The Inferno, as Dictated By Yours Truly.
If there exists a hell - the case is clear - It's probably not below us, it's right here.
Vestibule
Squanderers of Life or Talent.
These are the people who wasted away their life waiting for things to come to them instead of seeking them for themselves, or spent their lives dreaming of who they wanted to be but never made any motions toward it. Also here are those who had talent while they were alive but never put it to use or refined it. For instance, a person who had much talent with a camera and very easily could have made a name for themselves in photography, but discarded their dream and became a computer programmer instead, never to touch a camera after. The punishment for the Squanderers of Life or Talent is to walk a barren desert dotted with replenishing oases encircled by force fields, and thus forbidding entry. These people had the opportunity to have a fuller life when they were alive, but turned away from it. In death, they wish to fulfill their thirst with the oases, but cannot, just as their lackadaisy did the same for them in life.
Circle One
Spammers and Starters or Passers-On of Chain Letters
This garbage does nothing but pollute the Internet and make it increasingly stupider for all of us. Nobody's mother has ever died as the result of them not passing on a chain, and nobody's mother ever will, I can promise you. Sinners are punished according to the stupidity level of the chain and the frequency of posting. As spam and chain letters are petty but extremely maddening, so the people of this circle are forever plagued by petty but extremely maddening conditions. There are paper cranes that fly around inflicting paper cuts. Mosquitoes bite them mercilessly. Rocks randomly materialize from the ground, so they are constantly stubbing their toes. They twitch. They mangle everything they try to say. They are constantly exhausted but are never able to fall asleep for a second.
Circle Two
Defilers of Music and Literature
Those who maimed, raped, made fun of in school, or otherwise defiled the Muses of Music and Literature and/or their children. Such greats as Hannah Montana, Justin Bieber, Soulja Boy, and Flo-Rida reside here. Also here are writers of terrible fanfics done a million times before, vampire stories that are complete knock-offs of Twilight, stories featuring arranged marriages, stories featuring a girl in a boys' boarding school, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. The defilers of music are punished by being sealed into tiny boxes listening to their own sad excuse for music at deafeningly loud levels forever. At any attempt to break out of the boxes, giant radios pounce on them and smack them repeatedly against the ground, just as we felt the urge to do to our radios when their songs despotically took over the airwaves. The defilers of literature are put into their own cliche stories, forced to live out the storylines repeatedly for all eternity. Many authors with true talent patrol the area (they visit Hell from Heaven whenever they feel particularly sadistic), watching out for people trying to escape their stories. Then, they smack, whip, and verbally abuse these souls back into oblivion.
Circle Three
The Conceited
This includes the vain, the egotistic, the arrogant, and the megalomaniacs. In a nutshell, anyone with an unrealistically high opinion of themselves or a part of themselves. Their punishment is spending the rest of eternity with their bodies as mirrors, being smashed apart by huge hammers, and having to laboriously fit their broken pieces back together again, only to have the hammers strike them back into smithereens. The mirrors represent being in love with their own reflection (or some aspect of themselves that they preened over), and being broken is their punishment, the shattering of the reflection. It represents the distortion in how they viewed themselves.
Circle Four
The Greedy
These are the gluttonous, the selfish, the promiscuous, and the power- and money-hungry; anyone who wanted things for themselves in unholy proportions and were blinded by their want so that it caused harm to themselves and others. These people spend the rest of time with machines that inflate their bodies so they swell to enormous, excruciating proportions, a size that finally fits the amount of money/food/sex/etc. that they hoarded in life. When they finally explode, they are offered no respite but their pieces are hunted down again, stitched back together and swollen again, over and over.
Circle Five
The Small-Minded
This includes the shallow, narrow-minded, prejudiced, ignorant, etc. In life their small minds couldn't see the bigger picture, so in death they are contorted into tiny coffin-shaped boxes. The coffin represents the death of reason. They are buried in the dirt, denied any light or breathable air, just as their ideals were blind and suffocating. They are buried alive because their viewpoints buried their minds away from the light and reason of the world. Worms gnaw their bones, because that’s what happens when you die.
Circle Six
The Fanatics
This includes any type of religious fundamentalist, political extremist, and basically any person with crazy, unrealistic, and harmful beliefs. There was no middle ground or moderation for these people in life, so in death they are subjected to alternating feelings of being burning hot one minute and freezing cold the next. When they are hot, they become trapped in a fiery oven (a nod to Hitler’s treatment of the Jews in the Holocaust), and when they are cold their surroundings change to a freezer (a nod to whatever insane person locked someone in a freezer for some higher purpose, because I know a person like that has to got to exist somewhere in history.)
Circle Seven
The Sadists
This category includes any malicious, spiteful person who deliberately inflicted harm on others and enjoyed it. Their punishments include horribly painful things, like getting their gums stripped off with a razor, wooden splinters being pushed under their nails, anything very bad getting inflicted in the baby-making areas, the application of a cheese grater, getting lots of cuts and being dunked in a tank of lemon juice, etc, because those are things a sadist would think up and are representative of their own twisted, horrible natures.
