As Doug finished his signature he almost expected something drastic to happen, but there were no flashes of red light or manacles appearing on his wrists. He sat back in his chair and continued smoking. He reflexively reached into his pocket, looking for a phone as a modern person does in their first down moment. He chuckled to himself as he remembered where he was. He took another swig and just stared at the ceiling for a while, trying to unwind a bit. He was definitely buzzed, but he felt restless, not the least bit tired. Just to do something other than stare at a ceiling, he decided to start at least getting the pile of boxes off his desk and stacked in a corner, and get his office in order. He did so slowly, and eventually just had a single box, the phone, and the card on the desk. Rather than putting it in the corner, he opened the box and found binders of varied thickness. He took each out and laid them out on the desk, and also found a single loose sheet of paper on the bottom. Binders with titles like ‘Good Choices’, ‘Bad Choices’, ‘Circumstances’, ‘Ethical Training’, and more, all filled with the details of the life of some guy named ‘Jack Benhoff’. His actions, motivations for those actions, everything. Thousands of pages. Doug took a look at the single sheet. The header read ‘Form ID J431: Judgement Modification Request’. Below that was a box detailing his current sentence; 280 years for sloth, 275 years for envy, and 245 years for lust. At the bottom was a box to write in how the judgement should be modified, and two signature boxes.
Doug was curious how lazy and horny one needs to be to land yourself in hell, so he started flipping through the binders, starting with ‘Bad Choices’. It was filled with spreadsheets with data points of sinful actions. Time, place, category, severity, and references to appendix documentation. Doug started to feel a bit like a 1950s PI, wearing his suit in a dingy smoke-filled office, he was ready to crack the case. He dove deep into Jack’s life, both the good and the bad. It was a tough read.
Jack started out as regular kid. He grew up in the Midwest suburbs, played baseball, and spent his early childhood wanting to be in the pros. When he was 13, he was in a severe car accident which resulted in him losing the bottom half of his left arm. His mind was also scarred by losing any hope of living his dream. He started to hate school where he was bullied, and dropped out as soon as he could. He was able to apply for and receive disability, and lived in his parents’ basement his whole life, mostly watching porn or baseball podcasts in a haze from the pain pills he abused.
Doug spent some time flipping through the spreadsheets looking for the best and worst things Jack had done. “If any of that porn was child stuff I’m keeping this guy down here forever” Doug thought to himself. Thankfully that was not the case, his worst sins in lust were the few times he hired a prostitute. Jack’s good deeds were mostly related to his relationship with his parents. He and his father loved to talk baseball, and he did quite a bit to take care of both of them in their old age.
The phone on the desk began to ring. Doug had been sipping away at the whiskey and was at this point, a little drunk. He answered “Detective Doug here,” jokingly.
“Come down to my office.” Minos said curtly. “Cinder will escort you” *click*
“Oh cool, the first meeting I have with my demon boss I’ll be showing up drunk. This can’t go wrong.” Doug thought sarcastically. Cinder knocked and opened the door. “Right this way sir!” Doug grabbed the J431 form and followed silently to the elevators. “Basement” Cinder said, and the elevator began to descend. With a ding, the elevator doors opened to a thin hallway with three doors at the end. The two walked towards them. The door on the right read ‘Operations’, the door on the left read ‘Minos’. The door in the center looked like a bank vault, labeled with an inverted pentagram. Cinder knocked on Minos’s door and entered. “Doug for you sir! Would you like for me to take notes?”
“That will be all Cinder. Take a seat.” Doug looked about the office. It really wasn’t much different than his, just larger to accommodate even more boxes. The wood chair across from Minos had shackles built into it. Doug approached but hesitated. Minos looked up from the form he was filling out. “Those aren’t for you, don't mind them”. Doug sat nervously but kept his cool. For a long moment they just stared at each other, almost sizing each other up. It felt like Minos was trying to find reasons to be angry at Doug but couldn’t think of any. Doug broke the ice, “Well, it looks like you didn’t get canned for this, that’s good”.
“Fates of many will be decided upon the success of your leaving this place in one week’s time. Should the transfer fail…” Minos trailed off, and Doug sensed some actual fear from Minos. “Not a contingency I’m even going to plan for” he said, shaking his head. “I need your word that you are going to take this seriously, and rest. What do you need to entertain yourself? Deck of cards? I can send a jinn to the mortal world to learn simple objects, they could get a book? That could take a day or two..”
“I think I should be alright left to my own devices.” replied Doug. “The boxes in my office contain some real interesting data/stories. I read all about this guy Jack Benhoff before I came down here. I found this ‘J431’ form in there as well, do I have the power to commute this guy’s sentence?” He asked.
Minos looked properly annoyed again, and jabbed his finger at Doug as he said “Because you signed the handbook, you technically have the power to request that I modify a sentence, and I have the right to say no. However, that job is for someone properly trained for it. You are walking into something you don’t understand.”
