Hank HATES Heaven
Hank has been hanging out in Heaven for a couple of years now, he thinks, and he really doesn't like it, so he is waiting in line to file a complaint and try to make things right.
Welcome to the 17th edition of This Nick Writes. A newsletter that delivers one creative work of prose in your inbox once a month.
This month is a short story called “Hank HATES Heaven.” I hope you all enjoy.
The line of souls in front of him pissed him off. He even arrived early, at least; that’s what he thought. It occurred to him later that in the afterlife, time is relative, so it is impossible to beat a crowd when countless billions consider “your early” late. Add this to the list of things that caused him grief in heaven, and judging by the line for Customer Service, he wasn’t the only one. He leaned in toward a woman who looked strikingly similar to his elderly neighbor back in Erie and muttered, “You think lines wouldn’t exist here.” The old woman turned toward him. It was his former neighbor.
“Hank?”
“Barbra!” He couldn’t believe it. She looked just like he remembered her.
She snorted, “How long have you been dead?”
“Oh, I dunno. You know how time feels here. I think it's been a couple of years now. I remember when you keeled over, though. You were sitting on that toilet for two weeks before your sister found ya.”
Barbra sighed and rolled her eyes. “I remember,” she said.
He recalled that she liked to keep up appearances, which always annoyed him. “It’s good to see ya,” he said.
“Wish I could say the same,” she retorted.
Hank let out a good cackle and slapped Barb on the back. “Ya old heel. Ya finally spat it out.”
“Don’t see the point holding back anymore,” she shrugged.
He crossed his arms, “Yeah. Yeah. I was always nice to ya, though.”
“It was a fake nice,” Barb retorted, “You didn’t like me either.”
Hank’s face scowled. “ I didn't like your boring, long-ass stories.”
“Okay!” Barb said sharply as she stepped out of line and shuffled off.
“Where are ya goin?”
She croaked back at him without a look, “Someplace you ain't,” and muttered to herself, “Stupid mouth breather.”
“What about ya complaint?”
Barb ignored him.
“What a crank,” Hank mumbled, “Right?” He looked around at the people in front and behind him, hoping someone would bite. The cold shoulders and nervous glances informed him that he wouldn’t get such a reaction—not quite the community he expected when he arrived.
For being in a place that God created, it sometimes still felt like he was living on earth. There were streets and buildings. There were trees and mountains. You didn’t need to eat, but you could go out, enjoy a good steak, find the perfect New York slice, or a crispy fried piece of haddock. There were parties and adventures. There were bars and amusement parks. There was even football, the world-famous kind, not the one created in America, which also disappointed him. If it weren’t for the cleanliness, lack of crime, the whacky designs and colors, and the fact that he remembered his death, he would have never known he wasn’t still living on earth. Which was one of the reasons he was annoyed. He expected something…different.
So he waited in his grey Crocs, mesh shorts, and Chicago Bulls jersey, not because he had to wear clothes; he didn’t really have a body after all, just the perception that he did, but being “dressed” made him feel comfortable.
And he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
“How are you?” A female-sounding voice said musically, bouncing from an upper pitch on the first consonant and dropping down for the rest of the word, hanging on the end of it longer than he liked. Hank snapped out of his trance of boredom and noticed that he stood in front of a door. Well, it wasn’t a door. It was more of a doorframe outlined in metallic gold with a pink neon sign containing the words “Customer Service” above it in an elegant cursive font, which he didn’t love.
“Hellooo!!” In the doorframe stood a woman with short brown hair, wearing a grey three-piece suit and thick-rimmed glasses. She smiled and waved her fingers at him to attain his attention. Her eyes scrunched to match her smile as Hank finally looked at her.
“Glad to see you join us. I was just about to give up your place in line.” Her smile was so bright and enthusiastic. It bothered him.
“They can wait,” he said without thinking.
“Oh, Okay. Well, follow me.”
Hank followed her through the doorframe. A plain, dark wooden desk in a featureless white room sat on the other side. He looked behind him and wasn’t surprised to notice that he could not see the line of people he had left behind. The representative stood behind the desk and shuffled some papers around. Hank scanned the room for a chair or couch where he could set his theoretical bum. There was none.
