Requiem For a Dream: Portrait of Hell (A Children's Bedtime Story)

Hush, child; it’s time for bed. There are to be no more bedtime stories tonight. Say your prayers, and Jesus will protect you in your dreams. Don’t argue – sleep. If you’ve been a good boy/girl, then you’ll have sweet dreams, where angels will see to your every need and the power of the Lord will keep Satan and his demons away.

Fine, if you insist on disobeying and crying and pleading, I’ll tell you one last story about what happens to people who were bad children, children that never said their prayers before bed, who cried when it was time for the lights to go out, children that wet their beds and argued and disobeyed. It’s called Requiem for a Dream…

At the Gates of Hell there stands a man-beast that is 10 feet tall. His face is huge and looks as though it is made of leather that was left out in the rain for years and years. Bloodshot eyes are sunken back into his head, and on his nose there is a disgusting sore filled with puss and blood. He is bald on top, but has greasy, blood-red hair that falls from the sides and back to his shoulders. The man-beast looks not unlike a terrifying clown with a gigantic red nose; but if you look at him up close, you’ll see the puss leaking slowly from the sore, and you’ll see in his mouth he has teeth made of nails and shards of glass, and you’ll see that one of his hands has had all the flesh stripped away to the bone, while the other hand has seven fingers, five of which have been partially cut off, leaving only nubs, and you’ll know he’s not a clown at all, but one of Satan’s demons. The man-beast’s name is Bartholemule.

Bartholemule stands on a boulder and overlooks a line of people that stretches for as far as the eye can see (and further). The people are pale and dirty, and some are wailing and gnashing their teeth, for as they get closer and closer to the Gates of Hell and they see Bartholemule, it finally registers that they are to spend an eternity in Hell, in constant pain and suffering, and there is no hope. The thought of what awaits squeezes on their hearts, and it’s a suffocating feeling that grows and grows, occupying their every thought until some can no longer move. And this enrages Bartholemule. So he picks up a gigantic bullhorn made of human heads and screams at them, “Sinners, sinners! Keep moving, keep moving! You must face the Mirror of Evil and relive your sins! And then you will begin your sentence. Oh yes, you will, indeed!” And for good measure he whips them with a whip made from human flesh.

A girl passes through the Gates of Hell. She finds herself in a brightly lit room with walls painted black The light is almost blinding, but in the corner of the room she sees a mirror – the Mirror of Evil. It stands over ten feet high and is encased in bone laced with rotting flesh and sinew. The girl is panicked and can’t move, but a force in the room drags her before the mirror. And she looks into it. She sees herself as a child being put to bed by her mother. Her mother tells her to go to bed, but she won’t, demanding, instead, to watch more television. And her mother gives up and frustration. Then the image in the Mirror of Evil changes. The girl again sees herself, but it’s her from two years ago, and her ex-boyfriend is with her. They are in her bedroom, where she begins to undress and let her boyfriend touch her. But the two are not alone, for in the corner the girl can see what looks like a man peering down through a tear in the ceiling. He looks sad, as though he has been crying, and the girl, standing before the Mirror of Evil, knows it is Jesus.

Suddenly, she is no longer in front of the mirror or even in the same room. Instead, she is in a new room with equally blinding light, but she can see no walls or ceiling, and it looks as though the room stretches forever and ever. And she is naked. Bartholemule appears before the girl. His bony hand grabs her by the neck and lifts her into the air. Chains suddenly appear, dangling from the sky, perhaps attached to a ceiling she cannot see, and Bartholemule chains her wrists so that she is hanging in the air. She is too scared to speak and only weeps. He then raises a bony finger, and she can see it has a nail at the end that could be as sharp as a knife. It comes closer and closer until the nail touches the center of her chest and pokes and pokes, until it breaks through the skin and she is screaming. Bartholemule then brings the nail down across her body, gashing her, and stabs her in a new spot and brings his nail down again. He does this over and over; and suddenly the girl can feel a new sensation as spiders, beetles, and worms crawl over her body, stinging and eating – devouring – her. They crawl into her mouth, stopping her screams, and down her throat, suffocating her. And then, after hours of the torture, there is nothing left of the girl, not even bone; yet she can still feel, hear and see, and she wonders if the suffering is over. But Bartholemule laughs, and the girl’s body, whole and naked, appears in the chains again. He pokes her with his nail, and her suffering begins anew.

A man passes through the Gates of Hell and finds himself in the room where the Mirror of Evil sits. He walks up to it confidently and watches as a scene from him as a little boy plays in the mirror. Like the girl, he watches himself refuse to go to bed despite his parent’s pleas. And then the scene changes, although he is still a little boy. He’s lying to his mother, telling her that he didn’t break the neighbor’s window; and then the scene changes again, and this time he’s slightly older, but still lying to his mother, telling her he did not skip school; and then the scene changes again, only this time he’s fully grown and is lying to his wife, telling her he was with his friends, when he had really been with another woman. And he sees Jesus peering down through a tear in the ceiling, crying.

