The Hell Door

A short story on the afterlife. For more of my writing, go to andrewhenleywriting.wordpress.com

Where am I? What… what happened? Why is it so bright in here? Am I… dead? The last thing I remember is Laura stepping out into the road. She didn’t see it coming. She was… I had to protect her. Now I’m here. What happened?

 

Aw f**k! I knew that Tommy was a piece of s**t! Biggest score of our lives, he said. I shoulda known never to trust him. He screwed Carlos over when he went down a few years back, now he’s screwed me. Worse than Carlos, I ain’t just in jail, I’m dead. One shotgun blast to the face and BOOM! Good night Jimmy, we hardly knew ye. Wait, is there another guy here? “Hey you!”

 

Someone’s shouting to me. Another guy, sat leaning against the wall at the far end of the room. Is he God? Saint Peter? All this time, I’ve tried to lead a good life, but I’ve never really believed in God. In Jesus. In Heaven, in Hell, in any of it. “Can’t you talk, dumb a*s!” he shouts to me. Probably not God then. But then, who is he? Why is he here? Why am I here? I make my way towards him.

 

“Who are you? Where are we?” the guy asks me. Surely, this guy knows how he got here. I mean, my last memory is being shot by Tommy the Rat and now I’m surrounded by a bright white light. Possibly stuck here forever. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that my body is now worm food. I don’t know what this guy’s last memory is. Maybe it’s shooting pain in his left arm and tightness in his chest. Maybe it’s a burglar swinging a baseball bat at him. Hell, maybe the idiot jumped off a bridge. All I know is, whatever it is, it killed him. He gets way towards me and the ground starts to shake. Shaking so much I have to stand up. Who is this guy. He looks wet, with his cheap suit and modest haircut. Stained tie loose around his neck, and his jacket frayed around the hem. Who is he, why is he here? He keeps walking. Fast and strong, with purpose. F**k me, he’s the devil. Come to harvest my soul for eternal damnation. It’s not fair. It’s not right! I’m a Christian! I wear my crucifix. I pray, sometimes. I even go to Mass for special occasions. I don’t deserve this. “Lord, save my soul!” Even as I say it, I can feel myself being dragged towards him.

 

I stop in the centre of the room. It’s like my body’s stuck, I can’t go any further. The other man is coming towards me but he doesn’t look like he wants to. He’s screaming something about his soul. He stops screaming and we stand facing each other. He tries to move back but I think he’s stuck too.

 

“Please, don’t take my soul. I’m a good man. I know I’ve done some bad s**t, broken the law, hurt people, but I can be saved. Jesus will save me!”

What the... “Look, do you know why we’re here?”

“You’re… not here to take my soul?”

“What? No. I just want to know what’s happening. How did we get here?”

“You’re not the devil. Just some other dead guy.” I just made a fool of myself and begged for my soul for nothin’.

“Dead?”

“Yeah. Me and you? Pop, zing, boom, slit, whatever. Dead.”

“How?”

“Well I got shot. I’ve got no idea how you ended up here, genius. What’s the last thing you remember?”

Laura. “I remember Laura. My daughter. She stepped out into the road and I tried to save her. I… pushed her or pulled her or something. Then I must’ve… slipped. It hit me. That car hit me. I saved her.”

“Hey congratulations Superman. Here’s your prize: You’re dead! Trapped here forever with me.”

 

A sign rises out of the pure white ground beneath us:

 

WELCOME TO PURGATORY

 

There are two exits from this place.

 

To the left is the door to a place that seeks all corrupt souls. The damned and the cursed reside there. The unholy men of the earth endure unending torture of fire and brimstone as punishment and penance for their crimes against their fellow man.

 

The right is the door to a place where no sinners dwell. Only the pure of heart and mind are given entry. Those who led the life the Lord our God rewards will be repaid in eternal enlightenment and peace.

 

Only one of you may pass through each door, and the doors will only open together. You must decide your own fate. You cannot stay here.

 

Ignore these rules and you shall receive everlasting suffering at the twisted hands of the Prince Of Darkness.

 

I read through the notice another time and feel cold sweat gather on my brow. I’ve never believed in any of this, and now it’s all true. The miracles, the psychos who can hear the voice of God, all true. I was an unbeliever. And now I might pay for that with ‘unending torture’.

 

The guy reads through the notice a few times, at least three. Then he stands back and starts to read it again. This guy, so wet. The type of guy I’ve robbed or conned or generally screwed over more than a hundred times when I was alive. And I’ve got no problem doing it once more to get into Heaven and leave him to rot in Hell. I run towards the Heaven door on the right. “Hey, stop!”

I don’t. I keep running until I get to the door. Even with the white room and the white door, you can still see a glow coming in around the edges of the door. I try it twist the handle, but it won’t move. I pull and push at it, and the door doesn’t move. It doesn’t even shake in its frame.