“How are you enjoying your time in the afterlife,” she paused as she looked over a piece of paper, “Jim?”
He glared at her and stated, “Hank.”
The representative’s eyebrows furrowed. “Right, that was the last guy I spoke with,” she mumbled.
Hank was still fully engaged in tracking down a place to sit. He wasn’t the kind of guy who wanted to complain without being at least somewhat comfortable. Though it probably should have dawned on him that if he hadn’t found a chair by now, there wouldn’t be one. This disconcerted him, and it didn’t help that the representative kept rambling.
“...I really need to get better at organizing,” she muttered, “you think, as a being with unlimited powers, this would come easily, but I assure you, it does not… ”
Hank didn’t have time for a rambler. If you asked him to think about the irony in his thinking, as a current occupant of the afterlife, he would have agreed that it was a silly thought. However, he’s always spoken his mind and shared his heart, and at this moment, he was too flustered to self-reflect on the absurdity of his feelings. Like a tired and hungry toddler, he blurted, “Can I just sit?!”
She was unsurprised by this outburst. The representative may have even expected it. Her shoulders and eyebrows relaxed, and with an enthusiastic bow and a showy twirl of her hand, she said, “As you wish.”
In an instant, a foldable steel chair appeared between Hank and her desk. She sat down on what looked like a Herman Miller and gestured for Hank to do the same. He scowled at the cold and rigid steel of the chair. There wasn’t even a cushion! His eyes rolled into the back of his head as he let out a passive-aggressive sigh of disappointment and plopped his body-shaped soul into the seat.
“So, how may I help you, Jim…oh shoot…Hank. Right?”
“Right.” He said with a hint of anger and disappointment. “Is that normal?”
“Oh yeah, forget all the time. Don’t take it personally. I’ve got…” She opened a drawer, pulled out a giant binder, and flipped it open. Her hand pointed to a set of numbers: “...ten trillion souls and counting to keep track of, and that’s not counting…what you call them…..” She flipped through a few pages of the binder, finger tracing over densely packed words, “...animals! Right, Animals. You don’t even want me to start calculating how many of those we got.” She finished her sentence with a playful wink.
Hank didn’t like how she spoke to him. She made him feel like a child, but he wasn’t one. He died at forty-seven years old! Practically a middle-aged man that no one ever listened to or respected. He had enough of it.
“What’s wrong with this place?!” he snapped.
“Is the chair bothering you?” She retorted with a wry smile, entirely missed by him.
“I’m SERIOUS!” The vein on Hank's forehead looked like it was about to burst.
“The chair is bothering you, though.”
“YES! But that’s not why I’m here!”
“Oh, I know.” The musicality in her voice was like nails on a chalkboard to Hank. She took a breath, leaned over her desk, and titled her head. She whispered, “Do you really want to know?”
“YES!”
She flexed her index finger, encouraging him to lean closer. He did. Her voice was soft and rhythmic as she said, “You are.”
Hank furrowed his eyebrows. “I’m what?”
“The problem,” she sussrated.
His eyes widened, and his nostrils flared. He never thought he would want to hit a representative of heaven, but now knew he could. Hank watched as she raised her eyebrows, peered over her glasses, and waited. He glared in return, a silent moment between them and eternity. He decided she was not going to be the solution to his problems, and it dawned on him that perhaps her insult was an opportunity.
“Can I speak to your manager?” He stated flatly.
She laughed, her eyes squinting in the convulsions of air and humor.
This irritated him. Everything about her insulted his existence. “Will you stop treating me like a kid!? I know there is someone above you. There always is.”
“Oh, IS THERE, Mr. mortal? Who then?”
Hank cleared his throat. “You know.”
She pushed her glasses up the ridge of her nose and sat back in her chair, “God, you mean?”
“Obviously.”
“That’s me.”
“I don’t think so,” he said smugly.
“I am.”
“GOD…would know I’M not the problem.”
“But, you are.”
“He wouldn’t be wasting his time doing this!”
The representative cackled. The kind of cackle that anyone not in on the joke finds annoying and disturbing. Hank hated it. His fingernails clenched into his knees as his shoulders tensed.
