The great worm Cerberus has been defeated. Gore spews from its bulbous wormy belly. For millions of years it has guarded this gate. Suffice to say, this defeat was highly unexpected. It moans. All it wants is to return to the bowels of Hell to recoop and feast on easier souls.

Dante, the hero of this tale, removes Death’s scythe from the beast’s skin and allows the abomination to make a hasty retreat. He flexes his toned, tan arms and tosses the scythe in the air, saying his signature catchphrase: “Soul ya later, alligator!”

He then collects his powerups and descends ever deeper into the great morass.

For Dante, the next level of Hell is Greed. He has just completed Gluttony, and Lust before that. He’s making good time on his trek through the underworld, fast on track to bring Lucifer to his knees and rescue Beatrice.

However, for Lilliana Hanes, who controls Dante from her couch, there will be no “escaping” the fourth level of hell. There will be no “minibosses”, no “secret passageways” with “helpful powerups”. No. She will spend an eternity forced to lie in a vile slush made of freezing rain, black snow, and hail. No one will come to claim her. No one will care, or even know where she is.

This is because Lilliana is thirty pounds overweight. She’s a glutton, a sinner. She may volunteer at church every other Sunday, and she may help her sister raise that baby, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve to pay the ultimate price for eating too much, too often, and with unorthodox condiments.

Sorry, but that’s what the book says.

Poor Lilliana. When she gets up to make herself a Lean Pocket, she has no clue that the level she has just completed is a glorified rendition of her soul’s final resting place. The irony won’t hit her for another thirty-two years, when she dies of a massive coronary and wakes up in a pool of frigid tar.

“Oh no!” she’ll probably shout. “Why didn’t I change my ways and let Jesus into my heart when I had the chance!”

The same goes for Roddy Whitman, who plays through the Phlegethon portion of the Seventh Circle high out of his mind on cannabis. He has no idea that the digital river of blood he traverses with Dante bears an uncanny resemblance to the real river of blood he will drown in for the rest of time. Alexander the Great will be there, and so will quiet Uncle Rick. His future holds so much misery that he wouldn’t believe you if you told him. Plus, he’s stoned.

What did young Roddy do? His crime is violence, which he committed against his neighbor’s garage door with a carton of eggs twelve years ago. For that he will pay.

Tbat’s what the book says.

Roddy – the ignorant fool – is having fun playing through Dante’s Inferno, but he’d be having a lot less fun if he knew that he was spending twelve hours of his life traversing his future home for eternity, when he could be outside, playing fetch with his dog Wakka or making love to a beautiful woman, who no doubt will also be joining him in Hell.

And what of Alexandria Pepper, who beats the game in one sitting? Isn’t she just so proud of herself for beating it on Hard mode!” Little does she know that no “hard mode” exists in real Hell. No mode in the options menu remotely compares to the agonizing torture that await her after she dies in a car crash three years from now.

Little lustful Alexandria Pepper’s soul will sway endlessly in the winds of a violent storm. There will be no hope for rest, no time to gather her bearings or “open a mini-map”. Along with Helen of Troy and Dido, she will pay for letting her appetite sway her reason.

Because that is what the book says should happen.

Did she see New Moon because it looked like a good film? No, she saw it because it promised gratuitous shots of a young man’s chiseled abs! That is lust, pure and simple. The courts of hell need not convene. Sometimes even us mortals can play the judge.

Repent, Alexandria!

Repent, Roddy!

Repent, Lilliana, while there is still time! This preview of your damnation need not be unalterable!

And you! Pay attention, dear reader! For you, like millions more, will have a special sneak preview of the future misery that awaits you in Hell when Dante’s Inferno comes out. The only question is, will you make the change needed to cut down your sentence from eternity to eternity minus seven?

It may not be too late you, but for those deranged souls at Visceral Games, who bring Dante’s tale to your television screen with the hopes of bringing fame and fortune to themselves, their course through the underworld is set, and it is marked with pain and brutality. They will spend eternity among the other falsifiers in the Eigth Circle of Hell, their diseased souls trembling before Lucifer in the Malebolge.

What will they do when they come before the great beast, trapped in the ice for committing treason against God? Strike at him with a weapon of unimaginable power? No. They will submit themselves to be feasted upon, gnashed in his teeth, cursing the name of Electronic Arts all the while.

This is what the book demands.