If I have to read one more anti-vaccination manifesto, sift through one more comment-section of a post about flat-earth… I’d kill myself if it was possible.

…

I sat amongst three strangers suffocating from lack of personal space. The Volkswagen Beetle was a very strange choice for this trip, but maybe that was intentional. We were cramped and burning from the inside out. I was sweating my ass off; every adjustment I made for comfort left an outline of sweat from whatever part I adjusted. I didn’t know who owned the car but I already felt compelled to apologize for the swamp filling the seat.

            I suffered in silence. Nobody spoke a word since we got in the car sometime ago–I couldn’t really remember when… or where from. The windows were tinted black from the inside so we couldn’t see anything beyond the cage. All I could focus on was the heat baking my brain.

            “Can somebody please turn up the fucking A/C. Please?” Said the woman to my left. I turned to her. She was stunning, and scowling.

            “A/C’s broke kid. Already tried.” Said the man in the front seat. He was dressed in a suit, probably suffering the most. “We’re all burning up. Deal with it.” He added.

            “Easy for you to say with all that legroom up there mister bigshot. Why don’t you switch seats with me since you’re so good at dealing with shit?” She shouted. She had one of those voices that made you wish you were deaf. I could deal with that just to save my nerves from the shrill.

            “I’m okay up here love, and I’m sure you’ll be fine back there.” He said. Then he stretched out his legs and let out a great yawn.

            “Fuck you.” Was all she said.

            We sat in silence for a while longer after that. The last person in the car seemed to be content with that. Through my peripheral I got a pretty good idea of what he looked like. He had long black hair that hung over his eyes, and he was dressed in ragged clothes, torn jeans and an old shirt. He looked very young.

            “Hey goth-boy.” Said the woman. He kept looking forward. “I know you know I’m talking to you. You’re the only one in here that looks like they listen to My Chemical Romance before bed.” Still nothing. “I bet you hate your parents don’t you.” She was relentless alright.

            “Just leave him alone.” I said finally. She set her sights on me like a wild dog. Let’s see how fast I regret this…

            “Oh yeah fucker? And what’s your name?”

            “I’m David.” I said. I avoided eye contact.

            “Sure is nice to meet you David. You’re sweating balls…” She remarked, “You’re probably self conscious about how bad you smell.” I took in a deep breath (through my nose) as a clandestine test of my scent. It was bad. I wondered how long I’d been emanating the smell of sweaty skin. It must be everyone who smells. I thought to myself. It can’t just be me.

“You smell too.” I said back. She was quick to respond.

“I wish I could smell myself… all any of us can smell is your dirty ass. And don’t think nobody noticed you smelling yourself; we all noticed. You didn’t have to take that deep a breath to get an idea of how much you smell like a wet locker room.” She said, sounding like she could go on forever. I relinquished my stake in shutting her up and opted to ignore her, so long as my self-esteem would hold.

She continued rattling off remarks about my smell and anything else she could attack. I continued to ignore her. Finally she just said “Pussy…” and turned her sharp eyes elsewhere.

“What’s your name honey?” Said the man in the suit.

“What the fuck’s it to you?” She responded.

“You remind me of my ex-wife. It would be funny if you shared a name.” He said. “She was a raucous bitch if you were wondering, but I’m sure you put that together yourself.” My ears perked. The man spoke with confidence, and he looked like a level ninety-nine asshole. It’s always entertaining to watch mutually assured destruction personified.

She jumped from her seat to the front. She had heels on that dug into my stomach as she pounced on the man. I would’ve believed the scene was Hell itself if I was religiously inclined.

            “Idiots…” Said the quiet boy aloud.

            “Right? It’s bad enough sitting in this car. The least we could do is get along eh?” I said to him. “I’d just ignore her. Her words don’t mean anything.” He kept his gaze fixed on the windows. “You doing okay?” I asked.

            “I wasn’t really talking to you when I said that.” He said. I couldn’t make a damn connection in this car, and this kid was probably my last hope. Better to turn to the show than to make friends I suppose.

            The woman was winning. She had the man in the suit in a headlock while he struggled to slap her off. I don’t know what else I expected to be honest. I could’ve guessed this trip would devolve into that lady whooping somebody's ass. I was just glad it wasn’t me. She was really starting to fuck him up; it was a horrific scene I couldn’t stop watching. I realized she was probably gonna kill him if nobody stepped in. The ass beating transcended the level of a schoolyard tussle and I realized I was watching a man being beaten to death. It got to a point where he gave up and she was bashing his head in repeatedly with maniacally wide eyes.

            “WHY. WON’T. YOU. DIE. MOTHERFUCKER.” She screamed.