After what felt like hours, she finally stopped laughing and sighed, “Oh, that was good, Hank. That was good.” She leaned back into the Herman Miller and plopped her feet on the desk.
She asked, “You think I signed up for this creation business?”
Hank shrugged his shoulders.
“Yeah, right. Like everyone else, you assume I had a choice in the matter. But trust me, if I did, I would’ve ended all this,” the representative said as her right hand waved around, suggesting the entirety of everything, “a long, long, long time ago.”
“You see, that proves you're not God right there.” Hank crossed his arms and ankles. His posture was horrifically bad, always had been, and always would be, even as a disembodied soul now imitating a body in the afterlife. “Cause if you were, you could just end it.”
She snorted.
“Oh, hunny, I tried, trust me. I could not even tell you the number,” she said as she looked up at the featureless ceiling. “In my first billion years, I discovered how easy it was to destroy the things I made. A group of mortals goes bad on a specific planet, no problem; with a snap of my fingers, boom, a horrific flood wipes them out. A solar system teaming with brats ready to wreak havoc on a galaxy? With a little flick of the wrist, poof, I incinerate them by supernovaeing their sun. Starting over in the mortal realm is a piece of cake. Honestly, it was a real blast for a while. But, you see, this place, heaven, exists in the eternal realm, and I can’t destroy it. I can’t even change it. It began when I did. And that means every person who dies, or whom I eviscerated, ends up here, which is why I stopped the mass extinction thing eons ago.”
Hank chuckled, “I knew climate change wasn’t real.”
The representative perked up and thoughtfully pointed at him, “No. That’s real. I just didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Pfft. Whatever.”
Hank never cared much about politics, and he wouldn’t start now. It was all theater anyway—senseless theater. He should’ve guessed she would be part of the activist agenda, though. Chalk it up to another thing he disliked about this place.
“Still don’t believe me?” She interrupted his train of thought.
He pondered for a moment and then said, “No.”
“Would you like me to prove it?”
“Actually…yeah.”
Without a moment's hesitation, her eyes seared into him. He felt the gaze penetrate every layer of energy he was made up of and unroll the countless moments of the life he led on Earth. He felt naked. Vulnerable. Alone. Suddenly, the searing stopped, and she just smiled at him and said, “You stuck your “little member” in a warm car muffler in 8th grade, and you thought it felt nice.”
Forgotten shame and anger bounced around in him. His very atoms were electrified and vibrating. He could feel the twirl of human emotions he thought would’ve been left behind in his rotten corpse. The cold, hard steel of his foldable chair brought him no relief.
“Sorry.” He whimpered.
The representative relaxed in her chair, a great sympathy in her voice as she said, “We all have embarrassing and uncomfortable moments we don't want to relive. I’ve seen it all. Heck, I mass-genocided countless species, all because of a few bad apples. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Most people don’t. You know…I created you and everything else in the mortal realm out of sheer boredom,” she raised her right hand and pointed out the doorframe, “now, look at what we are dealing with…couldn’t have imagined.”
“Regret it?”
“No, but there are moments…certainly moments.” She paused and looked out into some distant place unknown. A world or dream only she could see and any mere mortal mind would never be able to grasp. After a long moment, she sighed.
“Is there anything else we can help you with today?”
“You haven’t helped.”
“You’re right, but that’s because you need to help yourself here, I think.”
Hank was frustrated. He wasn’t going to leave without an answer.
“Just tell me why Heaven sucks!”
She exclaimed joyfully, “I did!”
“NO, You didn’t.” Her smile grew as her wild eyes crinkled. Hank thought she looked like she was high on Prozac. It was the sort of fake happiness he grew accustomed to when dealing with corporate America. Where the phrases “Great to See You” and “My Pleasure” always felt tinged with condescension.
She tilted her head again and said, “If you don’t want to be treated like a child, then why do you need things explained to YOU like a child?” Her right eyebrow raised like a question mark.
“I’m not stupid,” Hank retorted.
“For a mortal, maybe not. To me, you’re silly. Though, all of you are. Even Einstein was dull to me.”
Hank perked up. “He’s here?”
“No. He jumped into a black hole a while back…I think.”
“A black hole?”
“Yeah, it's a thing.”
“Those exist in the mortal realm.”
