“A dead egoist is sentenced to Hell and, in one all-in effort, tries to send a message of support to the family he left behind. It doesn’t end well, not that it would.”

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Lukas Hassic was an asshole in life, and when he died, he went to Hell. One afternoon, when he was all by himself, he suffered a massive heart attack in his office gym. A soothing voice recited affirmations from his portable speaker, as he lay on his back on the cold hardwood floor next to his weight bench, exacerbating the chills he felt through the sweat that had seeped through his t-shirt.

It was not Luke’s intention to damn his soul – so could say anyone – and his first thoughts out-loud in front of Saint Peter weren’t to ask of the wife and two children left behind in his wake, but why he needed to be reviewed for entry at all. He hooted & hollered and raised a stink at the front of the line before the closed doors of Heaven and its gatekeeper, making sure everyone behind him could hear: he prayed every night with his family; he made sure to work hard in his thirty-four years of painting homes for a corporation; he consciously attempted to remain nonjudgmental, pushing up the people around him; and he canvassed every year for Jeans Day. There was more, but it just didn’t make any sense to him why there was any question he shouldn’t be sanctified.

Lately, Peter had been binging “Judy Justice” on Paradise’s on-demand service – which contained every episode of every court show ever – and he was curt and to-the-point with Luke: he was fake.

“Well that’s not fair.”

“Be quiet! I’m speaking!” The ground in the four-feet around them began to shake under the tremor of Peter’s voice. As quickly as they were needed, flashes of moments Luke had fogged with his own narcissism played before him as clearly as if they had just happened: moments that, when they are reflected on for what they are, temporarily break a man’s defences in their afterglow.

The brief silence that followed was disrupted by Peter, who enjoyed the privilege of calling Luke “a piece of shit” without repercussion, said goodbye, and then pulled a wooden lever to his side that disappeared into the clouds underneath him, triggering a mechanical system which opened a trap door beneath where the answerable stood, sending Luke plummeting towards the depths of the non-denominational Underworld, where the likes of Adolph Hitler, Robert Pickton, and the child molester down the street from you, all reside.

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