SYNOPSIS: The Prettiest Snake in Hell

by D. J. Connolly.

Back in October of 2008 I spent Halloween evening handing out candy to the ghosts and monsters who came to my door.  I filled the idle time between batches of ghosts and monsters by sipping Chardonnay.   When it was over I turned in for the night.  Soon after falling asleep I was awakened by somebody turning on the ceiling light in my bedroom; it turned out to be the ghost of George Bernard Shaw.  He dumped a rather thick sheaf of papers on my chest.  After fumbling for my eyeglasses I read the title page; it said Slick Willie In Hell, by D. J. Connolly.

             "What makes you think a book about Slick Willie will sell," I asked.  "He's old news."

             "It's not about Slick Willie," the ghost replied; "we had to pick somebody as a focal character.  The book is about the future of western civilization."

             "I didn't write this," I said, "why did you put my name on it?"

             "No one would believe who actually wrote it."

             "Who actually wrote it?"

             "Besides myself the authors were Stephen Vincent Benet, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kurt Vonnegut, Jules Verne, C. S. Lewis, Ayn Rand, William S. Gilbert, and Arthur Sullivan."

             "Are you all in the same place?"

             "Oh no; we communicate by email."

            "Why did you collaborate with such a diverse collection of authors?"

"Living in Hell made me a believer in workforce diversity," he replied.

             "I still don't understand why you brought it to me."

             "I couldn't find a literary agent in Hell who would touch it with a ten foot pole; and there aren't any literary agents in the other places where some of my coauthors reside.  Maybe you can get it published here on Earth."

             "If I make any money on it how do I get it to you?"

             "Keep it; it's no good where we are; and you'll have earned it."

Then he disappeared in a puff of smoke.  After catching up on my sleep I studied the manuscript; it read like something written by a committee.  I couldn't tell whether it was a comic opera, a right wing diatribe, a science fiction tale, a love story, a political satire, or a spiritual allegory.  George Bernard Shaw must know what he's doing, I thought, he's a very successful author; so I started submitting it to literary agents.  I couldn't find one who would touch it with a ten foot pole either; so I published it on the Internet in Amazon.com's Kindle format and forgot about it.  A year later, on Halloween night in 2009, I was sleeping soundly and I felt somebody shaking me.  It turned out to be the ghost of G. Bernard Shaw (he had told me he hates the name George).

            “What now,” I asked.

            “I just got an email with a big attachment from Jonathan Swift; he rewrote the whole thing to include a fat role for Obama.  And he gave our book a new title.”

            “What’s the new title,” I asked.

            “The Prettiest Snake in Hell”

            “Is Obama the prettiest snake in Hell?”

            “Yes; he’s also Hell’s only talking snake and an object of religious worship by Hell’s political, academic, and media elites."

            That might sell, I thought; Obama is not old news.  And by the time this book reaches the market he’s likely to be the most unpopular man in America.  

            The Prettiest Snake in Hell opens with a performance of Hell’s national anthem sung by Satan’s twenty harem girls and conducted by former Roman Emperor Nero, its composer.  The occasion is the presentation, by Hellarodham, Queen of Hell, of the 525,012,024th State of the Inferno Message.  After reviewing Hell’s record of success in recruiting humans and failure to run a prosperous economy Queen Hellarodham seeks the advice of Sacred Prince Obama, a talking snake and Hell’s principal deity.  Before responding, Obama demands a "peeper."  Then, after gulping down a day old baby bird, the snake responds with empty platitudes.  The Queen then invites written advice from the attendees to help her interpret the platitudes.  She soon receives a letter from Niccolo Machiavelli, author of The Prince, and one from Sigmund Freud, Hell’s most prominent psychology professor.  Niccolo opines that the root cause of Hell’s economic problems is lack of workforce diversity; Hell has been recruiting too many of the wrong kind of people.  And Sigmund attributes those same problems to Air Conditioning Deficit Order (ACDD) and proposes a 180 trillion HIV (Hell Interchange Voucher) program to provide mental health insurance for all Hell’s citizens.

