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There must have been a shift change because a young, short-haired woman with a nose ring and a fake beard appears at the doorway at the back of the booth. I know the beard is fake as it is grey and rippled, whereas her hair is purple and spiked. She wears overalls and Doc Martens. Her back is wingless, but in keeping with the workplace novelty theme, a halo of silver tinsel hovers over her head, supported by what looks like a mangled coat hanger around her neck. She shuffles the papers on the counter before her for what, to me, seems an eternity. She straightens her lanyard, looks up and says, ‘Next.’
I step forward.
She gives me a customer-service smile as fake as a Joan of Arc beard, masking the face of a clock-watcher who’s crunching hourly pay rates in their head as they keep the work clock within their line of vision.
‘Welcome to Paradise, sir. May I see your passport, please?’
As I hand my passport to her, I see track marks running up her tattooed arms and a vertical scar on her left wrist, raised and red raw. Within her lanyard rests a card with her image cast in a flattering light and the word Peta in bold letters and, below that in a smaller font, Trainee – Work Experience.
She opens the passport, looks at the photo of me looking like my grandmother at her wake and glances up at me.
I shoot her a cherubic smile, one full of innocence and goodwill. She frowns and resumes examining my passport. When she looks up at me again, I respond by adopting the face of a man plagued with haemorrhoids.
She smiles, closes the passport and hands it to me.
‘Welcome to Heaven, sir. Enjoy the afterlife.’
‘What do you mean “Heaven”? And “the afterlife”? Is this some kind of joke?’
‘No, sir. Screening the dead is serious business.’
‘The dead?’
‘Yes, sir, it’s protocol for everyone dearly departed.’
I am dead?
Jet lag fogs my muddled brain. A bin near the booth comes into my focus. It overflows with bags and books and shoes and wallets and a deflated sex doll. A sign above it reads: Please dispose of your earthly goods.
Am dead, I?
Fatigue clouds my cognition. I turn and look at the queue behind me and see Harriet’s face. She taps her nose knowingly.
Dead, I am?
Alcohol fuels my ambiguity. Behind Harriet stands a man who appears nondescript except for one distinguishing feature. A small box lodged in the side of his head. A small black box.
I turn back to Peta and say, ‘Are you telling me I’m dead?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘When? How?’
Peta scans down the flight manifest with her index finger until she pauses mid-page.
‘Plane crash. Mid-Atlantic. 3.37am. Now, sir, could you please move on through the gates.’ Peta gives me a patient, customer-service smile devoid of empathy.
I pinch the skin on my forearm. I feel no pain. I slap my face. Still no pain. I grab my testicles and squeeze them hard. Not even a dull ache.
I am dead. Dead. D.E.A.D.
‘But I can’t be dead. I have a reservation at Zuma for 8 o’clock tonight. I booked months in advance.’
‘You’ll have to cancel, sir. Now, please, sir, move on. Next, please.’ Peta’s customer-service smile loses its patience.
‘But surely even God must know how hard it is to get a booking there. I’m sure He has—’
‘What did you say?!’ Peta’s smile disappears, replaced by a stern, lipless scowl.
‘I said—’
‘Did you use a male pronoun to refer to the Almighty?’
‘Umm … yes.’
Peta snatches my passport from me and hastily scribbles something on it, followed by two long sweeps of her pen across the page.
‘Please step aside.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Please step aside.’
‘Why?’
‘Because your ascension into Heaven has been hereby revoked. Under sub-subparagraph 3 of subparagraph 7 of paragraph 12 of subsection 1 of section 6 of the Entrance Into Heaven Act 2020, the use of a gendered subjective personal pronoun when referring to a deity automatically bars said user from ascending to Heaven and requires them to be immediately relocated to a holding facility in Limbo.’
‘What? That’s ridiculous.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules. I only enforce them.’
‘Look, can’t you cut me a little slack here? I’m having a little difficulty getting my head around being dead, and now you’re telling me that God, in His infinite wisdom and compassion—’
Peta gasps.
‘What?’ I say.
‘Did you say “His”?’
‘I … I—’
‘You did! You did! Heavens above. My first day, my first arrival, and I get to invoke a sub-subparagraph 4.’
‘What’s a sub-subparagraph 4?’
‘Sub-subparagraph 4 of subparagraph 7 of paragraph 12 of subsection 1 of section 6 of the Entrance Into Heaven Act 2020 specifically states that use of a gendered possessive personal pronoun when referring to a deity automatically prevents said user from being relocated to a holding facility in Limbo and requires them instead to be incarcerated in Hell.’
‘You’re kidding me. This is political correctness gone mad. I demand to speak to the manager.’
‘I am the manager.’
‘Well, your manager.’
‘We’re all managers up here. It’s a new heavenly order.’
‘What about God? Surely I can speak to Him—I mean them. Zem?’
‘Oh My God! A sub-subparagraph 5. Use of a gendered objective personal pronoun. They’ll be using the recording of this conversation in training sessions for aeons.’
‘Look, I’m not having any of your PC bullshit. I’m jet-lagged, tired and hungover. For Christ’s sake, I’m dead. I’m going through those gates, and you can shove your Act up your—’
The shrill of a whistle which Peta raises to her lips and blows drowns out my words. The two security guards walk towards Peta and me.
