Email From Hell

Why am I writing this?  One of the angels actually told me not to.  He said that you all have
places where you could go to get a Bible and you all have churches you could go to and
if you haven't taken any notice of those two things you won't take any notice of an email
from someone in Hell.  I also realise that none of you can possibly help me.
As certain also of your poets have said, 'Abandon all hope ye who enter here.'  He's right.
But I just want to tell someone.  I just want you to spend a few minutes reading this is and
try to understand.  If anyone out there for a few moments can understand my pain, can
appreciate my agony, can sympathise with my suffering, if anyone can do that it will bring
me a a moment of relief in the contemplation of the thought that somebody cared, the first
relief I have felt in a long time.  Billions of people are in Hell.  Your grandparents, probably.
Nearly all of your ancestors are here.  You see, the problem is that everybody sins.  God
is a holy God.  He can't look at sin.  So he sends nearly everyone here.  There is nothing
pleasant ever again.  Just think of that.  So many things you enjoy.  A cup of coffee.  A
walk in the woods.  A view from a hill top.  Save the Earth, the only planet with chocolate.
There is no chocolate in Hell.  Or any other pleasure.  I can't really convey to you what Hell
is like.  I can only use pictures and half truths.  But what I can convey is probably frightening
enough.

I died of pneumonia in 1982.  I had a bad cold.  I didn't get to a doctor in time.  How long
ago now?  I don't know.  Nobody bothers to measure time anymore.  And in this internet
cafe - not that it serves any hot drinks or food - in this computer room, no one will put their
hand on my shoulder and say, Melissa, time to go now, you've been here for one hour.
It's not like that down here.  It's not as if you could do much on this computer anyway.
Can't buy much down here.  What's the news?  Another million people died today. Guess
what?  Nearly all of them ended up here.  The news is predictable.  Best never bother to
turn it on.  There's no calendar at the bottom of my screen.  What's the weather like?
200 mile an hour scorching winds.  Giant hailstones falling from the sky.  Don't go out in
the sun without your sun hat and your factor 25, and then only stay out for half an hour.
All the preacher's jokes.  Except that Hell is worse than that, much worse.  Think of a
patient in a mental hospital who has no hope.  He doesn't like himself, he doesn't like
his life, he finds no comfort in religion.  Except here the patient isn't insane.  He is right.
There is nothing good about him.  There is nothing to look forward to in his life.  God
wants nothing to do with him.  Why would God forget about people in this way?  Why
do we forget about God?  Imagine a child who wets the bed because he is frightened
of the dark.  He knows how to use a toilet.  He has learnt bladder control.  He is just too
scared to go to the toilet.  He imagines all sorts of evil monsters out there in the darkness
and it is safer to stay in bed, safer to wet the bed.  But imagine that the child isn't having a
nervous breakdown.  That child could leave the light on at night and all his monsters
would disappear.  My monsters are very real.  The monsters that exist in Hell are more
terrifying than the one the child's mind creates between him and the toilet.  I am sitting in
the Internet Cafe in the Lucifer Centre.  I'm going to send an email to my nephew.  He was
tiny when I died but I have heard he is now some sort of writer or journalist on the internet.
He writes articles on a website that has half a million visitors.  Dear Nephew, please tell
your readers about my world.  Please tell them that there is such a dark and horrible
place.  Dear Readers of his website, read the Bible, listen to your priests.  Put your trust
in Jesus, the only one who can save you from this horrible Hell.

I remember when I died, floating around the hospital room thinking 'This is fun.'  Then up
through the ceiling and towards this bright light.  The angel looked like a monk.
"How did you live your life?" he asked.
"I'm a good person.  If everybody was like me, the world would be a better place."
He smiled at me.  "Is that right?  I'll send you to another  dimension where everyone is
exactly like you."
"Oh yes, that would be wonderful.  Please do."  Different people have different
punishments.  That was my punishment, for insisting I was a good person.  The next
minute the angel left me and I was standing in an unfamiliar high street.  A child came up
to me and began pulling my long hair.  It hurt.  I always did that when I was a child,
I thought it was funny to pull people's hair and make them yell.  The child ran away
laughing.  I walked past some black teenagers who were standing at the bus stop.
"English Mary, English Mary," they jeered together.  We had one black girl at school
and whenever I passed her I would always shout "Keezay" in a mock African accent.
Kizzy was a black girl on a television programme.  Another woman appeared in the
street shouting,
"Where are my children?"  She was screaming and crying for several minutes.  The
woman had been killed in a car accident.  Her children had died with her.  Her children
hadn't gone to Hell because they weren't old enough to have rejected God the way
that most adults have rejected God, the way the woman herself had rejected God just
as soon as she was old enough to understand.  A woman came out of a nearby shop
to complain about the noise.
"Will you shut up?  You're disturbing the peace."  What peace?  There is no peace here.
"But where are my children?"
"Sort yourself out.  Pull yourself together.  They've gone and they're not coming back.
You should have got over it by now."  I walked further along the road.  A park, although
a noticeable lack of any beauty in it.  Another group of black people.
"English Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grown?" they sang, laughing.

Another woman has come into the internet cafe at the Lucifer Centre.
"I'm sending this email to my nephew," I explain.  "He's a writer on a well known website.
I want people to know what it's like in Hell."
"What is it like?" she asked calmly.
"The kids are horribly racist.  They shout English Mary at me all day because I used to
insult a black girl and call her Kizzy."
"Kids make fun of everybody."
"Does that make it all right?"
"Of course it makes it all right.  If Hitler was Prime Minister and everybody killed the
occaisional Jew that would make it OK.  My punishment was to live among a group of
people who all have a mob mentality."  She's upset me.  My pneumonia comes back when
I'm under stress.  I'm coughing violently.
"Spastic Spina Bifida," says the woman, laughing.  I used to call a disabled girl that.
The woman turns on one of the computers.  What is she looking at?  Porn sites.  Buy a
gun sites.  Drug sites.  The rubbish sites most people look at.  Things you can't get here.
I hope this message reaches my nephew.  You can never be sure if the email is working
here.  There are no technicians.  If people have a network problem they're meant to
sort themselves out.  I'll save this on the hard drive just in case.  If the network doesn't
work today maybe it'll work tomorrow.  Now I'll press the Send button and hope for
the best.