The worst thing about being a child in Hell is that there's no one here for me to push around. I am also not happy about the fact that I am spending eternity sealed in the hairless flesh of a prepubescent virgin.

Some of my fellow damned souls in Hell are boiled alive in oil; others forced to consume mountains of wriggling vermin. I go to school, endlessly. My bus passes through industrial neighborhoods with block after of block of stinking, monstrous machines that perpetually rip asunder the screaming dead. Oily streams of foul goo squirt from between the heaving gears and spatter the schoolbus windows. No one on the bus speaks. There is a faint clicking from the front as our driver manipulates the steering wheel with his serrated lobster claws; at the slightest sound from any one of us he will stop the bus, lumber back through the rows of seats, and wordlessly snip the lips off the impertinent child. One is then obliged to spend the rest of the day as a grotesque, grinning skull-face, and be teased mercilessly for it during recess.

Today I am called up before the class to demonstrate my good penmanship on the chalkboard. My teacher's furry hand deposits a lump of chalk in my own, and I'm told to write a comprehensive description of my various earthly sins on the chalkboard. This is a frequent mode of psychological torture in the Infernal Kingdom: making the damned relive their own mistakes and encouraging them to wallow in self-hatred and self-pity for the stupid ways in which we all got ourselves into this everlasting mess.

The teacher retreats, his claws ticking softly on the tile floors. His eyes shine blue in the cold florescent light, the pupils fixed. He is the scaled-up replica of a stuffed animal that I, at the innocent age of six, carried everywhere I went. I was so attached to it that I screamed and wailed when forced to surrender it for even a moment. Over my parents' fierce objections, I took the bear to school on the first day of first grade, and I was ridiculed by the other kids. I came home with my face still red and swollen from crying, and threw the bear in the trash. In Hell he forces me to do multiplication problems until the bones in my childish fingers snap, one by one.

The chalk is painfully tiny, forcing my hand into an uncomfortable hook. I begin at the first shimmers of my memory, describing how I stole cookies from behind my mother's back. I complete an exhaustive description of the various transgressions of my fourth and fifth years. Cullen the Bear reminds me when I neglect to mention an episode. The chalkboard is endless, easily accommodating the thousands of words while somehow allowing me to stand still before my fellow condemned children. Hours are consumed by my writing.

After the mockery of my first day at school, I turned to badness almost effortlessly. Meanness seemed to be the machinery that ran the earth, and I became an expert in its application. I bullied smaller kids into gales of weeping. I started with threats, and when those began to lose their effectiveness I backed them up with the meat of my flesh. My body obligingly grew heavy and threatening, the perfect tool for inflicting suffering. Tears and teeth were shed in my wake (I have drowned in the accumulated volume of those tears five times since I entered Hell). Older kids begged me to stop, and probably prayed to the Good Lord to make me go away. It was intoxicating. And then I fell off the back porch.

As I write, I detect a strange stirring in my pants. I'm getting an erection in front of the whole class, my pathetic little penis pushing against the material of my jeans. My face flushes, and I momentarily lose my place in the story of my sins. I hear the teacher ask me if there's something wrong. I frantically runs my eyes down the last line I wrote, trying to find the narrative again. The teacher, in his cutest stuffed-animal voice, tells me that if I'm done, I should turn around and face the class. At that, my erection seems to stiffen, almost painful in its desire to be set free. I do not move. The voice comes again -- not the lisping lilt of a teddy bear but a deep animal growl. I rotate, slowly, until I am staring out at the rows of haunted eyes. They all look down at my pants, and someone in the back snorts and smothers a laugh. My penis feels like an overinflated balloon, stretching and pressing earnestly towards the class. I hear a pop of stitchery, and it explodes through the fabric, pointing its little accusing finger out over everyone's heads.

I think human beings can get used to any situation, any kind of suffering or misery except one: regret. It's not the pain inflicted on us in Hell, or the degradation, or the pitiful spectacle of being forever surrounded by your fellow vile sinners, that makes eternal life in the Inferno unbearable. It is the regret, and the realization that is daily forced upon us that we only have ourselves to blame. There is a certain feeling you get in Hell when you realize that the boundless creativity of the tormentors has again succeeded in eliciting your regrets; you have been mastered, humiliated, and you are utterly powerless to prevent it. We are abandoned souls, derelicts that have been salvaged by cruel masters.

I feel the familiar, impotent tears of a punished child. I look down to see the tip of my penis swelling alarmingly, round and blue-red as a plum. I feel something awful burst low in my belly. Then the grossly distended tip pops like a birthday balloon and a swarm of bees emerges from inside me, stinging everyone in the room viciously.