A Very Dante Christmas

[Richter]

Let me paint you a picture of the holidays. 
It's almost nightfall outside the only bulk retail warehouse in a 25 mile area.  As such EVERYONE is there.

The traffic is a molasses like stop and go affair, gaining 3 feet with each heave of motion, almost like an obese person fleeing a house fire.  Good will towards men is expressed with sharp jives to get a few more feet ahead of the other guy, long toots of the horn, and engine revving curses.

Those who negotitate this and park semi legally, make their way, hooded of eye, and avoiding fellow shoppers and cars to the front of the store.  They squish through the slush and water that seeps cold if not wet like a growing mold, and approach the massive edifice.
40% off, ye who enter here.

There's a formerly desititute man out front, with a bell and a kettle, a posterboy for recovery from poverty and drugs.  He boasts a scraggly beard and a voice like 30 cigarette years as he barks out his mantra.

GIN

GALL

BELLS!

GIN

GALL

BELLS!

Each syllable punctuated by the sharp ding of his bell, we'd like to be happy for this fellow, but somehow we realize he's not quite ready for prime time play.  This is what it takes to get people to agree that it would be better to be in a carboard box fucked up on heroin.  Hopefully, before midnight, someone will arrive in a chugging, failing, state sponsored charity van and take him back to someplace warm and dry, where he will honestly cash in his donations and be able rest without fear of being raped or robbed. 
Yeah, you'd like to beleive that.

In the corner by a well picked rack of dying pine members is a much more somber figure.  Huddled near motionless in more thermal clothing than most will ever own, she sits, shepherd of the trees that no one will buy, and tomorrow are mulchbound.

Entry to the retail hell proper is another stygian delight.  Sound, heat, light and crowds overwhelm in a multi pronged tide of "holiday spirit".  The Second degree of retail inquisition.  Bewildered, you stagger forth, but relief and hope fade into yet another hurdle between yourself   The heavy press of cars without is mirrored, fiendishly, in the press of flesh and shopping carriage within.

(more to come)

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Fuck yeah.  Waiting for the next installment.  Okay to add to this, or are you doing this one solo?

[Richter]

I'm trying to LOOSELY break down the next few circles, but I'm stalling.  Feel free to take a swing!

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'll take the 3rd circle.  I have to brush up on my Dante.

[Richter]

If you have any ideas for the 4th too, it's yours.  I NEED get the wrath / sloth bit out of my head before I loose it.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

If you have any ideas for the 4th too, it's yours.  I NEED get the wrath / sloth bit out of my head before I loose it.

Right.  GO!

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Circle the Second

Those overcome by lust are punished in this circle. Dante condemns these "carnal malefactors"[6] for letting their appetites sway their reason. They are the first ones to be truly punished in Hell. These souls are blown about to and fro by a violent storm, without hope of rest. This symbolizes the power of lust to blow one about needlessly and aimlessly.

Inside, it is a maelstrom of activity.  Don't stop, can't stop, gotta get the bargains you lust after before they're gone.  Hear the tinny whining of Hard Rock Candy Christmas blaring from the speakers, a tribute to all that is missing here...a nostalgia for a time when this lust for consumer goods wasn't the end-all/be-all of the season.

Here the elder damned tell me about Cabbage Patch Kids, and how they punched some other soccer mom out for the last one.  Others will tell me about "Tickle Me Elmo", and of the glorious conquests and crushing defeats they suffered in their quest for such a desirable thing.

More recent inmates tell me of Playstation 3s and X-Box 360s, of how they trampled a security guard to death to get there first, in a store indistinguishable from this one.

But in their eyes, you can see the truth...they are damned, and their punishment is to know that all they lusted after was worthless; cheap plastic crap that they must still push and pull, fight and trample for.

I could stand no more, and I asked Virgil to lead on.

[The Wizard]

Huh. I just picked up Inferno today. Sort of weird that this appears at the same time. If I can catch up, I'll try and throw my hat in.

[Richter]

3.

As the press of the flesh sets in, the minds race.   Trough of offerings  laid before them, but never enough to fulfill their craze needs.

"I must get it all." 
"I must complete the list."

The carts they push are stacked to full, and from full to groaning.  Sating the retail need is never quite done, so they stack more, right up unto the very end of their plodding trip.

Between dives into the crowd they slump into the seats of overfull vendors, pushing food withered by heat lamps into their faces, swilling draughts that swell the waist and sicken with diabetes.  So fed and so fueled, they continue.

4.
They began to glance lean and wolflike amongst each other.

Who desires what I desire?
How do I get it FIRST?
Baleful mathematics of demand and ever shrinking supply make them jostle and push each other out of the way.  They set upon each other in barely contained passive aggression and borderline violence.  The line likened more to the skin on an old pudding rather than a surface tension, but miraculously is does not break, and the carts laden with always one item too few creaked onwards.

5.
Never take your children in public when they are tired, cranky or sick, my mother cautioned.  Some noises, no matter how great the din, pierce through all others. 

Shrill protestations from a dire child, Id overriding decorum and judgment, pierce the air.  Above the bab, the angered mother tugs at the flaccid arm and limp bodied form, screaming back her own harsh threats, and invoking Sainted Nicholas against him.

As she harries him down the aisle, a crowd which threat of violence could not part forms a bubble around her, a cyst against the wrathful exclamations, and the howled whines of a toddler who likely only want a nap and an end to the death hike across the noise of the retail pit.

[Richter]

Credit to Roger for the food court in circle #3.

[Da6s]

Would you mind if i wrote my take on the 5th 6th circle?

[Richter]

Take a shot at either.

[Da6s]

I'm just now getting back into my creative writing after not enjoying it since I was 19. Please criticize. Also, i can't figure out how to finish it, so i'm posting it as is thus far.


Canto de Lords-a-Leaping

And as we passed our way i began to question my guide. Would he alone be enough to protect and watch over me? Or would it be that i should fall victim to the never ending carol of the bells?

And then my guide spoke a warning. I was directed to avert my gaze away from the live action nativity shepherds as we crossed the river of pavement,  for they were true jews and the guardians of the secular side of the store.

As we crossed the threshold Virgil took my hand and informed me that we had entered into the 6th circle, the hell for holiday heretics. It was here the secular were to celebrate in extensive agony until the end of all holiday seasons had come to pass.

Now by a lawn and garden sign we ventured. Between the aisles, i heard the woeful sounds of the damned as they chanted "DREIDEL! DREIDEL! DREIDEL!" and "UMOJA! UJIMA! NIA!". As we proceeded, the chanting got louder and louder until we found the source amid innumerable candles. It was here that a solitary voice made it's way through the prattle and confronted us.

This voice was a shade, and this shade was bound in torment inside of a bright red box with green ribbon and bows. The shade only referred to himself as merriment ned, and he began a lamentation that virgil allowed me to hear:

"My festivus tree? Where is it? My frosty the snowman? My reindeer? They were in my attic, i know they were. Where are my lights? Where are my wreaths?   Where is my rudolph? WHERE IS MY SANTA?!? They have all forsaken me in this place of theocratic solemnity. What has happened to my beloved xmas? It seems the christians have fucked up it, and I shall never be allowed to experience festive joy again."