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Holiday in Hell - The Netherworld, Hell and Hades ... (Storytelling in Verse WS - Horror Story)

Chapter 1 - The Netherworld

With trepidation, walking streets,
I'm trapped within a nightmare world.
Forever damned, doomed to repeat
these cursed hours where I've been hurled.

The science of my day provides
a holiday of difference -
to travel back, for a while abide
and share some moments of another's existence.
The host's unaware of the soul
who shares her mind, muscle and nerve;
the traveller, she has no control,
but simply able to observe.

I'd taken vacations throughout history;
spent time with the thoughts of many a person;
shared moments of glory with those of great story;
adventured in major world actions,
so I picked the 'lucky dip' this time,
let fate choose who and where I'd be.
And found myself within the mind
of Ripper victim, Mary Kelly.

We stood, with a crowd, in Whitechapel's slum
while someone read the paper reviews.
On Dorset Street my mind went numb
as we heard the latest Ripper news.
I prayed that this not be the night
that Mary met her sad demise.
But, within twelve hours, to my great fright,
I looked into the killer's eyes.

They're sightless, blank, without a soul.
I gazed down pits of nothingness -
a blackness darker than the darkest coal
that fired deep crimson when he ripped our dress.
My spirit sank at Mary's choice.
Just who she'd met, immediate knowledge,
but panic paralysed her voice.
A squeak, 'Help. Murder,' all she managed.

He disembowelled us while alive,
excruciating, was the pain.
Breasts and liver and our hide
at head and feet neatly arranged.
Entrails hung about our neck.
The man is mad, beyond restrain.
Black blood splayed in pool and fleck.
All resistance frought in vain.

Release, expected when she died,
and my own body to regain
denied. No care how loud I cried
'twas in this nightmare I'd remain.
As Mary took her final breath,
time warped back to where we'd begun.
Twelve hours before she met her death,
we stood on Dorset Street again.

By some strange quirk I now am trapped
within this play of history's crime.
The link to my own self was snapped
and set a repeating paradigm
to which my soul's forever tied.
And it seems now, for eternity
(I've lost count of the times she's died)
I've walked these streets with poor Mary
to re-live over evermore
her last few dreadful hours of life.

In terror of the coming gore,
I await the Ripper and his knife.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 2 - Hell

I fought to hold on to sanity
whilst again and again, at the hands of a maniac,
I experienced the death of Mary Kelly
when she met the cruel Ripper, named Jack.
My science had failed me, I was trapped
within an ordeal, repeated twelve-hourly.
In the last few hours, 'til her life was sapped,
I walked the streets, wishing she'd flee,
while I fought to hold on to sanity.

While in the mind of Mary, abandoned,
enduring the echoing, never-ending curse,
I never once, ever, imagined
that things could get any worse.
But a nightmare of greater proportion
awaited, it seems nasty fate was not done.
My soul has near reached exhaustion.
If you listen, I'll tell you the reason.

This last time I shared in Mary's demise,
everything seemed more askew,
and when I finally opened my eyes
I was travelling with somebody new.
A prisoner, it seems, I have joined here.
Political dissention, his crime.
With what has just happened comes great fear.
I don't think I'll stay sane this time.

I'd had just six hours to contemplate,
and read this person's mind,
but nothing he thought betrayed just what fate
awaited us two this time.
The guards arrived with grim faces
and tied our hands tight at our back.
Then, marching us both about two hundred paces,
conveyed us to doctors demonic.

It seems we are part of a harvest.
Our organs, for rich people, culled.
No anaesthesia to help us,
we felt every cut, nothing dulled.
Corneas stripped, skin flayed,
pelvic organs ripped and bloody.
Alive, in panic, in agony I prayed
to a deaf, uncaring deity.

Then, with heart still soft beating, souls screaming,
we were carelessly thrown to the fire.
Ablaze and sizzling, tears streaming,
it still took some time to expire.
And, as happened before with poor Mary,
time warped. I returned to this cell
with heart pounding, no way to flee
this scary and punitive hell.

And here I await in pure terror.
In six hours, again, indescribable pain.
And, cursing my times' science error,
I feel myself slipping slowly insane.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 3 - Hades

I have been here for forever,
spinning, spinning in my brain.
I'll be here for forever, never
to see or hear the world again.

