Dead Ringer

I use to think that Heaven and Hell were made up. That's until I was cast into the darkest bowels of Hades. OK, that's a little dramatic. But still, I though I lived a pretty good life. I loved my family, gave to charity, helped my neighbors, and all that other nice guy stuff. Well, it was later divulged to me by a voluptuous succubus, whipping my back wearing nothing but a Cheshire grin, that unless sins are confessed - and forgiven - they just build up and up and up till said sinner is left with a festering mound of offenses that require a massive amount of penance. And now a days, that's not exactly the type thing people are prone to do. Confess that is. Or so she said between floggings. Most are more concerned about the performance of their 401Ks than their eternal souls. Speaking of which, with the market the way it is today, looks like I cashed out at the right time. Zing! Sorry just a little postmortem humor there.

So, you might be wondering what were the most heinous deeds that delivered me straight to Hell upon my death, not passing GO and not collecting $200? Lying and stealing. Plain and simple. Well, mainly lying and one act of stealing towards the end. Turns out those commandments did come from on high. Who knew? So the stealing came from me being lazy and taking an egg sandwich out of the office fridge that wasn't mine. Seriously? An egg sandwich? Guess it's all water under my coffin now. Anywho, turns out that sammie was a two-month-old time bomb waiting to blow up in someone's stomach. As luck would have it, my gut was the chosen arena for an intestinal Battle of Antietam. And let me tell you, death by dysentery is neither pretty nor painless. I guess that's what I get from a lifetime of lying. Which is to say, I'm in advertising - or was.
I'm sure you've seen my stuff. Sadly I can't go into detail, I'm still under NDA's and they little red men in charge down here don't let me forget that either. They're real sticklers for the rules. Break one just a little and it's an ice cream-sized scoop of flesh missing from the left side of your derrie for the rest of eternity.

And it's not just some set of arbitrary rules. It's the original rules. So for example, 'Thou shall not worship false idols'... well, that applies to sports teams. And not just the pros, all of them. If they had a mascot and you rooted for it, I'll see ya down here for OT. Unless you're the confessing type. And even if you are, I'm guessing that rooting for Sally's little league team didn't quite make it on to your 'To Confess' list.

Thou shall not steal. Seems pretty straight forward, but guess what? Most charities are scams. And if you worked for one - or gave to one - there's a whole level of suck dedicated those poor souls who thought (and sometimes were) doing good. That's just how the soul crumbles.

Thou shall not covet your neighbor's wife. Well, a good number of porn stars are married (or were at one point). So that's billions and billions of lost souls right there. Thanks, internet.

Seeing a trend here? That was the biggest kicker of all. I doesn't matter what you believed on terra firma. Down here it's all Old Testament law. No 40 virgins. No Nirvana. No nothing but fire and brimstone. So needless to say, Hell's the ultimate melting pot of cultures. All we're missing are most of those bible thumpers. I'm OK with that.

But I digress. Let's get back to why I'm here. Let's just say I was known as the King of the Disclaimer. The majority of the ad was one big turd of a lie. I'd tell the consumer whatever they wanted to hear - real or not. And I did. As for the truth (had to be there by law), I didn't just slide it in under the radar; I went stealth all over its butt. There was no finer print than mine. It made for a more than comfortable life, but look where it landed me in the end. Sure I have a cushy gig here now, but when I first arrived I was naked, scared, and shit covered. So let me tell you how I went from that to the Chief Creative Officer of Hell.
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When you're a baby, sometimes you fall asleep in one place and wake up in another. You don't care that you nodded off at your parents' friend's house and wake up in your own crib hours later. This is just the way of things. If that happened to me as an adult, I'd freak the hell out. I can't imagine how disorienting that would be - and the utter terror that wrenches your gut - trying to figure out what just happened to you, where you are, and how you got there. Then I died and experienced it first hand. And it's shit-your-pants scary.

Well shit-your-pants scary if you were wearing pants. It's more accurate to say shit-your-legs-and-feet scary. Lesson #1 of being dead: your clothes do not depart the corporal world with you. Instead you get dumped in a dead-life version of that dream where you're naked in school. Only everyone's naked and it's not school but an eerily endless silo of bodies. And you're just there. Then more people appear. And more. And then some more. This poor Arab guy just appeared above me and teabagged me - not of his own volition. As scarring as it was for me, I feel like it's homosexual undertones was a Hell within a Hell for him. After peeling his unshorn balls off my face, I tried to proceed to the exit, get it line, or whatever I needed to do to get out of this room of ever increasing flesh. One problem with that line of thought: I couldn't figure out where to go. There was no real sense of up or down after a few minutes of dead person dog piling up on me. And even if I knew up from down, I had no clue where to door was.