            Eventually she jumped back into her seat. She was hyperventilating, and covered in blood. The man didn’t move much but I saw he was breathing. How did he survive that onslaught? … What the fuck is going on here? My musings didn’t last long before another interruption.

            There were blank screens in front of everyone; they suddenly illuminated. Sequences of words flashed across my eyes.

            The following message is brought to you by Facebook. Special thanks to Facebook for kindly providing the information vital to our work. ~Underworld Lodging Co. Comic Sans… Really? I thought to myself. Who uses Comic Sans in a professional setting…?

            Welcome to Hell! Flashed across everyone’s screens. “Ha!” exclaimed the man in the suit. I wasn’t laughing. My stomach felt heavy, like I ate a pile of stones that stretched its bottom to the thinnest membrane. I heard stories before about travelers lost in the desert, and the heat makes them go crazy. Maybe my fried brain was extra gullible, but this didn’t feel like a gag. Am I dead? My imagination ran back over all of the bad things I did in my life. I was just a normal guy.

            You’re probably thinking about all the sins you’ve committed in your life… Read the screen. Thanks to our partnership with Facebook we are able to compile everything bad thing you’ve ever done into a numerically valued list that will print out for you shortly.

            A printer whirred below the screen and the pages dropped into my lap one by one. Everyone was silent as we thumbed through our lists:

* Stole a Reese’s from Stop & Shop: 500 points (x7)

* Cheated on significant other: 4,000 points (x3)

* Farting in public and pretending it wasn’t you: 250 points (x67)

* Gossip: 10 points (x652)

* Lied: 100 points (x873)

* Took shoes off on an airplane: 80 points (x60)

* Finishing a toilet paper roll and not changing it: 10 points (x150)

* Asked a woman how far along she was in a pregnancy, but she wasn’t pregnant: 600 points (x7)

* Didn’t tip waiter: 1,000 points (x40)

* Littered: 400 points (x145)

            The list was hundreds of pages long. Filled with things I did every day.

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“Since when is pineapple on pizza a sin? Sounds like discrimination to me…” Said the woman. “This is bullshit.”

            “Wasn’t on my list… freak.” I said to avenge my pride. She snapped back to me.

            “Don’t think I won’t fuck you up too.” She said. I cowered back to my list.

            We discussed all the things we did that we didn’t think made us deserving of an eternity in Hell. Then the car stopped and the doors swung open. We were in an bustling parking garage with hundreds of identical cars that had other poor souls being ushered into the building. Our own usher waved us on through the chaos and through a sliding door that led to an all white, modern office lobby. Everything was white except for the blue glow emanating from a sign above the reception desk. Of course, it was the logo for none other than Facebook Inc. and in smaller letters below Passage to Hell Division. Our usher sat us down in a line of four empty chairs labeled with our names. It was becoming more real with every strange event. I’m really going to hell I thought, I knew I should’ve gone to church more.

            The man in the suit had made a miraculous recovery from his beating, I chalked that up to him being dead already. He almost immediately left his chair and approached the desk. I overheard his conversation:

            “Hey buddy, do you know who I am?” He asked the receptionist. I wondered how many times the use of that greeting appeared on his sin-list. The receptionist shook his head, he was on the phone and it looked more important than the man in the suit. He grabbed the phone from the receptionist’s hand and slammed it on the hook. “Listen here pal, My name is Charles Koch and I’ve got a lot of money.” The receptionist wasn’t impressed. He rolled his eyes.

            “Sir would you please go back to your seat, a representative will see you shortly.” Charles Koch didn’t like that.

            “I want to talk to Mark Zuckerberg!” He shouted. “He knows who I am, we went out hunting lions in 2011.” Another check on his sin-list surely. “If I could talk to him for ten minutes I’m sure I could get out of here and out of your hair.” Again the receptionist rolled his eyes.

            “Sir, Facebook is in a partnership with Hell but Mr. Zuckerberg doesn’t oversee anything having to do with this division. He has far more important things to do. Business here still runs through the Devil, and he’s far too busy to have a face-to-face with you either. You’ll have to take a seat and wait your turn like everyone else.” I guess the idea of being wealthy and ending up in Hell like all the poor assholes didn’t sit well with Charles because next thing I knew he was halfway over the desk with his hands clasped around the receptionist’s neck.

            “Listen you little bastard you’re gonna get me a meeting with Zuckerberg or you’re going to be sorry.” Two security guards moved in quickly and dragged Charles away from reception and through a door away from the room. The guards looked like regular people, they must’ve been on Facebook’s payroll.

