and wrong.
Steam.
From below.
Steam rising, and there’s no sky. There used to be sky. It was…?
Steam, and the earth exhales.
He is wrong. Down deep, something moves.
Don’t look. Don’t think. It’s not a mouth; it’s just a crack, a fissure in the earth’s crust.
Wide, and deep, and it knows. Him it knows.
And for a second he knows it. He sees.
Some of the mist thins, and it’s different. Brighter. He doesn’t have the words for what’s changed. But he sees. Those aren’t twisted stumps of trees, long dead and gone. They’re bodies. Of what, he’ll never be able to tell now. All he knows is that there are bodies on the ledge. Bodies. And blood.
He can’t think. He had something once, and it’s gone. He’s not allowed to think. That was a lesson.
He’s standing on the edge of a pit as stones keep falling, and that too is a lesson.
And he falls.
Through dust, and ash, and blood, and steam…
Falls.
And keeps falling…
Into more steam, and sand, and tussock grass.
And blinks, because for a moment it seems like the blood of the world is rising. Up, through the grass, and sand, and earth,
before it blows away.
Even after it’s gone he can smell it, taste it on the air. In his head.
Then he too is gone.
Day’s Eve, The Mine
It’s been months, longer even. Here in this place. Occasionally they will deliberately let him go long enough to run through its labyrinth of tunnels, some hacked out of rock, others carefully lined with bricks leaching lime and blood. They set him free, and he walks, then runs as best he can now. At times he sees the odd flicker of lights in the distance leading to an exit they’ll never let him near. Or he’ll see figures moving up ahead of him in the bloodness. Some are crawling, and others are running; staggering like he is. Mostly he’s alone.
Until they catch him.
Every day he is there, caught in the firelight, too far along the tunnel to be more than a silhouette.
Watching.
The light keeps moulding itself around the figure, fondling, teasing, tasting. Knowing. The light is always hungry. It has eyes.
It’s worse when he forces his head up from his chains, only to see that no one’s there; he persists, even when watching means pain inevitably follows.
The light never cares who it devours either.
Despite what he says, there’s only one thing that’s here just for him.
He wishes he could remember how long it took him to notice it; he likes to keep an exact catalogue of his shame. Clearly it knows the value of camouflage. He only uses that excuse to himself for the first month.
Sometimes he tries talking to it when they’re alone. It never taunts him when he can’t. Not like him, not like the others.
For it, he tries harder. On a good day he has words. And, at those times? His sight improves too, life seeping back into his damaged vision.
He ignores the blood and rust on the stones, as it does. He has to.
For the most part, it exists patiently in this colourless world with him. On his bad days he tells himself that they’re friends. That they knew each other. In another life.
He knows that’s a delusion.
It is a year before they find out.
Even swifts can’t outfly the Devil for long.
Forenoon, The River
One day he makes it as far as the upper reaches of one of the underground rivers. It might even be the river.
He’s close. Close to the truth. The memories.
The river.
He doesn’t drink. He wants to, but he remembers that much. Not that he could have, even if he tried. That was another lesson, and another thing they took away.
They. Always him, and them, and they. He refuses to name any of them. He knows. This much he always knows. These small inner rebellions last the longest, before they too are gone.
He hadn’t freed himself this time. No matter what he remembers seeing and doing. The days it took. The things he did and keeps on doing to earn the time alone.
He is wrong.
He hasn’t earned anything.
He doesn’t mind drowning, not this time.
It’s nice. Being dead.
Calm, meditative even. Though he doesn’t think that’s ever been a thought he’s had before. He wishes he knew that for sure. He goes back to floating until something disturbs the water.
Fucking swans. And that’s an odd thought. If feels like his, but that too, is another thing that they took from him. The anger, they left. They like the anger. It’s a tool.
For a moment he wishes he had some bread to toss at it. That feels like the right thing to do, something he’s seen other people do. Normal people. Something someone else would do. Someone else.
And in that moment, as it turns, and he looks into the swan's eyes, it reminds him of something … the swift … before he buries that memory, and everything fades, except for a touch of red, which should mean something.
Here red means blood.
At Night, The Moon
When he’s free, and out of the pit, he catches glimpses of what he thinks must be the sky, but it’s either shrouded in steam and ash, or it’s night again.
Even then, clouds scurry obediently to veil it, and any telltale stars that he might use to mark his way.
