Free Ghost Shadows by Thomas M. Malafarina

certain he would find them still ripped and exposed. But they were not. He was whole once again, still naked, outside of the room where he had just endured one of the worst sessions to date. He was also momentarily free of pain and he knew he would have to enjoy whatever small amount of blessed relief he might have. It wouldn’t last long, although it seemed time, at least as Winston understood time, was without meaning in this place.  
    Long ago, a demon in one of his many intervals of torment had mentioned to him that in Hell, a thousand years of pain could take place while only a few seconds passed in terms of earth time. Likewise just a few moments in Hell might be a century on the other side. Although the creature was not intelligent enough to articulate what he wanted to explain, Winston was able to take the beast’s grunts and half sentences and turn them into what he thought might be a cohesive representation of the concept. He deduced that in Hell, the relationship of time was not linear; neither did it always go forward. Sometimes time stood still and sometimes it might even move backward depending on the particular need.  
    Â As Winston sat peacefully on the Path he knew exactly what he had to do next; he knew the routine. He was never allowed to sit for very long. He would have to eventually get up and begin walking to whatever door he was supposed to find next. Failure to do so would mean more severe repercussions in the next room. He also knew he could not go backwards and would not even consider attempting to do so. He had made that mistake once shortly after his arrival and discovered he was forced to go through every single agonizing second of every torture he had previously encountered all over again; from the beginning. That was only after five or six sessions. Now with literally thousands of periods of torture behind him he didn’t want to even look behind him let alone try to go backward.
    He stood up and looked out in the distance. Although he could only see for about fifty or sixty feet ahead of him in the dimly lit cavern he instinctively knew that the Path was endless. Spaced irregularly along both sides of the Path were doors made of large, heavy wooden planks bolted together with huge rusted iron hinges. The doors had no windows and were mounted into the stone cavern walls providing the only access into or out of each chamber. Winston learned shortly after his arrival that the rules of Hell were simple; walk forward on the Path and look for the next open door.    
    As he slowly made his way along the Path, Winston heard screaming of other unfortunate souls from behind those doors that were closed. The large main cavern was ceaselessly resonant with the unending shrieks of the damned. But despite the screams of the multitudes, Winston never met anyone else either in Hell or on the Path. That was another apparent rule of Hell; he was always alone except for those times of immeasurable suffering when he was in the capable hands of a vile demon.  
    Next to each of the doors hung a candelabrum formed from a real once living human hand, their withered gray fingers pointing upward as if reaching to catch some unknown object falling from a nonexistent sky. Melted fast to the cupped palm of each hand was a thick blood red candle; the hot wax dripping down forming puddles in the palm before spilling over and sliding along its shriveled forearm. The candles never seemed to burn down.
    Not long after his arrival in Hell, Winston had been naturally curious and reached out to touch one of the hideous appendages, thinking them cast from stone because of their veined appearance, and was frighteningly greeted with the icy chill of dead, rotting human flesh. Then the hand had actually moved, ever so slightly; just enough to send chills down Winston’s spine and to teach him one of his first of many lessons. It seemed to him as if almost every single minute in the horrible place he was