It was a day like any other – except there are no days in that singular (in both senses of the words) place. No minutes, no hours, weeks, or years. No seconds either. There is no time in Hell, you see. There just is. That’s the hell of it.
There I ruminated under the faintest light from above, nameless, Godless, with no sense of humour at all – I existed as a wretched and self-sorry soul, all reflection and no projection – contemplating the base, wasted life I’d once lived. Regrets? Too many to mention, but occasion enough to remember them all. Credits? Not enough to dwell upon. No, the balance was tilted in the worst direction and at the most extreme angle. Legions in this (literally) God-forsaken place still couldn’t figure out what they’d done wrong – or, more accurately, why it was deemed so damned offensive – while others understood only too well. The former would come to know eventually, but in the meantime, theirs was a different kind of torment. As I pondered my own iniquities, a light suddenly brightened a corner of my dark ‘cell’.
Two of them appeared, tall and seraphic, their radiance pushing back the shadows around me, guarding themselves against contamination from this murky realm I inhabited (interesting how the ancient artists intuitively had got it right when they depicted bright auras enveloping the holy spirits on their sojourns into the infectious world of mankind) and I was blinded until they wished their dimmers to a more comfortable level. Both wore annoyingly benevolent smiles.
