I. Smelling smoke, Sandra stood on the patio of her third story apartment as the February sunset bled into the southern Nevada sky.  She was beautiful at thirty-one with dark brown hair, piercing green eyes, and full red lips. Looking beyond the sunset, she felt eager for the change that would accompany the arctic storm that night.
For some time, she had sought a way to catapult herself out of her numbing, single-mother routine lived in the industrial section just off the Strip: getting up at six, eating breakfast, waking and feeding the kids, getting them to school, shopping, going to work, and so on.  Months before, she had complained to her therapist, the cigarette-puffing Father Harold Blackstone, that her life had become as tasteless as cold, unseasoned mashed potatoes.
“To turn things around, I'd do just about anything, maybe even slice up a nun,” she'd said, sipping from a steaming cup of sugared coffee. ”Once, I wanted to be a nun. Now, Father, life's a pit.”
It had been after seven in the September evening, and she had sat in the black leather recliner facing Blackstone's desk.
“You've lost your faith, have you, little one?” he'd asked from behind the desk. In the office's semi-darkness, smoke had poured out of his eyes, ears, and nose.
“Probably never had it, Father,” she'd mumbled.
“Oh,” he'd said, then sucked dryly on his cigarette. “I do believe you did have it. We all once had 'the faith.'”
 She'd wondered about the last statement.
“Believe anything?” he'd asked.
“Tried witchcraft once.”
“Me, too.”
“Believe in the Devil, Father?” she'd ventured.
“Hell, no,” he'd sighed.
For a brief time, they'd sat silently, absorbing each other's darkness.
Dizzy from smoke, Sandra had now leaned back in her chair and asked, “So, Father, tell me: what do I do?”
The Father had sat silently behind his desk, blowing smoke rings. Then, he had spoken the challenge: “What to do? Why, child, do what all good Catholics all do: to use a popular line, create your own reality.”
It had been like a light going off for someone who had struggled to depend upon the guidance of a gracious, invisible God.
Relishing taking control, Sandra had smiled the priestly advice that allowed anything from diving off a cliff into crystal blue water to joining a blood cult.
II. Now, on the brink, Sandra eyed the Seven Eleven across the street from her apartment.  In less than twenty-four hours her life would be hurtling in a new direction. The igniting act would require courage, but she had that.
Several times in the past four hours, she had mentally rehearsed the incident.  She had conceived the plan one week before while sitting across from a customer at Whistle Willy's.  Famous for large breasted women in skimpy attire, Willy's was the smoky restaurant where she worked. A wall-eyed part-time English instructor at the community college, Ray had often rambled on about “the evil ooze in every man, woman, and child.”
That very day, Sandra had told Ray about the house she had grown up in: the black cat that she and her sister had seen walking up the side of their two-story house, leaving a trail of bloody paw prints; the closet doors that opened and slammed shut twenty or thirty times a night; the twittering, jabbering voices in the attic that sang the names of each family member. It had been like a confession, and Ray had listened with bated breath.  Eyeballs bulging, he had finally told her that he was basing his next story around her.
“Tell me about that story, Ray,” she had asked.
“You ever seen Stigmata or The Exorcist?” Ray had asked just before biting into his buffalo chicken sandwich.
“Stigmata? That's the one about the young woman who takes on Christ's wounds?” she'd asked. Everyone knew the Exorcist.
“That's the one.”
Sandra had shuddered. Believing herself to be Catholic, Sandra had found these films terrifyingly truthful.
“Sure,” she'd said. “I've seen them.”
His mouth full of chicken, Ray had continued. “Well, that's kind of what this story takes off from: good-looking brunette with great tits and nice ass removes her clothes and, with the help of her Ouija Board, summons a spirit from Hell that nearly fucks her to death, claims her soul and turns her into a knife-wielding killer. Pretty good, huh?”
 “Eat your damned sandwich,” she'd snapped, her mind suddenly fixing on a plan that she now knew could transform her life.
The plan had been forming in her mind like an unfinished painting all week, and with a burning heart, as Ray had devoured the sandwich, Sandra had leaned forward and whispered, “All right, bad boy. Wanna have some fun, Ray? Just once?”
Ray had stopped chewing and looked at her, his right eye pulling out of focus. Then, he had asked, “You're joking, right?”
“Deadly as God,” she'd remarked.
“What you got in mind?”
“I wanna rob a store.” She had looked around to make sure no one else was listening.
“You what?” Ray had exclaimed, holding the three-quarters-eaten sandwich an inch or two from his mouth.
“Sssshhhh. You heard me. Rob a store. Hold it up. I need your car.”
Ray had set the sandwich down. “You're serious.”
“Perfectly,” she had responded.
Ray had looked away. “I don't think I want anything to do with this.”
“Sure you do,” she'd responded. “You love me.”
Ray had looked at her, paused and chewed. Aside from his part-time job at the college, he had no life; that much she knew.
“Sure I do,” he'd sighed, taking a bite from his sandwich. “Sure I do. Just fill me in.”
