by Diane Jaramillo

Created on: June 03, 2010

Good afternoon and welcome aboard the HELL TRAIN! I am your conductor on this wonderful trip today. Please be seated and fasten your seatbelts. Our stops today include the first, third, and seventh levels of Hell. For more information, please refer to your handbook "Dante’s Inferno", by one of our most illustrious residents.

What’s that you say? How did someone as obviously sweet and loveable as myself get sentenced to this job? Well, let me tell you.

It’s true when they say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. What they don’t tell you is that it’s a 10% downhill grade with no guardrails or runaway vehicle ramps. They also don’t tell you that it’s iced over all the time. Ever watch Ice Road Truckers on the History channel? Now you see my point.

The descent started easily enough. It was little things like taking the last napkin in the breakroom and not replacing them, or using the last sheet of paper in the copier and not refilling it. Those are the gentle slopes that give you that little push of momentum for the bigger dips to come.

Soon I was taking the last cup of coffee and not making more. Then it progressed to ‘borrowing’ pens from coworkers and not returning them. Before too long I was telling people exactly what I was thinking with no regard for the consequences.

It just got worse. I started murdering. Terminex had nothing on me. I haunted my back yard with a spray bottle of bug killer, just waiting for one of them to show their ugly faces. Whenever they did, I unloaded on them. When I found the ant hill in my driveway, it was a massacre. There were little ant bodies everywhere, and my husband told me I had a manic look on my face as I laughed while dousing them with ant killer.

The last push came when I found the neighbor kid’s pet snake in my back yard. Not only did I commit murder on the snake, I threatened the poor kid with bodily harm if he ever let one of his ‘pets’ come near me again. While most people might not think that ‘tap dancing my way to your mother’s house on your head’ is a hefty threat, it apparently worked on him because he has never come near me again, and here I am.

So, if you will take your seats, we will begin our wonderful tour of HELL.

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