UPDATE: I figured this out, actually. But I could use your help some more. I didn't want to make another thread about it as I didn't want to clog up the forum. But I have come to the conclusion that I'm going to bury the sinners of Pride in concrete and it will crush them as it dries. So, naturally, hand over what you know about concrete, please! I currently know that cement is mixed in with pebbles and other things. Then, it sets in 24-48 hours. Heats inside as the dries and also expands. I am also looking at modern concrete, rather than Greek or Roman. Also, the way they measure the weight of concrete is confusing. I am not sure what a square yard is and I'm American. I am thinking this punishment is the smallest space of all of them, more or less. I'm thinking of a concrete tube standing upright. Because this Hell is very claustrophobic, efficient, and isolating a vibe. All the walls of the other punishments are concrete as well, more or less. _____________________ So, I'm writing a story with a Christian Hell in it and decided for Lore reasons to update the Hell punishments to something more modern (aka within the last 100 years. So 1900-2000.) Also, due to lore reasons, the punishments reflect North America. Now, I got 6 out of 7 punishments figured out, but the punishment for pride is giving me a headache. Why? Because, the traditional punishment is being broken on the wheel and most modern adaptions of Hell take the wheel part as a motif, rather than realizing what that is, exactly. Which is, having all your limbs and bones broken, then having those broken limbs threaded THROUGH a wooden wheel. I did this for the other punishments, distilling them down to their base goal, but pride really eludes me. Because, I KNOW there were machines and other things that break bones, but I can't really nail it down. So far I have thought of the following: The Electric Chair - Because electricity can cause you to break bones. But the issue with the chair is that it doesn't really break your bones, rather sets you on fire. Horror Movie Style ECT - AKA, badly done/misused electroconvulsive therapy. Now, I know that this may seem like a bad idea, but when done wrong, it breaks bones. Yay? Also, ties into the theme of 'horrors that can be comprehended by modern day people'. But like I said, in Hell, everything is mis-used and YES! I, the author (and the characters) know that this isn't how ECT is actually done in the modern day. Waterboarding - Really easy to break bones, but isn't quite on theme for pride in a way? But could work, because the goal is bones being broken. And would also happily confuse the reader a bit, but makes sense overall. Falling from a great height- AND hitting things like beams on the way down. Think like some kind of partially built skyscraper. The issue with this is that Hell in this book isn't a group setting. It's thought that each person has their own space in Hell? Because as time went on, it got more organized. So, each person is suffering the same punishments as their fellow sinners of the same sin, but are alone. Hell is also FAR more condensed than it used to be. No more sprawling levels of Hell or mass chaos. It's all very segmented and orderly. So, each person having their own pit to fall in doesn't work as there is a space constraint. Because Hell is in the earth, more or less. The one cliche idea, because Hell also has some psychological elements to it and could be fun to play with: Russian Roulette - A revolver has wheel, right? Yeah, it's not my best idea. But seriously, I need help, guys! Give me your scary, gory and fun ideas, please. From my post below: Here are the traditional punishments: Pride - You will be broken on the wheel. -> Broken bones Envy - Placed in freezing water. -> hypothermia and drowning Gluttony - Force fed rats, toads and snakes. -> Fed gross things Lust - Covered in fire and brimstone. -> Burns Wrath - Live dismemberment. -> Taken apart Greed - Boiled in oil. -> Burns again, but I feel the oil is the important component. Sloth - Thrown into a snake pit. -> Death by poison. Okay, here are the other modern punishments: Pride - (Currently) - Jolted with electricity to break bones while being strapped to a table. Envy - Placed in a small room that floods with cold water. There is a false door to give the person hope. (I kinda modeled this one after the sinking of the Titanic.) Gluttony - Force-fed cockroaches (a modern bug hated/found gross by many) Lust - Burned alive in a crematoriaum (we don't have coal fires anymore, really. Sure, we have barbeques, but I wanted something that was relatable.) Wrath - Surgically taken apart via autopsy while alive. (Because, in the 1900's, forensic science greatly improved.) Greed - Trapped in a room with gasoline flowing down the walls. Causes fast-growing cancer that slowly rips them apart. (This one may seem more abstract, but I was also going with the 1900's oil/gasoline boom that happened last century. And how greedy oil companies are.) Sloth - Smothered by carbon monoxide.
