Authors: Helen Downing
“I understand why he ended up in
Hell, but why was he there so long before he got this shot?” I wonder aloud.
“Because at his core, Joe is a good
man. When he passed he was filled with so much shame and grief that he could
not see any good at all within himself. That brand of ruefulness takes a long
time to work through.”
I get a fleeting thought that I
must express. “Are you saying that because I was an awful person, but didn’t
feel as guilty as Joe, I was able to escape fire and brimstone in half the
time?” My tone sounds a bit more accusing that I intend.
“No,” Deedy says in a tired voice.
“In fact I was not, if you can possibly believe such a thing, referring to you
in any way. I was talking about Mr. Watkins, the guy who is still as of this
hour, in the land of eternal suffering.”
“Okay, fine. But can I ask a
question that is sort of about me?” I ask.
“Of course,” Deedy says, laughing
now.
“Besides follow him around, what
exactly are my duties?”
That question did the trick. Deedy
is now back to his usual effervescence. “Believe it or not, I need you to be as
bad as Will when it comes to following him around. It’s a very fine line. Don’t
look completely incompetent but just make sure he knows he is being watched.”
“Okay, why?”
“Tell me you didn’t feel just a
little better when you knew Will was around? When you felt there was always a
pair of eyes on you?”
“Yeah, that was nice,” I admit.
“And when the time comes, I’ll need
you to stay close and protect him. You know how it is at the end. Things might
get a little hairy.” Deedy is suddenly serious.
“Is he going to have to go to the
Day Care Center?” Even I can hear the fear in my voice. Those memories are
still a little too fresh for me.
“His experience will be different,
but you will still know,” he answers.
“Right,” I say breezily, standing.
“Easy Peasy Mac and Cheesy! Where do I start?”
Deedy gives me one of his signature
smiles. “And you accuse me of talking rubbish. Downstairs with you, Ms.
Elevator Repair Person. He should be arriving for the first time in about a
half an hour.” Deedy stands and approaches me. “And now, my darling girl, this
is goodbye until the end of the assignment.”
“Why?” I ask with panic. “I thought
I was able to return to Heaven every night!”
“Relax, you will. But you won’t be
able to see or talk to me. And I’m sorry, Lou, but I have to do this.” He puts
his hand over my eyes and through the blackness I hear him say “hwyl fawr.”
“I know that one! That means
goodbye,” I say as the sensation of his hands on my face disappears. When I
open my eyes the room is empty. Not just without Deedy, but nothing is there.
No desk, no chairs, no files. “Deedy?" I call into the nothingness around
me. There is no answer. I feel a chill run down my spine.
I spin and rush out of the office,
hurling myself down the hall toward Gabby. When I see her I feel a surge of
relief. “Gabby!” I exclaim and realize after I speak that I am screaming.
Gabby turns and floats toward me.
Floats.
Like when I first met her. She no
longer has wings.
I remember the first time I saw her
in Heaven, my surprise at her seemingly new accoutrement. “Gabby!” I had said.
“You grew wings!”
“I’ve always had wings, Louise. You
just couldn’t see them before now.” She had explained to me, all those years
ago.
Now she looks like she did then. I
start to hyperventilate. Gabby rushes over to me and puts her hands on my
shoulders. “Don’t panic, Lou. It is just protocol.”
“Am I back to being totally blind?”
I say, rushing over to the windows to peer out.
When I was in Hell, looking up was
like looking directly into the sun. Today my eyes are painfully reminded of
those days. There is no more beauty in my world, just blinding light and
nothing else.
“Gabby, I don’t like this!” I turn,
now sightless for a minute while my eyes adjust.
“It’s okay, Louise. It is just
camouflage. Joe has to be able to see and interact with you, and you have to
fit in as much as possible. Try not to worry.”
Try not to worry? Riddle me this,
angel girl.
“Can Heaven really be Heaven if you
can’t see God?”
CHAPTER SIX
Joe pulls on his clothes by rote,
barely paying attention to the almost comedic ridiculousness of the outfit.
