“Welcome to Hell, Where Black Burns Well”

*Disclaimer: The following depiction of Goth Hell is full of rather tongue-in-cheek, rather obscure, rather depressing, occasionally rather offensive, and potentially humorous subculture references.

Circle I: Gate of Nightmares and Plain of the Pointless

Jenna woke up, the pain in her head suddenly gone, her raven hair hanging in her face.  She sat in an ancient and rusty metal chair, a weak light shining down onto her from a single bulb hanging from a ceiling far too high to be seen.  She tried to stand up, but simply couldn’t.  Her attention snapped forward as a form moved into the light, and she stared.  A man with completely red skin, horns, and a long, pointed, twitching tail stepped forward, holding a piece of crumpled paper in one of his claws.  He wore khaki pants and a light green polo shirt.  Before Jenna could spout any objections, the man, obviously a real-life demon, began to read from the paper.

“Jenna Elizabeth Wilson, self-proclaimed Goth, upon your tragic and untimely demise from a most unexpectedly sad case of natural gas asphyxiation, you have been sentenced to Gothic Hell for crimes against God and Goth.”

“What?” Jenna exclaimed. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

The demon took a deep breath and calmed himself for a second, then began to explain:

“I understand that finding ones’ self in Hell is quite a shock, but I regret to inform you that those darned Christians are in fact quite correct, in the most medieval sense of the word.”

“Well, of course they are.  Grotesque irony is the sick nature of the universe,” Jenna explained with an air of learnedness. “And I thought I smelled the gas.  But ‘Goth Hell?’  What’s up with that?”

“Since the genesis of the youth subculture, we, the employees of Satan, Prince of Darkness, Corrupter of Man, Lord of the Air, etcetera, etcetera, found ourselves dealing with new kinds of souls that required newer and more specialized forms of punishment.  Beginning with the Flapper-Charleston Correctionary Facility in the 1920s, new sub-hells have been and are being constructed to more properly house subculture members who have been condemned to eternal suffering for their crimes against both the Lord of Hosts and their respective scene.  Goth Hell was officially opened when the lead singer of Joy Division killed himself.  You weirdos have to punished specially, apparently.”

“Okay, makes sense.  So, I know I wasn’t a very good person, and I didn’t exactly get around to saying the Sinners’ Prayer, though I was thinking about it, then what did I do to hurt Goth itself?  Gee, that is CORNY.”

“Punching Emo kids whenever and wherever they appear does not help anything.  Education is the weapon of justice, not senseless violence.  And for our sakes, don’t encourage them by driving them further into their hellish spirals of mopey-ness and poor attempts at copying your style.  Emo kids pass through Goth Hell on the way to Emo Hell, and let me tell you, I’ll take the unbaptized crying baby-shade over the whining we get out of them any day.  Can’t tear them apart tell they’ve reached their destination, darned policy.”

“Oh.”  Jenna cringed.  “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it.  Now that you’re here, YOU BELONG TO US.”

“No kidding.  So, what do I do now?”

The demon consulted his paper again, raised an eyebrow, read over the page again, shook his head, and explained.

“I’m personally not all that convinced, but it says here that you were walking the line between faith and doubt at the time of your demise.  Though you still cannot go to Heaven without complete faith, you are given the choice of changing circles every two hundred years or else helping me with my job of briefing new arrivals.  Do you know how circles work?”

“For the most part, assuming it’s like Dante said.  So, what are the circles of Goth Hell?”

“Unfortunately, it’s part of my job to explain that to you.  Goth Hell is composed of exactly seven circles, for no particular reason, though they are very Dante-esque.  Think about Hell long enough and you’ll figure out how we work.  Right now you are in the Circle I: The Gate of Nightmares and the Plain of the Pointless.  Shall we begin our tour?”

“Sure, why not?”  Jenna responded, now rather curious.  “Demonic tour guide.  Go figure.  Weird job.  Two questions.”

“Which are?”  The demon was growing impatient.

“One:  What’s your name?”

“Malephemon the Bilious.”  He sighed.  “But around here everyone just calls me Bill.”

Jenna tried and failed to stifle a giggle.  The demon looked crestfallen, and did his best to move things along, though still kicking himself.

“Why do I always tell the goofy ones?” he said under his breath. “And your other question?”

“What’s with the khakis?”

“This is Goth Hell.  Figure it out.  Let’s go.”

