Three Weeks in the Cellar - Prologue

Prologue

“Where do you see yourself in 500 years time?” says Mephistopheles. He leans back in his chair and looks directly at me. Satan, who is sat next to him across the table and has been looking out of the window at the river Acheron below, picking at a fingernail, turns and looks, too. This is my big moment.
I’m prepared. In careers at school we have been working on interviews. I know they always ask this question.

I think about Hell a lot.

When I am alone. When I dream. When I am awake. This is where I go. Sitting in my own room at home or in the Isolation Room at school where I’m sent for ‘disruptive’ behaviour, I re-fashion Hell in my head. Each time, building on my previous visit. I know Hell better than I could ever know myself. I am slowly, carefully, oh so carefully, building my own version, my own Inferno, like a cathedral, in my imagination. It is a place of perfect violence. And I have spent many years on its construction, fashioning its stormy landscapes and brutal chambers in my mind like some deranged architect. My history teacher at school, Mr Pulley, said at parents’ evening that I have a uniquely powerful imagination and that daydreaming is one of my biggest strengths, but I don’t think he meant it as a compliment. Sometimes, though, I wish I could think of other things.
In Hell there are nine circles. Each one contains its own sinners and different torments. Owing to lack of space, many of the torments have been industrialised. I’ve brought Hell up to date. The whole complex is mainly a huge factory system, regulated by ever growing tiers of bureaucracy.
My Hell is a full-frontal assault on all the senses. There’s the constant pumping of pistons, the spinning of wheels, giant cogs turning slowly, gears grinding, shovelling stokers feeding the hungry mouths of vast furnaces, fires everywhere, and red firelight casting grotesque shadows of demons’ wings on colossal subterranean walls. Massive turbines pump air and gas to keep the fires burning eternally.
Several huge factories are dedicated to paper making. Great vats of boiling pulp are stirred by naked men wielding enormous wooden spoons. If the men bend too far forward and plunge accidentally into the vats, they are left to scald and burn, bubble and melt, adding ‘texture’ to the paper. There is no ‘health and safety’ in Hell. Replacements arrive promptly. Sometimes, they too fall in as they attempt to reach and recover the floating spoons with a hook provided by the management.
Thousands of ledgers are bound every day and sent to the hundreds of acres of office space where row after row of dusty scriveners and clerks, heads down at their desks, record every sinful thought and deed without end, without rest. Quill pens, gripped by black inky fingers scratch across page after page of rough paper. Not the cushy desk job you might think. See the contorted and grotesque bones in their hands, the swollen joints and arthritic knuckles. This work soon provokes the pain of writer’s cramp, but multiplied ten-thousand fold without relief.
Countless thin-haired servants, wasted faces, cheekbones practically bursting through papery skin which has not seen the light of day for over a thousand years, their backs permanently bent, fill inkwells of white porcelain all day long. Millions of flickering gas flames, like orange rose petals, one fixed to each desk, cast shifting shadows which stretch across the gaps between them as if each worker is reaching for the throat of the one in front, pressing him into his seat.
Each soul now has its own file containing a record of all the sins, spiritual or physical, committed in its life. Everything is documented. These are stored on vast shelves made of wood as dry as bone, covered in the thick undisturbed dust from the skin of millions of flayed sinners which has drifted through the windows and settled there. Thousands of pullers or pickers tread silently like lost wraiths in the starved half-light retrieving or returning the files without end, without rest. The scale of the operation takes your breath away.
Beneath these huge office blocks built of blood-red brick in Victorian times is an endless industrial underground of iron pipe work, forged in huge furnaces. Massive bellows and vents pump in or extract foul air every hour of every day.
Most of the damned are now tormented in gigantic sheds, like battery chickens.
And then there’s the noise. The hissing and wheezing and groaning and rattling of machinery. The crying and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth of the restless, tormented damned overwhelms your ears and is enough of itself to send you reeling into madness, clutching the sides of your head.
My counsellor doesn’t know about this. How much time I spend here. She’d see it as an obsession, a mania. But it’s not irrational to be prepared. And if I end up here, I’ll be prepared. This is my contingency plan – in case the unexpected happens and I find myself suddenly, unexpectedly, dead.
And consigned to Hell.
You could almost say I want to come here. Because there’s something I have to do.
It’s part of the plan. I’m not going to go quietly as if someone has branded the word ‘victim’ across my forehead. No way. When I’m here, I will first achieve some position of responsibility – like a prefect or something, maybe volunteer to help out. From there, I aim to work my way through the ranks. My ultimate goal, though, is to become chief designer of torments. As soon as I have enough experience, I will apply for the post. I am confident that my diligence and track record will, at the very least, secure an interview. And Mrs Constant, my careers adviser, has told me exactly what I need to do.
Whatever happens, I’ll be ready.

