The more observant among the student body may have noticed the return of senior Ray Doss. Having just returned from a much-needed vacation to the fiery depths of the torturous abyss otherwise known as Hell, Doss is reportedly much refreshed and ready to finish out his final year at OHS. When asked why not wait until spring break to take ti me off for the visit, Doss answered, “Hell is just so crowded that time of year. You’ve got to rearrange your schedule if you want to get the real local experience.” He went on to say that “Hell is kind of humid in April anyway. I mean, obviously half the year the fire burns ice cold and for the other half it’s as hot as the sun, so you want to try and squeeze a visit in sometime in late winter, early spring. Those seasons are no joke.”
Doss meet the Lord of Darkness / Photographer: Demon from Hell
Hell is certainly a much-coveted vacation spot, but Doss is not one to give up its exclusivity.
“The entrance to hell?” he remarked, “if I tell you that, hotel prices will go sky high! Okay, okay — there is one in the building, I’ll give you that. You’ll have to figure out where on your own.” When asked where the exit is (similar to many amusement parks, Hell’s tourism has resulted in separate entrances and exits) he responded by spinning his head around rapidly while his eyes turned pitch black and faint tormented screams echoed down the hallway. The question was dropped, for fear of unintentionally and indefinitely opening a portal to a world of the damned through which only beings lacking anything resembling a human soul could cross. Presumably, one has to crawl out from the very depths.
If you have spent any time in Hell, you will certainly have heard from the competing tourism boards of all nine circles.
“Oh, the eighth is totally the best,” says Doss. “Fraud. There’s these 10 bolgias, and Bolgia Two is where the flatterers are. They’re nice.” Doss added that “The food there is okay. It’s all vegan. There’s all those dishes made from thorns in all the restaurants, of course. That’s not very filling, but it’s all right. Then there’s the tree of Zaqqum, which is a very traditional food of the sinners. It’s always served hot, so get that if you go in the cold-burning fire months. Or if you visit the ninth circle, since that’s where all the treacherous people generally are, and they’re frozen into a potentially endless block of ice. It gets chilly.”
Doss says that, having finished the brief vacation, he is much better prepared to finish this last semester. Generally, travel is good for the soul, and Hell is no exception: enter the abyss, and your soul will be taken from you and kept until your deepest immortal sins have been paid off in full. Considering how heavily a soul can weigh on a sinner’s shoulders, that’s an entrance fee many are willing to pay! If you enjoy sinning a lot, a look into Hell’s most popular tourist spots may be well worth your while. Doss gives his hotel in the Eighth Circle, a TripAdvisor rating of 4.5/5: “Really nice. Tortured wailing a little loud.”