Chapter One: The Heavenly Tour

The television program comes to an end and I stand up. This is my part, my job now. I start to speak to you staring at the blank screen with an expression of combined fear, confusion, and awe. You run your hand through your hair as though you expect it to disappear under your fingertips. Not that I can blame you since for the last months you were completely bald. I survey you as you drink in what you just revisited through the appealingly average television. You became my charge three days ago. Since then I have led you haphazardly through the alien courts of this place and helped you come to terms with your life.

The clouds have finally blotted out the sun from the one window in the room and I can see you now without having to squint through the nearby blinding sunlight. Now the atmosphere appears dark and dreary, it’s often like this. Quite often the weather is damp, gray, and depressing. Some people around here find it quite fitting; they feel that they have much to lament for. Many of them do have just cause to be upset; they lost their world without a moment’s notice. As I watch you finally come to peace with where you now reside, I realize what a beautiful thing it must be to know that the end is coming and not spend your whole life trying to guess when it will be taken from you.

“That was probably quite painful,” I hate this part, “I am here for you to talk if you need.” No one around here wants to talk about what happened to them and often saying that they can talk induces violent behavior. Now that I think of it, this really isn’t all that different than what I did before this job, other than the title, it is almost the same exact job.

Your silence is a blessing to me. I think you need more time to let this new place get into every pore; to let yourself believe that you are really here. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot more time. My day ends at five o’clock and it’s currently three thirty in the afternoon. We have only an hour and a half to go through at least some of the tour.

The hustle and bustle of city life surrounds us as we step out of the white building. It is a perfectly average city. Trendy coffee shops, cheap bars, local businesses, gentlemen’s clubs, and restaurants line the streets. Deep fog rises over the pavement and envelopes the cars crawling along in the mid afternoon traffic. A cloud scurries across the pavement as we watch the street light change from green to red. People push past us, rushed to complete their individual tasks while they can. “This is the most ancient city in our universe. Many thousands of times the population of New York City, other cities were never founded. You see, the landscape around here is the same no matter where you go: clouds, clouds, fog, and more clouds.”

“You were expecting something grander, weren’t you? Everyone does.” I laugh and my giggling echoes in the nothingness. “You were expecting the heavenly choir, clouds, golden gates, maybe?” I pause and motion at the area around us, “Well, we do have clouds. The holy freaks on Earth got something right; there are clouds.” I live in the clouds. Of course it’s not pretty; it’s gray and wet all the time. Thunderstorms, yeah, we get those too. “Have you ever been inside a cloud for a thunderstorm?” I ask. “Other than this ‘living amongst the clouds,’ thing, it’s not so different than Earth. We all work, we have enemies; well, there are no homeless, so that’s a step up from the planet, I suppose.”

You look confused. I’m not surprised though, everyone freaks out a bit after seeing themselves die again, as it sinks in. I’m a tour guide up here. Yes, there are tour guides in the afterlife; you don’t come here with the knowledge of how to survive in this world. In many aspects it is the same as the planet below, but in many ways it is very, very different. I mean, there’s the whole living in the clouds gig. I have some interesting stories about angry religious persons that thought that Heaven was this wondrous place of joy and, well, joyness. Honestly, it’s not. It’s not so different than the life everyone comes to know and hate on Earth.

People are difficult to acquaint with the afterlife because they’re so convinced that Heaven or Hell is going to be exactly as they have imagined it. Some people are more difficult than others, just as with anything. However, you’ve been one of the best ‘tourists’ I’ve had to give this tour to in the six months I’ve been here.

“I bet you’re decently upset. You seem like a good upstanding kind of person, or maybe not; whatever. This isn’t what you were expecting, was it?” I shrug, “Let me tell you something. Everyone comes here. Yes, every single soul comes here. Where is here? Heaven? Hell? Both? Maybe neither. Good souls, bad souls, whatever that means to you, they all arrive here. This is the final destination of every living thing.” I pause, “Yes, every living thing; that includes plants and animals. I know there’s a priest here somewhere that thinks that animals don’t have souls. He’s not well liked around here.”

