“Of course, you have a choice, Mister Stephens, just like everyone who dies.”
Stephens sat, or rather hovered, over a thickly padded and upholstered Queen Ann chair. Slender ball-and-claw foot legs. Intricately carved arm rests. Brass tacking. Quite an elegant piece. He could almost imagine it molding around him.
He looked between the two figures standing before him, both dressed in white, both holding a white clipboard, both wearing the same expectant look on their faces. The only difference between them, really, was the color of their hair, which draped to their shoulders. One a blond, the other a redhead.
“I’m not quite sure I understand,” Stephens said, and shifted uncomfortably, or as close an approximation as he could manage without a body. “I thought I’d lived a pretty good life, done the best I could and all that. It’s not so easy down there, you know.”
“Oh, we know,” said the redhead. “It’s not meant to be.”
The blond made faint noises as he flipped through whatever pages were clipped to his board, lots of “Mmm’s…” and “Uh huh’s…”
Stephens tried to peek at what was in the notes, but the blond tilted the board away. Stephens said, “I’m not trying to be difficult or anything, but I just kind of thought, you know, with all my good deeds weighing against my poor life choices, well, I just thought the scales would’ve tipped a bit more in my favor, that’s all.”
The redhead chuckled as if Stephens had just made a joke. “Let’s be honest, I mean, those good deeds weren’t all that spectacular now, were they?”
“Let’s not have any of that, Gorgo,” the blond told the redhead. “I’m sure Mister Stephens did his best. And he’s right, you know. It’s not easy down there.”
“Well, that’s the whole point though, isn’t it, Azrael?” the redhead told him. “If it was easy, they’d never learn anything now, would they?”
“Hang on a second,” Stephens interjected. “Am I to understand that you’re Gorgo, god of the underworld? And you’re Azrael, the archangel? Aren’t you supposed to be enemies?”
Azrael hugged his clipboard and tilted his head and gave Stephens a patient, sympathetic look. “Those stories do have a way of getting twisted around after a few thousand years. We’re not enemies.”
“Not at all,” Gorgo added. “More like opposite sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other, the sweet without the sour, the bad without the good — which brings us back to the matter at hand. You have a choice to make, Mister Stephens. Not quite good enough for Heaven, not quite bad enough for Hell, so you get to cast the deciding vote. Upstairs or downstairs. Exciting, isn’t it?”
‘Exciting’ wasn’t the word Stephens would have used. ‘Agitating’ would have been closer. He sat — hovered — on his chair, thinking and muttering quietly to himself, wringing his incorporeal hands as he weighed his options. Had it really come down to this, Heaven or Hell?
Perhaps sensing his dilemma, Azrael added, “‘In my father’s house there are many mansions,’ Mister Stephens. There’s more than just one Heaven and one Hell. Rest assured we can find a good fit for you.”
Stephens sighed, then rose from his chair. “Well, if that’s truly the case, then I guess I’ll choose …”
Choices, choices…