On the way to Hell, I met a man
who sold counterfeit tickets to Heaven.
He was ***-bellied, bald and hunchbacked,
mothballs in his mouth and flames in his eyes.
He mumbled through consonants,
slipped over vowels and destroyed syntax,
pointing at the tickets frustratingly
at the comprehension of my confused expression.
I shook my head and moved on
as he coated the air with broken expletives.

By a bridge over a magma river,
a bird-headed demigod held a set of scales,
but he waved me through,
seeing by the weight in my eyes
that my soul’s mass had already been determined.
He whistled a tune vaguely familiar,
a desert swansong of a dying missionary.

The road rose slightly, and at the apex
I saw the city in a foul-smelling valley.
Blanketed by smog, I couldn’t discern much,
a factory chimney billowing smoke and ash,
screams forcing their way through the cloud.
A giant man with skin like fresh, glistening blood
greeted me as I began my descent.
He informed me he was a demon
and he would be giving me a tour.
Asking him how long it would take
he said it was entirely up to me,
all the time in the world was waiting for us.

I asked him why he had no horns
and he laughed with a noise of horse death,
one he had baptised himself with an aeon ago.
He dutifully informed me that this particular misconception
came about due to a similarity between invading warriors
and their certain bloodthirstiness and vitriol
held in much akin to the view of demons at the time.
He assured me that demons weren’t that bad,
friendly enough but with a temper fitting
a location as unearthly foreboding as this place.

As we walked through the ***** streets,
I couldn’t help but notice they were busy with people
rushing about and selling things and generally
much like people did on the mortal plain.
The demon said Hell was much like Earth,
just with greater punishments if you didn’t pull your weight.
An abominably long and disjointed finger
pointed in the direction of the chimney I saw earlier.
That was where the worst of the worst end up,
the rapists and abusers of child and woman,
all the filth humanity had to offer,
always churning, he said, always smoking away.

We stood by the door for some time,
an awkward silence descending between us,
rattling the synapses in my brain
as I tried to comprehend my past life
and the fate that awaited me.

After an insurmountable time, the demon knocked on the door.
I heard scraping on the door, a set of keys fall to the floor,
a curse put upon those keys then the clinking of a lock.
The door opened and a massive fire raged within,
conveyor belts from several directions leading towards it,
naked people, statues to the Heavens, falling off the end
and making the fire grow and glow like no fire I had ever seen.
The demon in charge of this awful place looked me up and down,
asking me what I had done to ever deserve to end up like this.
I attempted an excuse but couldn’t muster the right words,
so I just told him the truth without hint of any repentance.
He shook his head and genuinely looked shocked at what he had learned
and grabbed my shoulders and hauled me towards my piteous soul-death.
I was stripped naked as I became more aware of the intense heat,
flames of scarlets and oranges reached out to my broken body,
all skin and bones and nerves vibrating to an otherworldly chill.
I floated up to a conveyor belt which felt unduly cold beneath my feet,
and as I looked back on the life I lived and the one I dreamed when I was young,
I realised that this was a fitting ending to a life lived fully sans regret.
I opened my arms wide like a Messiah and began to pray eternal thanks.