Escaping Heaven

by Cliff Hicks

  Before him laid another large open room, with another set of lines. There were at least a dozen walkup windows, and the one with the longest line had a sign over it that marked it with “START HERE.”

  Jake sighed and went to go wait in yet another line. He was starting to think Heaven was, in fact, just a series of well-crafted lines that lead to one another. Perhaps, he thought, if he kept at it, he’d end up in the line he’d started in. Behind the guy with the bone tied in his beard.

  Line after line after line.

  * * * * *

  This process repeated itself in a variety of incarnations over what felt like the next few months. (Or years. Surely it couldn’t have been years, could it?) Jake would find himself directed to a line (almost always in the wrong direction as the line he was actually supposed to be in), stand in the line, fill out more paperwork, turn in the paperwork (most of which was promptly ignored), watch them process the paperwork, add stamps, initial, notarize, authorize, recognize, sign, date, fill in, annotate, abbreviate and alter. The dozens of pages he was required to fill out would get reduced to something the size of an index card, handed to him, which he’d take to the next line and exchange for a new stack of paperwork, eventually, after three or four tries at being in the wrong line.

  It had become something like a dance, and Jake was tuned out for most of it. It was daily life all over again, simply on a smaller scale. The paperwork had gone from overzealous to just mindlessly repetitious. Now he was specifically screwing up little bits in an effort to have something new happen. No one seemed to notice. Even the conversations with the form processors were getting to be monotonous. Since Gilbert, they were all business, with no sense of humor and no attempt to be anything other than strict and formal.

  In an effort to keep himself from going crazy, he’d starting paying attention to the comings and goings of the angels. There certainly were a lot of them, but after a while, Jake was starting to be able to notice the subtle differences in them – how they wore their toga, how high or low the halo rested on their head, were they carrying swords or not. Lots of little details were adding up. Despite how indistinguishable and uniform Heaven was trying to be, tiny bits of individuality kept sneaking through the cracks, like bad weeds.

  He’d even begun learning how to distinguish the classes of angels, although he had yet to see any of the big Archangels people kept talking about as if they were the bogeymen. In fact, he’d mostly just seen generic angels, although the Cherubim were a fairly consistent presence. He did, however, see an Erelim a few times. He wasn’t sure what an Erelim was or what they did, but he looked a little like General Patton. The Erelim was practically marching through the hallway, with a small number of other angels, each looking butch and frightening, marching behind him. (In fact, he only knew that this particular class of angel was called Erelim because he’d heard a couple of the Cherubim gossiping about him after he’d left.)

  It was also fairly easy to distinguish the Erelim, because they had wings, large feathery blades that looked both strong and agile at the same time. After he stared at his first Erelim, Jake saw one or two more Erelim, again, distinguishable only particularly by the wings, but never had the urge to talk to any of them, because they all looked incredibly serious and bore scowls in addition to their wings. The last thing Jake wanted to do was draw attention to himself.

  Jake almost expected someone to drag him away at some point for deliberately screwing around on the forms, but so far nothing had come, not even so much as an unkind word, and all he had to build an image in his mind of the Archangels was all the gossip he heard. It was something to keep his mind occupied, and there was plenty of time to watch all the lower-ranked angels coming and going. Anything to help break the monotony was a welcome relief.

  Jake also realized that security was very lax here in Heaven. Sure, there were gates with latches and the occasional angel guarding a hallway, but for the most part, the entire place was a maze, and that was their only real defense. Once Jake had started understanding how everything was interconnected, he began building a map in his head. He was pretty sure he could get into lots of areas no one had showed him, if he felt it was really necessary. It wasn’t as though he was planning on running away; he was simply trying to learn more about the inner workings of Heaven. Something to keep his mind occupied.

  Inside of his brain, he was piecing together each little bit of information. He would attempt to eavesdrop on anyone who was holding a conversation around him. And he’d noticed a few interesting things.

  What he’d noticed first was that for being Heaven, and for the air of businesslike discipline they tried to portray, it was incredibly disorganized. Half of the time, people weren’t aware what others were doing, and disagreements about orders or papers were not only common, they were routine. Jake even heard one of the Cherubim refer to it as a ‘clusterangel.’ He caught the reference and smiled to himself each time he heard one of them use the acronym “CA.”

  The thing that amazed him the most, however, was that he had never heard anyone say they’d ever talked to or met God. And no one really seemed to be bothered by this fact. Sure, some of the mid level angels had been in meetings where they said one of the Archangels claimed to be passing the orders down from God, but he’d still never even seen the Archangels himself. There weren’t many of them and they seemed to be the leader caste here in Heaven. Any time they were spoken of, it was with a certain reverence and respect, almost as if the Archangels were generals. He found the whole thing a little disturbing, really. He was also disturbed by the fact that their presence was so carefully concealed from the general heavenly population.

  He was certainly sure that much of this paperwork was unnecessary. He didn’t have any lock-solid proof per se, but the angels were vague enough about the purpose of the paperwork that Jake was sure that a lot of it was simply stall work. He just wasn’t sure as to why. Was this simply part of the defense mechanism they’d developed to prevent overcrowding? Or did no one in Heaven actually talk to one another, and all of this redundancy was simply part of bad communication skills?

