Image CC-BY-NC-ND by Smaku (see link for recipe)
You reach for another cookie, whimpering softly. You tell yourself–just this last one, just this last one and you’ll savor it and then you’ll let go, and nobody else will have to die. You try to eat it slowly, to savor it, but you’re so very hungry–
And you don’t believe it, really. You can’t believe it. You still want to live, so you believe: with just this last cookie, you’ll solve the problem, you’ll free yourself from their trap. The governments will bow down before you and there will be a new era of prosperity on Earth. A weak chuckle bubbles out from under your tears, and you realize your imagination’s gotten the better of you, again. That and delirium. Nothing but cookies, sweet cranberry cookies, you don’t know for how long.
And every cookie you eat, someone on your side dies. Someone you knew. Someone you loved. You know they’re still alive now, still safe, because when they’re all gone–when they’re all gone, you’ll have no more cookies to eat.
You reach for another cookie, whimpering softly.
I’m sure you’re right. Hell is usually depicted as involving your own personal physical suffering. But I’m quite sure hell actually involves a choice of which of your loved ones to destroy, with no opt-out clause. That’s what makes it hell. There’s a bit in Don Winslow’s _Dawn Patrol_ where the narrator says something like, “The devil doesn’t make you choose between something good and something bad; that would be too easy. He makes you choose between something bad and something bad. That’s what makes him the devil.”
That’s a beautiful quote.
If hell were purely physical suffering, it would be far too enjoyable by many of the folks who wound up there (miscreants and martyrs alike).
I’ll have to check out Don Winslow’s book. My only connection with the phrase was via Megadeth. Now I’m wondering about those films from the 30′s as well.
Grab any of the Winslow books you run into. They’re all great!