Escaping Heaven

by Cliff Hicks

  The other Cherub had already fished a piece of paper out from his toga. Jake had no idea where the toga had a pocket, but he was pretty sure wherever the pocket was, it couldn’t be comfortable. Or sanitary. “Order from the high muckity-mucks. They’ve got no more room past these two,” he said pointing at Jake and Martin. “I’m carting these two up to Queue 23 instead of Queue 22.”

  Bob snapped the paper from Lenny’s hand and scanned it slowly then handed it back to him with a huff. It seemed Bob wasn’t one who cared for doing any more work than he had to, and by coming out here, he’d wasted time that he could’ve used doing… whatever it was Cherubim did in their off time, Jake supposed. “Fine. They’re your problem now, you deal with them.” Bob headed back towards Jake and Martin.

  Dennis had been watching Bob, and as he crossed towards the other two men, he suddenly caught sight of Ted’s ghost and immediately relaunched into his old tirade. “You, you bastard! I’m gonna kill you!”

  “You did already!” Bob yelled back and then shook his head, letting out a big breath as he rolled his eyes, turning back towards Martin and Jake. “You dead people just don’t listen these days. Back in my day, when an angel came to cart us up to Heaven, we were excited about it! Let’s go, Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. I don’t wanna waste my afternoon here, otherwise division will have my hide.”

  Behind Lenny, Dennis and Ted were both coming to the realization that they were dead. It was that ever so awkward moment where people realize that whatever else they wanted to do with their life, it was a little too late for that now. Their hostility had been forgotten and both looked like lost little children at a mall.

  “Come on you two, otherwise I’m just gonna leave you here,” Bob said to Jake and Martin as he started to walk off. Martin turned first, walking after him. Jake considered Dennis and Ted for a long moment, watching Lenny put a hand on each of their shoulders. Jake realized he didn’t want to get left behind, though, so he turned around and sprinted after Bob and Martin. The two ghosts and the other Cherub faded in the darkness behind them.

  “So what now?” Jake asked Bob as he moved to stand beside him. Bob was fooling around with his watch. It seemed a funny thing to do until Jake realized that it wasn’t a watch at all. It was some sort of wrist device. Despite the fact that Bob moved the various co-centric ring dials around with quick precision, it looked quite ancient and almost mystical. ”What’s that?”

  “My Super Justice Force Kung-Fu Grip Third Edition decoder watch. It tells me you’re a moron. Now shut up and let me concentrate. I’m rusty at this from this regional code,” Bob growled before turning a few more rings on the wristwatch device.

  Suddenly a glowing door-shaped mass of white light appeared right before them. It was almost unbearably bright, overwhelming to look at. Both men squinted before turning their eyes to focus on Bob, who had opened the door behind him so he was looking away from it. “There we go.”

  “How very Quantum Leap,” Martin said.

  “Let’s go, girls,” Bob said as he reached behind Martin and pushed the man forward into the portal of light. “You gonna walk or am I gonna shove you too?”

  Jake glared at the tiny fat man. “I’m more than capable of walking on my own, thanks.” He stepped through the doorway of light, and seconds later, Bob walked in behind them and the door closed.

  They were on their way to Heaven, much to Jake’s misfortune.

  * * * * *

  When Jake and Martin’s vision returned to them, after the white afterglow faded, all that remained was white. If anything, it was rather disconcerting. The last thing Jake wanted to see was this much white blaring all over his vision. Nothing, he thought to himself, should be this clean. But clean it was, despite all of the people.

  The first thing that came to mind was the image of a colossal waiting room. It was as though every person in an entire city was forced to sit on little (white) wooden benches, filling out (white) stacks of paper with (white) pencils that wrote in a happy (not white) gold color.

  “Welcome,” Bob said, as he slapped a hand on each of their backs, standing between them, “to Heaven. Or rather, Heaven Staging Area 22.”

  “We’re not actually in Heaven yet?” Martin asked, turning his head to look at Bob.