On the table between us sits a feast of summer fruits.
“Grape?” says Mephistopheles. He wants to put me at my ease.
Mephistopheles’ eyes are blue, so pale, they are almost milky. His suit jacket rests on the back of his chair. He has on a white, freshly ironed, short-sleeved shirt. A tie of dark red, blood red, slightly loose, sits around his neck. The top button of his shirt is undone. His left forearm sports an elaborate gothic cross entwined with serpents. There are dark rings under his eyes, eyes that smile, but are utterly without pity. He has long, elegant fingers and, strangely, manicured nails. His skin is as white as porcelain. Here there is no sunlight. He has blonde hair with hints of silver. Full lips. His handsome, chiselled looks are a shock.
He has charisma, my Mephistopheles.
I am not allowed to say anything about Satan. (He wasn’t at all happy with his portrayal by Milton in ‘Paradise Lost.’ “Do you recall that moment where he has me trying to rally the fallen angels for one last attempt to overthrow the Kingdom of Heaven and I ask who’s with me and they all just stand around looking at their feet? Humiliating. That’s not how it was. Nothing like”).

To assist my application, I have produced a leaflet which provides useful information about Hell including some historical background, descriptions of some of the more interesting and ingenious torments on offer, lists of the most important officials and their jobs, and assorted helpful maps and diagrams.
I pass the leaflet across the table. Satan takes it, glances at it and passes it on to Mephistopheles. “You’ve clearly done your homework.”
“I thought we could hand one to new arrivals. What do you call them? Sinners?”
“Guests.” He grins, chuckles a little. Mephistopheles smiles at the joke. “Customers, recently. They’re now ‘clients’ in Heaven, I’m told,” says Satan with just a hint of sourness.
“A map?” says Mephistopheles. “No one ever has any trouble finding their way here.” He hands the leaflet back, politely. “I don’t think so,” he says.
“We’ve been established many years; we don’t need to provide information,” says Satan.
“Like a thriving family business,” adds Mephistopheles, his face breaking into a beaming smile. He has the gaze of a confident man, a gaze that you feel all over. But his grin falls from his face like a mask removed when Satan gives him a stern glance.
“I’m good on organisation and administration, but imagination is my real strength.” I add, hastily. They are not impressed by my leaflet.
The problem is that Hell’s organisational systems haven’t kept up with the times.
“God’s got all the newest computer technology and he’s keeping hold of it,” Satan is saying. “At St Peter’s Gate, souls now arrive by elevator. St Peter himself, recently issued with a computer for the top of his lap, ticks you off on arrival and takes your photograph for their digi-records.” This clearly rankles with Satan who still has to rely on Charon and his patched-up ferryboat and an antiquated tally system operated by Minos who himself has seen better days. The rumour that St Peter, who is no longer the youngest of archangels, will soon be receiving a motability scooter, has not gone down too well, either.
“All our senior posts are filled by men who were educated before the time of Galileo,” he continues by way of explanation. “They know all about Aquinas and the Gnostics, but double entry bookkeeping and modern day accounting methods are a mystery to them. We have to modernise.”
“It’s pleasing to us to see the weaker sex breaking through into administration and management,” adds Mephistopheles, exuding sincerity. “We’ve become convinced that there’s a need for further change. To be frank, I’ve seen your work and I admire your ideas. We like what you have to offer.”
I wonder if I should pick him up on his unreconstructed use of the phrase ‘weaker sex’ but decide to let it pass. After all, apart from the misstep with the leaflet, things are going well.