“Correct. They exist in both.”
“So couldn't you just… pass through one and end up in the other realm?”
“You’re smarter than you look, Hank, but no, though many have tried.” She flipped through more pages of the enormous binder, glancing and absorbing more information. “The Polynesians and the Vikings were the first from your world to try and cross.”
“Huh. They never returned?”
“Never.”
“So they dead?”
“De-existed”
“Huh.”
“You don’t die here. You De-exist yourself.”
“Whatever. Einstein did that?”
“Yes,” she said, “his “massive intellect” wasn’t stimulated enough by eternal existence,” she literally air-quoted Einstein, her own creation. “That’s always an option, though, if you find this place insufferable.”
Hank mulled this for a moment. He wasn’t a big suicide type. It always seemed to him as the easy way out. However, he never considered leaving heaven; he didn’t even know that was an option.
“So…what happens after?”
“No idea.”
Hank’s eyes narrowed, “So there is someone above you.”
He knew he was being lied to. There is no way the “most supreme” of beings would waste their time taking complaints from the mortal masses.
She let out an exasperated sigh, “Don’t be dense. You were doing well for a minute.”
“I’m not! If you didn’t make you, something else did. It’s common sense!”
Her fist slammed on the desk. The enormous binder shot off it and onto the pristine white floor. “I’m the alpha and omega.” Her musical voice changed. It became thunderous and piercing. Hank felt an electric magnetism pulse through the room and in the particles of his soul. “The was, is, and will be. I’m immutable and self-existing. There need be none before me nor any after. Do not forget it.”
The space quieted, and the representative leaned back in her chair, waiting for Hank’s response. His eyes blinked as he thought about the breeze that formed during all the commotion. It felt nice.
He explained, “It just doesn’t make any sense to me. Like there had to be something…”
“Stop it.” She interrupted as she held her hand up.
Hank pressed. “Seriously though, ya have to…”
“Uh uh!” She interrupted again. “Just…be silent. For a moment.” She rubbed with her hand what, for Hank, looked like her temples. If someone had told him that God got as frustrated as humans, he would have called you a liar.
“If you had to deal with 10 trillion versions of you, you’d feel the same.” The representative stated.
“Huh?”
“You heard me..”
Hank was flabbergasted. “You read thoughts?”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t read them. I KNOW THEM!”
Thoughts and questions bounced around like free radicals inside him. He could feel frustration bubbling up within him. “BUT, this whole time, YA KNEW what I was thinking?”
She responded flatly, “I did.”
“Which means you know why I’m here, which…means…you know why EVERYONE is in that line.” Hank paused for effect. “What the fuck?”
“One, language. Two, yeah, I know why everyone stands in the stupid line. Three, even if I didn’t know peoples’ thoughts, I basically would…you’re all mad about the same bunch of crap every time.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Yes?” She stated playfully.
“Why waste our time?”
“We have all of eternity, dude. We are wasting nothing.”
Hank threw his hands up into the air. “So you make us talk?!”
“I’ve found that if mortals verbalize their feelings, you’ll be less of a problem and, sometimes, even less miserable—it gives you a sense of agency.
“Agency?”
“Yeah, It has something to do with the whole free will thing you all think I gave you.”
Hank dragged his right hand down his face. “I’m in hell.” He could feel the atoms in his body vibrate at a higher energy level, not the good kind. A heat formed within him as he thought about what they used to call this back on Earth–Anxiety? He stood up as he said, “I’m in fucking hell.”
“No, I assure you’re not.”
Hank paced in the featureless room. All his troubles and issues started to make sense now. Though he had many questions about why he was sent to such a horrible place, he was happy to get closer to the truth.
“It makes so much sense, though. All the assholes are here.”
“There is no hell.”
“Seriously, I’ve seen Stalin, Bloody Mary, Christopher Columbus, Wu Zeitan, Osama Bin Laden, and like every U.S. president, even Trump & Obama. This is hell.”
“Hell is a mortal construct! Everyone that’s ever lived is here!”
“That doesn’t even make any sense.”
“It does.”
“You let criminals in here, and…and…Atheists?!”
