Vacation in Hell

I had spent around a hundred years in Hell, and found that place pretty much as you would expect. Imagine the worst day you’ve ever had in Life and multiply it by infinity and such is the fear, the uncertainty, the brooding depression which accompanies a day in hell, if so loose a description of time could exist in spirit, which of course it doesn’t. In brief, unending misery and hopelessness perpetuated forever. There are times, or days, or a duration of sense patterns, whatever you want to call them, when all you want to do is die. But of course you can’t. You’re already dead.

Mercy me! You'd better know now. The Word is true. Jesus lives!

I met people, in the loosest sense of the term, from the very first, entered formal relationships, if you like, as you would in Life with the difference that here, in this infernal void, there was no question of getting on well with anyone because everyone hates you. Hate is an inherent quality and unchangeable. The mistrust is tangible. Do you understand the fear? You see a face bearing down on you, all grins and teen zits, and you know the oaf wants you for something. Such is the scale of the thing. He is approaching you with the sole purpose of slitting your throat or stretching out further the silken thread of your insecurity, already so fine and on a permanent quiver, day after day, a sickness that lives in your breast. But you wake each day and expect the worst, and here it is worse than you expected, manifest evil, Buster or Harry, Darren or Bull, men with such hardened spirits that they thrive only on the dry rocks of dead humanity and the moment they see a drop of tenderness, they recoil, run a mile, unable to bear even a speck of it, scoffing at kindnesses. And here they are, with hands outstretched, ready to welcome you to their domain, a yellowing, decaying territory, and what you notice first are the teeth, like a twisted, fading keyboard that you know will play all the wrong notes, and the yellow, the sick yellow of hell, serves only to highlight further the blackness of their hearts. And you take their feigned hospitality, because that’s all there is.

I’ve seen the Devil too. Yes I have, don’t mock. Thought I would tell you that and risk your ridicule because he is as bad as they say and you should be aware of that. By God, you should be fully aware of that. Oh, he’s not all horns and slimy tail, and fire raging in his throat, not all the time anyway. When he comes to visit he puts on his sunny face and for a while you could be fooled into thinking he’s your greatest friend as he kicks off his shoes and puts his feet up on your couch and joshes with you and calls jovially for a cup of tea and a biscuit. But while he nibbles on that figment of another existence, the sugary dough that is only the trick of memory but delicious nonetheless, he lets the light slip from him and the darkness returns curling the corners of his narrow eyes. Now you remember what you’re dealing with, see him as he really is. He’s the Boss.

He knows us all by our first names (though there are billions of us) probably because we are so important to him, each one another little victory, a sweet vindication of his original malicious intent, one up on the Loathsome One who gave up on him aeons ago (there I go, I’m ashamed to say, using that vulgar term again, but I’ve been here so long now that “the Loathsome One” has become a natural name for our Creator and I even use it myself without thinking) and this attention that he gives us can be mistaken for love though it is love’s opposite. It is only usefulness that attracts him, and I am not fooled the way the others are, and his presence alone is enough to fill me with shame. This is what makes me think I’m different from the rest, this sense of shame that still exists inside my breast. Nobody else I meet down here owns up to such a thing. It is a vestige of conscience, a vague reminiscence of right and wrong, which persists in me even in the darkest quarter. So when Satan calls me by my first name I don’t respond the way the others do because I still have a light shining. It is dim, unsure, but shining nonetheless, and worse, there is a real desire in me to fan it, to make it glow again. But down here, where we have been abandoned, that’s impossible.

You see I can’t enjoy myself the way the others do. Though they prick up their ears at the softest call, and smile fawningly when they hear their names, in reality they are greedy only for approbation which is never forthcoming. They receive only condemnation for this is their deserved status. Yet they have fun, can you believe it? In the midst of these crumbliing strictures, they rustle up enjoyment and frolic like newborn lambs. They seem to be more at home here than ever they were in Life, and I find, I’m afraid, that I cannot copy that. Me, I’m constantly at odds with them all and can’t find a thing we share in common. I’ve been here a hundred years and not one person I’ve met has appealed to me in any way. When Darren puts his arm around me to take me with him to a party, I feel only repulsion. When Bull offers me a drag from his joint I pull away. This is unusual behaviour for Hell where you are expected to indulge totally and completely because there is nothing else. (We talk of indulgence though it is only a memory of indulgence, physical, slippery, fattening self-indulgence, but it is real to us nonetheless and always around.)

I’ve tried to fit in, been to countless raves and ravenous banquets. I’ve recalled the physical joys a million times, not the spirit-lifting ones associated with love, but the base animal passions that many cling to, parties of a thousand souls where the only thing that mattered was attaching yourself to the nearest reveller in the shortest possible time, or festivals of fine fare where we gorged delicious food like lions till our insides began to ache. Sure they were tasty, succulent morsels, these temptations, sweeter than anything I had tasted in life. But I am dead to it. I always leave with a sense of shame, of sickness, and a wish to be away, as far away as possible, from what I can only see as one vast field of depravity.

I suppose this is my Hell.