So, I found this in my files the other day. It’s a short story I wrote for English class in my senior year of high school. I have no idea what the prompt was or why I wrote this because I do not remember it in the slightest, but it’s kind of entertaining, so here you go:
The Day I Wouldn’t Stop
Just one more, I thought to myself as I reached for the remote again. This had been my mantra for hours now. Outside the sun was shining, the leaves whispering as they blew about in the breeze. It was a gorgeous day and I had other things to be doing, yet here I was, greedily watching my way through the lives of three fictional witches. As I felt my hand close around the remote, however, there was no regret or remorse, only excitement to see what happened next. With bated breath, I read the summary presented to me on the screen before gently pressing the circular button on the remote signaling the go-ahead. Ironically enough, the next episode was about the seven deadly sins. As I watched the story unfold, piece by piece, I imagined the demon standing next to me, talking.
“You’re just like them, you know,” he said. “Consumed by your sin, wallowing in it readily.” Continuously he taunted me, his voice seeping into my head while I focused on the characters on the brightly lit screen. Downstairs I could hear the clanging of pots as my mother prepared dinner, my father playing piano on the grand. I could feel myself slipping away, just like the demon said, down into the depths of hell where Satan await my arrival. On screen, four characters were slowly doing just that, letting their sins corrupt them, driving them to the edge of the pit. I felt my own life mirroring theirs, the demon dragging me down, down, down. Suddenly, I was in two places at once. Standing on ice, looking out over a freezing, barren, wasteland dotted with piles of snow ice whilst the wind whipped at hurricane speed round and round the lake but also safe and sound, comfy and glued, on my sofa on the third floor ignoring the world around. I could see both places before me, like looking out a window and seeing both the reflection of the world behind you and the expanse of the world ahead.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” hissed a voice. I turned around in the icy realm, my arms hugging my chest to conserve the little warmth I still possessed where it was most needed. Walking towards me was a creature uglier than all the bugs in Christendom. His face, wolfish and harsh, scowled upon me as he limped on two mismatched legs, one of donkey hair ending in a hacked and beaten cloven hoof, the other scaly and rough, with thick black claws pounding the ice. Great horns protruded from his matted mane and a forked tongue escaped from between his pointed and gnarled teeth as he stalked ever closer.
“What’s going on?” I asked, stumbling backward, my voice quavering, whipped away by the wind.
A harsh and bitter laugh echoed around the cavernous wasteland. Beside me the demon who led me down lost his veneer of humanity and morphed into a creature not so unlike the devil before me. But whereas Satan had a strange elegance about his tortured appearance, the demon seemed lopsided and incomplete. The demon ran up behind me with his strange lopsided loping gait and began whispering in my ears the punishments I would endure for my contemptible act.
As he and Satan took turns describing the endless movement, the endless work and labor, the endless lack of the tools I most desired to finish more quickly the jobs set before me, I focused my attentions back on the screen I was watching at home. The screen where, before my eyes, the characters were overcoming their sins and defeating the demon— sending him into the fiery pit. With a nearly audible snap, my attention was forced back to the icy realm and with a jolt, I realized I could no longer sense the couch, hear the piano, or the pots, or the television. I could only feel the ice before me, hear the howling and the raucous laughter of the leering demons. Struggling, I forced my way down to the ice to run my hands through the icy wastes on the lake all around, reaching for the object I knew could end this torment as long as I was strong enough to find it. But the more I searched the ice, the less I believed it could work. How could I find the remote in hell? How could it have gotten there to begin with? Like lead, I felt myself begin to sink, down, down into despair. Then, for just a split second, I remembered my parents, and my brother, and my friends, and my cousins. I felt an overwhelming need to see them again, to talk to them, and my hand closed around the oblong black remote deep within the snowy ground. With one last look at hell, I pressed the power button.
I opened my eyes and found myself back on the couch, the television off, the piano quiet. I jumped up like I’d been burned, my heart racing almost as fast as my mind as I processed what had just happened. With a shiver, I ran from the room, down the stairs, and into the kitchen where I eagerly offered to help with dinner, to do penance for my sin. I swore then and there to watch my obsessions to make sure they did not take over my life. To control my greed for knowing what happens next, and going outside or doing my homework instead of letting my life waste away in front of the enchanting box. I, along with many others, have a tendency to obsess over things. Obsession itself may not be a sin, but it is so consuming, so overwhelming, that it is very easy, while caught up in such an obsession, to succumb to sins unconsciously. Greed, sloth, wrath, lust, even heresy, and violence can all result from an obsession.
This experience opened my eyes to the dangers obsession can possess. And I am careful now, in all that I do, that I do not let things consume my life. Every now and then, I slip up, but life isn’t perfect. People are going to slip up. The trick is to recognize the downward pull and struggle in the opposite direction.
