My Plane Crashed and I Went to Hell
A man, after being in a plane crash, finds himself in hell.
Reading time: 11 minutes.
A little announcement, or maybe two. We achieved two milestones in the last week. First of all, XTales.net has been featured in the list of world’s top 80 horror blogs by Feedspot. Make sure to check out their list.
https://blog.feedspot.com/horror_blogs/
And second, the previous story, ‘The Letter to My Other Self’ was published on world’s most popular horror-fiction platform creepypasta.com. Head over there to read it and vote.
https://www.creepypasta.com/the-letter-to-my-other-self/
Epilogue (optional for narrators)
Father James stood in the corridor of the hospital in front of the window of a private room. He was looking at the patient lying on the bed who opened his eyes and called for the nurse. Father James smiled. He turned to his fellow man standing next to him, smiled and said, “It worked. The project worked.” It wasn’t a noble smile though. His eyes gleamed with pride when he ordered the man, “Bring in the next one and plug him into the Dreamscape.”
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And now…
Do you know about fear when you are walking down a lonely road all by yourself in the middle of the night? You are scared as hell, but when you are with friends walking down the same road, it’s not that scary. Everything changes when you are not alone. So maybe it’s not the darkness you are afraid of. Maybe it’s the loneliness. I just thought of that because I was walking down a deserted road, all alone, and I was scared to death even in the broad daylight. It wasn’t exactly a sunny day. Heavy clouds covered the blood-red sky, but it was still a pretty bright day. Honestly, I would have preferred the darkness because maybe then, I would not be able to see all those bodies lying everywhere.
I did not remember how I had gotten there. Last thing I remembered I was on a plane, next thing I knew I was walking down this barren land filled with dead bodies everywhere as far as one could see. At first, one would think that they could be animals, I mean how can one recognize a body in that condition, but whoever put those bodies there made sure that anybody who sees them knows that they are humans. Maybe that was what was scaring me the most. I could have handled the massacred bodies but I could not deal with their heads being mounted on spikes beside their bodies.
I kept walking because what else could I have done? The stench, oh my god, the stench almost made me spill my organs out through my mouth. What was this place? Where was I? I threw a look all around and saw nothing but massacred bodies and vultures, ravens, and other vicious leathery winged creatures that I had never seen in my life feeding on those bodies. They were flying in the sky like kites at the harvest festival. The way they were picking on the bodies was enough to make anyone lose their shit. And this was all that there was, as far as one could see. Was there anyone even alive? Who had put these bodies here and mounted their heads on the spikes? I didn’t want to go close enough to those things, I was afraid that they might never have tasted fresh meat and they definitely looked like they could tear me apart easily. I was trying to get someplace far from there and safe, walking quietly, cautiously when suddenly—
“Oh finally, about time.”
I turned around saw a man just about my height wearing a bright white suit, holding a clipboard and a pen in his hand, bearing a broad smile on his face walking towards me, ignoring all the bodies around him as if they weren’t even there.
“Took you long enough,” he said looking at me.
When he got closer, I noticed that however in every way he looked like a regular human being, there was something different. He had two tiny pointy thorns protruding out of his head on either side, and he also had a tail, a long, snake-like, pointy-triangular-head devil tail.
“Wh–who are you? Where’d you come from? There was no one here a second ago! What is this–what is this place?”
The man brought a very sarcastic look to his face. "Oh, right," he said, “You arrive here late, keep me waiting, you know my shift ended like a week ago and then you, sir, grace us with your presence, finally, and then you question me?” He then dropped the sarcastic smile in a split second and, “I don’t have time for this, get it going.” He turned and started to walk away.
After a few steps, he stopped and turned back at me who hadn't taken a single step, sighed, rolled his eyes and walked back towards me.
“Listen,” he said, “I know what it feels like. Oh my god! Where am I? Am I dead? No. How am I in hell? I was a good person. Bla, bla bla. Chant your lament all you want but while moving, okay, I’m already very late.”
His words dropped two heavy bricks in my stomach. Was I…dead?
“So, keep it moving,” he said snapping his fingers. “Come on, quick.”
I didn’t budge. All I could think was—
“Am I dead? Is this Hell?”
