I think I am dead.
I’m almost sure that I died when I was driving back home from work one night. I had just turned a corner when a shapeless mass swerved into the side of my car. In an instant my body was flung into a dark turbulence. The last thing that I can clearly remember doing is raising my hands and watching the withered yellow of the street lamps spin in weird, glass-shattered circles.
A moment later a precise coldness entered the top part of my head. It lapped through me, leaving a chemical gloom in my stomach. My life had jumped out of me and was poised before me looking something like a photograph. White licks of exposure and muddy runs of chemicals had obscured the subject of the picture. At first it appeared to be of me, but the longer that I looked the harder it became to make my mind up. I was very disappointed.  I had always thought that death would resolve the problem of my identity.
What happened next is impossible to explain in words. I could say, “I shrunk into white light” but it would only be the generic equivalent of what I experienced. Rather, let me leave the whole affair alone and say it was quite incomprehensible when I experienced it and even more incomprehensible now that I’m in this place and I think back on it.
When I ‘came to’ I had the distinct sensation of being somewhere, although the only thing I could directly see was my hand.  It hung a bit too far away from me. I was horrified by it. Most of the skin looked sodden and drooped between pronounced arches of bone. My fingers had also taken a turn for the worse. They groped, twitched and curled like an upturned spider that wanted to scuttle away.
I shut my eyes and held my head between my knees. The in-between part of my legs reeked of acerbic dark and my skin was viscous to the touch.  I remained in this position for what seemed a long time, too petrified to move. In the distance, the shriek of grinding machinery mingled with a discord of howls.
Perhaps it was at this moment that I thought I was in Hell.
To be frank I was very surprised. I had never believed in God. On the few occasions that I had begrudgingly admitted to myself that there was a possibility of Him existing, I had severely questioned His authority. For instance, how could He be objective about human existence? If He was looking down on everything from far off, how could He know what it meant to be small and inside things? And (this is where I caught most of my friends out) even if he could simultaneously be exterior to things and interpenetrate them, how could he know what it meant to just be inside things?
The idea of Heaven and Hell had also seemed to me to be a very strange proposition. As much as I had tried (for the sake of my religious wife) to reconcile God with the idea of reward and punishment, I had always failed to see the connection. To me, it had always been fairly obvious that if God existed, He must also be responsible for all the actions of the people that he had created. Upon my remarking this to my wife, she grew red in the face and replied that He had given us the capacity to choose and that consequently we were responsible for our own actions. I had responded to her angry outburst by saying that she had merely reiterated what I had said, that God had given us the capacity to choose and that therefore we were not responsible for our actions since He, not us, had chosen for us to be free. In light of what I had said, I continued, both good and evil people were equal in status since they were both conforming to the predetermined nature of freedom that God had in mind when He created us. The idea of Good people being rewarded in Heaven and Bad people being punished in Hell was ridiculous since both Good and Evil people were being equally faithful to God’s plan, I concluded.  My wife had not spoken to me for days after this.      
Despite all my neat hypotheses, I had still ended up in Hell. For a moment I thought of all the other unlucky sods who had also built their lives up on false premises. Then I thought: why the Christians and not the Hindus? Why me and not someone else? An immense sadness filled me. It was a depressing thought to know that a great many people had lived and died for the wrong reasons. Was this the cost of the Truth? If it was, it seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with justice.  
Moved by a morbid sense of curiosity, I raised my head but instantly grew stiff with terror. Above me, great, hissing arcs of flame threshed open wounds of garish light. Higher still, the remains of an ashen cliff sweltered in the fiery air. Behind the cliff, tortured spirals faded into wisps of black fog. 
There were also winged shapes.  Sometimes they skirted a broken ring of sulphurous cloud and drew closer to me with a plunge and an empty, flapping sound.
I shuddered and placed my head back in-between my legs.  I began to think back on my life. Throughout it I had done nothing but talk about subjects that suited the occasion but had very little bearing on my true feelings. I often took pleasure in arguing for something I deeply opposed.  While I spoke I would sit back watching my exquisitely false words spin upward, smug with the knowledge that they were nothing more than hollow improvisations. After a while I began to doubt if I really believed in anything.  I saw myself as a plastic substance that had fanned outwards, without pursuing a particular direction.