Suddenly, Jenna found herself getting up and out of the chair, almost beyond her own volition. She followed Bill down a long, dark corridor that she hadn’t previously been able to see, and suddenly stood before a huge, flaming doorway that led to the crimson-lit outside.

“Behold, the Gate of Nightmares,” Bill said with six thousand years’ worth of defeated enthusiasm.  “Let’s keep going.”

Stepping through the scorching heat of the gate, they stepped into a lifeless, dusty field that stretched to all corners of the blood-red horizon.  All around them, human forms sat chained to the earth, some looking half-mad, others laughing with complete insanity.

“Behold, the Plain of the Pointless.”

“What’s happening to them?” Jenna asked.  “Looks interesting.”

“These people were neither good nor evil, and didn’t do anything for the Gothic movement.  Non-religious folk, mostly.  They just kind of sat around and took up space at dance clubs.  They are bound forever to the same location.  They all sit on the edge of madness, unable to communicate with each other.  For centuries they sit in complete and utter boredom.  Every five centuries they are permitted to entertain themselves for a decade by going completely and totally nuts.  Also, the boredom is slightly broken from time to time by new arrivals.  They weren’t particularly bad people, after all.”

“Boredom, eh?”  Jenna yawned, the monotony already beginning to eat into her unprotected soul.  “Let’s keep moving, alright?”

Bill rolled his eyes.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

With a snap of the demon’s fingers, another flaming portal appeared, this one much smaller than the Gate of Nightmares.  They stepped through without another word.

Circle II:  The Unbaptized Goth Babies and the Virtuous Neo-Pagans

“So that’s how you get from place to place here,” Jenna observed, following Bill away from the flaming gate as it closed behind them.

“Yep, staff access only,” he clarified.  “Can’t have people running all over the place, though I’m sure you’ll find it fun.”

“Absolutely!” Jenna beamed with a sadistic glint in her eye.  Looking around, Jenna saw a huge forest under a red sky that was half way between night and day.  All around the trees, black-garbed shades floated, talking in an ethereal and complicated language to one another.  Above them, tiny black spirits floated around, watched by winged demon babysitters and occasionally starting to cry.  Bill waved a hand around.

“Circle II: The Unbaptized Goth Babies and the Virtuous Neo-Pagans.”

Jenna blinked, and Bill continued.

“Thank you for not laughing at that pun.  I think it’s terrible.  Anyway, the flying wisps are the souls of the unbaptized babies who were born to Gothic parents, weren’t baptized, and died for various reasons.  The shades on the ground are the people who did good for the Gothic scene but belonged to various non-Christian religions, and adhered well to their tenants and convictions.  Since many were Neo-Pagans who revived old religions, they must speak in ancient tongues, which new arrivals have to learn in order to communicate.”

“Fair enough.  But these things are about to get a lot worse, right?”

“Absolutely.  Just remember, you have now been warned.”

Circle III: The Haughtily Prideful and Vain Goths and the Mall Goths

Stepping out of the next portal, Bill and Jenna found themselves outside of a huge, burning shopping mall.  Around them, crowds of Goths with physical forms milled around in various stages of pain.  Jenna stared as a man hobbled by, his skin full of cheesy Gothic slogan pins.  Behind him, a woman covered in infected piercings screamed as she held her face, the skin melting off of it.

“What’s wrong with these people?” Jenna inquired, now beginning to understand why Hell is not accused of false advertising.

“This is Circle III: The Haughtily Prideful and Vain Goths, and the Mall Goths.  All about punishing people who did goofy things to get attention and made all Goths look like complete attention whores, be that label correct or not.  That gentleman you were just gawking at was a prideful person in life, always having to show off how terribly ‘Goth’ he was.  So now he must walk naked for eternity, showing everyone around him how every inch of skin on his body is stabbed full of those stupid little ‘I’m so Goth, I’m dead’ and ‘Woe is me’ buttons.  Inferiority complex, anyone?  You Goths are supposed to be all about being comfortable with yourselves and not having to live up to anyone’s standards.  And those slogans should send anyone to Hell, frankly.

