My first thought after I died was, "Holy Shit! I’m dead!" I saw myself lying on the table with nurses and doctors yelling and scrambling around me frantically. Then that long high note began to fill my ears, flat line. By the time the reality of the situation was in my grasp, I started to rise into this light. It was warm and I felt happy that I was not plunging headlong into a fiery void. However, that sense of security was fleeting.
During my long, slow ascent, I saw those who were cast out of the Garden. They were on their way down, a dreadful experience. The shrieks of those descending rejections howling in terror were awful. They screeched by me in abundance, grasping at the air, hoping to stop the inevitable. The sounds of sinking horror rained by me in a downpour of pain that only desisted when I was finally in line at the gate.
Fear enveloped me as the line began to shrink. Some entered through the heavenly portal. Others watched Pete’s head swing from side to side. They would slowly back away as if they could sneak off and hide somewhere. Others even took off screaming into full sprints, but the clouds always parted and they tumbled downward with their pleas and curses following close behind.
Finally it was my turn.
"Joseph, we have been expecting you," Peter mumbled as he ran his finger over my file, skimming my deeds.
He sat there staring at me, then the file, and then me again. Back and forth he glanced, while occasionally stroking his white beard. He gazed at me for what felt like forever. Ha, that was before I really knew what forever was.
I was numb waiting for an answer. I mentally ran through my best and worst deeds trying to see which would pull the most weight.
The gatekeeper let out a long exhale followed by a brief chuckle.
"Alright, you’re in," he said.
A cold rush of relief filled my being and I walked through the gates into the garden.
Look how rude I have been. I never even introduced who I was. Actually there is not much to tell. My name was Joe Saxby. I wore a rubber watch, twenty-dollar shoes, and drove a van. I was an English teacher at a public school in New Jersey. I died of a massive heart attack at the age of 41. Too much fast food I guess. Now that I am here none of that matters, not that it mattered much down there.
Anyway, I entered through the gate and was stopped dead in my tracks. A wave of shock overcame me. Everything was vivid, almost alive with color. The blue of the sky, the green in the grass, the trees, the people, everything was glowing. It was beautiful. The landscape was gentle hills with sparse trees full of bounty. A few streams surged quietly under simple arched bridges. People strolled around alone and in groups with bliss scarred on their faces.
I was pulled from my dumb-founded stare by a tiny man standing just less than five feet tall. His head looked slightly large compared to his body and his ears seemed slightly large compared to his head. He was wearing a white robe with a sash that said "Welcome" on it.
"Hello Joseph. I am Ray-Ray. I will be your liaison for your orientation."
Still slightly dazed I mumbled, "Hi."
Ray-Ray told me he was an Orientation Angel and would get me acquainted with my new digs.
Ray-Ray had very small wings. Despite his diminutive stature, his wings were still not strong enough to carry him into flight.
"Joseph, we are on a very tight schedule so let’s get started. First off, welcome to Heaven. Here’s your robe."
He handed me a white robe. I slid it on and it was a perfect fit. He then gave me a "Hi, my name is…" sticker and a pen.
"Fill out what name you would like to go by on this and then stick it on your robe and I need the pen back. No sticky fingers," Ray-Ray uttered.
I took the pen and wrote "Joe" and stuck it on my robe.
The pen was returned.
He put his arm on the small of my back and we began to walk.
"O.K. Joe," said my small guide putting stress on my choice of names. "We are going to Group Orientation where they will fill you in on the rules of the after life. I will be available to you for any questions you may have. This orientation is a very special one. God will be there. He rarely makes appearances ever since he retired. I bet you didn’t know that the Big Guy is retired. He has been for some time. Now he is a hardcore golfer. Him and Lucifer are always going head to head on the greens."
"God golfs? With Satan?" I asked.
"Yeah, pretty much all the time. Him and Lucifer are always making friendly little wagers to keep it interesting."
"He bets at golf with the Devil?"
"All the time. They have this arrangement worked out. God picks a large location on Earth. Next Lucifer will pick some kind of natural disaster or plague or something awful. If God wins, the place is spared. If the Devil wins then let’s just say I would not like to be living on a fault line."
"So you are telling me that most of the horrific events that happened in my lifetime were caused by a lost golf game?"
"Bingo! Think of it like this; God had a really bad slice in his shot throughout the late nineteen seventies and early eighties. How do you think A.I.D.S. became such an epidemic? You’re lucky God settled his shot down or things could be a whole lot worse down there."
We continued walking through the Garden to orientation. I was still trying to compute this new information. "How could this be?" I thought to myself.
We arrived in a small valley with about 50 newcomers and their guides. All the guides were diminutive in stature. Ray-Ray exchanged some banter with some of the other Orientation Angels.
