It was a strange scene, to be sure. Hugh Gusman, the father of three and insistent-wearer of jean shorts, recently found his soul in the Unholy Abyss last Thursday after experiencing death: a not-uncommon way to die. Contrary to the ashes and darkness pervading the atmosphere, however, Gusman’s expression – reminiscent of his vomit-yellow knee socks – remained as bright as the embers cresting on the breeze of the screaming damned.
“It’s just a little warm down here,” Gusman said about his new infernal bearings in the depths of the underworld. “The heat would be killer, but I’m already dead!”
Gusman was having dinner with his family the night his soul descended. According to him, they were having pizza when one of his children hyperbolically blessed the food’s existence.
“Just remember the difference between Jesus and pizza, kids,” Gusman was compelled to respond. “Jesus can’t be topped!” Then, while guffawing at his own joke, a piece of pepperoni became lodged in Gusman’s throat. His children watched, paralyzed in horror, as Gusman pulled off a combination of hysterical choking and laughing until he slipped into unconsciousness and suffocated before his children or paramedics could revive him.
“Yep, that’s how that went,” Gusman said conversationally. “What a way to go, huh?”
Now dead, Gusman seems to be no less “alive” than when he was living. In fact, his face probably held a smile wider than the one on his novelty t-shirt as he greeted cheerfully his cursed companions in limbo. Normally a dreary place pervaded by desolace and misery, hell hath found a habitant who doesn’t seem to find it too uncomfortable.
“I was expecting fire and brimstone, all that conflated ‘purgatory,’ hubbub,” Gusman said. “And… well, there is fire and brimstone – everywhere, really – but color me purple when I started harmonizing with the demons singing fables of sin and nightmares! Ignoring the haunted screeching and visions, it’s all not that bad once you get used to it.”
Topically Gusman’s mention of purple likely alludes to the approximate color of his face as he choked to death.
“It’s kind of strange to reflect on now that I’m dead, actually,” Gusman pondered. “Do you know how weird it is to think about consciousness after you’re dead? It sure feels weird. What facilitates my ability to think and talk and feel? How do I know what I’m perceiving is real, or even by what standards? To what extent? What is even my anatomy right now?” Gusman took a moment to glance off into space before shrugging. “Eh, this Cartesian ontology is too complex for a humor piece.”
“Anyway,” Gusman continued, shrugging off the antipodal existentialism, “at first, I didn’t think my savagely spartan wordplay was enough to toss me in the Pit, but apparently so.”
Indeed: according to an exasperated Jesus, breaking the Third Commandment doesn’t usually result in such severe punishment. However, commonly forgotten is a stipulation that exacerbates taking the Lord’s name in vain: puns.
Gusman had a final audience with the Lucifer himself before he was sent through the gates into the deeper concentres. There, by unheavenly procedure, he had one last chance to repent and mitigate his holy pun-ishment in front of the fallen angel.
“I state my name to be Hugh Gusman,” he said in his introduction, before he grinned like he was hammering a nail into a (second) coffin. “But my friends sometimes called me Hugh-Man-Gus.”
Lucifer’s eyes glazed over. From his nefarious throne, even the devil himself looked down upon the man with pity. “There is no hope for this man,” Satan intoned mournfully. “He is a lost cause.”
Unrepentant, Gusman was sent away to Charon, boatman of the underworld, to be ferried him along with other sinners across the Acheron and through the gates of hell. Even then, witnesses in purgatory reported there to be no change in his good humor.
“Someone give that scarecrow an award,” Gusman said upon sight of a scarecrow in the bleak lands of limbo, reminiscent of the meadows in Asphodel. “He’s out-standing in his field!”
Charon sighed but refrained from hitting him with his oar. Reportedly, he only does that to reluctant sinners.
Written by Pete Muzawla, Contributor