Also, like that woman you saw, the vain Goths who spend all their time trying to impress other people with their looks and never show their real selves... well, they have it bad.  Not only are they forced to take on ungodly numbers of piercings which become painfully infected, but they are forced into Hell’s patented ‘Make-Up Cycle,’ one of my personal favorite punishments.  We give them make-up to put on, and it doesn’t look all that bad.  Unfortunately for them, it is highly acidic, and eats away their faces.  Their faces regenerate, but only to a point where their vanity makes them put on more make-up.  Thus, a never-ending cycle, beautiful and expertly executed.”

Jenna shivered.

“You’re enjoying this a little too much,” she rebuked.

“It’s what I do.”

“Oookay... What’s the mall over there for?”

“That’s the Mall of Humiliation, where the Mall Goths go.  If you have to go to the mall and show off how Goth you are every day, you’ve got some insecurities, and only making other Goths who go to the mall for serious reasons look bad.  I find it all terribly ridiculous.  The Mall Goths banished to the Mall of Humiliation can never leave, and are dressed in all the latest non-Goth fashions, non-removable.  The Mall is full of Hot Topic stores with exorbitant prices for even the smallest of items.  The souls are made to slave away in a food court for demons masquerading as cheerleaders who constantly make fun of them.  The Mall Goths will labor for centuries in the name of buying a simple wrist band, hoping to alleviate their humiliation, only to find that every single one of the millions of Hot Topic locations is closed when their shifts at the food court are over.  Then come the demon income tax collectors, on location, to collect a one-hundred-percent income tax.  There’s no resisting a five-story-tall tax collector.  Factor in a little insecurity, and you’ve got an eternal process.  To top it all off, nineties pop songs are all that’s on the Muzak station.”

Jenna blinked.

“Wow,” she whispered.

“Yep.”

Circle IV: The Fetishists and Generally Kinky People

This circle and its punishments are not very school-appropriate.  Generally speaking, the punishment is being eternally offered and then denied one’s decidedly perverse carnal desires.  Music written specifically to turn people off is perpetually shrieked by bat-like demon beasts.  A lot of Goths are into bondage and that kind of stuff, but for God’s sake, it’s not all there is to Goth.  Frankly, people like that are just like everyone else, only kinkier.  Moving on...

Circle V: The Bullies and Elitists

For good measure, Jenna wiped her eyes with her fists and shook her head violently a number of times, even after leaving the fourth circle.

“That is some kinky ****,” she commented, still stunned at what she had seen.

“We take pride in our work,” Bill stated plainly, thinking it all terribly obvious.  They had emerged at the top of a cliff, overlooking a burning plain dotted with cooler hills.  “Anyway, welcome to Circle V, the Bullies and Elitists, and exactly where you ought to be headed, if I had anything to say about it.  I think you know how it works.”

Down below, gangs of Gothic bullies beat each other up eternally, each attempting to be in the group that was the highest above the flames.  Bill walked off and started making bets with some other demons as to who would stay where for how long.  Jenna simply looked on, feeling surprisingly smug that she had narrowly avoided being banished to this particular place.  All across the plain, the belligerent deceased bullied each other to no end in the name of status and sadism, all having tried to be the Gothiest of the Gothic in life, and not tolerating people who were different from them.

“The spirit of conformity.  It’s an abomination, no?” Bill asked with a smirk as he headed back, pocketing a few severed heads he’d won in a bet.  Jenna’s face fell as realization sank in.

“That was me, wasn’t it?” she asked.

“Yep.  A lesson learned all too late.  Feeling awful and degraded?”

“Yeah, rub it in.”

“Good.  You’ll LOVE the next circle.”

Bill snapped his fingers with a wink, and the pair headed through another burning gate, the other side no longer glowing red, but now a flat black.

Circle VI: The Suicides and Self-Mutilators

Stepping out of the gate, Jenna found herself floating high above a land that was almost completely lightless.  Above her, there was an endless black void.  Beside her, Bill stood upon the air, the glow from his eyes illuminating his form to an extent.  Down below, there were occasional flashes of a dull red light amongst what appeared to be densely-packed trees with metallic branches and human-sized fruit.

“Circle VI: The Suicides and Self-Mutilators, a forest, just as Dante described it,” Bill stated with a slight hint of pity in his voice.

“Why are we floating?” Jenna wondered.  “It’s certainly interesting, but seems a little odd.”

