"Help me Hell"

Nick and his friend Marina were playing last night, occupying themselves while the big girls found something else to do, while their parents were still eating and drinking and telling stories. Finally Nick and Marina came downstairs and told us about their game. They had developed an elaborate fantasy in which one of them was in hell, and the other would effect a rescue. Nick explained in all his five-year-old seriousness: "So if Marina is in hell I will come and rescue her." Then Marina--one year his junior, though you wouldn't know it--chimed in "Unless I'm in help me hell, because there no one can rescue you."

My friend Kathy, a medievalist, watched in growing amusement. They explained more about "help me hell"--"it's where you go through this trapdoor from hell, and all you can do is call 'help me, help me!'"

"They're channeling Dante!" Kathy cried. We laughed and laughed as we listened to them explain ever more elaborate conditions for their various hells, including what would happen if you were the devil of hell (nothing good, believe me).

I don't know where they got this stuff. Nick never hears about hell in church, I'm quite sure--I tend more towards the "mercy" than the "judgement" school of Christianity--and Marina's being brought up without any religion at all. But then, hell's not really a religious concept, is it? It's an idea we need, we here in the world, to explain what will happen when those who offend us and prosper finally go to their rewards. And "help me hell" sounds just about right...

Sometimes I think I'm there, just calling and calling. But in mine, someone usually hears me.