The one you build for yourself

Someone asked if I were Satan and I had to design hell....

    You die, the light at the end of the tunnel is a single bulb above a door. You open the door and there is a little landing to some stairs. Everything is white marble and the walls themselves seem to be generating the soft glow. It's warm, it's an end, it should feel happy, but it's just numb. There's a stairway, you start walking it, on top of every flight is a landing. You can see every year of your life like this.

    Walking around the entire landing, looking into pictures, bring back all your memories. Every warm hug, every big smile, all your happy is held in these pictures and you can enjoy these memories as many times as you wish. You move on to the next year and the next, you realize that the landings below are no longer accessible. You can only move forward.

    You reach the top, the last year. It's filled with all the best memories in your life. Including the walk up the stairs. There's one more door, it has to be the after life, you open it and expect to see your friends and family, pets and acquaintances, everybody who is gone. No, it's a creaky old stairway going down. The light in the top of the staircase begins to fade. Something tells you that you have to go on or be trapped in the dimming room forever. So you go on, starting down.

    You can't even lift your elbows to shoulder height, the width of the stairway is too narrow. The door closes behind you. The stairs creak beneath you, they are chewed and yellowing wood. You can feel them give a little as you step down onto them. The light behind you keeps fading and pushing you forward. Finally, a stone floor and the staircase opens into a damp, darkened room. These pictures don't need to be looked at, they're talking to you.

    It's the last year of your life, all the worst things. Saved for you to recall in intimate detail. Depression, anger, and sadness leak out from these frames and chill your feet. You can feel your age again. This room stretches on, it's a chamber lined with yours and everybody who said, or even thought, anything about you. You have to trudge this chamber to the next stair case.

    An entire lifetime of everything that's worst, everything everybody has ever said about you behind your back. The worst things you have done or not done. All played out for you, some of those chambers seemed to go on for ages. You reach the last chamber. Your first year of life. In this one, you hear the hopes for your entire life played out for you. People that always hoped you the best, you seen how you repaid all their love. You can hear all their disappointment with every step in this last desolate chamber. Finally, another door.

    Will whoever put yourself in this hell ever let you go? The question echoes itself, millions of memories and people laugh and remind you that you put yourself there. You built these halls with your every breath, your every thought. You are walking up to the last door and see a small, shoddy table. There is a worn and torn book laying there.

    The book called is labeled 'reincarnation'. Opening the pages, entire lifetimes of your misdeeds are poured into your head. The cacophony of all those lives are roaring into you. You've been at that door before, flipping through the book, you see all these names that are familiar. They are all yours. With your back against the wall, looking back the the dark halls, it is up to you.

    You sit and listen to the chambers, its dark and disappointing mourn doesn't sound like anything. Still, you can make out everything they echo to you. The book is also speaking to you, it's voice is a warbling stream of thousands of voices in all different kinds of languages. You sit in the dark listening to these while contemplating signing the book one more time.

Author's Note

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1g38x5/if_you_were_satan_how_would_you_design_hell/

Reviews

[Norma M Sutton]

I like this. In this bit did you start with one thought and change midstream?

The book called is labeled 'reincarnation'.