“Welcome to the afterlife. Do you want to go to Heaven or Hell?” “Wait, you’re asking me where I want to go? You don’t decide it based on how I lived my life or anything?” “Nope, it’s entirely your choice.”
“Heaven,” I said enthusiastically.
“Excellent, the angel responded. “We always need more laborers.”
“Wait. Laborers? Isn’t heaven a place where I get to rest and enjoy eternal martinis and perfect sunsets on the beach?”
“No,” the angel laughed. “Heaven is hard labor. You’ll work 60 hours a week building roads, mansions, extending the pearly gates, and maintaining the farm. There are also mandatory worship services, prayer sessions, and you’ll have to sign up to care for children who died too soon.”
My nose crinkled in displeasure. “What is hell, then?”
“Hell has drugs and alcohol you can use to your heart’s content, video games, sex, food whatever you’d like is at the snap of your fingers. You never have to want for anything there.” The angel sighed, and passed me a form to relinquish my right to heaven and enter hell.
I signed.
The ink looked red.
A demon appeared before me, sinfully attractive. The demon gave me an appraising look and nodded; I could probably get laid if I played my cards right, and if the angel was correct, I would. The demon reached out, looping a thin thread across my wrist, and led me gently away from the angel.
Hell was amazing. It was colorful, bright. Everything was tempting. And I didn’t have a time limit. I did everything. I ate, I drank, I drugged. I gambled and won. I played video games and won. Everything was easy. The only challenge came in the sex, if you could even call it that, so raw and animalistic, rutting like rabbits in heat.
But after a few weeks, it began to wear. After a few months, it began to drag. A few years, well, even the sex was lackluster. Everything was boring. Drugs and drink numbed existence, food was good but never satisfied, there were no challenges. No humans. Occasionally, I thought one would be led through, but I never met anyone. And I never heard music.
I’m not sure how long it had been, how long I’d been in Hell, before I couldn’t take it anymore. The thread around my wrist were now thick cords, around my feet, wrists, and neck. I stumbled up the stairs, fighting my bonds the whole time, until I reached the gates again.
“Was Hell not to your liking?” The angel said. I shook my head, barely able to speak. “Well, you can’t go into heaven like that. You won’t be able to work chained up like that.”
“How?” I ground out. My throat was burned from the drugs, raw from disuse.
“I can cut them,” the angel said, “but it won’t be pleasant.” I held my arms to them anyway.
The angel sighed but reached forward anyway. The cords of hell burned the angel, sizzling flesh and leaving raw, open wounds behind. Or maybe it wasn’t the cords at all, but me, my flesh, burning under the touch of the angel. The cords unraveled, one thread at a time, one drink, one cigarette, one rut at a time. It dripped from me, no longer gold, but soaked red from blood.
Drop
Drop
Drop
The angel looked at me, and I felt they knew everything I had done in hell. I collapsed under the strain of it.
Heaven was beautiful. Hell seemed garish compared to it. Heaven, it wasn’t white like I’d thought, but a symphony of rainbow pastels and shining jewels. It was colorful and bright, but nothing demanded attention. The food was delicious, a single morsel satisfying from dawn to dusk. The work was satisfying; every evening I would sleep hard and fast and wake to the sun scattering pink and purple across the glossy mountains and into the trees.
And then there were the others! Other humans, other angels, kind and gentle and working in perfect harmony. And what harmony! We would sing as we worked, my voice suddenly warm and rich, and when we return to our mansions for sleep, the streets we’d paved in gold would hum back the tunes we’d laid them to, and I would fall asleep in my bed to the riffs and lullabies of the craftsmen who made my bed and my walls and the stained glass windows that caught starlight like a game of red rover.
I saw the angel again, the angel that guarded the gate, many times. I would sometimes sit with them, the only other person in all of heaven who knew what I’d done in hell, who saw me through the pain and the torment. I never asked, but I know the answer would be if I asked. I bled enough in hell, burned enough. The blood shed to dissolve those cords had been the angel’s, not mine. Sometimes, I see the others come and sit with them, too, and I think we all must have chosen hell. I wonder how much blood they’ve shed for us. As I sit between the trees and watch them dance, I wonder if, perhaps, I might be allowed outside the gates again, to warm people. To tell them the amusement of hell is empty and it isn’t worth the blood to get back, that heaven is much better, hard labor and all. I sit and sing praise to the angel and to God, and the trees harmonize and dance with me.
I think I will ask. If not for them, the others, who will choose hell, but for the angel, so he bleeds less. But for now, I sit beneath the trees and sing.
