I don’t know.
Maybe it’s all of the ‘Surrender to Jesus Christ’ bullshit posts that have been randomly invading my Substack feed lately, possibly as a ‘throw a chicken skewer to the crocodile’ move by the literati to see if I bite.
I mean, it’s easy, isn’t it? If someone is into Jesus, keep feeding them Jesus-related content, and job done.
Another satisfied Substack customer.
But maybe it was because I’ve been roasting my Christmas chestnuts in the sauna after reading about the benefits, such as reducing the body’s levels of HGH (Heavy Gonad Hormone), which causes men’s sacks to hang lower with age.
Regardless, I sat in the half-lotus position, letting my body rest like an unclipped haystack, waiting on the empty breath like the final wind of a fading fox, resting my mind like a child playing dead, floating in the ethereal swimming pool.
That’s when it happened.
First, I saw a logo.
It was a luminous chilli, flashing like a neon sign in 1930s LA. And not just any chilli. It was a Carolina Reaper, with its distinctive wrinkled, evil, pointy look.
Underneath it said:
Welcome to Hell: Where we endeavour to heal your soul 1,234,565,927,414,666 times faster than similar realms*
And I thought, what kind of a fucking vision is this?
Indeed, it’s up there with the time I took forty-two medium-sized Psilocybe subaeruginosa mushrooms and watched Tom Cruise dressed as Moses giving it to Keith Urban in the gob beneath the white cliffs of Dover while Nicole Kidman danced around them with her pubes on fire.
A countdown began below the logo, like one of those website launch countdown clocks that no one gives a fuck about. And Darth Vader’s voice began counting aloud.
10,9,8—well, you know how it goes.
I’d experienced the James Earl Jones countdown twice before.
The first time was when I dreamt that I visited Sangdopalri, the copper-coloured mountain, the pure land of the incredible liberator.
The second was when the crowd were going fucking apeshit cos Micky Jackson was about to pop out of the stage at the start of that show where he wore the gold chastity suit to stop him from showing his pee pee to children.
*Nielsen research poll
Finally, Earl Jones said a resounding, fat zero, and I found myself in a brown waiting room from the nineteen fifties like I was in Mad Men. I wandered to the front desk, where a leggy receptionist in a scarlet dress with pointy glasses greeted me.
“Erm, Frank T Bird,” I said.
“Ah yes, Mr Bird,” she said. “Please take a seat, and someone will see you shortly.”
So I sat down on this very comfortable couch made from the skins of humans, and I perused the magazine pile:
Hell Weekly.
Tridents Anonymous.
The Hot Anus journal.
I figured the Hot Anus Journal sounded interesting. And I honestly expected it to be about hot pokers being inserted into anuses, but it was a series of unexpected people holding their anuses wide open, displaying their yellow-stained sphincters to the world, and the images were surprisingly tasteful.
While I was on page four, examining the deepest recesses of Dolph Lundgren’s anus from 1986, examining each tiny whispy blonde hair and each perfectly formed skin cell, a door swung open.
Out stepped a man with dark long hair and a beard. He briefly spoke to the receptionist and then came over to me.
“Are you Russell Brand?” I said, feeling a little starstruck.
“Oh no,” he said. “My name is Jesus. I’ll be your tour guide today.”
“Jesus?” I said. “As in the Jesus, King of the Jews? Lord of the Carpenters, Prince of the—”
“Well, look, yes,” he interrupted, laughing. “That’s a real blast from the past, Frank. These days, I live a humble life showing tourists around hell.”
“Well, that’s interesting,” I said, nodding. “That’s fucking interesting, man. I suppose many of your followers on earth might have thought you’d be a tour guide in heaven, at least.”
“Ah, earth,” he said. “I remember that place. Bloody violent, if I remember rightly. What’s happening there? Are there still followers of mine there now?”
“Well, there’s a few,” I said. “And they kind of expect you to return at some stage.”
“What, really?” he said. “What, as myself, Jesus? I couldn’t do that. They don’t know what I look like. They’d arrest me for impersonating Jesus.”
“Yeah, I get it, mate,” I said. “ But anyway, how come you ain’t in heaven?”
“I wouldn’t work up in that shithole,” he said. “The pay is awful — equivalent to slave wages actually. Also, my dad is a goddamn tyrant. Excuse the pun or whatever. And you know what they say, don’t go into business with family and all that. Anyway, are you ready?”
