Escaping Heaven

by Cliff Hicks

  She tried to quell her crying again, wiping the tears from her face with the back of her hand. “No no… you’re right. Besides, you’re dead. It’d never work out.” She forced a laugh out at that, and Jake forced a polite smile back in return, although it felt hollow. “So why are you here? Some kind of Wonderful Life kind of thing?” She took a few steps back and leaned against the back of her couch, wrapping her arms around herself to hug her body.

  He shook his head. “No, nothing like that. You’re not suicidal, are you? You know that’s a cardinal sin, don’t you?”

  “No, it’s not. I know the seven deadly sins better than you do,” she said as she moved back over and slumped back down into her chair.

  “Yes it is, so clearly you don’t,” he said with a soft smile. “It’s covered under wrath.”

  “My ex-boyfriend, the Jewish scholar of Catholicism,” she muttered with a genuine laugh, weak though it was. “Does it keep people from Heaven?”

  “Does what?”

  She paused a long moment. “Suicide.”

  Jake thought back and recalled his own entry to Heaven, and the other souls they had picked up along the way, and he couldn’t help but think of the banker or businessman or whatever he was… Jake couldn’t think of his name, but distinctly remembered the man telling him he’d jumped from the building to his own death. There was no way Jake could forget the man falling through him. (Eyyyuck!) “I guess not. When I went up to Heaven, one of the people who went up at the same time as me had committed suicide, so maybe it’s only a contributing factor.”

  “Really?”

  Jake shrugged slightly. “That’s what he said.”

  “So if you’re not here to try and stop me from committing suicide, which I don’t think I could do any more anyway after seeing you in that horrible toga, why are you here, Jake?” Kelly said as she continued to regain her composure.

  “Y’know, I’m not entirely sure, Kelly. I was in Heaven for a while… time flows differently up there than it does down here…” he continued as he paced around in a small circle, “and I realized… I didn’t fit in up there either. I spent my whole life trying to fit in on Earth, and I figured when I got to Heaven, it would be the one place I could finally fit in, only to find out I didn’t fit in there either. So I left. I guess I’m still looking for someplace to fit in.”

  “Wait,” Kelly said, raising a hand up, “you left Heaven?”

  “Yep.”

  “But… it’s Heaven! The perfect eternal peace and afterlife.”

  Jake chuckled a little as he leaned back against a wall. He tilted his head back and his halo pushed forward a bit, the edge of it nearly over his eyes. He shifted his posture some and raised his hands up to straighten the halo out once more. “Yeah, well, people up there kept telling me that, too, and they couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more impressed with the place.” He paused for a moment. “They did have some colorful brochures, though.” They shared an awkward laugh together. “I guess I just don’t fit in there either.”

  “I don’t understand how someone couldn’t fit in when they were in Heaven, Jake, I really don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re probably just some psychotic break I’m having, my mind trying to rationalize everything and keep me together.”

  He shrugged a bit in response. “Believe what you like, Kelly. You’re not really my concern any more. I’m not the guy you knew anymore. Maybe that guy died when my body did, but I’m going to be someone different now. I don’t know who I am yet, but it’s time to evolve. Time to do something with this new lease on existence I’ve bought for myself. I’ll figure it out as I go, I suppose. That’s what got me out of Heaven in the first place. Not spending all my time sitting around planning but actually doing things.” He laughed a bit to himself recalling his grand escape. “Sometimes it’s best not to overthink these things and to just trust your first instinct.”

  Kelly sighed with resignation as she stood up. “Well, you certainly can’t go around looking like that. Not if you’re going to wander here on Earth. You’ll need to take some earthly clothes with you, and I still… ah… I still have some of your stuff here. They’re in the bedroom.”