  “Don’t you know ‘Heaven Is A Place On Earth’?” Bob asked, a big toothy grin on his face, before launching into a chorus or two of the Belinda Carlisle song. Bob’s singing was, Jake thought, one of the worst things he’d ever heard in his life, and he’d been dragged into karaoke bars on more than one occasion. “No, you’re not in Heaven, per se. You see those doors over there?” Bob waved a short stubby finger off in one direction and both Jake and Martin’s vision followed. Where Bob was pointing there were two large white doors guarded by rather burly looking angels.

  There was something odd about seeing angels that looked more comfortable being bouncers than they did with wings and halos. Oh, Jake realized, they’ve got halos. And he could see sheathed swords at their waists. He was willing to bet those would burst into fire as soon as they were drawn. It wasn’t something he was particularly eager to find out. “So,” Jake started, “the heavy guys are to keep people out? Repel invading demons?”

  Bob laughed heartily, slapping Jake on the back hard. “That’s a good one, kid. Invading demons. That’s a riot. I’ll have to remember that for next week’s poker game. No no, those gentlemen are just there to make sure nobody goes to the wrong section. Last thing you want is someone misfiled in Heaven. The paperwork is endless and nobody wants that.” Bob rolled his eyes just thinking about it. “Invasion.” He said it with such a dismissive tone, Jake wondered why the Cherub found it odd. “That’s funny… come on, we’ll get you guys started on the forms.”

  “Forms?” Martin asked.

  “Well, sure,” Bob said as they started to walk down the very, very, very long hallway. It was so long, in fact, that Jake couldn’t even see the end of it when they started. “You don’t think we just grab dead folk, cart’em up here and turn’em loose, do you?” Bob laughed, shaking his head, as if he found the very idea ludicrous. “It’d be total anarchy, and we can’t have that. What would Heaven be without rules? Nothing, that’s what. You have to keep people sorted by what they expect Heaven to be, otherwise you’d get all sorts of conflict. It’s hard to be perfect when your idea of perfect conflicts with someone else’s. That’s why Heaven is segmented.”

  “Segmented?” Martin said, crossing his arms over his chest as they walked down past even more people. “You mean segregated!”

  “Well,” Bob admitted, “you could put it that way, if you like, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Take, for example, this guy I carted up about a ten years ago. You know what his idea of Heaven is?” Bob stopped and looked up at them, his hands on his hips, as if he was challenging them to guess. “He wanted to blow things up constantly! You can’t accommodate that kind of guy in the same space as your basic ‘church hymns and rapture’ kind of guy. They don’t play well together, you can imagine. And don’t even get me started on the fundamentalists who want an endless supply of virgins.” Bob spun on his heel, shaking his head. “You’d think one or two would be enough. Okay, I can understand wanting a couple, but after a while, the experience would get traumatic. Or, worse still, dull. Besides, it’s not like you can really do much with them here anyway.” Bob was mostly muttering to himself and it caught Jake and Martin off guard.

  “What was that?” Jake asked.

  “Nothing, kid,” Bob said, waving his hand, “nothing. Don’t worry about it; you’ll find all about it sooner or later. Today we get you started on finding out what Heaven means to you.” Eventually they approached a window. Above it was a sign that said “042188-EZR4U Forms & Filing.” Bob paused and nodded to the long, long line that was forming up behind it. “This here is your line, Marvin.”

  “Martin.”

  “Right, whatever. Anyhow, stand here in line and when you get up to the fron
t, give them this card, and then fill out all the paperwork they tell you to.” Bob fished inside of his toga and pulled out a small white card. “Be sure you give them that card, otherwise they’ll probably delay you even longer. And you’re gonna be here a while, so you want anything you can get to speed up the process. Believe me, you do not want to be stuck in the longer lines some people get forced to go through.”

  Jake watched Martin lifted the white card up to his eyes and on it he could see five elaborate golden characters that glowed. It looked like it must have been a language of some kind, but he certainly wasn’t familiar with it. Jake asked Martin to flip over the card, which he did, and on the other side there was a 3D picture of Bob glowing. When Martin turned the card from side to side, it displayed a profile shot of Bob from either side.

  “Pretty impressive, huh? Anyhow, don’t forget. Card. Counter. Forms. Got it?” Bob asked Martin, putting his hands on Martin’s shoulders as he did, like a parent sending a child off to school for the first time.