And then all of a sudden, it happened.  I felt a huge sense of relief. I was wrong. Beyond a shadow of a doubt I had been grievously mistaken about what it truly meant to live. There could no longer be any games or doubts. I could no longer escape myself by using elaborate excuses. My position was secure. I finally knew who I was. I was wrong.
I looked up at the sky again. I was no longer afraid. All I could think about was that this whole tremendous, spectacle was created solely so that I could be wrong. How glorious it all seemed! I wondered why He had gone through so much effort just to prove to us to how far we had strayed from the Truth. Surely a worse punishment would have been to reduce us to nothingness so that we could never realise that our lives had a perimeter or fulfilled a purpose, no matter how abject.
But that was then.
I was alone under a blighted sky for what seemed months. I began to loose touch with myself. The bleak, hallucinatory light made my thoughts proliferate pointlessly with a dull, popping sound. Unable to open they shriveled and remained as heat-stunted buds. Nothing except the sunken heat seemed real.
It was only after I had given up all hope of my solitude ending that I encountered my captors, Gerald and Morkel. Their coming was announced by the scrape of their heavy boots and a hacking laughter that stirred the eerie half-light encircling me
“That you?” said a thick, brutish voice.
“That you?” echoed another.
 “There he is over there.”
Hurried footsteps scuffed along the hard, knotted ground. Then sudden quiet. Gritting my teeth, I managed to nod my head in the direction that the voices had been coming from. Not less than ten meters away from me I made out two murky figures stooped over a hump-shaped object.
“ Can’t be him,” said the first voice.
“ Jaws too warped. Heat tends to do this to them after a while,” chimed in the other.
“ Well what now? It could take ages to sort through all this garbage.”
“ We could try call out his name. Works sometimes you know. A lot of them love it… to suffer and all. It soon becomes the only joy they get in a place like this.”
“Why ’s that?”
“ They stay just the same as they are back there. They only feel bad when they’ve been found out. They hate suffering alone. It gives them no pleasure.”
“ Try it,” snapped the brutish voice.
There was a clatter of stone as the fat shape settled on its haunches. The thinner, more wiry figure appeared to remain standing. In the dimness, its long head seemed to be diligently turning from left to right.
 “ David Brenner,” it bellowed out. “ David Brenner?”
My tongue twitched in my mouth. It wanted to fashion a response, but only groped around uselessly. Eventually a flat, colourless word escaped.
“Yes.”  
I did not think that I would be heard. Nevertheless as soon as I had spoken the two figures turned towards me with alacrity. The fat figure scrambled to his feet while the smaller figure began walking towards me, beckoning to his partner with one of his gaunt fingers. The fat figure broke into a guttural laugh, swiped away at a few ribbons of murk and trailed his partner with a lumbering gait. There was the clank of chains.
I grew stiff with excitement. The lie of my life was beginning to take on a form. No longer would I have the sensation of being divorced from my actions. No longer would I feel the same way as a smoker who leans on his elbow and watches the tresses of smoke that escape his mouth with a philosophic and faintly disinterested expression.  I was about to face my destiny- an event that would give a sense of finality to all the insipid actions of my life. Like a character in a novel, I was to live out my passions and sufferings to the bitter end and learn their true meaning. 
For the first time in my ‘life’ I also had a sense of a vocation. For every two people plucking on a lyre and reclining on clouds, there would have to be someone like me. Someone who gave Goodness its true meaning by showing exactly what it was not. I was an indispensable, albeit sordid, part of God’s plans.

My captors had come to a halt in front of me. I saw them clearly. Grimy chains were slung across their shoulders. Beneath the chains, festering lashes showed beneath tufts of hair. Cuts and moldy abrasions disfigured the rest of their bodies. Their heads however, were lean, gritty and misshapen like the burnt tip of a match. Pairs of sinister horns curved out of the place where a normal person’s ears would have been.
