death, and there was no escape.”
“Oily sea?” asked the copilot?
“Yeah,” said the engineer. “In the book, the Devil let her take a sort of tour of Hell. Only it wasn’t underground like you usually think of it. It was on this whole other planet. There were birds feeding on people chained to altars, people flailing around in boiling filth, burning skeletons in fiery pits, all sorts of stuff. At the end of it, she was forced to throw herself from this high cliff into a sea of fiery boiling oil, where she was supposed to spend the rest of eternity.”
“A sea of boiling oil?” said the pilot. “That sounds pretty ghastly. What would a thing like that be like?”
“What can I compare it to?” posed Serena. “Imagine placing your hand into the deep fryer at your local fast-food restaurant all the way up to your wrist. Now imagine keeping your hand in there for a minute, an hour, a day, a year. On Earth, you couldn’t do that, of course. But you could in Hell, because there your flesh is never really destroyed, at least not permanently. It just keeps coming back, regenerating. There is nothing that can be done to your body that can’t be undone given an hour or so, for you are eternal, immortal. Oh, it hurts, hurts like you can’t believe, just like it would on Earth. Thing is, you’re already dead; you can’t die again.”
A strange silence fell over the group.
“Let’s take it a step further. Imagine a deep fryer large enough to swim in. You can’t get out of it, no matter how you try. Your blood, what little remains of it after a while, boils within your veins, but you still can’t die. The flames roar over top of you again and again, charring what was once skin. Your flesh seethes in the heat, becoming a mass of boils. All the while the demons are not far away, working to ensure that you don’t cheat your fate. Once you can imagine that, then you might be able to imagine what it’s like.”
“And this really happened?” asked the pilot.
“It really happened,” confirmed Serena. “It’s only by the mercy of God that I was allowed to return to warn humanity of what could lie ahead. Only the sacrifice of Christ separates us from an eternity like that. Without Him, we’re all doomed.”
It had become an uncomfortable subject. The pilot changed it by drawing the attention of all to a Russian warship in the sea below heading for the Bosporus. From there, the topic changed to the instability of the region. Serena’s adventure did not again emerge as a topic of conversation.
After a rough five-hour ride, they found themselves descending into the small municipal airport of the City of Kirkuk. Chris recalled that this had been the center of some pretty fierce fighting during the Iraq War. It was a lot calmer now, assured the pilot. He’d been flying this run for years without incident. The Kurds were really nice people, not the sort that made religious violence a spectator sport.
As they pulled up to the tarmac, Will Reinhart was there to meet them in one of the company jeeps. After just a few minutes of customs red tape, they were on their way to well number 14. They had chewed up another bit and werein the process of pulling it out. It would be out soon after they arrived. Then it would be quiet for a while.
It was a long ride to the well site, across cool, rolling desert landscape on a pitted blacktop and then on a gravel road. It reminded Serena a bit of northern Arizona, a sort of magnificent desolation. This was her first trip to the Middle East, and as a precaution against offending the locals, she wore a headscarf, as Will had suggested.
“It’s a mighty strange place out here,” noted Will. “The locals are darned friendly, really. And they like Westerners. Many of them even speak English. But things can change just like that. This is not a Christian nation. They are a bit more tolerant here than in most Islamic countries, but you don’t try to tell them that you’ve found
“Oily sea?” asked the copilot?
“Yeah,” said the engineer. “In the book, the Devil let her take a sort of tour of Hell. Only it wasn’t underground like you usually think of it. It was on this whole other planet. There were birds feeding on people chained to altars, people flailing around in boiling filth, burning skeletons in fiery pits, all sorts of stuff. At the end of it, she was forced to throw herself from this high cliff into a sea of fiery boiling oil, where she was supposed to spend the rest of eternity.”
“A sea of boiling oil?” said the pilot. “That sounds pretty ghastly. What would a thing like that be like?”
“What can I compare it to?” posed Serena. “Imagine placing your hand into the deep fryer at your local fast-food restaurant all the way up to your wrist. Now imagine keeping your hand in there for a minute, an hour, a day, a year. On Earth, you couldn’t do that, of course. But you could in Hell, because there your flesh is never really destroyed, at least not permanently. It just keeps coming back, regenerating. There is nothing that can be done to your body that can’t be undone given an hour or so, for you are eternal, immortal. Oh, it hurts, hurts like you can’t believe, just like it would on Earth. Thing is, you’re already dead; you can’t die again.”
A strange silence fell over the group.
“Let’s take it a step further. Imagine a deep fryer large enough to swim in. You can’t get out of it, no matter how you try. Your blood, what little remains of it after a while, boils within your veins, but you still can’t die. The flames roar over top of you again and again, charring what was once skin. Your flesh seethes in the heat, becoming a mass of boils. All the while the demons are not far away, working to ensure that you don’t cheat your fate. Once you can imagine that, then you might be able to imagine what it’s like.”
“And this really happened?” asked the pilot.
“It really happened,” confirmed Serena. “It’s only by the mercy of God that I was allowed to return to warn humanity of what could lie ahead. Only the sacrifice of Christ separates us from an eternity like that. Without Him, we’re all doomed.”
It had become an uncomfortable subject. The pilot changed it by drawing the attention of all to a Russian warship in the sea below heading for the Bosporus. From there, the topic changed to the instability of the region. Serena’s adventure did not again emerge as a topic of conversation.
After a rough five-hour ride, they found themselves descending into the small municipal airport of the City of Kirkuk. Chris recalled that this had been the center of some pretty fierce fighting during the Iraq War. It was a lot calmer now, assured the pilot. He’d been flying this run for years without incident. The Kurds were really nice people, not the sort that made religious violence a spectator sport.
As they pulled up to the tarmac, Will Reinhart was there to meet them in one of the company jeeps. After just a few minutes of customs red tape, they were on their way to well number 14. They had chewed up another bit and werein the process of pulling it out. It would be out soon after they arrived. Then it would be quiet for a while.
It was a long ride to the well site, across cool, rolling desert landscape on a pitted blacktop and then on a gravel road. It reminded Serena a bit of northern Arizona, a sort of magnificent desolation. This was her first trip to the Middle East, and as a precaution against offending the locals, she wore a headscarf, as Will had suggested.
“It’s a mighty strange place out here,” noted Will. “The locals are darned friendly, really. And they like Westerners. Many of them even speak English. But things can change just like that. This is not a Christian nation. They are a bit more tolerant here than in most Islamic countries, but you don’t try to tell them that you’ve found
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