He lowered his head in disappointment and sighed. When he looked back up, his eyes had a fiery red glow. “Do not make me angry. Start. Moving. Now.”
“But—but I don’t unders—”
Before I could finish, he did something that made me shit my pants. He opened his mouth so wide, I could easily fit in there, he grew up multiple feet in height and his body turned to burnt brown-red leather and he screamed in a blood-curdling voice. "DO AS I SAY YOU STUPID FUCK!”
I dropped to the ground, quivering with fear. I felt something wet in my pants. I started shaking and crying. I was so fear-struck that I couldn’t even let out coherent sentences. “Please—no—no—please let me—let me—please—no—no—oh god—god please—”
Then he shrunk like popped balloon and back to the nice smiling man in a white suit, still with the thorns and the tail. “I’m sorry, I lost my temper for a second. Oh no, I’d probably be stuck in this job for another century. I was up for a promotion, damn!”
I was still on the ground, still crying, still wet.
“Okay, come on stand up. Let’s take it easy. I’m here to help. Come on.”
I stood up just because of the fear. I was scared that if I made him angry, he might turn back into whatever that was.
“I’ll explain everything to you. I’ll answer every question, okay, just—just keep walking, will you? Please?” Then he started walking, slowly as he looked back at me as if a parent was trying to make his one-year-old child walk. "Come on."
I slowly followed him keeping my distance. I was still sobbing and was so scared that my legs were trembling. He did not care at all. He went on as if nothing had happened.
“So what do you wanna know? Tell me, I’ll answer your every question,” he said.
I didn’t ask anything. I couldn’t even speak properly. He looked at me and waited but when I couldn’t speak anything, he went on.
“Okay, let me see—uh yes, you are dead. You died—” he looked on his clipboard, “—in a plane crash and now you are in hell. My name is Toby and I’m here to help you get to your final destination.”
I tried to speak, my words quivered. “My—my final—destination?”
“Yes, like all of these,” he said pointing towards the heads mounted on spikes.
A few more bricks dropped into my stomach. “Wha—! No! Please no, oh god!” I had stopped moving but when Toby turned and gazed at me with his fiery eyes, I shivered and kept walking. The fear fueled my trembling legs.
“Oh god, no! Please!” I was crying like a baby but I still kept walking. “What did I do? I was a good man!” I wailed and Toby turned back, still walking.
“Oh, you wanna know what did you do to deserve this? What did all these people do to be forced to watch themselves eaten alive?”
I suddenly stopped crying. Tears still rolled my eyes but my mouth was as dry as a desert when I tried to speak. “What? These people…are alive?”
“Oh, yes, very,” Toby jumped. "Come on, let's ask this gentleman." He started walking towards the closest head. It was a bald head covered in a thick beard. It looked pretty dead to me but when Toby poked it with his tail despite my reluctance and constant head-shaking, its eyes jerked open and—it started to scream.
In mere seconds, every head woke up and started screaming in pain. I put my hands on my ears but still couldn’t stop those terrifying screams. It seemed as if they could still feel those creatures tearing off their flesh. Toby said something but nobody heard it. Then he did it again. He showed his real form and bellowed, “SILENCE!” It went dead quiet just like that. I looked at Toby who was, once again, a man in a bright white suit, used his tail to wipe some dust off his shiny shoes, then went on to tap on the head in front of him. “Excuse me, gentleman,” he said. “Could you be kind enough to tell our newest guest, what you did to deserve this punishment?”
The head first looked at me and then spit out just one word before closing its eyes again—“Nothing!”
“Nothing?” I asked. I had calmed down a bit but was still very shaken up.
“Did you get it?” Toby smiled at me. “You did ‘nothing’.”
“If I—” I gulped, “—If I did nothing then why this punishment?”
“Because you did nothing—when you should have.” Toby grinned at me and it made me feel unsettled. "You used to see bad things happening around you all the time. You saw people who needed your help every day and what did you do? Nothing. You just walked past them. You ignored them.”
I remembered. Every time I had walked past a beggar, a homeless or some guy getting mugged in an alley, I simply walked away. I never prayed once in my life. I never even went to a church even after father James, my neighbour asked me so many times. I remembered every single one of those moments as Toby went on.
