“Name please”
“Really?… you’d think there’d be a better syste-”
“Name. Please.”
“Looks like bouncers are the same with or without wings, eh?” I said to the next hopeful believer in line. I like to think he didn’t understand english and that’s why he turned his back to me. I turned back to the angel “Andrew. Andrew Sanyaolu,” I said it the way I’ve said it a thousand times to a thousand different call centre operators while I was alive, they never get it right “shall I spell it for you?”
The Angel looked up from the huge ledger over his gold rimmed glasses in a way that said I’m an Angel, and this is the book of life, of course I don’t need you to spell it. In reply to his look I said “well you needed my name, just trying to help”. He slid his finger down the pages of the ledger, licking his finger and flicking to the next page in a way that I found entirely unnecessary. Spit, belonging to an Angel or not, does not belong on the pages of the book of life but I kept my thoughts to myself, didn’t want to mess up my chances.
It was quiet. The whole worlds population single file and I could still hear the peel and flap of each page turn. I’ve never been uncomfortable with silence, I rather enjoy it but when do you get to have a 1–2–1 with an Angel? “So… Guess you don’t get much rain up here above the clouds?” My joke bounced off him* like a tiny bead (*her? I read somewhere that angels are asexual and God knows I couldn’t tell from his/her face). I settled into silence again and took in my surroundings. It really was quite grand: marble pillars, golden gates and shiny white everything so you knew everything was purer and more holy than anything you’d ever seen in your life, especially you. Really impressive I thought… Then the voice in my head followed with well if I had thousands of years and all the power in heaven and earth my house would be too. The moving cloud carpet is a bit cliché, bit hollywood.
Then I noticed something — this line. The one I was standing at the front of, stretched forever behind me and everybody that ever lived was standing patiently in it. Why? There was a book here with everybody that needed to be here so couldn’t everybody else just go… well, to the other place? Again, it just seemed a bit unnecessary if you ask me. I mean think about all the poor people at the back, how long would they have to wait? And what if they didn’t get in? And there wasn’t any particular order- I’m sure the chap two people behind me is from the Ming dynasty, and I think I saw MLK a little way down. These people have been dead and waiting for ages, it’s not exactly fair that they’ve got to wait for me now, I only died last week. Boring week in limbo though — imagine waiting at a train station but there’s only one platform, and there’s no boards, no conductors to tell you when the train is coming, no expected time and worst of all? No benches or seats so you just stand around all day and you don’t get tired because you’re dead. That’s limbo. You’re not allowed to ask how long it’s been there too, that’s one of the unwritten laws in limbo. You know, makes the wait seem longer if people keep asking all the time.
I couldn’t get my head around it so I asked the Angel “have you not got excel up here? There’s a brilliant search function that would really speed this whole thing up, bet you’re not having much fun staring at that book all day?”
His finger stopped with a sigh like a bus. “Not here.”
“Well it’s easy enough to get. What are you on, PC or mac?”
He tapped out the words with his finger “Not. Here.”
“I don’t understand?”
“…” the perfectly crafted face stared blankly back at me. I still couldn’t tell if it was a he or she but they had a very beautiful face. It felt like talking to a sunset.
I couldn’t believe it. I knew I wasn’t the most devout Christian in life, well I was barely a Christian in the biblical sense of the word, but I prayed everyday. You know, the usual: Thank God there’s still milk in the fridge; I Pray the trains are on time this morning; Thank God nobody caught me sleeping at my desk; Please God get me out of this and I’ll change my ways forever. I was a good person. I’d always given change to the homeless and I only stole when very hungry or very broke. Still, that wasn’t enough to throw me out of everlasting paradise was it? Not like I’d killed anyone. I was sure I’d kinda lived by enough of the rules to avoid eternal damnation so I did what anybody born in England does when they’ve been wronged.
“I’d like to see a manager please”
“… a manager?”
“Yes, a manager”
“You’re aware that these are the gates of Heaven and there is only one in control here? The alpha and omega, the I am that I am, the ro-”
“Yes, yes I’d like to see him… or her… please”
I never heard anybody laugh so hard in my life. The laugh infected the people behind me and the joke spread down the line like a bad smell.
Personally, I didn’t know what was so funny. I had to get in, I hadn’t any plans to be anywhere else. There was a mistake and I’d talked to God everyday when I was alive. He’d never talked back but I knew he’d understand better than this guy, he’d at least hear me out. We had an understanding.
