3

R o l a n d i n H e l l

Written by Damien Knightley

Illustrated by Tom Moore

M a s t e r O f T h e M o u n t a i n

4

5

c h a p t e r o n eA Wallflower’s Wallflower

6

Roland didn’t notice he was alive until he was dead. Born of a wistful mother and a father cut from stone, he was without airs or graces and sailed through life a passenger. He nev-er loved, lost or married and almost certainly died a virgin. For the most part his childhood went without in-cident, his teenage years the same. Even the school bullies didn’t find the time to bother him. Yes Roland was a real stick in the mud, a wallflower’s wall-flower.

From the age of fifteen until his death, aged 43, Roland worked in the Red Plate Cafe. It was situated a rather pleasant fifteen minute bike ride from his home. It was on this rather pleas-ant fifteen minute bike ride from his home on a rather unpleasant February morning that Roland was hit by a lor-ry and killed instantly. For reasons un-beknownst to him, he woke up in hell.

Hell is not the vision of fire and brim-stone you might imagine it to be. Shades of red are far too beautiful and vibrant for hell. The only colours that met Roland’s eyes upon their

7

opening were shades of black and grey. There was no wind to be felt, just dead air and the pungent smell of rot. Ro-land rose slowly to his feet and took a deep breath but no air met his lungs.He rubbed his eyes and looked around. Endless piles of rubbish trailed off into the distance, forging tremen-dous mountainous landscapes that cast huge shadows over every detail of this terrible vision. From beer cans, rotting fruit, plastic bags and pizza boxes to syringes, chicken bones and car parts. Over 200,000 years of human waste as far as the eyes could see. Ro-land looked to the floor beneath his feet and saw the mangled remains of his bicycle, his broken helmet was still strapped tightly to his head. He began to feel nauseous. He looked up again and a greater horror confronted him. Within the walls of the bent met-al, cigarette butts and cola cans that surrounded him, were row upon row of humble shelters. Roland swallowed hard, he wasn’t alone.

A crescendo of groaning began to emit itself all around him. The foul groans of Hell’s inhabitants. Occa-

8

9

sionally he sensed movement but as yet nothing or nobody could be seen. Ro-land looked at his trainers and began to throw up.

“Are you Roland?” a voice spoke from behind him, the groaning stopped abruptly. Roland wiped a trail of spit-tle from his chin. “Yes, yes I am” he re-plied timidly. He turned to face a tired looking man, wearing what looked like the remnants of a postman’s uni-form. “I have this for you. Welcome to Hell.” With that the postman handed Roland a folded piece of paper and walked away. Roland looked at the pa-per in his hand and unfolded it.

10

11

Dear Roland

It has been brought to my attention that there may have been

some confusion regarding your being in hell. It seems there

was a mix up at our sorting department and your files were

distributed incorrectly. To put it bluntly youre here by accident.

Unfortunately there is little that can be done to rectify this

problem. We can only send our apologies and hope your time

here isnt too traumatic. This is the first time anything like this

has happened and a full investigation is currently in proress.

P.s Off the record you could always try climbing the great

mountain of human waste situated in the dark corner of

hell. legend has it at its highest point it leads to a manhole

that should bring you out somewhere near the Piccadilly Tube

Station in Westminster. This however cannot be verified and is

in no way a reflection of our failure to develop a succes

sful cleaning program here in Hell.

12

Roland had rarely felt emotion be-fore so the fire in his veins and the white feeling in his stomach were new to him and he found them to be most unpleasant. He screwed the letter up and crammed it into his pocket before kicking a rusty saucepan as hard as he could. “BUGGER OFF!” He shouted as he stomped around, kicking and throw-ing anything that dared to lay in his path.

