Chuck has got us writing the last Flash Fiction this year as a random song title. Now, we don't have to go to the theme of the song, just use the song title; and he's given us 3,000 word limit to write to. Mine is AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell'... well, because it's been stuck in my head for the last few days.
My life started out like anyone else’s.
I was born into a loving family and brought
up properly to respect my elders, to care for my Mum and Dad and be carefree as
a kid. I learned my lessons at school,
went to Karate lessons on the weekends and rode my bike around the BMX tracks
at dusk before I heard Dad’s whistle on the wind for us to come home.
Mum was the best cook. She could make just about anything she could
put her hand to from food to clothes to most anything around the house. Dad built her a craft room the size of the
living room and she practically lived in it for around six months before
Christmas.
And we were never allowed in it.
And we were never allowed in it.
Never.
Not even to borrow a pair of scissors.
We never questioned that rule and just accepted that she was working on Christmas presents or birthday presents and did as we were told. So, Mum’s craft room was something we never went near, never told anyone about and when we showed our friends around the house, we kinda gave it a dismissive wave saying, ‘Oh, that’s Mum’s craft room; we’re not allowed in there… you know, it’s her cave of mystery.’ We’d giggle and snort and walk off. Our friends never questioned that room either.
As the years passed, Mum’s hair began to
grey little by little. She started to
look more tired, but she still had the energy of a person her age. I noticed that the more she used her craft
room, the older she appeared to become.
I’m not sure if Dad realised it or not.
So I asked him.
“Of course I notice.” He frowned, “She just
won’t tell me what’s going on.”
“Dad, have you been inside her craft room
since you built it?” I asked.
He looked to his hands, fiddled with his
fingernails and then looked at me, “No.
She won’t allow me in either.” Looking over at the room, he shook his head, “I
wonder what’s going on.”
Then, one day, I arrived home early from
high school to find the door of the craft room ajar and wondered what had
happened. Mum normally kept that room locked
up tight – even when we weren’t home.
The rest of the house had been locked up and this room had been built separate
from the house. I didn’t know what do
to. Dumping my school port on the floor
near my bedroom, I walked out to the room and felt heat coming from behind the
door. I put my hand up to the gap and it
felt like an oven inside there… and going against all the rules I had obey all
this time, I pulled the door open more and stepped inside.
This place was the most organised mess I’d
ever seen. There were boxes of material
stacked along one wall in order of colour, drawer up drawer of beads sitting
along a counter by the window. Hooked on
a long piece of dowel were hoops of ribbon in all widths and colours you could
ever possibly imagine. I saw two sewing
machines, two overlockers and in one area of the place were two easels and a
collection of paints, brushes and canvas’ as well with smocks all over the
place hanging up on hooks ready for use.
But the place was hot… it was like an oven. By the time I had looked around, I had begun
to sweat badly, but hadn’t noticed that the door had swung shut behind me until
I heard a loud CLICK sound and I turned, looking at it dumbly.
Without even touching it, I knew that
doorknob was hot, by the way it turned a molten orange kinda colour and began
to drip onto the floor.
“Mum!” I called out but my throat was
caught, dry and hoarse, “Where are you?”
A very deep chuckle answered me, “Your
mother isn’t here, Drew. But be a good
boy and step forwards, let me see my legacy.” Turning to my right I saw an
unremarkable man standing next to the counter, “Come here Drew… I must see you
for myself.” A grin pulled at his face and his eyes looked like … mine.
“No.” I cringed, “Who are you? And where is my mother?”
“You are my son… and your mother is a whore.”
He snickered, “She made a deal boy, and came here personally to collect her
soul today.” He looked me up and down, “But meeting you… that was just an
accident, a good one.”
“I don’t care who you think you are…”
“Think?” he stepped forward, “I know I who
am. But have you seen your Daddy look at
you lately? He can’t fully just look at
you, can he?”
“What kind of deal did she make?”
He sighed, cocking his head to one side, “She
wanted another child, oh so badly she made a deal with the Devil… and guess who
I am?” he tapped out a little dance on the spot with that grin on his face, “And
I graciously let her… but there was a catch.”
