My guide stood there calmly. "I say what I mean. You are in hell. We are in the first circle of it, but, it is hell none the less."
He grabbed me by the shoulder and we walked away from the table. All around us were more perfect naked men. All of them licking, sucking, and fucking each other. I looked at their faces. They all looked bored. There was no passion. Just the act of sex itself.
Everywhere we went it was the same. All my wants and desires were there in front of me. Yet, they were all corrupted.
"That's what this level is," the Guide said as if he was reading my mind. "You can live out all your fantasies, but they have all been sterilized so they mean nothing. Your wants of wealth and fame can come true. We just take the thrill of it away. We do leave the vanity aspects of it. So nobody cares, not even yourself."
We walked for what seemed like days. Passing every thing I ever wanted coming true. He was right, something was missing.
"Love," he said reading my mind again. "Desire. Call it what you will. Without out that you have nothing. You have this."
We came to a large pit. It went on for ever. It was like a black hole. It seemed to eat the light. The sounds of screams rose up from it. These were not the screams of someone stubbing their toe-- they were sounds of people being tortured.
My guide took me and we stepped into the pit.
We plunged downward in the darkness. My bones turned to ice from the cold.
Even with my eyes shut tight images filled my mind. Like movies of the Holocaust only a billion times worse.
I felt my soul falling deeper and deeper into despair.
Then I felt my soul jerk to a stop.
"Come on Greg, you stupid asshole," It was Mike's voice in the darkness. "Let's get you out of here."
I felt myself being lifted up and out of the darkness, through the piles of bored naked men and back to the white light.
I stopped dazed. A man with a beard stood in front of me.
"Santa Claus?" I asked.
"No," the man laughed. "It must be the big white beard."
"Oh my..."
"Yes I am," he said. "I look like this because this is how you imagined me, isn't it Greg?
"Yes."
"Now, you need to go home Greg."
He kissed me on the cheek. "Go home and remember."
I was whisked away from him.
"Remember what?" I yelled.
"That I love you."
Darkness.
I opened my and saw my father looking down at me.
I was in a hospital bed.
I was alive.
