The Final Step

A Story by Ibrahim Shah

A poor boy dies of cancer and now comes face to face with the Angel of Death who takes him through Hell.The boy is faced with various dangers only after each one he slowly realises the purpose of life

Time, is free but its priceless, you can’t own it but you can use it, you can’t keep it but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back. I am the shade; through the dolent land of death, my soul flows. My time was up, the cancer had consumed my being; my body lies in the earth, lifeless; without flesh and soon without bone, till it is nothing.

I felt my spirit lie there above the earth: naked, cold and invisible to the eye of the living. I felt this urge to rise up, my being was there in its fullness in front of a giant, hooded and skeletal figure… it was Death. His eyes were stern, evil-like, cold and unwelcoming. His aura felt so dark and cold... it sent shivers through the very essence of my being.

He extended his fleshless hand to my soul; he turned his face away from me and gazed northward.

In a flash I was away from the earth and in the midst of the cosmos and chaos. Death whispered to me … tell me, slave of God, what do you see? His every word made my spirit crumble, I was too afraid of him.

The entire universe, I replied with a weak and broken voice. No whispered Death. Enlighten me, I said while trying not to sound too bold. What you see is a manifestation of God in all His creations that you see before you.

Death grabbed my soul and dragged me down to the depth of my grave. It was dank, dark, murky and earthy. I couldn’t find a single remnant of my corpse.

The dim glow from my life force was the only thing that (barely) illuminated my surroundings.

Death pressed the soil of one of the edges of the grave with his long bony finger and it crumbled to his touch.

My spirit drifted with Death across the hollow and into the earth below my grave. A powerful wind blew and carried dust with itself, the dust whirled into a cyclone, it began forming into some sort of a figure, it wasn’t entirely like a ghost but more like a semi-solid memory, it was a thin, lanky man with sad and bulging grey eyes and sloped eyebrows, his pupils were quite narrow. He wore a long cloak; the hood was thin and long as well. Red velvet was embedded within the hood (possibly to symbolize terror or fear). Tears trickled down his eyes like a thin stream flowing from a mountaintop.

What’s this? I asked.

He’s your fear said Death.

For a moment I was perplexed and the man grew a mite bigger.

I don’t know what you mean, I feigned

Actually the fact that your fear grew bigger, tells me you do and the more you doubt he will grow but if you face the challenges ahead with bravery, he will dissipate. Death explained

He isn’t real is he? And Fear grew a bit bigger.

No but if you keep asking questions and doubting yourself, he will grow bigger, you know… fear is not real, he is the product of the thoughts you create, however, the danger lying ahead is real, b-, at that point fear grew even bigger.

You see now, young soul, with the mention of danger, your mind projected a flood of thoughts, causing your fear to grow. Death’s point was proven right there and then.

Death took me by the arm as we drifted across.

Suddenly something appeared: this was a woman clad in pink silk with beautiful golden hair, fair skin and blue eyes that were as deep as an ocean and were so beautiful its as if when a person would see into them they would fall under a spell.

Death warned: She is lust; the most wicked of temptations.

I closed my eyes so as to avert my gaze, I recited in my heart again and again: - God save me, save me, save me from this devilry.

Fear died down a little as I went into a deep trance praying to God for mercy from this evil.

Although my fear had decreased in size the woman was still there. "Such a handsome face, its so rude not to look people in the eye, come on… sneak-a-peek", she whispered. Any ordinary human could fall under her spell; she was dangerous.

Some sort of determination sprang within me, some sort of a rage overcame me, the rage you get when something pesters you and you feel that great need and determination to finish it off I worked up the strength to choke her, she couldn’t breathe, after a minute she was as good as dead, the woman crumbled into a pile of ivory pink dust.

I felt the aura of my spirit grow stronger because it had become warmer and it glowed brighter, my fear had become small, and it was unnoticeable for a split second.

Madness breeds madness. (The madness that lust created through temptation, ultimately created the maddening rage within you to kill her) Death said to me.

I took a huge sigh of relief; part of my spirit broke from me and encircled me, then became a part of me again.

The earth beneath my spirit crumbled to reveal a downward winding staircase of cinnabarite1; beneath the flight of stairs I witnessed the worse sight in all existence;

there were all things red, covered in fire, it was like a scrapheap of human misery, there was no railing to grasp on the way down the flight.

Why is there no railing on these steps? I asked, feeling afraid to fall

The path to salvation is never easy, Death sighed regretfully

I gazed northward and saw that there was no sunlight; the thick, smoky sea of sins had blotted it out. It was clear: - there was no salvation in Hell, and salvation is NEVER easy, the absence of sunlight made it completely evident.

The voices echoed from below, wailing. They surrounded me, closing in.

Lustful souls writhed in misery amidst the inferno. Two twin demons known as Greed and Gluttony. The most wretched out of all I have seen so far; short pot-bellied dwarf-like demons all battered, bloodied and filthy, drag the wretched sinners into the excrement in which they float.

