INTÉGRALE, LONGUEUR, AIRE

The colour is green, of course.

Envy

Zoned for Envy

If you haven’t screwed things up, a dreary little Envy Punishment should be bubbling up here within a few years.

Deadman’s Curve

Popular music aside, there is no such thing as a “Highway To Hell.”  There are, however, plenty of highways IN Hell.  They’re used to punish Envious SOULs who just can’t be satisfisfied with what they have.  When the Damned arrive, they’re given a clunky old rental car (with no stereo or air conditioning, of course), an out-of-date map, and vague directions that will supposedly lead them out of Hell.  Once they hit good ol’ Route 666, though, they’ll be permanently stuck in a neverending logjam of commuter traffic.  If they could just sit still, they’d probably be okay, but their envious natures cause them to switch lanes at the drop of a hat, snarling traffic even further.

Out of the Frying Pan

“June 23rd — Frying pan hotter than I remember.  Going to jump.  Maybe fire will be cooler this time.”

“June 24th — I was wrong.  Demons laughed as my hair ignited.  I’ll never make THAT mistake again.”

“June 25th — Demons have put me back in the pan.  It’s hotter than I remember.  Maybe I should jump.”

– “Diaries of the Damned”
Mephisto Press

Flaming Bellyflops per hour
Spatula Mishaps per annum

Another Man’s Shoes

Important Life Lesson #546: Be careful what you wish for.  The Envious SOULs imprisoned in these little slices of Hell spent their discontented lives muttering, “Man, I’d love to be in HIS shoes,” never realizing that demons were listening to their petty whinings.  Now, they spend eternity LITERALLY imprisoned in another man’s smelly, unsanitary footware.

Limbs Eaten Away By Athlete’s Foot
Broken Laces Per Year

Survey of the Damned

For eons now, the Demons of Hell have been trying to find out if Heaven’s all it’s cracked up to be.  To this end they’ve enlisted (or, if you prefer, “enslaved”) the Envious Damned to do a telephone survey of Heaven.  Naturally, having to spend eternity conversing with SOULs who are infinitely happier than they are is tremendously excruciating to these poor schmucks, but hey, that’s Hell…

Percentage of SOULs in Heaven who say they’re “Estatic”
Hell-Wide Phone System Crashes Per Month

Very Southgate Mall

These low-rent malls tend to pop up all over Hell, adding a tacky flavor to an already dreary place.  Locked inside, the Envious Damned are forced to forever shuffle from crummy store to even crummier store, dealing with nasty demonic salespeople, ill-fitting shoes, intolerable piped-in music, and a food court whose most palatable confection is Rat-On-A-Stick.

Ampitheatres of Anguish

Whatever your least favorite form of music, bagpipes, accordians, Euro-beat faux rock, rap, or lame-o 70′s guitar bands, the Ampitheatres of Anguish will be featuring it…constantly.

Welcome to Your Flightmare

Submitted for your approval:  An Envious SOUL boards a plane.  The demon sitting next to him has halitosis and wants to sell him a set of gold-plated lawn jockeys.  He moves to another seat, only to be confronted with a little old lady demon who is strangely compelled to tell the life stories of her 234 grandchildren to anyone within a two-meter radius.  He switches seats again and again, only to be confronted with an infinite barrage of boring, obnoxious demons.  Return your minds to their fully locked and upright positions, and remember to put your sanity into the overhead storage compartment; you’ve just entered…Hell.

Octoplex 666

Remember that scene in “A Clockwork Orange” where Malcolm McDowell was being forced to watch a seemingly neverending series of violent and pointless movies?

This is infinitely worse.  And the popcorn sucks.

Switchback Mountains

To those of us without an envious bone in our bodies, the Switchback Mountains must seem like a real lightweight punishment.  When SOULs arrive, they’re told to wait in one of several lines at the base of a huge mountain.  Through the magic of Helltech, it always appears as though the line adjacent to a given SOUL is moving faster than its own.  This leads to line-jumping, fistfights, and utter chaos.  The truth is, if a SOUL could just manage to be content with the speed of its assigned line, it’d reach the top of the mountain (and freedom) within a year.  As it is, most SOULs spend thousands of years looking for the “perfect” line.

NoBody Burgs

Sometimes the Demons of Hell expend a wee bit too much effort in their pursuit of a meaningful punishment.  Take, for example, the baroque torments of the NoBody Burgs.  When the Envious Damned arrive in these odd little hamlets, they’re fitted with specially-designed, ultra-expensive, totally-unremovable Envy Ray Goggles, which work something like this:

Step 1.  Goggled SOUL #1 spots goggled SOUL #2.  SOUL #1 becomes envious of SOUL #2, because SOUL #2 doesn’t have nearly as many disfiguring scars as SOUL #1.
Step 2.  SOUL #1′s Envy Ray Goggles, detecting SOUL #1′s envious thoughts, emit powerful green Envy Rays from its eye sockets towards the helpless SOUL #2.
Step 3.  SOUL #2′s Envy Ray Goggles, having similarly detected SOUL #1′s envious thoughts, perform an electrical mind swap between SOUL #1 and SOUL #2.
Step 4.  SOUL #1′s mind arrives in SOUL #2′s body.  SOUL #1 is happy to find that it suddenly has fewer disfiguring scars than it used to.
Step 5.  The powerful green Envy Rays catch up to SOUL #2′s body, hideously disfiguring it.  SOUL #1, now trapped in an even more twisted and painful body than before, mentally kicks himself in the butt, and reminds himself not to do THAT again.  Until SOUL #3 comes along…

As these bizarre towns fill up, they become little more than grody piles of mangled, screaming flesh, punctuated every couple of seconds by a nasty “zap” sound.

