‘so here the folk must dance their roundelay’

Here saw I peo­ple, more than else­where, many,
On one side and the oth­er, with great howls,
Rolling weights for­ward by main force of chest.

They clashed to­geth­er, and then at that point
Each one turned back­ward, rolling ret­ro­grade,
Cry­ing, “Why keep­est?” and, “Why squan­der­est thou?”

Thus they re­turned along the lurid cir­cle
On ei­ther hand unto the op­po­site point,
Shout­ing their shame­ful me­tre ever­more.

 

I now know Hell.

It is not go­ing to Wal­mart.
It is check­ing out at Wal­mart.

The store is Pur­ga­to­ry
                                   – but af­ter one nav­i­gates dis­ori­ent­ed faces, bod­ies adrift, blue vests and rus­es of price points

The check­out lanes are the Cir­cles of Hell it­self.
 

Then each, when he ar­rived there, wheeled about
Through his half-cir­cle to an­oth­er joust;
And I, who had my heart pierced as it were,

Ex­claimed: “My Mas­ter, now de­clare to me
What peo­ple these are, and if all were clerks,
These shaven crowns upon the left of us.”

And he to me: “All of them were asquint
In in­tel­lect in the first life, so much
That there with mea­sure they no spend­ing made.

 

I lit­er­al­ly spent over 30 min­utes be­hind one fam­i­ly who ap­par­ent­ly does­n’t know how to use food stamps, or what­ev­er food stamps are now called. They kept try­ing to buy things that weren’t cov­ered and even­tu­al­ly a man­ag­er had to be brought over.

I had un­loaded most my cart and was stuck on all sides
                                   – there were more souls be­hind me as well. Ar­riv­ing one af­ter an­oth­er, form­ing a se­quence. On line. In queue. Danc­ing the rounde­lay.
 

Clear­ly enough their voic­es bark it forth,
Whene’er they reach the two points of the cir­cle,
Where sun­ders them the op­po­site de­fect.

Clerks those were who no hairy cov­er­ing
Have on the head, and Popes and Car­di­nals,
In whom doth Avarice prac­tise its ex­cess.”

For­ev­er shall they come to these two buttings;
These from the sepul­chre shall rise again
With the fist closed, and these with tress­es shorn.

 

I stared into the abyss and he stared back
                                   – charg­ing a dime for “pa­per or plas­tic.”
 
 

—daniel paschal

Flom­mist Daniel Paschal is an avid gamer and a ded­i­cat­ed film­mak­er. He will al­ways be a die-hard Love­craft fan. Ph’nglui mglw’­nafh Cthul­hu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fh­tagn! Copy­right © 2016 Daniel Paschal. In­clud­ed: Sec­tions of Dante’s In­fer­no, Can­to VII. Foto by mehal­lo.

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