What The Hell
OK, not to toot my own horn or anything, but I think I would make an awesome Satan. I know exactly how I would set up hell. First off, it would start like jury duty—there would be an orientation session with all the new arrivals huddled together in one large drab room where they have to fill out information on clipboards and listen to a droning speech explaining what happens now that they’ve been condemned to hell.
Just like in jury duty, there would probably be legions of hand-raisers, people who think they are a special case and certainly there must be some misunderstanding, and if only they could speak to the appropriate department, it would become obvious that they don’t belong in hell. Those people would then be told about the Complaint Department. They are directed to another office where they wait for eons in a vast line, bigger than any queue ever experienced on earth. Then they discover that this line was only to receive the complaint FORMS, which are more voluminous than mortgage paperwork, and must be filled out by hand in triplicate, after which they must wait in another, equally unfathomably long line.
Once they arrive at the front of this second line, and submit their paperwork, the guy at the window promptly tells them that there are no reversals, no excuses, no reconsiderations, and that all condemnations are final. ”Then why did you have me wait in all these endless lines?” the person would say. “Why did I have to fill out all this paperwork and wait for eons in these lines if it was pointless? Why would you waste everyone’s time like this?’
The person behind the window would reply, “Because this is hell, sir. Next please.”
And then they would be shuffled off for the eternal fire and brimstone and whatnot.