III.   1:46 am. An hour before, the arctic front had exploded across the valley and dropped the temperature to below twenty. Sandra left her apartment bundled in a Colorado Avalanche ski parka, baggy white slacks, and blue running shoes. In the wind, she walked across the street. The parking lot and store looked empty.
 Standing just outside the store, chilled, she took the revolver from her coat pocket. Then, after reciting a prayer to the lords of darkness and putting on her mask, she entered.
     Inside, she instantly recognized the tall and skinny middle-aged man hunched over the counter: a reputed pedophile, he had been her college economics professor two years before. She couldn't remember his name, but as he looked up from his magazine with a nervous grin revealing crooked yellow teeth, she felt nothing but contempt.
 He raised trembling hands, his eyes gray with the grief of a condemned man. Keeping the weapon on him, she shuffled forward.
“Anything you want,” he rasped. As he stepped back, she took the note out of her coat pocket and set it on the counter.
Trembling, he stared at her, then reached for the note.
 “Don't shoot, please, please, don't shoot me,” he whispered, picking up the paper. His lips trembled and moved as he began to read.
 The store lights dimmed and the storm exploded against the window. The man took forever, it seemed, and Sandra wondered how often he would read the message.  Then, she wondered what it would be like to put a bullet in him. Killing had long fascinated her, and as she thought of taking the man's life, she felt heavy, invisible arms wrapping around her and a voice whispering to put a bullet in his heart.
 It was a wonderful idea. Gun leveled at the man's chest, she knew she could get away with it.
Ready to squeeze the trigger, she suddenly remembered a painting that she had seen years ago: Hieronymus Bosch's The Temptation of St. Anthony. Even at the time, tormented by destructive impulses, Sandra had been moved by the depiction of the praying saint, surrounded by grotesque figures representing demons with a medieval town burning in the distance.
Silently cursing the God who had turned her life into something as dull as cold oatmeal, Sandra pushed the painting from her mind. As the wind howled, the voice again spoke from within her: do it, do it now. Ordering herself to act, she squeezed, heard the short, quick burst, saw the man's dumbfounded expression, and watched the man collapse.
Feeling as if her soul had just been yanked out, she stepped forward, leaned over the counter, and looked down. The red stain soaking the front of the man's shirt told her that the bullet had entered the chest or stomach. The man gasped and choked, eyes bulging, and when he looked at her, silently pleading, she pointed the gun at his heart and fired again.
 With the second shot, she returned to herself; killing someone was what she'd wanted to do all along, and she wished she could tell Father Blackstone.  Turning, she shoved her weapon in her coat pocket, and walked out of the store. On the coldest night of the year, the parking lot and the street out front were empty.
In the biting wind, she pulled off the mask, shoved it her pocket, and began jogging down the small street to the left of the store.  At the end of the first row of low-income apartment buildings, she cut to the left again and toward the alley.
   Hours later, it seemed, she reached the parking lot behind the all-night Laundromat. Winded, she eyed Ray's car behind a large green trash dumpster. The keys, she knew, would be under the front seat.
IV.  Sandra would keep driving up through Nevada on the dark icy, snowy roads until she reached northern Idaho. There she planned to stay with some friends from Chicago.
As the wind pounded her car, she peered through snowy darkness and saw looming in the distance a yellow sign with bold, blue lettering. The sign read “EAT” and underneath it “GAS.” As she rounded a bend, she saw the small store. Lights pouring through the glass door told her the place was open. Hungry enough for raw steak, she slowed the car and pulled onto the gravel in the front of the store.
When she got out, she was struck by how windy and cold it was. She looked up. Jagged gray mountains stood against the black sky. Somewhere behind the clouds was the moon.
 She began walking to the store when a violent blast of wind knocked her backward into a pile of snow. For a time, she remained still, struggling to will herself to move.  As her head cleared, she felt sharp pain shooting from her shoulder to her wrists and stomach.
 It took her several minutes to get up, and when she did, another wind came, crumpling her with a blow to the side of her head. She yelled as she fell, and when she reached the ground her head struck a sharp rock. Pain tore through her.
The wind howled. On her back, staring into darkness, she felt warm moistness at the base of her skull. She was bleeding profusely. As the pain grew, she began drifting into unconsciousness.
“Why is this happening?” she gasped.
The wind blasted around her, freezing blood and bones. Then, strength ebbing, she heard the voice. She didn't know whether it came from her mind or the wind.
--Don't you really know? After all, you did commit your soul to Hell.
Sandra remembered. Just before entering the store, she had prayed. She waited for the voice.
Snow turned to sleet.  Curiously, in place of freezing cold, she felt a soothing blackness descend, and closing her eyes she felt herself floating. Knowing she was going to die, she could not open her eyes.  The wind shrieking around her, she relaxed and felt herself being sucked into a dark, swirling vortex, hands pulling her down, down, down.
V.   Eons later, she awoke.
Where am I? she silently cried.
Sandra opened her eyes and gazed at the gray landscape. In the distance, in place of the sun, a huge unblinking eye studied her. In front of the eye loomed silhouettes of towering, jagged mountains. The air thick with smoke, fire consumed the village in front of the mountains. Above the flames, large bat-like creatures flew in circles.