“I know you people think that you are one of those ‘Live and Let Live’ kind of people but the truth is that you like it. Deep down you are all sadists. You like to see those people in pain and trouble. It makes you happy. So here is your punishment. You like to watch, so watch. Watch yourself being torn apart, watch yourself being in so much pain that after a while, you grow numb to it.”
I was crying my eyes out because even though I knew what was going to happen to me, I could not stop or run. I had to keep walking. I was so fear-struck the only thing I could say was to ask, “How—how long do these peop—do I have to…?”
Toby laughed. He laughed out so loud it made my heart sink. He did not answer my question, he didn’t have to.
After a while, it grew so quiet that I could hear my heart in my chest. We kept walking. The sky was still red and filled with those damned creatures. I was very cold even though I was in hell or maybe it was fear, I couldn’t tell.
Toby stretched his neck in a very inhuman way and yawned. “Man, I am sick of this job!” he said. “I can’t remember how long I’ve been doing this, I just wanna get promoted already.” He didn’t care that I was listening. Why would he? “I am tired of just guiding people to their spot where they’ll stay forever and ever. It’s like I’m being forced to watch you people suffer. Agh! I just wanna do the deed with my own hands and I can only dream of ever getting to punish Bin Laden myself but I don’t know how long till they’ll promote me to heaven.”
My fear evaporated like camphor, I stopped right in my spot, still wet down there but nothing had ever shocked me the way that dissemination of the information did. “WHAT?” I literally shouted, forgetting everything. “Bin Laden is in heaven?”
Toby threw me a look. "No, you silly," he did air quotes "he is in ‘heaven’.”
“I—I don’t—I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. You see this—,” he waved his hand, “—is not real punishment. You guys are not evil. So you get these easy punishments.”
“Easy?”
“Oh, trust me, you're getting off easy. Just pray to god that you never find out what happens with the real sinners.”
“You send them to heaven?”
“Okay, let me explain this to you, you puny human who can’t even sin properly. Whenever someone really evil arrives, we arrange a special punishment for them. Bin Laden thought that he was on a path of god, so we sent him to ‘heaven’. We fueled his pride. We told him he was the favourite of the prophet. He is so full of himself that I pity him. We keep this façade until finally, one day the most menial service demon will shatter his reality. Oh, I wish it could be me. Hitler still cries like a baby. If he could, he would have committed suicide again. You should’ve seen his face when we all gathered together and laughed as he witnessed his ‘heaven’ melt away…”
Toby went deep-diving into his fantasy when I wondered if I really got an easy pass. I thought about the punishment that the evilest man I knew was receiving. I wonder what would happen to him when…it really was the best punishment for him and as we walked a little further, I thought maybe I deserved my punishment too. It wasn’t easy but I accepted it. I wished I got another chance, I promised I would make it worth it and as if someone was listening because as we reached the spot—
“Here we are. That’s where you’ll go. It was nice meeting you but…on you go,” Toby said gesturing at the only spike there with no head on it but with a nameplate.
“That’s not me!”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s not my name.”
“Yes, it is. It’s the only spot left for today and you are the only one here. Don’t try to act smart with me, it’s not gonna work!”
I tried not to look happy but hope had risen in my heart. "I'm telling you that’s not my name!”
“How is that possible?” Toby shuffled a few pages on his clipboard. “What’s your name then?” he asked.
I gave him my name and he checked his clipboard and then—“Oh,” he said. It was the longest ‘oh’ I had ever heard in my life—and death.
"What?" I was a bit both terrified and hopeful.
“Nothing, nothing, It’s a mistake. You’re just in a coma, You’ll wake up in a few hours.”
“So does that mean—it’s not real?”
“Oh, it’s real alright. You see, we want real evil people here but it’s really hard to distinguish when some ignorant people like you don’t do the right thing up there. So we, every once in a while, call someone hanging between life and death here to show them around, give them a peek, you know so they straighten up their act and get their life and morals together so we don’t have to deal with them.”
“But how calling me here is gonna help everyone else? I mean don’t get me wrong, I’ll change, I swear to god but what about others?”