And just like the girl, he is suddenly transported into a room with no walls or ceiling, a room that seems as though it stretches forever and ever. Bartholemule appears behind him and grabs his neck, surprising the man. A strange looking table appears, and at one end of it, there is small metal wall with a circle in it. Bartholemule lifts the wall up, so that the circle comes apart, and forces the man’s neck into the half on the table. He then puts the wall back, trapping the man so that he is leaning over the table, his chin resting on the edge. The beast walks around to the other end, and the man can see his terrifying features for the first time. But he does not have time to be terrified, for Bartholemule quickly grabs the man’s tongue from out his mouth. And the beast smiles, revealing the nails and shards of glass that serve as teeth. His boney hand then pulls one of the nails out and nails the man’s tongue to the table. And the man wretches and chokes in pain, only to be faced with a swarm of locusts crawling up onto the table. They have scorpion tails and make a clicking sound as they approach. The first one crawls into the man’s mouth, where it stings him, and then another and another and another enter into his mouth, and all sting and sting him, crawling further down his digestive track stinging and biting him the entire way down. More and more crawl into his mouth, and they all begin to eat him from the inside out, eventually spilling out of his eye sockets. Soon there is nothing left of the man, but he can still hear, see, and feel, such that he wonders if the torture might be over. But Bartholemule starts laughing, and the man’s body appears, good as new, and the man’s suffering begins afresh.
Another man passes through the Gates of Hell and faces the Mirror of Evil. Like those before him, he sees himself refusing to go to bed, refusing to say his prayers; and then the scene in the mirror changes, showing him as a young scientist writing a report. He remembers the report: it was about evolution, about how men evolved from monkeys; and he remembers how, even as he was writing it, he doubted its accuracy, yet continued to write until it was finished and eventually submitted to other scientists for review. The next scene is of him teaching science to children, explaining to them the lie of evolution and dinosaurs and the creation of the universe. And just like those before him, he notices Jesus peering through a tear in the ceiling, crying.

In the next room, the room that is never ending, the scientist is staring at a metal table. Bartholemule appears, and forces the man to lie down, strapping him in with leather straps that mysteriously appear from nowhere. With the nubs on one hand, the beast forces the man’s left eye open; and with the other hand, he slowly sticks a syringe filled with an unknown substance into the eye. As the liquid drains out of the needle, the scientist’s head feels as though it is on fire. He starts screaming and squirming, and Bartholemule pulls out another syringe filled with another unknown substance that looks not unlike blood. This time the beast simply sticks the needle in through the man’s closed eye lid. And the screaming and squirming stop, although the burning sensation gets worse and worse, until, suddenly, sores appear all over the man’s body. The sores grow and bubble, and some pop, leaving craters in the man’s flesh; and more sores appear and more pop, until there is no more meat left on the man’s skeleton. But he can still see and hear and feel, such that he wonder’s if his suffering is over. And Bartholemule only laughs; and the man’s body suddenly is whole again, ready for it’s torture to begin anew.

A woman passes through the Gates of Hell. Watching the Mirror of Evil, she sees herself undergoing an abortion, the doctor sucking life out of her and emptying it into a bucket. The woman starts shaking, not with sadness, but with anger. When she sees Jesus peering out of a tear in the ceiling, she screams in a rage. “What about my right to privacy,” she yells at Jesus, shaking her fist at our Lord and Savior.

And the woman is naked in the never ending room facing Bartholemule. He smiles, revealing the nails and glass in his mouth. From behind his back he pulls forth a long hose that the woman recognizes as a sucking tube used in abortions. Before she can respond, before she can even question her fate, Bartholemule grabs her with his free hand and shoves one end of the tube into her butt. He then takes the other end, twisting the sucking tube around her body such that she is immobilized, and forces it into her mouth. Two nails fall from his gums into his bony hand, and he uses them to fasten the tube to the woman, pushing the nails through either side of one end so they embed into the roof of her gaping mouth. Another two nails fall, and Bartholemule repeats the task at the woman’s anus. Suddenly, excrement flows from her butt to her mouth, and she chokes and chokes, and the feces keeps coming and coming. As time passes – it could be days or months or years – the woman begins rotting from the inside. Eventually the tube is only able to suck the skin off of her bones and spit it onto the floor. And the woman is momentarily happy, believing her suffering to be over. But then her body is made whole again, and the torture begins anew.

A young man walks through the Gates of Hell to face his sins in the Mirror of Evil. He watches as the mirror shows him scenes from the past, scenes of him as a teenager and man looking at pornography. Jesus, of course, is peering down through a tear in the ceiling, crying.