“That won’t be possible, human.”
“Well why not, Angel?” I pressed.
He sighed again, folded his glasses and placed them on the big book of life. “Do you think God makes mistakes, Andrew?”
I’d asked myself this question a few times and gave him the answer I’d come up with while I was alive “I think God does things and we give them names. Mistake, blessing, right, wrong. All just God doing what God likes”
He rubbed his temples, I think he had a headache or was implying I was giving him one. “Well he doesn’t. So if you don’t mind I have the rest of the world to judge. Take the path to the left and you’ll end up where you need to be”
“I am where I need to be and I won’t be going anywhere till you get the man in charge thank you very much” I retorted.
“Always one” he said, uninterested.
A pillar of fire swirled out of nothing and collapsed in on itself, in it’s place stood a bigger Angel with a flaming sword. If there was a gym in heaven I suspect that’s where he’d* spent most of his eternity (*this one was definitely a he).
“A problem, Gabriel?” a choir girls soprano sang out of the thick neck of the fiery Angel (Maybe it was a she). Everything is very confusing after you die, there’s no clear definition between things. In life you’re either one thing or the other, even when you’re confused you’re still firmly in that category — confused. After life you’re everything and nothing all at the same time, you know what it all means but have no use for it any more. You don’t even want to use all the knowledge you now have, you’re quite content putting it all in a box and looking for a different set of questions you don’t have the answers to. You’re extremely concerned about whats next and incredibly complacent about what just happened all at the same time. Reminds me of when I left Uni.
“Take this one down” Gabriel replied, pointing his glasses at me.
I was loosing it. “Take who where?! Take me in there!” I jutted my finger in the direction of the gates “There’s been a mistake and I’d like to see your manager please!”
They looked at each other and shared another laugh that rippled down the line. The queue was starting to slant with people standing to the side of one another to watch the commotion.
“That won’t be possible, human” the bigger Angel echoed.
“And why not, Angel Schwarzenegger? It’s not like he’s not in, is it?”
The Angel’s face turned rigid like a brick and she took one huge step towards me. With her towering over me and the heat of her flaming sword singeing the hairs on my head I looked behind me at the gathering crowd and decided I had to take this more seriously.
“Ok, I think we’ve got off on the wrong fo-”
I span around that angel like a beyblade. He never saw it coming. With all the strength I had I pumped my legs and sprinted towards the gates then started climbing the gold filigree, from a distance I bet people thought I was a divine spiderman. I was getting into the heavens and there was nothing Gabriel and his personal trainer could do about it. I just had to talk to my friend, the guy that’s always been there with me in my mind, God. There was no way he would abandon me… right?
A little way up the gate I heard the swoosh of wings flapping behind me. I’ve never been good with heights so I dared not look anywhere else but the next place I was going to put my hand, but I knew this wasn’t good news. There’s only one thing worse than getting stabbed and that’s getting stabbed with a flaming holy sword. There was more bad news — I heard an almighty series of locks unlocking. Like in that underground super bank thing in Harry Potter, just better quality and less hobbity. Then I felt the gates start to swing open. The smart thing to do in this situation would be to climb back down the 20 or so feet then simply walk through the gates but my body didn’t think that was an effective or dramatic enough response to the situation. So, without my permission, my celestial body decided the correct course of action was to backflip off the gates with the intention of landing squarely on my feet in front of the opening. I didn’t know how to backflip in life and it’s not part of the ocean of knowledge bequeathed to you upon death so I quite simply fell. Like a bird shot out of the sky I hit the fluffy ground with a poof and a thud.
“Hello.” said a familiar voice.
I groaned.
“He actually tried to climb the gate you say?” the voice asked.
“Yep, said he wanted to see ‘the manager’” they all chuckled together, again.
I opened my eyes and found 3 figures standing over me. Two of them I recognised — Angel Schwarzenegger and the bookkeeper — but the third, the third I kind of recognised but his face looked like it was always out of focus or constantly changing ever so subtly. There was one thing I knew for certain though.
“Y-you’re black!” I said, genuinely surprised.
“Well, technically, I’m whatever you wish to see me as, son” he said as he offered me his hand. I took it and got to my feet.
“Does that mean you’re G-”
“The manager? Yes.” He smiled. His voice was oddly comforting and warm. The kind of voice made for telling children stories. I’d heard it somewhere before.
“MORGAN FREEMAN!” I exclaimed. His face had finally settled (or my mind had finally settled on a face to give him) and I recognised it.
