The demon said to the gathered pastors, “Look, you’ve got staffing problems, and so do we. How about a truce?” Heads began to nod.
Tag: heaven
Fiction: At Death’s Door
Conor had seen this in a comedy program once, and it had been amusing. Now, it was puzzling.
He had discovered the little lane – a seldom-used back route to town – almost ten years before. It was a pretty and pleasant walk between green fields, and it provided just enough exercise to keep his old body limber and the blood flowing. He took it daily, had a cup or two of tea in town with friends, and then walked the lane back home.
Today, the path had a new feature: a doorway.
Fiction: The Devil You Know
Satan slouched on his throne, one leathery wing idly beating time to the off-key tune its owner hummed.
He watched the parade of souls stream by him. Some quailed and screamed at the sight of the overlord of evil; others, hoping to be spared a little misery, genuflected before the throne, not realizing that Satan fried every 417th person to do that.
As the endless line of wrecked humanity slunk past him, he would meditatively torture one in a particular fashion and another in a different way. For the better part of an hour, he drilled holes in various sordid souls so that he wasn’t the only one in Hell who was bored.
A flash of movement caught his eye; he turned his horned head to see one of his lieutenants rushing toward him. The demon bowed before his infernal lord.
“What?” Satan demanded.
“My prince, there is … something odd. Something new, and none of us in Admissions can explain it.”
Fiction: Souled Out
Darlan, an agent of Hell on Earth, sighed into his coffee. A good, strong cup of coffee was one of the few things that made up for being trapped in human form to do his infernal majesty’s will.
You couldn’t get any in Hell.
Today, though, even coffee wasn’t perking Darlan up. He was waiting for today’s mark to come along. Another soul to speed on its way to Hell.
Big deal, Darlan thought. The place is overrun with souls as it is, cluttering things up, screaming, pleading, whining — oh, the whining.
Three hundred years earlier, when Darlan was first given the job of infernal shepherd, it was exciting. He always exceeded his quota and liked to take on the tougher jobs. But any job begins to pale after three centuries, and Darlan was doing little more now than putting in his time. Other agents were showing him up, but he didn’t care.
Remembering Archie
We are storytelling creatures, we humans. Our sentience notices our mortality and mixes with our fear and so we tell ourselves lots of stories about death.
We tell ourselves that the unjust are eternally punished in either darkness or flame. This is especially popular if the unjust are beyond our reach in this life.
Even more important: to stave off our personal dread of the trip each of us must take alone to Hamlet’s undiscovered country, or to console ourselves that the parting we now make with a loved one is not final, we tell stories about a Valhalla or a Heaven, where we and those we love will yet live and enjoy peace and plenty.
When a beloved pet dies, we may tell ourselves a story about how our furry family member has crossed Rainbow Bridge.
As a storyteller, I could probably come up with something good along these lines. But my stories would be no less wish fulfillment than these others. I am increasingly convinced that the only stories to be told at such a time, the only true stories, are those the mourners hold in still-living memory.
Today, I mourn, and I think this is no time for other stories or for the flights of fancy I create.
The more-than-year-long run of one new piece of fiction a week ends here. Grim, tearful reality now rules as we grieve for a wonderful little dog we knew for almost two years. Perhaps there will be more to say about this later; perhaps the stories I hold of him will work their way into other stories that will then be more true because of the sharing. And perhaps we’ll get back on track next week. For now…
how empty the yard
without him –
our well-loved Archie