Welcome, sinner. Take off your coat and make yourself at home. You’re going to be here awhile.
You have committed the gravest of indiscretions. You agreed to attend a celebration at which there was the potential for dancing and for this you will suffer eternally.
Step into the parlor. As you can see, the nine circles of Hell have converged to form one epic dance circle. Yes, those are two different EDM songs blasting through twelve separate sound systems. Yes, the DJ does keep referring to himself in the third person. Yes, there is a line for the bathroom and no, you will never reach the front.
You thought you knew what Hell was? Sinner, you had no idea.
Help yourself to a beverage. It won’t improve your dancing or provide you the social lubrication you so desperately desire, but it will give you something to repeatedly spill on yourself throughout your damnation.
Boogey onto the dance floor and steel your eyes for the atrocities lying in wait. There you will witness a man — an adult man, a doctor on Earth! — forced to contort his body in hideous ways so as to mimic the movements of a worm.
You will watch as a woman is flipped upside down, sparks flying from her head as it makes contact with the flaming floor, her body spinning in furious, concentric circles.
Writhe and thrash as much as you’d like, but nothing can extract you from the vice-like grip of your fellow sinners as they march you around in an eternal Congo line from which there is no escape.
Cower, sinner, for there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. There are no corners in the Tenth Circle where you can squirrel away and pretend to check your email. No snack areas where you can kill time refueling for the next big song. Don’t even bother trying to leap into the mosh pits — there’s nothing down there to break your fall save for fire, brimstone, and empty Juul pods.
This is your nightmare, sinner. Every floor you touch is a dance floor; every time you try to wallflower, the walls disappear. We encourage you to dance like nobody’s watching, but allow me to be very clear: everyone is watching and they all have very judgmental things to say about your hip thrusts.
Prepare yourself, sinner, for nothing here is as it seems. Every few Millenniums, DJ Hellion will play the intro to “SexyBack” and you will begin to sense something brewing deep within your insides, a small wisp of something, something that almost feels like hope. Then thirty seconds in, the DJ will shout “DJ HELLION” and skip the rest of the song. You will deflate and return to your normal, tortured existence.
This is your new reality, sinner. Nothing exists for you except the screams of the damned as they wail along to “Shout! (You Make Me Wanna.)” You know nothing of pleasure. All you know is pain: the throbbing of your head as it bobs to the music, the stabbing blisters on your weary feet, the cramps in your legs as a demon emerges wielding a stick and demanding you prove how low you can go.
Who will save you now, sinner? Your God has forsaken you. You worship at the altar of Cotton-Eyed Joe.
Consider your choices, sinner. Was it all worth it? Were the mistakes you made in agreeing to attend this celebration worth the eternities of punishment you must now endure? Was the possibility of “having fun” and “letting loose” and “maybe getting a chance to catch up with Brittany” worth all the physical, mental and emotional agony?
You don’t have to answer now. You have an eternity to process your feelings.
Sinner, you may not know it, but you came here seeking answers. “What is Hell?” you asked, subconsciously. Allow me to explain:
Hell is other people promising to teach you how to Dougie but never clarifying why you need to learn.
Hell is doing the Electric Slide while being actively electrocuted.
Hell is knowing that you’re clapping on the 1 and 3 but lacking the skills to change your behavior.
Sinner, you are in Hell. And in Hell, once the beat drops, you can never pick it up.