Once upon a time, O children, there was a woman who worked as a librarian. She was a very good librarian, and she lived a long, successful, and generous life. Eventually, through no fault of her own, she became elderly, died, and went to hell.

Now, when you go to hell, O children, the first thing that happens is that your face is removed. All the skin and the fat. Your nose and your eyelids and your ears. Zip!

This leaves only the nerves, the muscular fascia, and the eyes. This is for a variety of reasons: so you can’t recognize people you knew in life; so you can’t make subtle facial expressions; so you will exist in near-constant pain; so you can’t judge attractiveness; so you cannot look away from unpleasant things; and so on.

The second thing that happens when you go to hell, O children, is that your fleshless head is removed from your body and mounted upon a small platform with wheels. Then your platform is placed in an enormous room, larger than all the oceans, alongside all of the other fleshless heads, each with their own wheeled platform. Then, the floor tilts and pitches and yaws, and all of your heads roll hither and yon, colliding and spinning and moving very quickly.

Now, children, because you have no hands, you cannot protect yourself from colliding with other heads. Because you have no skin, every collision hurts and aches and stings. Because you cannot cover your eyes, you have to watch every impending crash. Because you cannot cover your ears, you can hear every other fleshless cranium screaming and complaining and cussing.

Remember, children, this is not every hell; this is just the hell where this particular woman went.

The woman spent many years in this hell, never sleeping, never knowing the respite of rest, or cool water, or food, or the nonviolent touch of another living thing. The sun perpetually beat down upon her, and the hot wind was unceasing. There were days when the tilting of the ground was lazy and slow, and days when it was very steep and fast.

One day, the tilt was very steep. The woman found herself clumped up with a great many other fleshless heads, with more heads raining down upon them and grinding into their tender nerves. The woman clenched her teeth and waited for this particular pain to subside, and found that many others did the same, although some of them were doing it to try to keep their mouths shut so nothing would drip inside.

There, in the large pile of heads, waiting for renewed and different pain, she listened to the heads around her, which she normally could not do, because everything moved too fast.

“Boy, this is terrible,” said one of the heads. “My cheek meat is raw from crashing into another fellow’s forehead. My tongue is torn from flipping over on the surface. One of my eyes burst last year and it’s been growing back so very slowly, itching the entire time. This is awful. I mean, this is really, really bad.”

“Aw, it’s not so bad,” said one of the other heads. “It could be worse.”

“You kind of get used to it after a while,” said a third head.

Aha, thought the woman. After a while, I will get used to it. This, at last, is something I can look forward to.

Then, O children, the woman crumbled into nothingness and returned to earth, a fresh-faced infant ready to begin anew.

The art at the top of this post is by Grady Gordon.

Once upon a time there was a woman who worked for a crematorium.

This woman did not enjoy her work for the sake of working, but found that she enjoyed the hours, and she enjoyed the paycheck, and she enjoyed the freedom that the paycheck allowed her when she was not working.

When she was first hired at the crematorium, the man who hired her explained to her all of the procedures and rules that must be obeyed. He explained the necessity for privacy, so no one could see the sometimes unpleasant care and handling of the dead; the importance of a clear chain of custody, so remains would not be misplaced or misidentified; and the importance of cleanliness, so that the crematorium would be respectable, and the remains of different people would not get mixed together.

After working side by side with her coworkers for several days, she noticed that, when it came time to roll the person into the furnace, it was always done head-first. She asked one of her coworkers about it, and was told that it was a regulatory requirement. She shrugged and continued working.

This woman worked at the crematorium for many years.

One evening, this woman found herself the only person in the crematorium after a long day. This was not an unusual situation, as she had attained a level of seniority. She had one more dead person to cremate before she could take off her uniform and dust mask, and go home to her family and her pets.

This particular dead person had once been a bodybuilder, and she was heavy and cumbersome to handle alone. When the crematorium employee got the coffin onto the rollers, she discovered to her dismay that the body was positioned feet-first. She considered wrestling the corpse onto the conveyor and turning it around, but she was already very tired. She was alone, and no one would ever know that she had broken the feet-first regulation. She hit the button, and the small pressboard coffin began to roll towards the furnace.

As the door to the furnace opened and the coffin started to roll into it, she heard a small, quiet voice. She immediately slammed the button to stop the rollers and halted the coffin in its tracks. She yanked the coffin back from the flames, its bottom already having blackened a bit, and pulled back the top, afraid that she had nearly sent an alive person into the flames.

But the woman in the coffin was most assuredly dead.

“Please don’t burn me up,” said the dead bodybuilder, through lips that were beginning to moulder.

“You are very dead,” said the crematorium worker. “I have to burn you up.”

“Then let us strike a bargain,” said the dead person, as opaque multicolored tears rolled out of her slack eyelids. “Leave me unburned for only a little while. If you do this, I will tell you secrets of what awaits us all.”

“Fifteen minutes,” said the woman, and the dead person agreed.

And so the woman leaned down, so her warm pink ears were near the dead person’s cold gray lips; and the dead person told the woman secrets.

And then the crematorium employee burned the dead person up.

The woman went home to her family and her pets, and she ate dinner, and she watched some light entertainment, and she went to bed. Once there, she lay with her eyes open and stared at the ceiling. She closed her eyes, and in her mind she saw the strange tears rolling down the dead woman’s face as her depleted lips flapped and her voice croaked.

She thought about the secrets that she had been told, and she found herself tossing and turning all night, and dreaming of flickering orange flames and billowing black smoke, and of white ash covering the world.

In the morning, the woman was very tired indeed. But she got up, and she put on her uniform, and she went to work.

Once upon a time there was an owner of a 7-11 convenience store. This was back in the times when names meant something; in the days before convenience stores never closed.

This owner cared very much about the well-being of his franchise, and unlike other owners, he was there every morning when the store opened, and he was there every night when the store closed, although he was not there for all of the time in between.

For twenty years, the man did this: cleaned and opened the store in the morning; locked and cleaned the store at night. In this way, the man was an excellent caretaker.

Then one day, the owner got a phone call. This was on a land line, as these were different times. “Your store must be like the others,” the person on the other end said, “and it must remain open around the clock.”

The man did not want to do this, as he was content with his store as it had been since it opened. He thought for a long time about what to do. He could not go against the wishes of the man on the other line of the phone, for they could revoke his franchise license, and that would be terrible. He could not change the name of his convenience store, because he felt a great loyalty. And he could not continue to operate his store as he had done lo these many years.

And so the man sold his store. A young man accepted the keys, and gave the owner money, and promised the owner that he would shepherd the store through the next journey.

The man went home. He spent more time with his wife, and his children, and his grandchildren. His wife was grateful that the man was home when she awoke, for he no longer needed to get up early to open the store; and she was happy the man was home when she went to bed, for he no longer needed to go out late to close the store.

But the man was still not happy. He woke up aimless and puttered through his day, doing things he liked to do: he built model trains, and read his books. He perfected several recipes which had evaded him, and he completed his collections of stamps and pennies. And yet he was not happy.

One morning, the man woke up while it was still dark outside and could not go back to sleep. He lay next to his sleeping wife and listened to all the little sounds his house made. He got up and walked through the dark rooms. He started a pot of coffee. He cleaned the large windows in the living room. At seven o’clock, he unlocked the front door.

That night, after he and his wife went to bed, he could not sleep. He listened to his wife breathing for a long time before getting out of bed. He swept the kitchen floor and wiped off the counters. He took out the garbage and ran the dishwasher. At eleven o’clock, he made sure the door was locked, turned off all the lights, and fell asleep quickly.

In this way did the man live out the rest of his days content.