Circle Eight
The Violent Against Nature
This is anybody who deliberately committed a harmful act to nature, whether it be littering or deforestation or hunting for leisure. Punishment depends on the specific crime committed. Those who polluted water or forests get toxic chemicals and waste pumped into their own bodies. Those who cut down trees get their own bodies hacked apart by chainsaws. Everybody here, however, gets to experience various parasitic flora and fauna growing from and eating at their bodies in a harrowing, painful, invasive way, representing how they did the same to nature.
Circle Nine
The Takers of Life
Homicides, murderers, assassins – this circle is reserved for anyone who purposely took the life of a sentient being. (Abortions and military go to purgatory, however.) They spend forever with all their senses removed and their bodies fully paralyzed, because their killing was senseless, and also so they get to experience death while still being conscious. They may also periodically be subject to sudden, agonizing spells of pain, or be submerged in pools of very hot or very cold blood, because they caused pain and spilled blood.
Circle Ten
Round One - The Treacherous to Others
This category includes anyone who gained someone’s trust, only to maliciously and purposely betray them. This includes liars, frauds, con men, etc, as well as Judas-like figures. They are first led to what appears to be Heaven and in the midst of enjoying themselves, the illusion drops and the true appearance of the place, a ruined wasteland, reveals itself. The Heaven they were shown before was full of everything each individual has ever wished for, the culmination of every desire they have ever held in their hearts. The Treacherous to Others must endure forever dealing with the loss of their Eden, just as they captured the trust of other people, only to shatter it with their perfidy. Unlike in life, however, when the people they betrayed eventually put it in their past, the inhabitants of Circle 10, Round 1 must experience the pain of their loss and betrayal fresh and constant, for all time.
Round Two - The Treacherous to Selves
These are people who purposely lied to themselves, who knew something to be so but turned their back on it and covered it with a fabrication. Punishment for these people is to be slowly, painfully stripped of each layer of their physical bodies – skin, bones, organs, and so forth – until they are nothing but a spot of consciousness. When this has occurred, they are plunged into an endless deafening pandemonium of buzzing, flashing shapes and faces and skins. The sinners try to capture features and characteristics for themselves, but everything they reach for, every attempt to rebuild their identity, evades them. This is representative of the denial and erasure of their true selves, or of an aspect or truth they turned their backs on, and how they tried to fashion themselves into a different person. Now, in Hell, they are stripped of their physical selves and eternally taunted by the chance to create a new self.
Squanderers of Life or Talent.
These are the people who wasted away their life waiting for things to come to them instead of seeking them for themselves, or spent their lives dreaming of who they wanted to be but never made any motions toward it. Also here are those who had talent while they were alive but never put it to use or refined it. For instance, a person who had much talent with a camera and very easily could have made a name for themselves in photography, but discarded their dream and became a computer programmer instead, never to touch a camera after. The punishment for the Squanderers of Life or Talent is to walk a barren desert dotted with replenishing oases encircled by force fields, and thus forbidding entry. These people had the opportunity to have a fuller life when they were alive, but turned away from it. In death, they wish to fulfill their thirst with the oases, but cannot, just as their lackadaisy did the same for them in life.
Circle One
Spammers and Starters or Passers-On of Chain Letters
This garbage does nothing but pollute the Internet and make it increasingly stupider for all of us. Nobody's mother has ever died as the result of them not passing on a chain, and nobody's mother ever will, I can promise you. Sinners are punished according to the stupidity level of the chain and the frequency of posting. As spam and chain letters are petty but extremely maddening, so the people of this circle are forever plagued by petty but extremely maddening conditions. There are paper cranes that fly around inflicting paper cuts. Mosquitoes bite them mercilessly. Rocks randomly materialize from the ground, so they are constantly stubbing their toes. They twitch. They mangle everything they try to say. They are constantly exhausted but are never able to fall asleep for a second.
Circle Two
Defilers of Music and Literature
Those who maimed, raped, made fun of in school, or otherwise defiled the Muses of Music and Literature and/or their children. Such greats as Hannah Montana, Justin Bieber, Soulja Boy, and Flo-Rida reside here. Also here are writers of terrible fanfics done a million times before, vampire stories that are complete knock-offs of Twilight, stories featuring arranged marriages, stories featuring a girl in a boys' boarding school, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. The defilers of music are punished by being sealed into tiny boxes listening to their own sad excuse for music at deafeningly loud levels forever. At any attempt to break out of the boxes, giant radios pounce on them and smack them repeatedly against the ground, just as we felt the urge to do to our radios when their songs despotically took over the airwaves. The defilers of literature are put into their own cliche stories, forced to live out the storylines repeatedly for all eternity. Many authors with true talent patrol the area (they visit Hell from Heaven whenever they feel particularly sadistic), watching out for people trying to escape their stories. Then, they smack, whip, and verbally abuse these souls back into oblivion.
