Hell's Viscerous Reaches

[Job]

Shaking the red dust from his fatigues and shin plates, Adrien Stromme clambered painfully up the steep steel-grate staircase. A low mechanical hum could be heard resounding in the approaching hall. As he mounted the final step, he stood before a massive frame, at least fifteen feet wide and 20 feet tall.
Cables and wires sprouted out of the walls and floor, feeding into it, in utter disarray. Only several yards away was a control box, or what he assumed to be the control box for this remarkable apparatus.

He could feel the persistent throb in his thigh as he hobbled over to the central panel...even though he had applied a poultice with the field dressing, the bleeding continued.

He lay his backpack down with an effort and gingerly placed his shotgun, chamber nearly empty, onto a nearby wheeled tray. Pausing in the near-darkness, he closed his eyes, trying to recall the basic training session for bacic mechanic operations. Regret washed over him as he opened his eyes again, realizing he remembered very little. Looking down at the control scheme, all dials and levers and implements clearly labeled in English, he knew that this was his only opportunity to leave the base. Even now he could hear the low rumblings of the lupine demons, swathed in muscle and infused with malignity. There were at least nine of them and he only had two shells remaining.

As he was only a lieutenant in the Mars-division of the Federation of Colonial Powers' military, he wasn't privy to top-secret information. However, he had heard rumors of a partnership between the highest military heads and the UAC to test a new form of inter-space transportation. This, he speculated, must be that device, though this had the look of a proto-type; not only that, but this was the area where most utilities and machines were kept in storage until the military decided whether to dispose of them or re-instate their use. Focusing his attention on the task at hand, he examined the controls closely, striving to locate some dial or switch on the vast face plate that he felt confident he could use.

In the upper-right corner he saw a small digital optic screen with a numberpad directly below it. Suspecting that this was meant to be the date-input device, he hesitantly punched in the corresponding numbers for what he recalled to be numerical form of that day's date, 6-07-2147. The internal mechanisms of the power box whirred, processing the figures he entered. He took up his backpack and shouldered it as he stepped over to pick up his shotgun. Only several minutes later, as he reached for his shotgun, the frame flared up with a blue-gray light that spilled into the walkway. It seemed to require a tremendous amount of power, because the wires were even now beginning to smolder and spark.

He looked over his shoulder, away from the luminous spectacle, and realized that the noise of this...gateway was fueling the demons' ferocity and it also allowed them to pinpoint his location. He had to leave. Now. Knowing that if he did leave through that gateway, no matter where it took him, he would not be able to come back because the stalwart beasts that craved his body would lie in wait for him or destroy the device entirely. But the concept of never coming back to the ravaged base seemed far more preferable than to be torn apart by warm, tooth-laden mouths, drenched with saliva and caked with human blood.
They were only a handful of yards away, with only four feet of steel to separate him from being rended like a beef carcass in a meat processing plant. He couldn't linger...with this final thought in mind, he stumbled under the weight of his backpack toward the dazzing light...


...His eyes were clenched shut while his body shuddered from a tingling sensation, not unlike an electric shock. Gasping for air and panicking, he inhaled deep breaths of the atmosphere, only to taste a nauseating odor that permeated the air. He sat up, his body racked with spasms of coughing, his whole body reviling the petulant stench that coursed throughout this...place. When his breathing became regular again, he attempted to open his eyes, to see where he had been whisked off to, without choice and foreknowledge.

As he opened his eyes, his skull was spiked by a throbbing pain as his vision, which was blurred and out of focus, was bombarded by an unyielding luminosity. He shook his head, hoping to right something within his brain, so that he might be able to ascertain his location. Several minutes passed and his vision improved; blinking the last haziness away, he looked upon the landscape, drinking it in. He was on a vast plain, dotted by rocks and the scorched skeletons of what appeared to be trees. Mountainous outgrowths, colored the hue of dead blood, sprouted up in a seemingly random pattern. No sun or facsimile thereof shed sunshine here. The only source of light that he could see was a massive conflagration past a distant mountain range that encompassed the entire valley. He breathed again, deeply, and attempted to determine the nature of the atmosphere.