In cycles of pure and raw terror,
due to a glitch in my century's science,
I'd spent the past aeons in a blur,
sharing, repeatedly, another's conscience.

An age of fear with poor Mary,
Another with the prisoner, flayed alive.
This was no pleasure holiday,
and my angst was in overdrive.

Then, in cycle a million and one,
again the universe tipped,
and into a new situation
I was unceremoniously flipped.

With sudden release from the prisoner,
the first thing my thoughts ascertained
was sunshine on an altar,
the second, severe chest pain.

I felt the new mind for only a moment,
then it was gone, a lost cause.
The body lay dead, to be blunt,
but I stayed right where I was.

No repetition seemed a good sign,
and, although trapped in the corpse,
I somehow understood, this time
I'd encountered my final warp.

So I'm in for another cremation, I thought,
and, although the burning be agony,
after all I've been through, 'twould be but nought,
for I knew, with no body, that I would be free.

I lay for six days in the coffin
whilst strangers performed open mourning.
Betwixt hope and fear, my soul turning ashen,
I awaited my final burning.

There came a wave of claustraphobic unease
as the lid was nailed to the box,
for I had a sense of a final tease.
I knew, by then, that the universe mocks.

Bracing for fire, I perceived the words
of the service for the Catholic brand.
Then, with heavy heart, senses blurred,
I heard the sound of shovelled sand.

I wonder and wonder and wonder and wonder.
I guess that I must be the greatest transgressor.
Buried, interred, I'm six feet under.
I have been here for forever.

Forever underground I've dwelt.
How long that is, I can't affirm,
but it's been some time since I've heard or felt
the sucking of the feeding worms.

Darkness, silence, insanity.
Suffocation in a cocoon.
Hysteria, madness, frequent frenzy.
Lunacy minus the moon.
.

Review Request (Intensity): 
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
Editing stage: 

Comments

is a Horror-story! I like the way that you told it first-person and the story itself? Superb! I just have one little niggle and that is in going from the thought of being cremated to being buried. I get the last laugh being on you and being buried instead; how that makes for eternal damnation, but would like to see a little better transition. Great stuff! ~ Gee

There is value to commenting and critique, tell us how you feel about our work.
This must be the place, 'cause there ain't no place like this place anywhere near this place.

for the very supportive crit
I've done some edits, and added some verses, with your thoughts in mind.... would love to know what you think.
love judy
xxx

'Each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They are.'
(Rudyard Kipling)

author comment

I've had dreams like this.
I'm not crazy about the meter. Some of this reads like a poem, while some has lines overlong and stumbles in any sort of meter. It doesn't detract from the story though, which I am most concerned with. We'll call it free verse and leave it at that.
One of the things I liked most that you didn't continue was the use of a known entity. A real victim of a real killer. I thought of victims of Jeffrey Dahmer, a bad man being condemned by Pilate and on...
Just a thought.
I think yours gets the creepiest award.

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Part two is actually based on real events, if the media are to be believed....
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/dateline/story/human-harvest-chinas-organ-tra...

I know whar you mean by the long lines.... but I've actually parsed a lot of them and they all come out as tetrameter....

I would be interested to know, if you have time, the ones that particularly grate on you...

So glad to maybe get the creepiest award, considering I never considered I could write a horrror story...
Thanks again Wes
love judy
xxx

'Each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They are.'
(Rudyard Kipling)

author comment

This is my third or fourth time to come to read your participation , but always have something to interrupt. I am not a fan of lengthy readings these days for a very justified reason. However, I am really happy i could finally do it.
You never fail to amaze me with your poetry dear Judy and this is brilliant horror. I think the real stuff helped to create the story but no one could deny your creativity.
Very well done dear!!

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Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words
........Robert Frost☺

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I just popped in quickly to do some edits.... and add a verse about worms lol
hopefully I'll be back tomorrow to get to some crits .... looking forward to reading your horrror story xxx

'Each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
shall draw the Thing as he sees It, for the God of Things as They are.'
(Rudyard Kipling)

author comment
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