Circle Three
The Conceited
This includes the vain, the egotistic, the arrogant, and the megalomaniacs. In a nutshell, anyone with an unrealistically high opinion of themselves or a part of themselves. Their punishment is spending the rest of eternity with their bodies as mirrors, being smashed apart by huge hammers, and having to laboriously fit their broken pieces back together again, only to have the hammers strike them back into smithereens. The mirrors represent being in love with their own reflection (or some aspect of themselves that they preened over), and being broken is their punishment, the shattering of the reflection. It represents the distortion in how they viewed themselves.
Circle Four
The Greedy
These are the gluttonous, the selfish, the promiscuous, and the power- and money-hungry; anyone who wanted things for themselves in unholy proportions and were blinded by their want so that it caused harm to themselves and others. These people spend the rest of time with machines that inflate their bodies so they swell to enormous, excruciating proportions, a size that finally fits the amount of money/food/sex/etc. that they hoarded in life. When they finally explode, they are offered no respite but their pieces are hunted down again, stitched back together and swollen again, over and over.
Circle Five
The Small-Minded
This includes the shallow, narrow-minded, prejudiced, ignorant, etc. In life their small minds couldn't see the bigger picture, so in death they are contorted into tiny coffin-shaped boxes. The coffin represents the death of reason. They are buried in the dirt, denied any light or breathable air, just as their ideals were blind and suffocating. They are buried alive because their viewpoints buried their minds away from the light and reason of the world. Worms gnaw their bones, because that’s what happens when you die.
Circle Six
The Fanatics
This includes any type of religious fundamentalist, political extremist, and basically any person with crazy, unrealistic, and harmful beliefs. There was no middle ground or moderation for these people in life, so in death they are subjected to alternating feelings of being burning hot one minute and freezing cold the next. When they are hot, they become trapped in a fiery oven (a nod to Hitler’s treatment of the Jews in the Holocaust), and when they are cold their surroundings change to a freezer (a nod to whatever insane person locked someone in a freezer for some higher purpose, because I know a person like that has to got to exist somewhere in history.)
Circle Seven
The Sadists
This category includes any malicious, spiteful person who deliberately inflicted harm on others and enjoyed it. Their punishments include horribly painful things, like getting their gums stripped off with a razor, wooden splinters being pushed under their nails, anything very bad getting inflicted in the baby-making areas, the application of a cheese grater, getting lots of cuts and being dunked in a tank of lemon juice, etc, because those are things a sadist would think up and are representative of their own twisted, horrible natures.
Circle Eight
The Violent Against Nature
This is anybody who deliberately committed a harmful act to nature, whether it be littering or deforestation or hunting for leisure. Punishment depends on the specific crime committed. Those who polluted water or forests get toxic chemicals and waste pumped into their own bodies. Those who cut down trees get their own bodies hacked apart by chainsaws. Everybody here, however, gets to experience various parasitic flora and fauna growing from and eating at their bodies in a harrowing, painful, invasive way, representing how they did the same to nature.
Circle Nine
The Takers of Life
Homicides, murderers, assassins – this circle is reserved for anyone who purposely took the life of a sentient being. (Abortions and military go to purgatory, however.) They spend forever with all their senses removed and their bodies fully paralyzed, because their killing was senseless, and also so they get to experience death while still being conscious. They may also periodically be subject to sudden, agonizing spells of pain, or be submerged in pools of very hot or very cold blood, because they caused pain and spilled blood.
Circle Ten
Round One - The Treacherous to Others
This category includes anyone who gained someone’s trust, only to maliciously and purposely betray them. This includes liars, frauds, con men, etc, as well as Judas-like figures. They are first led to what appears to be Heaven and in the midst of enjoying themselves, the illusion drops and the true appearance of the place, a ruined wasteland, reveals itself. The Heaven they were shown before was full of everything each individual has ever wished for, the culmination of every desire they have ever held in their hearts. The Treacherous to Others must endure forever dealing with the loss of their Eden, just as they captured the trust of other people, only to shatter it with their perfidy. Unlike in life, however, when the people they betrayed eventually put it in their past, the inhabitants of Circle 10, Round 1 must experience the pain of their loss and betrayal fresh and constant, for all time.
Round Two - The Treacherous to Selves
These are people who purposely lied to themselves, who knew something to be so but turned their back on it and covered it with a fabrication. Punishment for these people is to be slowly, painfully stripped of each layer of their physical bodies – skin, bones, organs, and so forth – until they are nothing but a spot of consciousness. When this has occurred, they are plunged into an endless deafening pandemonium of buzzing, flashing shapes and faces and skins. The sinners try to capture features and characteristics for themselves, but everything they reach for, every attempt to rebuild their identity, evades them. This is representative of the denial and erasure of their true selves, or of an aspect or truth they turned their backs on, and how they tried to fashion themselves into a different person. Now, in Hell, they are stripped of their physical selves and eternally taunted by the chance to create a new self.
♠ ♠ ♠
Chapter title credit to Kim Addonizio, from an original poem by Philip Freneau.You can read about Dante's original order of Hell here.