 

“It says on the sign, the door won’t open unless we open them together. You can’t open that door unless I go open the Hell door. And I’m not opening the Hell door!”

“Well me neither! I am getting into Heaven! Go open the Goddamn Hell door!”

 

I walk over to him. He’s still shouting and heaving at the Heaven door. I don’t want him breaking the rules and sending us straight to Hell. I don’t feel fully in control of my body as I grab him by his collar and pull him back to the middle of the room.

 

“Look, we need to decide. Either one of us goes to Hell, or both of us do.”

“Fine. Decided. You go. Bye!”

I grab him before he runs off. “No! We should both say our reasons why we think we should be the ones who get to go to Heaven. Then we fairly decide who it should be.”

“Fine.”

 

What a sap. All I have to do is make up some story and I get into Heaven. He’s the kind of loser who’ll believe a sob story. Sell it well enough, and I’ve got peace, everlasting peace.

 

“So who goes first?”

“You can.”

 

I try to tell him this story about how I spent my childhood caring for my wheelchair stricken mother, but I can’t. My mouth won’t let me. It’s a lie and it won’t let me tell it. I can’t tell him the truth about me, how I ran the drug trade with Carlos a few years back, or Tommy sending me here by shooting me just so he could get a bigger score from the bank robbery we pulled. I’d never get into Heaven if he knew the real me. I’m surprised God is giving me the chance. So I reach inside my shirt and fish out my crucifix. The silver on the necklace has turned green. The little metal Jesus on the cross used to be green too, and scratched. One of his feet had snapped off. But here it’s shiny and new. Perfect and pure. I rub Him between my finger and thumb. It feels smooth, and even slightly warm. I shove it in the guy’s face.

 

“I’ve worn this every day since my First Holy Communion. Everything I’ve done, Jesus has walked with me. If I need guidance, I pray to Him. You have one of these?”

“No. Before today, I didn’t even really believe in God.”

That’s why God has given me a chance. “Then there is no way you should get into Heaven ahead of me! Atheists don’t get in man! They’re banned!”

“I wasn’t so much atheist as agnostic.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“That I simply wasn’t sure about God, or His existence. I just didn’t know.”

 

I may not have been as devout as some Christians, or attended Mass as much as I should have, or even been that nice a guy, but there is no chance some agnostril or whatever is taking my seat at God’s right hand.

 

“What about how you died?”

“What?”

“You told me before you got shot.”

“Yeah. I did. Big deal.”

“How?”

 

S**t. I can’t lie. Just like before with my fake wheelchair bound mother. So I have to limit the truth.

 

“Someone shot me.”

“I guessed that. Who?”

“A friend. His name was Tommy.”

“Why did your friend shoot you?”

I have to answer and I can’t lie. “He wanted my cut from the bank robbery”

“So you’re a criminal. And you think some necklace you probably just forgot to take off when you were a kid means you’ve earned entrance to Heaven?”

“At least I believed in Heaven! God is the most powerful being that ever existed, and you think just because you’re a nice guy He’s gonna say ‘so f**k you doubted my Almighty power, come join the party’?”

“I’ve led a good life. What most people would probably call a Christian life. So I didn’t know if there was some higher power out there who pitied me in my time of need or helped me through my difficulties And yes, I doubted whether there was a life after the one on earth, and whether good deeds would be rewarded in it, but I was a good man anyway.”

 

He keeps talking, telling about his wife and kid. How his little girl is sick and he works two jobs because they need to buy special furniture and toys so she won’t hurt herself. How he tried to put his wife first and make her happy. About the time he won big money in this crossword puzzle competition, and he spent it all on a trip to Canada because his wife and daughter wanted to see Niagara Falls. Said it was her last wish.

 

“Who’s last wish?”

“My wife Abbie’s. She died. Lung cancer. She never smoked a day in her life, but she cleaned up in smoky pubs to make money for Laura’s special things.”

“You want to see her, don’t you? Your wife.”

“I know she’s in there.”

 

I point to the Heaven door and think of everything behind it. He’s right. All I want is to see my wife again.

 

“I would walk to Hell for her if I thought she was in there. But she’s not. She’s in Heaven.”

“Go.”

“What?”

“Go. Go see her. Go to Heaven. I’ve never done a single thing in my life that I’m proud of, nothing that gives me the right to go through that door on the right.”

 

And I walk off to the left. I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never been married. I’ve had a few girlfriends but they were somewhere in between w****s and concubines. I never loved them and they never loved me. There’s no one waiting for me, like there is for him. I walk to the Hell door and touch the handle. The metal feels cool. I look over my shoulder and see the other man turn the handle to Heaven. I turn mine and both doors swing open. As the door to damnation swings open, I feel the heat sweep up my whole body. The light from the fire makes me squint. I step forward and feel my body descend into weightlessness. Through the piercing flames, I see a shrouded figure, dressed in a suit.