This So-Called ‘Lone Wolf’ Section Of Hell Is Actually Pretty Crowded

By Awad Shukri, stabber

Being in Hell has its drawbacks, as you can well imagine. Beyond not getting seventy-two virgins, I experience the profound and abiding eternal torment of shame for my hideous choices in the material world. It’s no picnic. But I have been surprised by one discovery: there are a LOT of “lone wolf” terrorists here other than I. It’s getting pretty crowded. “Lone” indeed.

Each of us had his or her own circumstances that led us here, of course. I tried stabbing an Israeli and got shot – as did many dozens of my newfound, uh, roommates, but there’s no shortage of Muslims who came here directly from France, Belgium, Germany, and elsewhere. And many of our group didn’t get here via killing anyone by stabbing; a good number of us committed vehicular homicide in the name of Allah, or used firearms. What we have in common is we were killed as jihadis and categorized as acting without assistance from a known terrorist organization, lest people’s precious assumptions about tolerance be upended. After the hundredth attack some of us were sure that notion would get old and the West would wake up, but nope. As I said, we’re not exactly lone here.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that none of us is lonely. Feelings of isolation are par for the course in Hell. They’re kind of the whole point, it’s becoming clear. A person who refuses to connect to the humanity of others and sees them only as The Enemy, or only as vehicles (see what I did there?) to attaining Paradise, has not cultivated what it takes to bring humanity together, and will forever feel disconnected. Loneliness and shame are direct outgrowths – one might say just another manifestation – of that refusal. But damn, are there a lot of us here.

It kind of reminds me of rush hour in, say, the New York City subway. Hundreds of thousands of people, but the only thing that connects them is their presence in the same environment. It’s an underworld of its own, where even eye contact is undertaken at one’s peril, and the powerful awkwardness of guilt pervades the atmosphere when a panhandler passes among the sardines packed into the train. Oh, the humanity! At least, I think. I’m not really good at acknowledging humanity. That’s why all of us lone wolves are here.

Oh, no. They’re bringing in the panhandlers to solicit. Christ.

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