By: Highwing The first time I saw Brian in Hell, he was hanging from his usual hooks. But the milling throngs of laughing, mocking demonspawn, who often gathered to pick at his entrails and pile humiliation upon his more pressing tortures, were absent this day. Brian was as alone in his torment as he would ever be.

He didn’t notice my approach until I was standing right in front of his face. Lifting his head and focusing upon my visage, he snarled, “What the fuck are you supposed to be?” A reasonable question, given the picture I must have presented. “I am the Sin of Pride,” I replied.

“You come to laugh at me?” he challenged, his voice full of wounded adolescent petulence.

“Do I look like I came to laugh at you?”

“You look more fucked-up than most of the assholes ‘round here,” he assessed brutally, “and that’s saying a helluva a lot.”

I merely nodded. Of course he was right. As the Sin of Pride, my soul’s physical appearance had to mirror my essence. From the neck down, I suppose I looked almost regal, flowing blue robes hiding my form. But my head ... As Pride, my head was understandably large. No, not large - freakishly gigantic. So huge that I had to wear a special bracing mechanism on my shoulders to support it. Without that Hell-built contraption, the sheer weight of my swollen head would have caused it to snap my neck and fall right off to go rolling along the ground. Which had happened several times, shortly after my ascension to the post. The things you have to learn in a new job ...

The size wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t also been for the hellish case of neurofibromatosis. Yes, that’s right: Elephant Man’s disease. Except that my misshapen skull put John Merrick’s to shame. Twice as big, and four times as hideous. The malformations of my facial structure made it impossible to tell even what species I had been in life. I was hardly the most grotesque sight in Hell, but I’m sure Brian didn’t appreciate my pretty self blocking his view of the scenery.

I looked around at the empty cave, which at the moment we had to ourselves. “At least they’re not laughing at you today.”

“Fuck you.”

I allowed a slight smile to lift the corners of my mouth - an expression utterly lost in the craggy lumps and canyons of my cheeks. “Believe it or not, I am here to help you.”

“Oh, yeah? Then get me the hell out of here.”

“Perhaps I will do just that.” I leaned in close to him. “You remember what you did, don’t you? That caused you to come here? It’s very important that you remember ... “

“They all laughed at me!” he shrieked. “Every fucking one of them!”

“Nofur is laughing at you now, Brian. That I can promise you.”

My use of his name seemed to register on his warped awareness. He looked at me with something vaguely resembling interest. “Why do you want to help me?” So petulent, so full of incohate rage. It twisted something inside of me.

“It is part of my own penance,” I said. “I may be the Sin of Pride, and not without my powers in this place, but I still have my own torments and burdens. Souls such as yours weigh upon me.”

A glimmer of hope, filtered through his perpetual madness, lit his hollow eyes. “Then free me.”

“You must free yourself.” I licked the spittle off my lips; drooling is a constant nuisance for me. “Do you know how many of the classmates you killed had actually ever laughed at you?” The wrathful insanity reasserted itself in his expression. “They all did! But I gave them what they deserved! Every one of them!”

“One, Brian. Exactly one. The other sixteen had never laughed at you. Most of them didn’t even know you. They may have seen you in the hallway, known you as that sullen outsider who always wore the black heavy metal t-shirts, but they didn’t know your name. They certainly never laughed at you.”

“You’re a fucking liar!” he screamed into my face, his bloody spit mingling with mine upon my lips. In the corners of my vision - my neck brace rather limited my ability to glance sideways - I could see the hungry demonspawn gathering for another full-frontal attack on Brian’s tender parts. My presence, and Brian’s agitation, had attracted their attention. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

“I will come to you again,” I said to him through the rising tide of satanic giggles and snickers. “In the meantime, I want you to remember that last day at school, and what you did there. And I want you to ask yourself: ‘Do I deserve this?’ I think you will come to see that you do.”

I turned even as the first of the dwarf goblins began picking gleefully at Brain’s partly-eviscerated spleen. They flooded the stone cave floor beneath where he hung suspended, their tiny twisted claws reaching upward toward flayed flesh and exposed organs. The tide of their arrival was matched by the rising tide of their mocking laughter. I quickened my pace to leave the scene as quickly as I could.

Behind me, I could hear Brian picking up the refrain he’d been screaming since the moment he’d first arrived in Hell, impaled upon hooks and with a stalagmite through his private region.

“STOP ... LAUGHING ... AT ... ME!!!”

---

In life, I was proud. And why shouldn’t I have been? The company I worked for regularly resided in the upper ten percent of the Fortune Five Hundred. And as the head of their public relations department, I liked to believe I was largely responsible for that perennial success. The concerns of others were not my concerns. I was one of the Masters of the Universe, above the mundane and common people and their tiny, pathetic, meaningless little lives.

