Curnutt 1

Elijah Curnutt

Mrs. Wenz

English 102

9 February 2024

Revised by Ethan H.

Revised by Jordan A.

The Many Sins of Hell

I found myself gaining consciousness lying with my face pressed against cold asphalt.

Surrounding me was the skeleton of an urban metropolis. As far as I could tell, there was nobody

else inhabiting the city. Lifeless skyscrapers towered over me, reduced to nothing but strange

monoliths with nobody to make use of them. I tried my hardest to recall how I got there, but the

only thing my mind could muster was the faint image of the grill of a speeding car. As I

continued studying my surroundings, I noticed a lone sign of life in the distance, a single

still-active traffic light. With that beacon of normalcy, I pressed forward.

As I got closer to the traffic light I saw that this place was not completely devoid of life. A

line of people was formed leading up to the intersection. On the other side of the road stood a

grand marble door, radiating an otherworldly light. I quickly got to the back of the line, wanting

to see what was happening. I asked the person in front of me why we were standing there, and he

replied “To get to heaven of course”, vaguely gesturing towards the door on the other side of the

road, “Every few years they’ll let someone cross safely”. I replied, “If that’s heaven, does that

mean we’re in Hell right now? How is that possible?”. He looked at me strangely for a moment

before responding, “Well if you’re standing here with us then you’re here because you

jaywalked. Every sin or crime you can imagine is punished here in Hell, it’s just some are
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punished more than others”. I stood there for a few minutes in silence, just trying to process the

information he had given me. Finally, I managed to ask, “So why isn’t anyone crossing? It’s not

exactly a busy street”. At that exact moment, like the universe itself wanted my question

answered, someone jumped out of line and began to sprint across the road. As if materializing

out of thin air, a car turned the corner and sped through him, sending him flailing to the ground.

His body laid limp on the floor for a while, unmoving and lifeless, until the ends of his limbs

began to be puppeteered by an invisible force, dragging him back toward the line. As he

approached, his body began to jerkily and painfully reconstruct itself back to its proper function,

bringing him visible agony. At the end of this process, he was brought to the back of the line

behind me. His face was plastered with an expression of disappointment and despair. I stared at

him in horror, my mind in shock at the violent display I had just witnessed. I got out of line,

allowing the man to fill my spot, and without a word began walking away from the intersection. I

wandered aimlessly through the abandoned streets for several hours, desperate for a different

way out. Eventually, I spotted an open manhole cover in the middle of the road. Upon closer

inspection, it opened up to a vast pit with a ladder descending into darkness. Seeing no other

option I carefully grabbed hold of the ladder and began descending .

Down the rabbit hole I went, and on the other side I found myself in what appeared to be a

casino. Blinding lights and neon signs filled the room, stimulating the senses to a point of mental

exhaustion. All around me I could hear the familiar chiming of slot machines. However, there

wasn’t a machine in sight. Instead surrounding me were people sat in desks desperately punching

numbers into old-fashioned counting machines used by accountants. The devices rang out every

time one of them finished a calculation, spitting out a receipt into a boundless pile on the floor. In

the center of the room there was an LED screen that read, “World's taxes complete: 16%.”. I
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began walking towards one of the people, wanting to determine what exactly was going on here.

However, at that moment I recognized an unmistakable face sitting at one of the desks, Al

Capone. With that sight, I was struck with a terrible realization: All of these people were guilty

of tax evasion. Cursed to complete all of the world’s taxes for eternity. I was in an IRS-sponsored

portion of hell. In a state of total fear, I kicked open the door on the wall to my right. It opened

up to a sharp cliff leading to an ocean below. Knowing nothing could possibly be worse than the

punishment waiting for me staying here, I jumped, plunging into the night.

Moments before hitting the water, I braced myself for the inevitable impact. However, it

never came. Instead, I fell through the water as if it were air. If my visual intuitions weren’t

telling me I was submerged underwater I would have believed that nothing had changed.

Eventually, I fell through this layer of water, landing somehow unharmed in the stomach of a

damp cave. The cave was bathed in an eerie red light, seemingly originating from nowhere. On

the wall opposite of me, an elevator was embedded in the rock face. In the center of the room a

group of about 20 men and women stood suspended midair, metal rods piercing through their

body at excruciating angles. I recognized them almost immediately as the lead staff of the video

game company Riot Games, their punishment directly proportional to the suffering and agony

caused by the games they produced. My soul filled with despair, there truly was no way out of

here, so I lumbered into the elevator and began ascending back up to the city. I wandered my

way through the abandoned streets back to the end of the line at the intersection, which was now

substantially longer than it was before, finally accepting my fate.

Works Cited
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Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri : Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise.

New York :The Union Library Association, 1935.

“Al Capone.” FBI, FBI, 18 May 2016, www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/al-capone.

“Pedestrian Injuries & Fatalities.” ASU Center for Problem-Oriented Policing, 4 Nov. 2022,

popcenter.asu.edu/content/pedestrian-injuries-fatalities-0. x

Word Count: 980