ACT I

Itʼs You and Me, Old Friend 

______________________________

    Hell didnʼt burn. 

    Hell was cold.

    Frigid. 

    And so were its flames. 

    It raked at you; clawing at you and milking your bone dry of its essence by freezing over the thick layer of skin and then shattering it. It consumed you in a blaze of acidic, icy fury, and used your innards as a way to feed the Darkness. 

    It gnawed at your flesh, kneading the tender meat, and then jutting the blade into the core of your heart. Itʼs an ocean of stark white flames, coaxing you into complicity – and then showing you the full force of His wrath when you dissolve into the caged heat of the icy waves. 

    You never came out of the hell the same. 

    Because Hell didnʼt burn. 

    You burned. 

    Your limbs were shriveled and winged; your skin was a pulpy, wrinkly cloth on your back and your teeth were barbed, sharpened like knives. Your bones rearranged themselves into an eagle formation, and your ribs played along  – carving and shivving themselves into barbed, harsh talons. Your organs were licked and salivated over with the vehemence of the fiery waves, and they perched themselves at the top of your bones; sandwiched in-between the ivory white. You were a grotesque animal: scared, vengeful...rotting. Raging and smashing everything around and hissing and gnashing and screeching. 

    Time in Hell wasnʼt relative. 

    It was atmospheric. 

    Depending on the hastiness of your torture, or the amount of torture you were enduring, time could flow with the flames. Screeching, hissing, tearing at your insides more quickly and more rampantly or slicing the forked veins that wrapped around your arm with more viciousness. Spurts of pain followed by a grand finale. Other times, the torture was long and brutal – articulate, precise. Retribution filled. Staving off the hunger of the animal within, the hunger your sins intensified, staving off the hunger for murder, for sex, for alcohol, for life itself – only to reawaken it. 

    You see, Macbeth burned in Hell for 954 years. 

    He died in 1057 a bitter, alone, and reviled man; the king of kings who lost it all. 

    And now...

    He was hungry.