It might help to know what the other six modernised punishments were. It seems strange to me that the important element in breaking someone on the wheel, for the deadly sin of pride, is the bones breaking, rather than a revolution from pride to shame - which in life the person has forgotten is continual.
the Greeks were good on hellish punishments.... Hell for me would be (in Sisyphus like fashion), have to do a grueling, physically and mentally demanding, impossible task and just when i'm just about to complete it, i have to start all over again in a never ending loop. And like Prometheus, being chained up and having to endure excruciating pain (like an organ being pecked out by ravens...) until death, only to be brought back to life and have to experience it all over again in a never ending loop.
If vanity is their sun, I would destroy the thing they are vane about. Just have demons clawing at their face for all eternity or something. I’m trying to remember but I think I remember something like that from Se7en.
I think a ferris wheel that takes you high then plunges you into sewage might be a good one. Or being tied to the bottom of a roller coaster.
Cast adrift in that unending IKEA maze with an intermittent phone signal while tethered to a conspiracy theorist. For an hour or eternity, would it matter?
How would waterboarding break bones? Unless the victim is flailing up and down and sideways? The being dropped sounds similar to the strappado, but that's medieval and was designed to dislocate the shoulders I think. If it's a punishment for pride or vanity, I'd maybe think of things associated with it: trying to improve one's appearance, or impress others. Maybe have the person run on a sadistic treadmill, or get inserted in some twisted leg extension or leg curl that bends in weird ways to break their bones? Or maybe they lay on a tanning bed with a mirror above them, and then an incremental number of mirrors are added, crushing their bones. Or maybe, with the emphasis on social media, instagram etc. to get likes, they are imprisoned in some selfie station, and every time the shutter opens and closes, someone (or something) gives them another like by smashing them with a rubber mallet, but it's random so they can never predict where they will strike next. Tinder is sort of like a wheel, where people just keep scrolling until they find someone that suits their tastes, swiping left, etc, but I don't know a good physical analogy to that. If the person is really into cars, and detailing, you could have them strapped to the hood of a Maserati and travel around town smiling and impressing everyone at hundreds of miles per hour, accumulating dust, bugs and dirt around the car and on the person, which will then head straight to a hellish car wash with hydraulic hoses with enough psi to break bones. I don't know, just some ideas.
Or they can't get out of the tanning bed and it burns their skin and flesh off, but of course they can't die. Or they're forced into a starvation diet (like so many people do after a breakup to try to look better and hook themselves a new mate) and become like living skeletons, again of course unable to get the sweet mercy of death.
Funny, in another book I used a ferris wheel that at the base had a guy with an axe to chop them in half. Also, used a rollercoaster of fire in the same setting, too. Hehe.
Here are the traditional punishments: Pride - You will be broken on the wheel. -> Broken bones Envy - Placed in freezing water. -> hypothermia and drowning Gluttony - Force fed rats, toads and snakes. -> Fed gross things Lust - Covered in fire and brimstone. -> Burns Wrath - Live dismemberment. -> Taken apart Greed - Boiled in oil. -> Burns again, but I feel the oil is the important component. Sloth - Thrown into a snake pit. -> Death by poison. Okay, here are the other modern punishments: Pride - (Currently) - Jolted with electricity to break bones while being strapped to a table. Envy - Placed in a small room that floods with cold water. There is a false door to give the person hope. (I kinda modeled this one after the sinking of the Titanic.) Gluttony - Force-fed cockroaches (a modern bug hated/found gross by many) Lust - Burned alive in a crematoriaum (we don't have coal fires anymore, really. Sure, we have barbeques, but I wanted something that was relatable.) Wrath - Surgically taken apart via autopsy while alive. (Because, in the 1900's, forensic science greatly improved.) Greed - Trapped in a room with gasoline flowing down the walls. Causes fast-growing cancer that slowly rips them apart. (This one may seem more abstract, but I was also going with the 1900's oil/gasoline boom that happened last century. And how greedy oil companies are.) Sloth - Smothered by carbon monoxide.
