My Vacation in Hell

By Gene Twaronite

A dark comic tale of a young man's journey through hell

My Vacation in Hell is a humorous young adult fantasy. Set in the mid-1960s, it is told in first person narrative by a 15-year-old writer named John Boggle. A troubled nerdy misfit and a frequent flyer of his imagination, John is inspired by a book report reading of Dante Alighieri's the Inferno. In the eternity of the five minutes before summer vacation, he embarks on a pilgrimage based upon his own free-wheeling interpretation of the work.

Following Dante's lead, John populates his hell with all the people who have wronged him over the years, inventing deliciously cruel punishments for each of them in his teenage version of cosmic retribution. Aided by his best friend Virgil, a trusty guide in this shared imagination, John also struggles to come to terms with the world's many evils. And as he descends further into this realm, he constructs his own hierarchy of evildoers, assigning them to the levels he believes they deserve.

But it is the evil perpetrated upon John, a victim of sexual abuse, which poses the most difficult challenge for him. The deeper he goes, the more he encounters obstacles, some of whom in the guise of colorful demon characters try their best to keep him there. But the worst obstacle of all is his own self-image, forged out of guilt and shame. He will not leave this hell of his own making, Virgil tells him, until he learns how to deal with the evil inflicted upon him and finds the true center of his being.

Though disturbing at times due to its mature theme, My Vacation in Hell delivers a message of hope with a large dose of humor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gene Twaronite
• Release date: Jan 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224960934

Gene Twaronite

GENE TWARONITE is a poet, writer, andauthor of twelve books. Early in his career, he wrote humorous stories for children, some of which were published by Highlights for Children and other magazines. He has always been fascinated by the way fables can weave together truth, wonder, and absurdity in a form appealing to all ages. This is his first fable.

Book preview

Dedication: To all who seek

their own way out of hell

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my wife Josie, critical reader and editor extraordinaire, for her thoughtful suggestions and editorial assistance in helping me find a way out of my own dark wood of doubt and interminable revisions. I also wish to thank book cover designer Abigail Westbrook for her wonderful cover, which is based on Gustave Dore´s 1861 engraving entitled Lucifer, King of Hell. And a special thanks to my character John Boggle, victim of sexual abuse in my previous novel The Family That Wasn’t, who inspired me to write this story.

Chapter 1

No Way Out

There are no road signs in hell. No way to tell which direction to turn or how many miles left to go or even where the next rest stop is. I don’t have a clue how to get out of here. 

Hell is not what I expected it to be. I used to think of it as a place full of hot rocks and red flames and naked people in pain. That was before my little trip here. Just like in Dante’s book, there are different parts or levels. Only the levels are more like separate worlds or zones, all connected by doors, stairways, bridges, tunnels and sometimes just holes. And each zone has its own set of rules.

There are even some good parts to hell, though the books don’t mention it. It kind of makes sense when you think about it. Nothing is so totally bad that there isn’t some sliver of good in it. 

Wish Virgil would come back. He ducked through a door and was gone before I could ask where he was going. It’s just like him to take off like that when things get too rough. 

The weather down here is getting worse, so I’m sitting it out behind a boulder to wait for the wind to die down. It’s blowing so hard it sounds like a church choir being burned alive. I’ve still got my journal and have started writing to make some sense out of all this, though if it gets much colder I may have to start a fire with it. My fingers are so numb I can barely move them.  But I need to get this down before it’s too late. 

According to Virgil, we’re in the last zone now. Dante called it the Ninth Circle, which is at the bottom of a giant central pit. It’s like being at Antarctica, with ice everywhere as far as the eye can see. In the middle of it all is a giant head, stuck in the ice. Dante said it was Satan himself. But after getting a good long look at its faces (it has three of them), I can tell you it’s definitely not Satan that’s stuck there. It’s something far worse. I’d know those faces anywhere. And if I don’t get out of here soon, I’ll go mad.

Chapter 2

A Book Report

Iwouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for that book report assignment in Ms. Fishstein’s English class. She told us we could choose any book we wanted, so I chose the Inferno by Dante Alighieri. What attracted me immediately was the book’s subject: a journey through hell.  How bad could it be?

Pretty bad, I soon found out. The book was written by a guy in the early fourteenth century. It’s hard to believe there were even people back then. Think of it. This author wrote before movies, television, cars, pizza, electric guitars or even printed books had been invented.  Before people even knew about germs or that the earth revolved around the sun. 

