Out in the many folds and ripples of reality and belief and beyond, many places claim the name of Hell. It's one of those names without much intrinsic meaning at this point, much the same as your town's Main Street not being the most Main of all Streets.
We're going to talk about one Hell here.
Everyone arrives just the same. You wake in the back seat of a car. Lights flicker past the window, lining the walls of a gradually-descending tunnel. It will go on for as long as it needs.
The driver is unfamiliar, but welcoming. Most can remember a suit, everlasting patience, a name: Charon. (This too being another recurrent beat in the universe, of course.)
They answer your surprise. They tell you - gently as they can - that you're dead. They're here to accompany you through the rage, the pain, the curiosity. You have as long as you need to work through this; time does not matter now, and the world waits for you.
Hell is eternal and forever. It is infinite, impossible, dreamlike, all knit together by endless roads. It is full of people in places and absent in others, full of natural wonder and cities and towns built in the images of places people most loved.
The shapes of people are different here. The people are demon-dogs, horned, colorful. You start in one shape, and with time you may guide yourself to others. They're still people just the same, just in other shapes.
Death can't get you again here. You hunger and thirst and tire, but only just. There is no need that can truly hurt you, only nag enough to be a discomforting comforting memory of life. There is no threat of well-being or disenfranchisement that can ever find you again, and if anyone tries there is always a way out, always somewhere else to be.
It's a place where Nothing is allowed to happen, for as long as you need it. It's a place where you have the space to find the shapes you'll take without life contorting you into something you wouldn't or shouldn't be. It is not a perfect place. It is not a cruel one. It is one that offers you, well and truly, all the time in the world to figure yourself out.
You'll know this before you leave the tunnel. You have to, you see. It only ends when you're ready to make a choice:
Does this place sound right for you?
Hell will only take you with consent.
If you refuse, the tunnel exits into a highway, the car turns into an off ramp. We don't know what happens there, other than that some other afterlife has a chance at you.
If you accept, it drops you at a roadside, somewhere near a community. You begin anew, with a small bag of goods, the clothes on your back, and a postmortal eternity ahead.
So all these stories begin.
dunno how much we'll keep up with it given chronic fatigue but
we spend a lot of time writing bittersweet queer afterlife fic to process the world, and we just kicked up one to share the one afterlife we've been fidgeting with for a while
