Damned Horizons

The Road to Hell: The One-Way Trip

On a city street paved with sin.

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

The Road to Hell: The One-Way Trip

The road to hell did not begin with fire. It started with greed, deception, and desire.

With motel lights buzzing like dying flies, With cracked teeth, smiles, and bloodshot eyes.

With voices that crawled through the vents at night Like centipedes hunting the last bit of light.

I walked through a city that smelled like decay, Where the buildings leaned over like predators’ prey.

The alleys were throats the gutters would breathe, And the rain came down black as a cemetery wreath.

I saw sinners with halos stitched into their skin, And children with faces carved hollow and thin.

I saw preachers with tongues made of venom and wire, Selling salvation beside dumpsters on fire.

The moon looked diseased, pale yellow and cracked, Like God took one glance at the earth and never looked back.

Every window I passed held a version of me, Some laughing in madness, some begging to bleed.

The devil never appeared with horns or with chains. He came dressed like a memory, like a band-aid for your pain.

He smelled like old whiskey and hospital halls, Like funerals, gunpowder, sweat-covered walls.

He walked right beside me and spoke soft and slow, “You can rest here awhile. No one needs to know.”

But the ground underneath us was built out of bones, And the trees grew with faces that twisted and moaned.

Their bark split apart into screaming mouths wide, Spitting curses and secrets from people who died.

I kept hearing footsteps directly behind, But whenever I turned, there was nothing alive.

Only shadows hanging upside down from the streetlights, bright, blind, Moving wrong, bending wrong like puppets with snapped spines.

The deeper I walked, the more hell changed its scenes One minute a wasteland, the next minute a dream.

Then, suddenly, I stood in my childhood home, Except everything rotted and covered in mold.

Family portraits were dripping black fluid like tar, And something kept scratching from in the walls from afar.

The hallway stretched longer each time that I ran, Like the house itself knew exactly what I planned.

Then I heard all the names of the people I failed, Every regret banging and hammering rusted old nails.

The air turned metallic, the ceiling Blood red The floor turned the fire alive into dead.

I wanted to stop. God, I wanted to stay down. To let the abyss pull my exhausted soul underground.

Cause hell ain’t just torture and lakes full of flame, It’s the moment you believe that you could never change.

It’s carrying grief like a corpse on a bruise broken back. It’s smiling in public while your mind is in black.

But somewhere beyond all the rot and disease and deceit, Beyond the dead forests and blistering heat,

I heard something strange underneath all the screams: My own heartbeat refuses defeat.

Slow. Heavy. Violent. Real.

So if you find yourself walking through hell, Keep moving even when your legs start to fail.

Keep moving when nightmares crawl under your skin. Keep moving when the devil starts calling you in.

Because hell is alive, it studies your fears, It ain't happy until your ass disappears.

But every step forward becomes an act of war. And eventually the devil may find me nevermore.

Mike X Vinson

© Mike Vinson, 2026. All rights reserved.

New Literary Society