Within the Walls of Hell (3 page)

This scene opens with the Messenger leading the new comer in.

 

 

Stone
: Where are you taking me to?

Messenger:
I'm taking you to your room.

Stone:
(
Looks at the surroundings. Sees the dusty floors, broken windows and doors
and collapsing
walls
) oooh no! This place is not good for me. Even a prisoner would not like this place. What's worse, the place is unnecessarily hot. I'm going back. (
Starts walking back towards the gate. Messenger does not try to stop him. Gets to the gate and tries to push it open. It doesn't open. Takes a few meters backward with the intention of using his body as a weapon to knock open the gate. First and second attempts fail. Gives up and walks back to where he left the messenger who is now in the
company of Sandi
).

Stone
: The gate didn't open.

Messenger
: I noticed.

Stone
: And you didn't come to help me open it?

Sandi:
That gate only opens to let people in. Once in here, you can never get out again. That's what I was told when I got here.

Stone
: (
Looks at the Messenger
)

Messenger
: What he has said is right. Now can we go and see your room?

(
With no other word, all three head to the room next to the one given to Sandi. Inside, there is a broken couch with the materials on it torn and old. There is an air conditioner which does not work and is covered by rust. The floor is dusty and untidy
).

Stone:
(
Not happy with what he is seeing
). Before I came here, I lived in a big mansion which was all covered with tiles. There were many servants to clean it. No grain of dust could be seen. If I saw any trace, the servant who was supposed to be in charge was immediately fired. The chairs in my sitting room were first class. (
With disgust
) look at what you have here….a single couch which is old and torn. (
To the Messenger
) Why did you direct me in here when you knew quite well that your furniture was not up to date?

Messenger
: When you were born, you were born with nothing and in the course of your life, you amassed a lot but when you died, you took along nothing. You entered here with nothing and you should be contented that you even have a torn, old couch. You've done nothing to earn it. I think you should really count yourself lucky.

Stone:
Did I hear you mention the word lucky? I don't think somebody should be talking about luck in this hole which is not good even for a rat. I had lived through life and have a taste of nice things. I know what is nice and what's not. This place is not nice. It sucks totally and completely.

Messenger
: Well, the choice was yours. You were told when you were growing up that there were two places you go to when you die. The good place was called Land of Eternal Happiness and the other one was called Land of Eternal Discomfort. You were seriously warned about the latter but where you go after you leave that place below your feet depends only on you.

Stone:
I'm just from telling you that I was living like a king down there and knew the taste of good things. I wouldn't have possibly chosen this place. It sucks. No man in his right senses would choose a place like this. If at all I chose this place, I must have certainly been drunk.

Messenger
: That is not true. You were not drunk at all. You were in your right frame of mind when you decided to come here. All those who have come here keep claiming they never chose this place. Instead, they accuse me of directing them here. It's true that no man in his right senses would choose a place like this one but each and everyone is the driver of his or her own life.

Stone:
(
To messenger
) What are you doing here? Did you decide as well to come here?

Messenger
: I am a messenger. I was sent here to take care of some people who might be contesting their presence in this place.

Stone:
He who sent you did the right thing. I am one of those who can't remember the day, time or year I decided to come to this filthy place. If you can refresh my memory, I would be really grateful.

Messenger
: Well, let me begin with a phrase somebody you knew very well made. He said “All Men Are Born Equal.” By implication it means that all human beings must be treated fairly without prejudice of any sort and with dignity.”

Stone
: I disagree with that. He who made that stupid statement was my one time leader. He did not really mean what he said because his actions proved the contrary of what he was trying to preach. He claimed all men were born equal but had men who were forcefully taken from their homelands working on his plantations without any pay.

Messenger:
Whether he put into practice what he said or not or did the opposite of what he preached is not the issue here. I am using the phrase because it is very true and suits the purpose for which my master created Man. You consider the phrase stupid. What do you consider stupid about it?

Stone:
Where he said that ‘All men are born equal'. That is ridiculous… there are those who must be servants or slaves and others who must be masters. There are those who must be rich and others who must be poor. There are those who must think and make proposals and others who must execute the proposals of the thinkers. There are those that must be loved and others that must be hated. In such situations, you cannot talk of equality. Have you tried to imagine a world where everybody is materially or financially rich? Such a world would be chaotic.

Messenger
: (
Smiles
) I like your explanations. But there is something you've said there which is really intriguing and it is that ‘there are those that must be loved and those that must be hated'. Who are those that must be loved and those that must be hated?

Stone:
I wouldn't like generalizations here. I will take myself as an example. When I was down there, I loved those that were like me, rich like me, civilized and belonged to my class. I hated those that were poor, different, uncivilized or inferior.

Messenger
: Can I ask you a simple question?

Stone:
Please go ahead.

Messenger:
From the moment you were born till the moment you left that world, did you eat just one kind of meal day in day out?

