Bills also exist in Hell and no matter how often you pay them, they are due.

“I paid that yesterday!” Harcourt argued.

“It’s due again. Pay up, deadbeat!”

You can never catch up. And you can never elude the anxieties of debt. People who had been responsible and debt-free through their entire lives, in  Hell found themselves in debt to their eyeballs.

The anxiety was worst for them. Some would even try to kill themselves, so anxious were they, but they always failed because they were already dead. They were in Hell, after all.

Even had they been successful in killing themselves, it would not have helped them to evade hellish debt. They would have died and gone to Hell, where they already were, because suicide is a very bad thing. It’s the sort of bad thing that is a one-way ticket to Hell.

Hell is all about redundancy. And debt.

There is a very contrarian tone to Hell.

This is brought up because of the way it affected Harcourt and the angel Alicia who had agreed to help Harcourt leave Hell. I don’t think it takes a great deal of explanation to convey the problems this entailed.

She agreed to help Harcourt leave.

He wanted to leave.

All agreements are broken except …

You see? Harcourt had to find a way to make himself want to remain in Hell. Otherwise the sweet angel Alicia would not be able to help, certainly not with any success.

It was a conundrum, that’s for sure.

Though it has been repeatedly stressed it warrants one more iteration: time is non-existent in Hell so December is really a pointless concept, as is the holiday season. But the Devil likes the look of ongoing distress the music produces in the Damned so he keeps his iPod playing through the sound system — the Christmas playlist, on shuffle. Forever.

Santa is in Hell too, stuck in a fireplace where a fire rages till the end of time. He’s there because he failed to bring the Devil a Wii for Christmas.

“That’s not a word!”

“Is now,” the Devil replied calmly.

“I want out!” Harcourt cried petulantly.

“No one gets out of Hell.” The Devil was cross now. “Don’t start being a shit disturber!”

It was remarkable to Harcourt how much the Devil sounded like his father.

“Do you know what happens to shit disturbers? Do you?”

Harcourt shook his head.

“They get shafted big time. Big time! Need proof? Here I am – take a good look!”

I must have struck a nerve, Harcourt thought.

“You slay me!” the Devil said, almost crying with laughter. “Walls! You actually asked walls! ‘Are you the Devil?’”

Harcourt’s face reddened like a spanked bum.

He said, “I’d like to protest.”

“Feel free!” the Devil replied, still laughing.

“I don’t remember what acronyms mean! I use to. Now I don’t! I think you did that.”

“Well, they’re dumb in the first place. Why worry?”

“I wouldn’t except people keep using them.”

“Listen,” the Devil explained, “There are no people here. Get use to it. There’s just lost souls that once were people. And they all got here D.O.A.”

“What’s that mean?”

“D.O.A.? How stupid are you?”

The Devil had a devilish sense of humour. That, too, may have been mentioned already.

What do you think the horror for political parties was in Hell?

They could only be honest. And they always agreed with each other.

It made them so mad.

Johnny Bigshot was a pop star. He was a rock star. He was a star in hip-hop, popular jazz, folk music, world music, alternative and every kind of music there was as he was very fluid when it came to genre. Sadly, he had never been good in any of them. He was a lousy singer, an inept musician. He had what is often referred to as a ‘tin ear.’

But that was no barrier to success. You could fudge a lot in the studio.

A good part of Johnny’s problem was his complete lack of interest in music. He was into music merely as a way to become a hugely popular celebrity, one with clothing lines and perfumes and who could wear a lot of ‘bling.’

Harcourt was a bit put off by his meeting with Johnny. The celebrity had a strange way of looking at him yet not actually seeing him. It was creepy, Harcourt thought. Johnny even grabbed Harcourt’s hand at one point and with a felt-tipped marker autographed it.

It made Harcourt feel icky.

Johnny was tremendously frustrated in Hell. Being a celebrity, he expected to get “sexed up,” as he enjoyed putting it.

He would actually cry out, in a booming voice, “Who wants to play hide the salami?” As he did he would point at his overly padded crotch as the source of potential fun and frolic.

No one would answer, however, except for the sad and thin little man with receding hair and squiggly smile. He would always answer, “I would!”

His name was Arland. He was in Hell for “no good reason” (as the Devil liked to put it).

By the way, Johnny Bigshot’s real name was Joe Brown. He was from the suburbs.

No longer knowing the meaning of any acronym, and acronyms being letters rather than words and thus resistant to any deciphering for meaning, Harcourt was frustrated.

He wanted to listen to MP3’s but couldn’t because he had no idea what they were, or why or how someone would listen to them. It just seemed a peculiar teaming of letters and numbers.

He was moved to watch HD TV but was flummoxed by both acronyms – HD and TV.  What could they mean? To calm himself, he went off and watched television which was remarkably crisp and clear.

Eventually he decided he would lodge a protest with the Devil himself but, whenever he asked anyone where the Devil was, they would say they didn’t know. They said the Devil was AWOL.

Harcourt spent much of the remainder of his day stopping in front of the many walls he encountered and asking, “Are you the Devil?”

Wherever the Devil was, he was laughing so hard he was crying. He was laughing his ass off!

He thought Harcourt’s troubles were a riot.

This bothered Harcourt. He wanted an autograph.

He danced in front of Sartre.

He waved his hands.

He did cartwheels and somersaults and shouted and screamed.

Sartre was unmoved. He stood in lonely isolation as if utterly unaware of anyone else around him, which was exactly the case.

In Sartre’s Hell, people did not exist.

Hell, for Sartre, was no people.

It seemed to him as if he lacked definition. In terms of characteristics, he was indefinable.

He realized he was Everyman and therefore lacked distinguishing features. He could not be anyone because he was everyone.

“I have no identity,” he thought. “I’m back in high school!”

And it made him so mad.