Deadbeats
August 15, 2008

Oh, Hell: Detailing a recent trip to someplace warm

by Britt Aamodt

Dear Hereafter Housing Authority:

I don’t mean to complain, but I think there’s been a mistake.

When the Entrance Examiner asked me to define the meaning of “Other” under Part I, Section C: Religious Affiliations and Belief Systems, and I told him (or her, I couldn’t quite tell, so please excuse the error if there is one) that “Other” meant “None of the above.” And when he/she inquired further: “When you say none of the above, does that mean you prescribed to a personal religion?” And I explained further: “No, it just means I thought God and the afterlife were a bunch of hooey” and the word “atheist” got bandied about—well, I figured the matter was settled.

You can imagine my confusion, then, when the Hereafter Housing Trolley halted at the mouth of a tunnel coughing brimstone and spewing the wails of the damned. Apart from myself, there were four passengers on the trolley. I assumed the stop was for them. So, I took out one of the Plasma Powerbars they’d given us at the Afterlife Diner and began peeling off the wrapper when the conductor bellowed: “We haven’t got all day.”

I could see he was looking at me, which I took to mean he needed a little encouragement from my end to help the others along. I hoisted the Powerbar, toasting: “Bon voyage. Everyone out who’s going out.”

At which point the old-time passenger in golf pants stirred. “Think he’s talking to you, honey,” he said to me.

I was chewing on the Powerbar, which if you’ve never had one is like gnawing wood. “Isn’t my stop,” I said. “As the Entrance Examiner told us, you reap the afterlife of your beliefs. And I never believed in this picture book hell stuff.”

Putrid gases swirled from the tunnel entrance and into our open-sided trolley. The old-time party coughed a bit. But the other three, you would have thought they were choking on mustard gas.

“Don’t know if I got my facts right, miss,” continued the old-timer dabbing his eyes. “But seems I heard in church that the fellows running this joint are pretty tetchy. Don’t put up with much delaying. Yep. Get kind of nasty if they have to drag you off.”

“Guess somebody better shake a leg then,” I said.

That’s when the matronly passenger, who’d earlier insisted on taking the seat closest to the right hand of the conductor, hauled herself into the aisle, muttering as she came. “Now I wasn’t raised like this, miss. But Jesus preserve me. If you do not get off this bus right now, I will personally escort you to the hounds. My dear Lord has called me to his bosom and I will not be denied my assumption one more instant.”

I won’t bore you with the entirety of our exchange. Suffice it to say, I lay upon the hard floor of the tunnel looking back at the woman’s retreating figure. The trolley tipped and swayed to her ghostly weight. “And don’t you think of hitching a ride neither,” she railed from the top step. “No room for sinners on this bus. No, ma’am. Now driver, you go on ahead. Take me to Jesus.”

The trolley engine whirred. They were off.

Slowly, I picked myself off the floor and dusted my clothes. (I still wonder what my mother was thinking burying me in white). That’s when I came nose-to-nose with a man dressed in one of those laughable devil suits you see on Halloween. What I assumed was a devil suit.

“Do you know when the next trolley is scheduled?” I said.

***
By my reckoning, I have now been in Christian hell, some version of it, five weeks. Five weeks too long if you ask me (and you haven’t), which is why I feel the present need to write.

To be succinct: I do not belong in hell. I am not saying I lived a blameless life. You can check your ledger on that score. But according to your rules, the soul (me) enjoys the afterlife of her beliefs (atheism).

In all my twenty-seven years I never once entertained the idea of wallowing—for eternity—in pitch twenty fathoms deep. Nor, commuting to my job at Carefree Insurance Company, did I ever conceive the endless round of proddings I would receive as I bobbed to the surface of said pitch and was skewered by pitchfork-wielding demons. No, because atheism by definition rejects any notion of life after life.

Which brings me to wonder how it is that I am sitting here on a shelf of rock scored and pitted by the ages. (I’ve been given a temporary reprieve from the pit to write this letter.) You may notice my choice of writing utensil: charcoal. Not the best writing utensil in the world, but when your host’s idea of a break room is a flame-scorched desert, you make do.

I should probably close this letter, especially as my last six attempts have gone up in smoke (literally). So please please please recheck your files. I am sure this is all some error and you will fix it straightaway.

Sincerely,
Katherine Popich,
an atheist, NOT a Christian sinner

* * *

Dear Hereafter Housing Authority:

Thanks for the quick response to my letter. No sooner had I posted the grievance than my Entrance Examiner arrived. He/she whisked me to a safe house on the outskirts of hell where we discussed the mix-up. Boy, did we laugh.

It seems the Housing Board didn’t know what to do with an atheist who in life had failed to imagine her eternal resting place other than as blank nothingness. Since you can’t house someone in “blank nothingness,” I was told, the Board combed my files and found three references to Dante’s Inferno. Yes, the Entrance Examiner and I laughed to think I’d been assigned to hell for my reading habits.

After sharing a pint of Ecto Eggnog, the Examiner got up, saying he/she had to go but promised to advance my case to the Board. We shook hands and off I trudged to bed.

Yet just as I was snuggling in, a bell clanged. The next thing I knew I was here.

Here in Hades with Achilles, Agamemnon and a snake woman called Medusa. I am left to conclude that either the Board tossed out my appeal or they are trying to teach me a lesson.

Lesson learned. The hereafter exits.

Now, could you please sign my relocation order?

Sincerely,
Katherine Popich

* * *
Hereafter Housing Authority:
I am not, nor have I ever been, Muslim.
Yours truly

* * *
HHA—

What kind of outfit are you running here?

Okay, I see how I might have landed in Christian hell. Or, with some imagination, the other destinations on my enlightening itinerary thus far. But Anubis the jackal-headed god?

I don’t know what your concept of time is, but that mummies, pyramids and Book of the Dead crap died out long before I was ever born. And rightly so. Because this paradise is no paradise, let me tell you. Since my arrival, I have been coaxed to dive through flames, to ride a lumpy cow across the desert and to do battle with a snake whose last kin died out 65 million years ago.

As if that weren’t enough, Anubis has just borrowed my heart (don’t ask how) to balance it against a feather. He tells me that if my heart weighs more than the feather, Ammit the crocodile-headed deity will rip my everlasting soul to shreds.

Get me out of here NOW.

* * *
Hey All:

It’s been a while. Bet you couldn’t believe your luck when six months passed and no word from good old Katy Popich. But then a college campus is a far cry from boiling pitch and soul-devouring crocodiles.

I myself have always enjoyed the romance of college life. Sleeping late. Skipping class. Ordering pizza at 2 a.m. and never gaining a pound. God knows this is as close to paradise as you can get, with only the occasional hangover.

So I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.

I’d pick a 24-hour dart tournament over snake wrangling any day. It’s just that along with the dart tournament, there’s the 24-hour keg party followed by the 24-hour movie marathon, which in turn is followed by the 24-hour road-trip. I mean who has time for class?

Certainly, the professors don’t. They’re all down at the mead halls. Turns out our campus borders Valhalla. And I’m not saying anything against Vikings here. They’re decent enough, when not pillaging dorm rooms. But it’s just that I always hoped death would be a little less lively.

Yours affec,
Kathy
END»

Writer

http://brittaamodt.wordpress.com... 

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