I was also a fixer. My years as a Tech Specialist in the military had given me a talent for smoothing out glitches - a talent that I applied to my civilian career with gusto. I could solve any public relations problem that came our way. Give me a scandal, and I would spin it into the ground or out into space, make it go away until our millions of customers would forget about it. I could do anything. And I do mean anything.

Nigeria was my greatest achievement. The chemical leak at our regional plant there killed, by some estimates, as many as seven thousand of the locals, the labor we employed at pennies on the dollar compared to Western standards. And the workers’ families. Spouses and children. The elderly, suffocated in their beds. It was a nightmare. No one would ever buy our products again. We would be boycotted to eternity. Yes, I had quite a different take on eternity back in those days.

Except that it never happened. My department and the legal eagles worked together to cover our asses and cut our losses. There was never a single lawsuit won against us, and the government contracts were just too big to be cancelled, even had the politicians bowed to the public outcry. In many ways, it was one of the worst massacres that had ever occurred in the history of the world, and we covered it up in plain sight. Loss of life on a massive scale, reduced to the lines on an accountant’s ledger and the rise and fall of stock prices on the Dow Jones and quarterly earnings reports. We even had the Nigerian plant cleaned up and back online within six months. It was a great corporate accomplishment, and I was so, so proud of it.

Little did I know that the weight of seven thousand souls would be waiting for me when I died. And not just the ones from Nigeria ...

---

They were still going at Brian when I returned. I cannot say how many days had passed, for time is largely meaningless in Hell. For him, I’m sure it was long enough. I waved my staff at the demonspawn, and they dispersed. Of course I have a staff - I am a Sin, after all. And although one might conclude from looking at me that I would need it to get around, the truth was I could have danced through the passages of Hell with the grace and abandon of a teenager had I so desired, big head and all. But a Sin must retain a certain air of dignity. And so I always walked with a slow and stately deliberation, and I always carried my staff. It was an effective bit of ornamentation, and did feel reassuring in my grasp, even if it was purely for show.

Brian didn’t realize I was there at first, so wrapped up was he in his private agony. His eyes were closed, and the tortured sounds coming from his throat were the gutteral, incoherent noises of a wounded animal. He did not resemble any sentient fur, nothing that could be called a person. His pained protests were wordless, grunted cries for a cease to his cruel predicament. Too bad he was clueless about what would be required to make his torment end.

“Hello, Brian.”

He opened his eyes, focusing on me as if awakening from one nightmare into another, as the last of the little demons scuttled back into the shadows. It seemed to take him a few moments to realize that he was no longer under physical assault from their probing talons.

“You ... you can make them go away?” he muttered, all the weariness of the world in his voice.

“I am not without my influence here,” I said. “And now that I have done this small favor for you, I would like you to do one for me.”

“Oh? What?”

“Do you remember what we talked about the first time I visited you?”

“Some bullshit about ... about ... “ A glaze of confusion frosted his eyes. “About something ... “

“You’re very good at forgetting what you don’t want to remember,” I informed him.

“Kinda hard to concentrate when you’ve got a rock spear through your nuts, a steel hook in your forehead, and a bunch of assholes are trying to pull all my guts outta me ... “

“Yes, that would be distracting,” I conceded. “But, how much of that do you really believe is real?”

He stared at me blankly. I dismissed this turn in the conversation with the wave of a claw. “That can be the topic for another day. My concern now is for the things that most definitely are real. Since it has slipped your mind, let me refresh your memory. During my previous visit, I was informing you of the very real fact that nearly every one of the students you shot had never laughed at you.”

Any sense of appreciation toward me for chasing away his tormentors disappeared in a flash. He swayed a bit on his hook wires as he convulsed in wrathful agitation; I almost think he might have tried to hit me if he’d been able. “You’re a fucking liar! They all laughed at me!”

“Do you ever think about them, Brian? The ones you killed? I know they were able to speak to you for a few moments before you were brought here. Do you remember their words? The hopes and dreams and missed opportunities they would never realize, because of you?”

“They deserved what I gave them! They all did!”

Poor Brian was beginning to sound like a broken record. This denial was his defense, I knew. It was the wall that protected him, and imprisoned him. As long as he persisted in this false belief, he would never have to face the full horror of his actions on earth. If I wished to help him, I would have to smash that wall down.

“This is my favor that I ask of you,” I said to him. “I want you to remember them. Remember what you did to them.”

“No! Go away! Fucking ugly bastard!”

“Perhaps you need some help in doing this. I have something here that might prod your memory.” I withdrew the assault rifle from the folds of my robe where it had been hidden, and held it up for him to see. “Do you recognize this?”

