Archie's Heaven

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Epilogue: - Archie’s Heaven​

Six weeks ago, I died at home after spending several months infirmed in hospital, with testicular cancer. I reached the ripe old age of eighty-six. I remember lying there waiting to die and thinking about all the bad times, all the good times and the new journey I was about to undertake. It felt like paradise lost leading to paradise gained.

Just three people attended my funeral with me being one of them in spirit. They had a lovely service for me. The local parish priest read out my name Archibald Cannon in the maudlin voice of his while speaking about my obituary. I found the burial rather touching. Just two women paying respects for the meagre life that I had had. I followed them of course - to the later drinking party the pair of them had planned as to send me off so to speak. Watching their every movement and listening to their conversation.

They spoke of me saying I was such a lovely man in my old age but a complete bastard early on in life. I heard them say how they were looking forward to spending the proceeds of the will as they thought that because the latter half of my life of was led with such misanthropic meanness - there would be plenty to go around between the two of them. I didn’t know who these supposed benefactors of my earthly belongings were.

However, I laughed – hard – at their naivety. I had in fact spent all of my money on a new gambling habit of dog track races and loose women on web cams on the worldwide internet. I was indeed a vengeful, secretive person in later life, making sure no one was to benefit from such a miserable existence - Oh the satire!

It was then I got a tap on the shoulder from a friend who I had met six times before – Old Father Death Time. At least, that was the nickname what I cheekily remember calling him on the last occasion, we had met. He took me immediately on to a boat – Barking on that I had already spent far too long, on what is now the past shell.

He looked illustrious with his black-all cloak. The scythe and everything. It was so familiar and comforting despite the darkness that we all fear - it exuded him well and seemed right. Yet, there was not even faint change to the way he wore his raiment, even from the last journey. He complained often on the journey of how regularly he had to do this job, remonstrating also about the conversation I had with him last time we spoke and on this occasion. I had a habit for repeating myself and going on a bit much with my chatter.

After an hour, we had crossed the ether and I bid my old friend goodbye to venture into the place where souls like mine are processed. A building that seemed like a hospital. A structure so large, the eye held no explanation for how large it really was...

I was greeted at the reception by a Doctor Rolf Himmelmann - A soul to human re-integration consultant. A soul-gynaecologist to you and me. When I asked him if this was a place where heaven was he gave me a rather obscure look. He then told me that place was only on the top floor where the boss was.

In days later, I would meet him again after I would ask him several other questions. Like why the babies in some of the rooms had old faces on them, and why I was not allowed to go to the first floor. For days, I had been wandering around that place seeing the images of former people and listening intently to their stories. None of them could answer me anything about the place. It seemed only pertinent to ask him about the anatomy of heaven.

While his image flickered and stuttered as he gave his complex explanation, he amused me as he laboured on to why each floor was what it was. It seems that the penultimate top floor was for the saints and revered angels. The floor below that was for people like the good doctor himself. Those were most favoured by the boss or god if you like. The first floor was for those that had been extremely bad. He reminded me sternly that there was no such place as hell. Those people were put to sleep or in a small soul coma. Sleep was the only way they could treat them properly to get all of the bad out of them – they would forget all that they were and be able to start anew.

There were some though, that were so bad they were shipped off to other places and constellations where only the special hospitals in special places that could remedy those souls. No one was truly evil, but those people would stay in the worlds where they had been sent. Never to return.

The middle floor, he went on to say, was for people like me. Those that needed to retry the lesson of life, so they could move up to the higher floors of the building when the next shell expired - Earning the rightful place of rest and remembrance. The babies I had seen were his job. He was to regress those souls into a new shell whereby they would be processed back into the world I had come from. Their faces would take on a new appearance once the process was complete. Essentially, they would be the same soul though.

I wondered what was so wrong with me that I had my place put in the middle. Doctor Himmelmann told me that my prognosis was a bit of soul toothache. Something had gone slightly wrong on the last incarnation. That it was his predecessor that was to blame for my being a complete bastard during my middle life. I smiled at that prospect, that I was not entirely to blame. Although Doctor Himmelberg did snap at me as though he read my thoughts and barked that, I was lucky not to have been determined to have led my next life of a bee.

Not questioning what he said to me after he told me to go and enjoy myself for a few days and then think about what I most wanted from my next opportunity. I was to prepare for a shrinking and that he would give me a card with a picture on it, which would give me an idea on who to animate who I was to be next.

During the next few days, I grew tired of waiting for my operation. Travelling the ether and places of my old life that had significance to me. Seeing the old people of my life still living their daily drab lives. Their world seemed slightly grey to what I had experienced in the past few days. It seemed all too sad to have to return there once again. Never mind, it could prove to be an interesting journey.

The next day I was to go into one of the middle room cubicles where my image would regress into my new identity. My new name was to be David Rowan. I was white as I always had been and that I would prove to be a much better person than I previously had been.

I began to ponder on this new identity. One that I might be - what I had most missed in the last life. It was then it dawned on me that, I had seen a girl in my past shell. I never found out her name. I had seen her many times. A beautiful young woman. She seemed to have this power of me like a tale of unrequited love, but with a yearning like no other. Her eyes I could get lost in for what may have been seconds but it seemed like hours. It was though I saw the cold and warmth of her inner soul. I got a deep sense of longing, as if something was not quite complete. That I had a new purpose and despite my latter half of life, had been spent in almost complete silence. I could hope and really say to myself. Oh, how I long to peer into those eyes once again.

It saddened my heart to think that tomorrow that memory would be forgotten. Just like all the previous experiences of life that I had before. I would again plunge the Life that I am, into the abyss of the pool of living and everything would again be left to chance...