The 9 Levels of Hell For The Living

Dante's Inferno took us through the 9 levels of hell when you die. But we think there are plenty of hellish places you can find yourself in when you're alive. Here are the 9 levels of hell you've probably encountered at some time in your life.

LEVEL 1: Jiffy Lube Waiting Room

At first glance, the Jiffy Lube waiting room seems down-trodden, but normal. It has all of the common elements of any other waiting room: magazines, a television set, coffee, donuts, and even a little candy machine. However, upon further investigation, you’ll quickly discover that the Jiffy Lube waiting room somehow contains the absolute worst of all of these things. The magazines are from 2002, and half the pages are torn out. The television set somehow always has terrible reception, and is stuck on Spanish soap operas because the channel buttons are broken. The coffee is cold, the donut box is empty, and the candy machine is half filled with Mike & Ike’s, and half-filled with the dead bugs who ate the rest of the Mike & Ike’s. But wait, it gets worse: at the end of all of this, a guy with half of your education is going to rip you off, and then present you with a receipt from a printer that was built before cocaine became popular.

LEVEL 2: Open Mic Night At A Coffee Shop

Usually you’ve been invited to this level of hell by someone you work with, or one of your girlfriend’s friends. There’s nine people in the audience, yet somehow the person you came to see is 64th on the list to go up. After sitting through eleven different performances of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” all of which were prefaced with a five minute talk about when they came across a homeless person/dog/child that looked “disenchanted”, the person you came to see comes up. Then he or she plays an original song they wrote, the lyrics of which read like the opening credits theme to Full House. Then, after they’ve finished, you can’t just leave, because they wants to “have a cup of coffee” with you, even though by this point it’s 11:45 p.m. and you’d rather not ingest something that’s going to keep you up for four more hours and cause you to shit out the nine maple scones you ate while trying to pass the time before his performance.

LEVEL 3: A One-Year-Old's Birthday Party

Walking into a one-year-old’s birthday party is like walking into a really bad acid trip. There’s colorful shit all over the walls, everyone’s speaking in disturbingly high voices and time slows to a crawl. Then, as you stand there, you have to pretend that you’re really excited for the gurgling, snotting “special little guy” who has no idea why someone is shoving a flaming cake in his face or forcing him to wear a hat. Having a birthday party for a one-year-old is like having a birthday party for a chair or an amoeba. Yet, you have to paste a fake smile across your lips every time someone says, “Let’s all take another photo of the amoeba!”

LEVEL 4: A Denny's Restaurant Near A High School Right After A School Play Ends

Drama kids are the most annoying people in any school environment, but few things are worse than 30 high school drama kids hopped up on post-performance adrenaline, teenage hormones, and Moon’s Over My Hammy. Most of these loud, obnoxious adolescent thespians will still be sporting a thick layer of stage make-up to let everyone know that they were just in a play, and if that’s not a clear enough signal, they’ll be sure to constantly scream lines from Pygmalion, or West Side Story, or whatever other shit-ass play they just stumbled through. You’re eating at Denny’s, so your meal is not going to be that great to begin with, but these cracked-out drama kids are sure to make your dining experience a living hell.

LEVEL 5: Kinkos

No matter what you need to get done at Kinkos, if you ask an employee for help, he’ll take a simple process and explain it to you like he’s trying to recount the plot to Mullholand Drive. “Okay so first, you go to the color printer, no wait, first you grab the copy key, then there’s this part where you take your jump drive and…okay, before that part though, there’s this other part that’s really important where…hmm, maybe I have that backwards.” Then after you finally figure out what machine you have to use, it sends to a printer that apparently doesn’t exist, nor has ever, yet the Kinko’s guy is sure he’s seen it before. It’s like the Sixth Sense, except replacing Bruce Willis with a HP laser jet, and Haley Joel Osment with a 27-year-old guy who’s probably tried on several occasions to overdose on marijuana.

LEVEL 6: Emergency Room At 1 A.M.

You’re sitting next to ten people, all of whom look like they’ve caught whatever that monkey in Outbreak had. The whole place smells like someone threw a bucket of bleach on top of a pile of baby shit. Then every ten minutes, a nurse comes out and calls the name of someone you’re almost POSITIVE sat down five minutes ago. Meanwhile the guy vomiting next to you has filled up his barf bag and set it down between you and he, even though there’s no one sitting on the other side of him. You try and sleep, but the chair you’re sitting in was apparently used in Guantanamo Bay to torture Al Qaeda members into giving up Osama Bin Laden’s whereabouts. Finally, the night ends at six in the morning, when you get seen, then are informed that your insurance doesn’t cover this exact location, and you’re going to have to pay through the ass.

LEVEL 7: Dinner With Two People Who Want To Get Divorced

Have you ever noticed how mashed potatoes can instantly remind you of how much you hate your spouse? If you have, then that probably means you desperately want to get a divorce, but can’t afford to. Somehow every single element of life reminds these people that they hate each other. Subtle complaints about the green beans or the silverware quickly lead to harsh, quippy remarks on sexual performance, followed by a long, uncomfortable silence. Don’t bother trying to change the conversation, because as soon as anyone says anything, they’ll both go back to an argument that they were having long before you even showed up. Eventually, one of them will leave the table and the other one will complain in a hushed tone to you about why they hate their spouse, and what financial woes are troubling them. If you’re thinking you can just leave, forget it. No matter how awkward it gets, they will never let you leave. You’re trapped in this hell for the entire night.

LEVEL 8: A Gas Station Bathroom When You Have To Shit

Upon first entering the eighth level of hell, you’re actually in awe. And then the fear sets in. How is there shit smeared on top of other forms of shit? Why is there a human leg in the corner? Is that a bucket of custard? As you attempt to relieve yourself, the only thing you can do is spread your legs as far as they will go so no fleshly parts of your body touch the stained, beige, cracked toilet “seat.” When you’re finished with shitting, you then realize (a little too late, I might add) that you’re now forced to wipe your own asshole with what can only be described as “mushroom sand paper.” It’s not absorbent, it’s rough enough to draw blood and there appears to be some small civilization living on its surface. The fact that you now probably have AIDS doesn’t help, either.

LEVEL 9: Florida

There are four types of people you will encounter in Florida. 1) Proudly uneducated toothless rednecks who think they’ve “made it” because they parked their trailer “in a place that has warm all the time.” 2.) Fat, jackass Midwestern tourists in cut-off jeans who think spending two weeks of their vacation eating fried shrimp at an Orlando Red Lobster qualifies as some sort of exotic luxury. 3.) Walking, wrinkled corpses who are somehow still given driver’s licenses…and actually drive cars despite their half-inch cataracts and non-existent motor skills. And 4) Everyone who lives in Miami (snobby club sluts, Cubans who won’t shut up about Cuban politics, South Beach Guido douchebags etc.) If you ever find yourself in the Ninth Level of Hell (aka, Florida), you should probably just kill yourself. Or go to the nearest airport and take the first flight out of there. Whichever is easier.