“Well, it seems as if it’s your turn today, Gerald,” said the smaller demon as he paged through a hefty manuscript.
“Licks, lashes or cuts?” said the other.. He began to finger the handle of a butchers-knife that was attached to his ankle with a leather strap. A filament of spittle dangled from his wrinkled snout.
”Doesn’t exactly specify here,” the smaller one mumbled, desperately paging backwards and forwards.  “Won’t take a moment longer…Ah, says here in no uncertain terms that he’s scheduled to see the Boss.”
“That’s strange, you sure Morkel?”
“ Don’t ask questions, you oaf, just lug him over your shoulder and let’s be on our way. There’s no point in delaying.”
With a hoarse grunt, Gerald bent down to free me from the strange weight that had stopped me from moving around ever since I had ‘arrived’.
“Can’t you just get on with it and torture me, I’m dead tired of waiting.” I said, surprised at the sudden volume of my voice. 
“Thinks he’s a clever one, this one does,” said Gerald.
“Asks queer questions and expects straightforward answers.”
“As if anything were straightforward.”
“As if we should even answer him…” There was a peculiar sharpness in Morkel’s voice.
“You really don’t have to,” I interrupted, “ in actual fact I would prefer it if no one ever spoke to me again. That was the worst part of living. I’m sick of authorities. After all these years I’m finally my own authority. I don’t want to waste time with anyone else, I just want to get on with this whole business of suffering. I was wrong; it’s that simple. My life’s finally my own business; I don’t want anyone sniffing around it anymore. Once you’ve strayed as far off the path as I have, what more can be said?”
“Whatever,” said Gerald, “an eternity of punishment sounds like a bloody long time to me.”
“ Not really,” I replied. “ I think I’ve begun to understand that being punished for a specific thing isn’t that bad. In fact, most people I know have a deep desire to punish themselves - all the better now that someone’s given them the reason for doing so. To suffer is to be alone, and to be alone is the greatest form of egotism. I’m sure that after an eternity I’ll feel as pure as a saint.”
After this we stopped talking. I was being lugged over Gerald’s back and all I could make out were small patches of ground bouncing up at me. From the way Gerald’s feet fell, I sensed that the route we were taking was gradually sloping downwards.  The further we seemed to descend, the colder the air became. I even noticed that the odd stone was freckled with ice.
Then I had the sensation that we were rising.  As I looked down, I saw a flight of sharp, concrete steps edging away from me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a figure swoop down the stairs. He was running one finger along the dark latticework of a banister while reading a sleek docier. At the bottom of the stairs, he paused, folded the docier under the crook of his arm and carried on walking off into the wintry distance.
By the time I had finished observing the man, we had reached the top of the stairs.
“We’s here now,” said Gerald as he unbundled me off his back.
“Get a move on.”  Morkel shoved me forward.
I staggered and then steadied myself, pleasantly surprised that I head regained the ability to make proper use of my body.  In front of me there were large, polished doors that opened up into a vestibule from which a number of passages radiated.  As I walked through the doors, I heard the rapid tap of footsteps. A tall, crane-like figure was hurriedly advancing towards me from the furthest end of a passageway.  On either side of him, the gleaming walls threw up elongated reflections of his rigid frame. I turned round out of nervousness. To my shock, Gerald and Morkel were gone. I turned back again not knowing what to do. Was I to stay or leave? 
Before I had made up my mind the man was upon me. He was nervously fingering the insides of his pockets and greeted me with averted eyes and a terse nod of the head.
“ First door to the left.” His tone managed to be both aggressive and punctilious.
As the echoes of his footsteps died away, I decided that there was nothing for it but to follow his orders. After all it was the easiest alternative; to walk away would only delay my punishment. I would be disregarding a chain of events that had been set in motion, perhaps, solely for my sake. And besides, I was able to see the door. It was not more than a few yards away from me.
I opened it and walked in. At the far end of a room a man was hunched over a great, oak desk. He was surveying an open file with pale, mournful eyes.  I stood transfixed. After he had finished reviewing the page he placed the palms of his hands upwards, stared into space and began to quiver with a reserved indignation.  I could hear the clatter of typewriters and the morbid droning of electric fans coming from what must have been an adjacent office.  
