After the horror of reliving the womb, I almost welcomed the return to the path. The pain there was at least a distraction. Katha plunged me back into Maya’s soul just as the desert of black sand was ending.
The landscape shifted. The burning sand gave way to a slick, muddy bank that sloped down into a river. The Vaitarna. The name resonated in my mind with a deep, instinctual dread. It was vast, wider than any river I had ever seen on Earth. And it wasn’t water. It was a thick, slow-moving torrent of everything vile. A churning stew of pus, blood, mucus, and knotted clumps of human hair, dotted with bobbing, half-dissolved bones. The stench was a physical blow. It was the smell of sickness and rot and decay, so powerful it made my soul retch. It was the smell of sin itself.
“This is the river of your own pollution,” a Yamdut growled, prodding me toward the foul-smelling edge with its club. “Every dirty thought, every ugly word, every secret, nasty pleasure. You enjoyed swimming in it during your life. Now, you can bathe in it for eternity.”
I remembered my own secret impurities. The affair with Sameer. The thrill of the illicit texts. The way I would sometimes look at Rohan with contempt, my heart filled with a secret, ugly pride. I remembered Maya’s own teenage explorations, the dark corners of the internet she visited, the cruel gossip she reveled in. All of it, all our secret filth, was here. It was this river.
Before I could recoil, I was shoved from behind.
The impact was not a clean splash. It was a thick, glugging submersion. The liquid was hot and viscous, clinging to my naked spirit-body like hot tar. It filled my mouth, my nose, my eyes. I was drowning in a soup of our own collective impurity.
But I wasn’t alone.
Things moved in the thick current. They bumped against my legs, slithered around my arms. I saw a fish-like creature with jaws lined with what looked like spinning saw blades swim past. Something with needle-sharp teeth latched onto my arm, and a burning poison spread through me.
I flailed, trying to push them away, trying to get my head above the foul surface to breathe, but my struggles only seemed to attract more of them. They swarmed me, tearing, biting, devouring.
The pain was immense, but the psychological horror was worse. This was not an external punishment. This was me. This was us. I was being consumed by the physical manifestation of every ugly, lustful, or hateful thought Maya and I had ever entertained. Every gossip magazine I had ever flipped through, every cruel online comment I’d read with a secret thrill, every moment of objectification or contempt—it was all here. It was alive. And it was eating me.
I kicked and fought, propelled by a sheer terror. I had to get to the other side. As I struggled through the vile current, I saw other souls, thousands of them, all flailing, all screaming, all being torn apart, their despair was just another ingredient in this terrible, self-made river.
Somehow, I reached the other bank. I crawled out of the filth, my spiritual body shredded and dripping with a foulness I knew would never wash away.
I lay on the muddy ground, heaving and trembling, my soul stained. But there was no rest. The Yamduts were already there, yanking the searing rope, dragging me onward. The bath was over. The journey was not.
Index of: Journey Of Hell: The Unforgotten Promise
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