“Well, you’re gonna tell them. Because if you don’t, you know where you’re headed when you actually die and next time we won’t let you get off so easy.”
Toby then gave me an obnoxious smile that sent chills down my spine and the last thing I heard from his mouth before everything went dark was, “You are not being punished, gentleman, you are just a visitor.”
My Plane Crashed and I Went to Hell
Do you know about fear when you are walking down a lonely road all by yourself in the middle of the night? You are scared as hell, but when you are with friends walking down the same road, it’s not that scary. Everything changes when you are not alone. So maybe it’s not the darkness you are afraid of. Maybe it’s the loneliness. I just thought of that because I was walking down a deserted road, all alone, and I was scared to death even in the broad daylight. It wasn’t exactly a sunny day. Heavy clouds covered the blood-red sky, but it was still a pretty bright day. Honestly, I would have preferred the darkness because maybe then, I would not be able to see all those bodies lying everywhere.
I did not remember how I had gotten there. Last thing I remembered I was on a plane, next thing I knew I was walking down this barren land filled with dead bodies everywhere as far as one could see. At first, one would think that they could be animals, I mean how can one recognize a body in that condition, but whoever put those bodies there made sure that anybody who sees them knows that they are humans. Maybe that was what was scaring me the most. I could have handled the massacred bodies but I could not deal with their heads being mounted on spikes beside their bodies.
I kept walking because what else could I have done? The stench, oh my god, the stench almost made me spill my organs out through my mouth. What was this place? Where was I? I threw a look all around and saw nothing but massacred bodies and vultures, ravens, and other vicious leathery winged creatures that I had never seen in my life feeding on those bodies. They were flying in the sky like kites at the harvest festival. The way they were picking on the bodies was enough to make anyone lose their shit. And this was all that there was, as far as one could see. Was there anyone even alive? Who had put these bodies here and mounted their heads on the spikes? I didn’t want to go close enough to those things, I was afraid that they might never have tasted fresh meat and they definitely looked like they could tear me apart easily. I was trying to get someplace far from there and safe, walking quietly, cautiously when suddenly—
“Oh finally, about time.”
I turned around saw a man just about my height wearing a bright white suit, holding a clipboard and a pen in his hand, bearing a broad smile on his face walking towards me, ignoring all the bodies around him as if they weren’t even there.
“Took you long enough,” he said looking at me.
When he got closer, I noticed that however in every way he looked like a regular human being, there was something different. He had two tiny pointy thorns protruding out of his head on either side, and he also had a tail, a long, snake-like, pointy-triangular-head devil tail.
“Wh–who are you? Where’d you come from? There was no one here a second ago! What is this–what is this place?”
The man brought a very sarcastic look to his face. "Oh, right," he said, “You arrive here late, keep me waiting, you know my shift ended like a week ago and then you, sir, grace us with your presence, finally, and then you question me?” He then dropped the sarcastic smile in a split second and, “I don’t have time for this, get it going.” He turned and started to walk away.
After a few steps, he stopped and turned back at me who hadn't taken a single step, sighed, rolled his eyes and walked back towards me.
“Listen,” he said, “I know what it feels like. Oh my god! Where am I? Am I dead? No. How am I in hell? I was a good person. Bla, bla bla. Chant your lament all you want but while moving, okay, I’m already very late.”
His words dropped two heavy bricks in my stomach. Was I…dead?
“So, keep it moving,” he said snapping his fingers. “Come on, quick.”
I didn’t budge. All I could think was—
“Am I dead? Is this Hell?”
He lowered his head in disappointment and sighed. When he looked back up, his eyes had a fiery red glow. “Do not make me angry. Start. Moving. Now.”
“But—but I don’t unders—”
Before I could finish, he did something that made me shit my pants. He opened his mouth so wide, I could easily fit in there, he grew up multiple feet in height and his body turned to burnt brown-red leather and he screamed in a blood-curdling voice. "DO AS I SAY YOU STUPID FUCK!”
I dropped to the ground, quivering with fear. I felt something wet in my pants. I started shaking and crying. I was so fear-struck that I couldn’t even let out coherent sentences. “Please—no—no—please let me—let me—please—no—no—oh god—god please—”
Then he shrunk like popped balloon and back to the nice smiling man in a white suit, still with the thorns and the tail. “I’m sorry, I lost my temper for a second. Oh no, I’d probably be stuck in this job for another century. I was up for a promotion, damn!”
