Perdition University

I was never really raised to believe in Heaven or Hell, so I never thought about it until I ended up in the latter. How did I get here? I guess you could say it started on my first day of high school. I was sort of a shrimpy kid, and kind of awkward, which of course meant I pretty much had a giant target on my back to be constantly bullied and harassed.

Worst of all were the seniors. You know, the older kids who think that because it’s their last year of school, that gave them a free pass to be total douchebags to everybody. The ironic things is, that while I was basically tortured throughout my whole freshman year, I ended up becoming just like them.

I had a growth spurt over the summer leading up to Sophomore year, and suddenly I was a six foot wall of muscle. Needless to say, when my former tormentors got a look at me, they immediately left me alone.

Sure, I could have turned the other cheek. But a big part of me wanted to see them get what was coming to them. So for the next three years, they were the ones being shoved into lockers, and getting beaten to a pulp. Yes, I got detention more than a few times, and was even threatened to be expelled, but they never actually went through with it. Probably because I was the best football player in the school.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I joined the football team as quarterback, and ended up winning the state finals for our school, which got me a scholarship to college. I even became head of the top fraternity on the campus. I could hardly believe that I had gone a wimpy nerd to the head honcho of the school. But like I said, I ended up becoming just like, if not worse than the ones who bullied me all those years ago. Why? I guess you could say that I realized that the bigger, more popular kids tormenting the smaller, geeky ones is just the natural order of things in any school, just like in nature and the food chain. And since I had gone from the latter to the former, I was obligated to continue the cycle.

Yep, those were the best years of my life, but as fate would have it, they were also the last. One night I was walking back to the frat house after an off campus party, when out of nowhere, I get hit by a drunk driver. And just like that, my life was over. Like I said before, I never really believed in the afterlife, so imagine my surprise when I found myself suddenly enrolled in Perdition University.

Upon arriving here, I realized two things, The first being, obviously, Heaven and Hell really do exist. And second, Hell loves irony, because from the instant I set foot in this school, I was suddenly the one on the bottom of the social ladder. And before you ask, no, I’m not the only damned soul here. There are plenty of others that are condemned to spend eternity alongside me here. The guys are mostly jocks and bruisers like I was, but here they’re treated like they were nerds by the much stronger and far more sadistic demon students.

Then there’s the girls, who were basically all the spoiled head cheerleader type in life. Now they’re mocked and relentlessly tormented by the demon girls here. Like I said before, Hell loves irony. Being dead, we don’t require food or sleep, so our day here is pretty much an endless loop. Constantly moving from class to class, then starting all over again. If you thought the students sounded bad, wait until you meet the staff. Right now I’m sitting in Ms. Zabill’s, a female demon’s, classroom as she is scratching out today’s lesson on the board with her long, sharp fingernails. With each stroke, a sharp, shrill screech pierces the silence and makes everybody in the room flinch or cover their ears.

When Ms. Zabill turns to face us, we see she has written on the board “Sin and Punishment 101” “Every single one of you has committed in one form or another, a sin for which you were not forgiven.” She says. “Now, I’m sure you all have some kind of excuse as to why you did what you did, but I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter.” She pointed to a girl sitting in the front row. “You, come up here and state your name and why you are here.” The girl, a blonde that looked around seventeen, stood up and faced the class. “My name is Cindy, and I don’t know why I’m here. I never did anything wrong in my life!”

Ms. Zabill rolled her eyes as though she had heard this a thousand times before, which to be honest, she probably has. “Really?” She says “So you don’t remember how you bullied the less popular girls when you were alive? How you targeted one girl, a certain Johanna Smith in particular, how you mocked her for her acne and braces, and drove her to drown herself?”

Cindy had no response, and could only cross her arms and pout. “It’s not like anybody cared about her anyway.” Ms. Zabill chuckled “You mortals, always thinking someone else is to blame. I suppose I should thank you. If your kind wasn’t so arrogant and prideful, I wouldn’t have this job.” Ms. Zabill Snapped her fingers, and Cindy suddenly burst into flames. She ran around the room, screaming like a banshee before finally collapsing on the floor as the fire continued to burn away her body until the only thing left was a black mark on the floor. Nobody in the room so much as batted an eyebrow. This sort of thing happened all the time here, and we all knew she would manifest again in an hour or two, ready for more punishment.

Next up was another girl, an enormously fat redhead. She waddled up to the front of the class and said. “My name is Janet, and when I was alive, I was the hottest girl in my school. All the boys would flock to me like birds, and I could have had any one of them that I wanted.” “So what happened?” Said Ms. Zabill, though something tells me she already knew the answer. Janet began to cry, and she half sobbed the rest of her story. “There was this fat girl in my class, and I would always tease her about her weight.” “Tease her?” Said Ms. Zabill “I think you did much more than that. Didn’t you?”

“Okay, Fine! Me and my friends mocked her and humiliated her every day!” Now Janet began to break down in tears. “And now I look like a human whale!” “That’s enough now.” Said Ms. Zabill "Take your seat.” For the next half hour, the class went on like this, with everyone telling what they did in life to end up here.They were all pretty much the same, basically they were all some popular girl or jock who made life for their classmates miserable, and now they get to spend eternity on the other side of the spectrum.

The bell rang, and my next class was gym, which was taught by a burly demon named Mr.Butch. He was one of the most sadistic teachers in the whole school, and believe me, that was no small feat. “Alright, mortals.” He said in his deep, terrifying voice “Today the boys will be lifting weights, while the girls will play volleyball.” To you, this might not sound so bad, until you take into account the fact that the weights at this school literally weighed several tons, and the volleyballs were made of fire and explode after a set time, so it was really more like a lethal game of hot potato.

I tried lifting one of those little mini dumbbells, and ended up dislocating my shoulder. But that wasn’t the worst of it, I saw this one dude who ended up getting crushed by the bench press machine, and another that actually succeeded in lifting one of the really big weights over his head with Mr.Butch’s help, only for him to immediately let go and let the weight drop down, literally bending the guy in half.

After gym, we had a free period, which was arguably the most dangerous part of the day,because the demonic students used this time to hunt down and torment their favorite targets. I ended up being held upside down by my ankles as two demons repeatedly dunked my head in a toilet bowl full of lava. Needless to say, by the time they were finished, my head was nothing but a blackened skull,and I had to go through the rest of the day like that. But I got off easy, compared to what they usually do to the others. But you want to know the worst absolute worse thing that could happen to you here?

Getting sent to the dean’s office. No body really knows what happens when you get sent there, because anybody who goes in never comes out. I’ve never even seen the dean (no rhyme intended), nor do I know if the dean is male or female.

Some speculate that whoever the dean is, he or she simply devours anyone sent to his or her office, and that soul vanishes from existence. Of course, that’s just a rumor, but I don’t know which is scarier, the rumor itself, or not knowing whether it’s true or if something much worse awaits anybody sent to the dean’s office.

You probably think that this all ends after graduation, but as I said before, this is no ordinary school. There is no graduation, we are all condemned to spend everyday in this school, forever. Why am I telling you all this? Because you never know when your life will end. You probably think you’re going to live well into your golden years, and that might be true. But the truth is, you could die at any moment of the day, be it from a heart attack, or some sort of accident, or maybe you were bitten by something poisonous. My point is, nobody likes an jerk, especially Heaven. So if you're like me when I was still alive, you had better straighten out real quick. If not, well, then I guess I'll be seeing you soon enough.