White and Other Tales of Ruin

So they searched, and I searched, but all the while hope was slipping through my fingers. Whichever radical cult she’d hooked up with, they would have taken her far away from me. Already I would be little more than a vague memory in her mind, a confusing image of what a father should have been, an unbeliever, a waste. I sent out a plea over the net? there were groups that provided a search service, both electronically and, more expensively, physically? but even they admitted that the chances were slim. Most of the religious groups that had sprung up over the past decade eschewed technology, and it was already likely that Laura was essentially removed from existence.

All she’d have left would be herself, and whatever skewed faith she had found.

More than me, at least.

The route to Hell can only be found by those who need it the most. It is never advertised or discussed openly in public — there are no books about it, no documentaries — but just as the true reality of things is hidden beneath the manufactured patina of everyday life, so most people know about Hell. They know about it and believe in it, but they never honestly feel that they need it. Things can never get that bad, they think. My life can’t drop to those depths, surely.

I went looking without knowing what I was looking for. I’m sure that’s how I discovered Hell so easily. I was wandering the streets one evening, listening out for anything that sounded like a religious meeting. There were many gatherings in the city, many religions, all of them right and all of them wrong, as ever. My walk took me along one street, down the next, across open shopping plazas and through a park. There were a lot of people around now that the sun had gone down, and all those I saw appeared to have somewhere to go. I was aimless, and I stuck out like a gorilla with blue hair. My face was slack, my eyes wide and demanding, my mouth moving silently, betraying my encroaching madness. Because I truly believed that’s where I was: at the edge of madness. Janine was seven years in her grave, her perfume as fresh in my nostrils as ever. And now Laura was gone, stolen from me by the perverted followers of some god that had never and could never existed, her mind probably taken from her, twice removed from me. My memories of her were beginning to feel unfair. They should have been her thoughts, not mine. It seemed so wrong that I should have more recollections of my daughter’s life than she, had the brainwashing gone as far as I feared.

I fled the stares and snickers and found myself in an old preserved side-street, the cobbles shining with evening dampness. The gutters overflowed with litter, a drunk lay sleeping in a puddle of piss and vomit. I was way off the beaten track. Perhaps I’d been aiming here all along.

Nestled between the rear entrance of a smoke-filled pub’ and an unknown Chinese restaurant stood a door. It was clean and freshly painted, so out of place. A sign hung above it, looking so perfect, so appropriate, that I knew it was placed there just for me. The flush of warmth and peace mimicked what I would have felt had I found Laura herself, and for a few seconds I was sure, certain that everything was not going to be alright …. it already was.

Hell, it read. Calmed if you enter, damned if you don’t.

The door opened on frictionless hinges. The ground shifted beneath my feet to carry me into the room, and I felt as if I was flying towards my fate. I did nothing to prevent it. I was not afraid. I’d heard about Hell from drunken friends at the tail-end of parties and strangers in airports, and I knew it was the place for me. I needed a dose of misfortune. Things were bad for me, but so much worse for so many other people. I needed to be told this for sure.

I needed to see.