Damnation 101 is a Bizarro Fiction novel written by Kevin Sweeney.
Thanks to a balls-up by a moronic God, all humans go to Hell when they die. But the Academy that trains demons to torture can’t churn out students fast enough to cope with demand, and so as an experiment a human is enrolled to see if the damned can be used to shore up the number of tormentors. But first she has to survive the harsh lessons of Damnation 101…
In a high school in Hell four students end up in detention together; Dro)))ne, a fallen angel who thinks he’s better than everyone; El Pendejo, a half unicorn, half Mexican wrestler demon; Bibbidibobbidibu, an insecure imp with a lot to live up to; and Zsa Zsa, a recently dead Generation XXXer whose life before death was already Hell-on-Earth. Between bouts of gang rape and extreme brutality they get to talking, painting with body fluids a picture of relentless horror, of life and lessons at the Academy; the “Violence Fair” of students competing to build the best killing machines; cliques; a food fight with the corpses of near-extinct animals and genetically modified babies; bullying; a biology lesson dissecting angels the size of whales; fucking with the janitor (who happens to be Hitler); and a good old fashioned school shooting...
This work provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Zsa Zsa's father was a repeat offender of this trope, having sexually abused his daughter all of her life. She even gave birth to their incest baby whom he unceremoniously killed and threw away, eventually driving her to kill him.
- Almighty Idiot: God is described as this, having created all of existence as a dumping ground for his many fuck-ups. When Zsa Zsa sees a glimpse of Heaven, she sees God as a massive thing created and destroying twisted caricatures of itself indiscriminately. Dro)))ne (having once been an angel knowing the guy at one point) even writes a sonnet dedicated to him, describing in great detail about how the universe was made to be God’s toilet.
- City of the Damned: Turns out Hell is a college town, made up of either a torture academy or literal torture farms.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: Having had a shit-life and being forced to be a student in Hell after death for a school of torturers, Zsa Zsa is not one to be fazed easily. Even when she is being violently gang-raped by Dro)))ne and El Pendejo during detention, all Zsa Zsa does is strike up a conversation (that is before Dro)))ne's semen eats away at her insides like battery-acid and his screech causes her eardrums to explode).
- Deal with the Devil: Bibbidibobbidibu makes a living making faustian bargains with still-living humans after her graduation. While it is lampshaded as a pointless job considering all humans are damned regardless (thus making human souls an intrinsically worthless commodity), it is implied that it is just an excuse for demons to wreak havoc in Earth.
- Easy Road to Hell: All beings in the universe must adhere to a one true faith or else they wind up in Hell to be tortured for eternity. Humans were nearly exposed to the true faith in The '70s before the then-budding religion was unceremoniously killed by US Intelligence, damning mankind for all time. Regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or any action the person had committed, once you die you will be objected to unspeakable tortures for all of eternity. Hell has become so overpopulated with human souls that the Department of Infernal Affairs has decided to start enrolling damned humans - Zsa Zsa being the first as a test-run - into their school to educate them in becoming tormentors.
- Gorn: And how?!
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: It is mentioned that Zsa Zsa not only graduated from school, she also became one of Hell’s most proficient and accomplished torturers, indicating that the experiment was a success and that more damned souls will be admitted for the same job. Her colleagues would then complain that she had an unfair advantage, humanity being responsible for unspeakable horrors such as ethnic cleansing, child soldiers, sex slavery and nuclear annihilation.
- Industrialized Evil: Once a human is throughly and viscerally introduced to what the rest of eternity will be like for them, they will eventually be placed on an assembly line, carried by a meat-hook through the jaw as a demon student enacts physical torture onto them with whatever tool they choose.It was much like a production line. They stood on a metal grille floor, each with their tools, and took care of the patients as they swung in. The patients were strung up by meathooks rammed up through their throats and out through their mouths, hooking them by their jaws to dangle from a conveyer chain that ran overhead and brought them in from one entrance to be processed before being hauled out to exit from the other end of the room.Processing was basic torture with whatever the students wished; between the more refined, thought out forms of torture, there was plain, simple physical trauma, the everyday business of Hell.
- Our Angels Are Different: Angels are apparently an insectoid species of alien that happen to be closely connected to God.
- Shout-Out:
- The entire plot is deliberately based off of The Breakfast Club.
- Bibbidibobbidibu is named after the Fairy Godmother's catchphrase from Cinderella.
- Dro)))ne deliberately name-drops the band Sunn O))) to explain how his name is spelled.
- The Sleepless: Sleep deprivation is one of the many, many, many, many tortures perfect in the academy that is inflicted on the damned souls.
- It is offhandedly mentioned that Zsa Zsa is routinely killed so often by her fellow classmates that she does not really need to sleep, these temporary deaths rejuvenating her after she comes back.
- Take That!: Every book available in the library is either a copy of the Necronomicon or Ayn Rand.
- Third-Person Person: Bibbidibobbidibu speaks entirely in third person, a quirk Zsa Zsa finds annoying in general.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The entire story is meant to be a dark, twisted take on The Breakfast Club.
- Would Hurt a Child: Since all humans go to Hell regardless of age, ethnicity, religion or any real action they are guilty of, all children wind up in Hell, being tortured for eternity like everyone else. The book even opens with Bibbidibobbidibu eating a young boy's eye, tearing off four of his fingers and using rigged chairs to force his father to sodomize him all as an introduction to Hell for them and as a practical exam for her.
