HE THOUGHT HE WAS A GOOD MAN.

A politician reaches heaven...

The deity looked surprised in a way that only a deity can, seeing as deities are in control of everything and consequently unlikely to ever be surprised at anything even though they have eternity to experience it.

“You’re not due yet,” he growled, treading warily past the gooey remains of a snail, and he consulted a gigantic tome in front of him, flipping through thousands of entries as if he could read at the speed of light, which he could. “In fact, I’m not expecting you for thirty seven years!”

Ben Bradstoke leered at him. “That shows what you know,” he grumbled. “I was murdered, and that’s all there is to it. Murdered dead as a dodo more times than I would have thought possible, and here I am.”

The deity had the grace to look astonished. “It’s unlikely that a soul could be murdered more than once,” he murmured. “It was one of the laws that I established way back when I lit the Big Bang and brought everything into being. Once a person is dead than that death is irreversible. Death means death and that’s all there is to it. It goes against nature for it to be anything else.”

Ben Bradstoke raised one querulous eyebrow.”It was you who lit the Big Bang?” he asked.

“Well, someone had to,” replied the deity. “I couldn’t leave the Universe to carry on as it had been going, all empty and with nobody to talk to, and...” here he grinned underneath his beard, “...and no pretty girls to look at!”

“Then you should know that a fellow can be murdered by all sorts of people,” commented Brad. “Let me tell you. You see, I’m a do-gooder. I benefit all of humanity. I’m a politician who knows the very best way to rule a mass of people with a smile on my face whilst simultaneously getting to be very rich myself. It’s easy really, taking a little bit off everyone until my own pile was unbelievably huge.”

“That’s how the Pope explained things,” sighed the deity. “He explained how his lot have got it made and, you know, he seemed proud of it. It seemed a bit greedy to me, but what do I know about being mortal? How can a power as great as I am have any notion of the lives lived by those with mortality to contend with?”

“I suppose you can’t,” conceded Ben Bradstoke. “But it might help me if you explained it a bit for me… how does your apparently lengthy life...”

“Immortal. I’m immortal and therefore have a life-span beyond measure,” grunted the deity. “I’ve been around since I lit the Big Bang, in fact I was around before then but, as I said, there were no pretty girls for me to look at back then so it was a tad boring, and I expect to be around well past the end when the galaxies and stars and everything in between them sort of finally flicker out. Then I might have to light another Big Bang if I get bored.”

“What’s all that got to do with the accumulation, indeed the acquisition, of wealth in obscene quantities?” asked Ben curious.

“That’s easy enough. Why become wealthy when I own absolutely everything under every sun already?” asked the deity. “I even own you! At least, I own the flesh that your corporeal body was made of before you sort of died, the various elements that combined together to make the man who was, apparently, murdered on several interesting occasions.”

“I get your point,” conceded the ex-politician.

“So why were you murdered? This is fascinating me, and I don’t get to be fascinated too often, not these days when I reckon I’ve seen everything an infinite number of times over.”

“I was murdered because I took a great liking to another man’s wife and he didn’t like the idea of losing her to me,” said Ben regretfully. “I know I should have left her alone. I know I should have turned and walked the other way but she was a right corker and I fancied her something rotten. So I didn’t turn and walk the other way, and her wretched scumbag of a husband poisoned me with a toxic mixture that caused my heart to stop beating and me to be dead.”

“But that’s only once! You said you’d been murdered a multiple of times, which is the only reason I’m talking to you now, out of godlike curiosity.”

“All right! Keep your knickers on! I was lying there with the toxic poison consuming my life when another person came up to me. It was, believe it nor not, my own wife and she screeched at me, that was the way she talked, she screeched, always screeched, and I can hear her words right now as if she was at my elbow screeching them. You filthy unfaithful scumbag, was what she called me, I’m your lawful wife and there you are cavorting with a woman who’s not your wife! Take this! And she pulled a dagger from inside her brassiere, a dangerous place to keep a dagger I would have thought, and plunged it into my heart at the precise moment that the poison got to it.”

The deity grinned grimly. “That’ll teach you to be a bit more considerate when it comes to the ladies,” he said.

“A bit late when I’m dead!” snapped Ben.

“So that’s how you came to get here thirty-seven years early, amd serve you right. You shouldn’t go messing around with the affections of others.”

“That’s not the whole of it!” snapped Ben Bradstoke. “There’s more. There I was with toxic poison and a dagger both stilling my heart when the Prime Minister came along, and she’s a tartar! I said I was a politician, didn’t I?”

The deity nodded. “You did. And a selfish one,” he nodded.

“Well, I double-crossed her,” sighed the spirit of Ben Bradstoke. “I told her one thing and did another, because, well, I could. I told her that she should make a series of new laws that would guarantee she would stay in the job for ever, and then I put money at the biggest and richest bookmaker’s that she’d lose the next election by a whopping margin, and I got the most tremendous odds seeing as her new laws suggested she’d last for ever in the top job. But she must have worked it out, that I had a scheme.”

“You did? What scheme might that have been?” asked the deity, alarmed.

“I stirred up a revolution and there was a civil war with blood and gore everywhere, a civil war in which she was deposed, an unexpected election was called and, of course, although she tried to get her prime ministerial job back, she lost it. So I gained millions from the bookmaker’s who went bankrupt, she saw through my plan and at the precise moment when the toxic poison and the dagger stilled my heart she shot me!”

“Hum. That probably taught you a lesson or two,” commented the deity. “And so you come here thirty seven years early and you expect me to look after you?”

“That would seem to be the normal thing...” nodded Ben, sheepishly.

“Well, let me explain something … you see that squashed snail over there? With its shell in a zillion pieces and its juices splattered all over my Heaven?”

Ben nodded and, had he a body left, may well have vomited at the squishy sight.

“You see,” said the deity, “for those foolish enough to arrive here a great deal before their appointed hour we have a system of reincarnation, and you’ve been reincarnated. Time plays tricks in this eternity, you know, and before you had a chance to explain anything at all to me I had reincarnated you as a snail. In fact, that snail, that squashed and lifeless snail, and sent you back to Earth to live out whatever natural life a snail might expect to endure. But with all the comings and goings of a veritable army of people out for your life the snail, that is you yourself, got trodden on by three murderers and squashed several times until you were … well, just look at yourself.”

“That’s me?” yelped Ben, shocked.

“It is. And it’s on it’s way to snail Heaven where there are loads of lady snails waiting to share your home with you and trail their juices all over your living room. That’s your eternity from now on, and I hope that all the immeasurable wealth you accumulated does you a bit of good.

“Off you pop, then.”

© Peter Rogerson 05.05.18