I like your ideas! I was thinking about pressing as a punishment a while ago. Pressing is where a heavy door is laid on you and then rocks are slowly set on top to crush you alive. I believe it was used during the witch hunts in America. But it's a bit too old of a method for this story. As for waterboarding, they don't flail about, because you strap them down and it's the person fighting to get free that breaks bones. I thought about some kind of sadistic leg curl or something. But I wanted all of the punishments to be things that were things that the reader could comprehend/is from real life, more or less.
My suggestion would be to look at the symbolic logic of the punishments, rather than the injuries. This seems an extremely literal treatment. Lust would have been to do with the sinner having a tactile or sensuous nature, so the punishment was a reversal of that. The emphasis is on brimstone caressing the skin rather than a lover - not simply on being burned - so I don't think a crematorium is analogous. Likewise with wrath it's being torn apart destructively, subjecting the person to the uncontrolled anger with which they harmed others. Surgical dismemberment loses this because it's controlled and considered and expert. And then I wonder if the writer will have earned the readers' patience to approach the topic at all? Not many writers have made a mark here since Dante - in 1472. There might be a reason for that.
I see your logic in focusing on the symbolic, but I personally like a more literal translation. Because it's more of a Hell Update, than a rethink. Yes, I love Dante's work and the story this is in has many ties to his work. But, I think for the sake of story, it's best I return to the traditional punishments rather than the ones set out by Dante in Inferno or Purgatorio. And on another note, I am going for more horror-inspired, so I do think a crematorium works well. Because it's relatable, disturbing to think about for the reader.
Have you heard of pink slime? They take the trimmings left over after stripping the pig or cow carcass of good cuts and pit it in a centrifuge. This separates the semi-edible slime from the gristle and the fat and bone shards. Later it is pumped with ammonia to kill the bacteria, but that's by the by. Your victim is partially diced up and put in an industrial food processing centrifuge, the inside walls of the wheel of which become coated in the victim's proteins. Advantages: Is there anything more evocative of the horrors of modernity than industrial animal farming and food processing? It involves a wheel, breaking a part the body and wrapping its constituent parts around said wheel, so a very precise comparison with the older punishment. Disadvantage: Strictly speaking it isn't the bone that is being threaded around the wheel, but the proteins. But that seems not outside of the spirit of the punishment.
... every day, after being taken from his body-shaped cage where he wallows in filth—his own as well as that of everyone else suffering the same torment. And of course, they can't die. Or are reborn every day to do it all again, and can remember what happened when they were 'dead' (whatever that means when you're in Hell or Heaven).
The victim is from his filthy pen to the centrifuge. Before he goes in his flesh is scored, cross-hatched with a knife, a couple inches deep, down to the bone. Then he is strapped in and the centrifuge starts and his proteins spill and stick to the walls until he is inside a wheel made of his own flesh. At the end of the process he is a husk of bone and skin and what organs didn't fly out through the deep cuts. He is barely conscious but alive. He is taken from his centrifuge and dumped back in his cage, where he will be force fed through a tube until his flesh grows back enough for the whole thing to start all over again.
Brilliant. One thing I would add, thinking about the harsh realities of factory farming, is that he's never removed from the cage. It's picked up by a robotic crane arm and bolted onto the centrigufe by more robot arms. He never leaves it. Maybe it holds him forever on hands and knees, like a cow or a pig. Plus he's covered with sores and wounds and sick all the time, being pumped full of antibiotics just to keep him alive. This is fun, but we should probably let @Gravy do the writing (as good as yours was).
