Heaven Eleven

I must admit I wasn’t a decent person throughout my life, which is why I was sent to work in Heaven Eleven the day I died.

Heaven Eleven is a 24-hour convenience store for deceased souls. I was made to work there because, as I was told, hard work in the afterlife is the only path to everlasting salvation.

The day I arrived to Heaven I was placed in a queue in a job centre, designed to help determine what sort of work we would be doing for the rest of our immortal life. The angels at the counter took quite some time to get through the queue which was ever growing, as more and more people on Earth were dying and their souls were swiftly being transported to Heaven.

After several hours I made it to the front of the queue, where the job officer in charge of my case took a long hard look at my spiritual resume and made an assessment on what sort of work would be suitable for me. Realising that my spiritual resume was considerably lacking, and seeing that I much preferred to work alone, the job clerk promptly assigned me as manager of the convenience store in the southern quarter of Heaven. The job clerk then made the arrangements for an introduction with my supervisor, Archangel Michael; an imposing, majestic figure who held me accountable for the atonement of my sins.

Whereas the job clerk made no judgment about my failure to be a decent human being, Archangel Michael was not so casual and lenient. He demanded that my store be kept meticulously clean and pure and well stocked at all times. I wasn’t allowed to stock tobacco or sweets or booze in my store, but only the heavenly essentials, such as angel wings, harps and even calling cards for angels that wanted to make contact with their loved ones still living on Earth (albeit the spiritual kind of contact through prayer and meditation). We even had cleaning products called Heavenly Protection Spray to ward off evil sprits.

Archangel Michael insisted that I work hard to keep my customers satisfied and happy, and that I was only here on probation; that if my performance wasn't up to scratch then my place in Heaven could be jeopardised. If I couldn't be useful in Heaven, if I were a liability, then there was only one other place to go.

But you see, the thing was, I had been a bad person my entire life, and bringing me here ruffled my angel feathers. In life I had been selfish and crude, dishonest and unjust, and here I didn’t want to be humble and serve others. I didn’t want to take orders from authority. I didn’t want things to be pure. I revelled in chaos and neglect, ruin and decay, wanted that pile of dark, grey matter to be wrapped around me like a stinky cloak, to conceal the pain of my troubled soul. I felt so much guilt for my past, and being bad helped me to have an identity that felt comfortable and familiar.

Archangel Michael rebuked me on more than one occasion for my laziness. He told me that I would never rid myself of my guilt if I didn’t accept the grace of God that had been offered to me, the chance to reform and shape myself into a new identity.

In truth, I envied the angels that had privilege to use a calling card, but moreover, I envied that they had loved ones to contact. I had no one at all that cared about my death. Not even my own mother, whom I had lost contact with after she was moved around to several different hospitals due to her failing condition. She died of shame, I am sure.

Our store had security cameras to check we weren’t being visited by one of Satan’s henchmen. If you weren’t careful in Heaven, you could be plucked off your heavenly perch and taken below to the lost world forever. Even in Heaven you had to be careful you didn’t end up in Hell.

After a particularly gruelling day, when I had washed the store from top to bottom and restocked our shelves with the inventory of goodness, Archangel Michael came to visit me. He said there had been complaints from other angels about my poor customer service, that I cursed and gossiped too much about the possibility of an uprising. I knew my demeanour was sour but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about my customers, didn’t want any of it. I never asked to work in a store, in my life I had been a thief and a fraud and a scammer, pilfering huge sums of money from innocent people, so why the hell should I care about anyone now?

I said this to Michael out loud, blurting it all out to his angelic stony face, told him I was fed up with trying to do good when clearly all I wanted was a proper death. Why could God not see that?

“You have a lot to learn, my child,” he said sternly. “But be warned, once you turn your back on Heaven for good you can never return.”

“Sounds BLOODY GOOD to me!!” I shouted. “I HATE THIS PLACE!!!”