And just like those before him, the man finds himself in an empty, never ending room, where Bartholemule waits. Chains appear from nowhere, one set dangling from what might be a ceiling and another lying on the floor, and the beast hangs the man from them, fastening his arms and legs, such that he is pulled into a gigantic “X.” Bartholemule lifts a bony finger and examines its razor-like edge. He then puts it to the man’s eye and slowly begins carving the eye out of the socket, ignoring the screams. The other eye is cut out of the man’s head in much the same way. A table suddenly appears, and the beast puts the eyes on the table. But the man is not blind, for his eyes still work, and he can see his body from the table on which they now lay. Before the man can wonder what horrific torture is to come next, three people – two women and a girl: his mother, sister, and daughter – appear chained next to him. Bartholemule begins doing monstrous thing to them, ripping and tearing them with his bony fingers. The man wishes he could turn away, but his eyes still stare at the scene, while all the pain and suffering his family experiences is projected on to him. When there is nothing left of his mother, sister, and daughter, he begins to take some solace in the idea that the suffering is certain to end, but Bartholemule, of course, begins only to laugh, as the women’s bodies appear whole and new and the torture begins afresh.

A woman walks through the Gates of Hell, crying. When she sees the Mirror of Evil, she turns to run back, to run and run as far as her legs will take her, to somewhere – anywhere – she can repent for whatever sins she may have committed. But it is too late for that, and an unknown force drags her toward the mirror, where she begrudgingly sits before it, rocking herself. And the scene she sees in the mirror reveals her sin. It begins like nearly all sins begin: she is disobeying her parents. Crying before bed, refusing to sleep. And then she sees herself stealing, first from her parents, then from stores and her work. And like those before her, she sees Jesus peering through a tear in the ceiling, weeping.

Bartholemule forces the woman belly down onto a gigantic metal table. He pulls her arms forward and straps them to the table. She watches as he pulls nails from his mouth and a hammer from behind his back, and she struggles as he pries her fingers open and nails each one to the table. Next, he methodically begins hammering the woman’s pinky finger, slowly working his way down, completely flattening the finger as he progresses, and she screams. And screams and screams, until Bartholemule stops hammering to pull an especially large nail from out of his mouth and hammer it through her throat. And this stops her screams, and he starts hammering again. First the pinky finger, then the next finger, and the next finger, and the next. And when he finishes with one hand, he moves to the other. Done with the hands, Bartholemule starts hammering her arms, careful not to miss a single inch, crushing the limbs into a thin sheet of bone and goo; and when he is done with her arms, he works the legs and feet; and when he is done with those, he batters from the base of the spine up to her head. Eventually, there is nothing left of the woman to pound, but, of course, she can still hear, feel, and see, and her body is given back to her whole and complete, the torture ready to commence anew.

A young boy/girl walks through the Gates of Hell. It is you. You don’t know what you’ve done; you should be asleep and dreaming wonderful dreams, protected by angels, loved by Jesus. The Mirror of Evil is in the corner, beckoning, but you won’t move until an unnatural force drags you kicking and screaming to face your sins. And you look into the mirror, where you see yourself as you lay here now, with me. You had been crying and begging. You had refused to say your prayers. You had taken the Lord’s name in vain. Jesus meant nothing to you; you cared only about yourself, demanding more bedtime stories. So now, standing before the Mirror of Evil, you, like those before you, see Jesus peering through a tear in the ceiling, crying.

In the never ending room where Bartholemule awaits, you are spread into an “X,” chained by chains that appear from nowhere. The demon uses a nail from a bony finger to carve out your heart. You scream, you regret, you try to repent, for you know Jesus could protect you. And Bartholemule laughs a knowing laugh, then bites your heart in two, chewing it into smaller and smaller pieces until it is liquid. Next comes a kiss of death, as he grabs your face and brings his lips to yours. And he spits your liquid heart into your mouth, where it slowly works its way to your belly. It hurts so badly; it burns and chokes, and it feels as though you are being smothered to death, the weight of Hell pressing on your lungs. But Hell is not suffocating you; it is your sin. For that is what sin feels like when you have abandoned Jesus and He you, leaving you on your own to face Evil. And Bartholemule takes the rest of your heart and feeds it to a swarm of insects that marches toward you. With every one of their microscopic bites, you feel the sharp pain of needles being pressed into your skin. And just like they devour your heart, they devour you; and while they feast, you can not escape a tremendous feeling of sorrow and loss that pounds on you along with the physical agony of being eaten alive. You love Jesus now, but it is too late. It is too late. If only you had listened to me; if only you said your prayers and went to bed without ever having heard this horrible tale. Jesus would have protected you in your dreams; and he would have protected you from the Gates of Hell. But no, you never accepted the Lord Jesus Christ into your heart until it was too late. So when the insects are finished with their feast, your body is given back to you untouched and ready for the torture to begin anew. You will never be able to go to bed. For eternity.