Excellent. Truly hideous. Yes, I got slightly carried away. As you were. It also feels somewhat indecent to be hitting 'like' on those posts.
@Mogador This is actually a really cool punishment idea. The thing is, this version of Hell isn't slaughterhouse themed, but it's a great idea. I have had some time to think about it and I am actually leaning toward burying sinners in cement. Because the weight would crush all their bones. Do any of you know anything about concrete? So far, from what I know that it generates heat as it sets and expands a bit. @Xoic YES! Pulling a bit from Dante here, I see. With the being reborn every day, more or less. I like it! In my Hell I pull from the concept presented in Inferno that the sinners know nothing of the present but know the past and future. And that's a really fun punishment. I think there is a story here with this punishment, honestly. @Mogador THIS IS REALLY DAMN COOL! Someone needs to write this story where this character and a few of the others escape a slaughter-house themed Hell. There was a manga once that kinda did this, but it was more of a 'group of friends end up in slaughter-house hell and slowly begin to go mad'. Here's the Manga: https://kodansha.us/series/starving-anonymous/ I honestly couldn't make it through it, but it's kinda down the same line as what you're suggesting here. @Xoic YES! I agree. I think we need a new 'The Jungle' for this era. Because it's gotten so much worse somehow. Okay, so I'm just thinking that logistically if he's penned up like a cow, how will the centrifuge work? I always thought you had to be standing or whatever. I like this. I think this could be its own story. Gross but wonderful. What if these people are trying to make super-humans or something? OR, it's a cannibalistic society that is trying to survive after humans killed the last animal. I mean, what else are humans going to eat? Also, the theme for the book is 100% Blood//Water by Grandson. @Mogador I agree. it is excellent and truly hideous. I think it is its own story and it's just a matter of who has the guts to write it, without chucking their guts. I mean, imagine instead of jail, you are processed for meat for society? And the place they are sent is called HELL or something smart, or whatever. And there are characters inside trying to break out and other people trying to secretly bring back animals. But the big companies are trying to shut them down, because they are making so much money off of the system in place. And it's not. I'm going to go like all of these posts, gleefully.
'Under the Skin' by Michael Farber is sort of like that, although I've only seen the movie, which probably doesn't make those themes as prominent as the book does.
I might have something for you. The Ilizarov process is a surgical procedure for lengthening and straightening bones. It was referenced in the film Gattaca and was used until 2006 in China (when it was officially outlawed) to make people taller. Basically what they do is take one of the long bones and scribe a cut all the way around it, then hook up a device that attaches to either side of the cut and pulls the bone lengthwise. The patient's body tries to heal the cut in the bone by filling in the gap with new bone material, but the gap is constantly widening, just faster than the bone can "heal." It takes several months of intensely painful daily stretching but, when successful, can give the patient an extra few inches of height. When unsuccessful they end up crippled for life. Legitimate uses include therapy for people who have legs of different lengths or have been victims of some sort of trauma to their limbs, but in the PRC it was widely used because taller was seen as better and companies were allowed to, perfectly legally, set minimum heights for things like secretarial positions, leading people to seek out the process to improve their chances in the job market. IMO, it fits your requirements well as it involves a) breaking the bone b) intense and prolonged pain even under mortal conditions and standards (in Hell it could go on for centuries, be applied to all the bones, whatever c) with the increased height, be connected to a feeling of unwarranted pride (see, for example, how former US president Lyndon Johnson used his height to intimidate people in negotiations) Hope this helps!
This is really interesting. But I am looking for ideas from North America from 1900-2000. But we'll eventually get back Asia. But that won't be until the year 2300. (Now I want to write some futuristic or historical piece about that.) But honestly though, that method is terrifying. Leave it to people to abuse a solution for an illness. I mean, look at what happened with the lobotomy or ECT. The first being actually not useful, but people misusing medical inventions drive me crazy.
How about getting hit by a bus over and over? That breaks bones and it's pretty funny. Imagine getting hit by an eternal procession of municipal buses.