  “I think so.”

  “Good, you’ll be fine. Now get in line.”

  Jake looked on as Martin shuffled over to join a queue that seemed impossibly long. The line doubled back, it tripled forward, it did a quadruple backflip into a jackknife with a half twist and a maraschino cherry. Jake noticed that Martin seemed to be struggling to find the end of the line, but eventually he seemed to get his bearings and started tracing the line one direction. All he could do, really, Jake figured. But he and Bob apparently didn’t have time to wait around and see if Martin found the front of the line or the back first, as they had somewhere else to be.

  * * * * *

  The two had started walking another direction the minute they’d sent Martin off. “So how come he and I have to get into different lines?” Jake asked Bob as they walked. Bob tended to strut through here, but Jake shuffled his feet along next to him, which seemed to diminish the effect. “Aren’t the forms to help you guys determine where we go into Heaven? Why would you need to put us in different lines?”

  Bob shrugged a little bit as they walked past endless amounts of people filling out more endless amounts of paperwork. They passed all kinds of people, from men in suits to Zulu warriors in tribal attire. It was odd to see people dressed in Civil War attire next to astronauts. “Not everyone goes to exactly the same place, and it’s the Cherubim’s job to make that distinction first.”

  “Cherubim? Is that you?”

  “It’s a class of angels, kid.” Bob snickered a little bit. “We’re the ones who do all the hard working, but hey, at least we got put up in the Sistine Chapel. Do you see any of the other angels up there? No. And I’ll bet you that really chaps Gabriel’s hide. I don’t even want to think what it does to Michael.” Bob shrugged a little bit as they rounded a corner and started moving into another part of the massive hall. “Cherubim mostly do all the acquisition these days. We go down and pick up the newly dead and cart them back up here. We give’em the dimestore tour, we put’em down at processing and then we go get more. It ain’t bad, and it keeps me out of the office.”

  “Wait,” Jake said, stopping walking for a second, “you mean… you actually preferring going down to Earth rather than staying up in Heaven?”

  “Hey!” Bob said, waving his hands franticly, as if Jake had said something wrong. Bob was even looking around, as if he was afraid someone might have heard him, but no one around them seemed to pay them much attention. “Now I didn’t say that! I’m just saying it’s nice to get down on the planet and see how things are going. You know, you want to have a little bit of an idea what’s going on down in the modern world. Besides, everything down there is so lively. It’s all sort of predictable up here, that the repetition can get a little bit droning if you’re not careful. That’s why I volunteered for this duty. Just get myself a little excitement from time to time. And hear some music other than harps…”

  “Volunteered?” Jake asked as Bob grabbed him by the wrist and they started to move again. People had begun to stare and if there was any one thing Bob disliked, it was attention, unless of course he was calling for it. “What do you mean, volunteered? I thought you were born into being a Cherubim!”

  “Duh, of course not,” Bob said as they moved past even more endless people, while he brushed imaginary dust off his toga with his right hand. “It’s a job, like anything else. The only ones who’ve always been angels are the Upper Echelon, the Archangels and whatnot. Pretty much the rest of us – the Seraphim, the Erelim, the Elohim, the Ophanim, the Hashmallim, the Malakim, the whole lot of us – we’re all conscripted. We got here to Heaven and somebody looked at us and put us to use. You have a job, you have a purpose. That’s what my old man used to say… until his boss shot him in the back, of course. Oh well, can’t be helped. Everyone dies in the end.”

  Jake pondered that for a minute as they continued to move through the seemingly endless hallways. In fact, Jake noticed that he didn’t seem to see much in the way of features in almost any direction he looked. There were columns, sure, and a ceiling over their head (which Jake found a little humor in, being that it was Heaven and all, and there really shouldn’t be much in the way above Heaven… although Jake supposed it was more of a waiting room before the whole Heaven experience) but Jake was noticing that the most defining characteristic of the place was people.

  “How many people are in here anyway?” he asked.