Gabriel took a £10 note from under the book of life and handed it to The Terminangel. “Told you” he said “If they’ve ever watched Evan Almighty it’s always Morgan”
“I thought gambling was a sin!” I complained.
“It’s not gambling if you’ve got nothing to lose and nothing to gain” said the bookkeeper.
I squinted. Sounds like a double standard to me I thought, but I had more pressing matters to deal with. I was in the presence of God. I’d never met royalty before so I kind of bowed, curtsied and stuck my hand out “your majesty” I offered. He looked at me for a moment and chuckled again in a way that made me feel like what I was doing was ridiculous, but not because it was entirely wrong, because I was in the company of a friend.
“Tell me what the problem is”
“Well, first he’s been leaving spit stains all over your book of life and he’s not letting me in! Then there’s this line — you invented all the technology in the world so why have you got people waiting up here just to see what they can’t have and be turned away? You could snap your fingers and be done with it in a second, I just think it’s a bit unnecessary.”
At that moment it all spilled out of me, all the questions I’d spent my life pondering “Speaking of unnecessary, I don’t know when I’ll get another chance because you never talk back in my head so could you tell me what all the palaver is about? Why the whole heaven and hell drama? You can’t threaten people and expect them to be unbiased in their love. And the Jesus situation? What was that? And the whole revelations bit with the horse men and the suffering but never being granted death? I mean you already know what’s going to happen, you’re making it happen! So what’s the point? You could snap your fingers again and we’d all be in there having a whale of a time. Couldn’t this all be done a different way where everybody is happy and there’s a lot less of the death and pain and suffering? Particularly the whole burning for eternity thing. Who’s idea was that? Well all Ideas come from you anyway so all this bad stuff, all the evil and that, right? Why’re you letting it happen? That’s the real issue. If I had children and I really loved them all and there was a way I could make them all happy in the blink of an eye I can’t see any reason I’d be burning them in a lake of fire or letting them kill each other off in the most horrific ways instead” At this point I didn’t know why but tears began to creep out of my eyes and my lips quivered as I spoke “I just don’t understand why you’d take people’s mother’s and father’s and son’s and daughter’s away. I don’t understand why you’d keep them alive but kill them from the inside out, I don’t understand why you’d suspend them in life while you unravel their mind one thread at a time till they don’t even know who they are anymore, I don’t know why you’d paralyze someone that loved to dance, I don’t know why you’d give throat cancer to someone that loved to sing, I don’t know why you’d starve a child. I don’t know why-”
“Enough.” his voice boomed and shook the foundations of heaven.
“Have you ever seen me set a single foot on earth?”
“Well, no… I guess not”
“So how could I do all those things?”
“Well you’re God, you know, you do miracles and control everything.” I waved my hand in the direction of the world below.
“Am I putting the words in your mouth now?”
I thought about this for a second. I searched for another voice in my head, something that was telling me what to say. I couldn’t find one… “No”
“So you see it’s not me that does any of those things. I granted you all choice and look what you did: squandered it, perverted it, abused it in ways even I hadn’t anticipated. Then you come here, literally to the gates of my kingdom, and complain to me about what you have done?” He laughed again, just as warmly “That’s simply not how it works, my boy.”
He turned and began to walk back into the gates. His words stood in my mind and I started to walk around them. I turned them over in my minds hands. They were literally the words of God but they were too wide, too broad. They didn’t come to an end, they just stopped. They didn’t fit. Yes, the words came together to make an answer but not an answer to my question.
“Wait!…” I shouted, almost forgetting who I was talking to “I mean please. Please wait!”
He stopped but didn’t turn.
“… but you let it happen. All of it. You let it come to this. That’s a choice” I took a few slow steps towards him “You knew it would, you must have wanted it to else… else it simply wouldn’t.” I drew level with him and looked into his eyes. I saw everything with clarity and I pushed the words out of my mind and into my mouth “There’s nothing here against your will! Choice doesn’t come into it! There was never any choice! What choice?! Since the beginning it’s been your way or death, your way or a plague, your way or a flood, your way or forfeit salvation, your way or this! Your way or hell! Like there’s only one way to be a good person. You didn’t have to set foot on earth when you could send a burning bush, you didn’t have to set foot on earth when you could simply part a sea, you didn’t have to set foot on earth when you could send your only son… You did this, so I ask again, why? Why this instead of something better?”
