Infernus

None whatsoever. I had a lot of pent-up anger (turning to helpless rage) that I didn’t know what to do with. Feelings that had nowhere to go.

For years I had been thinking of these themes that became the whole of Infernus. All the loops of chapters that turn, as circles, into themselves; all the elements of eternity that now exist in the book. But, never as one book; not as a whole. Just pieces, maybe short stories, but not altogether as one book.

One day, as Michael was just entering his sickness that would last, for him, a year and nine months, quite like magic, a bright silver sphere appeared in my mind. I could see roads and canals and valleys in it that represented chapters and themes, all circling around each other. That sphere was Infernus.

Instead of ripping off Dante’s Inferno, I thought I would do an homage to it. So, instead of naming the chapters “Cantos” or after the circles of Hell, I would manufacture everything (and I do mean everything!) as circles. Everything in the book circles around to itself eventually. Sometimes merely a few pages later you will see something loop around to itself. Other times it’s many chapters later. But, that was my homage.

I felt I could turn this sphere in my hand, and look at it this way, and then that. And see it all, all the time. All the layers; how every chapter related back to this chapter, or that chapter. All the relationships I never had to build because they were already established in my mind. The ending, the colors of the demons. All of it. I could see it all whenever I chose.

(It is obvious to anyone who has barely any interest in the classics that Dante’s Inferno must have been a huge influence on my childhood. And you would be right. But, of course, in my twisted mind, I never felt Dante went far enough. I also knew, that in his day, he couldn’t have gone farther. It never would have been published. Or he would have been executed, or the like.)

I’ve placed this paragraph in the middle of this dull, dull, dull afterword (that no one’s gonna read) to discourage the uninterested scanner. Here it is: The next thing I’m going to say is my theory… and it’s mine. If you ever meet me, please do not ask me why I wrote Infernus. I really don’t know. It appeared in my life rather rudely in ’93, and it’s been tormenting me ever since. And this is true whether the book sells a hundred copies, or twenty-million. Other than therapy for me, I have no idea at all why I wrote it. I’m just as much in the dark about it as you are. Heh-heh.

The first thing I knew was that it had to be handwritten. The visceral experience of actually touching the notebooks with pen was extremely important to me. I believed it was an essential part of my therapy.

Every time I put pen to paper, the book just flowed out of me, in the order you see it now. I could pick up exactly where I left off before. The book was written, in order, that way. All the layers were already there in my mind, just waiting for me to write them down that way.

I wrote when I had pain. Over the next three years (continuing two years after Michael had passed away) I wrote 86 pages, its original length. Over the next twelve years, through 2009, I added about sixty pages to it, refining and changing it here and there. (By the by, I do not recommend taking sixteen years to write a novella! No, indeed. Unless you go completely bonkers! Imagine Infernus in my head for 16 years total. Whew!)

Shortly before Michael died, dementia robbed him of the memory of who I was. He began to think I was one of his caretakers. That truly scraped my soul.

That defined Hell for me. So much so, that when I wrote chapter nineteen, “The Core,” and made this chapter the definition of Hell, the things the creature said as she lay disintegrating in Dr. Mountfountain’s arms were the same things I had heard Michael say to me. Taken directly from his conversations with me. “I’m sorry I came into your life and ruined it” and “Don’t ever send me away.”

Then I went quite mad with my writing. I decided instead of using pen to write with, I would (metaphorically) stab the paper with a knife, cutting and slashing and wounding.

Quite early in writing this mess I knew no one would ever publish it, so I decided, that instead of writing a horror book, I would write a horrible book. The distinction for me was this: Since I knew it was never going to be published (and who, in their own madness would publish such an offensive mess?), I would pour my guts onto the paper and just write like hell. Since it would never be published, why not put every dark horror I could think of on paper, and simply not worry about writing “down” to anyone? Make a horrible book just for me.

And I did just that; or attempted it, never caring if anyone ever read it. It was merely therapy for me. My creative juices turned the most murderous things in my mind that I was thinking of doing to this horrid disease, and to others that had treated Michael badly and me because of his disease (and no, you wouldn’t believe some of the stories) into episodes in Infernus.

Probably the reason I had saved my most vitriolic poison, and the longest chapters, for false religions, was because of how some of these lovely individuals directed their version of “love” toward Michael and me. Yes, I’m being facetious.

It must have worked as therapy. I never needed to get on any medication or see a therapist.

I’m completely normal!

After reading Infernus, wouldn’t you agree?

See you in your dreams. Heh-heh.

Truly… The End!

Copyright

FIRST EDITION

Infernus

Published by Blasphemous Books

an imprint of KHP Publishers, Inc.

khpbooks.com

This book is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This work, including all characters, names, and places:

Copyright 2012 Mike Jones

All rights reserved.

Cover art Copyright 2011 K.H. Koehler

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of both the publisher and author.

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Footnotes

1

See appendix, at the end of the book, for an explanation of this mystery.

2

This concept of the book being dictated is also explained in the appendix.