His eyes went wide in mortification. “That’s ... that’s ... “

“The gun you used at your school? Yes, Brian, it is. Or one of them, at any rate. You actually killed more students with your pistols, but this weapon caused wounds that were far more horrible. You could blow most of a fur’s head off with one shot from this. But I don’t have to tell you that, do I? You’ve seen that for yourself.”

His lips were quivering now, and the tears in his eyes were not just from his imagined physical pain. “Nooo ... “ he mewled like a lost kitten. “Don’t make me remember this ... “ “But you must. It is vital.”

“NO!!!” he snapped, screwing his eyes shut. “I won’t! You can’t make me!”

“Yes, I can.”

“What’re you gonna do - shoot me?” he challenged.

“Yes.” His eyes opened again, only to find me levelling the barrel right at his face. “I don’t believe you ... “

“Do you believe in God?”

His face froze in a rigid mask of terror. He believed me now.

“Noooo - “ I squeezed the trigger. The explosion was deafening in the confines of the cave. Brian’s face disappeared in a spray of red mist, halfway back into his brain. It was a wound very similar to some he had once caused on earth, with this very same gun. I laid the rifle across a stone stump where he’d be sure to see it once his sight returned.

“Remember THAT,” I said, and left him.

---

As the Sin of Pride, my main responsibility is humiliation. During my time working with Brian, I hardly shirked my Hellish duties. The proud litter the earth, and unless they live good lives otherwise, making up in other areas what they lack in humility, they eventually all come to me.

I try to be as imaginative in my punishments as I can, but there are just so many cases that my creativity gets spread a little thin sometimes. I have no fewer than five former CEO’s who now slave in the mail rooms of Hell, menial and unappreciated labor with no hope of promotion for all of eternity. I have Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists covering Hell’s bake sales, and Nobel Prize-winning authors writing ad copy which is forever rejected by their demon supervisors. Sometimes, if despair leads one to submit a particularly poor piece of work, I’ll instruct the demon in charge to accept it, and compliment the author. This usually only leads to greater despair.

I have engineers plagued by intermittent apparatus that can never be repaired no matter how many hours they spend trying, teachers stuck with students who are incapable of learning, physicians drowning in patients who can never be healed, artists who are now blind, musicians who are now tone-deaf ... and I won’t even go into the politicians, who easily make up over half my constituency.

This is my flock. And if they are not properly debased, then I am not doing my job. Do I enjoy it? That is a question I cannot answer. It is my purpose. Does an ordinary person enjoy breathing? It is something they do automatically, without thinking about it. So it is with me, and the punishments I devise. To try not to do it would feel ... unnatural. And so I preside over these damned souls, meting out the torments that seem appropriate and making their afterlives as miserable as I can ... unless they’re able to find their way out of their own private Hells.

Some make it. And that gives me hope. Not that I will ever escape from here; the weight upon me is simply too great to overcome. I shall dwell here, until some gross soul more deserving of the position comes along to dethrone me. Then they will become the new Sin of Pride, and I ... I don’t know what will happen to me then. I suppose I’ll find out. In good time.

---

Brian’s face had mostly grown back by the time of my next visit. He could have regenerated it almost instantly - an option not available to his similarly stricken earthly victims - had he not been so bound in his self-imposed agony. My violence upon his soul-form was as much for show as was my unnecessary staff, but to Brian I’m sure the pain was just as real as if he’d still worn living flesh.

I swept my claw over his face to fully restore it. If he was in any mood to talk - and to listen - I would have a lot to say to him this time, and I didn’t care to engage in conversation with lidless eyes and lipless teeth glaring out at me from a bloody skull. After my rejuvenating touch, the oozing bullet hole in the middle of his forehead was the only visible defect in his face ... and that injury, suffered in life, was forever beyond my power to heal.

He blinked at me a few times, absorbing the fact that I’d just undone all the harm I’d caused him at the conclusion of our last encounter. His gaze went to the assault rifle perched upon the stone table alongside us. “You come here to shoot me again?”

“Only if I have to. You didn’t like it very much, did you?”

Brian spat at me. Fortunately, his bloody loogie fell short of my royal blue robes. Drycleaning in Hell can be a real bitch.

I seated myself on another rocky stump before him. It was the first time I’d sat down in his presence, and I hoped he would pick up on the fact that I intended to make this session different from the others.

“Well, do you?” I prompted.

“Do I what?” he asked sullenly.

“Believe in God? That was the question I left you with when we last spoke.” Brian swayed uncomfortably on his hook wires.

“If you’d prefer, I will rephrase the question a bit. Do you believe in Heaven and Hell?”

He scowled. “I’m in Hell right now. Kinda hard not to believe in it.”

“That’s one way to look at it. But tell me, have you ever really thought about the logic behind the whole idea of God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell?”

“What logic?” he sneered. “You fuck up, you go to Hell.”

