Left Behind: I Wish I (Was) Were - Chapter 1

I’m bored. I’ve got little to do for the summer except learn, and crazy shit (crazier than usual, that is) has been happening all around us. Most of my beliefs are pretty out there, so fuck it. I’m gonna write a periodic story: Left Behind: I Wish I Was (Were).

It’s is the story about a man who is basically the antithesis for Kirk Cameron. A stout believer until irrationality jumped ship and became a non-militant atheist. Just a young man, minding his own business, living everyday life. Happy, sad, human. Not of a necessarily enviable intellect but not without his merits.  Knows he hasn’t figured out the world and still laughs at the fact that the first thing he said when he got a blowjob was “oh my God.”

He lived in our world. Going to work everyday. Exercising on occasion. Enjoying the pleasures of sex and Nutella – separately. And when 6:00 P.M. hit on May 21st of this year, 2011, he disappeared. He has some friends, and they all thought he was pulling a prank, but now they’re pretty worried and his face is plastered all over Twitter.

This is his story.

By the way, sound effects are in bold letters. THESE ARE BOLD LETTERS. Writing looks retarded when you add asterisks every two words.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Our hero(?) wakes up, in a beautiful garden, with the worst feeling of a hangover this side of watching any M. Night Shyalaman Movie. (Except The Sixth Sense. I liked that one.)

“Oh bleep.”

“Wait. What the f-bleep?”

“F-bleep!”

“F-bleep. Bleep. Mother-bleep.  C-bleep-s-bleep.”

“Bleep-faceF-bleepbleepbleep-bagbleep-headbleep-smokerbleepbleepbleepASS!”

“Oh bleep! I can say ass! Sweet.”

His sense of realization lasted only seconds, much like Dustin Diamond’s career, when he saw where he was, and his unfamiliarity with the place.

“Where am I? Why do bad words keep getting bleeped out? Why in the world do I have a voice over?”

Oh bleep. Bleep it! Me too? Sorry about that dude. That wasn’t supposed to happen. I can’t really figure out this damn headset. Wait. I got-

“Wait! Wait! Before you leave, can you tell me where the hell I – awesome! I can say Hell. Sorry. The bleeping’s getting to me. Where am I? Please.”

Do you know that I am the narrator? My function is solely to narrate. So you go do stuff and I’ll just talk about what you’re doing. It’s like Twitter, but more awesome, and I have a microphone.

“Please. I’m going crazy here. There’s nothing around for miles other than pretty little flowers, so my allergies are starting up.”

Ok ok. Firstly, here’s some Claritin. Weather here gets crazy since we’re closer to the Ozone Layer. Secondly, since I’m the narrator I can’t give you straight answers. Most I could do is talk in riddles or something. Here goes. The name of the wondrous place you are in starts with an H, and rhymes with one of Kevin Spacey’s best movies. There. Simple. Be seeing ya.

“H? H...Hax? Hoon? Hurns? Hurns! OK. Where the hell is Hurns?”

HURNS? What the Hell are you talking ab – oh, seriously? You actually LIKED Superman Returns? Are you retarded? Even my grandson hated that movie, and he’s got ADD so he didn’t even watch the whole thing. You’re in HEAVEN, you nitwit, as in SEVEN?

“Oh. I haven’t seen that one. Heard it’s ok.

OK? Just OK?

“Yeah. Never really got around to it ‘cuz it didn’t seem like much.”

Sigh. Hell’s a better place for you.

“Hey! I heard that!”

Bet you did.

“What’s got his panties in a bunch? / I think he figured out his headset. I can’t hear the hum of his amp anymore. / So yes, that makes it definite. I’m dreaming. I’m supposed to be in Heaven and an invisible narrator just gave me some allergy medicine. Right.”

The young man, also known as the retard-that-hasn’t-seen-Seven-because-he’s-too-cool-for-it, doubted the reality that befell him. So, in an unsurprising demeanor, he spent half an hour pinching and pricking his body, to see if he woke. He didn’t. He wasn’t asleep to begin with. When he started drawing blood he decided that the voice he heard might not be his own, and actually spoke true when it said that he was now in Heaven. Finally. If the voice had actually been in his own head it couldn’t have said that Kevin Spacey wins in the end. JA! Suck on that! I didn’t even get bleeped! Loser!

Well, whatever. As our everyman – if he had seen Seven. Zing! – started on his journey, he knew not which way to go.

“I don’t know where to go.”

Told you.

In a whim he decided to go north. He thought he was going north at least; he was actually heading east. But his stride was determined, to say the least.