The moon does her bit to help. He’s grateful for the support, here where nothing, no one, can reach him. Help him.
But he’s never free. He knows that. No matter what he thinks he sees.
At Night, At Day, And Forever
The figure’s back. As always. Man, monster, or worse? That’s a question he doesn’t want to know the answer to. Maybe he knew before, but the lessons keep taking everything away.
It is firelight, and he flinches back as far as he can within his shroud of chains; part of him knows this fire.
The figure’s coming closer, light slicing through murk, and sulphur, and pain, but it doesn’t bring clarity or freedom. He isn’t being saved by an angel, or by anyone. There’s no Heaven here, watching fire flow eagerly ahead to bleed a path towards him.
And there are eyes in the darkness. Watching. Waiting. The eyes are laughing, and after everything they’ve seen and had, those eyes are still hungry for more.
They want him. Always.
They have him.
He has him. Alistair. The name tastes of blood.
And he’s in the wilderness again, but that too is deception. He can’t see them, but there are walls all around him, and chains.
And that wire held so tight? Reaches forward to infinity, strung through the souls of the damned, of which he is one, and not the least amongst them in sin.
These wires will never break.
No matter how hard you scream, what you give up, what you promise, what you choose to do.
Never.
But you keep trying. You have to know. You lost something-someone-important a long time ago. And you will, and have sold your soul so many times since you’ve got here, to get that back.
You cling to that. You’ll do anything to get those memories back.
‘You really want them that bad, Dean?’
The name means nothing. You’ve learnt to answer only to blood and pain. But this too is a lesson that’s been burnt into you. When to give in, when to say, ‘Yes!’
He’s free. Standing in front of that simple ruined doorway.
Feet set on a pre-determined and already worn path, he enters. Walking through a familiar tunnel,
Towards something that is still beyond any and all of his imaginings and fears.
Walking onwards, as the voice says, ‘Beg for me.’
So he does.
Thus begins Dean Winchester’s tenth hour in Hell. Walking. Carrying an asked for, but heavy burden.
The gift of memory.
For another of Dean’s hours in Hell see:
Blood and Cupcakes Part 1 | Part 2
Though it would be wise to read its prequel first:
Bread and Circuses Part 1 | Part 2
For further Christmas stories and graphics see my: SPN Advent Calendar
Rating: R, Gen
Characters: Dean, Alistair
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchester dolls for the purposes of general amusement. Sorry about the holes!
Word Count: 2,171
A/N: Door 9 in my SPN Advent Calendar
A photo essay from Hell (2008 - ∞)
This is an experiment: in form; and tense; and to see if it is possible to tell a viable story based around a series of pictures - let’s call it the Poliakoff test *G* (though I’m not sure I passed)
Warning: Lots of graphics. This may take some time to load.
Summary: The worst thing of all is when they take the memories.
They used to say Hell was made up of circles, different levels according to your sin. They said Hell was a pit, a fiery furnace of eternal damnation. Now they just say, “Hot as Hell,” “When Hell freezes over,” and “Hell on Earth.”
They’ll tell you, “Life is Hell.” Well, no matter how bad it is, it’s not.
Nothing’s ever like you expected it to be, but this much is true.
They take everything away.
Earthfall, The Rail
You don’t notice the big things as much as the little ones. The details are what interests you, always have been.
The way that concrete and stone crumbles at the edges, the cracks forced ever wider by lichen; strange ferns, and coastal grasses dried to bone; and the careful sigils of graffiti, visible to all, intelligible to none but its maker. You notice all of that before you see the tension on the wires, screwed deep and never letting loose. The doorway you don’t even see until you’re through it.
The rails diverge ahead of you, but you walk the main line-undergrowth already reclaiming the side line, so you ignore the pebbled track that veers alongside it, sure that it has an end that isn’t yours. The coarse hinterland bracken catches deep as you pass heading up the incline, leaving bloody trails on your skin that are nothing. You haven’t felt pain in so long you almost miss the security of it.
It’s nothing.
You’re being wrapped around the hill, earth falling away to your left, and though part of the railing looks recent, you hug the rock face. You’d call it a mountain, but you don’t dare. That’s another thing you lost at the beginning.
The trees are reaching up for a grey sky you can feel, but not see. You don’t ask how tall they are, how far they’ve come. You don’t look.
Someone’s erected a flimsy hinged strut overhead; you could touch it even without stretching. You don’t. It’s not enough to hold back the earth.