Satan is explaining how there may be an opening for an assistant to Minos. “He sometimes makes mistakes,” he says. I’ve met Minos. Once the authorities have been impressed enough to give you your first position of responsibility, you are placed on a short induction course and introduced to Senior Leaders. Minos is one of the most powerful. He’s ill-tempered, half- human, half-serpent and blind. By him your fate in Hell will be decided. He smells your sins, then wraps his serpent’s tail around himself to signify the circle of Hell most suitable before placing you on his Wheel of Torture which sends you to your allocated circle.
“He was boiled to death by Daedalus, you know,” says Satan.
“Which explains why he’s so grumpy,” adds Mephistopheles.
“The trouble is, he’s losing his sense of smell,” says Satan.
This is the reason I am here. There’s something I have to do, someone I have to find.
I need this job.
“It’s important that all souls are sent to the right place,” I find myself saying. “After all, we’re talking about eternity here. Imagine someone has been murdered with no time to confess and be absolved of his sins. They might be dispatched in a hurry, to one place or another and a mistake made. I’ve worked in Reception, I know it can happen.” Perhaps some sliver of goodness or love in a fold of their soul has been overlooked and they have been mistakenly plunged into eternal torment.
“That sounds a little like a conscience to me,” says Mephistopheles. “We’re not usually too worried about individuals…” On the wall behind him is a plaque which celebrates an ‘Investors in People’ award.
“It’s not,” I reply, perhaps too quickly. I have to be careful. “It’s a desire for order, a foolproof system.” They both seem pleased by this response. “We need accurate records of where everyone is. When and if they are moved. And there need to be special tortures for those who make mistakes. I can help with those,” I say.

In the lowest or ninth circle of Hell, where he was hurled by God, Satan is trapped up to his waist in ice. His huge wings beat ceaselessly causing terrible winds and storms. At the same time, he’s here with me - in interview room no. 2. I haven’t yet worked out how he does this, what form of enchantment can achieve the impossible.
Satan wants to know about my plans for new torments.
“OK What’ve you got?” he says.
So I tell him.

They’re inside, deliberating. I’m out on the first floor balcony having a calming cigarette, waiting to hear their decision. Down below, the land falls away to the mighty Acheron, river of pain. Here it’s as wide as the Thames at Greenwich. Charon, Son of Nyx and Erebus, is ferrying. His lank grey hair and soiled, unkempt beard are matted with sweat. His jowly flesh hangs from his skull under a greasy cowl. He looks tired, worn out. He hasn’t had a day’s rest in two thousand years. Dad would say he should’ve joined a union. His leathery hands are blistered and bleeding, toiling hard against wave and wind. It’s a slow, laborious process plying his ferryman’s pole.
He ties his empty boat to a stake. The dead line up and begin to shuffle on, wailing and cursing and tearing their hair. He beats them with his oar, crying “Come on, come on,” impatiently, his eyes flashing fire. He is a man quickly moved to anger. Only Hercules has ever had the front to take him on. Those who cannot pay the fee are told that they must wait for a hundred years. They turn away, quietly weeping in despair and lie farther off on the bank by the water’s edge.
I don’t know how much souls weigh but his boat, crowded, lies low in the water. The devil only knows why it doesn’t sink. Even a small outboard motor of the most basic kind would turn his life around, I think.
Hell is in crisis. They need new ideas. And there’s a lack of space. They need more torments of the mind. I can help.

The door behind me opens slightly. I flick my cigarette over the balcony, push a wisp of hair behind my ear, smooth my skirt.
It’s Mephistopheles. He smiles.