Trigger warning: graphic violent imagery including depictions of death, murder and torture.
The Ten (HDB) Levels of Hell
Housing Development Board, better known as HDB, is Singapore’s public housing authority. Founded in 1960 to improve the squalid conditions of Singaporeans as a result of rapid population growth, the first HDB flats constructed were basic and functional in design. Over the decades, they began displaying more unique characteristics, but for the most part they remain practical and homogenous.
This vertical hellscape is not an expression of discontent or criticism against HDB flats. The HDB building which I lived in is simply serves as the inspiration for the structure and layout for this scroll-like piece after realising how easily I can see multiple units at once from the landing. Turning this building into a hellscape offering an unfettered view into 10 floors, each representing the sins that landed the inhabitants there in the first place, came from a long-time rumination on religion, culture and spirituality in relation to a collective moral compass. It is interesting to see what values people think will earn you a place in heaven or what sins that will condemn you and how these beliefs are often influenced by the culture or religion we were brought up in.This drawing is a take on eternal damnation based on my own personal values and perspective as a secular individual.
The Building Breakdown
Level 1: The least hellish floor of the whole building; in fact, the residents might not realise they are in hell, if not for the fact they are informed so upon arrival. With this knowledge, these flawed individuals are essentially given a second chance to live life, but with the choice to either make better decisions or repeat the same mistakes, in which case they would either progress into the better afterlife - “heaven” as its known in most cultures - or descend further down the building.
Level 2: Cooking, cleaning, scrubbing floors, and repairing crumbling walls are sullen and weary souls engaging in endless labour. In their earthly life, they were as indulged and indolent as the demon overlords they now serve hand and foot and pay heavy taxes to (all of which goes to the maintenance fund of the building) as punishment for their selfishness and failure to care for people besides themselves.
Level 3: The third level is reserved for liars, frauds, hypocrites and narcissists, self-serving imposters with zero integrity and little care for the consequences of the discord they sowed in their earthly relationships and communities. Home to scam artists, cheaters, swindlers and master manipulators, these untrustworthy people have condemned themselves to living in perpetual discomfort: wearing hard, featureless masks that symbolise their sinful insincerity, and scratchy, heavy clothing that hinder them in all activities. Removing these items will only result in tearing the skin off (due to the tar behind the mask and the clinginess of the garment) and a demon guard pitilessly handing you a new uniform. Mirrors are everywhere on this floor to challenge the sinners to confront their true reflection and see who they really are.
Level 4: The deranged and violent wreak havoc here. In life, they were destructive criminals and delinquents that ruined lives, including their own. However, recognizing the role abusive systems might play in the real world, some might say they were doomed from the start. War, poverty and corruption are deeply destabilizing forces which not everyone can survive without resorting to drastic measures for survival. For inflicting the harm and devastation they did on innocents though, their punishment is to continue living in chaos with ferocious demons who brutally intervene and their equally vicious guard dogs.
Level 5: Laboring intensively like their counterparts on the second floor and attacked by disease-carrying bats every time they slack off, which is often, are the criminally lazy and insipid. While those in the second floor were merely self-absorbed and opportunistic, these individuals were so useless they didn’t do anything for themselves, contributing nothing to society. The bats that mercilessly feed on them reflect the parasitic nature of the condemned and cause their bodies to erupt in rashes and boils that drive them near to the point of madness unless they finish their tasks. Additionally, because they are below the floor of the rowdy and violent, pieces of the ceiling will fall, crushing their heads and adding to the mess they have to clean up.
Level 6: Living in rancid squalor among rats and demons in hazard suits are even greater parasites than the fifth floor denizens. Greedy and selfish, they hoarded all the wealth and resources when they had the means to enact change, be a positive influence or give back to society. These were powerful people who went on expensive vacations and challenged other billionaires to cage fights while ignoring the employees that slaved away and kept their empires running, the environmental consequences, and their own children. Now, as they swim in sewage and scrounge through the filth for scraps of food, might they start having some empathy for the lowly plebs that made their fortune?
Level 7: Crammed in tiny cubicles like unethically farmed chickens, the Level 7 denizens live in a bleak and corrupt system not unlike the kinds they enabled, participated in and even championed in life for their own profit or survival. Not caring that their little gain would be at the expense of many lives, these cowards have abused their positions of authority to imprison the innocent, silence their dissenters, and massacre entire groups of people for self-preservation or convenience. Out of all the floors in this building, the seventh floor is the most crammed and poorly designed - and the second filthiest, for the disgusting sludge from the sixth level would constantly leak into their prison cells, adding to the discomfort and misery.
Level 8 - 9: The only floors with constant interactivity between residents. The eighth floor group were pure survivalists with no morals and scruples about pain, violence, murder and ruining people’s lives. All they cared about was control and power, and they would do anything to obtain it.
The ninth floor group took things further by being their executioners. They are despicable criminals who not only have the stomach to inflict the pain and misery they do, they might even enjoy it. They enjoy it so much that in hell, they are constantly going upstairs on deranged killing sprees, brutalising their neighbours while suffering from their equally brutal retaliation.
Level 10: An abyss containing the worst of the worst: vile sadists who live purely for pain, monsters who go out of their way to invent new kinds of torture and suffering. They make their eighth and ninth floor neighbors shudder. To give them a taste of their inconceivably evil nature, their floor does not just have ordinary demons; instead, eldritch horrors they have no hope of figuring out, let alone defeating, plague them for eternity (for it is pretty much impossible that these guys will ever repent), including a centipede-like monster that takes its sweet time digesting fully conscious souls.