There’s no choice here; the rail goes through. You tell yourself you can see that light at the end, that it’s real. You keep telling yourself, once, and once again before you duck your head, cringing unnecessarily, and you’re in.
You saw that light. It was real. It was in front of you, then gone, and you’re through. That’s a journey you should have remembered, but you can’t.
You know not to look back; you didn’t lose that. You know, but you do.
The gate wasn’t there, when… It wasn’t there. If you weren’t standing a bare ten feet past the opening, head still turned, you’d be almost convinced it was another tunnel. But it isn’t. Can’t be. So it’s not.
There’s a figure beyond the gate, and you should… But you don’t.
Smokefall, The Gorge
There’s a reason you don’t look. A hundred reasons falling down into the gorge, along with the scattered needles of tree trunks more than forty-feet long. Rocks, water, wind, time and intention brought them down, and it’s a reminder of how easily you break now.
If it weren’t for the path, you’d be a pioneer in this wilderness. You can’t be.
Something made that path.
You feel safer alone.
A million reasons. This sure ain’t no hill, but you still don’t rename it. That was one lesson.
You’re wearing a coat of earth-granite, shale and more now. You try to convince yourself it’s light. You’re a fool, because it only lifts for a minute before settling more firmly on your shoulders, shortening your breath.
And there’s a bridge that won’t ever be crossed.
There’s a bridge.
At Dawn, The Vents
It’s worse, the closer you get.
The earth is cracked, dry to its core, but still strangely turgid; swollen with something desperate to be free. Mud. It’s mud. Could have been a river through here in another time. This is what remains. Only the cold khaki surface crumbling to dust.
But it’s not. It’s still alive, moving so slowly he keeps missing it, till a few slow bubbles roil sulphurously, and burn themselves a new course.
Nothing can live here.
Except the mud.
And him.
He’s wrong. He keeps making mistakes. Expecting someone to be there. Something’s wrong.
Where he is now? There’s just a horizon, and smoke. Some fool’s burning fires! The world is on fire. Fire. Fire means something. He knows fire. He remembers how to smell, and there’s no acrid taint to the breeze. It’s wet, and warm, and wrong.
Steam.
From below.
Steam rising, and there’s no sky. There used to be sky. It was…?
Steam, and the earth exhales.
He is wrong. Down deep, something moves.
Don’t look. Don’t think. It’s not a mouth; it’s just a crack, a fissure in the earth’s crust.
Wide, and deep, and it knows. Him it knows.
And for a second he knows it. He sees.
Some of the mist thins, and it’s different. Brighter. He doesn’t have the words for what’s changed. But he sees. Those aren’t twisted stumps of trees, long dead and gone. They’re bodies. Of what, he’ll never be able to tell now. All he knows is that there are bodies on the ledge. Bodies. And blood.
He can’t think. He had something once, and it’s gone. He’s not allowed to think. That was a lesson.
He’s standing on the edge of a pit as stones keep falling, and that too is a lesson.
And he falls.
Through dust, and ash, and blood, and steam…
Falls.
And keeps falling…
Into more steam, and sand, and tussock grass.
And blinks, because for a moment it seems like the blood of the world is rising. Up, through the grass, and sand, and earth,
before it blows away.
Even after it’s gone he can smell it, taste it on the air. In his head.
Then he too is gone.
Day’s Eve, The Mine
It’s been months, longer even. Here in this place. Occasionally they will deliberately let him go long enough to run through its labyrinth of tunnels, some hacked out of rock, others carefully lined with bricks leaching lime and blood. They set him free, and he walks, then runs as best he can now. At times he sees the odd flicker of lights in the distance leading to an exit they’ll never let him near. Or he’ll see figures moving up ahead of him in the bloodness. Some are crawling, and others are running; staggering like he is. Mostly he’s alone.
Until they catch him.
Every day he is there, caught in the firelight, too far along the tunnel to be more than a silhouette.
Watching.
The light keeps moulding itself around the figure, fondling, teasing, tasting. Knowing. The light is always hungry. It has eyes.
It’s worse when he forces his head up from his chains, only to see that no one’s there; he persists, even when watching means pain inevitably follows.
The light never cares who it devours either.
Despite what he says, there’s only one thing that’s here just for him.
He wishes he could remember how long it took him to notice it; he likes to keep an exact catalogue of his shame. Clearly it knows the value of camouflage. He only uses that excuse to himself for the first month.