“I guess I’ll just have to go along with this. Me. An atheist. In Heaven. Fantastic. There go 20 years of telling off religious wingnuts that they were out of their mind. My mom is gonna have a field day when she hears about this. Especially when I told her Jesus banged Mary Magdalene. Whatever. That was a fun Thanksgiving Dinner.”

As he talked to himself and walked out of the field he saw a street a few yards away. No cars passed as he neared it, and no cars passed as he sat down and waited with the sun in his face. No cars passed as he doodled chalk drawings on the street. After a while he came to a realization.

“Maybe no cars are going to pass.”

Well, that didn't take long. He followed the street for what seemed to be a few miles, but he noticed that it didn’t really seem like progress. The Allergy-Inducing Field still lay to the sides of the road, and no landmark told him otherwise. He followed the Useless Road, as he so called it – he renamed the things and places he saw, as a way to cope with the fact that he was technically dead – for another 15 minutes when a pickup truck appeared in the distance. He signaled it, by waving like a maniac, and the truck stopped next to him.

- “Maybe it’s not such a Useless Road after all.”

  “Seems like a nice man. I’ll ask him for a ride.”

  “Hello. Would you mind giving me a lift?”

- “OF COURSE”

A voice like seven thunders and as awesome as a Dream Theater concert came forth from the man as he spoke. Our protagonist - whose name I forgot to ask – flew a few feet from the pickup. As he hoisted himself from the floor, the man in the truck spoke in a gentler voice.

- “I’m sorry about that. Didn’t recognize that you were human. I could’ve killed you! Are you well? Come on in.”

The ringing in his ears hadn’t stopped, and he couldn’t make anything of what the man had said. He realized nevertheless that he could now face him, even if he spoke, so the voice had dialed down a bit. He thought he was a good lip reader in high school, so he gave it a try. He did understand that the man would offer him a ride, but wondered why he would ask if he was into croquet.

- “Where am I? Someone told me I was in Heaven earlier.”

- “Laugh. That person couldn’t have been more wrong. You think this is Heaven? A highway?”

- “That’s what I thought, but he sounded very convincing due to being a voice over.”

-  “You’re a riot. Hell’s back there, I was making a delivery, and Heaven’s where I’m going now. Hop on.”

- “Oh. See, when you said that I wasn’t in Heaven, I thought you meant I was actually somewhere on EARTH.

- “My bad. Yeah, you’re not. Though if you ever get back, there’s a strip club on 3rd street in NYC. It feels like being home.”

- “Ok. So I’m…crazy. That’s a better answer than being in a supernatural realm.”

- “No. No. You’re here all right. I’m Sariel, but you can call me Sal.”

As he rode with Sal, he finally realized it was true. He was definitely in another realm. He was in shock for around 15 minutes but Sal slapped him out of it when he started to shake.

- “Ok. I’ll roll with it I guess. How did I end up here in the first place?”

- “Don’t know. I’m basically a delivery boy/tour guide for these areas. I like to help people that look lost but I don’t really know where I’m going most of the time, so whatever.”

- “Great. You’re a guiding angel without a clue.”

- “Hey. Us angels have feelings, you know? Hmph. And I know as much as a I need to.”

- “Sorry. It’s that the whole being technically dead that’s getting to me. What were you doing in hell anyway?”

- “I take souls that are lost or wrongly archived back to where they belong. Between us, the public institutions here aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”

- “So you’re a sort of repo man.”

- “More like a cleanup crew. 99% of repo men go to Hell, so it’s not really much of a compliment. And I’ll let you in on a secret: You wanna listen to good music, you’ll have to visit Hell. Sometimes I just go there because of that. The demons have really good taste in music, and they’re not half-bad when they’re not on duty. They showed me this one guy, Tyler, the Creator. He’s pretty sick. But as soon as I cross the border between Heaven and Hell though, I can’t listen to him anymore. Everything gets bleeped and he curses a lot, so it sounds less like a rap and more like an 8-bit rendition of All Eyes On Me. That and his name’s pretty blasphemous, but between him and J-Hova, I think his music’s better.”

  “Sorry. I get carried away when I talk about music. Only thing we got in Heaven is trumpets and some string instruments. We used to have an oboe, but after that American Pie movie came out we had to take it away because some of the younger angels started getting ideas.”

- “Wow. Yeah. Bleep happens.”

- “Tell me about it. You might want to go to sleep. It’s a while ‘til we get to the city, and you’re not used to how time passes up here yet. “

- “Thanks dude.  I’ll try to go to sleep. I could definitely use some.”

- “Good night.”

- “It’s noon, but whatever, good night.”

As he said this the day turned to night in what seemed like a second.