With an overpowering strength Archangel Michael picked me up and threw me outside on a cloudy sidewalk. I was sobbing and inconsolable for all the terrible things I had done.

Suddenly, a shadowy figure crept up beside me.

“Come with us,” it hissed.

“Who are you?” I asked, intrigued.

“We can give you all the comforts you need, a nice warm bed and a hot bath at the end of each day. You never need to work another day again. And you can have all the wealth and splendour you desire.”

And with that, the shadowy figure vanished, leaving me to ponder his offer.

***

In Heaven, angels don’t sleep, and especially not if you’re working in a 24-hour convenience store. You just work straight through, or if you’re a good angel, you’re working hard to bring comfort to those in need in the world of the living. Some work in our heavenly call centre non-stop, answering prayers or offering spiritual advice, and others go out in the field to create daily miracles, some humble like the blossoming of a rose, and some more spectacular. I had heard about the party of angels that pushed a car out of harm’s way onto an empty sidewalk after the driver had had a heart attack, leaving him with only minor bruises and avoiding a fatal collision.

But alas, sometimes there aren’t enough angels to be everywhere at once, and when earthly disasters were unavoidable, or someone died from natural causes, we had a team of angels ready and waiting to initiate the new arrivals into Heaven. And often, what you were assigned to do in Heaven was very different to what you did on Earth. If you were a wealthy banker in life, for example, you became a janitor in Heaven; if you were childless in life (by choice or otherwise), you got to work in a childcare centre for all the babies and children who had died too young. If you were a climate change skeptic, or didn’t appreciate nature, you’d be out in the field all day, working hard to make things grow. Now that would make you stop and think how hard the Earth was working to keep you alive!

As for me, I died from a gunshot wound after a drug deal gone horribly wrong. No angels came to rescue me that day.

***

The next morning I was back in the store. I was pondering the proposition from the evening before, when something on the security camera caught my eye...a shadowy dust was mingling in between the shelves, near an angel customer that was struggling to try on a pair of angel wings. I hadn’t bothered to ask if she needed help.

The dust manifested itself as an AL - Agent of Lucifer – and was creeping slowly towards her.

I had never seen it happen, but I had heard the stories about angel abductions. This is why angels worked in groups, and had the most powerful of wings to blow the enemy away. But if they were not on their guard, they could be ambushed and snatched away. Why did such an evil thing like this exist in Heaven? Because even there, evil would try to conquer good, and what better way to collapse all faith in God than by destroying his kingdom?

I watched as the AL took aim to strike.

Suddenly, I found myself lurching from behind the counter. “STOP!” I yelled, and toppled over the manifestation. He pushed his pitchfork deep into me, not to take my life in blood (for I had no life to lose), but to penetrate me with the forces of evil.

“Come with us!” he hissed. “You belong to us!!!”

I grabbed the pitchfork and pulled it away, snapping it in two. The figure seized my robe to snatch me underground into his waiting cesspool; a hole had opened up in the floor and he was going to drag me through. I held fast, holding onto the shelves, holding onto the belief that this was MY STORE! and this SON OF A BITCH! was not going to drag me away from it. I grabbed a can of Heavenly Protection Spray from the middle shelf and sprayed that terrible demon down. His figure recoiled and slithered around like a tortured insect. His grip weakened, he let go, and he got sucked right back into the hole.

The hole disappeared.

I went over to my angel customer and helped her up. It was the first time I had ever done something like that for someone. Something...good. I felt - for the first time – light...like a huge weight inside of me had been lifted. I felt calm. I felt...free.

As these new emotions came to me, I savoured them, allowing my senses to be present and to truly absorb them.

A light shone at the door, and Archangel Michael appeared. He was guiding an elderly woman, who was strong and confident on her feet despite her age. I recognised her instantly as my mother.

“Sam,” she said gently and approached me with arms outstretched. She stood in front of me, cradling my face with her hands. “Sam, I will always love you.”

I hugged my mother tightly for the first time ever, and cried.