The Wages of (Postmodern) Sin

When the faithless masses of my contemporaries die, their souls do not end up in Hell; they end up in Heck. One may think this punishment less, but still it is extreme. For eternity they will wail there, regretting that they hadn’t been perceptive enough in life to attain to faith and so have a route to redemption. But they will also gnash their teeth in shame, recognizing they never had enough grandeur in them to merit the flames of Hell. And so Heck will drag on, a fetid heaviness in the air, as they spend their days in lines waiting to exchange coupons for gadgets and novelties which keep repeating themselves--which, when they get them back to their cubicles, always somehow end up being the same thing: a little semi-lifelike effigy of the buyer him- or herself.