Pennies From Heaven

Have you ever wondered if maybe ghost are real, but so real and so commonplace, that you walk by then every day but don't even notice them...?

It’s not as if life after death, some sort of existence beyond the grave was something nobody believed in. Most didn't of course but at the same time quite a few did and they did it quite persistently. There were books written about it, television programs dedicated to it even gatherings you could go to at which self styled ‘mediums’ would claim to commune with the dead. Problem was, this was all nought but fanciful novelty. A juvenile hobby wrapped up in the iconography of the occult. Ouji boards and such. Something to be observed in the darkness of empty castles, abandoned prisons or condemned hospitals. Chasing shadows around empty buildings, jumping at every noise. It was a hobby, it was entertainment, it was dumb.

Don’t misunderstand the facts of the matter however. None of this is to say that ghosts aren’t real or that the afterlife isn’t a reality. Oh it’s real and so are those who reside within it. Only it’s far more mundane than the ghoulish enthusiasts would ever have liked. Far too boring, commonplace and everyday for them to be able to notice. In fact, hardly anyone ever noticed and even when they did it wouldn’t be for long. For those that noticed would look right through the wraiths of the neither realm they weren’t invisible, merely unseen. Most of the time.

Oh yes, ghosts were real all right. Chances are you’ve seen one and you never even knew it. You may have seen one today, you might see one every day! Or at least you ignore one at least once a day. You pass them in the street often, somewhere deep in your heart when you see them, feeling what they are or at least the desperation of the state they are in and not wishing to linger around it. Moving on with your day as fast as you dare. Desperate to remove yourself from that overwhelming atmosphere of sadness, of loneliness, of loss.

But they aren’t ghosts in the traditional sense these poor lost souls. They don’t dwell in dark and empty places seeking to jump out and scare those that visit them. They aren’t evil, they aren’t malevolent, they aren’t even all THAT interesting. Not a white sheet or rattling chain in sight here….

You would find them on the streets. Sometimes walking the streets, most commonly sitting by the side of it. Their heads usually bowed and humble, eye contact rarely made.
The living know them as homeless people and this is in reality the most precise description of what they are. Only it has connotations running much deeper than any amount of brick or mortar could ever convey. Without a home in the truest sense, the most existential way possible, these people that were now sat, literally on the waiting list. The purgatory process through which they must now pass, serving as a triage of sorts. A qualifying process for the great beyond. The afterlife was after all a busy place. The busiest of places. Process and time management it turns out had a home that went further, much further than the physical realm. Whether you ended up going upstairs or downstairs, the gatekeepers could only handle so many at once. There had to be a stifling element involved, a process of determination of sorts. This was it.

This method of doing things had been around for so long, become so very commonplace that the living didn’t even notice it. Not that they ever had mind you. When the process was first introduced people hadn’t even batted an eyelid. Most of the living not even stopping to question why one of their number was sat on the sidelines of life, not participating or engaging. Those that did react were usually given to contempt or bizarre resentment. The human condition proving to sadly be heavily predisposed to a lethal combination of either blind ignorance or vicious prejudice.

Here is how the process works…. Those now dispossessed of life must sit upon the sidelines of the pathways of the life they once lived. They must observe those still striding in the glow of existence but they may not interact with them at length. This would be harshly punished if transgressed. Each of the homeless souls have a task - they may ask for spare change. The change is accumulated in a symbolic receptacle with which all homeless souls are issued during triage. What use have the homeless for money you may ask, since they are in fact now as you’ve discovered, banished from the waking world and forbidden to tread upon it?

It's not about the money. Each coin, each token, they are a gesture. Emblematic of kindness, of love, of something that stands out for just a moment as pure. The purity of giving in a world ever more consumed with vanity, with wealth. A token such as this so very rarely found is a piece of someone’s heart. Enough of these built up, saved up over time; that can be enough to help a homeless soul find home once again. Lost no longer they ascend to the light.