“Yes.” The representative leaned forward and set what looked like her elbows to Hank on the desk. “Your concept of the afterlife comes from stories—stories told and changed over thousands of years. Control freaks made up half the stuff. Do you think an all-powerful and omnipotent being like myself cares if you go to church or pray?”
“Ummm, Yeah?”
“Ummmmm…No. I don’t care. I literally have trillions upon trillions of other things going on. I could care less if anyone ever thinks about me.”
“What about all the terrible shit we do? All the murdering, stealing, corruption, genocide?!”
“Do. Not. Care.”
A heavy and unbearable weight overcame him. He couldn’t stand or pace anymore; instead, he flopped back in his uncomfortable chair, exhausted and speechless.
Finally, he said, “This is awful.”
“Is it?” She stood up out of her chair and looked down at him. Hank felt the desire to punch her again, but he held back.
“YES. It’s God-awful.”
She smirked, “Again, I don’t have much to do with shenanigans on your planet. I lit the fire; you “humans” did the rest, but here.”
She tapped on the featureless white wall behind her—a montage of living images from Earth populated and played. There was no theme or specific time period, just people and places. Pain and suffering. Love and Laughter. Nature and Machine. “Being a mortal is tough,” she narrated as a multitude of moments from many lives played on the wall, “ You’re born one day, happy, innocent, and utterly unaware of the doomed nature of your existence. You had no control over whether you were born poor or rich or inherited a hospitable or inhospitable climate. Whether you would be loved or unloved. Feel safe or fear for your life.
One day, you realize you're going to die, and then people hurt you. Sometimes, even groups, armies, and nations disappoint and harm you or those you love. Your innocence is stripped away as you learn pain, and most of the time, you don’t know what to do with it. Everyone carries that pain and eventually releases it onto others, starting the cycle over again. Sometimes you do this consciously; most of the time, most people are entirely unaware of what they have done to the people around them.” She paused and looked into him, “Any reasonable, enlightened being would see that for what it is—a big mess. Entangled, unforgiving, and downright vicious at times.”
“You could just end it. The mortal part, obviously.”
“I know. Heck, how many people from your world pray and wait for it?”
Hank nodded, thinking of a few former friends and family members back on Earth who were more engrossed in what awaited them in the afterlife than they were in the present, living one. How many prayed and prophesied the end times and the second coming of their savior, and for what?
“But, you know,” she continued, “one of the reasons I stopped all the annihilation business eons ago was because every time I snuffed out something completely horrid, I also ended up killing something beautiful because, for every person who perpetuates the hurt and pain they feel unto others, there is someone who doesn’t. Then, there are those who have committed small or grave sins but learned not to. They became aware of some of their failures and decided to be better. Sometimes, out of all that darkness comes redemption, in its true form, not some type of religious bullcrap sold to you by a preacher.”
A tear formed in Hank’s eye as he watched and listened. The images of life were beautiful—the absurdity of it all, the unnecessary conflicts over material needs, the useless desire for power, and the illusion of control. The atoms in his body calmed. He felt goosebumps. The representative retook her seat, satisfied with her explanation. The living images disappeared, and the white featureless wall returned.
She spoke softly, “So, all that judgment, reward, and punishment crap is, well, crap. And the whole reason anyone is miserable here is because they can’t let it go. You choose to make it miserable, one silly thought after another, though I’m not surprised. In the mortal realm, you would complain about it being too cold and not having enough sun during winter; as soon as summer would come, you gripe about it being too hot and the sun giving you skin cancer. It never ceases.”
Hank chuckled at that. He remembered complaining to his friends about the weather, regardless of the season. It’s something even Barbara and himself could easily talk about and agree on most of the time.
The representative tapped her hand on the desk.“So, that was my spiel, take it or leave it.”
“You give that to everyone?”
“Everyone that has a similar complaint as you.”
Hank fiddled with his imaginary hands and remembered what it felt like to feel their grip on a steering wheel, a shovel, and the sticky hand of a lover. He wanted to forgive and move on, but who has forgiven him? Why does he have to be punished just because he doesn’t like certain things? He has a right not to be miserable and surrounded by assholes.
The representative let out a frustrated sigh and spoke, “Alright. Let me try it this…”
“Wait, isn't it better if I…like…verbalize it?” Hank interrupted.
