3 Seconds In Hell

I died for 3 seconds, and went straight and unhindered to Hell. Upon my arrival, the Devil came and took my left hand; and we stood, like Father and Son, before that infamous immensity of molten fire, the limitless, unquenchable expanse of mucilaginous horror, that cracked and crackled to reveal its seething white-hot underbelly. The Devil asked me to choose whether to be cast into the squirming hostility immediately or to wait awhile as I watched my fellow humans boil and broil and scream in eternal agony. He said that he often loved people to just stay and watch on their first day of arrival because, then, the horror and affliction of Hell was total and complete, and immensely rewarding to him. He added that he was a fair being and still allowed us some choices, even  when we were utterly in no practical situation to make any.

"I do not want to be here," said I, whining and quivering in unspoken terror, to which the Devil's reply was "That's not a decision you can make now," by which he meant that it was too late for me. My life of choices was spent. Then he proceeded to add, "However, I can return you to Earth; but you must choose, from the two ways which I shall offer you, how to spend your worthless time on the worthless planet that you so love." I quickly agreed, thinking I would do anything to return to Earth, and away from the hideous terror of the inglorious molten sea.

"A short life of 3 seconds during which time you shall be the most intelligent of your species, a genius of a singular kind. Your fame will be unsurpassable, your glory intense and unmatched. 3 seconds during which all your dreams and whims shall come true. Or a long life of 100 years spent in savage servitude, of brutal labour and undying humiliation. My demons shall minister to you and shall be your supervisor, and they shall expose you to an anguish so great and insupportable it will make what they did to Job of Uz a travesty."

Having said this, he turned to face me; and, lo! what a mocking smile he wore on his unfeeling countenance, and what a cunning gaze in his deep, bone-chilling eyes. I broke down in yells from the desolate pits of my accursed soul, yells that startled Hell itself. For an instance there, I imagined the everlastingly burning and smouldering souls had forgotten their unequalled suffering and stopped their unsettling screams in order to listen to me!

Enraged that I had failed to take one of his choices, the Devil lifted me up into the air by my neck and hurled me, like a little rock, into the molten, white-hot vastitude of fire . . .

And I woke up suddenly in my bedroom at home, choking and screaming, red smoke hissing menacingly out of all the pores of my skin and the orifices of my body. My hair was all burnt, my night-clothes vaporized, and my throat patched. My head felt as if it were splitting along jagged, irregular lines, like a rock in a desert, and my eyeballs throbbed like a thunderbolt, rife with agony and immortal pain. I was hotter than a cupola; the heat of my body alone set the blanket and bedsheets on fire. Soon the entire bedroom was engulfed in flames.

And I heard someone laugh just outside the door when I ran that way, a baleful, deep-throated guffaw like the rumbling of the foundations of the Earth. Ha, ha, ha, . . .