After all these years, nothing can surprise him anymore. If he is being honest
with himself, he really doesn’t care either.
He hasn’t really cared about a
whole lot for the last, who knows how long. A dozen years? A hundred years?
Fifteen minutes? Time means nothing in eternity. And down here, what would be
the point in trying to track it anyway? There are no holidays, technically you
no longer have a birthday after you are dead, and the only thing that separates
day from night is the tossing and turning of a few sleepless hours compared to
abject misery and a thankless job in the wakeful ones.
Thinking about work makes Joe’s
head hurt. His brain is still reeling over recent events. He cannot believe
that after all this time, however much time that may be, he summarily lost the
only job he’s known not only in death but in life. Joe stops to remember when
he first bit the proverbial dust. Once he realized that hell was an awful lot
like any earthly city, only with shittier people and a much higher heat index,
he found his way to the offices of the one thing that every earthly city, no
matter how big or how small, has to have. A newspaper. Once he had walked into
the editor’s office and announced what he had done to find himself sentenced to
eternal fire and brimstone, he was hired on the spot. Since then, Joe has found
himself spending every day of his afterlife on the city desk of the Hellion
Gazette. His job was mainly writing stories cunningly designed to make
everyone, well at least everyone who would buy and read a paper down here, feel
even more miserable than they had before they read it. The circulation stayed
relatively low, compared to the population. Readers were mostly newbies who buy
the paper out of habit, since that was what they did when they were alive. Even
after the boxes with the disgusting websites showed up, the numbers remained
steady. Of course, it always spiked a little every once in a while, and Joe had
learned that was probably the month of January back in the land of the living.
Just one of the many fascinating facts Joe had learned while working at the
Gazette. More people die in January than any other month. People also die more
often at the beginning of every month than the end. And if you are looking to
be a true part of the “in crowd,” you’ll want to die at eleven in the morning.
Anyway, Joe was a natural from
jump. He had even gotten some hate mail for his work, which in Hell is the
equivalent to a Pulitzer Prize. Yesterday started like any other day, sitting
in the editor’s office getting the day’s miserable assignments. The editor with
the gruff voice of a lifelong smoker, asking who wants to write a story about
the thirty-fifth anniversary of the construction on 7
th
avenue. Joe
passed on that one. He had written the story about the thirtieth anniversary of
the construction on 7
th
avenue. Was that really five years ago?
Seems like yesterday. He offered the story to the guy who got the assignment.
All he had to do was go through it and change all the thirtys to thirty-fives.
Put in a few fives and go home early. The next story on the block was an expose
of one of the superstores at the edge of town. Specifically, how long it takes
to get out of the store once you walk through the doors and make the dreadful
choice to actually make a purchase. Some folks have claimed standing in line
for as long as six days. Joe leaped at the opportunity to finally get the
chance to write about the superstore. With its piss poor customer service, the
shoddy products, and the exorbitant amount of makeup the women who work there
seem to be forced to wear. All of this under the roof of a great white elephant
is exactly what poses as a shopping experience in Hell. He was thrilled when
the editor handed him the blue post-it note with the assignment written on it.
This was going to be his most depressing story to date. And it will practically
write itself.
Joe virtually skipped to the
superstore. He was that excited. His adrenaline was pumping like it used to
when he worked as a member of the paparazzi. The word paparazzi is Italian
meaning “large mosquito.” While most would say that is because they represent
annoying blood sucking versions of journalistic bottom feeders, he would argue
that it is because of the buzz he heard in his ears whenever he was chasing a
good story. That buzzing was happening now and Joe knew he was going to nail
it.