  “Oh, man, who can keep track any more…” Bob replied in an exasperated tone. “With so many people being born every day, the number of people dying daily grows in leaps and bounds. Heck, they built a new wing a few decades ago just to handle the influx of infants. You ever tried to tell a two-year-old to fill out paperwork?” Bob rolled his eyes in frustration. “Nightmare. So they put up a division to take care of their paperwork for them. That way we have less to worry about, they have less to worry about, and we can all go about with our daily lives without any of the rigmarole. You ever listen to the Stones when you were back on Earth?” Bob, it seemed, had a knack for changing conversation threads on a dime.

  “What, the Rolling Stones?”

  “Yeah! Man, I do love Keith Richards.” Bob mimicked a guitar, playing a riff in the air with his hands. “Bah bah, badda dah, badadadada. I keep hoping I’m gonna be the one who’s gonna end up picking him up, but y’know, I’m convinced nothing can kill that man. He just might live forever. It is entirely possible that he is the one immortal person on the entire planet. A lot of the angels up here have a betting pool going on when he is finally going to kick, but whenever it happens, I intend to be there, if only to give him the final applause. And God bless him, too. He has made some rockin’ tunes over the years. Heck, I’m sure he made a bunch more after I died. Just wish I could hear more of them.”

  Jake scratched his chin while the two continued walking along another hallway that looked absolutely identical to the last dozen or so they’d walked through. Jake wondered how anyone kept their bearings here. “So why don’t you?”

  Bob stopped in his walk, turned and then looked at him with a slight scowl. “And how do you suggest I do that, hotshot? We don’t exactly have music stores here in Heaven. I’m dead, just like you, remember?”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Well, you’re on Earth all the time,” Jake explained, leaning against a wall as he talked. “Can’t you, I dunno, pick up an iPod or something? Hell, even a record player if you had to. I’m sure you can figure out some way to bring music back.”

  The Cherub stared at him for almost a minute, as if in shock. “That ain’t a half bad idea…” Bob said as they started to walk again, “but y’know, I bet there’s some regulation against it somewhere.”

  Jake shrugged a little bit as Bob paused to scratch himself. “Really? I can’t imagine they’d ban music. It’s one of the major joys in life. Why would anyone want to make less joy in Heaven, if this is the final resting place. You should look it up.”
/>   “Oy, kid, you should see these damn rulebooks. They’re the kind of thing that make accountant’s wet dreams.”

  Jake laughed a little bit. He found it funny that Heaven was full of rulebooks, but it seemed like the kind of thing there’d be a way around. The more rules people write, the more holes there are in them, or so a guy he’d known in high school had always said. “So? You’ve got time, right? What’s the harm in spending some time seeing if you can get a little bit more joy? And a little music goes a long way, in the end…”

  “That ain’t a bad point,” Bob admitted as they rounded another identical corner, entering a bigger area that was filled to the brim with people in every direction, with the exception of the one they’d come from. “And I’m not sure how often they update those books. Hmmmm…” Bob paused and then put a hand on Jake’s shoulder appreciatively. “I don’t say this often but… thanks kid. It’s a good idea. Hey, we should be getting close to your stop any minute now.”

  By stop, Jake wasn’t really sure what Bob meant. All he could see in any direction was people. Some people on benches, some people in lines, some people sitting on benches who were in line… “My stop?”

  “Sure, you gotta get processed like anybody else,” Bob snorted. “What, you think you just get to waltz in when there’s paperwork to be filled out? Who’s gonna fill it out? Me? I don’t think so, amigo.”

  Jake and Bob finally reached what looked like a man’s back, because it was one. He could see there were people in front of the man in what looked like a line, but he couldn’t see the end of it.

  “Here we go,” Bob said. “Stand here and follow these people forward. Eventually, someone’s gonna walk by handing out forms. They always do. Make sure you get a green form, a blue form, a pink form, a yellow form, two orange forms and one of the big compendiums. Oh, and here’s my card, and your starter pamphlet,” Bob added as he jammed a card then a leaflet into Jake’s scrawny hands. “It’ll give you the basic rundown on the ins and outs to get you started.” Bob patted Jake on the shoulder. “Good luck, kid. Hope it all works out for you.” He began to walk off.