“Isn’t there always?”
“That catch was that the child was mine.”
I felt a sudden hatred for this man so
strong I wanted to kill him, “Where is my mother?”
He gave me a mocking smile, “Dead. Once I take a soul, you die because a human
cannot exist without a soul.”
Feeling behind me, I found a pair of large
metal scissors – the type that cut material, that are very sharp, that are
expensive. I grabbed them quickly and
lunged toward him screaming! Shoving him
to the floor, I felt my hatred explode out of me as I plunged the scissors into
him…
… but they hit nothing but the floor!
Scrambling to my feet, I looked around.
Where’d he go?
Turning, I heard the door open, and Dad was
standing there, “Son? Drew, you okay?” he spotted the scissors sticking up out
of the carpet of the floor and noticed me coated in sweat, “What happened?”
“He took her.” I groaned.
“Your mother?”
I nodded, “She made a deal with the Devil.”
Dad just stood there, not knowing what to
do, not until I yanked the scissors out of the carpet, “So you attacked him?”
Dumping them onto the counter, I muttered, “He
told me he was my father. Exactly what
did you expect me to do?”
He shrugged.
“You know, you’re acting very… calm about
this.”
He ran a hand over his stubbled face as his
voice caught in his throat, “Yeah, I know.
It’s because I’ve always known that you’re not mine. There were just little things about you that
gave it away that you didn’t belong to me… and today, we have to save your
mother from the place she been sent to.”
“Dad that might take years.”
He looked at me, then look to his
hands. The Devil was right: my father couldn’t look at me.
“Dad, we don’t know where He put her.”
“Yes we do.” He nodded looking at me
finally, “The Devil put her on his throne… but your mother isn’t a Queen.”
“She’s the whore.” I whispered.
It took weeks to find out what we needed to
about how to get into Hell without the Devil finding out. And really there was no real way to do
it. The only way to do anything about
getting into that place was to make a deal with a demon… and even then, with my
bloodlines, they’d tell their boss who – when you think on it – was the Devil.
Crap really, right?
Yeah… right.
So, there we were – Dad and I – sitting at the dinner table eating pizza after the other kids had gone to bed, working on our search for Mum, when I had the best idea. Well, okay, not the best, but it was something that would work.
“How about I tell Him I’d go with him.”
Dad turned on me, “Are you nuts?”
“Hear me through.” I touched his arm, “He
wants me anyway. So I go and find out
where she is and bring her back through… um…” I search the papers, “Purgatory.”
He looked at the research, “And which Reaper
is going to wait for you there?”
“We’ll find a way back.”
“Or not.” A voice said behind us.
We turned to find my sister, Tiffany,
standing there in her pajamas, “I’ll summon you back.”
“Summon?”
She walked to the table, quickly read over
our plan and sat down, “I’ve been practicing witchcraft for over a year, I can
do it.”
“But your initiation…”
“Bah… it’s all flowers and floating pencils.”
“You have to have one.” Dad said, “You can’t
do this without being…”
“I’ll talk to my High Priestess and see what
I can do.” She smiled, “I want Mum back as well, but like all Hell I’m letting
you piss off downstairs without a way back.”
Tiffany came home the next afternoon in a
crappy mood, “She won’t let me.”
“You’re not ready?” I asked.
“Not according to her.”
“Sis, I’m not letting you if your High
Priestess isn’t letting you.” I said, “But I appreciate the idea of it.”
“Okay.” She said, “But at least let me
prepare the pathway for you to enter the place… so you might be able to return
the same way.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I grinned.
The cemetery was dark the night we did the
ceremony for me to enter Hell. I wasn’t
looking forward to it and neither was Dad… but it was our only way to get our
mother home. The disgusting part was
that we had to exhume her grave. It took
around an hour to dig her casket up and open it. Then, I had to get into the box with the body…
this was the freaking shitty part!
The casket was closed – but not nailed shut –
and then the ceremony was begun. Dad
spoke the Latin to perfection and then Tiffany prepared the pathway back
through the casket for me to come home – and what a way to come home!