  He moved into the bedroom before her, watching his step as he did. The place was littered with dirty clothes in nearly every corner, nook and cranny. She had to have not washed a single bit of clothing since his death, he thought to himself. Once he set foot into the bedroom, he could tell the assessment was a fairly accurate one. The closet doors were open and the only things hanging in there were old clothes of his he’d left over on some of the nights he’d stayed at her place. He also noticed in a quick glance around the room that one of his shirts was on the bed, next to her pillow. It was wrinkled and balled up, as if she’d fallen asleep clinging to it, crying, each night. (Or maybe, he realized, he was just seeing what he wanted to see.)

  She moved in behind him and slipped into the room, wandering towards the bed. “You’ll have to excuse the mess,” she said, trying to regain her self-control. “I haven’t been able to focus much since you died.” She pushed the shirt on the bed underneath the pillow, and neither of them spoke about it. “I think I’ve still got your backpack here from that time we went camping.” She walked over to a corner of the room and moved a handful of clothes to unearth the backpack. “Let me see how much I can fit in here,” she muttered as she moved over to the closet, taking a handful of his clothes off the hangers.

  As she started to pull clothes off the hangers, his stomach rumbled, a low burbling noise, and Jake looked down at it with a curious smile. “Well, I’ll be. Apparently now that I’m back on Earth, I need to eat again. That’s certainly something new.” He paused, then his face scrunched up in a sudden realization. He bolted from her room and ran straight to the bathroom, closing the door shut behind him as he lifted up the toilet seat, lifted up his toga, tugged down the shorts and relieved himself. He’d never been so thankful to take a piss in all his life. After a minute or so, when he’d finished, he adjusted the toga and flushed the toilet, closing the lid to be polite. He opened the door to find a mildly amused looked Kelly peering at him.

  “They don’t have toilets in Heaven?” she said, holding out the backpack to him.

  “Nope,” he replied, taking the bag from her, slinging it over his shoulder. “Nor food, sex, music…”

  “Oh come on, Jake, now I know you’re teasing me,” she said with a smile as they walked back out into the entryway. “How can Heaven have no music? A musician’s idea of Heaven would be to make music all the time, wouldn’t it?”

  He lifted his hand up to his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You know, I never really saw where anyone ended up beyond the area where I was, so I guess I don’t actually know what other final resting places are like. Weirdly enough, I spent most of my time in Heaven either in lines or wandering around the areas where the lines were.”

  “See?” she said with a smile. “Maybe they just filed you in the wrong part of Heaven. I can’t imagine Heaven being all that bad a place, otherwise why would people be struggling so hard to get into it?”

  He laughed warmly at that. “Easy. People keep talking about it. And no one who gets in ever comes back. It’s like those popular clubs you see downtown. By the time anyone figures out it’s not that impressive, they’ve already made their money and are gone by morning. Heaven’s the same way. Everyone’s dying to get in, but once they get in, and they find it’s not what they want, it’s too late…” He cocked his head to the side, as he opened the door out of the apartment. “It’s the Hotel California, when you think about it… you check out any time you like, but you can never leave…”

  “I guess I just have to hope it won’t be as bad for me as it was for you,” she said, a soft smile on her lips. His visit had lifted her spirits, he could see, and while she still carried the guilt of having cheating on him inside, she no longer thought she’d driven him to suicide. It was funny, Jake thought to himself, how muc
h they’d never really talked when he was alive, and now that he was dead, it was much easier to talk to her. He could see there was still the look of confusion and sadness in her eyes, but it was something she could recover from, not the broken and shattered shell of a person he’d come across just a short while ago. “Take care of yourself, Jake, wherever it is you go.”

  Jake smiled back at her warmly, nodding. “I will, Kelly, but you take care of yourself, too. Clean up your apartment, take out your trash…” he said as she was nodding, somewhere between laughing and crying. “Take a shower!” He leaned in and kissed her on the forehead as she giggled slightly.

  “Right, I will, Jake. Thank you. I probably didn’t deserve this… but I needed it.” He could see she was smiling to stop herself from breaking into tears again at any moment. “Don’t be a stranger. You can stop by any time you want to.”

