My hope really does spring eternal; but, darn it, Leonard isn't listening.

By now, Archer has sprung Patterson. Babette joins them and the trio is already strolling toward the fiery horizon amid screams and swarms of black houseflies. Patterson offers his hand to steady Babette on her high heels. Archer sneers, but it might just be the pin lanced through his cheek.

Even as I continue to talk, expounding on my theory about Xanax addiction being caused by demonic possession, Leonard of the lovely brown eyes throws open his cell door and bolts after the vanishing hikers. My last only new friend in Hell, Leonard's scrambling over the terrain of aged Gummi Bears and smoldering coal. His head swiveling, on the lookout for possible demons, he's calling, "Wait!

Wait up!" Rushing after the fading blue point of Archer's Mohawk hair.

When all four of them are almost gone, reduced by distance to mere rule-breaking dots in the landscape of bubbling poop and discarded Jujubes, only then do I open my own cell door and take my first forbidden Bass Weejun steps in their pursuit.

VII.

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Like so many tourists, we've embarked on our little walkabout to explore Hell. We take note of the general topography. We view a few interesting landmarks. And I'm prompted to make a small confession.

The group of us skirted around the margin of the flaky, greasy Dandruff Desert, where scorching winds as hot as a billion hair dryers blow the scabs of dead skin into drifts as tall as the Matterhorn. We traipsed past the Great Plains of Broken Glass. After a fair trek, we stood on a bluff of volcanic cinders overlooking a vast pale ocean which stretched to the horizon. No wave or ripple disturbed its opalescent surface: a shade of soiled ivory similar to the scuffed faux leather of Babette's counterfeit Manolo Blahnik shoes.

Even as we watch, the viscous tide composed of this off-white ooze seems to rise and consume a finger's width of the ashy, cindery beach. So thick is the corrupt liquid that it appears more to roll up the shoreline than to wash ashore as this flood tide creeps in. Apparently, on this particular ocean, the tide never ebbs and is always flowing, always a rising flood tide.

"Check it out," Archer says, and waves one leather-jacketed arm in a wide arc to frame the view. "Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the Great Ocean of Wasted Sperm...."

All ejaculate, according to Archer, expelled in masturbatory emissions over the course of human history, at least since Onan—it all trickles down to accumulate here. Likewise, he explains, all bloodshed on Earth trickles down and collects in Hell. All tears. Every spit gob spit on the ground ends up hereabouts.

"Since the introduction of VHS tapes and the Internet," Archer says, "this ocean has been rising at record rates."

I think of my Papadaddy Ben and shudder. To repeat, Long Story.

In Hell, porn is creating an effect equivalent to that of global warming on earth.

The group of us take a step backward, away from the rising, shimmering ooze.

"Now that this twerp is dead," Patterson says, as he cuffs Leonard on the back of the head, "maybe the ol' sperm sea won't be filling up so fast."

Leonard rubs his own scalp, wincing, and says, "Don't look now, Patterson, but I think I can see some of your ball juice floating out there."

Looking at Babette, Archer licks his tongue around his lips and says, "One of these days we're going to be up to our eyeballs...."

Babette looks at the diamond ring on my finger.

Archer, still ogling her, says, "Hey, Babs, you ever been up to your foxy eyes in hot sperm?"

And pivoting on one scuffed heel, Babette says, "Back off, Sid Vicious. I'm not your Nancy Spungen." Waving for us to follow her, fluttering her white-painted fingernails, Babette looks at Patterson in his football jersey and says, "It's your turn. Now you show us someplace interesting."

Patterson swallows, shrugs his shoulders, and says, "You guys want to see the Swamp of Partial-birth Abortions?"

We, the rest of us, all shake our heads, No. Slowly. In unison, for a long time, no, no, no. Definitely not.

As Babette strides away from the Ocean of Wasted Sperm, Patterson trots to catch up with her. The pair of them link arms, walking together. The team captain and the head cheerleader. The rest of us, Leonard and Archer and I, follow a few steps behind.

To be honest, I keep wishing we could all talk. Chew the fat. And, yes, I know that wishing is another symptom of hope, but I can't help it. As we amble along, trudging over steaming brimstone beds of sulfur and coal, I want to ask if anyone else feels an intense sense of shame. By dying, do they feel as if they've disappointed everyone who ever bothered to love them? After all the effort that so many people made to raise them, to feed and teach them, do Archer or Leonard or Babette feel a crushing sense of having failed their loved ones? Do they worry that dying constitutes the biggest sin they could possibly commit? Have they considered the possibility that, by dying, each of us has generated pain and sorrow which our survivors must suffer for the remainder of their lives?

In dying—worse than flunking a grade in school, or getting arrested, or knocking up some prom date—perhaps we've majorly, irreversibly fucked up.

But nobody brings up the subject, so I don't either.

If you asked my mom, she'd tell you that I've always been a little coward. As my mom would say, "Madison, you're dead... now, stop being so needy."

Probably everyone in the world looks like a coward when compared to my mom and dad. My parents were always leasing a jet to fly round-trip to Zaire and bring home an adopted brother or sister for Christmas—not that we celebrated Christmas—but the same way my friends might find a puppy or kitten under their holiday tree, I'd find a new sibling from some obscure, postcolonial, living-nightmare place. My parents meant well, but the road to Hell is paved with publicity stunts. Any adoption occurred within the media cycle of my mom's film releases or my dad's IPOs, announced with a gale-force flurry of press releases and photo ops. Following the media blitz, my new adopted brother or sister would be warehoused in an appropriate boarding school, no longer starving, now offered an education and a brighter future, but never again present at our dinner table.

Walking along, now backtracking across the Great Plains of Broken Glass, Leonard explains how ancient Greeks conceived of the afterlife as Hades, a place where both the corrupt and the innocent went to forget the sins and egos left over from their lives on earth. Jews believed in Sheol, which translated as "the place of waiting," again, where all souls collected, regardless of their crimes and virtues, to rest and find peace through discarding their past transgressions and attachments on earth. Kind of Hell as going to detox or rehab instead of Hell as burning punishment. For most of human history, Leonard says, people have perceived of Hell as a sort of inpatient clinic where we go to kick our addiction to life.

Without breaking stride, Leonard says, "John Scotus Eriugena wrote during the ninth century that Hell is where your own desires take you, stealing you away from God and the original plans God had for fulfilling your soul's perfection."

I say maybe we should swing by that swamp of terminated pregnancies. There's a good possibility that I might run into a long-lost sibling or two.

Yes, I may be flip and glib, but I know what constitutes a healthy psychological defense mechanism.