“Ah. So you admit that you did fuck up, then?” Brian chewed on his indignation, but said nothing.

“Never mind. We’ll get back to that later. We’re not talking about you, for a change. I mean to keep this conversation academic. Now let’s say - hypothetically speaking, of course - that someone does something terrible in life, something that will surely condemn them to Hell. Now, who decides which souls go to Hell, and which ones don’t?” Silence.

“This is open for the class to answer,” I said. “And you’re the class. So, who decides?” “God, I guess,” Brian muttered grudgingly.

“Yes, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? At least that’s what the conventional wisdom leads us to believe. And would it also be God who determines what punishment is to be inflicted upon those who sin?”

“I ... guess so.”

“So would most people. But what happens to these condemned souls after judgement? They’re sent to Hell. But God doesn’t rule Hell, the Devil does. And why would the Devil give a damn about carrying out a punishment imposed upon a soul by God?”

He stared at me. I do believe I had his interest. “What are you getting at?”

“Only that the commonly accepted view of the afterlife has a hole in its logic that you could fly a 747 through. Why would the rulers of Hell want to punish someone like you, Brian? It seems to me they would be falling over themselves to congratulate you for your crimes, reward you with the best they had to offer, maybe promote you to some sort of junior demon officer. You would be much too valuable for them to subject you to something like ... this.” I reached out with my ornamental staff and gave one of his supporting wires a guitar-string twang.

“Unless, of course, they don’t exist.”

“Don’t exist?” he repeated dumbly.

“Have you ever seen the Devil?”

“Nooo ... “ he answered after a befuddled hesitation.

“And you won’t. Because there is no Devil.”

“Then ... who runs Hell?”

“Nobody. There is no Hell. Or Heaven. It’s all the same place. Just one big room where we all go after we die. The only difference is what you bring with you from life.”

“I ... I don’t understand ... “

“It’s not a very difficult concept to grasp. If you do harm in life, you punish yourself for it here. The worst judgements we suffer are the ones we pass on ourselves.”

“Are you saying I’m doing this to myself?” he demanded.

“In large part, yes.”

“You’re fucked.”

“No, actually you are, and you’ve only yourself to blame.”

“You’re a fucking crazy bastard. You think I want to be here, like this?”

“It’s not about what you want, but about what you feel you deserve ... “

“I never put myself on these hooks and rammed a fucking stone spear through my nuts!”

“In a way, you did ... “

“And what about those little demon shits who come around and laugh at me?”

“They do that because they know it’s what you hate ... “

“And what about picking at my guts? I sure the fuck never told them to do that!”

“There is some interaction between souls here ... “

“Bullshit. You’re full of shit.”

“If you stop to think about it - “

“No! You’re full of shit, and I ain’t listening to you anymore!”

I stood, withdrew a dagger from my robe, and sliced off Brian’s tongue. It hit the stone floor with a wet smack, then started to shrivel and wither even as a new one began to grow in Brian’s mouth.

“Your turn to be quiet for awhile,” I said. “I’m not full of shit, and you’re going to listen to me. There is no God in white robes passing judgement on every fur who dies, there is no Devil presiding over the damned, there is no Heaven or Hell. And I am in a position to know. Now perhaps I oversimplified things a little just now, so let me explain further.

“Of course it is not just a case of souls giving themselves the afterlife they feel they deserve. That’s a large part of it, but the truth is, there are some evil fucks walking the earth who feel they have never done anything wrong and will go straight to paradise when they die. Well, they don’t, however much they believe it. There’s some karmic force that enters into the equation. I’ve never been able to figure out the exact formula myself, or precisely how it works, but the truth is that if you cause harm on earth, you will pay for it here, no matter what you believe. There is some judgement imposed upon us from the outside, but it’s not God, and it’s not divine mandate. There are laws that rule souls, as real as the laws of physics. You do evil, you will suffer here. That simple.”

Brian gurgled and gagged. His tongue was regenerating faster than I’d supposed it would. He must’ve really wanted to vent at me. I knew I’d better wrap this up quickly. “But how much one suffers is often up to them. You killed seventeen decent young furs in your blind rage. You were bound to pay some price for that. The question is, at what point will your sentence have been served?”

I moved closer to him. “If you refuse to accept that a large part of this punishment comes from within you, how will you ever be able to escape it?” He stopped trying to speak out of his voiceless mouth, and stared at me. There was something in his gaze other than the usual pure hate. He regarded me as if I’d just torn the dusty tarpaulin off his soul.

“You killed, Brian. You took lives. You ended everything for them, choked off all they could have become. Do you really think you deserve anything less than you’ve been given?” He continued to stare at me. There were tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. I leaned closer still. “Do ... you ... deserve ... this?” He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and whimpered. I turned and strode from the cave.


Page 2
Page 3



Close Window