We walked down this corridor, which started out lovely with silver and nice gems but gradually became rocky, smaller, and hotter, like entering a mine.
Finally, the corridor opened out into a scorching hot, barbaric scene.
Men in suits were strung up over a pit of boiling pumpkin soup while these weird dwarves with octopus heads tugged on metal wire wrapped around the men’s junk until the wire cut through the top of their sacks, and they dropped down into the pumpkin soup.
“So,” said Jesus, wiping the sweat off his forehead. “This department doubles as the kitchen and the department for politicians. As you can see, today, it’s pumpkin and gonad soup for lunch. What’s clever about this is that once the gonads start boiling in the soup, the politicians feel as if they’re still attached. That was included in the new update.”
I watched in horror as I recognised a few old faces.
“Is that John Lennon?” I said.
“It is,” said Jesus, bowing his head uncomfortably.
“But he wasn’t a politician. He was a peacemaker.”
“I know,” he said. “But by the end, he’d become so angry and involved in politics that it happened this way.” He paused, taking a long blunt out of his pocket and sparking it up.
“I want you to know, it’s not some panel that decides all this,” he said. “There’s no Saint Peter—no Simon Cowell—no Scary Spice to decide one’s fate.”
He took a long drag, blew the smoke upward and passed it to me.
“Beings make their own home brew, Frank, and they drink it out of habit. There is no judgement and no judge. Everything you see here is self-torture.”
“I get that,” I said. “But does it not bother you that these people are being tortured right here in front of you? I mean, you’re meant to be Jesus, aren’t you?”
“It did at first,” he said. “But, look, it’s better than them going to heaven since they can purify their sins here. Such things can only be purified through suffering, Frank. If these people all ended up in heaven, they would be comfortable enough to reap a whole bunch more sin, and the outcome would be truly disastrous.”
I shuffled awkwardly in my Crocs.
“I have to say, J — may I call you J?”
“Please don’t.”
“Okay, fine. That last thing you said about purifying sin sounded very Christian to me. Are you a Christian these days?”
From the scratching of his eyebrows, I could see that I’d offended him.
“Let’s just move on, shall we,” he said in the voice of Morgan Freeman.
“Look, Jesus,” I said. “Is this tour going to take long? It’s just that I have an appointment with the podiatrist.”
Jesus looked at me with great disappointment in his sparkling purple eyes.
“It’s okay, Frank,” he said. “You can leave. I understand it can be a bit overwhelming at first.”
“I’m not overwhelmed,” I said. “It’s just that I got these verrucas on my feet from going barefoot at the swimming baths. But one last question. Why am I being shown all of this? Is this my own fate or something?”
“Certainly not,” said the world’s greatest tour guide. “But, I’d like to answer your question with a rap in the style of the Fresh Prince of Bell Air, if I may.”
“Of course,”
It’s easy to think that hell doesn’t exist when you read too many books.
And if the hell was outside, you’d probably be right, and you wouldn’t give two fucks.
But everything, Frank, it all exists right there in your mind.
And therefore, all things are possible — anything you can find.
And it aint at all the subject of your anger that brings you here.
You can be angry at abuse, at oppression, at war, and still, this will all be near.
Cos anger itself will drag you down regardless of where it’s pointed.
The anger’s flames create this place; a citizen of hell, you’ll be anointed.
And no one knows what —
I cough loudly and point at my watch.
“Look, for fuck’s sake, Jesus,” I said. “I’ve really got to go. I’ve waited months for this appointment but thanks for the tour and the rap n that.”
And just like that, I’m sitting back on my cushion, looking out at the wet, azure sky and thinking about the people in my life with so much righteous anger.
I think of social media and realise they are the factories of hell since they take your opinion and make it more extreme, leading to great anger.
And as the man said, it’s not the subject of the anger but the anger itself that creates hell.
And I realise it’s night time. And I’m not even on my cushion. I’m in the garden.
And there’s a vague scent of burning flesh in the air.
And I realise the neighbour is cooking a barbecue.
And It smells a little like hell.
I stop turning my prayer wheel and go inside.
Bingo. Great job my man!
Hell yeah (had to)! Need more rip roaring furious writing like this in everyone’s lives.