He remembered that scent. When he was on guard duty in his days as a private, he had been posted as a sentry in the base's laboratory sector. On one of his duty-shifts, he recalled an accident that had occurred. A computer circuit had blown and caused a small explosion. One of the scientists had died in the blast and his corpse had smoldered until the flames were extinguished. That was the sent that pervaded the air that flowed into his nostrils...it sickened him. He rose to his feet, unsure if he could stand, and his whole body was taken with spasms of illness. His abdomen flexed as he vomited where he stood. He hadn't eaten since that morning, so the stinging taste of bile was all that came up.

Taking a moment to gather himself again, he looked to the sky and saw that it was devoid of any clouds that resembled something from earth. Massive bodies of dust-burdened smoke billowed into the heights of the stratosphere, giving the winds an unpleasant, acrid flavor. Those very zephyrs that crowded his nostrils carried screams. Screams of human beings -- he knew that they couldn't be mistaken for anything else than that.

Perhaps having stayed at the base would have been far, far better a circumstance than to be where he was...Not wanting to admit what his eyes told him to be true, he tried to deny the environment in which he stood. To close his eyes and see his wife, his daughter again. He didn't wish to be dead, but he wished he wasn't alive either. His only desire was to simply be out of existence so that he wouldn't have to confront the truth that was now so clear to him.
Slowly, his mouth dropped as the truth manifested itself within his mind and rooted itself in his soul.
..."This is Hell..."...the words forced their way past his lips.

[dsm]

Nice, well-written story. There's some fine descriptions there.

My only real beef with it is that you haven't separated the paragraphs (I did that for you). Some dialogue of sorts (I suggest having this marine think sentences, like: "Could this be the gate?" or the like) would have improved on the story too, but I can see that having dialogue in a Doom story isn't always easy.

[Zaldron]

Who are you to judge to the point of actually violating the integrity of other users' posts?

[Little Faith]

It's a damn fine story, and I don't care that much about the lack of dialogue. After all there is only one person present. The description of hell is very vivid.

Shoot, with work so good as this you don't even need to put in an imp sex scene.

[Job]

Thanks -- and I'm kind of thankful for DSM's intervention. :) Hopefully, me "changing" the name of the Doomguy won't rub anyone the wrong way. I changed it to a Serbian-India name that meant "Strong and confident actions".

[Rotting Corpse]

Vulg@r said:

Serbian-India name that meant "Strong and confident actions".

Cool story. The name how ever has got to go.The doom dude is form the u.s. That name is to fourin sounding.

[Job]

Done and done. It was a bit odd -- just a placeholder name.

[dsm]

Vulg@r said:

Done and done. It was a bit odd -- just a placeholder name.

Oh I don't give a crap about that name. And about the marine being US, is no excuse to remove the name.
Remember, BJ Blazcowicz in Wolfenstein isn't much of an American-sounding name and he IS American.

As long as you don't throw a Fly Taggart at me or a Spwindwoodie Googleflux ;-)

[Rotting Corpse]

dsm said:

BJ Blazcowicz in Wolfenstein isn't much of an American-sounding name and he IS American.

True but,I think bj is his intals.


Hay Vul@ar are you going ot continue this fic?

[Agnes]

I, too, hope there's a second chapter coming. It was a good read.

[Job]

Demons Hand said:

Hay Vul@ar are you going ot continue this fic?

Sure am. I'm going to see if I can illustrate the functions and inner workings of Hell through this fan fic.

[DaJuice]

That was kickass. I really enjoyed it, hope to read the next one soon.

[Jonathan]

BJ Blazkowicz is a Polish-American, kinda like Stanley Kowalski in a Streetcar Named Desire. BJ doesn't rape Blanche DuBois though, although hey there's an idea for a fanfic!