Sometimes he tries talking to it when they’re alone. It never taunts him when he can’t. Not like him, not like the others.
For it, he tries harder. On a good day he has words. And, at those times? His sight improves too, life seeping back into his damaged vision.
He ignores the blood and rust on the stones, as it does. He has to.
For the most part, it exists patiently in this colourless world with him. On his bad days he tells himself that they’re friends. That they knew each other. In another life.
He knows that’s a delusion.
It is a year before they find out.
Even swifts can’t outfly the Devil for long.
Forenoon, The River
One day he makes it as far as the upper reaches of one of the underground rivers. It might even be the river.
He’s close. Close to the truth. The memories.
The river.
He doesn’t drink. He wants to, but he remembers that much. Not that he could have, even if he tried. That was another lesson, and another thing they took away.
They. Always him, and them, and they. He refuses to name any of them. He knows. This much he always knows. These small inner rebellions last the longest, before they too are gone.
He hadn’t freed himself this time. No matter what he remembers seeing and doing. The days it took. The things he did and keeps on doing to earn the time alone.
He is wrong.
He hasn’t earned anything.
He doesn’t mind drowning, not this time.
It’s nice. Being dead.
Calm, meditative even. Though he doesn’t think that’s ever been a thought he’s had before. He wishes he knew that for sure. He goes back to floating until something disturbs the water.
Fucking swans. And that’s an odd thought. If feels like his, but that too, is another thing that they took from him. The anger, they left. They like the anger. It’s a tool.
For a moment he wishes he had some bread to toss at it. That feels like the right thing to do, something he’s seen other people do. Normal people. Something someone else would do. Someone else.
And in that moment, as it turns, and he looks into the swan's eyes, it reminds him of something … the swift … before he buries that memory, and everything fades, except for a touch of red, which should mean something.
Here red means blood.
At Night, The Moon
When he’s free, and out of the pit, he catches glimpses of what he thinks must be the sky, but it’s either shrouded in steam and ash, or it’s night again.
Even then, clouds scurry obediently to veil it, and any telltale stars that he might use to mark his way.
The moon does her bit to help. He’s grateful for the support, here where nothing, no one, can reach him. Help him.
But he’s never free. He knows that. No matter what he thinks he sees.
At Night, At Day, And Forever
The figure’s back. As always. Man, monster, or worse? That’s a question he doesn’t want to know the answer to. Maybe he knew before, but the lessons keep taking everything away.
It is firelight, and he flinches back as far as he can within his shroud of chains; part of him knows this fire.
The figure’s coming closer, light slicing through murk, and sulphur, and pain, but it doesn’t bring clarity or freedom. He isn’t being saved by an angel, or by anyone. There’s no Heaven here, watching fire flow eagerly ahead to bleed a path towards him.
And there are eyes in the darkness. Watching. Waiting. The eyes are laughing, and after everything they’ve seen and had, those eyes are still hungry for more.
They want him. Always.
They have him.
He has him. Alistair. The name tastes of blood.
And he’s in the wilderness again, but that too is deception. He can’t see them, but there are walls all around him, and chains.
And that wire held so tight? Reaches forward to infinity, strung through the souls of the damned, of which he is one, and not the least amongst them in sin.
These wires will never break.
No matter how hard you scream, what you give up, what you promise, what you choose to do.
Never.
But you keep trying. You have to know. You lost something-someone-important a long time ago. And you will, and have sold your soul so many times since you’ve got here, to get that back.
You cling to that. You’ll do anything to get those memories back.
‘You really want them that bad, Dean?’
The name means nothing. You’ve learnt to answer only to blood and pain. But this too is a lesson that’s been burnt into you. When to give in, when to say, ‘Yes!’
He’s free. Standing in front of that simple ruined doorway.
Feet set on a pre-determined and already worn path, he enters. Walking through a familiar tunnel,
Towards something that is still beyond any and all of his imaginings and fears.
Walking onwards, as the voice says, ‘Beg for me.’
So he does.
Thus begins Dean Winchester’s tenth hour in Hell. Walking. Carrying an asked for, but heavy burden.
The gift of memory.
For another of Dean’s hours in Hell see:
Blood and Cupcakes Part 1 | Part 2
Though it would be wise to read its prequel first:
Bread and Circuses Part 1 | Part 2
For further Christmas stories and graphics see my: SPN Advent Calendar