I was still on the ground, still crying, still wet.
“Okay, come on stand up. Let’s take it easy. I’m here to help. Come on.”
I stood up just because of the fear. I was scared that if I made him angry, he might turn back into whatever that was.
“I’ll explain everything to you. I’ll answer every question, okay, just—just keep walking, will you? Please?” Then he started walking, slowly as he looked back at me as if a parent was trying to make his one-year-old child walk. "Come on."
I slowly followed him keeping my distance. I was still sobbing and was so scared that my legs were trembling. He did not care at all. He went on as if nothing had happened.
“So what do you wanna know? Tell me, I’ll answer your every question,” he said.
I didn’t ask anything. I couldn’t even speak properly. He looked at me and waited but when I couldn’t speak anything, he went on.
“Okay, let me see—uh yes, you are dead. You died—” he looked on his clipboard, “—in a plane crash and now you are in hell. My name is Toby and I’m here to help you get to your final destination.”
I tried to speak, my words quivered. “My—my final—destination?”
“Yes, like all of these,” he said pointing towards the heads mounted on spikes.
A few more bricks dropped into my stomach. “Wha—! No! Please no, oh god!” I had stopped moving but when Toby turned and gazed at me with his fiery eyes, I shivered and kept walking. The fear fueled my trembling legs.
“Oh god, no! Please!” I was crying like a baby but I still kept walking. “What did I do? I was a good man!” I wailed and Toby turned back, still walking.
“Oh, you wanna know what did you do to deserve this? What did all these people do to be forced to watch themselves eaten alive?”
I suddenly stopped crying. Tears still rolled my eyes but my mouth was as dry as a desert when I tried to speak. “What? These people…are alive?”
“Oh, yes, very,” Toby jumped. "Come on, let's ask this gentleman." He started walking towards the closest head. It was a bald head covered in a thick beard. It looked pretty dead to me but when Toby poked it with his tail despite my reluctance and constant head-shaking, its eyes jerked open and—it started to scream.
In mere seconds, every head woke up and started screaming in pain. I put my hands on my ears but still couldn’t stop those terrifying screams. It seemed as if they could still feel those creatures tearing off their flesh. Toby said something but nobody heard it. Then he did it again. He showed his real form and bellowed, “SILENCE!” It went dead quiet just like that. I looked at Toby who was, once again, a man in a bright white suit, used his tail to wipe some dust off his shiny shoes, then went on to tap on the head in front of him. “Excuse me, gentleman,” he said. “Could you be kind enough to tell our newest guest, what you did to deserve this punishment?”
The head first looked at me and then spit out just one word before closing its eyes again—“Nothing!”
“Nothing?” I asked. I had calmed down a bit but was still very shaken up.
“Did you get it?” Toby smiled at me. “You did ‘nothing’.”
“If I—” I gulped, “—If I did nothing then why this punishment?”
“Because you did nothing—when you should have.” Toby grinned at me and it made me feel unsettled. "You used to see bad things happening around you all the time. You saw people who needed your help every day and what did you do? Nothing. You just walked past them. You ignored them.”
I remembered. Every time I had walked past a beggar, a homeless or some guy getting mugged in an alley, I simply walked away. I never prayed once in my life. I never even went to a church even after father James, my neighbour asked me so many times. I remembered every single one of those moments as Toby went on.
“I know you people think that you are one of those ‘Live and Let Live’ kind of people but the truth is that you like it. Deep down you are all sadists. You like to see those people in pain and trouble. It makes you happy. So here is your punishment. You like to watch, so watch. Watch yourself being torn apart, watch yourself being in so much pain that after a while, you grow numb to it.”
I was crying my eyes out because even though I knew what was going to happen to me, I could not stop or run. I had to keep walking. I was so fear-struck the only thing I could say was to ask, “How—how long do these peop—do I have to…?”
Toby laughed. He laughed out so loud it made my heart sink. He did not answer my question, he didn’t have to.
