How to shuffle off this mortal coil in 30 minutes or less.

A story of a man in the brief moments between death and the afterlife. I was trying to see if I could create a story in less than 1000 words; this required me to boil down the story quite a lot.

Death really isn’t as terrible as they make it out to be.  Oh, yeah, sure, there’s a crap load of pain before you actually die, but after that it’s smooth sailing.  Well, maybe not sailing, more like flailing from the hornets that came from nowhere.  Okay, so there’s pain.  It’s more of a nuisance, though, until the two-headed lion comes towards you.  That little b*****d had a fever and the only cure was my calf muscle.

Okay, I should back up and give a bit of a preface.  I’m dead.  After the accident, I shuffled off this mortal coil in less time than it takes to cook an egg.  My death was fairly typical.  It happened when a tractor trailer decided that my car was completely lacking in flames and taking up entirely too much space.  I lived for exactly seven minutes and forty-three seconds.  The odd thing was, I was conscious for the whole thing.  I could have done without that.  My last words were trite.  Blood poured out of my mouth as I gurgled “God, help me.”  I wasn’t exactly Voltaire.

Of course my death didn’t exactly make a splash on the world.  I wasn’t really living much of a life before my Viking funeral anyway.  My girlfriend left me for my dad (made Christmas really awkward), I was stuck in a dead end job working for a she-beast from Hell, my dog died, I was losing my apartment, I was being audited for some reason, and a bunch of other crap.  I mean, nothing unbearable by themselves, but together they made my life miserable. 

When I died I didn’t know it.  I was confused and sitting on the ground dazed in a very strange place.  Massive redwoods jutted out randomly from the sand dunes I was sitting on.  A few moments later I discovered that it is quite difficult to run away from a predator in sand. 

After several minutes of running and barely escaping losing a few pounds of flesh, I turned a corner and saw a man in a toga standing before a rather large gate with fire roaring behind it.  Must be a metal concert, I thought. 

The lion rounded came up behind me, roared, and ran off in the other direction.

The guy, obviously the reason the lion left, was looking at a device in his hand as he stood behind a lectern.  Not wanting to be a meal, I went up to the guy.  “Hey, man, what’s going on?  I just got hunted by a freakin’ two-headed lion through a landscape that would make Dali vomit.”

He looked up from his device.  “Oh, Neal?  He’s a bit irked.  They’re renovating his place and he’s temporarily homeless.  A bit territorial, too.  You weren’t supposed to have to deal with him until after going in.”

“Where?  What?  Okay, back up, what is going on?”

“Dear me, you don’t know, do you?”

“Well, no.  One second I’m on my way to get fast food and the next I’m being chased like I’m on the savannah.  I’m not a gazelle, you know.”

“No, just a sinner and,” he added an obnoxious dramatic pause, “dead.”

“I’m not.”  Images flashed through my head.  The accident, the bleeding, and the pain.  “Damn, I guess I am.  Wait, did you call me a sinner?” 

“Quite so and through these gates is your punishment for,” he took the device back up.  It appeared to be a tablet PC.  “Really?  That’s it?”

“What?”

“Says you cheated on your taxes.  That’s a new one for me.  I guess not rendering unto Caesar is a mortal sin.”

“What?  I didn’t cheat, I just screwed up.”

“I’m sorry, the device never lies.  It says you cheated and didn’t repent.”

“Look, I’m more than happy to take blame if I did something wrong, but I didn’t.  I just really, really suck at math.  You add line G to subpart 7 and multiple that by the square root of pi to come up with the first number you need to determine what bracket you are in.”

He was touching the screen and making various gestures.  “It appears you haven’t repented in a long time.  May of ’03.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Well, you ignoring your salvation has left you in a predicament.”

“So, this is Hell?  I thought Saint Peter was supposed to judge me.”

“Eh, oh, no he’s up in Heaven sorting the saved.  This isn’t Hell, either”

“Then where the hell am I?” 

The guy glared at me.  “You mortals have called this place Purgatory.”

“So I got to go in there and suffer agony until my time is done?”

“Hmm, no, not quite.  This is like Hell-lite.  Not so bad, but not exactly fun.”

“And there’s nothing I can do about this?”

“Not unless you made a deathbed request for salvation.  The system takes a bit to update, so…you do that?”

“Not really.  Just sort of choked on my own blood and whimpered for God to save me.”

He looked up.  “Really?”  He sighed.  “You humans always do that crap.  A life of sinning and causing suffering for others, but one muttered prayer as you lie dying and up to Heaven you go.  Hell of a loophole, if you pardon the pun.”

“So, I’m free to go?”

“Well, to Heaven.”  He gestured his thumb towards a door I hadn’t noticed to his right.  “Take that, it’ll do all the work.  Don’t mind the light, it’s a bit extravagant.”

“Thanks again.”

He ignored me and went back to his device.

I, with some wariness, went to the door, opened it, and stepped into an elevator.  As I entered he door slammed and the elevator shot upwards.  As it went up, the room got brighter and brighter, the walls surrounding me disappeared. 

There came a roar of sound and the light went from being everywhere to being two points just ahead of me.  Huh, the funny thing was it looked like headlights.

Author's Note

I think I slipped out of tense a few times. Hacked away at this pretty quick, but am more than happy to hear where I flubbed on that.

Reviews

[Raspberry Rebel]

This made me laugh...Very humorous, just shows that death can be as entertaining and just as much of a pain in the a*s as life...what a tangled web. Wonderfully done, I enjoyed this from you and am looking forward to reading more of your work.