“Well, it does seem a bit excessive. This is like, over 800 years and he never really hurt anyone.” Doug could tell that questioning Minos’s judgement annoyed him further and he had to hold back a tirade he would have given to anyone else. Instead he just snapped “Firstly, you should know that time works differently down here. 800 years down here is not long, he will return to earth not long after he left it.” Doug started to protest but Minos shot back. “Fine, you wanna do this? Give me that form”. Doug placed the J431 on the desk and Minos took a look at it. After a few moments as Minos picked up his desk phone. “Patch me into floor 2…..Belpha I’m looking for the soul of Jack Benhoff. Soul ID HCO88190NNFJ-V. By my math he should be in Lust…..Got it. Patch me into floor 7….Invidias, I’m looking for the soul of Jack Benhoff. Soul ID HCO88190NNFJ-V. Have him escorted down to me immediately. Also, I’m assuming you're pulling souls from other departments to fix this mess, make sure you are submitting TR45’s for every single one you need longer than 24 hours, I will be reviewing them personally…..One more thing switching, get me Cinder in here." He hung up the phone and Cinder appeared in the office. Minos looked at it and said “Today’s the day Cinder, we are processing a J431. Which requires minutes to be taken” Cinder squeaked with joy, and took a seat on the ceiling above them. Minos looked back to Doug, handing him the form and a pen from a drawer. “I’m going to need in writing what should be reduced and a valid reason why.” Minos said “Don’t just give me some bullshit ‘he didn’t hurt anyone’ excuse. Just because you’re here by accident doesn’t mean anybody else is.”
Doug took the paper and tried to remember the details but his head was still swimming. He felt the huge burden of this strange man’s fate suddenly in his hands and wished he’d taken this more seriously, at least not be drunk for it. He was still trying to remember the good things he had done when the knock came at the door. A demon entered, along with the soul of Jack Benhoff who seemed terrified. “Come stand over here Doug, take a seat soul.” Doug stood up and moved to the right of the desk. Jack sat down, and the shackles instantly sprang to his wrists and ankles. Minos stood and unhooked his whip from his belt. He swung it in a swift motion, over his head and caused it to wrap around the man, which it did once. Minos’s eyes were closed for a moment as he judged the man’s entire life. He opened his eyes and started winding the whip back into a ring in his hands, shaking his head. “What a wasted life. A self-imposed jail cell of self-pity. Many have lost more than an arm and gone to live fulfilling lives.” The man stayed silent and looked at the floor.
“Well hold on, he did lose more than his arm, he lost his dream.” Doug tried to protest, but Minos went into a full tirade, yelling and jabbing a finger at Jack.
“He lost all motivation for anything! All discipline, all will to better himself or his community. Tell me soul, when were you happiest in life after the accident?” Minos demanded. “Uhh.. I don’t know…” Jack stammered. “I will refresh your memory, when you were 22, you volunteered to help coach baseball at the local little league. Which you did for a few months. Those months were the only time you attempted to connect with and do any good in the world. You might have even done so had you not attempted to flirt with the married mother of one of the children and subsequently asked to not come back. After that you let yourself rot. Poisoning your body, mind, and soul with depravity and cheap hedonism at the monetary, emotional, and moral expense of others. I could have charged this soul for violence against self, the whip spared him to Sloth.” Doug had never felt a more awkward five seconds of silence as Minos sat back down, broken only when Jack began to sob lightly.
“He.. he’s right.” Jack said weakly between sobs. “I deserve this. I am trying hard to learn this all before I go back, and have come a long way since I got here. I want to live a good life.” Doug was now fully embarrassed for himself and the man at this point, and also confused. “Go back?” Doug asked. He realized he never had considered what happens at the end of the sentence.
Minos sighed and flipped back to a tone of soft annoyance “Unless Doug wants to prove to us his ignorance further, your examination is over soul, return to your work. You will receive a verdict once rendered” Doug stayed silent and Minos waved his hand, causing the manacles to release. The escort demon took him by the arm and led him out the door. As Doug walked back to the seat, Minos asked “Are you ready to stop pretending you know what’s going on here and go back to just doing what I say?”
Doug replied sheepishly, “Yeah, sorry man I didn’t mean to like, challenge you like that. I’m still really confused about what’s going on here. I thought hell was forever, but are you saying it’s only temporary? Do they all get punished and then go to Heaven?”
“Look, I’m not going to sit here for the hours it would take to explain our entire process let alone the underlying metaphysical infrastructure of the cosmos.” Minos replied, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “To answer that though, they do not go to Heaven, they go back to Earth, or some other celestial body capable of growing souls, wherever the Bardo takes them. We are contracted to take in souls primarily from Earth as we have the facilities best suited to get these souls back to the mortal/celestial realm with a proper fear of the consequences of evil deeds. Now, can you please go back to your office, and rest.”
Doug rose without protest and walked to the door. He stopped as he reached for the handle, and turned back to Minos. “How about just a five percent reduction in remaining sentence time? He was good to his parents in his life, and showed remorse and growth in his time here.” Minos glared at him. He grabbed the J431 and the pen and started scribbling on it then spun it towards Doug.
“I will give a one percent reduction to placate this hero complex of yours and you can pat yourself on the back and say to yourself you did something. Final offer or get out.” Doug walked up, and signed the final box and extended his hand to Minos. Minos looked him in the eyes and said “Get out”.
Doug turned and left as Minos gave instructions to Cinder on where to deliver the paperwork. He closed the door, all alone in the deepest hallways of Hell.