That’s Death… You Forget Stuff

Should have stopped for coffee, Roger Harrison told himself as his face drew a forty-foot skid mark across three lanes of I-5.

Where’s Helen? And Katie? Buckled up for safety? Didn’t you get air-bags? Driver’s side or both? Cost too much you cheap ba–

Roger felt himself floating down a long tunnel to a long perdition, Helen’s screams knifing his ears, Katie’s cries begging Daddy’s help.

“Damn,” Roger cursed.

The clerk clucked and typed the word.

“Mister…?” the chief judge began, searching documents for the name.

“Roger Harrison.”

“Bless you, son.”

Roger recognized several of the twelve black-robed men behind the dais.

Willy Biscuit–died two years ago–adviser to five presidents. Reverend Tim Laker–fraud and racketeering. The other one–sex freak–crying all over himself, begging forgiveness. What’s his name?

Roger couldn’t remember. They’re all dead anyway, he chuckled to himself.

Like you, Roger shivered despite the rising heat in the room: a high school gym, with the smell to match–brick walls, wood floor, coffin-dark. Already Roger couldn’t remember how he got there.

That’s death, he chuckled. You forget stuff.

Roger searched the lantern-lit faces of his judges, hoping for some kindness in the craggy stiffness of their pasty white skins.

Old and tired, Roger noted. Maybe they’ll forgive.

Roger closed his eyes. A prayer would have been in order but Roger couldn’t remember one. His eyes opened, he looked down at the oak desk in front of him. Next to the ink-well someone had scrawled “the afterlife sucks.”

Roger laughed.

“Order in the court!”

Roger covered his mouth.

“Has this man been reborn?” the head judge asked the clerk.

A hush covered the room, the clerk delighted in shaking his head. The jury became a symphony of clucking tongues and a sea of waving gray heads.

“The indictment please,” the chief judge ordered.

The clerk creaked to his feet with a foot-high stack of computer paper in his arms.

The tribunal gasped.

The clerk plopped the document in the middle of the dais. It listed every transgression Roger Harrison had committed during his thirty-seven years of life–from the tiniest white lie to the deadliest sin. It didn’t matter that Roger had been a kind man, a good friend, hard-working, a loving husband and devoted father.

The lowest, slimiest, most ridiculous TV evangelists had the answers after all, Roger understood bitterly. You’re going to Hell, he realized, directly to Hell.

Roger laughed again.

“How do you plead?” the main minister asked without rancor.

He was a thin, pale man in Pilgrim black. Roger tried to place the face. He’d seen it in a book…back in junior high…Cotton Mather?

“How do you plead?” the judge repeated, his voice rising.

“Does it matter?”

“No,” the inquisitor admitted, “though we would like to do all we can to redeem your soul.”

“What’s it going to cost me?” Roger wanted to know.

That’s the way. Fight back. Don’t go easy.

“It’s not going to ‘cost’ you anything, sir,” the Reverend Willy Biscuit bellowed.

Cotton Mather (Roger was certain now) waved his hand to calm the others.

“Have you ever contributed, Mr. Harrison?”

“Contributed?”

“Yes–when the collection plate was passed in church-meeting?”

Roger shook his head. Presbyterian by birth, he hadn’t lost his faith so much as left it behind–he wasn’t sure when, only long ago.

“Ever pledged anything?” one of the others wanted to know.

What is this?

“During an evangelical crusade,” the Reverend Tim Laker pressured. “A love-offering, an envelope. Money, lucre, coin of the realm.”

That’s what they care about.

Roger shook his head.

The men in front murmured disappointment.

“Perhaps you called the toll-free number at the bottom of the screen during a television appeal,” another minister tried hopefully. He was kind-looking, with rosy cheeks, an endearing smile and a twinkle in his eye behind gold wire-rims–

“Hell, no!” Roger spat.

The clerk squealed delight and typed the blasphemy into the computer.

“Go to Hell!” the angriest evangelist shouted.

“Order in the court!” the head man demanded, pounding his gavel. “Mister–?”

Once again the chief judge had lost the name.

“Roger Harrison,” Roger hissed.

“Bless you, son. It is my painful duty to–”

“The hat, the hat!” the clerk called out. He pranced over to place a six-inch square of black cloth on the chief judge’s thinning, gray hair.

Death sentence, Roger realized.

“Eternity in Hell.”

The gavel pounded, the trap door opened.

“Next case!” Roger heard as he plummeted miles down a dark, slimy passage.

For an instant Roger didn’t understand the oval in his hands, the signs blasting by, Katie’s voice in the back seat: “Are we there yet, Daddy?”

Asleep at the wh–

“Roger!” Helen screamed.

Crunch of steel, screech of tires.

Should have stopped for coffee, Roger Harrison told himself as his face drew a forty-foot skid mark across three lanes of I-5.

[tags]fiction, humor, irony, horror, religion, death, sick[/tags]