The receptacles which the homeless souls hold are of course purely symbolic. A portal of sorts leading to an unseen realm of accumulation, a vault if you will. In which all of the goodwill is stored until capacity has been reached. Now the homeless souls are, typically and understandably, usually found to be in a rather despondent state. Somewhat shackled as they are to the rules of the game allowing them only minimal interaction, they rapidly become very sad and depressed. Indifferent to their plight and wholly disinterested in its outcome. This state of affairs is very inconvenient as far as the powers that be are concerned. After all, any system if it is to be successful, needs to be monitored, to be ran as it were.
In the early days of afterlife triage, the administration had trusted the homeless souls to be in charge of counting their own blessings. The feeling being that surely eventual access to the everlasting Kingdom of heaven would be motivation enough for a bit of simple counting. They were wrong. The inherent and designed cruelty of the process having rendered many of the homeless souls so absurdly deranged that they in fact came to feel that they were already in hell. This was something that the powers that be found insufferable, ungrateful and frankly very offensive.
Then of course there would be the rebellious types. Those who, not content to have spent an entire lifetime being disruptive to process, had carried that troublesome habit forward with them into purgatory. Such cases were a menace. They would have accost the living in the street, desperately jabbering at them about the brutally grim reality of their situation. Warning those unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of their tirade, that this horrific limbo awaited them too.
Fortunately and not at all unsurprisingly, such cases were usually completely ignored. Often mistaken as religious street preachers. Either that or lunatics and or drug addicts. Which let’s face it, while it was now physically impossible to be the latter, many were most definitely now the former and with good reason. There would of course, always be those among the living that did choose to believe the ravings of the homeless souls. They were however, typically of a certain type and usually as well as quite easily, dismissed by the rest of the living as either poor sad confused souls or raving nut bags.

Nonetheless these inconveniences to the process were a problem, a big problem to the powers that be! Blessings had to be counted attentively and efficiently. Disruption of any kind had to be discouraged and where possible prevented. The process needed a tweak. It was time to send in the angels.

When it was decided by the powers that the best way to bring the process under tighter controls was by assigning an Angel handler to every homeless soul, there were several immediate drawbacks that had to be considered. Angels were not at all inconspicuous. Their giant wings, Halos and flowing white robes, simply were not going to be conducive to the overall desired effect of things. For a time, angels were encouraged to visit charity shops, outfitting themselves in the most tatty looking apparel they could find in an effort to themselves approximate the appearance of a homeless soul. This simply did not work. Angels themselves having an aura far too saintly to lend itself to this attempted artifice.
It also began to cause confusion as well as attract attention from the living. That which is unseen usually remains unseen due to its mundanity as well as its relentless consistencies. This breaking of the pattern was just too much for people to accept. Homeless people in pairs? Why? The process it seemed needed another tweak.

What was decided upon was heavily time-consuming but ultimately in the long run, undeniably successful. The angels would have to change form while on earth with their assigned homeless soul. The angels would have to become dogs…

The living almost invariably loved dogs. This meant that it didn’t matter now about an angels kindly and saintly aura as humans naturally associated such feelings with dogs. The angels could now be just as unnoticed as their assigned captive, even unnoticed to the homeless soul themselves, but they could also be in the perfect position to do some good old fashioned counting of the blessings! In fact, blessing accumulation greatly increased under this scheme, the living feeling much more encouraged to donate their kindness now that angels in the form of dog had joined the equation.

In some cases this approach only fueled earthly contempt from the living towards the homeless souls. The living taking pity upon what they perceived as poor unwilling canine participants in a wretched existence. Not realizing for how could they, that in fact they were there to do a job! This would lead often to unforeseen complications the living sometimes choosing to ‘rescue’ their poor little furry friends. This created immense administrative issues!