  After a long while, he reached what seemed like it might be an actual progress point. There was a white door that opened, let one person in and then closed, only to repeat the process a few minutes later. When he got closer, he could see that there was a door on the other side. The room itself looked fairly barren with the exception of a bench. When the man standing in front of him, who a burly Russian who also didn’t speak a word of English, stepped into the room and the door closed behind him, Jake leaned his head against the doorway to listen, but could only hear the muffled sounds of a voice in regular spurts, speaking in Russian. He would just have to wait for his turn to enter the room.

  A few minutes later the door opened and a voice inside beckoned in a pleasant female voice “Please enter the chamber.” Jake shrugged a little bit and then stepped into the small room, and the door closed behind him.

  The room was octagonal shaped, with a bench on one side. Other than that, it was more of the standard white-on-white-on-white-with-white-highlights motif, with plain walls and no decoration of any kind.

  “Please place paperwork into tray.” He moved over and placed the small collection of papers into the tray, which then closed. “Please remove all clothing.” He cocked his head a bit, contemplating this. “Please remove all clothing.”

  “No,” Jake said. “Why would I take my clothes off?”

  Two drawers deployed from the wall without warning, and gold lettered signs appeared above each of them. The sign above the empty drawer on the left read “OLD” and the sign on the left read “NEW” in glimmering characters. “Please remove all clothing.” The voice was slightly more insistent than it had been before. Jake wondered what would happen if he continued to wait, but he was more interested in what was in the “NEW” bin, which looked mostly like a handful of folded cloth, although it was hard to tell through the semi-opaque lid covering the drawer.
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  It occurred to him that he would get rather bored sitting around in here, and that the door back had never opened with an occupant in it. Also, the door to let people in had remained closed for various time frames, and now Jake understood why – it remained closed until the occupant realized being stubborn wasn’t going to get them anywhere and did what they were told to.

  He sighed and started emptying his pockets into the empty drawer. Change, billfold… he sighed a little bit as he pulled the engagement ring from his pocket, then chucked it into the drawer without giving it a second thought. He removed his shoes and socks, then tossed them in, followed by his shirt, pants and boxers. After doing so, a voice stated “Please step into golden circle.”

  Jake turned to look behind him and sure enough, on the ground now glowed a yellow circle, which he stepped into as instructed. The circle slowly rose up from the ground, much to Jake’s surprise. It bathed him in a golden light as it passed upwards along his body. “Y’know, I wouldn’t have expected golden showers in Heaven,” he mumbled to himself with a snorted laugh.

  As the light passed over his eyes, Jake scrunched his eyes closed shut, the golden ambiance painful on his retinas. (But in a pleasant way that Jake found even more disconcerting.) After the light reached the top of his head, the voice spoke and said, “Scan complete. All nonbiological possessions removed.” The “OLD” drawer snapped shut and then the golden circle of light was gone. “Please don new clothing.” The lid on the other drawer retracted, and the letters above pulsed, as if to draw notice to themselves.

  With a shake of his head, he moved back over to the now open drawer and peered into it. “What, this?” he asked the disembodied voice. “You can’t be serious…”

  “Please don new clothing,” the voice repeated.

  He took everything out the drawer, which closed once it was empty, and then laid them out one after the other on the bench. There was a pair of white silk-like boxer shorts, a white tunic, a belt, a few golden broaches, a pair of white slippers and a long, narrow sheet.

  “Please don new clothing,” the voice repeated.

  “I’m getting there!” Jake barked back at it, annoyance obvious in his voice. He pulled the shorts on first, then the tunic, clear on what both of them were. He held up the sheet in no particular direction and said, “What the hell is this?”

  One of the walls flickered and a series of diagrams began illuminating, one after another. At the top, in large elaborate letters were the words “HOW TO MAKE A TOGA.” Jake’s face scrunched up and then he sighed, realizing he wouldn’t be allowed to leave until he was wearing the sheet in some approximation of a toga. He followed the instructions, using the broaches as pins, as instructed by the diagrams, until he had the cloth draped over his body in a passable fashion. He put the belt on over his waist, mostly to just hold the whole thing together, and then pulled on the sandals, which were exactly his size and fit comfortably on his feet.

  “Please step into golden circle.” He looked behind him, and there in fact was the golden circle once more.

  “No wonder this process takes so long,” he grumbled, stepping back into the golden circle. The circle lifted once more, moving up and along his body, scanning it over as he tapped his foot impatiently. This time, however, he folded his arms over his face to cover up his eyes and protect them from the overwhelming light that swept across his body. He certainly wasn’t going to endure that painfully pleasant gold light blasting his retinas again if he didn’t have to.