Now they say, Hell is all fire and brimstone, coming from someone who is already dead; the living people above have it all wrong. The treacherous villains remain frozen in the icy grasp of the Devil himself, just as our Holy Books described him: as a miserable wretched serpent.

The damned souls seemed all the fiercer: We will drag you down to this abyss if it’s the last thing we do. The ironies of their words made me pity them. A tear trickled down my sea green eyes into the depths of Hell. My toes curled as I heard them pray in desperation for my misery.

May God help them, I thought to myself

The Devil sat upon his fiery throne taking the form of the Angel he once used to be before he defied God. But his wings were all black and shriveled; he wore a torn, dark red garb and held a scepter of thorns that was lit with flames from the top.

He gave an evil grin; he reveled in the misery he wrought in his infernal dominion that was given to him by God.

I placed my feet firmly upon the steps, not wriggling nor shaking for a moment, let’s hope my faith keeps me this way.

My fear was still with me but it was hardly any powerful.

O souls, for God’s sake, aren’t you seeing the state that you’re in? Do you not witness the beauty of God’s creation? I pray mercy for you o damned ones. No power operates except for the will of God.

For my kindness towards these denizens of Hell, heaven was almost mine.

Death led me to a precipice, it was extremely steep and jagged but nonetheless solidly built, and it was somewhat of a disproportionately shaped cuboid of stone. I

pray God help me in this laborious task otherwise I fall into purgatory. The stone precipice had stones sticking out of it. Death explained

These are the deeds of your worldly life, the ones that feel like fire are sins if you bear their burn God will reward you all the more (those souls down there have failed and thus they rot) and those rocks feeling like ice are your ones of righteousness, be steadfast in the climb, God is here.

I placed my hand on a cold stone and placed my foot on the hot one, the heat from my sin felt like a hot iron rod skewered through my foot. But soon I discovered that enough time on the stone would make the heat a little bearable.

Such were my traits in my worldly life: I could take the heat. The pain made me all the more determined because what I’d face in the inferno would be far worse than what I’d face now.

In pursuit of my soul, the devil sent the two demonic twins: “Greed and Gluttony” after me, to lure me into the infernal chasm. They tried to tempt me with different thoughts: - Power, Wealth, Glory.

I remained all the more resolute peeking at the fire beneath every time an offer was whispered into my ear (so as to remind myself that these offers were nothing but empty words). With the words out of my lips, God is most great. The two were repelled back into the depths of Hell’s cesspits.

My worldly life flashed before me, the different memories of childhood, those cherished moments with family precious as diamonds among the endless sands of time.

My patience with those who wronged me made me think: - “If I could bear that pain why not this?” they were both equally excruciating because the pain inflicted upon me in my worldly life left a deep scar in my heart which wouldn’t heal (at least not here) and would fester on forever if my soul plunged into Hell’s fiery pit, and this would be woven into a heavy cloak of eternal regret.

The sweet laughter throughout my life echoed and neutralized the bitterness of sadness; while I was alive someone once told me: - When life gives you lemons learn to make lemonade.

The fear; there were some things in my worldly life I feared doing, I was afraid of heights; but then it hit me: it’s not the height that one fears, but it’s what comes after the plunge, in the end: agony and torment. Hell was certainly something to fear, this made me all the more determined in the journey

The anger; it was quite an anchor weighing me down for most of my days, it haunted me, it destroyed most of my days, it poisoned my mind but now…this anger…I saw it as an opportunity, this anger would consume my being enough to remove the searing pain felt by the burning stones that I used, to push myself upward. So… anger, in a way, was my savior.

The envy, the burning jealousy I would have of those content souls rejoicing in the Kingdom of God; drinking wine which had no effect on the head, reclining on jeweled

couches while listening to the sound of tranquil music filling the air, not suffering or wailing in misery which I would be in if I’d failed. Celebrating the name of God and having that satisfaction of pleasing him for eternity in the Kingdom upon which the sun never sets.

Honor, my honor was the greatest pillar of my paragon of virtue; the disgrace I would feel if someone were to pity me seeing my spirit rot in the inferno.

My steady journey upward made me realize: you live in torment if you didn’t trust enough and this was exactly the same case: - if I didn’t trust in the strength given to my character by my moral virtues, there would be fresh torment waiting for me just a few million feet below.

I felt something, a flat surface, could this be had I reached the end of this paramount of pain…this mountain of misery… this tormenting trial. Two figures clad in pearl white, silk garments with wings broader than those of a Pegasus heralded my arrival with the blowing of silver trumpets. I observed the state that I was in: - all battered burnt and bruised and my face was hardly recognizable. The two had led me to an archway it was veiled by a sheet of water which was ever flowing, they helped me step through it, and I stepped through it, completely renewed, my misery now seemed like a pile of dirt thrown back into the pits of my grave, never to be seen again.