I didn't know where I need to go, but knew I needed to go somewhere. So I picked a direction that felt right and began to swim through the sea of fellow dead people. Apparently everyone else had the same thought but in a different direction. If you've ever been in a crowd and had to go the opposite direction of everyone else, that's kind of what I was like - except from every conceivable direction. I got kicked in the face, a thumb in my ass (hope it was a thumb), punched, scraped, pushed, pulled, and at times felt liquid on me as well. I'm sure my sojourn would look like one of those Family Circus cartoons where Billy romps around the neighborhood like an ass clown.

After a while I completely lost track of time and direction all together. I later found out I'd been in the receiving tank for the better part of a decade. Seven years - man, Hell and its numerology. But I do know that I nearly wept with joy when my hand found the cold, slimy, metal interior of the tank. The cold freaked me out a lot cause Hell was supposed to be hot. But regardless, having some tangible to help guide me somewhere was an unexpected reliefe for sure. I decided to find my way down cause I arrived on the top of the pile, so logic - of it exists here - says the door is down. Off I went.

I made it a little way before losing the wall. So I scraped my way back up till I found it again. Seems like the tank is less of a silo and more of a colon shaped tube that winds all over the place. Maybe that's why is slimy. Shudder. And double shudder for a cold colon. So after trip after trip  of constant backtracking to keep the wall in reach, I finally made it to the exit - a drain-like sphincter that pulsated and sucked down people and all their excrement that pooled up. Looks like shit still flows downhill in Hell. It was like the x-rated version of that scene in Shawshank Redemption.  And instead of hearing Andy gag at the stink, I got to smell it, feel it, and taste it as well along with my closest naked, shit covered friends.

While I've been metaphorically shit on in the past, I've never been literally shit out till now. Minus all the human feces, I imagine this is what being born is like. If vaginas were cold, metal, and pumped out kids in a continuous stream. There was no give. It was really tight and really hurt. It was also filled with piss and shit. So I kept choking that down when I tried to breathe. Then kept puking it back up. And repeat. Finally, I got to the proverbial butthole of Hell's intake process and was dumped out into what I can only describe as the shittiest place under the Earth.

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Everyone was covered in shit. And shit covered everything. There was nothing to wipe it off with expect more shit. I didn't even notice the smell anymore - hell, didn't even notice the taste. But for some reason, this was the moment everyone started freaking out about being covered in it. Like we haven't been for better part of a decade. I decided to not give a shit and try to trim my time in this lovely chamber down to a minimum. With no exit sign in sight, again I picked a direction and soldiered on.

Here's the funny thing about Hell at this point, it's beyond simple. I'm thinking there's going to be all kinds of crazy stuff going on here, bizarre punishments, horrors beyond comprehension, and demons of all kinds. So far, nothing. Just a cold steel colon and a cavern filled with shitty people. Yet it wears on you. I'm so completely worn down - mentally and physically. I can't think straight. I can't see straight.  All I want to do is sleep. But every time I lie down, I just find myself standing again. No idea how it happens, but it does. There's some weird physics down here.

It's right about now that I start to realize something. While everyone is howling and making a racket about how awful it is to be covered in crap. No one is listening. No one is doing. Everyone is just complaining. Given there wasn't much do to do about it, I decided to take another tactic all together. I asked for guidance. "Which way is the exit?" I shouted a few times. This seemed to take people back a bit. They were so concerned about being covered in crap that actually getting out of Scat Cave hadn't even crossed their minds. My plea started spreading. You could here the question echoed all around. It in some way seemed to snap people out of whatever state of mind they were in and focus on a common goal - escape. And just like that, the message was out. Compared to the time spent in the metal colon, the answer seemed to come back in no time at all. It started when "Which way is the exit?" started to get muddied up with some other word. After a little bit "Which way is the exit?" was complete replace with the sweetest word I'd heard in a while. "Here".