Stone
: Please come on!!! That question is ridiculous. We had a saying down there that ‘Variety is the spice of life.' If I ate just one meal all my life, I would have died of constipation prematurely. Anybody who wants to live long must eat varieties.

Messenger
: That is something which is well said. Well, my master who made you and me love variety too. That is why he made all those people that you hated because they were classless, poor, different, uncivilized and inferior. What bothers me right now is why you loved variety and my master's own love for variety had to be such a huge problem to you. By hating them, are you by implication trying to tell me that my master shouldn't have created them?

Stone
: ooohh no!!! I think you are getting it all wrong. I am not against the fact that the odd category was created. On the contrary, it was a good thing people like them were created. For example they made us, the privilege group, feel important and also did the jobs we considered odd jobs.

Messenger
: I'm glad you admit that they are important because they are useful.

Stone
: There you are wrong again. They are useful but not important. People who look different, poor, uncivilized and uneducated are not important. You see, importance goes with class, respect, wealth, the kind of wife, house, car and kind of school one's children attend. If one is worshipped by the poor, the importance is even greater.

Messenger
: wow!!! I am really marveled. But, what I don't really understand is where that hatred for a fellow human being was coming from?

Stone
: I hated some people who were different from me, who were poor and uneducated. They had a queer way of behaving. You needed to see what most of them did especially those that were uncivilized….they sacrificed some of their brothers and sisters in some stupid rituals and equally ate some of their brothers and sisters as food. Others strapped explosives round their waists and blew themselves up. Who in his or her right senses would do such things? How can one be talking about equally with such kinds of people? How can you expect me to associate myself with those low-lives? That is why we decided to catch them by force and use them on our large plantations as cheap labor.

Messenger
: I've still not understood where that hatred was coming from. Was it just from the fact that they were inferior, uneducated or had some practices which you considered horrible?

Stone:
At first I hated them because they were different, inferior, and so on. But it was that hatred that could give room to sympathy sometimes. What deepened my hatred especially for those that were different was the fact that our stupid representatives in the house of legislation decided to pass some stupid bills which they called the Bill of Rights. By the terms of the Bill, those low lives were granted equal rights as those of us who mattered in the society. The stupid things learned of it and wore it on their heads as caps. (
Really outrageous
) I couldn't stand it when my servants claimed rights when I asked them to do things they were already used to doing. They asked for payment for their services which they couldn't dare to before. The legislators went as far as fixing the amounts we had to pay them as wages. The worse thing was that a good number of those low lives and animals took advantage of the new laws to become influential, right to the extent that they became bosses and could dare look in the faces of their former masters. The one that really choked me was the right granting those animals citizenship. I couldn't believe that my nationality was given to those things we removed from one forest somewhere. That was all intolerable. I couldn't just take it lying down.

Messenger
: That explains why you created an organization to sort of undo what the legislators put in place. Isn't that right?

Stone
: I had to fight back. Those legislators thought they did what Napoleon left undone but they did not know that they were indirectly killing me with that madness they passed in the name of a Bill. Such an act inspired many other houses of Representatives around the world to do same. I started loosing millions in wealth and capital as labor became too expensive. Some of the fools who benefited from the Bill became rich like us and were helping many of their brothers to become rich as well. They produced what we produced and sold to their brothers. That was part of my market that was taken away. People like us were fast fading to the back ground as the trend continued. In different places where the same bill was passed, rich people there were wailing too. You can see that I was not the only one who suffered.

Messenger
: If the cost of labor was too high and your wealth and capital suffered, why did you not try to negotiate with your former workers to give them a percentage of what they produced in place of the money you were forced to pay them as wages?

Stone
: Do you know what you are asking me? Negotiating with them would have been begging. How do you want me to stoop so low as to negotiating with people I didn't even consider human beings? That was definitely unthinkable. I had to find another way out, by creating my organization with branches all over the world to combat the threat that was coming from those low-lives. I put in place the RLGO which stood for the Regain Lost Glory Organization. It had two branches. One branch was strictly military which had to execute our prescriptions and the other was the sensitization branch. I headed that second branch and developed the ideology of the organization. I trained followers who reasoned, acted and saw things the way I did. They had to go out to different parts of the world to spread my ideology. It had to do with the development of hatred for anybody that looked different and the separation of amenities. We could not use the same things with them. Those low lives were enemies and had to be treated as such. We could not succeed if someone who reasoned like us was not in a high place. So we imposed a compulsory contribution to our members and we used the funds collected to sponsor some members who became heads of state and members in the House of Representatives in some countries around the world. The military branch on its part was asked to kill some of the low-lives that had become prominent and also create an atmosphere of fear by burning down their homes and issuing death threats. That way they could not aspire to become prominent or dream of anything great. They had to be contented with what we produced and not to aspire to become producers. They had to remain eternal consumers.

Messenger
: Did you consider yourself after doing all that a successful man?