Near her, beneath a decaying tower, a black-cloaked saint, who reminded her of Father Blackstone and whose eyes were hooked to thin wires, prayed to a woman clothed in red. Between Sandra and the saint, grotesque things littered the ground: a young brunette woman's head buried in sand, a large speckled spider crawling across a tiled floor, a dead fish with a hook through its gill, disease-blackened plants crawling with green snakes, a dead wall-eyed man hanging by a rope from the branch of a twisted tree.
And she suddenly knew, as if the words had been burned into her brain, that she had been condemned as a witch.  Arms tied tightly behind her, she was bound naked to a stake on a small hill. The bruises and cuts on her body and face suggested that she had been beaten, and the immense pain between her legs made her wonder if she had been raped. Oil-soaked kindling of brush, branches, and logs were piled around her.
--Care for some mashed potatoes? or maybe raw steak? a silent voice mocked.
Her head snapped left, then right. She'd heard this voice while dying in the snow.
 --Where am I? she wondered.
--Where do you think you are, little one?
 She looked up and noticed the spider's one eye fixed on her.
--My guess is that I am in Hell, or a kind of Hell, she said.
The response came quickly.
--Yes. Exactly, beautiful woman. You are in the very Pit of Hell--or, as you say, a kind of Hell.
 --Hell is impossible, she said; no God would create it.
 --That's right, said the voice. Let's ponder the will of the Almighty, who, in his infinite and glorious wisdom, created this smoking little oven.  Go ahead and think about that as flames fry your fucking entrails.
 She paused, unable to breathe, and looked up at the eye in the sky?
 --I'm dead, right? she asked.
 --What do you think?
 She moved her eyes to the saint, saw his mouth moving frantically.
 --What happens now? Sarah wheezed.
 --You tell me, Sandra: what happens in Hell? What? Harold Blackstone knows.
 --Harold the praying saint? she asked, glancing over at the praying man.
 --The same.
 --Will he burn?
 --Eventually.
 --Will I burn, then…?
 --Yes, the voice said. Forever. Once the fire is lit, the pain and flames will never stop. It's worse than getting up with the kids.
 --Your flesh will melt, the voice sang, and your eyeballs will pop, and your tongue will fry in your mouth. You'll repeat the horror an infinite number of times. Each time it will be as if you've never experienced being burned alive. The terror and pain will be unbelievable. It's an experience you will endure forever.
 --Until the end of time? she asked, shaking.
 --There is no end of time.
 She gazed at the huge black bat-like creature flying just overhead. The creature had one eye.
 --Where are you? Sandra finally asked, feeling faint.
 --I'm looking at you, the thing said.
 She peered at the distant eye just beyond the mountains. Her heart pounded as she panted and sweated.
 --Now, the surprise we've all been waiting for, said the voice.
In the dark gray land, just across the square where the condemned saint prayed, she noticed shuffling toward her a tall, thin, smiling man with crooked yellow teeth and an enormous bulge in his pants; whistling, he was approaching from the tower with a torch in hand. The man stopped inches from the kindling, bowed, then lowered the torch to the wood.
 Tense, dizzy, Sandra waited.  Then she glanced down.
The fire crackled at her feet, moving quickly through the kindling, gathering into flames, building into intense heat. Terror increased. Muscles convulsing, Sandra wanted to scream but no sound came from her mouth. Sickened, she watched as flames licked her legs, stomach, and breasts. All the way from her skull to her toes, her bones filled with savage heat, and her flesh began to melt.
  “God, help me,” she gasped, as flames danced over her head and crept through her ears into her boiling brain.
It was just a matter of time. Flames roared and danced, branches popped; flesh and bones hissed and melted. Her vision fading to gray, then to black, she felt her heart and stomach explode. This is no dream, she thought. Flame shot from her mouth as she silently screamed for her eternal soul.
VI. Smelling smoke, fighting nightmare images of hell, Sandra stood on the small patio of her fourth story apartment.  Always spectacular in southern Nevada, the December sunset bled the sky yellow, orange, red, purple and blue.  Studying the colors, she felt suddenly afraid.
Brushing away her fears, she turned her mind to last night's weather report. An arctic front was supposed to move in that night, dropping the temperatures to zero. She had never liked the cold. Wondering what it would be like to freeze to death, Sandra thought of Ray, her wall-eyed therapist, mentally rehearsed her robbery, and wondered if Blackstone would remember to leave the keys in the car.
As she walked back into her apartment, she hoped Blackstone's car did not smell of smoke.
 

RandJLogsdon@aol.com
 
 

This story has been inspired by Hieronymus Bosch's The Temptation of St. Anthony? The url is below.  Bosch was a late medieval, early Renaissance Dutch painter whose apocalyptic paintings would have landed him today flat in the office of a psychiatrist, who would likely pumped him full of anti-psychotic drugs.

www.ibiblio.org/louvre/paint/auth/bosch/