It's Hell, Charlie Brown: Chapter 2

Linus's Story

Chapter One here.

Chapter Two:        

“Hell?” Charlie Brown asked Linus. “Why am I in Hell?”

Linus knew the news was difficult to accept, and so he kept silent as Charlie Brown ranted and raved and stomped about his room.

“Tell me, Linus,” shouted Charlie Brown, “what possible sin could I have committed that would justify the hell that was my life before, let alone the Hell of this Life After?”

“I’m in Hell?” Charlie Brown shouted. “Me? Are you kidding me? Charlie Brown? Charlie Brown is in Hell? No, no, no, I don’t think so! You know why, Linus? BECAUSE I WAS ALREADY IN HELL! That was Hell, up there, a Hell of a Hell! You were there, Linus, you saw it - the abuse, the scorn, the hatred, the daily humiliations, the endless degradation, the complete and utter failure of everything I ever attempted! What was that if it wasn’t Hell, Linus, tell me!”

His voice rattled the windows and rang in Linus’s ears.

“That was the one thought that got me through it,” Charlie Brown continued, “did you know that? That was the one thought that sustained me from unbearable day of existence to unbearable day of existence, the thought that, Yes, this horrible, Chuck, this is agony but this is Hell. This is Hell, and you’re getting it done with, and soon it will be over and afterwards there will be Heaven. That was it, Linus, that was the thought. But you’re telling me no, you’re telling me it’s not done. That there’s some further Hell I’m slated for, that what I went through in life wasn’t punishment enough. Punishment for what, Linus, for what sin? The sin of trying? Of caring? Of being a good friend? Tell me, Linus, what possible sin could I have committed that would justify the hell that was my life before, let alone the Hell of this Life After? Rape? Murder? Genocide? Let me tell you something, Linus, that life that I lived up there? No one deserves that, not even a genocidaire. I wouldn’t condemn Hitler to that life. I should be in Heaven, Linus, I should be in Heaven right fucking now, surrounded by a hundred baseball trophies and a thousand little red-haired girls, and that son of a bitch condemns me to Hell? What malevolent unjust psychopath is running the show here?”

Linus sighed.

“The Great Pumpkin works in mysterious ways,” he said.

“The Great… are you kidding me?” asked Charlie Brown, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Is that who… is that really… is that Him?”

 Linus punched some numbers into the keypad beside the door.

“Let’s take a walk, Charlie Brown,” he said. “I’ll show you around.”

Down hallway after hall Linus led Charlie Brown, the fluorescent overhead lights buzzing and flickering, the carpeting moldy and buckling, the wallpaper peeling, until at last they passed through what appeared to be some sort of Main Lobby, and out through the front doors onto the front porch. Down a small walkway Linus led them, from which point Charlie Brown could get a better view of Hell. He was surprised as most new arrivals are to find that Hell was not the inverted cone Dante described in his Divine Comedy, which Charlie Brown used to read at night, before bed, after a long day of humiliations at the hands of cruel others; it cheered him to imagine as Dante did the various torments of those who tormented him.

But Dante was wrong.

As it turned out, Hell was more of a dilapidated, unkempt Borscht Belt Catskills Hotel from the 70’s, a Kutsher’s, say, or a Grossinger’s, fallen into disrepair, staffed by evil soulless staffers and occupied by sinners, which isn’t far off from what they were in their prime, actually, so that the layout wasn’t as confusing as Dante’s was. But of course, this particular Catskills hotel was enormous beyond imagination, stretching out into the dark horizon, made up of tens of thousands of guest rooms filled with hundreds of thousands of guests (and still only one small elevator that was always out of order), catering halls, nightclubs, pools of fire and tennis courts of agony.

“But even if I can accept that I’ve been condemned to be here,” Charlie Brown said to Linus, “why are you? What did you ever do?”