  He shook his head slightly. “I’m sure they’ll be looking for me here eventually. The only reason they’re not here yet is that they haven’t figured out I’m gone. I probably shouldn’t have even come in the first place, but, well, I did…” He glanced about the outside of the apartment building quickly. “But sooner or later, they’re going to be looking here, so I don’t think it’s safe. No offense, Kelly, but I really don’t want to be carted back to that Hellish Heaven just because I was stopping by for lunch. I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.” He shifted the backpack on his shoulder as he started to back away from the door.

  Kelly leaned her shoulder against the doorframe, tilting her head to rest against it. “You really think they’re going to come and try and drag you back to Heaven?”

  Jake nodded back at her. “Count on it. I’ve seen them do it to others.” He walked down the stairs from the apartment then turned to look back over his shoulder. She was still watching him go. “Make something of yourself, Kelly. Do everything you want to do with your life. Otherwise you’re just wasting it, like you thought I was.” Then before she could reply, he turned and walked off into the night, leaving her with those words.

  After he’d walked a decent distance from the apartment building, he decided there were a few things he needed to try. When he’d turned intangible, the phone had fallen through his hands, as if he couldn’t take it with him. So after he was in a more secluded area, he turned intangible again, and sure enough the backpack fell to the earth, passing right through him. He turned tangible again and pulled out a t-shirt from the bag, pulling it on over the toga. Then he turned intangible again, and just like before, the shirt passed through him and fell to the dirt. He shifted back to solid and then put the shirt back into the bag.

  The next thing he needed to test was whether or not he could take things with him while he was tangible. He grabbed the sword hilt from his belt and pulled it out, pondering it for a moment. He hadn’t tried using the sword while he was solid yet, and the idea made him slightly nervous. Still, there was no time like the present. He moved his thumb onto the switch and the blade of fire burst from it. This time, however, he could feel a bit of heat wafting off of it, and the blade had more actual weight to it. Interesting, he mused. The blade had more of a presence when he did. He idly wondered what the effects of a heavenly blade of fire cutting mortal flesh would be, but decided he didn’t really want to test it on himself. Instead, he began the process of cutting a door again, this time while he was tangible. Sure enough, the process worked just like before, cutting the lines of fire into the air. When he stabbed the blade in the center and turned it, this time he could feel the slightest bit of resistance, like he was actually turning a lock. Cracks of fire rippled out and then the door was filled with white fire before flashing, filling out the doorway of light. He waved a hand in front of the doorway and couldn’t feel any heat. This was, he realized, what they called a leap of faith. If the fire of the doorways still burned, he would be scalded when he passed through. He picked up the bag again, slinging it over his shoulder, then closed his eyes as he stepped into the doorway.

  He stepped through unscathed to the location on the other side, a small cave up in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado he and his family used to play in when they went camping over summers. The backpack still rested on his shoulder. That answered another question – not only could he make and pass through portals while he was solid, he could bring things with him. It was a new set of rules he’d have to learn, but in its own way, that made it fun. It was new, and after the endless repetition of Heaven, new was good. New was refreshing. New was, well, new.

  He moved deeper into the cave, using the sword as a torch of light to illuminate his way. He knew the path fairly well, but it had been a few years since he’d been here. It was off the trails and wasn’t someplace people would likely stumble on without knowing where to look. This would be a good place to hide clothes and anything else he might pick up along the way.

  After he stashed the clothes some ways in, he moved back outside of the cave and moved up the cliff side to get to a nice little outcropping. The sun would be up soon, and he had an undeniable urge to sit and watch it, so he decided he would. He moved to sit down on a bit of rock and leaned his back against another bit of rock, his eyes turning up to the horizon, seeing the haze of light seeping over it, the sun not yet risen, but the approach of dawn unmistakable.

