A Short Stay in Hell

by Steven L. Peck

Have you ever loved someone for a thousand years? I would have bet it impossible, but that’s how long we were together. A thousand years we traveled the halls of Hell together. I don’t remember fighting. She was magic. Nights were wondrous. Days full of laughter and long, slow conversations.

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.

Why would God have structured this Hell such that every wound would be instantly healed in the morning, but only the kiosk would slake hunger and thirst?

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.

“Ninety-five raised to the one million three hundred twelve thousandth power.” “That’s a lot. Right?” “You don’t understand. In our old universe there were only ten raised to the seventy-eighth electrons.” “You mean there are more books in this library than there were electrons in our whole previous universe?”

“Well if you were somewhere near the middle of Hell, you only have ten to the one million two hundred ninety-seven thousand three hundred seventy-seventh light years to go.” I’ll never forget his cold laugh. “You have over a million more orders of magnitude light-years to fall than there were electrons in our old universe.”

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? Who can understand? Once I feared to say such things, dreading a worse punishment. But what worse fate could there be? To remember love and know it is unattainable? To know love wanders somewhere light-years and light-years distant, ever knowing it is forever out of reach? Forever hidden?

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.