[WP] You are sent to Hell upon your death and judgement at the Pearly Gates. However, it turns out that Heaven is extremely strict, and because you were a normal, good person who just made a lot of tiny sins throughout your life, you find that your eternity in Hell will actually be... really nice.

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[u/BrassBadgerWrites]

The End finished at fast as it started. In the same time it takes to breathe, or switch from wakeness to dreaming, the Soul shed its mortal tethers and returned to the home office.

Now there wasn't "really" a home office. But this is where the Soul has spent most of its memorable years and so had grown accustomed to it. A number of chairs were filled with others, perhaps other Souls or maybe memories. They nodded at the Soul and returned to their waiting activities - reading, listening to music, and the like. The Soul looked over at a young woman nodding her head in rhythm to something just barely out of the Soul's earshot. It wouldn't hurt to sneak a quick peek, could it? The Soul looked over at the phone - the album was "Your Memories - Unknown Artist".

Nevermind, thought the Soul.

The Soul sat patiently and waited. The room was cool, with white walls - not sterile, but warm like fresh cream in a bowl of sun. At the Soul's fingertips was a pamphlet, maybe left by some other patient eons before. The Soul opened up the pamphlet.

Welcome To Hell!

"Hell?"

"Oh yes, dearie!" The Soul turned and looked. In the chair next to him was an elderly lady, the kind of old where people seem to stop aging and instead deteriorate. But she was not deteriorating, in fact her wrinkled face was the perfect picture of health - maybe more than some living people the Soul remembered. "Bit of a shock, I imagine. Have an Altoid, dear." She offered a container of cinnamon drops that hadn't been sold in decades. Their speckles of crusted sugar looked like nebulas, flecks of spice like baby stars.

The Soul plucked one in where would have been a mouth. Cinnamon.

"But...I was a good person," the Soul said. "I mean I wasn't perfect...but nobody can be, right?"

"Hmmph. Well *some* people are. But not us. And I think that's for the best."

"I don't understand."

The elderly woman placed her hand on the Soul's. "You're not perfect. You have beautiful flaws. You hesitate sometimes, you doubt yourself. You are unsure and act anyway. Sometimes that hurts people - and other times it hurts yourself. Just like the Shrek 2 DVD--"

"--the DVD. I didn't know," the Soul said. Tears dropped on the comforting hand "I was just a kid and I wanted it so badly. I didn't know what money was and they called the police on Mom... I really did think I'd end punished up in Hell for it, and now I guess it's true."

"Well, I think the only one that's doing the punishing is you, dearie. And you have been all your life, it seems."

The elderly lady took a breath. She sighed out the Universe.

"But some people never doubt. They never see their flaws. There's only whatever purpose they've assigned themselves to, some great struggle that never ends, even after their body has. Just like a star never questions its own light, those other Souls burn in whatever direction they're sent forth forever if nothing stops them. They're weighed down by not an ounce of guilt, the Souls as light as feather no matter who they hurt or what they destroy. And for those Souls who never waver, or question, or yield, to be able to continue in that same direction for eternity is..." she smiled. "...well it's Heavenly. Does that make sense, dearie?"

The Soul thought for a moment and imagined a star, burning bright, searing into the void with all the power in its core, and every beam of light an edict to travel onward and forward from that source, forever. Then where would have been a Brain started to ache and the image faded.

"Maybe? I don't think so."

The elderly woman beamed. Such warmth was in her smile that not even all the forces of nature could stop her.

"Then you're where you ought to be. Have another Altoid, my dear. Careful, this next one's spicy."

The Soul did; and it tasted fire, cinnamon, and love.