            We waited there a while longer. After a while I realized the music playing in the room was a 24/7 channel for Christmas music. Last I remembered it was March on Earth. I had to get the fuck out of there. Finally my name was called and I was ushered into a small office behind the reception area. I was sat across from a woman who was looking through a folder with my name on it. I sat for about five minutes while she looked over my file and she hadn’t said a single word to me. I couldn’t wait any longer and finally asked the question that had been burning in my mind.

            “So Facebook has been Hell this whole time?” The woman sighed and dropped my file on the table.

            “Mr. Paulsen do you know how often I get that question?” I shook my head. “It’s what everyone wants to know. I’ll explain it to you briefly and one time: Hell was a rundown relic of a time thousands of years passed. The Devil had no sense of how a modern business should be run, and harboring damned souls isn’t different from any business on Earth. Old Hell was as inefficient as it was obsolete. So Mr. Zuckerberg bought out a 51% stake and now that Facebook is running the logistics of Hell we get more souls over the threshold faster than ever. We know everything about everyone, so we’re more fit to run the place than the Devil itself.”

            “Wow…” I said. “You really modernized Hell. I guess nothing is sacred anymore. You must be really proud of your work.” She shot me a glare.

            “I’ll have you know I’m a senior marketing supervisor with a masters from Yale’s school of management. I just have to do this shit twice a week until I get important enough to delegate it elsewhere.” She turned her eyes back to my file. “The good news about you is you’ve never committed a mortal sin, just a million of what we classify as everyday sins.” She said. That made my ears perk.

            “Are you saying I can get out of here with a slap on the wrist? Maybe just a few years here?” I asked. She could sense the hope in my voice.

            “Mr. Paulsen you’re here for a reason… You tallied over 65,000 sin points over the course of your 45 years on Earth. Now, you weren’t a menace to the world, but you were an asshole. And we have a place for assholes in Hell too.”

            “So I won’t have to walk across hot coals forever? I won’t have to push a boulder up a hill like Sisyphus? What do I have to do?”  I asked before she raised her hand to stop my questions. Then she crossed her arms and spoke.

            “You’ll get a cubicle and a computer, and you have to spend the rest of eternity on Facebook.” She said. I was elated.

            “I can do that!” I said. “You know how many hours I’ve spent on Facebook? I’ll watch cat videos and basketball highlights… maybe Facebook buying Hell out isn’t so bad after all!” I said.

            “Well it’s not just that–” She said with a smirk on her face. “–you’ll have a never ending, always updating stream of everything Facebook has to offer. Your job is to like what you like and scroll past what you don’t, but you must consume everything.”

            “Okay… so I’m like quality control for all the posts?” I asked. “I guess that’s better than what I thought Hell would be.”

            “Exactly.” She said. “And we’ll have you get started right away.”

…

            I just finished my millionth post.

         Congratulations on consuming your millionth post David! You’re doing a great job. Keep it up! Flashed across my screen.

            I’m fucking tired of comic sans. And I can’t read another post about a soccer mom threatening to hit a kid that slide-tackled her son. A notification blipped on my screen.

            Satan would like to chat.

         I clicked the window to open the chat. Satan was typing.

            Hello David.

         Satan… I wrote.

            David, you’re miserable browsing Facebook… aren’t you?

         I didn’t know it would be this bad… I wrote, I used to like looking at Facebook when it was just my friends but I didn’t realize how insufferable everyone in the world is online

            I know David I know. But I’ll tell you what – You like rock music right?

         Sure I do. I haven’t heard anything but Christmas music for the last eternity.

            LMAO Satan wrote, You don’t know anything about eternity yet but I’ll tell you what. All your favorite bands are in Hell with me (the Christian mothers against rock n’ roll were right) All you have to do is come down here and you’ll get all the free concerts you want!

         I pushed my chair back and sighed, running my fingers through my hair. And I know what you’re thinking. Only a complete moron would go to hell for some free concerts. But don’t forget I was a complete moron who had just consumed a million Facebook posts without a break.

            I stumbled out of my cubicle. Nobody even tried to stop me though, I guessed this was always an option. Finally I found the door to the room I was in on my first day.

            “What are you doing in here!?” The receptionist shrieked as I slammed the door open. She looked older, but apparently hadn’t yet become important enough to not be doing this part of her job. She picked up her phone from the desk, probably to call security. Though she just held it without making a call once she noticed I meant no harm. I stared at her, realizing it was the first time in so long that I wasn’t looking at a screen. Then she spoke.

            “What are you doing away from your station?” She demanded. “We own you.”

I was defeated, and sounded nothing like I used to. Still I had one last desire.

            “Just send me to real Hell.” I pleaded. “The one with Hitler and Charles Manson. That’s all I want.”

            She looked at me like I was crazy, like I just willingly asked to be sent to Hell. Then she brought the phone to her ear and dialed.