That is, until he arrived. Once he
got through the doors he saw something, something he was not expecting to ever
see here. Sure there was plenty of fodder for a real “down in the mouth” story
that would drive every reader into an abyss of hopelessness. The fact that it
took several tries to get through the electronic door, the guy standing in the
middle of aisle nine screaming to the top of his lungs, the unsupervised
toddler dumping containers of various liquids while frightened workers stood
around too terrified of the diminutive demon to approach him. Joe took out his
reporter’s notebook, prepared to start scribbling about how wretched every
aspect of this place was. Instead, he turned his attention to a small group
that seemed to be actually enjoying themselves. Unlike the rest of Hell, where
folks either avoided one another or were downright vicious to their fellow
residents, these people were smiling, and laughing, and talking. Joe realized
it had been so very long since he had heard laughter, seen another human being
smile. He was drawn to these people like a starving man to a smorgasbord. He
was starved, but not from lack of food. He was starved of human emotion. He sat
with them and started to listen. These folks had taken an opportunity, while
waiting in this endless line, to build relationships. For some unknown reason,
these people had decided to suspend the general misery that the overbearing heat
and despair that followed them everywhere, even into this store. Perhaps the
additional frustrations had been just enough to cause an opposing effect, like
temporal aliasing makes wheels in movies and on television seem to be going
backward. Joe found himself writing down things like ‘Long lines help alleviate
the loneliness of Hell’ and ‘Every living soul, even those of us with sentences
to eternal damnation, apparently retains a capacity for Joy.’
If someone were to ask him why,
even today, he would not be able to answer. He played the events of yesterday
over and over in his head, and other than temporary insanity, he truly is
without defense. He has no idea why those people seemed happy, and he is
clueless as to why he was so compelled to document that happiness as completely
as he had. All he knows is that when he got back to the office and spent a few
hours typing it up and handing in the story, the editor perused it, looked at
him as though he was looking at a stranger, and handed him his pink slip.
Terminated for inciting peace and
good will.
Once Joe had gotten over the shock
of being fired, and wrapped his head around the fact that he had lost the one
job he thought was his calling, he began to clean out his desk. It was there,
among a pile of papers and old notebooks that a strange post-it note appeared.
Unlike his usual blue ones from the editor, this one was yellow. On it was
printed in perfect penmanship:
DO YOU BELONG HERE?
CALL US TO FIND OUT!
SECOND CHANCE TEMP AGENCY
(666)-573-2236
He considered this and shoved the
post-it into the box with the rest of his “personal belongings.” Then he had
gotten up and faced the open stares of his co-workers, giving them all a middle
finger of their very own. Then he wondered if one of them had placed the post
it on his desk as a gesture of kindness. After looking back at each of their
faces, he decided that was probably not the case. This felt like a secret. It
felt…special. None of these bozos would qualify as kind or special. As he was
walking out the door for the last time, he had to squelch the overwhelming
desire to stop by the editor’s office and take a giant shit right on his desk.
Laughing at the thought of the expressions on everyone’s face if he gave into
that prepossession, he heard someone call his name. He turned and saw an old
buzzard of a man who had only been working there for a few weeks. Joe seemed to
think his name was Doug, but he could not guarantee it, so he just answered,
“What?”
“Phone for you, Watkins,” he
barked. “I told her you’d been canned, but she says it is urgent and it has to
be you.”
Joe goes back to his now empty desk
and picks up the phone. “Joe Watkins, City Desk,” he said, out of pure habit.
“Mr. Watkins,” said the friendliest
voice Joe had ever heard. “This is Gabby from the Second Chance Temp Agency.”
“Have you called here before? I
think I may have gotten a phone message.” Is that why that post-it note had
ended up on his desk?
“No, Mr. Watkins. This is my first
and only call.” Her voice was like pure cane sugar. He was getting a cavity
just listening to her. “I’m calling to remind you of your nine am appointment
tomorrow.”
“Sorry, Gabby was it? I don’t
recall ever—” He did not get a chance to finish.
“We will send a car to pick you up
in the morning at eight thirty-six which will get you here with about ten
minutes to spare. See you in the morning, Mr. Watkins.” Then she hung up.
Joe left feeling almost drunk with
all the events that had occurred. After a night’s sleep it hadn’t worn off yet.
He woke up this morning feeling just as muddled. He gets up, gets dressed, and
gets outside to wait for the car, and his future to arrive.