Going Up?

A short story about a man's experience trying to get into heaven after taking his own life.

In a room sits a man hidden from the world both by his own wishes and by the darkness that threatens  to completely engulf the room. Only the piercing light of a digital clock is left to fight against the darkness. A few feet away the man turns on a desk lamp.

"Finally some reinforcements." thinks the clock.

The man swiftly grabs a piece of paper and a pencil and looks at the clock. It reads 3:24 AM.

"I've heard of worse times to die." says the man to no one, not even to himself. He begins to write on the piece of paper in tiny, almost unintelligible scrawl.

Do you ever wonder why you're here? I do. I lie in bed and listen to the world existing without me. I know that with or without me the world doesn't change, I alone do not change how the world interacts. But when I listen to the streets they sound different, more interesting. The world sounds so alive. But it's just tricking me, it's not alive. Even if it was what would it care? It wouldn't be happy. I'm not happy. Because the cold truth is no one is happy until they die.

With this the man drops the pencil and turns off the lamp. The clock is again left alone to fend off the darkness for itself. The man raises and acknowledges the welcome click of the hammer being cocked on his revolver.

"My name is Michael Parsons." The gun goes off with a deafening blast that Michael only hears half of before the bullet hits him. Somewhere on the floor lays the part of Michael's brain that is dying to say "And I'm oh so happy."

It will be another 2 hours and 54 minutes before the sun will rise to defend the clock from the overwhelming darkness. It would be 36 hours to the minute until Michael's body is found by his landlord George who, after a moment of silence, calls to inform the police. The coroner would place the time of death at around 4 AM. Michael Parsons thinks that would have been a much better time to die.

With a flash Michael awakes in an all white room. He is wearing a fancy tuxedo but is missing the hat. For a moment this upsets him. A voice to his right grabs his attention.

"This way." says the voice. Michael thinks it sounds like Barry White. "Who was that?" Michael asks. Or did it sound like Morgan Freeman he finds himself thinking. He can't find out for sure because the voice does not repeat itself and instead lets Michael find a door that reads 'Enter' all by himself.

He takes a step forward before catching himself. "What am I doing? Always away from the light." Michael turns around and takes one step before his eyes are hit by a blinding light which causes him to take his own advice and turn to walk through the door.

As he crosses the threshold of the doorway he finds himself in what appears to be a DMV except that the walls and floors and ceilings are all white and there are only two lines. Michael looks to the right and sees a sign at the front of the line that says 'Heaven'. He looks to the left and sees a sign that says 'Hell'. He gently sidesteps in to the heaven line while carefully looking around to see if anyone was looking at him. Instantly a man in an all white suit grabs Michael and pulls him out of line.

"Damn."

The man throws Michael into another all white room where a balding, slightly pudgy man sits behind a desk on the phone. The man looks up from the phone at Michael and mouths "one second."

"Yeah. All right. And this woman would like nothing to go wrong at her daughter's wedding? Yeah sure we can do that. Yes okay. (Sounds like an interruption) Okay. All right. Sure thing, goodbye now. (Laughs) All right goodbye." He hangs up the phone. "Michael! Take a seat."

Michael shakes his head while looking scared. This amuses the man. "Oh don't be afraid, there's just a few things we need to discuss." he says. His light-hearted demeanour convinces Michael to reluctantly sit down.

"Am I going to hell?" Michael questions brazenly. Strangely enough his mind wanders to how he wants a top hat and how the voice was definitely Barry White.

"That's what we're here to discuss. I'm just going to get right down to it, we have lost your record."

"My what?"

"Your permanent record. Recording everything you did, said, thought or thought about thinking while alive on Earth."

"Well... Don't you see everything? You are God aren't you?"

The man laughs heartily at this. "If I had a nickel. You think God is a balding man who works a desk job? No, I am just a helper. Have you read the bible?" Michael pauses for a moment then shakes his head no. "Well I'm in there somewhere. You should look into it some time."

"Umm, okay." Michael was sure he wouldn't. He also hoped the man couldn't read his thoughts or else he's sure he'd be going to hell. At least the man would know that Michael was for sure on the voice being Barry White. It was a little too important to him that this man knew his thoughts on the voice.