  Jake realized he was the child of two different worlds now. He could be intangible if he needed, able to pass through things at will and impervious to harm, or he could be solid, with all the ups and downs that brought. He idly wondered what would happen to him if he died while he was solid, but the logical assumption was that it would just be the same thing that would happen to him if he died while he was intangible – he’d turn into that white dust he’d seen before and disappear back to Heaven, a fate he couldn’t say he particularly looked forward to. So he needed to not die. Easy enough. And he needed to figure out what to do next.

  That one didn’t seem quite as easy.

  * * * * *

  The three angels took a while finding Gilbert’s office, but deciding who should take the lead in talking to him took a bit longer. Randall thought they had been too soft on Bob, and that they should go in guns blazing, while Shelly had argued that their multipronged approach had worked just fine. In the end, though, James had the most convincing argument – they would go in as a group and just deal with him as best as they could. An angel helping someone escape Heaven would certainly not look good for anyone’s record, and they figured they could break him without too much work, had he in fact been this way.

  They entered into Gilbert’s office quietly, closing the door behind themselves. Gilbert had his head down in the paperwork on his desk, but apparently was tuned to the sound of his office door keenly as he raised his left hand in response to their entrance. “Just one minute,” he said as he scrawled on a piece of paper. The office was a disaster area made purely of paper. There might have been furniture beneath some of the leviathans of files, but none of the three angels wanted to be the one to find out. (Perhaps the furniture was using the paper as a defense mechanism to avoid doing any work itself, like letting people sit upon it.)

  Despite the fact that paper was scattered everywhere in what seemed a rather haphazardly manner, there was no denying there was some method to the madness. Bluish-white papers were in one section, reddish-white papers in another, and all the various shades of rainbow-tinted white each seemed to be holding their own areas. The papers, it seemed, had gotten territorial, and built their own small countries amidst the madness. Warfare looked inevitable.

  Gilbert, however, seemed undisturbed by the fortresses of paper that amassed around him. After he’d finished scrawling in a few last notes with the golden pen, he put it down and looked up at them, his beaklike face scrunching up a little bit. “You’re not new souls,” he said, the confusion evident in his voice. “What can I do for you angels today, then?”

  James moved towards him first, stepping over to the desk, leaning to place his hands on the edge of the
desk, bending down to try and look a bit menacing in his direction. “Tell us where Jake Altford went.”

  Gilbert didn’t seem intimidated at all as he nodded, standing up, moving over towards the file cabinets, which were providing high ground to the orangish-white paper nation. “Sure sure. Someone got misplaced, did they? One sec…” he opened one of the drawers, scanning through files before he pulled out a one-sheet, nodding to himself. He closed the cabinet carefully, as if he knew tectonics would surely set the looming conflict into motion. “Sure, here it is. He got sent to Personnel Block 42A-68F-32R-08K, determined he’d do best if he kept himself busy and occupied based on the paperwork he’d turned in, and his case file history.”

  Randall was about to interrupt when James raised his hand slowly, motioning for him to be quiet. “What do you mean his case file history?”

  “I can just read you the notes here. ‘Altford is a generally passive person who goes with the flow of whatever situation he finds himself put into. He had a rather traumatic final day on Earth, or so he said in his paperwork, so it’s entirely possible he may be somewhat overwhelmed upon initial encounters. Decision: Place in recreational quarters with minimal excitement and shift in routine, and he will fit in fine.’” Gilbert closed the drawer and moved back over to his desk before dropping the paper, a white-white sheet of paper littered with gold scrawl, in front of James. “You can read it for yourself. I remember him fairly well. Good kid. Full of ideas.”

  Shelly looked at him curiously as she moved more towards James and Gilbert. “What do you mean ‘full of ideas?’” She turned her head, staring at him. They needed to be very careful how they approached this. If it turned out Jake hadn’t been here, it was entirely possible that they needed to keep his disappearance quiet from yet another person. She could see why James had motioned for Randall to keep quiet. Randall was a nice enough guy, but he had a tendency to let things slip in a way she almost found cute. Still, not the kind of thing you wanted when you were trying to keep facts close to your vest.