Suddenly things became silent and two powerful angels with flaming swords and brilliant armor swooped down onto the small hill we stood in front of.
"Welcome to Heaven!" The pair exclaimed.
Then a slightly obese angel landed. He had a receding hairline and looked like a used car salesman. He was wearing a disheveled green robe and seemed to be out of breath.
"Welcome newcomers," he wheezed. "This is your orientation for Heaven if your guides have not already informed you. There are a few formalities we must get out of the way then we will have a very special guest. First, my name is Larry and if you have any questions please direct them to your guide, not me. I am going to clear up a few misconceptions about Heaven that will make your transition a little less awkward."
Larry placed his hand on his chin and cranked his head causing his neck to crack loudly.
"Alright, let’s get started. I know that many of you have a lot of preconceptions about this place, most of them coming from the Bible. The Bible says a lot of things and most of them are wrong, so please try to keep an open mind."
"Any of you who thought there would be around the clock buffets, sorry you are wrong. You are all dead and food is used only to sustain the living, which you are not. Anyway we do not have the staff to feed everyone here, we are already understaffed as it is."
"Another thing is that you cannot come and go to Earth at your leisure. Actually you cannot go back to Earth at all because you have no wings to fly there. If you really need to see what is going on down there, binoculars can be supplied to you."
"And last but not least, no sex. I know most of you thought it was going to be orgies and beautiful women feeding you grapes all day, but no. Sex is used for procreation and you cannot procreate up here. And sex for the sheer pleasure of it is a sin. I know it is a rough adjustment, but for some of you it probably won’t be much of an adjustment at all."
"If you want to find any loved ones or relatives please ask your guide and they will be able to locate them. Now with those formalities out of the way, would you all give a nice round of applause for our very special guest, the almighty and powerful God!"
A ball of white light came down from the sky. Its aura covered the group. The light pieced through me in a pleasure-pain kind of way. Then I was engulfed in a state of euphoria. I can only guess that everyone there was feeling the same. I felt a love that is not felt or even imagined on Earth. This sensation lasted for about two minutes then the light began to flicker to the sound of a cough. Then it went out altogether. There in place of the light stood a six-foot Gibbon with a long white beard surrounded by a soft blue light. It was God and he was dressed in golf knickers, golf shoes and a polo shirt.
God cleared his throat and smiled.
"I am glad you could make it. Enjoy," God said.
His light became intense again. Then it ascended and he was gone.
"You know ever since he retired his cameos get shorter and shorter," Ray-Ray uttered to one of the other small angels.
I turned to my guide and uttered, "God is a Gibbon!?"
"What were you expecting, him to look like George Burns?"
"Well, no, but I thought he would look like a man. I always thought we were created in his image."
"I don’t know where you guys came up with that myth, but boy, you’re way off," snickered Ray-Ray. "The living are such egomaniacs. You all think everything revolves around you. God never made you in his image. You made him in your image."
"I don’t understand."
"The first mold for a dominant creature was a gibbon, obviously created in his own image. He created them to rule the Earth and so he could give them guidance if they went astray. It was sort of a little project for him. The only problem was that they were to perfect. Instead of conquering their environment they adapted and understood how to live in the balance of God's nature. They only took what they needed for survival and actually had a pretty harmonious society in their own right. When God realized this, he got bored because they needed no guidance. So then he took that mold and made a few intentional flaws like vanity and greed and lust. Hence the humans were born. I think he may have flawed you a little too much because now you are totally out of control and think you are all little Gods in your own right. Personally, I think he was so disgusted with how you turned out that it might have contributed to his retirement. I still can’t figure out why he lets some of you in Heaven. I guess he blames himself more than he blames you."
We walked out of the valley and I was stunned from this story. Ray-Ray led me to a little brook where we sat and he asked if I had any questions.
"Can you find some of my friends and family? I would love to see them," I asked.
"Well I know your parents are still living, so who would you like to catch up with?"
"I want to see my friend Mike Hacker. He was my best friend growing up until he was sent off to Vietnam where he died."
"Nope," he blurted.
"What do you mean ‘nope’?"
"Let’s just say he took the southbound train."
"Hell?"
"Bingo!"
"What about Chris Huff or Joe Ferroni?"
"Nope and nope."
"They went to Hell too? What about Jimmy Driscoll or Lance Purcell? How about My Grandpa and Grandma?"
"Nope, nope, nope and nope."
"My Grandparents are in Hell!" I shouted.
"They were a little too friendly with the Nazis during the war. That will score some big points against you. You do have a great-great Uncle Myron here. He seems to be the closest relation that actually made it up here."
"Who?" I asked.
"Myron Cassidy, on your mother’s side."
"Never heard of him. Can I see him?"