As a result of the ham fisted philanthropy of the living, many angels had ended up unaccounted for. Having been liberated they would in many cases find themselves living the life of a pet. Some of them even quite liked it! Quickly going native, they would discover that a life of treats, belly rubs and naps was in fact preferable to the clerical duties which had been the cause of their transmogrification. Having an Angel in a household of the living was of course a massive issue as far as the powers were concerned. You couldn’t do that!
Sure enough, improbable stories began to emerge: Entire families walking away from an enormously fatal traffic collision with not a scratch on them. House fires that burned through the night and yet the next morning saw an entire family emerging from the charred husk of their home with no burns and no signs at all of smoke inhalation. Miracles! Unlicensed, unauthorized miracles. Angels abusing their granted powers for reasons of pure sentimentality. Having gotten infected by the livings limited short term perspective and attachment to the physical realm and all of its petty trappings.
Cases such as this were thankfully few and far between. Of a low enough number to be dismissed as a silly hoax that nobody really felt able to believe. Eventually of course, as all humans do, the family would age into dispersion and the Angel dog would have to move on. It couldn’t remain with successive human generations where there were any, because this of course would lead to raised eyebrows and pointed questions. Odd enough for a family to be showered with good fortune every day of their lives, odder still for the dog to remain alive when pushing 20, but to lend credulity to an animal living 30, 40 or even 50 years in plain sight was something not even a miracle could manage. The Angel dog would be moved on by the necessity of circumstance.

This would lead often with bitter irony to the Angel dogs themselves becoming homeless. Much like the souls they have been sent to this realm to manage it was now they who found themselves dispossessed. Sometimes an Angel Dog in this category would be fortunate enough to find their way back to a loving family with whom they would then shower miracles. Other times, if they were really clever but suitably subtle about it, they could get back to the descendants of the family they’d had to leave. Said family being only too happy to take them of course, because this dog was ‘just like granddad’s dog.’ To accomplish this though, much less for multiple generations (again where there were any available) was both risky and difficult. Most times the Angel dogs, now homeless would end up back on the streets. Back sitting at the side of a homeless soul. Only this time there was no counting involved for these Angel dogs had become afflicted with the condition of love. The homeless souls now dispossessed of life would now while in the company of the love laced dog angels, feel an unaccounted for sense of well-being when they needed it most.
The dog Angel would use its heavenly aura to keep them both warm on those long cold nights. They would stop them feeling sad for too long thanks to their life giving energy of love. Meanwhile the powers above of course, truly in administrative disarray at this stage, would wonder why there were no blessings were being counted. Not even realizing that the Angel dogs in these categories had formerly been lost in the system and then snuck back in when they weren’t looking. Not realizing either that this byproduct of a system gone awry was the greatest blessing of them all.

Angel dogs who, having lived as pets among the living now understood what it meant to receive love and acceptance and now felt compelled to pass it on. Thanks to these creatures, there would in fact be moments now when the warmth of a tear trickling down the cold cheek of a forgotten face unseen by the living, was in fact a tear of joy. A fragment of love that meant something so special, so pure, so true that most would be unable to comprehend it. Certainly the powers that be above would not know where to start.
A side effect emerged from this development a side effect that as side effects go was rather a miraculous one. With their heads bowed, their gazes deferentially averted as was their custom, the homeless souls would cry many of their tears of love gifted them by the Angel dogs into their spare change receptacles… These tears however were no ordinary tears, they were droplets of gladness escaping from a heart which had previously felt so cold, so alone, that these tears were blessings, blessings in the purest of forms. Blessings so profound that they did not need counting to be catalogued, so undeniable was their meaning. Just one of these drops of liquid love was worth a multitude of all the spare change a homeless soul could accumulate in but a single year.
The powers were to be suddenly shocked as there was a sudden upsurge in cases of homeless souls now not only possessing enough blessings to get into heaven but in fact being ‘in credit’ to do so. It was a minority its true but it was a meaningful minority and a phenomenon that the powers above were at a loss to explain. For one fine day, when a homeless soul did look upon their true and only furry friend, suddenly seeing golden glowing wings of light spread from their backs and a beautiful unearthly glow enveloped them, they did know that their suffering had ended and they were free to ascend. For they had been shedding tears that were in fact pennies from heaven.

Author's Note

Thank you for taking time to read. Any thoughts or feedback greatly appreciated.