From: Larry’s Desk – Entry 2

There is something you need to know about the Purgatories. You don’t end up here because you stole a candy bar when you were eight, or got drunk at your sister’s wedding and pissed on the cake or consistently refused to drop money in the Salvation Army tin cans. You end up here because everyone ends up here. Everybody.

Joseph Stalin sat in Purgatory 492 for a while. Mother Theresa was lounging at Purgatory 69 until recently. That was a coincidence, by the way, not some sick joke played by the Sorting Guides. At least that’s what they claim.

Right… who are the Sorting Guides. In short, they are the ones who pick you up once you shuffle loose off the mortal coil and deliver you to one of the Purgatories. It all happens too fast for anyone of you to notice, but trust me, they’re there. And they love placing bets. More on that some other time.

We had several new arrivals this morning, like we do every morning, because you assholes simply refuse to stop dying. Most of them were unremarkable and, frankly, kind of boring. One of them, however, was a young woman who clearly arrived way ahead of schedule. She managed to make it out of the Soul Summoning Chamber without tripping on the mop bucket, which is a significant achievement around here, and completely ignored the coffee machine.

She seemed concerned, but that is to be expected when you have recently suffered from a severe case of unexpected deadness. I would say about ninety eight percent of new arrivals step out of that janitor closet looking like they just woke up in the middle of a Prom dance buck naked. However, this girl actually looked more like she had just walked into her apartment to find every piece of furniture nailed to the ceiling.

There was a familiar swish and a file dropped into my delivery box: Lily Rose Harris from Windham, Connecticut. Because sometimes you just can’t pick a favorite flower. I waved at her to come over. She walked around the coffee machine like it was made out of lepers and stood in front of my desk, still looking nervously around.

-“Should I call you Lily or Rose?” I asked.

-“Vienna,” she replied distractedly.

-“Excuse me?”

-“Call me Vienna. Everyone does. I hate both my names.”

-“So, Vienna Harris… any particular reason why…”

-“We went to Vienna for my Senior trip. Wouldn’t stop talking about it where am I?”

-“Where do you think you are?” I asked. She looked at the enormous sign behind me.

-“That says… purgatory?”

-“Eighty-six. Purgatory eighty-six.”

-“So… there’s more than one…”

-“Thousands. So, your file says…”

-“I’m not in Hell?” She asked suddenly. There was genuine surprise in her voice.

-“Not yet. But the millenium is young,” I replied. “Do you think you should be in Hell?”

-“I… don’t know… I thought I would be.”

-“Why?” I put her file down. She had my attention.

-“Because of how I died,” she said, almost in a whisper. I looked in her file.

-“Says here you jumped out of a window on the fourteenth floor of an apartment building in fourth street. Landed on a red… Prius.”

-“That was an accident…” said Vienna.

-“You accidentally jumped out of a locked window?”

-“No, that I meant to do,” she replied. “I didn’t mean to land on the Prius. I was aiming for the Taurus next to it.”

-“You have a thing against Fords?”

-“It was my ex-boyfriend’s car,” she said.

-“I see… well, accidental destruction of a new vehicle is arguably an undesirable thing, but hardly worthy of eternity in Hell.”

-“I committed suicide. It’s a mortal sin, right?”

-“Is that what you believe?”

She hesitated.

-“Well… my priest said…”

-“Let me stop you right there and give you an important tip. Every single thing your priest ever said, all of it, became one hundred percent irrelevant the instant you walked through that door. Everything.  In fact, a lot of it was probably already irrelevant long before that.”

I pointed to a small window on the far side of the room, next to an inviting blue door.

“You see that window over there?” I said “Behind that window sits a highly unpleasant lady named Margaret. Don’t ever talk to her unless she calls your name. Seriously. Don’t. But once she calls your name, you’re going to walk through the blue door, down the hall and around the corner and you will meet with the Inquisitor.”

-“Who’s the Inquisitor?” She asked nervously.

-“He is the only guy here you should be worried about. His name is Bill Bartow and he is not going to give a single solitary orphaned fuck about what your priest, pastor, chaplain, counselor or even your parents told you. He’s going to care about what you believed and what you did. And if those two things don’t add up to a positive, he’s going to send you up that elevator over there and Julie will be the last smiling face you ever see.”

-“So… suicide is not a sin?”

-“You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Vienna smiled for the first time since her arrival.

-“Princess Bride! I love that movie.”

-“Me too,” I said, although I’ve never actually watched it.

-“So what does does that word actually mean?” she asked.

-“Sin? It means someone in a position of power had a list of things they don’t want you doing and some items on the list could not be made into crimes for a variety of reasons. You ever notice how the seven deadly sins are not actually against the law in most places? Envy, sloth, wrath, lust, pride, greed, gluttony, none of them actual crimes and yet allegedly the worst sins on the book. You don’t find that suspicious?”

-“Well… I suppose, but…”

-“Also, notice that “body-slamming a fuel-efficient car” is not part of that list. I’d say your destination is far from determined, kid.”

I heard a familiar sound coming from the janitor closet.

-“Tell you what, I have…” I looked through the file that had just dropped on my desk. “…Tommy Gander about to walk around that coffee machine.  He just got the ultimate penalty for DUI.  So why don’t you go talk to Julie for a while and we’ll chat again later.”

Vienna glanced with concern at Julie’s desk.

-“She’s by the Hell elevator,” she whispered.

-“That’s true, but if I send you to Carl by the Heaven elevator, you will actually start looking forward to Hell. Trust me.”

Vienna nodded and wandered off. Meanwhile I turned my attention to the pudgy, balding man now standing in front of the coffee machine.

-“Tommy Gander?”

He turned to me.

“Where the fuck am I?”