“Here, let me show you the sights,” I say. I lead you to what most people want to see first, the gates. There used to be golden gates of Heaven; now they’re falling down. “The Golden Gates haven’t been used since the first Christian up here decided that they were a good idea.” Once they had been magnificent, however they’ve never been used as more than a tourist attraction around here. When that first Christian decided that the Gates were necessary, he had help because he was the first of his kind in this place, which is kind of a big deal seeing as how many people pass into Heaven. The gold is chipping off of the gates in big flakes revealing the iron rods that really held the Gates together. “That’s right; the Gates aren’t even solid gold. No one could afford solid gold, so gold plating had to do.” I know that you’re wondering why the Gates never get used, hell, I know I didn’t know until not so long ago. “Gods aren’t so different than humans you know. What kind of God has the time to sit at the Gates and decide who is ‘good’ enough to be allowed into Heaven? They’re busy running the world. So, since they were built, the Gates have fallen out of repair.”

Next I lead you away from the Gates. “Every soul here upon first arrival goes on the tour of their life. Immediately following this a judge decides if the soul will be spending time in Hell’s Chambers. It’s like down on Earth when a delinquent is put before a judge and he can dole out prison or community service. You remember this from when you first arrived a few days back. The laws are pretty much the same up here except when it’s been deemed that you should rot in prison, instead you are taken to Hell’s Chamber.” I point generally to a large building that resembles as hospital. “Inside those sound proof walls are those that have broken the laws of Earth and the afterlife.” Not every bad deed gets punished there, “If a full sentence is served on Earth for the crime one has committed, there is no punishment. If the crime is minimal you will probably serve time in the custodial services working for the God of Charm.”

A huge question of the newly dead is about the Gods. “You learn quickly living around here that there is indeed more than one God and some of them aren’t as impressive as you’d like to think.” However, most people are still anxious for a look at a God. I lead you towards a big old palace nearby. The palace obviously had its day; however, that day has been lost in the long past. “This is the palace of retired Gods.” No God ever wants to retire, they’re forced to. “I suggest you avoid that place like the plague, most of them are quite angry about being retired.” I explain further, “A God only retires when people stop believing in him. When Rome was destroyed, Zeus and all his underlings were put into retirement. I hear that was quite the fiasco with Zeus hurtling lightning bolts at anyone that walked by. Gods thrive on their believers; they don’t want humans knowing that otherwise they loose their power in the living world. If people knew that Gods were a creation of man and not vice versa then Gods would become obsolete, a thing of the past like the horse and carriage.”

A little old man is puttering around the palace with a little blue-grey bucket and a mop. His eyes are lively but his hair is so grey that it’s as white as Snow White’s cheek. He smiles, revealing a lack of most of his teeth. At most, the man has maybe eight crooked teeth left, so that your attention is immediately drawn to his mouth. I point him out to you, “See, that there is the God of Charm.” I let the oddity of that sink in for a moment. As mortals we are inclined to believe that Gods always personify their traits, usually they do, but it’s not a one hundred percent certainty. “Lesson one in recognizing a God: Gods do not always appear the way it seems they should and therefore it’s nearly impossible to discern them from the mortal souls that inhabit the afterlife.” I looked back at the janitor figure God. He grinned that crooked grin at me again and I cringed away from the horror of his teeth. “I’ve come to learn that there is no such thing as a ‘Good God’ or an ‘Evil God.’ There are just Gods like there are people. The differences being that Gods have magical powers, more often than not, and that Gods age in Heaven whereas the dead do not. Eternal Youth or some crap like that, more like Eternal Age-Of-Death.”

I chuckle, “You know, I’ve heard that the reason that he’s missing so many of his teeth is because he charmed a woman away from the God of Strength who promptly knocked all of his teeth out. What a mentally castrated dimwit.”

