Hoo boy, hell–post clog-pop destination for the damned–has sure provided some top-notch inspiration for literary geniuses. Dante, Milton, Virgil, Rimbaud, Bernard Shaw, C.S. Lewis, Michael Moorcock, the writers of Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey–they’ve all concocted brainbursting versions of the nastier side of the afterlife.
Comics writers have written some awesome hells too. One thinks of Garth Ennis’ Chronicles of Wormwood, in which the African-American Jesus visits hell and has a good old chuckle watching Adolf Hitler licking shit off a giant circumcised cock.
But that’s fiction. What about hell as described by someone who’s actually been there? Yes, you read that right. I’m talking about the recently published book 23 Minutes in Hell by Bill Wiese.
On Nov. 22, 1988, Wiese woke up in hell. Not a figurative hell. Not a literary hell. The real hell. The one where everybody who’s not a born-again Christian spends all eternity teetering on the edge of insanity, suffering hideous and unbearable agony forever and ever and ever.
But the thing about real hell is that, compared to made-up hell, it’s kinda rubbish. To cut a short story even shorter, Wiese woke up in a tiny 15-by-10-by-15-foot cell that also contained two 10- to 13-foot-tall (and presumably extremely thin) monsters who–despite the cramped conditions–attacked him and ripped all his meat off. Then Jesus appeared and admitted that he’d put Wiese in hell so he could warn others.
Now you or I might have been tempted to thump Jesus at this point, probably while shouting: “What the hell? Are you totally insane? Do you know how much it hurts to have all your meat ripped off, you sick bastard?”
But Wiese–being born again and therefore knowing that God moves in mysterious ways–got down on his knees and groveled like a dog.
Since then Wiese has toured the world warning folks just what Jehovah’s got planned for non-Christianists. (Be warned–God is not like Santa. He don’t give a flying monkey’s chuffknuckle if you’ve been good or not. He just wants you to get down on your knees and adore him.)
Wiese is either wrong or he’s right. And if he’s right, then God is an insane tyrant. And what do we Americans do with tyrants? We rebel against them. And if we catch them, we execute them. Ain’t that right, King George III of England? Ain’t that right, Saddam Hussein?
In short, the father, the son and the holy ghost are the ultimate axis of evil–a profoundly un-American, human-rights-abusing, WMD-possessing terrorist tyranny presenting a clear and present danger to untold millions of Americans, living and dead.
Our course is clear. In the name of all that’s American, we need to invade hell, kill God and liberate our brothers and sisters from an infinity of torture.
Let’s roll.