“You’ve verbalized enough.”
“But, ya just…”
“ENOUGH!” Her voice boomed. Hank swore he felt his chair shake.
Her voice softened as she spoke, “You’ve been mad about the chair since you got here, right?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s cold and uncomfortable, and you don’t see why you can’t have the same chair I have.” She waited for another response.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s think about that. You’re a soul. Your body is an illusion. All our bodies are. It’s just your essence perceiving things the way you’ve always seen them since you were alive, and it's projected here. So you’re mad at and uncomfortable in a chair that you don’t need and, as far as eternity is concerned, does not actually exist. Yet, you’re mad about it like it matters. You’re letting it make you miserable.”
He looked up at the representative, finally seeing God within them. To Hank, the chair disappeared, and now he just floated, but it felt like he was absorbed into a cloud. It was so comfortable.
God smiled at him. It was the kindest smile Hank had ever seen. She said, “You get it now,” as she relaxed back into her chair, content.
He smiled back at her and replied, “Thanks for letting me talk.”
“Anytime. If you’ve been delighted by this visit, please leave us a kind review on The Heaven Pages. All you have to do is take a moment, think about it, and poof, it will be there for anyone who looks us up.”
Hank nodded his head and moved toward the door. The line had grown three times as long while he was inside. It occurred to him that perhaps he did arrive “early,” even though he would question that again later. As he walked past the long line of souls, he looked at all the people, wondering what each of their stories were. Some looked young, some looked old, and all were vastly different from the other, yet deep down, he knew they were all the same. Near the end of the line, he spotted his old neighbor again. She also saw him but tried to act like she hadn’t.
Hank approached and spoke softly, “Hey.”
Barbara crossed her arms. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“I know, but I…I owe ya an apology.”
She looked at him from the corner of her eyes suspiciously. “For what?”
“I wasn’t patient or kind to ya. In fact, I was kind of a selfish dick back when we were alive…and for that, I’m sorry. Truly. If I could, I would make it up to ya.”
Barbara uncrossed her arms and gave him a side-eye look. “You mean that?”
“I do.”
She turned and looked at him for an uncomfortably long time, but Hank could sense her changing. He broke through! This is what God had wanted for mortals all along.
Words exploded from her lips as she yelled, “You piece of shit. You think I would believe those silly little words coming out of your mouth?! You’ve never been self-aware your entire life; why would you start now!!”
“Barb, I’m serious…”
Barbara waved at him dismissively and crossed her arms again. “I don’t want to hear it! You’re as bad as these youngins around here: entitled, lazy, and always making a ruckus.”
Hank was speechless. That feeling of eternal frustration, the one God must feel all the time, crept up on him. He was genuinely sorry, and he thought he said it sincerely. He wanted to call her a thousand different names; he even thought about fighting her, but Hank took a theoretical breath instead.
He said, “Have a good afterlife, Barb,” and walked away.
Outside of the pestering replay of his just-ended conversation with his old neighbor, he felt almost weightless. The heavy disappointment of existence slipped beyond the atoms and quarks that made him. He could only imagine what life would have been like if he had felt this way before he died. But he also knew there was no reason to stew on that.
He wanted to tell Barb and the other poor souls waiting in line the truth, let them know everything would be okay if they just let it go, but he now knew they probably wouldn’t have listened, though he hoped, someday, they would unless they were assholes.
He thought about what would be next for him as he walked past colorful buildings, busy restaurants, and bright and loud attractions that would make Vegas or Pigeon Forge feel like boring tourist traps. One thing he knew, he didn’t want to stay here any longer. After all, there was a whole universe to explore, and he had already wasted enough time dwelling on the inconsequential. It was time to go “live”, and eventually, he knew he would find himself at the edge of a black hole, ready to disappear for good. He didn’t know when that would be, and he didn’t care. Deep within himself, he just knew that someday, he wouldn’t want to be, and he looked forward to attempting to enjoy the journey there.
This is incredible. Heart-warming and also kind of life-affirming. Along with a bunch of laughs!
I liked this one in particular:
Heck, I mass-genocided countless species, all because of a few bad apples. Don’t beat yourself up about it.
You are awesome!