As they demonize
hell in such a way, they characterize heaven in a…. “heavenly” way. The word
“hell” has found its place in the human language as an expletive and an
offense, while the word “heavenly” has even earned a spot as an adverb for its
ideal, unearthly atmosphere that people imagine. I remember hearing some time
ago that that’s supposed to be some sort of motivation for people to live a
just life, but judging by the number of humans I find in hell, it seems like a
failed religious propaganda.
I don’t know what heaven is like;
I’ve never been there and I never will be there. I don’t know if all the things
they say about heaven is true or not. What I can say, however, is that such
myths about hell are mostly false. Hell isn’t a ring of fire or a concentration
camp created for the sake of torture.
Rather, here in hell, we offer
counseling classes for all people. Everyone is here because of a reason. I’ve
been working in hell as a counselor for the past 30 years and the funny thing
is that no one ever knows why they’re in hell. The first thing anyone says on
counseling class is that they deserve to be in heaven. It’s almost routine for
me now; I’d scoff a little and then try to make the person understand why he or
she’s in hell.
Counseling is actually a difficult
task. Convincing people that they’d done something wrong with their lives and
troubled the lives of others is harder than you probably think it is. Arguing
with serial killers is simply agitating when the serial killer is so persistent
about his innocence. I assume that’s why he had the heart to kill so many
people in the first place, but it’s slightly bothersome to see that he hasn’t
changed his mind even yet. Trying to convince those who have started off with
polygamy and ended up with rape is even worse. The man would start off with
“I’m not the only one who did it. It’s just a commonplace practice in my
tribe!” I’d slightly pinch my chin with my fingers and then say, “I’m sure
people who did the same thing are also going to come to hell when they die.”
Then he’d go on to argue about how the women actually gave him consent. I
didn’t know or care much about women’s rights in the past, but my job in hell
as a counselor has eventually made me a feminist. Although difficult,
counseling does show me different perspectives and some insight into why these
people end up in hell. It’s sad to think that they actually never learn why
they’re in hell. (And yes, it is my job to teach them, but no, I’m not doing a
bad job.)
To be honest, though, counseling gets
really funny in a lot of cases. Most of the people in hell are not notorious
rapists or murderers; they’re just ordinary people. Listening to their stories
and why they got assigned to hell is simply hilarious. Stories regarding
breakups, robbery, divorce, and deception often remind me of crazy morning
dramas to the extent that I am urged to burst out with laughter. I sustain the
laughter just for the sake of keeping the rules; I’ve been told that the
failure to comply with the rules may result in extra education or the loss of
one’s job if severe. Keeping a solemn face is one of my most troublesome daily
tasks.
Just this morning, I’d been talking
to a newcomer named Harry. A boy came into the counseling office, sat down next
to the heater (we have heaters, not rings of fire), and started off with, “Uh…
Do the hell admissions people know that I was murdered?” I would have loved to
tell him that a lot of notorious people who have committed malignant actions
were murdered by those with righteous intent, but I didn’t say that out of the
fear that I’d implant some weird justification into the minds of murders who
live in hell. Rather, I said, “Yes. In fact, they’ve sent me an affidavit from
the court case in the real world regarding your death. I didn’t read it yet; I
can’t read or comprehend human language. Read it for me.” Then, I handed him
the printed affidavit that the hell admissions office had forwarded to me a few
hours ago.
“Ok,
so you guys think that my good friend Betty killed Harry, but I'm here writing
this letter to defend her, and explain what happened yesterday. Yesterday, in
the morning, she was very excited to go to prom with her boyfriend Harry until
he said, ‘Let's break up’. It was no big deal, just me going out with her
ex-boyfriend, Harry. And Betty, my friend is a cool girl. She said ‘It's so
unlucky for you to have that kind of trash as your boyfriend.’”
I
mused over whether the person was speaking in an obscure way that I could not
comprehend or whether my capacity to understand human language had simply
atrophied over the past few minutes. I eventually got the hang of what had
happened.
“So…
this was written by your girlfriend?”
“Yep.”
“And
you used to date your girlfriend’s friend?”
“Yep,
just until the day before I started dating my new girlfriend.”
“And….
you don’t understand why you’re in hell? That first paragraph isn’t enough?”
“No,
I don’t get it.”
I
sighed to myself, ‘Here we go again. I really hope his story is interesting.’
Then I told him to read on.
“I
think it wouldn't be a big deal for her since we all know that Harry is kind of
Casanova. Anyway Betty was too talkative and I couldn't withstand her. God. It
was painful. I drank martini in a row to pretend to be drunk. I thought after
couple minutes of pretending, she would be gone. But she didn't! She talked and
talked.”
