A Short Stay in Hell

by Steven L. Peck

How do you pray if you don’t know what God is like? Maybe God was a demon – that would explain much of the misery of earth life.

This clarity of memory surprised me the first time I tried reviewing the past, but it was all there. (This was to be the greatest curse of Hell. Sometimes I would replay my entire life again and again for thousands of years. Remembering all the things I could have done differently, all the things … no. I won’t go there now. I must tell this story.)

It seemed odd, standing there in Hell, but understanding how we each had died seemed the most important thing about us. I see now, however, that it was only because it was the freshest thing on our minds – and something we had worried about all our lives in one way or another. Now it was over.

Here in Hell it was absolutely still. Not even the whisper of any air movement. The stillness of the grave?

Even when I tried to formulate doubts about my experience, I found I was only playing with doubting. I really believed I was where the demon said I was. I was in Hell and there was no denying it. It was as if my entire consciousness, like a computer program, now had a script imposed on it compelling me to believe this experience was an actuality that brooked no argument.

(The strange thing in Hell is, you always know what time it is. The great clocks are always visible.)

Where do all the things you believed go, when all the supporting structure is found to be a myth?

The pain almost killed me. If it hadn’t been for Betty I might have jumped – but then where would I go? I now know, of course.

“It does bring a modicum of hope.” “Yes, it does … and maybe some despair.”

I just stood there for a moment. Such breakdowns were common. We were all sick of it. If I let it get to me, let it get away from me at all, I could be in the same state in a matter of minutes.

We can’t care about anything here. We can’t make a difference – all meaning has been subtracted, we don’t know where anything comes from or where it goes. There’s no context for our lives.

Perhaps each person was the only difference in all these halls of unchanging ranks of books, kiosks, clocks, and carpet, and that, and that, at least, we had to hold to.

We were a team, Rachel and I. Oh, I miss her so much. I think our love could have lasted forever. I’m sure it would have. She was so … no, I won’t cheapen it by trying to express it in words and short sentences. I loved her. That is enough.

Strike them when they are awake. Smite them when they are asleep. Cut without mercy. Slice without pity. The day is now. Teach them the horrors of a just God!

If I had one wish to make in this eternity of madness, if I could have one prayer answered in this empty place, it would be that we had turned left instead of right.

I am God’s mace. I am his calipers,

He, like me, is lost in the library. Alone. I wonder, does he still feel he is the fist of God?

I needed help far beyond what I could take control of, and prayer seemed the only measure I could take.

But somehow I feared the defining point of this Hell was its unrelenting uniformity, its lack of variation from type. If there was a heaven at the end of this, it must be filled with great variety, perhaps a multiplicity of intelligent species spread across universes. Yes, heaven would be as full of difference as Hell was of sameness.

What I would have given even to see a cockroach in this place. It would be heralded as a treasure that could not be purchased with a king’s ransom. To see its six legs splaying from its thorax would have been a sight worth waiting for in a line a thousand years long. Songs would be written about its delicate multi-segmented antennae. Its wings would have inspired such poetry as to make people weep for decades at its telling.

What do you want?” He seemed distant. I hesitated. “I was just wondering about the … sorrow.”

What is love that it has such power? Whatever it is, it seems unlikely this God who placed me here knows anything about it. If it loved me in the least, could it inflict what it has upon me?

Anticipation is a gift. Perhaps there is none greater. Anticipation is born of hope. Indeed it is hope’s finest expression. In hope’s loss, however, is the greatest despair.

Now the search is all that matters. I know there will come a time when I find my book, but it is far in the future. And I know without doubt that it will not be today. Yet a strange hope remains. A hope that somehow, something, God, the demon, Ahura Mazda, someone, will see I’m trying. I’m really trying, and that will be enough.