Ad Inferos
Pope Francis died on an Easter Monday morning in the spring. It was raining. This was generally considered an inconvenient time for dying, as it interfered with both the Papal lunch schedule and the Vatican’s weekly pest control inspection. His final words, uttered after a particularly banal meeting with JD Vance, a man who radiated the kind of ideological confidence only available to the truly unqualified, were simply, “Ad inferos!” Which is Latin for “To hell with this,” but also, in this case, disturbingly literal.
It was almost as if some ancient force of energy just couldn’t bear to share a timelime with these weapons-grade wankspanners a moment longer than was absolutely necessary.
“Now I know just how the Queen felt when she met Liz Truss”, he thought. One moment he was nodding politely whilst silently screaming, as Vance droned on in pseudo intellectual hillbilly how the planet could, with just the right combination of deregulation and evangelical smarm, be repurposed into a Christian nationalist theme park. The next, he was slumped in his chair, eyes wide, the dawning realisation that there were worse things than excommunication. There was the company of these bastards.
And then - darkness.
Not the serene darkness of a Catholic heaven, mind you. Not the tasteful, incense-scented kind of oblivion promised by centuries of dogma and organ music, accompanied by the Heavenly host. No. This was bureaucratic darkness. Institutional darkness. Darkness with … paperwork.
He awoke in what could best be described as the waiting room of a post-war Eastern European train station, if that train station had been designed by Kafka and then left to rot for several millennia. He expected a celestial welcome: choirs of angels, Peter at the gate with the clipboard and instead... nothing. Just eternal oblivion in somewhere that resembles Victoria Coach Station. No harp, no cloud, not even a dodgy Italian espresso.
The walls were damp. The ceiling dripped. Somewhere in the distance, a child cried, a vending machine buzzed, and an unseen dog barked with malicious intent.
[Back in the world of mortals following the news of the demise of the Pontiff, on another continent the Dali Lama was making damn sure that the meeting that had been set up for him and JD Vance was been quietly but most definitely binned off]
So the Holy Father was not met with a Heavenly greeting. Just a sign that said, 'Welcome to Hades: All Souls Must Queue, please take a ticket for the Ferry' . There was a long line of visibly irritated figures. It reminded him of Portsmouth.
This place wasn’t Heaven, but it also wasn’t Hell either. It was some sort of Mesopotamian bureaucratic cosmic holding pen - it appeared that the concept of the afterlife stopped evolving at the time of the Sumerians, and it also appeared it was mainly staffed by long-dead philosophers and smug athiests. Sartre was there, offering him a stale croissant and a shrug. Dawkins was in the corner saying "Told you so" every five minutes. And Nietzsche kept winking at him.
He was visibly fuming. He’d spent his whole life being the 'cool Pope,' cracking down on corruption, talking about climate change, trying to modernise the unmodernisable, only to find out he’s been flogging divine snake oil the whole time. At least his last Easter address only a few hours before will have royally pissed off the Israelis. He gave a wry smile. That gave him some comfort. Felix Pascha Bibi, stick that up yer hole, you murdering twat.
Margaret Thatcher, who’d somehow managed to privatise part of the underworld, a corner of Hades called 'Enterprise Souls Ltd' was seated behind a small desk with a sign that read, “Ask Me About My Afterlife Monetisation Strategy!” She was charging the dearly departed to use the loo, which appeared to be the only toilet on the ethereal plain, and which, like everything else, didn’t work.
“Free market principles,” she said proudly, as the plumbing emitted a noise best described as ‘apocalyptic flatulence.’
Next to her was a very sheepish Adolf Hitler, whom it was abundantly apparent had been through several centuries of court-mandated sensitivity training and now spoke in the halting, apologetic tones of a disgraced German children’s presenter. “Ah, ze Pope,” he said, offering a limp wave. “Do not vorry, ve are all equals here. I run ze local chess club.”
Under a flickering lightbulb, perched on a cracked leather dark green chesterfield which spat out springs, sat Peter Cook with the weary look of a man who saw this coming a mile off. He held a lukewarm gin and tonic and greeted the Pope with a slow, sardonic nod, before taking the time to take the piss out of the current situation:
“Well, Your Holiness,” he said, “You were expecting clouds and harps, no doubt. Don’t worry. I was too. Turns out it’s just a damp municipal basement filled with wankers and broken vending machines. Eternity, old boy, what a bloody shambles.”
Francis turned to one of the machines in question, more out of habit than hope. It contained an alarming mix of stale Monster Munch, something labelled ‘Cola, Approx.’ and a bag of crisps that looked like it had been sealed during the Bronze Age. He inserted a coin. It clunked. The lights blinked. And then - nothing. He pressed the button again. He slapped it. He muttered a prayer. The machine, like all machines in the underworld, remained unmoved.
“Hope,” said Cook, sipping his drink, “is the first torment. I think If I remember correctly you’re meant to abandon it”
Behind them, a soul was screaming because the lift to the upper levels was out of order and Thatcher was charging £6.50 to read the safety notice.