After a while, it grew so quiet that I could hear my heart in my chest. We kept walking. The sky was still red and filled with those damned creatures. I was very cold even though I was in hell or maybe it was fear, I couldn’t tell.
Toby stretched his neck in a very inhuman way and yawned. “Man, I am sick of this job!” he said. “I can’t remember how long I’ve been doing this, I just wanna get promoted already.” He didn’t care that I was listening. Why would he? “I am tired of just guiding people to their spot where they’ll stay forever and ever. It’s like I’m being forced to watch you people suffer. Agh! I just wanna do the deed with my own hands and I can only dream of ever getting to punish Bin Laden myself but I don’t know how long till they’ll promote me to heaven.”
My fear evaporated like camphor, I stopped right in my spot, still wet down there but nothing had ever shocked me the way that dissemination of the information did. “WHAT?” I literally shouted, forgetting everything. “Bin Laden is in heaven?”
Toby threw me a look. "No, you silly," he did air quotes "he is in ‘heaven’.”
“I—I don’t—I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. You see this—,” he waved his hand, “—is not real punishment. You guys are not evil. So you get these easy punishments.”
“Easy?”
“Oh, trust me, you're getting off easy. Just pray to god that you never find out what happens with the real sinners.”
“You send them to heaven?”
“Okay, let me explain this to you, you puny human who can’t even sin properly. Whenever someone really evil arrives, we arrange a special punishment for them. Bin Laden thought that he was on a path of god, so we sent him to ‘heaven’. We fueled his pride. We told him he was the favourite of the prophet. He is so full of himself that I pity him. We keep this façade until finally, one day the most menial service demon will shatter his reality. Oh, I wish it could be me. Hitler still cries like a baby. If he could, he would have committed suicide again. You should’ve seen his face when we all gathered together and laughed as he witnessed his ‘heaven’ melt away…”
Toby went deep-diving into his fantasy when I wondered if I really got an easy pass. I thought about the punishment that the evilest man I knew was receiving. I wonder what would happen to him when…it really was the best punishment for him and as we walked a little further, I thought maybe I deserved my punishment too. It wasn’t easy but I accepted it. I wished I got another chance, I promised I would make it worth it and as if someone was listening because as we reached the spot—
“Here we are. That’s where you’ll go. It was nice meeting you but…on you go,” Toby said gesturing at the only spike there with no head on it but with a nameplate.
“That’s not me!”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s not my name.”
“Yes, it is. It’s the only spot left for today and you are the only one here. Don’t try to act smart with me, it’s not gonna work!”
I tried not to look happy but hope had risen in my heart. "I'm telling you that’s not my name!”
“How is that possible?” Toby shuffled a few pages on his clipboard. “What’s your name then?” he asked.
I gave him my name and he checked his clipboard and then—“Oh,” he said. It was the longest ‘oh’ I had ever heard in my life—and death.
"What?" I was a bit both terrified and hopeful.
“Nothing, nothing, It’s a mistake. You’re just in a coma, You’ll wake up in a few hours.”
“So does that mean—it’s not real?”
“Oh, it’s real alright. You see, we want real evil people here but it’s really hard to distinguish when some ignorant people like you don’t do the right thing up there. So we, every once in a while, call someone hanging between life and death here to show them around, give them a peek, you know so they straighten up their act and get their life and morals together so we don’t have to deal with them.”
“But how calling me here is gonna help everyone else? I mean don’t get me wrong, I’ll change, I swear to god but what about others?”
“Well, you’re gonna tell them. Because if you don’t, you know where you’re headed when you actually die and next time we won’t let you get off so easy.”
Toby then gave me an obnoxious smile that sent chills down my spine and the last thing I heard from his mouth before everything went dark was, “You are not being punished, gentleman, you are just a visitor.”
Epilogue (optional for narrators)
Father James stood in the corridor of the hospital in front of the window of a private room. He was looking at the patient lying on the bed who opened his eyes and called for the nurse. Father James smiled. He turned to his fellow man standing next to him, smiled and said, “It worked. The project worked.” It wasn’t a noble smile though. His eyes gleamed with pride when he ordered the man, “Bring in the next one and plug him into the Dreamscape.”
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