“I have been sent by the symbol of Divine Love. Follow me, I have much to show you.”
Those words echoed in my mind. I didn’t know why I chose to follow, just that I felt compelled to do so. The journey through the gates of hell weren’t new. I had been here and stood before Cerberus, though I had never seen the inscription written upon the gates.
“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate“
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.“
I don’t remember crossing Acheron, but I do remember Virgil leading me into the first circle of the abyss; Limbo.
This was where those who did not believe in a God, came to rest. Men and women who weren’t evil or sinful spent their forever in a deficient form of paradise. Destructo Boy wandered hopelessly, hoping to be saved. After all those years of saving people, he was not rewarded.
The second circle is where the proper punishments began; Lust. No thing here gleamed. The carnal malefactors were condemned to be buffeted back and forth by a terrible storm. Lovers like Narcissa Balenciaga, obsessed by their lust, were drifted into self-indulgence, and therefore drift forever in a howling darkness of helpless discomfort.
In the third and fourth circles, both Gluttony and Greed were displayed. The gluttons grovelled in the mud by themselves, sightless and headless, symbolising their cold, selfish and empty lives. It was no surprise to see Luther Grim here.
I saw the horror of wrath on the fifth circle. The wrathful, Vision and Grimskull, fought viciously on the surface of slime whilst the sullen, The Burned Man, lie passively wrathful beneath the water, withdrawn into the black sulkiness of no joy.
The heretics were trapped in flaming tombs upon circle six; heresy. Dr. Death and El Mariachi Muerte could never escape. Their souls died with their body.
Circle seven was for violence. Felix Foley couldn’t escape it. His violence against neighbours and self meant that he suffered eternally, wallowing in the blood of his life. He was immersed in it, boiling forever.
Each member of the Arcadian Censorship Authority found themselves on circle eight; fraud. Corruption, seducers, panderers, flatterers and more. Each one in their own little Bolgia of punishment.
Finally, Virgil led me to the ninth and deepest circle of Hell; treachery,
It is here that I was told to take my place and stand perpetual guard inside the well-pit, my legs embedded in the banks of the ninth circle.
When I turned on the people of Arcadia and trapped them inside my Mortuary, I committed a sin of treachery that upon my end I would be punished for.
And when his hat manifested and my clothes became his, I saw what was in fact the new, born of the old.
A Ferryman. A duty that once belonged to me.
His smile tortures me to this day, as I stand guard in the ninth circle of hell for eternity.
“My task was that once you met your end, I brought you here, Tombstone.”
“And met your end, you did.”
“I have sent you on your way.”