Hell Formed A Union Read online

  Hell Formed a Union

  D. A. Weeks

  Copyright © 2017 by D. A. Weeks. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters places, and incidents

  are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance

  to any actual persons living or dead is coincidental.

  Special thanks to the reason for my life, my Wife and those two special words.

  Additional thanks to Angie Arnold, dedication. Carolyn Stoner, inspiration. And, as always, Corey Matthews, motivation.

  This is Hell!

  How Did We Get Here?

  The Punishment

  Blue Flu

  The Stand

  Fired!

  Healing

  The Meeting

  United Hell Force

  Rejected

  Deliberate and Wait

  Time’s up

  Born again

  This is Hell!

  So, did you know that you don’t sleep in hell? Yeah, kind of messed up. I always thought that you would wake up in the morning, do some arduous, meaningless task, get punished and yelled at a few times then do it all over again the next day. You know, sort of like your job right now. But that is not the way it is. I now see that there is no day or night. There are no seasons. Just a seemingly endless continuum of time leading toward eternity or salvation. One would think that without sleep you would be exhausted. But in hell, it is more like that feeling you get when you have been driving for several hours and your eyes start to close but you jerk them open just before you fall asleep. You never get that peaceful satisfaction of giving into the release of thought and consciousness. Your eyes are pulled back open and your mind is right back on the road as it were. I am tired. We are all tired, just not sleepy.

  This place is probably not at all like you have imagined. Nor similar to how it is portrayed in movies. Fire and brimstone my ass! We would love to have just an ember of heat. It’s not like it’s freezing or unbearably cold, but everything is simply uncomfortably cool. Have you ever been in a room that had just a slight chill? Not cold enough to make you want to get up and turn the furnace up or even put on a sweater, but just uncomfortable. You can’t even snuggle up with a partner for heat because their semi dead bodies are just as cold as yours. Besides that, I think that sort of behavior is frowned upon.

  Another common misconception about hell is that it is filled to capacity. Considering how many sinners have been sentenced to “eternal damnation” over the millenniums, it is easy and comforting to think that hell is full and the devil can’t handle any more. No such luck. You’re not getting off the hook that easily. There is plenty of room here and “business” is booming.

  Speaking of the devil, details and numbers can you imagine being on a first name basis with the devil? That’s right. We all come here with a first name, maybe a middle initial, a last name and a face. The devil, or the boss as he prefers to be called, remembers all of us. It’s not even like we really need names once we are here. We have no families to care about. No social security or retirement plans. We are just kind of…here. I suppose the boss could have upgraded his system of keeping track of everyone long ago with the advent of computers but it is thought that he did not trust their accuracy nor did he want to be a slave to the IT department. His system seems to resemble that of the credit bureaus’. You really have got to hope that you don’t show up with a name like Adolf Hitler and have dark hair and a mustache. They really do have special places in hell for certain offenders and I can only assume that you do not want to go anywhere near those places.

  The boss does have help keeping watch over everyone making sure that you are obtaining the proper amount of agony. These minions, or supervisors, may not know you by name but they sure will narc you out just when you think you’re going to get away with something. They sometimes blend in with the rest of us and even talk to us as if we were friends. Ooo, look over there. Is that John S…? No. My bad. Just kinda looked like him but they’re taking him somewhere else anyway.

  The landscape in hell is not completely dissimilar to that of earth with the exception of no plentiful water. We are not underground, but it is always dark. The dreary gray sky is heavy and thick, somehow making it much harder to breath. The sky is devoid of clouds, sun, moon and stars. It almost blends seamlessly into the somewhat more gray land’s horizon. I’m not sure, but this could potentially be a very large planet which has escaped the orbit around its sun and is just floating aimlessly through space. The only way to mark time is by counting the water cycles. We do get a small jug full of water on what seems to be a regular basis. We have come to count one water cycle as one day and five hundred cycles to equal one hell year. Nobody really cares if this is a planet, another dimension or just a sick mind game being played out collectively on each one of us. All we know for sure is that we do not want to be here…forever!

  How Did We Get Here?

  How in the hell did I end up here? What the hell? Who the hell do you think you are? Just look around. You then realize that questions of this nature really don’t make very much sense anymore. This is hell.

  I have never been an altar boy and I’m not in line for sainthood, but I am not a complete psycho serial killer either. They say that I was a kleptomaniac. I take exception to that and think maniac is a bit strong of a word. I saw myself as more of a kleptoaficianado. I started with a pack of cigs once in a while and found it rather easy and a little exhilarating. It was not much of a leap from that to a pint of whisky or just about anything that would fit in a pocket or waistband. Eventually, security cameras were in every isle and corner of the stores so I had to actually start paying for everything that I wanted. Most of us ended up here for a few common indiscretions or lapses in judgement.

