Dead. Limbo. One-minute short of eternal hellfire and brimstone. Instead he was sentenced to an eternal existence as an overgrown infant. All because he had died just one minute short of his 18th birthday. Sixty more seconds, and he would have gone to the Lake of Fire. That one realization made everything hit home for Dante. He was dead. He was in Limbo. He was stuck in a giant daycare center filled with other people who had died without a baptism. And the only options presented him were to either go insane and become a drooling idiot, or go with the flow and accept the treatment.

Fear welled up inside of Dante. He fell over onto his side and curled up in the fetal position. He stared straight ahead at the mesh walls of his new prison.

“Dante?”, Lysa said. “Dante? You there, kid? Helloooo?” Dante just ignored her. His soggy diaper was starting to cool, too; his hairless crotch starting to chafe and itch. He ignored that too. “Criminey, kid, don’t do this now! You just got here! Snap out of it, already!” Fuck her. Stupid blonde-headed -dead- bitch. He had problems of his own.

Apparently, finding out that he had had a near Hell experience was a more traumatizing experience than an actual death experience. A big baby experience didn’t even compare. Mrs. Applegate had remarked once that “No one dies an atheist.” Even atheists feared Hell on some level. It was better to rot in the ground than to be tortured till the end of time.

He would have gone to Hell if he had died one minute later. It just wouldn’t get out of his head. It wasn’t fair. He had been a pretty good kid all his life. Not great, but pretty good. He got mostly A’s in school. He had never hit anyone, save in self defense, and generally listened to his parents. But all because his parents decided not to have some old child-molester drip water on his forehead when he was a baby, he was now stuck as a baby forever? That wasn’t right! That wasn’t fair! His vision got blurry as tears trickled down from his eyes.

No. What REALLY wasn’t fair, was the fact that he was dead to begin with. He was supposed to be planning for college, not dead! He had had his whole life ahead of him. He wasn’t supposed to worry about what happened when he died, that was what people did when they got old. Who knows, given enough time, maybe he would have gotten religious and been baptized and all that other stuff after he grew up. But now he was never going to grow up, in any sense of the word.

Dante murmured something under his breath.

“What was that, kid?” Lysa asked, leaning in closer to him.

“I said WHY DIDN’T THEY LEAVE MY SHOES ON?!” Dante roared. Lysa fell back and started shimmying away as Dante screamed at the top of his lungs. He could feel his face turning red and snot start pouring out his nose, but he didn’t care. Fear had given way to anger. The feeling of the hot tears streaming down his face only increased his anger. He was transmuting his embarrassment into rage.

“WHY DIDN’T THEY LEAVE MY SHOES ON?! WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T THEY DRAW ON MY FACE! IF THEY HAD BEEN PLAYING A JOKE ON ME WHEN IT HAPPENED I WOULDN’T HAVE DIED! WHY…gasp….DIDN’T….gasp….THEY…gasp…DRAW…gasp…ON…gasp…MY FAAAACE?!” Dante was lost to words at this point. He didn’t have any left.

He started punching the floor of the playpen as hard as he could, right in the middle of it. He kept striking and striking. He wouldn’t stop until he had either punched a hole in the floor or until his knuckles broke. Midori and Lysa looked on from opposite sides of the pen. Both had a look of shock and fear on their face.