“Sit down,” he said without looking at me.
I walked across the floor toward a large, leather seat that faced his desk. Once I had sat down he spoke again.
“ I suppose you know why you’re here,” he said.
“ No,” I replied.
“ Then you take my identity for granted,” said the man.
“ Well in that case… I must say I always imagined that you would look quite different…”
“ And that I wouldn’t grant individual interviews,” interjected the man with a taut, ironic smile.
“ Yes, that. Exactly that,” I said, surprised.
“ Well, then Mr. Brenner, you’ll be surprised at what I do know. Your attitudes for instance. Very interesting, I must say. Without you realising it, you have allowed yourself a kind of acceptance that I do not even have the privilege to indulge in. I can, of course tolerate certainty, but arrogance, why that simply doesn’t belong in a place like this.”
“ I don’t know what you’re talking about” I replied defensively “ I’ve simply followed the logic of my life to its bitter end. If that results in kind of acceptance, it’s not my fault, but the fault of this place.”
“ This place indeed,” said the man lighting a cigarette with gloomy elegance. “What makes you so sure about this place?”
“ You have admitted your identity,” I said smoothly. “ It reconfirms everything I already had the foresight to conclude.”
“Admitted?” laughed the man. “ Why do you assume I was telling the truth?  There’s no real reason for my doing so.”
At this point the man leaned forward. He had pasty skin and small, weary eyes that looked as if spectacles usually magnified them. His spare hair was neatly clipped. There was the faintest showing of prickly stubble on his upper lip. The slight curve of his mouth suggested that he was always in a mood of humorous dissatisfaction.   
“You see,” he said after a while.
And I had seen. There was something too individual, too particular about his person for me to believe that he was the symbol of Evil. With his gray jacket and his one free hand resting on his paunch, he paid a closer resemblance to a fat, conceited bureaucrat who belches indiscreetly in-between appointments.
“Never mind my identity,” he continued a moment later, “what makes you so sure that this place is the place you supposed it to be? Hasn’t it struck you as a bit odd that a realm that lies outside of human experience should correspond so directly to human experience? Honestly, in my mind, this place seems suspiciously similar to the way Dante and B-grade horror movie directors have described it. I always imagined that Hell would be curiously incongruous to human expectation- a series of white, illusionary, cubes leading nowhere, for instance. This place, however, seems to be some sort of crude joke, a perverse pageant, a last tremor of guilt that your dying mind is forcing you to play out.”
I remained silent. Suddenly, I found the rows of dark files that girded the room on bleak, metal shelves disconcerting. I preferred the fire and ash.
“ But,” he continued with a vague wave of his hand, “what I have just said is of little consequence. Assume for a moment, that all your ideas were correct - they could well be. It really is of little importance. What is important, however, is that I myself am convinced of my own identity.”
I looked at the man incredulously.
“Perhaps you do not understand. Let me attempt to explain myself. A short time ago I summoned a person of importance to my office to discuss an urgent matter. For convenience sake, let’s call him a prisoner. Inevitably, the fellow never arrived.
“ Of course, you have to understand that in a realm such as my own a ruler needs what people from back there would call “prisons” and lots of them. More frustrating still, is the endless hierarchy needed to administer these “prisons”. Annoyingly, a request by some minor official takes no time at all. Procedures are skipped over, words smudged and documents conveniently lost. However when the order comes from myself, the whole system is thrown into chaos. Everyone is aware of the nature of such a situation. They know that any ineptitude on their part, no matter how small, will result in the most stringent of punishments. Consequently no one assumes responsibility. Each high official passes responsibility onto the next, underlining some minor clause which stipulates that the responsibility lies with someone else. Eventually some half-wit underling is tricked into assuming full responsibility. Since his occupation is to accept all the orders given to him, he will nod his head whether he understands or not.  In a situation in which my will is to be carried out, he will most definitely not understand. Obviously confused, the underling will verify his orders with some intermediate official, who thanks to his luke warm position has been oblivious of the turmoil. The official, horrified that such important orders should be entrusted to a dolt and even more horrified that he is now hopelessly embroiled, will immediately seek further verification from a higher official.
