I have come to the conclusion that I am not dead.
I am certain, in fact, that I am merely visiting
the vast plains of the afterlife instead
as a tourist, casually wandering
Hell with no contract preventing me
from returning to the Land of the Living.
Should this be the case, I figure there’d be
some rhyme or reason for my ordeal,
perhaps a moral to learn or divinity
to meet or ancient relic to steal
back from the villain who pilfered it
first, maybe even a sick sovereign to heal
with some arcana I am yet to exhibit.
Something plucked straight from the plot
of an epic fantasy story, albeit
a rather convoluted one. Whether or not
this is the case is as yet untold, though
- strictly between us, friend - what
ordinary soul wouldn't be a fraction low
should they be put through all that I am
faced with, only to be left out in the snow,
literally and figuratively. Just to get here, I swam
through a blizzard of solorn souls, fought
demons akin to Cerberus himself, and damn-
I scarcely made it out alive! Surely there ought
to be some point to all this, a lesson
to take away or prize of some sort.
Alas, I suppose time will tell. My question
for you, friend, is: why are you here?
Are you like me, a peer to lessen
my isolation, or are you like them, neither peer
nor foe, just a part of the furniture?
As we speak, a barbarous storm rolls near,
her lightning flashing a stark verditure,
not white as we are so used to,
and as she approaches she brings with her
a chaos unlike anything neither you
nor I could ever dream: we just don't possesses
such evil within us. Her plumes of blue
and obsidian pollute every recess
in the horizon, flooding every canyon
and crevice and, to their distress,
every poor sod living there. Do we abandon
the unfortunate souls? Do we rush in and save who we can
before our flesh rots off our bones? Dear companion,
we know nothing, other than
the absolute certainty that we are ignorant
in this matter. We don’t know when it began,
whom or what is capable of such malevolent
power, or in fact whether the storm approaching
is malevolent at all. Perhaps it’s perfectly innocent.
Do you see what I’m saying?
Dear friend whom I just met,
what exactly is the point in trying
when it was never our problem at the outset?
I am merely a tourist, it’s none of my concern
who lives and who survives, forget
the villagers in the hills, should they burn
at the hand of green lightning or choke
on obsidian fog. I only hope to return
to the land from which I came. The smoke
creeps forth and the lightning laughs and there is nothing we can do;
there is no consequence for us folk
merely passing through.
So, what say you, friend?
What do you suppose we do?
Is it our utilitarian duty to defend
innocent lives at the expense of our own?
Or do we run, save ourselves from the end
of this world and travel alone
to the next, wherever that may take us?
Do we brace the tempest and loan
our lives to defend total strangers?
What if the strangers turn out to be barbarian
monsters who slaughter us and those who succeed us?
That doesn’t sound very utilitarian.
Friend, I suggest we move on:
forget the tempest and the anonymous villain
who conjured it; forget the philosophical jargon
and the ethics and the morality
and the tedious compulsion to do what’s right. Heroism is a con
orchestrated by Lucifer to lure humanity
into his eternal prison. These souls wallowing
are testament to that. So come, escape morality.
We are tourists, casually wandering
Hell with no contract preventing us
from returning to the Land of the Living.
We are not locals here, thus
we have no business dealing with their infernal
grievances and political fuss.
Friend, whether I am supposed to be Virgil
and you Dante, or vice versa, it appears we’ve been dealt
a get out of jail free card, if you will.
Alas, Lord, now I know how Dante felt:
I have come to the conclusion that I am not dead,
and these wretched souls cannot be helped.
There’s nothing more to be said.
