For me, Hell wore many faces. It had never been a crater in the earth's crust, governed by a little red man with a pitchfork fetish. It had never been about flaying flesh and the screams of the damned.

No. The Hells I had seen, the ones that I had experienced, came in subtler forms, and more often than not, left marks upon my flesh as an eternal reminder.

Yet, this new Hell I faced, I doubted it would leave scars as the others had, but it posed as a trauma that would induce nightmares for many moons to come.

Beneath the fluorescent glare of the overhead lights, surrounded by...