‘Any trouble, Peta?’ the giant guard says.
‘Yes, Andre. We’ve got a sub-subparagraph 5 here. And he’s becoming hostile.’
‘I am not,’ I say.
Andre rests his huge hand upon my right shoulder, and I swear I sink a couple of inches into the tiled floor.
‘Please remain quiet while I speak to this officer,’ Andre says. He applies a little more hand pressure, and my knees buckle.
Peta hands him my passport. Andre reads it and looks at me and shakes his head and says, ‘Sir, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used—’
‘I’m not going anywhere except through those gates.’
I take a step forward.
‘If you don’t come peacefully, we will need to use force.’
I see the smaller guard twirling his nunchucks.
I am confident I can out-sprint Andre over the first five yards and, given the adrenaline pumping through my body, leap the Pearly Gates in a single bound and find sanctuary before I am nunchucked.
‘Try your best, big boy,’ I say, ‘but you shan’t catch me.’
I duck to release myself from Andre’s grip, but I am too slow. He applies a full nelson, then a chicken wing, followed by a sleeper hold. His left nipple stares at me as I choke and become light-headed. My head spins (or is it his nipple spinning?), and as the surrounding noise fades, my eyelids close and my world darkens.
***
I wake and find myself sitting alone in a small room. My dry throat aches and my head throbs. Walls painted black with a garish red trim on the cornices darken the room. An elevated booth sits at one end, and behind its glass, a dishevelled head of hair slumps over a pair of crossed arms resting on the counter.
I stand and limp over to the booth.
‘Excuse me?’ I say.
The body neither moves nor talks.
‘Hello. Hello? Are you awake?’ I say.
The body stirs and rises from its slumber. It is wearing a black ACDC T-shirt and a three-day growth. He stretches his arms and yawns.
‘Can you tell me where I am?’ I say.
He opens one eye and says, ‘Whattauwant?’
‘To know where I am, and, more importantly, how I can return to Customs.’
‘How the hell should I know? I’m on work experience, and this is my first shift. I told the head honcho I’m not a morning person, but he still put me on the graveyard shift.’ He stifles a yawn. ‘He said it didn’t matter because all I had to do was wait for people to arrive and send them downstairs in pairs.’ He yawns long and wide. ‘If you can sit and wait for the next person to arrive, I’d be stoked.’
I go to ask him if I can have a chat with the head honcho, but he curls himself up again and nuzzles his head within his crossed arms.
I limp back to my seat and scan the walls for a door, a window or even an air-conditioning vent; anything I can crawl through to escape. No opportunity presents itself.
The room’s temperature rises, so I remove my jumper and wipe my sweaty face with it. I’d die for a glass of water, but my shoulders slump when I realise I no longer hold that currency.
‘Hey,’ I say, ‘could you please turn the air-conditioning up? It’s boiling in here.’
The booth dweller stirs, only to raise his hand and flip me the bird.
What is it with these younger generations and their attitude? I think. Where’s the respect?
Footsteps approach, and with a whoosh, the wall before me parts and in storms a little woman in regal dress and carrying a gold statuette. Harriet.
‘Damn that omnipresence,’ she says. ‘Seventy years of distinguished service as a thespian, seven decades of my poor bunioned feet treading the floorboards at the National Theatre, over two-thirds of a century of award-winning performance, critical acclaim and fan adulation, and all He can remember is the lines I fluffed in The Tempest in 1967.’
I go to correct her use of a masculine subjective personal pronoun, but I see wrath in her eyes, so I keep my listening face and beam empathy.
‘Seventy years. And one tiny slip-up—all because of that bloody gin and tonic I downed pre-performance to steady the nerves—and I’m cast down into an afterlife of eternal suffering. Hell, they don’t even have the BBC Arts channel down here. Well, they can take away my eternal salvation, but I’ll be buggered if I’m going to let them have my Oscar.’ She wraps her arms around the gold statuette.
‘My God!’ I say. ‘You are Dame Judi D—’
‘Of course I am, you silly little man.’
She sits next to me. I smile as I notice her feet do not touch the ground.
She clutches Oscar in her lap and fans her face. ‘My word, it’s a trifle stuffy down here.’
‘Tell him,’ I say, pointing to the glass booth.
Behind the glass, a pale arm stirs and a handful of bony fingers spider across the counter. They pause and hover above a large red button. They form a fist and pound down on the button.
The heavy-metal chorus of ACDC’s “Highway to Hell” rocks the room, and the floor under our feet parts. Roaring, leaping flames appear below us and nip at our raised heels. Our chairs teeter at the edge of the parting floor, and we topple forward. I go to grab Dame Judi’s hand but grasp Oscar instead. Dame Judi slaps my hand and says, ‘Do you mind!’
So this is it, I think. Eternal damnation. All because I had the temerity to assume God was masculine. It’s not my fault. Blame the Christian Brothers of my youth. Blame the marketing arm of the Catholic Church. Indeed, blame God itself for not raising its skirt to the faithful.
I’ll admit I’ve had better days. But, then again, it’s not every day you die or come face to arse with a rich camel trying to enter Heaven or get to see the Pearly Gates. And it’s certainly not every day you meet, let alone go out with, a dame. And an Academy Award-winning dame at that. Yep, some things in death, as they are in life, are just worth queuing for.
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