As you can imagine, the book was pretty tough going. The worst part was, the author wrote the whole thing as one long poem which starts off like this:

Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray

from the straight road and woke to find myself

alone in a dark wood ...

The only thing that got me through it was that in my edition of the book, translated from the Italian by John Ciardi, there was a summary of each Canto or chapter, sort of like Cliff’s Notes.  So you could just read the summary and then go straight to the good parts. My teacher, by the way, actually believed that I read the whole thing and gave me an A for choosing such a mature and complex book.

And, despite having to skim over all the stuff about goodness and virtue and the different categories of sins, I found there were lots of fun parts. I mean, this guy wrote about hell as if it actually existed. And he filled it with the souls of people in real heavy duty pain.

In the Third Circle, for instance, he described how a storm of rotting, stinking snow and rain falls forever into a nasty sea of slush, where the souls whose sin was gluttony are forced to just sit there as they are ripped and torn apart by Cerberus, the official three-headed dog of hell. Is that great or what?

Of course, I couldn’t see why Dante chose such a terrible punishment for the gluttons of this world. Because in life they made no better use of their time than simply to eat and make waste, they are forced to sit in pools of waste for all time. All right, so it’s not exactly cool to spend every minute stuffing your face but ... does a person really deserve to sit in shit for all time simply because of an eating disorder? 

There were also other things in the book that I didn’t agree with. For instance, in the First

Circle of hell Dante puts all the people who never heard about Jesus Christ and thus never had the chance to believe that he was truly God. He calls them the Virtuous Pagans. Though they don’t actually suffer, they have no hope at all. To me this doesn’t sound very fair. From what little I know of Christianity, it doesn’t sound very Christian, either. And to have no hope at all forever ... wouldn’t that be the very worst kind of suffering? 

Thanks to my crazy mother, who just started her new job at a recycling plant near Boston, our family has tried out hundreds of different religions over the years, including many Christian ones. She recycles religions as if they were used auto parts and claims that you should try to take the best from each one and put them all together. This can get very confusing, like the time when I believed in Vishnu, Zeus, Odin, Gaea and Shamash as all being the one true God and even tried to get my principal to let me take days off in their honor. Mom always insists that it’s important for a person to believe in something. But just because a person doesn’t, does that mean he deserves to go to hell? Aren’t there far worse things that people do? This got me to thinking about all kinds of stuff. What is the absolutely worst thing that a person could do?  I guess killing another human being is pretty bad, but it’s how you do it that counts. If you kill someone by mistake or because you’re so mad that you can’t think straight, that’s one thing. But if you kill someone simply because you’re bored or because it brings you pleasure, well, that‘s something else. And if you kill thousands of people because of racial or ethnic hatred or just to make a quick profit or even to go to heaven, yes, I think that’s got to be right up there on the worst things list.

Just read any history book and you’ll discover all kinds of nasty things that people have done to each other. There’s rape, torture, and cannibalism. There’s gassing, goring, and burning at the stake. And for slaughter on a more massive scale, nothing beats a good A-bomb, though some prefer fire bombs or the personal touch of a homemade explosive device.

Even with all this evil in the world, I found myself wondering if there were still something worse, something so terrible that we just can‘t imagine anyone ever doing it. And if someone did do such a thing, how would this person be punished?  How much pain and suffering would be enough? 

Pretty depressing stuff, I know, but I just couldn’t help myself. It was fun thinking about it, just as Dante must have felt. He put all kinds of people down in his hell, including famous warriors, philosophers, politicians, even popes. And I started thinking about what people I would put down there.

Chapter 3

In a Dark Wood

J ohn, wake up! shouted Mr. Sickleby in my ear. You’re daydreaming again.

Mr. Sickleby is my ninth grade American history teacher. If you don’t wear skirts or play on Mr. Sickleby’s chess team, you don’t stand much of a chance in his classroom. He’s a real pervert who always seats the most attractive girls in the front row just so he can look up their skirts. With most students he’s just indifferent, but he’s always had it in for me. OK, so I admit zoning out a lot lately, but that’s no excuse for the way he treats me.

All right, John, he will say in a sarcastic voice, "would you repeat for us the names of all the U.S. presidents in order, starting with the first? I assume you at least know that one. 