After our departure point was located, it didn't take long for the most Hellish event known in the universe to occur. A line formed. Given I had no idea where I was or going, or how far away it was, I queued up.
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In typical line fashion. It moved a little. It stalled. People tried to cut, fights broke out. People cried. There was a sense of movement, but no landmarks to prove that we were actually making progress. It was like a concert parking lot after the show. Lines converged into lines - none were straight. And no one really knew where they were going. But for some reason had a mad desire to get there. No idea how long I was in line for, but again it was just this simple act that broke so many of us. Boredom and confusion are a deadly combo. Many people just wandered out of the line at various points and disappeared into the never. Se la vie. Eventually a wall came into view in the distance. As I approached the masses were converging on a single door marked 'Exit'. Holy shit, there's got to be a catch or this isn't Hell. Well there was. The exit was right there, but you had to go through a single reinforced metal turnstyle. One person at a time. And there were probably millions of us all vying for position. This is where shit got got even realer than what it was like waiting in line. Pushing, shoving, name calling, all taken to new heights. It was mass hysteria to get to that turnstyle.

Note - the turnstyle would not turn until the person opened and closed the door that came after it. When the door was open, all you could see was a second one in the room beyond. And the first door always closed before you could get a glimpse of what was behind door number two. And when that first door opened again,  the previous person was no longer in it.
So as long as it took to get to this turn style, it seemed to take twice as long to reach it once it was in sight. But when I did, it felt like I'd done my time. Paid for my sins. And this - this - was my ticket to heaven, or at least purgatory. It had been such a mind numbing experience to this point. I was so mentally and physically exhausted, this had to be the end. If only I knew how wrong I was.  

I'm pressed up against the metal, like the first row at a concert. I will be next. By god, I will be next. I hear the style clicking as it turns, then the squeak as the door opens followed by the thud of it closing. I'm in the style pushing and pushing, trying to get this beast to move. After a few, I hear the release of a bolt and I rotate through. I walk up to the door, turn the handle and cross the threshold. The door latches firmly behind me and it goes pitch black. I saw the second door a few feet in front of me, but now as I grope forward - nothing. I take step after step but never reach the other side of the small room. I turn to my right and walk for a ways. Nothing. Spin a 180 and walk twice as far. Nothing. I think about calling out, but wonder what good that'll do me. There's got to be something I'm missing. I figure I'll reset and try again. I point myself in the direction I think the entrance is and head off. And wouldn't you know it I find a wall. And with a little poking around I find the door. I'm about to head back into the darkness when a thought strikes me. What if I go back into Scat Cave, open the door, then run to the second door before the first closes. I grasp the doorknob and have a moment of fear that it'll be locked. Surprisingly it isn't. So I open it and walk back into the Scatverns. Only, they're gone. I'm in a totally new place. One I wasn't really expecting. My high school. And sure enough, just like in dreams, I just walked into the front of the class stark naked. Oh yeah and covered in shit (which isn't usually in the dream). Everyone starts pointing and laughing. But unlike having this dream as a kid, this time I'm not embarrassed. I'm pissed. And not a scrawny fourteen year old. I'm a filled in, not too out of shape 36 year old. I see the faces of kids I hated in high school. I know this is supposed to humiliate me, but instead it enrages me. Without even knowing it, I've hit my limit. I snap. The things I do to these kids are beyond inhumane. Maybe it's the years of creative thinking boiling up through my subconscious. Maybe it's something darker that's been buried for a long time. Or maybe it's knowing that I'm in Hell and there's not really going to be any repercussions for my cruel behavior. But whatever it was, the level of destruction and pure pain I bring down upon them wasn't human. I'm talking sick, sick stuff here. Some try to fight back. Most try to flee - but can't. The door won't open. I use textbooks in new and meaningful ways they were never intended for. Limbs of some students end up inside other students. There's slow agonizing deaths for some and quick ones for others - even though I usually went through elaborate ways to mutilate the bodies after. Mainly to psychologically incapacitate those I haven't gotten to yet. Needless to say, when I'm done the room looks like the inside of a strawberry rhubarb pie. I stand there, breathing heavy and letting the reality of what I just did sink in, when I hear a slow clap starting up behind me. Later I think back and know that that sound should have scared the shit out of me. But in the moment, I just slowly turned as if the sound was an annoyance. I see a solitary figure standing there - squeaky clean in the midst of all the gore. "You, my friend, are an artist. I'm humbled to be in your presence. Let's chat about your future".