  The vast majority of hell’s inhabitants are rather tame by any standard. Take that girl over there for example. She really liked sex and may have actually had some sort of disorder, but adultery is still adultery none the less. You may be surprised to find out how many people are relegated to this place just for doing the one thing that God or nature has programmed us to do. Reproduce. Whether we do it alone or together, for love, affection, primal urge or just stress relief, it is still just a natural bodily function. If you really think about it, sex is about the most controlling factor in your life from puberty until old age. It is used to sell just about everything on earth but then we are made to feel guilty about it and punished for it.

  You may find yourself here for any number of reasons. Depending on your religion, upbringing, culture or family traditions, you probably did something undesirable according to somebody in authority. Maybe your mom or dad told you things like if you don’t do your homework and quit teasing your sister, you are going to go straight to hell! Strict, huh? Or how about your priest telling you to keep holy the Sabbath but your boss tells you inventory is on Sunday and you have to work? That is a tricky situation. Feed my family on the one hand or break one of the Ten Commandments on the other.

  About ten thousand people per day show up in hell and are given a sort of orientation. Gathered together in what I would call an arena, the devil announces to the crowd that a certain amount of punishment will be inflicted upon each individual commensurate to the amount of evil he or she has committed. After such punishment is completed, each person will be sent back to earth in order to be reborn and given a second chance to “get it right”.

  Wow! At least there is hope. The prospect of living an eternity of hopelessness and despair would be enough to send any soul into a depression that would render them useless. So now we just need to figure out exactly how much bad crap we did and how long will it take to work off the wrongdoings. The first problem with this is the passag
e of time itself. There is no sunrise, sunset, moon cycles, nor sleep/wake cycles. All we have to determine time is the regularity of water. Secondly is that my idea of how much harm I have inflicted on earth may be entirely different from someone else’s idea who may have committed the same harm. They don’t really specify up front how long you will be spending in hell. I’m sure we will figure it out or we can just trust those in charge to do the right thing and release us when our time is up.

  I started asking around and a lot of people had similar stories about getting out. They were told “just hang on a little while longer.” “Things may be looking better for you soon.” They say anything to appease the person asking and get them out of the face of the authorities. When asked if anyone has ever witnessed a soul being released back to earth, nobody could say with any certainty that they had.

  A glimmer of hope or a trace of possibility is enough to keep the human spirit trudging forward relentlessly trying to better one’s own conditions. None of us had ever questioned the legitimacy of the possibility of going back to earth and starting over. Perhaps we should have. It must just be human nature to see the good in others and assume that they will do the right thing. I think that we were all just glad that we were not damned to hell for all of eternity. Or were we?

  The Punishment

  Everything we do here is done arduously and with malcontent. “Of course it is”, you might say, “You’re in hell! Things are not supposed to be easy.” This is true, however we all have work to do and you would think that the work would get done more effectively if we had some degree of satisfaction in that work. But I suppose that part of the punishment is the pain of every aspect of your existence.

  Specialized agony. I believe that is what’s going on here. I see a man, who in life, was extremely annoyed by traffic and moron drivers. Now he spends more of his time driving to and from work than he does actually working. On earth he lived in California so his drive to work now is a combination of Interstate 5 in L.A. and north on the 405 in Orange County. This other woman, also afflicted with road rage, was from Chicago and now she spends most of her time on I-90/94. I was from Cincinnati so I get a good dose of I-75.

  Your pet peeves, prejudices or anything that just annoyed the hell out of you has now come back to haunt you in abundance. Many people have certain odors that really gagged them so now that particular fume is prevalent everywhere. Nosey talkative people constantly getting into your business pissed you off to no end so now you are surrounded by that type. Liars, two faced people, rumor starters are truly everywhere.

  Yes, by the way, I did mention driving to work. Nobody gets to relax for long in hell. On top of the difficult living conditions (and I use the term living loosely) we must all toil for some unknown reason. The work seems to be mostly some kind of mining operation although the substances that we amass is curiously unfamiliar to us. We use pumps, buckets, syphons and other various types of gathering equipment for two different substances. The first is a thick amber colored liquid. We assume it is like a refined oil but we cannot smell it because of the heavy stench in the air and we are forbidden to touch it so who knows. The second is a slightly thinner white liquid. Again we have no idea as to what it is, what it is used for, or where it ends up. We just load it into large containers and watch it leave for its final destination. Who really cares? It’s just work.

  Every form of production requires auxiliary personnel to keep everything running smoothly. Some sort of accounting must take place in order to assure that quotas are met so we do have people who are the bean counters. The product must be transported and quality is inspected regularly. I mean the boss is powerful but he is not a genie who can just clap his hands and all the work will be done. All of us who are in hell are the devils’ personal work force. We all stay busy until it is time for the water and then a short amount of downtime follows. We all wish we could just sleep during that downtime.

  I have found that we all work, not for a paycheck in this case, but for the possibility of a reward at the end of your hell career. That reward would be life. We fear the boss because we think he can somehow make our lives worse than they are now. We just want to make it through to that mysterious better life at the end. The promise that we will be able to have a new life, a fresh start is so attractive that we believe just about anything and will do anything to receive that reward.