  “Thank you,” the voice soothed politely. The drawer he’d put his paperwork into opened once more. “Please take paperwork back.” He did as instructed, moving over to the drawer, taking his paperwork out of it, as the drawer closed. He scratched his head, as it felt like his brain itched after that second pass of light, but the sensation was gone seconds later. “Continue to back of line.” The door parted and Jake walked another thirty or forty paces to find himself at the end of another line. He wondered how much more of this he would be forced to endure.

  What seemed like years into his ordeal, Jake was approaching the end of the paperwork. They had told him in the last few meetings that he was “nearly in” and Jake was pleased to hear that. He could tell these people were wasting his time, but he didn’t really want to speak up about it, as they were just doing their jobs. Or what they seemed to think their jobs were. On top of all of that, he could tell they really didn’t know all that much more than he did. They were simply doing what they had been told to do. Jake knew what that was like – having a job you did, not because you enjoyed it, but simply to get through the monotony of each day. He could empathize with these people because their afterlife had been his daily life. Also, as he moved further and further down the food chain, he’d noticed the halls had gotten smaller and smaller, with less and less people, which somehow felt like progress.

  If anything, though, the process had gotten faster and faster each time he moved to another consultant. It was a funneling effect, he supposed. Lots of people at the top slowed everything down, but at they figured out where each soul went, there were less and less people in each individual funnel. The waiting rooms were smaller, the lines more manageable. It felt as though progress was being made. He lost count of all the names of people he talked to, the forms he’d filled out. He wasn’t even exactly sure where he was going anymore. The map he’d built in his head was mostly shot. From what little he’d been able to glean from people as he talked to them, Heaven was an insanely large place. He could believe it, too. It never seemed like he’d been moving backward, just forwards, the entire time he’d been here, however amazingly long that had been.

  A few dozen people later, he sat before a man who was much more grandfatherly than anyone else Jake had seen thusfar. (He looked so frail, Jake was afraid the man might die in front of him, except of course that he was already dead. It was all rather confusing metaphysically.) Jake had been whittled down from all the massive stacks of paper to a single sheet of paper so many times he’d lost count. He held out the sheet to the old man. “Are you the last stop?” Jake asked him.

  “This is it,” the old man wheezed at him, taking the sheet of paper and scanning it for his name, “Jacob Altford. This is your final stop before you pass into Heaven itself.” The old man’s wizened finger scanned across each line on the paper, reading it slowly but surely, as if final checking everything before it was all said and done.

  Jake had been amazed towards the end how quickly they’d been moving along with him. Some people hadn’t even bothered to introduce themselves; they’d simply processed Jake like another file, not even greeting him. He took a moment to look around the office, if it could be called that, while he waited for the old man to check everything.

  The office itself was made up of simple white walls with a simple oak desk and two chairs in the middle of it. There were three doors behind the old man, and directly over the door Jake had come in hung a small framed slogan. “The Lord is watching.” It was, as far as Jake could remember, the first real reference to God he’d seen since he got here, another thing he found a little odd, perhaps. (He felt the man must have had some clout, however, to have a decoration hanging. They seemed to be fairly uncommon in Heaven, which also seemed unusual. He wasn’t sure why Heaven was so sparse on decoration, but it certainly made it much easier to lose one’s way when everything looked the same. He really didn’t understand how the Cherubim did it.)

  “Well, Jake, everything seems to be in order here. Sorry about the wait, but you understand how it is, we want everyone in the right place and not just running around unsatisfied with their post-living experience,” the old man said with a toothy smile and just a hint of an accent Jake couldn’t place.

  “So I’m ready to get into Heaven itself now?” Jake asked, a touch optimistically.

  “You are indeed, Jake,” the old man confirmed. “You won’t be needing this last sheet of paper, so all you need to do is get up and walk through door number 2, and you’
ll be in your own Heaven. Remember, if you feel like you would like to change which Zone of Heaven you are in, you will need to file the correct paperwork and wait the according amount of time. But for now, go and see your Heaven.”

  Jake stood and took the old man’s hand into his and shook it. “Thanks, I was beginning to wonder if there really even was a Heaven, or if it was all a bunch of smoke and mirrors. It’s finally time, though.”

  The old man nodded in response. “It’s waiting for you, so get along otherwise maybe they won’t wait for you.” The old man laughed a little bit at his own joke, and Jake joined in.

  Finally, Jake thought, all the paperwork and waiting was about to pay off. He was about to see the big prize that was Heaven. Or, he supposed, his Heaven. He’d been in Heaven since he’d arrived here, but it hadn’t really felt like Heaven. More like a dentist’s waiting room. But now, his time had come. It was time to see what he thought Heaven should be.

  He raised a hand to wave to the old man with a smile as he walked around the desk, placing his hand on the doorknob. He left it there for a few seconds, as if the idea of opening the door made him nervous. Then, suddenly, he turned the door handle and pushed it forward. Beyond the other side of the door, Jake could only see blinding white light flooding over him. He raised the back of his hand up to shield his eyes and then cautiously stepped through the door, it closing automatically behind him.

  So, Jake thought to himself, as he looked around, this is Heaven. Let’s have a look about the place.

  * * * * *

  Time passed…

  * * * * *