Recollection

You don't know Hell until you've felt it. /angst

When I awoke, I was staring up into black. All that was around me was a blasted landscape of ice, tossing and turning, uplifted by the frozen winds. I was in an arctic wasteland. The frozen sea extended in all directions, seemingly unending. There was no horizon - just a line where the abyssal night met the seething ice. Infinite was the Hell around me; infinite was the Hell I had found; infinite was the Hell I became.
  Hell. What is Hell? That was Hell. I was Hell. In Hell, there are no screams of sinners; only your own screams. There were no demons punishing anyone; only you, suffering in the cold. Hell. No fire, only ice. Hell is an icy, cold plane, whose sky was merely a black ceiling. In Hell, it is forever night, and forever cold. In Hell, the suffering is infinite.
  What did I do? I wandered. The frozen desert all around me... I could not bare it. I had to get out, to escape. I walked on and on through the bleakness, but the Hell did not change. The blasted ice never left; there was never a single space that was not frozen solid. The landscape never changed. It was bleak. And then I was bleak. And then it was hopeless. I was hopeless. A frozen world - a frozen wanderer. But I did not die...
  I cannot say for how long I journeyed until I found it, for time only seemed to repeat itself in Hell - never flowing, always stagnant... But I found it, eventually: a pinprick of light in the abyssal night.
  "A star..."
  No, not just a star - a jewel!... A gem! It... gave me direction.
  I wandered on, trekking across the dunes of ice and snow. And it accompanied me. Thus, I made my way, but now with a star by my side.
  And then, I began to notice things... The line that separated the abyssal night and the blasted ice became a horizon; there came a soft grey upon the line, and it dissolved into a horizon. Then came the periods of warmth, ever so slightly warmer than the bitter frost of the land. These I came to call days, and when the warmth left, I called the empty periods night. Time began to flow, to progress, to move forward...
  My fingers warmed. My ears, my cheeks, my feet... I began to hear the star, for it seemed to speak. The days became warmer, the nights less intense. And I wandered on, with the star at my side, which I then called a friend...
  I wandered, on and on, my sole friend accompanying me. And, one day, I felt my body cry out for rest. I slept.
  When I awoke, there was a Sun in a blue sky, and all around were things... people, plants, animals, buildings, cars... And when night came, there were many stars. But that one friend seemed so much farther now.
  I had returned to life, escaped Hell. But I realized that my friend who helped me out was not so near to me. I yearned to find it, to reach it, to give my thanks...
  So in my dreams, I built a spaceship. And in my dreams, I visited my friend.
  One day, I will build a spaceship. And one day, I will find my friend, and say, "Thanks."

Reviews

[Andy Ruffett]

Wow, neat story. You really describe the feelings he or she would be going through well. Sometimes you need a guiding light to get out of hell.