“ I gave up criticising this strange system. I even gave up trying to understand it. Although nothing can frighten me, it irks me to believe that there are certain things outside of Good that disturb my rule. Even more disconcerting is the fact that since Hell is the absolute negation of Good, this meddlesome problem must have arisen from Evil.
 “ Eventually I decided that it was going against the nature of Hell to be organized. I ordered the destruction of the entire system. My circle of advisors did not take well to this. They urged me to reconsider, to use my better judgment. In a sense I did…. And wiped out nearly half of the meddlesome idiots. The other ones jabbered on about cause and effect for a little longer but soon relented and carried out my orders. A few hours later a sealed envelope arrived from the “prisons”. The message was brief and stated how ‘ the advantages and disadvantages of such a course of action were being seriously considered.’ I was satisfied; at least some progress had been made. A day later I received a manuscript from “prison” officials. It was a very confusing affair. In the end they conceded that their imminent destruction had its advantages and disadvantages and that perhaps the advantages only just outweighed the disadvantages, but only in one sense or maybe two, since there was evidence, sadly none of which could be substantiated and that perhaps the best thing to do in any case was to leave the situation as it was.  I was at a loss for words. Progress had been made yet and at the same time it meant it absolutely nothing. For the first time in my reign I felt impotent. My wishes had been obeyed and yet disobeyed at the same time. Further efforts of mine to undermine the system were ineffectual. The letters I continued to receive from the prisons insinuated everything and yet actually stated very little. It seemed as if this structure of power had the ability to simultaneously accept and deny responsibility - for everything. Every outright attack against the prison officials failed since I was not sure who or what I was attacking. Indeed, after my most violent protest,  I received a frenzied response from prison officials stating that I should hold my temper since they themselves were not even sure who had the final say within their organisation. After this response I grew less determined. My attitude became one of indifference.
“ I began to doubt myself. I had always seen myself as a figurehead of sorts, but up till then I had never thought about just how much there was beneath me. In an instant I was no longer whole. My identity was out of my hands, defiled by masses of space. A million eyes were watching me, both here and back there, from a million different positions. To be sure I was confident about my close circle of orderlies. I knew what they thought of me.  But what about those a station or two beneath them? Could I trust them completely? Were the time-blurred features of those nameless people who relayed my messages as harmless as I once thought?
“ Perhaps, at this point you are confused, Mr. Brenner. Consider; a ruler, no matter of good or evil, is like a tree, they can only spread outwards and communicate themselves through the finest and most peripheral of networks. Taking this into account you will understand that I began to fear that the last people to carry out my will, those who I considered to be the most subservient to me, carried a secret triumph against me in their hearts. Perhaps I thought, I was so distant from them that they viewed me and my authority as a harmless abstraction within a dislocated system.
“It was only then that I realised that even I did not know the full extent of myself. Even as a ruler, I was not complete. Just by existing there was a limitless void surrounding me that I could not hope to own. There was something between myself and others- call it space or distance if you will-that fractured me into a thousand separate shards. I was not fixed to anything. I fluctuated as the spaces between myself and others grew shorter or longer. I became aware that I existed within and without myself, equally.”
Finally, the man leaned back into his seat, silent.
“ I don’t understand the significance of what you’ve just told me,” I said. His words had exhausted me. They had settled in my head like a migraine.
“All I wanted to tell you was that, even for a leader, Hell is as much a certainty as life. Perhaps it is even a continuation of life and not an end.” 
“Do I get to be punished now?” I said in a thick voice.
“Oh, you just have. Goodbye,” he said.
Taking his hint, I got up to leave. As I approached the door I looked over my shoulder. He was no longer seated, but pacing up and down behind his desk. He looked small and harmless. For a moment he resembled one of those stupid toy puppets that I saw as a child. They would oscillate up and down a futile axis.
For the first time I wondered - I wondered what would be waiting for me on the other side of the door.
My punishment had begun. I was alive again.