  Have no doubt that we have all accepted the fact that our time and punishment must be served. Accepting one’s lot and just lying down to be trampled upon are two different things. At the end of one of our typical work cycles, the boss had gone too far. We got off work, went to the water room as usual and waited at the door. Usually one person would go into the room, retrieve their small jug of water, leave the room and the next person in line followed. This time, however, the first person entered the room only to find that the smooth floor had been completely covered with marbles. Dude fell flat on his ass. Just keeping his footing without falling again proved to be quite challenging if not impossible. It was similar to watching a small child on ice skates for the first time. Hilarious at first, yes, but after watching person after person fall to the floor on their knees and butts it became clear that it would be quite a while before I had my chance at the water. Several of us spilled our full jugs of quenching water before we could make it back to the door. Naturally there were no do overs.

  A lot of people had to spend their downtime thirsty and hurting while other lucky and sure footed workers had the water but no downtime because of the long lines involved in the fiasco. Needless to say, no one was at all happy with the situation. What was even worse was the fact that this was not a one-time prank. The entire thing repeated at the end of the next cycle. Punishment is one thing, but making sport of others’ suffering is just going too far. Astonishingly, not a single person said a word about it to the boss, his minions or even to each other. Fear had its complete and paralyzing grip on everyone.

  Blue Flu

  Three cycles had come and gone. Finally people began to grumble and complain to each other about the circumstances at hand. I decided to speak up to a small group of people who were standing around getting ready to start a new cycle of labor. I said “Why don’t we do something about it?” The replies I got were stern and uniformly allied. “You have got to be crazy!” “Are you out of your mind? There is nothing that we can do against the devil. He holds all the cards.” “We have no choice but to put up with it.” I then asked them if they had heard what they just said. I told them, “You all have the exact same thoughts about our circumstances and that is equal to power.” They were a little puzzled about my statement because individually, they had negative comments, but collectively, we were of the same mind set. I went on to say that we had to assume that everyone felt the same about the problem and with the power of our sheer numbers, we could do something about it. With everyone on the same page, change can occur.

  Naturally everyone was extremely skeptical about the idea of standing up to authority. Then I asked, “What exactly do we have to lose?” It was hard to believe that I had to remind everyone that as of now, we had nothing, we were getting nothing and change was highly unlikely if we just kept doing the same thing cycle after cycle. “Does anyone here really want to take it anymore?”

  I think that I finally got through to them. Things really could get no worse than they already were and we are in hell for crying out loud! I had to act fast while everyone was receptive to the idea of unity. I told the group that we would start with one cycle of inactivity in order to take a stand. We had to spread the word quickly and efficiently without a lot of room for questions or confusion. People tend to back down from their convictions and beliefs once they roll it around in their heads for a while. They tend to imagine the worse possible outcome for anything new that they may attempt. The point would be simple. We would do no work until the marbles were removed from the water stations. It was a simple demand with a simple consequence for that demand not being met.
br />   While the people of hell were spreading the word of our insurrection, I was considering the possibility that I may be called upon to act as a spokesperson for the population. Even though I had never lead anything in my life, I thought that my ideas were sound enough that I could do the job at least as well as the average hell inhabitant. Then I realized that by speaking up, I could be singled out from the crowd and somehow be made an example of what would happen to troublemakers. It was a risk and challenge that I was more than willing to take. After all, I had just asked everyone else to stand up for themselves regardless of the repercussions.

  The word of a strike was spreading quickly and more importantly being received quite well. A sense of accomplishment, purpose and hope was almost contagious. It was replacing the fear that had gripped and crippled us all for much too long. It is an amazing thing to witness what happens to people when they comprehend that they can do more and be more than what they had been lead to believe. It is like putting water on a seed. Up to the point of the introduction of water, the seed just exists. When watered, it sprouts and has the possibility of becoming any number of wondrous things.

  Finally, it was time to take our stand. To say that we were all a little nervous would be an understatement. We estimated that we had about eighty-five percent cooperation and those who were reluctant to join our efforts seemed a little confused and out of place. But that was alright because we did not want to become the tyrants that we were standing up against. We hoped that if we had success it would be enough to show the few skeptics that maybe there is a better way.

  It was amazing to see the minions looking around for so long not even realizing that virtually nothing was getting done. They could tell that something was different, but could not quite put their finger on it. Once they figured out exactly what was going on, they realized they were not prepared for anything like this. Nobody had ever stepped out of line before and that first made them mad then bewildered. Naturally the first reaction of the minions was to demand that we all get to work as if they somehow owned us. Our response was solid and unanimous. “No!” We were told quite more forcefully this time to get to work or the boss was going to hear about this. Someone in the crowd of workers yelled out, “Get rid of the marbles then we’ll get back to work.” What a brave soul that was. I sort of dodged a bullet when that person spoke up. I thought for sure I would have to do it myself.