(5) Sophie Peters: Wanda’s Room
At approximately 9:15, Wanda opened her bedroom door, expecting, as was usual, to find her bedroom on the other side. Instead, she found Hell. Every child opens this door once in their lives and for Wanda, it was on her 7th birthday.
The sponge-like absorbency of her imagination had not yet been wrung out by the insecurities of adults, and so Wanda accepted what she saw the same way she accepted the violence of her father. It was just like Grandma had described. Snakes slithered in cylindrical masses, glistening, as though their albino scales were formed from frozen dew drops. They squeezed together and made up an almighty archway. Beyond this, the little girl saw a landscape of sorrow and fire. The sky was empty, no color or blackness filled it, and the ground lay fifty feet below where she stood. Wanda heard the incomprehensible pain of sinners floating up to her in yelps. She heard the screams of profanity and the blood-curdling cries of raped women. Wanda had not known rape before this moment, but a child is quick to comprehend. Hell, she saw, was white. Color was stripped and ruined and stolen from all who entered that place. White bodies writhed and burned on hot white coals, and the smoke that rose was filled with the curly cinders of afros on fire. The life and warmth of their souls were stripped and dissipated. Ashen bodies oozed blood like it was horse glue, from their molested and disfigured forms, reeking of chlorine.
Wanda saw something in the centre. A woman on a couch, besides a man. These two were in color, they were not yet in hell. Their warm brown skin was untouched. The man on the couch had eyes that were violet, and his pupils burned the crimson of hateful desire. He asked the woman “You wanna pay me another way, Sugar?” The woman was smiling, she replied: “Yes, ok”. Wanda watched as the man mounted the woman on the couch, his horns grew as he did so, larger, and harder and crueler with every second. “No! Don’t do it!” She cried, but Wanda’s voice was lost in the windy roar of white flame. She found that she could not move. As the devil pushed, his victim began to turn icy like the rest. The deathly whiteness spread from her lower abdomen outwards to her chest, her legs, and then the tips of her fingers and finally her deep chocolate eyes as they stared skywards in hopeless resignation. With every pulse, the hairs on her body detached and fell from her, in large sickly clumps. The snakes coiled, the bodies burned and melted, the stench of corrosion surrounded them. Satan looked into Wanda’s eyes and he pushed himself into his ghostly prey. Wanda saw that she recognized the couch on which they lay. The devil spoke.
“I am giving her a curse. I will give it to you too, one day.”
Wanda blinked and Hell was gone. Her hand gripped the door handle to her bedroom, and the smell of the burning flesh was replaced by that of her mother cooking in the kitchen. There was the faint sound of arguing in the distance.
***
Several years later, and a hundred thousand hairs had grown and been cut, Wanda replied to Jerard, “Yes, ok…but wear this. I know what you got”.
Sophie Peters is a self-taught multimedia artist born in Minnesota, USA and raised in England. They specialize in painting and also work with text, fiction, and digital media. As a queer, female-bodied person, they take interest in power dynamics and storytelling for marginalised or unusual voices. They have a first-class bachelor of science from the University of Birmingham, UK, and currently live in New Orleans, USA.