Everything I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned in Hell
The ground in Hell is cracked and hard like it is in some places in the desert. Hardpan I think they call it. It’s almost completely flat and really pretty smooth. It looks a lot like the deserts in the American West actually, except that I don’t think they have occasional fire storms out there, not even in Death Valley to the best of my knowledge. Here it’s a regular occurrence though, First little waves of fire start shooting through the cracks in the hardpan about once every thirty seconds or so, then the wind picks up, then the wind catches on fire and, well, all hell breaks loose.
Yeah it’s not fun, but I’ll tell you what, I traveled all over the Earth when I was alive and saw all kinds of things, but I had never seen anything nearly as impressive or beautiful as watching the entire sky catch fire with a strong gust of wind. Big swooping arcs of fire, miles across running the gambit of colors from white through deep blues that make you long for water like no want you’ve ever known, right to the yellows and reds.
Hell is really a misunderstood place. It’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be, admittedly, we have fire storms down here all the time and there are some really unsavory characters wondering around, but neither one is too hard to avoid, because they both tend to hang out in the same areas, and the really bad ones don’t last long anyway.
The thing that really surprised me though, was the sheer number of people down here. Man, everyone is down here! You name ‘em they’re here, from the great ones right on down. When I found out that my life had lacked some certain quality that would get me into Heaven I was fairly pissed, and understandably so, this is Hell after all, you know, Satan and that whole bit. But now that I’m here I think I would have been alone if I had gone to Heaven. I don’t think we’re missing anything down here anyway, sure we have pain, but no more than we had in life. And contrary to popular belief you can still have emotions including love down here, just in a very Victorian kind of way; you just can’t show emotions on the outside, lest everyone gets fairly upset.
Another common misconception about Hell is all the demons and monsters and stuff from the old books like the Bible, and Dante’s Inferno, and all those Stephen King novels. They don’t exist, not even that three headed dog thing that supposedly guards the gates of Hell you hear so much about. Well I’ve got news for you, there are no gates either, yeah I was disappointed too. That seems to be the only thing that is consistent down here, disappointment. Oh well. I’ve gotten use to it, so has everyone else down here, except for those really twisted Jesus freaks who can’t ever except the fact that they’re here. They will eventually though, you will too. You’ll see.
© 2004 Justin Wilson
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