Tips on Avoiding Hell [Or: (If Having Failed To,) How to Experience Hell to the Fullest]

Tips on Avoiding Hell [Or: (If Having Failed To,) How to Experience Hell to the Fullest] l If frolicking imps followed towards the light become less ebullient, kind of pushy even, you’ll soon find yoursf cheerlessly confined to the pit.

One: If self-recrimination is the true nature of the pit, then blame others where possible and while you can. Say maybe if it weren’t for Allan Raval or for Donnie’s hammering, or if like the Good Thief or Emperor Constantine you’d only gotten right with God at the last minute, say maybe then…. Say none of this aloud. It won’t go over well with the hellspawn who’ve taken over your chain of custody from the imps.

Two: Zooming out a bit: if still alive, take in VERY LITTLE hell-based content. The most accurate model of hell is the Swedenborgian, also known as the personal model of hell. That means Hell will manifest your darkest imaginings: an eternal struggle against Ravalian stand-ins, for example. It will manifest high school hallway fistfights long dreamt in dreams: endlessly punching with no efficacy, being punched, eye gouging. And of course there’s the fire, and of course there’s the flaying.

Three: Come to think of it, maybe stop reading these tips right now. Just click that little X in the top right corner because the more the innocent reader knows of flayings, the more likely she is to be flayed upon her arrival in hell.

Four: The worst part about the flaying, incidentally, is that your skin grows back.

Five: Flayed once, sure, no picnic, what with nerveendings and organs exposed to acidic regurgitations from demonic maws, yet in your first flaying’s wake you’ll rationalize, “Heck, they can only slice that skin off the once. ” Not so. The growing back of the skin is at first curious, though itself painful, until by the third of fourth flaying you realize the true pain is the subjunctive pain of the flayings to come, of the flayings evermore.

Six: To the extent that there is buggery, and this extent is significant, lobby to be the “pitcher” rather than the

“catcher” if the intimation is clear. This is no condonement of the heteronormative tendency to use the words, “Fuck me in the ass, ” as an expression of the worst fate that can befall a man. It is fair warning against the sharpened nature of hell’s phalli.

Seven: Don’t request a sit-down with the Infernal Serpent. He is busy running an interdimensional organization. Don’t try to barter your way up the chain of command. Play the long game.

Eight: Do not let your mind wander to any concept unbearable as the “eternal. ”

Nine: If asked by a functionary demon (pictured below) if you’d like a break from the flayings and Rick Rude-inspired dick choppings, do not, repeat, DO NOT accept their invitation to spend an aeon or two in The Hall of Memories. Just going to repeat that for emphasis: AVOID THAT FUCKIN’ HALL OF MEMORIES.

Ten: Emphasizing this once again because mere remembering is something we’re all afflicted with on the prison planet, so it sounds pleasant relative to sharpened dicks, but there are memories we cling to all our lives for the sole reason that these are the memories we need to forget.