What Hell Really Is . . . to me
By Michael Haskins
I have been fighting a sinus infection for more than week and feel like writing this . . . well, I don't, but here goes.
This sinus infection has my already damaged ear even more clogged up and that plays havoc with my hearing, my eyes are ready to explode, my nose is so ready to explode NORAID needs to be altered (if you know you understand about the nose).
My body knows something is wrong so it keep closing down. I am in bed, sleeping, more than I am awake, as my body repairs itself (I wanna believe that).
Most illnesses I treat as an inconvenience, like a mosquito at bedtime. But this sinus thing is murder. I cannot read, write or even watch the boob-tube. I can tolerate about 15-minutes of CNN. I want to be under covers in a dark room.
Having nothing else to do, while waiting for sleep, I try thinking about where I am in my fourth novel. I do that a lot, think about where I will pick up the next morning and it has proven helpful in the past.
Not now! My head hurts so much that thinking hurts! This, I have decided, is what hell is all about. We all have a version of hell and it ain't always fire and brimstone, as we were taught in Sunday school.
Dec Burke, over at Crime Always Pays blog spot in Ireland, asked me once if God asked me to choose between being able to write or to read what would I answer. That's like asking me which of my twin daughters I would save from drowning.
That's how my hell feels right now. I can't do either. I tried making notes in my notebook about a short story, but didn't get far because my concentration was somewhere else.
I thought the end of the year was going out with a bang. I have sold two short stories, one to the Saturday Evening Post – my first ever Mick Murphy story – and one to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine – my latest Mick Murphy story – and had hoped it was foreshadowing of things to come. Then this!
I get a worse headache just thinking about what I could have accomplished in this week of hell. I would've at least finished one book I was reading, and figuring 500 words a day, I could've written . . .
Somewhere in the novel I am writing now, I have Padre Collins state that sometimes hell is waiting. Now that's foreshadowing.
What's your private hell on earth? You know mine, tell me yours.
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