My stoic guide Gandhi led me down into Circle eight,
I shuddered, fearing the dark depths of the next Hell,
For I had been more petrified than ever as of late.

I yelled my guide’s name, only to have it lost in the dark,
I could not see him, only the pellets of sharp hail streaking
Yet my ears were flooded with shrill yells, unadulterated and stark.

I passed a splintered mangle of oak,
On it sat the skeleton of a man squealing,
A pig trapped, his shirt continuing to soak.

An IV was strapped to the wrist of the man,
Spewing his blood onto the filthy floor,
Injecting him with venom that caused abysmal visions of Satan.

This punishment was saved for the malevolent Brainwashers, the propaganda artists—
Those who manipulated the fabric of people’s lives to benefit themselves;
These were the worst of the fraudulent, screaming with their arms full of cysts.

In front of me sat Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda mastermind—
This man was the reason millions stayed in Germany,
Unaware of the immediate Jewish slaughter—it snuck up on them from behind.

Goebbels yelled, “I NEVER TOUCHED A SOUL, YET I CANNOT THINK!!! MY BRAIN IS BLANK!!”
Gandhi just stared, for he knew Goebbels would never learn his lesson;
Violence was a sin, yet it was mind-numbing propaganda that hit people like a tank.

The face of the sinner was bursting with bubbling boils,
Gruesome and desolate, like a pagan devil,
I did not want to look down, for it was obvious that his pants had been soiled.

A smile appeared, a grin stretching across Goebbel’s face,
It stretched from ear to ear, almost animated in nature;
I thought I was going insane, yet my virtuous guide could also make my case.

The grin grew into a fully animated, mesmerizing face of a cat--
I was hallucinating, it seemed, because a body formed from thin air,
The Cheshire Cat, notorious for hypnotic trickery and the mischievousness of a rat.

Fear swelled up inside me even though the creature was stagnant—
My mind flipped on its axes, challenging my views of the world;
I was brainwashed, yet my imagination was rampant.

Gandhi spoke to me: “Do not fall victim to the Cat’s deceptive visual trickery,
For the mind-numbing effects will spellbind you, driving you to insanity.
The Cat was cast here for its ability to make the most stoic men fall to misery”.

Just as the baby brown snake feigns death at the sight of a natural superior,
Using its advanced intelligence to escape certain death—
Able to find the one hidden weakness behind the fearful exterior,

My righteous guide searched the cavern of his brain for the Cat’s weakness—
Shining a laser-pointer off into the distance with the genius of a thousand minds,
The cat bounded off, for no cat can resist a laser, not even the most fearless.

With the monster evacuated and only bloody brainwashers with IV carts,
Gandhi and I scuttled off like spiders in the night without a trace of pity in our hearts.