This was how it usually started. He would say something like this to provoke me. I always thought memorizing lists of presidents was a pretty stupid waste of time anyway. So, of course, I got up and just made up names. Warner J. Hamwing. Edwin G. Barleycorn III. Then Victoria Sucretia followed by ...    

That’ll be enough, Mr. Bazukas-O’Reilly and whatever other names your family is using these days! I can see you’re just as stupid as your big fat brother.

My full last name, by the way, is Bazukas-O’Reilly-Geronimo-Giovanni-Li Choy-Echeverria. It’s a long story, but I’ve learned to live with it. I came up with the acronym B.O.G.G.L.E. and my friends just call me John Boggle. 

Sickleby had my brother Bruno in class the year before last. At over 300 pounds he may be a bit large, but he certainly isn’t stupid, just different. When old Sickleby found out that Bruno’s middle name is Katherine, he just wouldn’t let up. He was always calling him by that name and making fun of him in class. To this day Bruno still hates history. 

I suppose I should ignore him, but Sickleby just brings out the worst in me. People like him shouldn’t be allowed in the classroom. Just think of all the heads he’s messed up, and all the girls he’s ogled. If I had my way, he’d be down in hell right now ...

Wearing only his undershorts and that stupid tweed jacket of his, he would be forced to sit forever at a too small desk while his teacher, with long hair and a face like Frank Zappa, asks him question after question.

"Now Atwood (his first name), please tell me the names of all the U.S. Presidents’ dogs and cats, beginning with George Washington.

But that’s ridiculous! Mr. Sickleby shouts. No one knows all their names and why would they? How can I ...?

Sorry, wrong answer. And with that his teacher pulls a switch on his desk that is connected to hundreds of wires going to pins sticking out from all over Mr. Sickleby’s body. He screams and screams as his body twitches and flaps like a huge ugly fish.

Just then a beautiful girl, in a very short skirt, would enter the classroom and sit down on top of Mr. Sickleby’s desk. Mr. Sickleby stops screaming, for the pain has stopped. He can’t help but look, though unfortunately he has completely forgotten what happens when he does. 

Roving eyes again, I see, said his teacher. Then he steps forward and with two flicks of his wrist yanks old Mr. Sickleby’s eyes right out of their sockets and squashes them in his hands. You won’t be needing these for a while. Now concentrate on the lesson.

It was fun imagining Sickleby get what he deserves, but there were other fish to fry. I began thinking about that bully back in seventh grade.

His name was Ronnie Rotmeisser. Like all the kids in his gang, he wore greasy black jeans, a frilly red tank top (even in winter) and little switch blade earrings. Around his neck was a necklace of barbed wire. Though I could never quite figure out the tank top, I do have to give him credit. He really worked hard at his image. The only trouble was, the minute he opened his big fat mouth he just made you laugh.

Hey Johnnie, what’s the password?  You ain’t goin’ nowhere till you say it. Then he would just stand there, his hairy gut protruding out from under his tank top. It quivered like jello whenever he talked.

Furunculosis, I would say, or any other fake word that happened to pop into my head. It didn’t matter much with Ronnie, for he was a man of few words.

‘Fewrun what? he would ask, having already forgotten what the real password was, if there ever was one. That ain’t no word." 

So the game went on and, trying hard not to laugh, I would have to explain what the word meant while Ronnie eyed me with an air of suspicion.

I usually managed to keep from laughing, for one thing bullies don’t like is to be laughed at.That’s something I picked up from my best friend Virgil, who always tries to keep an open mind on people. It is a good strategy that has saved my life on more than one occasion.

But not everyone is as wise as Virgil. Take my little sister Venus, for instance. Everyone says she has a genius I.Q., but sometimes she can be even dumber than Ronnie. Fortunately, she’s outgrown her Venusian phase, when she used to cover her face with white powder and put on a white sheet taped with pictures of flowers. That is what she used to believe the inhabitants of Venus look like. But now, she walks down the street with her face in a book or while playing with a slide rule, mumbling to herself. She’s the perfect target for a guy like Ronnie. 

I’ve managed to get her out of a couple of tight situations and, once, even got my head bashed open on account of her. But you can’t protect somebody forever. One day, Ronnie caught up with her when I wasn’t around.

He was swaggering down the street with his gang. I guess he needed to impress the other members. They surrounded Venus in the alley back of Michelson’s Food Market. Maybe it was the complete obliviousness that Venus displayed toward everyone, but they saw her as stuck-up and viewed the books she always carried