"But anyways back to business. Which was..."

"My record."

"Right! Yes. Lost it." With this the phone rang. "Will you excuse me for a second?"

The man didn't wait for Michael to acknowledge that he didn't mind before he answered the phone.  Michael wished he wasn't so lackadaisical with how he lost his record. It seemed mildly important.

While Michael's thoughts were about the man the man's thoughts were about the phone call he had just answered. "Hi. Speaking, what can I do for you? Safe trip? To where? Yes that all sounds fine, a safe trip it is. All right bye."

"What are those?" Michael asked.

"Just answering prayers. Standard business."

"I thought you were all seeing."

"What am I Big Brother? Do I look like Santa Claus?" The very un-Santa Claus looking man questioned.

 "No." Michael replied embarrassed. This isn't the time to offend anyone he thought.

"Thank God" said the man. This caused Michael to give the man an odd look, like the one you would give a parent who knows of a depraved sex act. "Now back to the matter at hand. According to our records well... You never existed."

"Is that bad?"

"Very bad."

"Why?" asked Michael.

"Well we run a tight ship around here."

"Clearly." Michael immediately regretted sassing someone who, for all he knew, may have created the Universe.

The man seemed mildly offended. "Hey now this is the first ti-(The ringing phone interrupts him. He ignores it.) This is the first time anything of this sort has happened."

"So what do we do?" asked Michael. He desperately wished that the man would say 'Well you're going to go right on up to Heaven! Have a nice afterlife!'. But he didn't.

"Like I said we run a tight ship here, we can't let you in to heaven just like that. Plus I've heard some things."

"Some things?"

"Bad things."

"Bad things?" Michael's voice chose not to hold back his terror.

"Yes from a one Mr. Francis Stevens."

"Fran is up here?!" Michael was excited. Heaven might not be so bad.

"No."

"Yah I didn't think so. He was a bad person."

"Yah... Well enough reminiscing. You're scared. Be a man Mr. Parsons."

"I thought God was always nice." Michael said.

"Seriously? Check up on that Bible." The phone rang again, again the man ignored it.

"Aren't those prayers?" asked Michael.

"And now they're unanswered prayers. Don't worry they'll call back. They always do." For the first time Michael could sense that perhaps this man didn't particularly like his job.

"If you can answer any prayers then why don't you?"

"Again, Bible. Here just have one." The man reaches into his desk drawer and throws Michael a gold Bible. It hits him square in the chest.

"No thank you, I'm not religious." Michaels eyes open wide in shock after he realized what he admitted. He closes his eyes tight and hoped this was all the last neurons in his brain firing before they died.

The man laughed heartily and wiped a tear from his eye, "Oh don't worry. It's based on how you lived not what religion you followed." He leaned in close to Michael. "And between you and me, we like the non-religious ones better."

"Why?" Michael was surprised.

"When people think that their every action is being judged they tend to act differently than how they normally are."

"Lucky me then." Michael had found a silver lining.

"Actually no. You're the only person this has ever happened to. Ever. Literally since the dawn of time. That probably makes you the unluckiest."

Just another grey cloud. "How did this happened?"

"See we're not entirely sure. And because of this we don't know what to do with you. But don't worry, you'll only be here for a few more moments."

"What do you mean? What does that mean? Am I going to hell? Am I going to heaven?" Michael wished it was the latter more than he had ever wished for anything. He was hoping the phone on the man's desk would ring with his prayer to go to heaven and the man wouldn't ignore it.

The phone rang.

And with that the last neuron in Michael's brain ceased to fire. The clock, still battling the fight against the darkness still read 3:24 AM. It noticed the commotion from the streets below, the confusion from hearing the sound of a gun go off. The clock noted how interesting the streets sounded and resumed its fight against the darkness.

Author's Note

I'm not a big fan of this myself but I think the idea has potential. ANY suggestions would be great

Reviews

[Cherrie Palmer]

this is a very strong story, it makes the reader ask questions that they want to see answered. You have a compelling hook to lead the story forward. The only thing missing is the next chapter.