I heard the thin layer of dirt being tossed
over the lid and then heard them performing the rituals. Minutes later, I pushed the lid open and
found I was in a boiling hot cell of a place.
Heat rays wavered off the floor and all around me.
I was in Hell.
Climbing out of the casket, I stepped onto the roasting ground and stood, and began to walk to the road where the Devil stood waiting for me.
“I knew you just couldn’t resist me.” He smiled.
“I’m here for my mother.”
“The whore?” he laughed, “Very well, you can
have her.” He turned and walked across the road, towards a door I hadn’t
noticed. It opened and let us through
into a hallway where there were cells upon cells of lost souls of people who
had lost their way and were stuck here in Hell for a variety of reasons.
I was here to get my mother out of here and
back to Earth where she belonged.
We approached the end of the hallway and the
door opened to a room where I found my mother chained to a bed in the middle of
a large cell. She was almost naked and
had demons taking advantage of her – one by one – and she just laid back
against the grey pillows with a distant expression on her face, in her eyes.
“Mother?” I said stepping toward her.
She turned toward me and her eyes lit up, “Oh…
another one…”
“No… I’m your son.”
She turned her face from me whispering, “I
have no son… none at all.”
Tears stung my eyes as I turned around,
leaning on the door frame ready to be sick.
I had come all this way to find my mother, only to find her chained up
and treated like this.
“It must be a shock…”
“Fuck off… you knew she’d do this.” I
snapped.
He took a deep breath, “Well, yes, Drew I
did. So, why did you come? Why did you come alone?”
I turned and looked at him, “Because it’s me
you want. And you would not have stopped
me.”
“True.”
I glanced at my Mother once more before
approaching the bed, grabbing her shoulders and looking into her eyes and realising
immediately, that we had definitely lost her.
Her eyes were nothing but lost pools of nothing – they were empty of life,
of soul, of anything to say she used to be a human. I whispered in her ear, “Mum, it’s me, Drew,
your son. You have a family. Tiffany missed you. Dad misses you… little Bradley misses his
Mummy… please come home to Earth.” I started to cry, “Or at the very least, ask
God to save you.”
Her head snapped around as her voice shrieked,
“I have no family! Never did!” she
shoved me away, “Leave me alone, Drew! For
the love of all that’s God’s creatures, Drew go away!” she pulled and yanked at
the chains as she tried to scratch at me and I turned away toward the door.
It opened and I stepped back out into the
hallway…
…walked down past the other cells…
…out onto the side of the highway…
I crossed it toward the place I was before,
found the casket and climbed back into it… dreading the fact I had to close the
lid on my own.
I now despised small spaces.
Pushing the lid open, I sat up to find Dad
was squatting by the casket to help me up, “Shit Drew… you were gone for a good
five hours. It’s almost dawn.”
“We lost her.” I said, “She’s…”
“…here.” Tiffany said looking over the top
of grave site with a torch.
With Dad helping me up, we looked over the
top of the grave to find my Mum was standing next to the grave, “Holy crap on
toast.” Dad mumbled, “Let’s clean this place up and get the hell outa here.”
“Please, let’s not use that word anymore.”
Mum said.
“Which one?” I asked clambering out of the
grave.
“Hell.” She said holding me close, “You
pulled me out of that place, and I was on the highway to Hell… the true
Hell. He had more plans for me than just
what you saw, Drew.”
“What kind of plans?” Tiffany asked.
“Well, he’s let me go.” Mum said, “We’re
safe from Him… for now.”
When we arrived home, Dad and Mum sat in the
kitchen talking. I listened at my
bedroom door with my light out to their conversation:
“Sweetheart, what did you mean by: for now?”
he asked.
“Do we have to…”
“Yes, we do.” He said.
“He let me go. But Drew is the Son of the Devil. When he is old enough, he will be ordered to
walk the Highway to Hell by his true father – and nothing we do will save him
from his true destiny in life.”
“What destiny is that?”
I heard Mum start to cry, “We’ll be able to
say that our son is the Devil.”