"Sure, but it is a three day walk in that direction," he said pointing over my left shoulder.
"I have to walk for three days to see this guy?"
"Yeah. You didn’t think I could just pull him out from under my robe, did you?"
"No. I mean of course not. I just didn’t think it would take a three day walk to find someone."
"Don’t tell me you think we have mass transit up here? Walking is the only way to travel around here unless you’re an angel. Anyway, if walking was good enough for Jesus it is good enough for you," he grunted. "So do you want to see this guy or what?"
"No. Not right now."
"Well then let me show you around, if you don’t mind walking. There really isn’t that much to see anyway. It is mostly fields, streams and light foliage. Actually, this is an ideal place to play golf. What the hell, I’ll give you the dime tour anyway. It will give you a chance to ask me some questions that I already know you will ask."
"How do you know what I will ask?"
"I have been doing this since the dawn of time and not one of you have yet to come up with an original question."
We began to walk and he stared up at me and began to lecture on how humans come up here with such grand expectations. He told me how we are consumed by so much useless garbage down on Earth that when we come up to live a simple pure life in paradise most of us have serious problems adjusting.
"You guys come up here after leaving your nice homes with the entertainment centers and microwaves and sport utility vehicles and you can’t handle the uncomplicated existence of Eden. You are bathed in bliss and love and you still thirst for more. I still cannot figure out why," Ray-Ray grunted.
During our walk I heard music coming from over a hill. The perfect harmonies filled my ears. It was sweet and passionate. I asked my dwarven guide to check it out.
It was a choir of angels singing. They were all dressed in red and blue robes with gold colored ropes keeping them closed. The music was intoxicatingly soothing.
"Get used to that song," Ray-Ray said.
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Well they only have a repertoire of about 120 songs."
"That’s a lot of songs."
"Not after a few centuries of hearing them."
"Wait. Your telling me a group of voices that heavenly can only play 120 songs?
"Yep, that is all that is suitable to be played in Heaven, so don’t get any funny ideas that they take requests," my guide chuckled.
We stayed for a few more songs and I wondered how anyone could grow tired of those voices, even with a limited repertoire. Finally we moved on.
"Hey Ray-Ray, I got a question for you. If God is retired who is running the show?"
"Duh, Jesus. Who else? God retired a few hundred years ago. Jesus trained for about two hundred years before he really tried to sink his teeth into the job."
"Jesus had job training for two hundred years?"
"Well, running the universe is a little more complicated than it looks. It took the kid a while to learn the ins and outs of the job. Now he is in charge, but he is not like God. God was very hands on. Jesus is more concerned with the paper work and behind the scenes stuff. He usually has the angels take care of the messy stuff. I’m not knocking the guy. He can do a birth-death ratio for the whole year in about twenty minutes. He also likes to make sure everyone who dies ends up in the right place. That is why there have been so few missing souls reports filled since he took over."
"Missing souls report?"
"Yeah. When you were back on Earth did you ever see a ghost?"
"Once, I think."
"Well it used to be a lot worse. God was usually very sloppy with the books and a lot of folks would get overlooked. When they are not picked up as you were by our little tractor beam, they have a tendency to wander. Then they are very hard to find. I can only imagine how hard it is to keep track of a few billion people, but Jesus seems to have a real knack for it."
"So Jesus isn’t planning on coming back to Earth?" I asked.
"Oh no, he already did. It did not go as well as he hoped. He had his comeback tour in 1981. JC came back and began preaching that he was the Son of God and the whole schtick about loving your neighbor and giving all your money to the poor. After doing that for about 20 minutes in Utah he was promptly locked up in an insane asylum. That really pissed him off and he has been very reluctant to go back ever since."
From the distance we saw an angel approach. He descended right in front of us. His wingspan was broad and I could tell he had a slender frame under his white robe with red trim.
"Ray-Ray, you have another appointment waiting for you," He said.
"O.K. Well Joe I gotta go. I hope you don’t have any more questions. If you do you’ll figure them out. You’ve got plenty of time to figure them out," he chuckled to me.
"Michael, can you give me a lift over to the gate?" Ray-Ray asked.
Michael lifted himself about six feet from the ground and said, "Sure buddy, just jump into my arms."
Ray-Ray tried and tried but could not get up to him.
Michael laughed and coaxed him on as he slowly floated toward the entrance.
"Come on Mike, this isn’t funny," Ray-ray shouted as he chased and lunged at Michael.
They moved over a hill and I could still hear Michael’s laughter and Ray-Ray’s curses in the distance.
Bio:Thomas D'Intino is 26, he lives in New Jersey, and writes professionally for sports, entertainment, music, and television news. He has also had a few poems published.
E-mail: euphioquestion@yahoo.com
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