I take my keys out of the messenger bag that hangs limply at my side. It was a gift from Baina when I turned twenty-one. What a pain that had been, convincing my own tour guide that I needed to take the messenger bag with me to this place. I was a difficult “tourist;” my tour guide never technically finished his job on me. Tour guides are supposed to lead a newly dead person through their life a second time, this time as a spectator. This way the freshly deceased is usually at peace with what happened in their life time. I, however, refused to relive the last months of my life and after some time, was given up on.

“By the time I died, I thought I was ready to die. I was completely wrong. I’ve come to the conclusion that no one is ever ready to die, even if they think they are.” For some reason, over the past couple of hours I’ve opened up to you. That’s a big deal for me too; I don’t have a lot of friends up here. It took a lot of convincing, but after I told you that I hadn’t yet relived the last few months of my life, you convinced me to allow you to help me sort out what had happened.

Grudgingly I lead you towards my house; I really didn’t want to do this. I convinced my tour guide that I wasn’t ready. I’ve convinced myself that I can be at peace without doing it. I don’t know if I have the strength to look back at the havoc my life was in. I do not know why I agreed to this. I didn’t want to agree, but for some reason I felt that I had no choice. Lost in my own thoughts I wandered down the foggy, wet streets towards my residence.

Being new here, I’ve got some pretty awful living conditions. I live in a one story house with a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom that doubles as a living room. Of course living on the first floor of the afterlife means I am, quite literately, living in a cloud. The only way that you get out of the clouds here is to live in a high-rise apartment; and you have to have been around the block for at least a couple thousand years to be able to even think about affording those places. So, I live in a damp, dark, cold, little house where the heating barely works.

Finally we arrive at my house. You can walk from one side of it to the other in approximately four point six seconds. That may be an exaggeration, but it’s small. My house is a blue color, of sorts. Perhaps when it was built a couple centuries ago it had been a nice robin’s egg blue. However, in the current state, it resembles the color that the sky turns just before a very light rain and the paint is peeling away leaving white and brown splotches. The shutters are bright, newly painted red giving an impression of an ancient creature with angry red eyes. The previous resident had started to fix up the paint job and gotten as far as the shutters before realizing it was useless. My yard, if one can call it that, was a very thin layer of cloud that makes the planet below very visible. The house is literately inside of a cloud making it nearly invisible to any passerby that isn’t looking. “You weren’t expecting Heaven to be pretty, were you?” I ask sarcastically.

I realize that though I am holding the tangle of keys in my hand, I have yet to pull the house key from the clutter of keys that I hold. The keys jangle one by one as I go through them, talking to myself, “Golden Gates, Palace of Heaven, Hell’s Torture Devices,” I trail off. Some five minutes later, I am getting incredibly frustrated. “It’s ridiculous how many damned keys you have as a tour guide, you’d think that they would have come up with a better way to do this by now!” I exclaim to no one in particular. I glance back at you to apologize but you are busily staring at the gray sky. It must fascinate you: being inside a cloud, that is. I know it seemed a really novel concept when I first arrived. The novelty wears off really quickly.

There’s a crack of thunder in the distance, “Sonnofa—.” Quickly I find my key, “I’ve got it, let’s get inside before the storm moves in.” Storms up here move much faster than they seem to on Earth. Suddenly the whole house shakes with thunder and lightning dances outside in the damp air. It never rains here. Rain doesn’t go up. However, it stays constantly damp, which is worse by far. “Welcome to your first Heavenly Hellish storm.” I cringe as the house shakes again, “At least they move and we’ll be in the clear soon. Until then, good luck hearing yourself think!” The last sentence had to be screamed over the storm raging outside. For a moment the house has a strobe light effect as lightning rockets towards the planet all around. “The Gods of Thunder and Lightning think it’s really funny to aim the lightning right around houses. However, on the same token they have to be careful to not actually hit the house or they’re liable.” Really, knowing the Gods up here though, that’s not a comforting thought; they’re not the brightest creatures in the afterlife. I right myself after a particularly vicious thunderclap knocks me off of my feet and sit down in the living room; you follow. We sit in silence; it’s hard to compete with a storm happening outside your window. I watch the beta swimming confused circles in the fishbowl that is firmly taped to the floor shake a bit and a splash of water hit the carpet. I sigh, that means that I’m going to have to clean the carpet again, and move the fish to the kitchen where the floor isn’t carpet. With one final thunder clap that makes my bookcase wobble, the storm is over. “The storms don’t last long here, but they change the way you decorate so that nothing falls and breaks; and do they ever disrupt your day.”

