Write On Edge: The Blessings

Prompt:   Hope comes in a jar. It floats. We wrote about hope in our memoirs this week, now let’s take it in a different direction. According to Dante, the gates of hell are inscribed “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”   Let that inscription lead, but not necessarily define, your piece for Friday’s link-up.   This piece connects with this one.  

The door to the interior office area of The Blessing Society was absent of any vestige of warmth;  Andy shivered as his hand touched the knob of the door.  The door opened at his touch with a sound that always invited comparisons to a crypt, a wail of air flowing behind him and pushing him reluctantly into the dark hallway.  The door closed silently, and he was cut off from the world.

Andy's breath hitched, a voiceless sob.  He bit his lip and began to move forward, telling himself that there was nothing to fear.  His father was Melchior Blessing, after all; the most powerful man in the world.  Andy had been coming to this building, and this office, since he was a young child.  Nothing had ever happened to him in this hallway, not really. His experiences were all in his mind.  It was only ten steps from outer door to the inner one.  Ten steps.   

And yet...

The air seemed thicker in this hallway, as if clotted with blood, and a vague smell of rotted flesh crawled into Andy's nostrils with each step.  His legs felt heavy, pulled into the floor by unseen talons.  His shoulders were weighted with the burdens of the entire world.   As he moved, there was a sense that his spirit was being separated from his body, suctioned out of him by a wretched vortex of desolation.  All was forsaken, the walls seemed to whisper.  Andy kept walking, gritting his teeth as tears of despair poured down his cheeks.  Only what was left of his will prevented him from gibbering with fear as he arrived at the door on the other end of the hallway. 

He knocked on the door, twice, then waited for his father's voice to rescue him.

"Enter."   Andy shivered with relief.  Inhaling as deeply as he could, he opened the door and stepped into the firelit office of his father.   Melchior swiveled in his chair as his son entered the room, a large gold chalice in his hands.

"Welcome, my son.  Please, join me."  Melchior motioned Andy toward a chair in front of the massive stone desk.  He hurried to obey his father, pretending to ignore the slowly swinging, bloodless corpse of a woman hanging upside down in front of the fireplace.

"Would you like a drink, son?"