            The Queen of Hell finds Sigmunds program unaffordable and Niccolo's arguments persuasive; so she invites him (Niccolo) to chair a select committee to produce detailed policy recommendations.  Chapter 3 closes with the final report of that committee.

            Bill Clinton is introduced in Chapter 4.  He dies of injuries sustained while fleeing cops in hot pursuit of a child molester dressed as the Easter Bunny.  Chapter 5 introduces the reader to Purgatory, a country right across the River Styx from Hell.  Bill is sent there by a computer error which is soon corrected.  Al Gore first appears in Chapter 6; he’s traveling on his own initiative across the River Styx to lecture Hell’s government about its contributions to global warming on Gaia, the planet shared by Hell and Purgatory.

            Chapter 7 opens with the arrival in Hell of a Charon cruise ship carrying Bill and Al.  There Bill meets Julia Agrippina, Nero’s mother.  And she immediately becomes a target of his lust.

           You might think it unlikely that Bill would be interested in a lady two thousand years old, even though he once expressed romantic interest in Juanita, a mummy on display at a Washington museum.  Julia is much more attractive than Juanita; like every other character in the story her physical appearance in the hereafter is much like it was in the prime of life.  However, she has no interest in Bill; she considers him too much like Nero’s father.  Besides, she's interested in Vladimir Liftoff, a former Soviet rocket engineer.  You will not be surprised to learn that Soviet officials are well represented in Hell.

           The next few chapters describe life in Hell, develop most of the main characters, and describe a convention of government officials and academics that Hellarodham convened on the recommendation of Niccolo's committee.  The reader will recognize many of the convention speakers as historical figures; and much of what they have to say will be recognized as parody of what they said years or centuries earlier.

            After making his global warming pitch at the convention, Al resolves to remain in Hell rather than return to Purgatory where he's still welcome.  He declares, "I'd sell my soul to the Devil in order to do something about global warming."

            Nero plays a continuing major role in the story as an entertainer and composer of songs.  All his compositions are doggerel written to fit various traditional folk tunes in the public domain.  Early in the story Bill and Al join Nero's musical endeavors, Bill as a saxophone player and Al as a singer.  Al also slaps a rockabilly slap base in time to the music.

            In Chapter 13, Julia is surprised to discover, via hellevision, that Hannah Harper, an African American house slave she had failed to corrupt two centuries earlier, resides in Purgatory rather than in Paradise.  Hannah turns the tables on Julia and inspires her to repent twenty sinful centuries and flee Hell for Purgatory.  However, while planning her escape Julia learns she's about to be inducted into Satan’s harem.

            While most of the major characters are distracted by Planned Parenthood's 71st convention in Hell, Vladimir (Vlad) finds a way to spirit Julia across the River Styx into Purgatory.  They spend the next quarter-century with Hannah who welcomes them as teachers in her Christian school and sponsors them as surrogate parents of five babies who were aborted on Earth.  While attending an academic lecture in Purgatory, one of several described in the story, Julia and Vlad learn that Obama, a mysterious planet named (more or less in jest) by Purgatory astronomers after Hell’s prettiest snake, is on course to cause a catastrophic change in the climate on Gaia, the planet shared by Hell and Purgatory.  Long before that happens, however, they’re invited to go "Home" to Paradise.

            Meanwhile Bill and Al achieve high-level positions in Hell’s government, Al as Hell's environmental affairs minister and Bill as executive assistant to Igor Nukemoff, another alumnus of the Soviet strategic weapons establishment.  Bill helps Igor run a crash project with the twin goals of developing nuclear weapons for use against Purgatory and air conditioning every building in Hell.  Like so many government programs on Earth, Bill's project costs many times the initial estimate, drags on endlessly, and fails to achieve its stated goals.

            In due course Obama crashes into the local sun causing an endless ice age on the planet Gaia.   The Prettiest Snake in Hell closes with Nero, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton trying to soothe Hellarodham’s troubled spirits with a variation on the song that opened the story.  She’s troubled because she’s been reduced to living in a place that resembles Antarctica .