So that was it. No reward. No punishment. Just infinite mild inconvenience in the company of history’s most insufferable figures.
The very recently deceased Pontiff acknowledged to himself that he had been a bit out about death. There were many things Pope Francis had failed to expect in the afterlife: the vending machines, Thatcher’s urinal monopoly, Hitler’s sudoku group, but even he, in his most feverish Lenten nightmares, could not have predicted the presence of Anne Widdecombe.
“She's not even dead,” he whispered to Peter Cook, who was trying to get BBC Radio 4 reception through a broken periscope. “Why is she here?” Cook didn’t look up.
“Some souls are too bitter to wait. She bi-locates. A sort of spiritual mould. Everywhere and nowhere. Don’t get too close, she’s currently running a citizens’ moral tribunal and she’s confiscating gay thoughts.”
Widdecombe loomed out of the shadows, clutching a clipboard, a crucifix the size of a cricket bat, and a thermos of something that smelt faintly of boiled guilt.
“I knew the Pope would be here,” she sniffed, in the voice of someone who thinks they’re still on Question Time. “Just like the rest of the liberals. Hades is full of them. Degenerates. Remainers. Bishops who smile too much. Honestly, I feel quite at home.”
Behind her, a small choir of minor Tory backbenchers sang Jerusalem off-key while flagellating themselves with copies of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Meanwhile, in a roped-off part of the underworld known only as The Eventual Reckoning Zone, demonic project managers, all of them wearing lanyards and holding clipboards made of fire, were putting the finishing touches on something truly unholy. It was labelled, in runes that screamed with the blood of lawyers:
THE CENTIPEDE OF SHAME™
A joint initiative by the Ministry of Cosmic Recompense and the Dark Gods of Irony.
One of the demons sat by a very dangerous looking sewing machine.
First in line: the soul of Tony Blair, down here because it had been long since being flogged to some inter-dimensional demon in a public toilet on Hampstead Heath and was currently awaiting the imminent reacquaintance with the rest of him. It twitched nervously, still insisting this was some kind of administrative error.
“Surely there's a tribunal? A conference? A keynote address I can give?” he said, as demons ignored him and tested the stitching on a ceremonial gimp mask.
Behind him: a similarly de-souled Peter Mandelson, who was still trying to secure a non-executive directorship in the afterlife and had offered to 'monetise the whole 'suffering' thing' for the demons. They of course declined.
And finally, bringing up the rear (in every conceivable way): Jimmy Savile, who was so unrepentantly vile that even the demons wore gloves.
“Why a centipede?” asked Francis, who was beginning to regret every pastoral letter he’d ever issued on the subject of divine mercy. Peter Cook, without missing a beat:
“Because the after-life has a sense of humour, your Holiness. And it likes German Fairy Tales.”
Somewhere in the shadows, Widdecombe scribbled a note. 'Petition to have centipede banned on grounds of public decency'. Also, 'too many homosexuals in Hades. Recommend daily exorcisms and a return to national service.'
The clipboard sparked ominously. And so, the Pope sat back, imagining what the Cola Almost would have tasted like and concluding that in all likelihood, it was almost like Cola, as he surveyed the full grotesque machinery of post-life.
Meanwhile, while Hitler struggled in the corner furiously trying to extract a Wispa bar from a vending machine with a bent coat hanger, Pope Francis slumped beside it listening to Hitler hum ABBA songs. Peter Cook was complaining about the damp in a Derek and Clive voice, and as he observed the underworld around him, the Pontiff continued to gradually arrive at the conclusion that everything he had believed to be the truth, all his faith and the dogma he had championed... well he had been wrong all his life: that eternity wasn’t fire or brimstone or divine judgement.
It tuns out Hades wasn’t exactly punishment. It was satire with a grudge.
And It was Thatcher explaining capitalism to a vending machine that didn’t work.
This is what eternity looked like: no salvation, no damnation, just bad lighting and broken appliances. Like an eternal holiday in a dank wobbly caravan in Jaywick. “Madonna santa…” Francis muttered just as Thatcher leaned in and said:
“Would you be interested in buying a book by Milton Friedman, your Holiness? - I'm sure for a small fee can get him to sign it, he works in accounts".
By a bus stop with a timetable attached that that claimed there was a number 47 Service to Peterborough on Tuesdays, he noticed an electric purple neon sign. It was hanging off its hinges, creaking in the wind, written in script and flickering of course. It read
Wel om to H des - pop lati n: ev ryone, ev ntually
“Well I hope you like tepid disappointment, your Holiness”, Tony Hancock, still in his mac and Homburg nodded at him, “There’s lots of that down here. That and the unmistakable aftertaste of sulphur... my God it’s everywhere. You can’t get it out of your clothes, and the only deodorant down here is that European version of Lynx Africa".
As the crows fell from what passed for the sky in the underworld, and an empty bus clearly in service drove by without stopping, making sure it waded through a puddle and soaked the poor souls waiting for it, in the background the best of Coldplay appeared to be playing on a loop.
Forever
