Remembering Hell Read Free Page B

God, I just talked to
Deedy, exactly the way I would talk to him if I was sitting directly across
from him. I feel something very much like gratitude to know he is actually
listening when I pray. However, I am also starting to feel pissed off that now
that I’m right in front of him he has decided to deliberately not listen.
    “So, should I go home and get on my
knees to get your attention? We have to talk about what happened.” I feel my
face get flushed with embarrassment at my own cheekiness.
    “No, actually we do not,” he
replies with an authority that supersedes any emotion or inflection. Deedy has
always been able to shut me up, even when I didn’t know who or what he actually
was. He has this posture, this way of being, that makes me want to instantly
become a better person. And I don’t want to disappoint him. Again.
    He continues, “We have nothing to
talk about, because what happened did not happen to you, my darling girl. It
happened to her. Well, more specifically, to them. And while I am
overwhelmingly interested in hearing how you may feel about that, I can’t help
but think that besides your burning desire to vent whatever emotion you may be
feeling, what you really want…” he leans across the desk and looks into my eyes
with a fire behind his eyes, “is to start meddling around someone else’s
journey. And that, darling girl, is not your job.” He points at me with a long
elegant finger, and then he wags it back and forth as though he is telling a
puppy not to jump on the furniture. “Do I have to explain the importance of
what you do one more time?” he asks.
    All right, so no matter how much
time goes by, this is where Deedy and I always end up. I have been part of the
welcoming committee in Heaven for the past half century or so. That means my
job is to gather together families and loved ones and be a kind of event
planner for new arrivals. Remember when I said that getting to Heaven was a
great party? Well, that is partially because of me. I am quite good at my job,
if I do say so myself. Not that I do not want to do more, or to be more.
Specifically, to have wings and super powers like Gabby. And I have made that
very clear to Deedy, both face to face and in our “evening chats,” as he likes
to put it. So this is the part where Deedy tells me to learn temperance and to
not allow my personal ambition to get in my own way. He has a plan for me, just
as he does for each of us, blah, blah, blah.
    “No!” I say with desperation.
“Because I’m not talking in abstracts here. I am not here to discuss your
management concepts or the glass ceiling! I am talking about something much
more important!” I am on my feet now, my emotions taking over in my voice and
my argument. I realize that my hands are on his desk and now I am staring into
his eyes. “I cannot…absolutely cannot allow my best friend to go to Hell!”
    Linda and I had been like sisters
at one time. My first true friend, who stood by me no matter how big of a
shitbird I could be—and you have no idea how big that is. I had a knack in my
youth of turning bad behavior into fucking performance art if I really put my
mind to it. And even when it backfired in Linda’s face, like my drunken toast
as her maid of honor at her wedding rehearsal dinner, there was always
forgiveness in her heart for me.
    In the remote viewing room at the
company, I have seen so many lives wasted and even more senseless deaths
brought on by a hopelessness that can only be felt by beings trapped in their
own cruelness. Linda was never cruel, never even unkind. It was painful to
watch her grow old and see the bitterness form and then become her armor and
shield against a world that she could no longer understand or participate in,
and eventually watch it seep into her very heart. Linda’s heart was always a
wonder to me, so full of love. As I watched her final days tick by like minutes
to someone already eternal, and the understanding that in the end