Elevators, Inc.

These strange, towering skyscrapers are made up almost entirely of elevators:  crowded, stinky elevators with deafening piped-in music.  The Envious Damned are free to move about from elevator to elevator, but each new elevator is MORE crowded, STINKIER, and LOUDER than the previous one.  Rumors of an express elevator to Heaven abound, but no one’s ever seen it.

Escher Pits

The Escher Pits stretch the old “Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire” conundrum to an absurdly infinite degree.  On the face of it, they look like ordinary, if somewhat elaborate, torture chambers.  There’re racks, thumbscrews, tapes of Regis and Kathie Lee, you know: The Usual.  Upon closer inspection, one finds that this is not your everyday house of pain.
For one thing, no SOUL is being tormented in the same manner as his neighbor.  This leads the Envious Damned to think that they’ve got it worse off than the poor suckers next to them.
Secondly, the Damned are allowed to switch places with their neighbors every few days. Since they’re Envious buggers by nature, they inevitably choose to make the switch, convinced that they’ll be better off.
Lastly (and this is the tricky, paradoxical, part), whenever a SOUL chooses to switch torments, the new torment is ALWAYS worse than the previous one.  It’s a Moebius Strip of pain!

Contentment

Zoned for Contentment

Someday, this little slice of Heaven will grow up to be a full-fledged Contentment Reward.

Vacation Slides of the Gods

Unlike most slide shows, the Vacation Slides of the Gods just get more and more interesting with each ethereal <ka-click> of the projector button.  And since it’s Heaven, none of the slides are upside-down or out of focus.

“Wows,” “Kewls,” and “Awws”
Politely Stifled Yawns

The Good Neighbor

In Heaven, the grass is ALWAYS greener on your side of the fence, and even though your neighbor is happy, you don’t envy him.

Block Parties
Unreturned Power Tools

Coffee Shops of the Word

These crowded little bistros offer Contented SOULs the chance to express their long-buried poetic natures to an always-appreciative audience of Angels.  When the cherubs snap their fingers, you can almost touch infinity, man.

Karaoke Korners

Some SOULs don’t want to sing in a choir, but want their voices to be heard, nonetheless.  Here in these quiet little watering holes of Heaven, the Contented Blessed can sing their little hearts out, secure in the knowledge that, for four or five minutes at a time, theirs will be the most beautiful voice in the world.

Rousing Sing-a-Longs Per Evening
Repeated Songs Per Evening

Newbody Knows

In these gold-trimmed complexes, the SOULs of the Contented are allowed to choose and discard their bodies like they were clothing.  Typically, most SOULs will settle for an idealized version of their mortal self, but a few SOULs will use the opportunity to explore the infinite complexity of the humanoid form.

Distinct Eye Colors (In Millions)
SOULs at Parties Wearing The Same Body

Seventh Heaven Stretch

In Heaven, no one is picked last, and everyone eventually gets a game-winning hit, touchdown, basket, goal, or strike.

Records Broken Yesterday
Labor Disputes

The Choir Invincible

In these massive choirs, even the most off-key and timid of SOULs will eventually sing like, well, an Angel.
And everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, gets to sing a solo every now and then.

High C’s per Day
Fleeting Moments of Disharmony

Hoofer’s Heavens

Every SOUL in the Hoofer’s Heaven has been given the gift of dance; not just the usual varieties of dancing, like ballet, tap, and so forth, but dancing as communication.  The SOULs have such fine control over their bodies that they no longer speak, except through dance.

Final Curtain Theatres

Every night, without fail, the Final Curtain Theatres put on another brilliant production of some completely new show.  And every night, another Blessed SOUL becomes a star.

Tear-Jerking Soliloquies per Week
Missed Cues per Month

Envy Aid

The Envy Aid concerts have been bouncing around Heaven, in one form or another, since sentients began rhythmically banging sticks together and calling it “music.”  These neverending shows feature the most musically gifted SOULs ever to pluck, strum, blow, beat, or shake an instrument, which alone would be enough to make them pretty darn cool.  But since this is Heaven, the Contented Blessed are encouraged to join the performers onstage, where they quickly discover that they’re just as talented as their musical idols.  Jammin!

Encores Per Evening
Unnecessary Sound Checks

A Musement Park

Muses are fairly difficult to come by in the waking world, and even harder to capture.  In Heaven, though, muses hang out in Musement Parks, inspiring Contented SOULs to artistic heights undreamt of by mortal minds.

Entirely New Art FormsCreated
Bad Reviews

Bovine Bliss Ranch

Anyone who’s ever looked deeply into the eyes of a cow knows the truth; cows are the single most blissed-out creatures in all of creation.  On the B.B.B. Ranches, this characteristic is taken to its logicial endpoint, as Contented SOULs are allowed to live out their afterlives as happy, cud-chewing cows.  MoooOOOoooo.