A Short Stay in Hell

Cover design by Matt Page

Know your audience. That’s good advice; and I ought to listen to that voice in my head that tells me not to venture where I’m sure to embark when I’m about to open my mouth and gush forth to someone I already know will not appreciate (or perhaps even tolerate) the subject raised. But sometimes enthusiasm and the desire to share overwhelms that wisdom and I find myself doing just what it warns me not to.

Point in case: I’ve mentioned my having read the novella “A Short Stay in Hell” to two souls outside my household. One was a reader. He, I already knew from past discussions, read widely, and wished to read more widely still. He had, it turned out, already read Steven L. Peck’s novella of 2009 and was wildly enthusiastic it, telling me that he had found himself spiritually disconnected from himself after having completed this short work. The other, not a reader, was instantly dismissive of both it (which he declared, before hearing me out, stupid) and me, inferring – my projection – that I was crazy to have even wanted to read such a thing; or anything at all, I imagine.

I ought to have never broached the subject with the second person in question: He (who’ve I been acquainted with for decades), to my mind, has never been a deep thinker: he professes to enjoy SF, but has never read science fiction – indeed, he could not name a single SF author to save his life; he watches science documentaries, but never ponders anything beyond the mere facts he’s consumed. Am I being dismissive of this individual? I suppose I am. But one wonders how someone can not ponder what eternity truly means in context of the human experience if come face to face with the very question. Or am I unique in this?

I mention this because this short work, this novella in question, does exactly that. It explores how we, finite beings with limited perspective, might weather eons of existence.

Illustration by Erik Desmazieres

The premise: a devout Morman passes away, and discovers that he is being sent to Hell because he is not a disciple the true faith. What faith, do you ask, as he does, is the true faith? Zoroastrianism. The protagonist had never even heard of Zoroastrianism. Neither had those others seated before the surprisingly amicable demon who was processing them. The demon looks horrific, but is amicable, and quite apologetic concerning their fate. But he is also businesslike in the application of his task. Each is whisked off to their individual hell without much delay. But before their dispatch the demon mentions that, unlike Christianity’s dire eternal damnation, Zoroastrianism’s hell is only temporary, merely a short stay while the soul earns its redemption for not believing what it ought to have. Our protagonist, our amicable demon notes, was an avid reader in lie, and so decides he knows the exact sort of destination that should suit him.

Dis, by Stradanus

Soren (our protagonist) suddenly finds himself next to an unimaginably vast bookshelf, a hell apparently modelled after Jorge Borges’ Library of Babel, one decidedly and horrifically similar to Dante’s City of Dis, that appears to stretch unto eternity, up, down, left and right. Across a not overly wide chasm is another identical wall of shelves, where, like those culturally similar souls he finds himself among (all American, all Caucasian, all in their peak of youth and fitness), innumerable other souls mill about, as he must, searching for a selection of volumes describing their personal life story, detailed to second. This will be no quick or easy task, given that the library contains every possible book, even those comprising gibberish, random symbols, books of all As, all Bs, books where the text of “War and Peace” has every second letter an A, or B, or asterisk, or ellipsis. One wonders how long our protagonist might have to search such a library to find his biography?

The book is essentially an exploration on how this might affect a human intellect, or soul, as it were, should it find itself in such a hell. How the monotony experienced might drive one to eons of depression. Or to madness. Or cruelty.

What it truly terrifying is how countless eons, innumerable billions of years, the lifespans of consecutive universes, are only a sliver of eternity. How short is a short stay in hell when compared with eternity?

This book is indeed philosophy. It is also heartbreaking and horrific.

Its intent was lost of the second soul I spoke with; but he also has no interest in faith or philosophy. Or deep thought of any kind, I imagine.

Its meaning was not lost on the first. Or on me.