As you die, you wake up in a fiery place. You quickly realize you’re in hell. You ask the next demon why you are there, as you lived a very good life. “You’re not being punished”, he says. “You are the punishment.”
You look back on your life to see why this would be the case and can’t seem to understand. You talk very little so you wouldn’t be annoying, you are too weak to physically hurt anyone, and you haven’t made too many stupid decision that people would cringe at. There’s nothing that explains why you are the punishment.
You ask the demon why and you are the one and they answer, “You will have to find out on your own time.” He fades into red of the flames before you can ask anything else.
You’re still confused but decide to just figure it out later. As you walk through the many places and layers of hell, you see anguished faces, sweat and blood and burn on their bodies. Part of you feels bad for them but part of you is glad that that isn’t you and that you don’t have to do anything.
While exploring you see more pained expressions and you start seeing envy on their faces. In some ways there is something to envy, you didn’t have to do anything, you got to sit and watch them suffer. As time went by, you start enjoying the thought of them work and work towards an unreachable goal. Especially since you didn’t have any responsibilities.
Eventually you met Satan and had some deep conversations with him. For some reason, you felt accomplished, like meeting him was a privilege. You were honored to meet him and few others down there has even seen him, let alone talked with him. You were having the best time even.
After what felt like a month, you started to join in on the punishment. Taunting and looking down on the other souls in hell. Taking you food with you when you visit the hungry, wearing precious red jewels when you visit the vain, and sitting down next to the area that the laborers are moving boulders. Every once in a while, you kick pebbles in, you become increasingly bored and decide to toy with whoever is nearby.
Every soul knew about you and every soul hated you. They complained more than usual, and caught the attention of some of the higher up demons. They looked at your behavior for quiet a while, trying to figure something out. You were brought in to talk with Satan again but this time, the look on his face wasn’t pleasant.
“Do you see what you are doing?” his thunderous voice boomed loudly, echoing against the arched hall leading to his throne room.
You replied with a simple “no?” That clearly wasn’t the right way to answer that question because his face twisted with disgust.
“Look at your action! Compare them to how you were when you first started here!” His voice rattled you to the core, causing you to tremble and flinch away.
You start stuttering to defend yourself but then stop when you realize how much you changed. You used to be sweet but now you’re tormenting other souls, souls just like you, souls that had lives, souls that had lovers and families, souls that although they went to hell, where still people. You felt like these actions of yours were familiar and tryed to think further back than you did when you first how here. You get as far back as middle school, you stop and try to remember those times. You were bored and had nothing to do so you picked on some of the kids you knew. You kicked rocks at them, you stole their lunch money, you made them do your work, you wore expensive watches and clothes around them, and you mocked and taunted them.
Your head hangs low as you are lead out of the room. you now realize that you were not the punishment after all, you were the punished but you needed to know why you were being punished to accept the punishment and this was how they did it. The punishment felt worse now that you had just had a long time to enjoy yourself. You worked hard towards the same unreachable goal for eternity. Your hands were bloodied and bruised, your body was covered in dirt, blood and sweat or tears. A new soul entered every once in a while and many knew why they were there.
After a while, another soul came in looking confused and asked a demon, “why am I here? I lived a good life.” When you look at her, you see that it wasn’t envy on the faces that you saw, it was pity. Everyone knew how it would end.
The demon responds with “you are not being punished, you are the punishment.”
