Malachy Jackson Site

What does hell look like in your imagination? Lake of fire? Symbolic and personalised to your sinful needs? Freezing? Maybe just a dark place where God can’t hear you like Sheol?

I’ve always been fascinated by hell as a concept. I grew up Catholic, so perhaps that’s natural, but it’s omnipresent throughout religion and culture in some form or another. Think of this as a manifesto, how I believe hell should be.

Concepts of my vision of Hell:

• Monsters. All the time, everywhere. There needs to be a big variety of them, to form different needs in torment. Big scary ones to hack you to pieces with an axe, flesh eating bugs to infest you, intelligent ones for more intimate torture. They should have their own interactions with each other, their own ecosystem bent towards torment.
• Built like a maze. Hell is a winding labyrinth, seemingly built underground. Tunnels and buildings, fortresses, dungeons, torture chambers. Imagine the Dungeon of Fear and Hunger. It should have different layers and different climates. Flooded areas with polluted water filled with leeches, areas with tight cave passages to torment claustrophobics, for instance. This way, torture is self-inflicted. When someone is sent to hell, their natural desire to wander introduces them into new and exciting forms of pain.
• Loneliness. Whilst you might meet another person in hell, they should be few and far between. It shouldn’t be crowded. Humans are social animals. Other humans are a lifeline.
• Artifice. Hell should feel part natural, part constructed, the stone of caverns twisted by human intellect towards torturous ends. Mechanical traps should be omnipresent. Hell should feel like it was built by humans, but only the most depraved of them. The Elizabeth Bathorys (Bathories?) and Issei Sagawas of the world. A true world gone twisted, where the truly depraved have built everything, and all life wants you specifically to suffer.

I have plans to make use of my vision of hell eventually. I’ve said if I ever become a hack I’d write rip-offs of Battle Royale (the death game, specifically Battle Royale format penetrates my pretentiousness and appeals to my lizard brain directly), and I have a concept for one of those set in hell. Maybe I’ll write chapters for it and post them here.

For my favourite depictions of hell, see: The Binding of Isaac, Demonophobia, Doom (the original games, where hell is darker and more atmospheric, as opposed to the new ones), Chainsaw Man (very different from my vision but still beautiful), Burning Up (Insane Clown Posse song), Tomino’s Hell (poem), Panorama of Hell (manga)