Hell / The Reality Nightmare

My last touch with the reality I knew, the reality others knew, would have been when I stood in my hallway. When I walked through my door, what had all happened had finally all sunk in, I could feel my organs as they changed.
My heart grew heavy and sank. It anchored my body, refusing to let me move. My lungs could not take in enough air. I was suffocating in my own body. My stomach instantly became severely famished. Always hungry, but unable to eat.
And it continued, relentless, increasing. Until finally, my senses lost touch of what was real. I could feel the inside of my chest flicker. I thought I had imagined it, until it happened again. This time, my vision blurred and distorted. I swore that the lights had dimmed as well. I could feel my insides churning. It was violent. My chest would flutter and flicker in dizzying sync with my eyesight. I believe bile spilled from my throat into my mouth, and a sickening, bitter taste filled my mouth. I could smell rot that felt like it poisoned my lungs. My skin crawled all over my body. a low pulsing infested my ears, injecting fear into my state of panic and revulsion.
The sensation in my rib cage crew stronger. There was something twisting and twitching, vile and black that needed to escape.
and in one painful, agonizing moment, it tore itself from me. my senses slowly returned.
i looked down.

oh god.

there was a giant, gaping hole in my chest. black fluid seemed to ooze and drip from it. i continued to stare at it for a while. i looked up and into a mirror, and was filled with dread and sadness.
looking back at me was a pale figure with old, matted hair. the skin was white and taunt and glistened sickeningly, with dark veins highlighting the cheeks. as for the hole in my chest, i saw that it was all the way through. all my clothes were tattered and torn.
i sat on the bench behind me and raised my cold hands to hold my head.
am i dead?
i always thought of the afterlife as what goes on in the mind... emotional and spiritual reality became more as physical reality became nothing. and i tried to continue that thought, to finish it, but i could not. it faded from my memory, leaving me with a realization that i found horrid but did not know why. everything felt so real. i could feel the harsh wood beneath my feet, i could smell rot and stink in the air. i could hear the now dim hallway i was in creaking and moaning. worst of all was the incessant ache in my chest, where that damned hole was.
i walked outside, thinking that perhaps i could escape this place. i opened my door to a dark and barren land that seemed to mock my neighborhood. houses were in shambles, the grass was replaced by dirt, and the trees were bare and old. every few trees would hold a corpse swinging from a noose. the street held strange, disgusting creates like fat, over sized red maggots sliming across the pavement. Ghoulish figures like myself stalked the stale air, aimless and wandering.
i closed the door as i re-entered my home. i sat on my bench again. i tried to search for love, for happiness, for good memories, and found none. i tried to replace the sadness with hatred. with rage. i could not. i even tried to shed tears, but my face remained dry.
i could only feel the sadness, the fear and the loneliness wash over me and drown me.

"why?" i asked.

and i only heard one whispered response.

"this is forever."