I move from the couch and into the kitchen; I pour myself a beer. I take a long drink from the bottle, noticing how the neck of the bottle is cold against my lips. The gritty taste of the beer leaves me refreshed. It’s strange how something can be described as both gritty and refreshing. Gritty is something that one usually associates with dirt, refreshing is something associated with things that aren’t dirty. Gritty usually has a negative connotation; however, if it’s a good beer, well then, it’s not negative. I come to the realization that I have neglected to ask you if you want something to drink. “Do you want something?” I call to you. “I am terrible at this hostess thing. I apologize.”

Some five minutes later I am back in the living room sitting next to you. You sit so close that your body heat is keeping me warm on the awful pleather couch on which we both are sitting. Skimming the room, there isn’t much. There’s a coffee table, a book case, obviously the couch that we are sitting on, and a very small television. Color scheme wise there isn’t much going on. Everything is an off white tan color, except the couch that I bought for a grand total of fifty dollars. The book shelf has a single book in it, my diary; I’m not one for much reading. The coffee table is a wooden table about a foot off the ground and circular.

Then there is the television. The television seems to have come straight from the fifties, black and white and everything. The screen is only about the size of modern day computer screens, with a faux wooden frame. If I were to turn it on, the sound of electronic snow would fill the small house. Antenna rabbit ears stand at full length in hopes of picking up at least one channel; it never will. If the television were turned around, one would see that all of the wires and inner workings of the television had been removed forcibly, by the looks of it. Small remains of wires hang down, trying to reach each other again. I take another swig of my beer and study the blank television. By all rights, it should never work again. However, that’s one thing about this place; things don’t stop working right.

I stand up, “Let’s get this over with.” I wander over to the television and give it a good hard kick. It goes on. I’ve decided long ago that this television must have come from Russia, give it a good kick and it works. The buzzing, fuzzing sound of the electronic snow fills our ears making us cringe. Violently I shake the screen, nothing happens. If anything the noise gets louder. “Damn piece of crap!” I yell and kick it again. The noise quiets down enough that one can see what’s happening on the television. I fiddle with the antenna, the snow stops completely. Now, what’s strange about this television is that even though it should be black and white, it’s most definitely in full twenty four bit color.

I pace a bit, avoiding the inevitable. I don’t want to watch this. I don’t think I can watch this. This was the most terrifying part of my life, and I don’t want to watch in unfold again. I know that watching it will reveal more about what happened and why, but I don’t think I can handle that. I also know that this will viciously rip open old wounds and I know, for a fact, that I can not handle that. Revealing what happened may help me move on, but it is going to hurt first, and I don’t think I really want to know His story. I can’t do this. I can’t sit and watch my old life fall apart for a second time. It’s all still so fresh in my mind. Seeing it happen again is going to hurt like sting ray barb through the chest. Nothing is going to change what happened, and as I watch I’m going to want to change it, and I can not. I hate being a spectator with hindsight, not able to change what I see happening. It’s like a train wreck, so terrible that you can’t help but keep watching. It scares me.

I sigh and sit down next to you on the couch. Having another body so close to mine is comforting. I’m not well liked in Heaven, and therefore I keep to myself for most of the time. I’m socially deprived. Just having you with me is a comfort and will make this easier. I couldn’t do it alone. I glance over at the television that is currently showing me fast asleep next to Nicky. I cannot tell immediately what time frame the television has started us in. It is not an exact science, and actually for the most part, the television has a mind of its own and starts approximately where it feels is necessary. I suppose, on some levels the television is alive. On the television an alarm starts going off.