“You can’t get too close to the trees if you ever want to leave.  Down there, the Goths who cut or damaged themselves by other means, as well as those who killed themselves and wound up here, are completely without light.  Left forever with their feelings of self-loathing and depression, they are consumed with burning desires to hurt themselves.  In trying to relieve themselves, they will only add to their suffering, and create a most vicious cycle.  The ground is littered with razors, but they must inflict mortal wounds to release the glowing life-blood that you see as flashes of light.  Each time they inflict what would be a killing wound in life upon themselves, their self-hate and need to harm themselves increases, and the mortal blows require continually-increasing levels of damage.  In order to find the next type of weapon, they must release their life-blood, or else struggle through the darkness of their own pain and madness with no relief, though they will eventually find the next implement.

"Eventually, they become so mutilated and require so much self-damage that they take root as sentient trees with bladed branches.  Once in this form, the branches are blown about by an occasional breeze and cut each other.  From the wounds left by the breeze, they begin to grow new human forms of themselves.  Once these forms mature and fall off, they become extensions of the original mind, and repeat the whole process over.  Some day, there will be whole forests connected to a single soul, growing and hurting itself into infinity.  The trees make things worse by inflicting their pain upon other sufferers, as they did in life when they broke the hearts of friends and family, and forced them to share their pain.  That’s why you can’t touch them, even if you are normally protected by your post-mortem conditions.”

Jenna was silent.  Bill decided that it was time to move on.

“Let’s go.  There’s only one more circle, and it’s at least got some poetic justice to it.”

The demon snapped his fingers, and they hurried through the gate that formed behind them in the air.

Circle VII: The Gothic High School Shooters and Serial Killers

When they emerged on the other side of the door, they were once again floating, but the red glow had returned, this time in the form of floating lanterns.  Jenna looked up and down, and saw that they were inside a relatively narrow pit with no visible top or bottom.  A few dozen people hung at various levels from the infinite ceiling by black chains.  She recognized a few faces that she’d seen on the news.  A Neo-Nazi, some Trenchcoat Mafia members, and others were being lowered down slowly into another eternity of suffering.  The pit was lined with stone platforms, upon which numerous figures stood.  Bill took her closer, and explained what this circle was for.

“This is the deepest and darkest circle, Circle VII: The Gothic High School Shooters and Serial Killers.  It is a bottomless pit into which those Goths who aggressively hunted down and killed neighbors, classmates, and strangers.  While murder is a bad thing no matter what,” he said, sucking a breath into his beastly nostrils.  “This is the Seventh Circle because of the incorrigible damage it does to the good name of Goth.  Other people become convinced that most Goths, who are just interested in getting through life and appreciating the world in their own way, are all crazed, Satanic serial killers ready to start shooting at the drop of a hat.”

“So what’s coming to them?” Jenna asked, a little confused as to how this eternal descent was any worse than Circle I.

“Watch the creatures on the platforms.”

Jenna looked closer, and recognized other faces she’d seen on the news; smiling, innocent faces of the victims of these crimes, and other, more general smiles that wouldn’t normally be able to hurt a soul.  And they were all wielding shotguns.

“Man, that is what I call irony!”

“Exactly.  The killers are chained up and helpless, like their victims, as they are forever shot by demonic facsimiles of FCA girls.  They never lose their ability to feel pain, and can do nothing about it.  They become delirious from blood loss, and have had their memories erased, so they do not understand what they have done wrong, just as their victims were usually innocent to them.”

“So... This is the very bottom of Goth Hell?  Or is there a bottom?”

“Not quite.  There is a bottom, but it’s elsewhere, and connects to the nerve center in the city of Dis, Circle VI of Hell Prime.  It’s also the beginning of the path to Emo Hell.”

Jenna floated silently for several minutes, deep in thought.  Seeing what she’d seen, she couldn’t help but take pity on the people condemned to the eternal torments of Gothic Hell, where black burns well, and there is no escape, not even for the children of the night.  Finally, she looked Bill square in the face.

“I’ve made up my mind,” she announced, with the purest of human conviction.  “But I need to ask you one thing first.”

“Sure, why not?” Bill asked, interested in getting this crazy Lolita on her way so he could go get something, or someone, to eat in the Mall of Humiliation food court.

“What exactly IS Emo Hell?  I have to know where I probably sent a few of them.”

Bill looked at her for a few seconds, then explained:

“Emo Hell is actually totally sunny.  It is a great, green pasture where no haircut is safe.  There are no Circles.  There is only the Razorless Land of Happily Mating Bunnies.”