Damned

No, it's not too late for me to devote myself to being fu

Nearby, oblivious souls sprawl within their cages, so sunken in their shock and resignation they fail to shoo the houseflies that crawl along their soiled arms. These flies freely roam across their smudged cheeks and foreheads. Black flies, fat as raisins, walk across the glassy surface of people's staring, dazed eyes. U

Behind their own jail bars, other condemned souls tear at their hair. Enraged souls, they rend and shred their own togas and vestments, ripping their ermine robes, their shrouds and silk gowns and tweed Savile Row suits. Some of them, Roman senators and Japanese shoguns, dead and damned to Hell since long before I was even born. These tormented wail. Their specks of raving slobber mist the fetid air. Their sweat runs in rivulets down their foreheads and cheeks, glowing orange in the ambient Hellish firelight. The denizens of Hades, they flail and cower, shake fists at the flaming sky, pound their heads into the iron bars until their blood blinds them. Others claw at their own countenances, raking their skin raw, scratching out their own eyes. Their broken, hoarse voices keening. In adjacent cells... in cages beyond cages... trapped, they stretch to the burning horizon in every direction. Countless billions of men and women yammer, despairing, shouting their names and status as kings or taxpayers or persecuted minorities or rightful property owners. In this, the cacophony of Hell, the history of humanity fractures into individual protest. They demand their birthrights. They insist on their righteous i

In Hell, it's our attachments to a fixed identity that torture us.

In the distance, following the same route on which I've so recently returned, a bright blue spark floats. The spot of bright blue, vivid against the contrasting blaze of orange and red fire, the blue nimbus bobs along, edging between faraway cages and their shrieking occupants. The blue speck passes the dead presidents gnashing their teeth, ignores the forgotten emperors and potentates. This blue spot disappears behind heaps of rusted cages, vanishing behind crowds of lunatic former popes, obscured behind the iron hives of imprisoned, sobbing deposed shamans and city fathers and exiled, scowling tribesmen, only to appear a little more blue, a little larger, closer, a moment later. In this ma

Clamped under one leather-clad arm, Archer carries a brown manila envelope. His hands stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans, the envelope pi

Archer throws a look at the people who surround us, sunk in their addictions and righteousness and lust. Each person cut off, isolated from any future, any new possibility, withdrawn and isolated within the shell of their past life. Archer shakes his head and says, "Don't you be like these losers..."

He doesn't understand. The truth is I'm prepubescent and dead and incredibly naive and stupid—and I'm consigned to Hell, forever.

Archer looks directly into my face and says, "Your eyes look all red... is your psoriasis getting worse?"

And I'm a liar. I tell him, "I don't actually have psoriasis."

Archer says, "Have you been crying?"

And I'm such a big liar that I say, "No."

Not that being damned is entirely my fault. In my own defense, my dad always told me that the Devil was disposable diapers.

"Death is a long process," Archer says. "Your body is just the first part of you that croaks." Meaning: Beyond that, your dreams have to die. Then your expectations. And your anger about investing a lifetime in learning shit and loving people and earning money, only to have all that crap come to basically nothing. Really, your physical body dying is the easy part. Beyond that, your memories must die. And your ego. Your pride and shame and ambition and hope, all that Personal Identity Crap can take centuries to expire. "All people ever see is how the body dies," Archer says. "That Helen Gurley Brown only studied the first seven stages of us kicking the bucket."

I ask, "Helen Gurley Brown?"

"You know," Archer says, "denial, bargaining, anger, depression..."

He means Elisabeth Kiibler-Ross.

"See," Archer says, and he smiles. "You are smart... smarter than me."

The truth is, Archer tells me, you stay in Hell until you forgive yourself. "You fucked up. Game over," he says, "so just relax."

The good news is that I'm not some fictional character trapped in a printed book, like Jane Eyre or Oliver Twist; for me anything is now possible. I can become someone else, not out of pressure and desperation, but merely because a new life sounds fun or interesting or joyful.

Archer shrugs and says, "Little Maddy Spencer is dead... now maybe it's time for you to get on with the adventure of your existence." As he shrugs, the envelope slips from under his arm and drifts to the stony ground. The manila envelope. The brown paper is stamped Confidential in red block letters.

I ask, "What's that?"

Stooping to retrieve the fallen envelope, Archer says, "This?" He says, "Here's the results of the salvation test you took." A dark crescent of dirt shows beneath each of his fingernails. Scattered across his face, the galaxy of pimples glow different shades of red.

By "salvation test" Archer refers to that weird polygraph test, the lie-detector setup where the demon asked my opinion about abortion and same-sex marriage. Meaning: the determination of whether I should be in Heaven or Hell, possibly even my permission to return to life on earth. Reaching spontaneously, compulsively for the envelope, I say, "Give it." The diamond ring, the one Archer stole and gave to me, the stone flashes around one finger of my outstretched hand.

Holding the envelope outside of my cell bars, beyond my reach, Archer says, "You have to promise you'll stop sulking."

Stretching my arm toward the envelope, carefully avoiding contact with the smutty metal bars of my cell, I insist that I'm not sulking.

Dangling the test results near my fingertips, Archer says, "You have a fly on your face."

And I wave it away. I promise.

"Well," Archer says, "that's a good start." Using one hand,