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Last One In

As the noose tightens around my neck I feel my heart begin to race. The hangman’s hot breath stinks of old gin and chewing tobacco. His body odor is rank.

“Charles Govern, you have been sentenced by the great state of Alabama to hang from the neck until dead. Do you have any final words.”

I’d thought about this for some time. All my life I never did believe in anything ‘cept my own damn self. But truth was, all that got me was a hell of a lot of nuthin and this here noose. ‘Bout time, I figure, to play a different hand.

I clear my throat and the trapdoor upon which I stand creaks forebodingly.

“I am sorry for what I done.”

And really, I was.

“If I could trade my life fer them I took, I would.”

No kiddin’.

“I just hope God sees his way tuh forgivin me, cause I know y’all never will, and I caint blame yeh.”

No one was listenin and the master of ceremonies, or whatever the guv’ment calls the guy who kilt me, gave a little wave of his hand and said “God have mercy on your soul.”

Then the hood was on, black and stuffy, and the seconds passed like hours ’til the floor disappeared and I fell down with a little yelp that prolly no one even heard.

---

I come out t’other end of a tunnel of light into an expanse of clouds. Behind me a circle of energy flits on and off, like the butt of a fire fly. Looking into the portal I’d come from I can see another person flyin towards me, getting closer as the portal flickers, all old cathode raytube TV-like.

This fella was just about out the portal when it shut down for good, retracting into a single point. Poor basterd’s head was just poking out by then and the top half of his skull was cut clean off and his loose, bloody brain cap lay on the cloud in front of me where the portal used to be, looking like fresh liver in a hairy bowl.

Y’all can imagine I stood there lookin at that poor fella’s half a head for a good long time. Ventually, I turned round and saw the most amazin, distressin thang I ever have seen. There were the pearly gates, wider than a football field and made of shiny rainbows, like unicorn horns or sumthin.

I guess in years gone by that mighta been a good thang. But standin there, right then, it wasn’t much to celebrate seein as everywhere I looked them white, fluffy clouds was positively littered with corpses. Just bodies in every state of disrepair, cut into pieces, half eaten, burned or crushed. The cloudy ground was fulla Angels lookin like dead pigeons crushed under car tires, the feathers all matted in blood and splayed out like long finger bones.

At the top of the great gate, on the long elegant spires, were heads, they mouths gapin, and they tongues all stretched out they mouths like one of them stone gargoyles you see on ole churches in in Disney movies. I didn’t recognize any of they faces, o’course, but one of them had a sign tied to its hair with a name written in blood.

St. Peter The Dead

Seein my welcome party’s head stuck on top of the that famous old perfect gate really riled me up and so I called out. “Hey!” I said, and when there wasn’t no answer I said it again. “Hey!”

From inside the slightly ajar gate next to a small tiki hutt with a sign that said “Information”, I heard a low groan. Uncertain, I walked through the small gap in the giant gate and followed the sound until I found another poor basterd covered in his own gore. He was an angel, I’m guessing, by the wings and the ole armor he was wearing, and his wings was awash in blood. He gurgled when he saw me.

“Hey there.” I said awkwardly. “Names Govern. This here heaven?”

The fallen angel struggled to make words. “W..a.s.” That’s all I could make out.

I sucked my front teeth in confusion. “Well, what the devil happened?”

Again the angel worried at his words, some blood seeping out between his lips as he slurred a simple answer. “W…a.a..r.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” A war in heaven. Who’d a thunk it. Seemed like the sort of thing God wouldn’t be too fond of. “And what’s God gotta say bout all that? Where’s he at anyway?”

Whatever death comes to the angels of heaven came for this one right then, but not before he spoke his final word. “De…aa…d”.

I blinked. “Huh?” But he was dead, or whatever, no longer there with me. I looked down for a long time again and gave this all some thought. I think I musta thunk there for a good long time, although not a sound came to bother me, nor did I see hide nor hare of another living soul.

Eventually, I weighed my options and made my choice. There wasn’t no exit where I’d come in, and no one waiting for me back on Earth even could I get there, and there wasn’t no point in staying here.

That left only damned thing to do.

With a shake of my head I spat on a nearby cloud remorsefully and headed deeper into the Kingdom of God.

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