Being so Consumed by anger, he had completely forgotten about the mys-terious inhabitants of the shelters. Alerted by the commotion, Their groans began to grow louder again and a vis-ible wave of movement crept towards Roland. He stumbled backwards as one by one the shelters were vacated by their curious occupants. An array of bodies began to appear. Businessmen in frayed, blood stained suits, teenagers exhibiting a ‘how to’ of suicide proce-dures. The old and the young disfig-ured and hideous. Each lost limb and broken bone giving a clue as to how they had died. They moved slowly to-wards Roland. He froze in terror, his eyes wide as windows. The groaning

13

became deafening. Just in time, Roland began to run.

Roland ran for what felt like a mil-lion miles. Eventually his legs gave way beneath him. He fell into a barricade of cassette tapes and realised he was at the foot of a mountain. Had the blood not dried in is veins he would have felt his heart pounding in his chest. Roland knew exactly what to do.

- - - - -

14

15

16

17

c h a p t e r T W OMaster Of The Mountain

18

over the next 2 years 4 months, 3 days and 7 hours and 23minutes, Roland climbed up and through, amongst other things-

250,548,183 coke cans, 108,364,834 cigarette butts, 576,872,345 pizza boxes, 768,284,756 nail clippings, 485,384,671 odd socks, 673,475,729 assorted fruit skins, 497,038 kilograms of human hair, 756,948,934 cubic miles of various liquids, most of which are unmentionable, and an as-sortment of horrors that would test the temperament of even the most hardened stomach.

For the first four months barely a day past without Roland vomiting. By the seventh month barely a week. By the eighteenth Roland could have washed his hair in dog shit without so much as heaving. Roland became God of the mountain. In Hell he was alone, mas-ter of his own destiny. He had no need for food, money or love. He strove for one thing and one thing only, to reach the summit. The simplicity of it all made him grin like a car salesman. Roland the king, Roland our lord and saviour, Roland the invincible.

19

- - - - - Roland soon learnt to be resourceful. Every time he wanted to sleep he would construct a bed made of stained bed sheets and clothes he had found on his journey. He re-enforced his train-ers by dipping them in the black pools of molten rubber that bled from some-where deep within the mountain. He never felt hungry but occasionally ate anything he could find that wasn’t too rotten or pungent. His favourite being black apples. The rains of Hell were tremendous but there was always something on hand to use for shel-ter. Today it was the turn of an old car bonnet to keep Roland safe from the elements.

Below the din of the rain Roland spoke softly to himself. “Who would have thought that only when there was no-body around to see me would I would become so visible?” He took from his pocket a handful of boiled sweets and began to pick the hairs off of them. He put one in his mouth and masticated vigorously. “You see one must wonder, which mountain do I prefer?” Roland spat out the boiled sweet and picked a

20

21

cigarette butt off the floor and lit it. He realised the rain had stopped so de-cided to leave the relative comfort of his shelter.

As he readied himself for the next leg of his journey he felt a warm breeze on his face. The sensation startled him. It had been so long since Roland had felt such a breeze the feeling had be-come alien to him. It was only then did he notice faint beams on light timidly hiding in and around the shadows. Above him the clouds of dust, that had hung intimidatingly above him for so long, had cleared. Roland looked up towards the grey skies of Hell and for the first time he could see the moun-tain’s summit.

On the 25th of December 1998 at around 2.00pm, Roland climbed out of a man-hole near to the Piccadilly Tube Sta-tion. He wore, with pride, the remnants of 100,000 years worth of human waste. As he fell to his knees a cold wind hit his lungs and cracked them back into life.

22

EpilogueRoland found his re-introduction to life difficult. Everyday for nearly three years he returned to lift the manhole cover to find only rats and sewerage. On one such pilgrimage Roland arrived to find builders re-surfacing the road and his manhole was lost forever. He tried to adjust but he didn’t know where to start, so he started every-where. Eleven years of debauchery fol-lowed until on his 59th birthday he decided to sue Hell for false imprison-ment and the subsequent effect it had on the quality of his life. Referring pri-marily to his addiction to various rec-reational drugs, alcohol, black apples, cans of coke and cigarettes butts.

Due to his insistence that Hell was brought to justice and his apparent insanity, he lived out the remainder of his days in Salisbury Crown Institu-tion for the mentally unstable.

- - - - -

23