Exhausted and grieving, I was thrown over the back of Archipresbyter Werinharius by my guide, who wanted no more delays whatsoever. Limping on its three legs, the lamb carried me out of the brothel and down the senseless alleys of Antiherusalem, my guide walking in front, stormy because of my sinfulness.

Certain of my perdition, I gently caressed the lamb’s large head and whispered soothing words into its ears. There is still hope for you, I said. I can’t avoid returning here for my cleansing punishments, but I was promised that after this brief visit in Hell, I’d be shown the land of Necubia, and if I don’t live to take you somewhere better, then at least I will take you to Necubia, the land of indifferent and barely tolerable things.

For a lamb who has witnessed the pain and darkness of Hell and faced immense losses and suffering, the barely tolerable might even be preferable to outright happiness. The grassy slopes with the frolicking lambs are unlikely to be found there. But excessive happiness might feel blinding to the grief-stricken, and one who has known pain won’t yearn for happiness afterward. Only the souls who have been allowed to quench their thirst in the river of oblivion can bear to meet happiness after the torments.

In the land of Necubia we may find a slope somewhat less lovely than what I previously promised. The grass is probably brownish there with the occasional thistle and shrubs of bitter rue. But surely edible for someone with modest demands, and besides, the other lambs will understand your thousand-year bleakness.

No one will be frolicking in the meadows, more like trudging heavily through withered things. But all the withered plants will be yours and your trudging will be shared.

Now we traversed the alleys which were home to the infernal workshops. Tanners and fellmongers skinned each other, carefully scraping and cleaning the skins using their teeth under the strict supervision of the punishing angels, while cooks took turns making broth from each other to feed the Lord’s slave drivers.

But the biggest and worst of all the infernal districts is the weavers’ square. Here, the entrails of the damned are weaved into a large tapestry. Along the edges of a frame the size of ten cathedrals hung thousands of the damned with their bellies ripped open. A team of master weavers in dented armors flew around on the backs of carrion birds, carrying the twisted entrails in their hands, threading the weft through the warp. From time to time, a carrion bird couldn’t resist throwing off its rider to peck a hole in the tapestry, thus ensuring that the magnificent work could never be finished as it also served as food for crows and jackdaws.

As we rode past it, I couldn’t divert my eyes from the horrible tapestry. It pictured all the wrongs of the world and the sins of the damned, and in the center was a portrait of the great opponent himself, complete with his melting steel beak and buckhorns, as he is a vain ruler desiring recognition through all the labor done in Hell.

In a corner of the tapestry, I saw myself sitting in the scriptorium, fat-bellied and with my carnal lust peeking through my robe. Torpidly I sat, my mouth open, drops of gall depicting my five remaining teeth-stumps, writing my book about my own temptations.

On the top of the page I sat bent over, it said:

There was once a learned man who took pleasure in many types of sin, but as the Lord had frequently cautioned him to change his ways, he turned himself around and became a monk without anyone close to him knowing. In the place where he became a monk, he met many people of varied natures, some who read worldly books and others who read the holy scriptures, and he started exclusively emulating those who devoted themselves to lectio divina. However, the more he read, the more he felt the spark of a devilish temptation spreading within.

So masterful is the tapestry of entrails, I recognized every flourish of my handwriting, which is easily recognizable as I taught myself how to write as a child, long before receiving any proper guidance, which is also why I have never learned to hold the quill correctly. Even in the smallest particulars, I found the tapestry’s representation of my writing to be impeccable.

Mesmerized, I gazed at that page in the book of my temptations, the tiny woven letters so confusingly similar to mine

until I realized that these letters in the tapestry must have been created using the intestines of the crying infants nailed to the frame between grown men and women

and in that very moment I decided never to let my hand write another word, not even if the abbot or my guide commanded me to, lest these words be woven with the guts of unbaptized children in Hell. I heard their pitiful wailing every time the weft was tightened or a master weaver pulled at the intestine, and I heard men and women who, at the height of their pain, managed to stifle their screams to sing to the little torn ones, speaking to them with tenderness, like a mother or a father would

and the sound weighed heavily on my heart, even though I knew that the children were impure in the Lord’s eyes.

Certain of my perdition, furious with my guide for having taken me here and still grieving the she-beast he had killed in the brothel

as the carnal joy she had granted me was bigger than anything I had experienced on earth

I leaned against the giant lamb’s head and whispered in his ear

that this journey, for which I had regretfully dragged him along, had been arranged solely for me to learn from the apparitions I was shown in Heaven and Hell

but that I no longer wished to draw any lessons from it.

This is an excerpt from Visions and Temptations, forthcoming in Johanne Sorgenfri Ottosen’s translation from the Danish on July 1, 2025, from New Directions Publishing.