While
listening, I built some respect for lawyers who work with court cases like
this. It must be hard for them to look at an abstruse affidavit like this and
make some sense out of it. What does all of this have to do with the victim’s
death?
Rather,
by this point, I was quite curious about this individual that was sitting in my
room. He seemed so shy and innocent, but so far he’d been shattering his image.
“You’re
a Casanova?”
“Yep.”
“How
old are you? You seem quite young.”
“Thirteen.”
By
then, I was cracking up quite severely, but I tried not to show that. I’m sure
that it would’ve only appeared as a chuckle. I asked,
“Do
you know what a Casanova means?”
“It
means to have a lot of girls.”
“Then
won’t the girls be hurt?”
“I
don’t care. Casanovas don’t care about past girls.”
“And…
you don’t understand why you’re in hell?”
“Not
at all.”
I
wondered how other counselors cope with listening to stories like this. Do they
also have a hard time keeping a well-maintained facial expression? Or do their
muscles also twist and turn, trying their best to pretend that the laughter you
had just made was an instantaneous one that no one had managed to spot?
“Please
read on.”
“Her friends, including me,
told her to forget him and revenge with a new, good-looking guy. However, she
said she cannot hurt his feeling.
Though Harry was a bad guy.
And he indeed hurt Betty, it couldn't be her who killed Harry.”
Is
this a diary? Or an affidavit?
“You know Harry's ex-, before
Betty, (Her name is Wendy) had a big fight in the prom? Wendy was a wrestler,
as maybe none of you knew. The reason Harry broke up with Wendy was because
Harry got beaten up so hard that he had to stay in the hospital for a whole
month when he got caught cheating on her.”
Now I was really confused. The
writer of this affidavit seemed to be caught up on the problem of Harry and all
his girls that she didn’t even talk about what she had witnessed before and
after Harry’s death. To add on, there was something wrong with her language; it
was written in a way that it’s so hard for me to understand. Yet, there was
something ridiculously funny about it that I couldn’t help laughing. I counted
the number of girls that appeared in the story: the writer, Betty, Wendy, and
the ex before Wendy. That was four girls he had dated in one affidavit. And he
was thirteen. I had lived up to 50 years in the earthly world and this was my
30th year in hell; I’m still single. What a fate.
“I strongly believe that
Wendy should be also considered as a suspect of the murder.”
That was the end of the affidavit. I once again indulged in deep sympathy
for the lawyer. He must have a hard time trying to utilize that unsupported
one-liner in a court case. Then I felt a degree of inquisitiveness in me; I was
actually quite curious as to who had killed Harry.
“Was it Wendy? or Betty?”
“Neither. It was my current girlfriend. After she drank a row of martini,
she came to me and started to yell the hell out.”
“Yell the ‘hell’ out?”
“Oh, sorry. She started to yell quite loudly. She complained about how I’d
always meet other girls. Then she picked up the glass that she used to drink
from and threw one at me. It shattered to pieces.”
“So your current girlfriend killed you out of anger?”
“That’s what I thought until then. Then she pulled out a dagger and I
realized that something was wrong. After that, it wasn’t much of a big deal;
it’s pretty much self-explanatory. She killed me; I died.”
“Then she put together this affidavit and handed it in to the court? What
a girl!”
“Yep. What a girl.”
Quite a lot of time had already passed, just as I was listening to his
stories. I told him that today’s counseling session had ended and that we’d
continue later on. He left the room. Harry was so funny on multiple levels. For
one, he seemed fine with having lost his life. For another, he would read the
affidavit so casually as if he didn’t feel any kind of guilt or remorse to the
atrocities he’d done toward his girlfriends. It seemed like he had made his
adjustment into hell perfectly on his first day. I figured that I’d see him
multiple times and he’d never understand why he’s in hell.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see Harry again. Someone had filed a report
that my laughter was a disturbance to the rehabilitation of jail-dwellers based
on the fact that I was chuckling and laughing through most of my counseling
session with Harry. They read the report, didn’t come to me to verify if
anything was true or not, and simply fired me. I was outraged; I had lost my
job.
I stayed calm and decided to handle the matter through litigation. I
didn’t know they had a court in hell; I didn’t have any reason to know because
I was never mistreated in such a way. It turns out that they do have a court in
hell. So I sued and here I am.
The lawyer stared, dumbfounded, at this
preposterous affidavit. He’d been through many cases, both in the earthly world
and in hell, but this was beyond everything he’d gone through. He asked the
counselor,
“You want me to make a case out of
this? In your defense? When the law already states that counselors should not
laugh during counseling?”
“Isn’t that what lawyers do? Making sense
out of nonsense?”
The lawyer sat in silence, and then
muttered,
“I wish I’d gone to heaven.”
