The New Arrival Department

Tom Mollica                                About 1725 words

1018 South 47th Street

West Milwaukee, WI 53214

414-383-3886

tom@studiotommy.com

The New Arrival Department

Standing in the Grand Jas Cemetery, Flossie Boselieu stood in front of her husband Henry’s casket. She forced herself to make a sad-looking face. The truth was it didn’t bother her at all that her cheating husband dropped dead from a heart attack. Too bad it didn’t happen when he was cheating on her with his floozy secretary.

In the Heaven’s Gate New Arrival facility, Garmites Thompson tapped his fingers on his fourth-floor office workstation desk and watched Flossie on a holographic projection. He and some friends had tickets to tonight’s Gospel A-Go-Go concert at the Saint Hedwig of Poland amphitheater, so Garmites waited impatiently for the day to end.

Like every other workday, Garmites monitored funerals to see what people were saying about the recently deceased. This factor, although a minor one, helped determine who made it into Heaven. No detail was too small for the Heaven’s Gate background-checking department.

From the next workstation, his co-worker Felix yawned and said, “I am so bored.”

Garmites looked over at Felix’s projection. “Who’d you get?”

“It’s a funeral for Walter Kittle at the Tranquility Gardens Chapel in Lincoln, Nebraska. The guy was ninety, and only a few people are even at the church. There isn’t going to be much, if anything, to add to his life history.” Felix leaned over to look at Garmites’ screen. “You at least have a lot of people in your assignment.”

At that moment, Flossie Boselieu decided to put on a performance for Henry’s relatives. Henry’s family was stinking rich, and Flossie wanted to stay on their good side. She feigned sadness, moved forward, draped herself over her husband’s closed casket, and sobbed. Flossie knew acting, having studied at the Brigitte Bardot Performing Arts School in Cannes. Remaining plonked down on the casket with her arms out, she wailed, “Henry was a good man. He didn’t deserve to go. Take me instead, God.”

Felix watched Flossie. “You know what would be funny? When someone at a funeral says, take me instead, we do it.”

“We do what?” Garmites asked.

“Take the person. There is a little-used option in the advanced settings where we can acquire someone and bring them to Heaven’s Gate.” Felix went into his control panel, entered commands, typed on his keyboard, and opened a small pop-up screen. It showed the same funeral Garmites was monitoring.

Garmites leaned over to look at Felix’s screen. “I did not know we could do that.” He knew Felix had worked at the facility for at least fifty more years than he had and knew a lot more.

“The Mother Superior would not authorize it, but we can do it. Look. You circle her.” Felix used his finger to make a red circle around Flossie, who had lifted herself off the coffin. “Then all I do is drag her to the New Arrival check-in center tab. It’s something the bosses don’t want us to know.”

“Well, that’s the darndest thing,” Garmites said. He knew Felix liked practical jokes. Last week at lunch, he substituted salt for sugar in the shakers at Marge Quiggle’s table, and she poured salt into her coffee. “Boy, would we get into trouble if you did that.”

“No one pays any attention to what we do,” answered Felix.

The two technicians nodded in agreement and returned to their work. Workers in the New Arrival facility did not find it to be the most exciting job, so anything to break up the monotony was good. Workers waited for promotions to jobs such as horticulturist in the Garden of Eden, or positions in the Eternal Bliss department.

A minute later, Garmites and Felix looked back at each other. Mischievous grins appeared on both their faces.

“Do it,” said Garmites.

Felix circled Flossie and moved her to the New Arrival tab.

*****

Flossie Boselieu stepped back from her husband’s casket. After her Academy Award-winning performance, she considered making loud weeping sounds, then falling back and fainting for added dramatic effect. The next thing she knew, she stood in a waiting line with two other people. The line led to an opening in a pearly gate where an elderly priest wearing a white robe, sat at a desk. On top of his head was a square ridged biretta cap. An old Packard Bell computer and monitor sat on the desk.

“What the?” she blurted out. “Where the bleeeep am I?” Flossie did not use the word bleeeep but said a swear word, and a censor automatically bleeped it.

The priest at the desk pointed a finger at her, then rubbed his two index fingers together in a tsk-tsk gesture.

Looking around, Flossie saw a hundred or so waiting lines. Each had two or three people in it. A sign above, which appeared to be magically floating in the air, read, “If there are ever more than three people in a line, we will open a new one.”

In their small office, Garmites and Felix watched Flossie. The two were having a great laugh.

“Check out the look on her face,” said Felix. “She’s thinking, ‘What the sweet potato blossom is going on here?’”

Garmites held his hand over his mouth to cover his giggling.

A man wearing a three-piece suit at the front of Flossie’s line answered a few questions and moved through the gate. A cute little Schnauzer yapped and ran to him.

“Bubbles,” the man happily whooped. He picked up the dog and kissed it.

A “poof” noise sounded, and a woman suddenly appeared in the line behind Flossie. When she turned to look at her, the priest at the desk called out, “Next!”

Flossie stepped to the check-in desk.

“Name, please, my sister,” the priest stated.

“Um, Flossie Boselieu. This is weird. I can’t wait to wake up.”

“She thinks she’s dreaming,” Garmites said.

He and Felix laughed heartily again.

The priest typed on a keyboard. “Can you please spell the last name?”

“B-o-s-e-l-i-e-u.”

“Hmmm.”

“What does hmmm mean?” Flossie questioned.

“My sincere apologies, Flossie Boselieu, but you are not showing up on our list of today’s arrivals,” the priest stated. He touched an index finger to his chin and scrunched up his face. “It appears you have a lot of time left.”

Felix said, “Uh, oh. That’s not good. I didn’t think of that.”

“You didn’t think she wouldn’t be on the New Arrival incoming listings?” Garmites questioned.

At the desk, the priest pointed his finger up, and a yellow light blinked overhead.

The woman behind Flossie complained, “This always happens to me. Every time I get a checkout line, something goes wrong with one of the customers in front of me. Someone bought the wrong size laundry detergent that wasn’t on sale and wants to get a different one. A coupon doesn’t work. Someone can’t remember the pin-number on their debit card. You name it, and it happens to me.”

Flossie turned her head and gave a nod, to show she knew what the woman meant.

A golf cart with flashing lights mounted on a top rail motored up to the desk. “Is there a problem, Bishop Leo?” the man driving asked. He wore a fancier red robe.

“Yes, Cardinal Gregorio. This new arrival is not scheduled to report today.”

Cardinal Gregorio stepped out of the cart to look at the monitor. “Hmmm.”

Flossie eyed Cardinal Gregorio and thought, what’s with these guys saying, hmmm?

The Cardinal looked at Flossie. “Please state your date of birth, sister.”

“May second, nineteen-seventy-two.”

“Hmmm,” said Cardinal Gregorio.

“Hmmm again,” Flossie said to herself.

The Cardinal touched the Packard Bell keyboard. This time, a bright red light began blinking over the desk.

“Oh, jeez,” said the woman behind Flossie.

In less than a minute, an angel appeared overhead. Large wings slowly flapping kept her hovering in the air over the lines of people. Her long hair flowed in the breeze, like a blond Baywatch lifeguard running in slow motion. Heavyset, with a peanut-shaped head, she looked different than the angels Flossie saw in pictures.

The flying angel saw the blinking light and flew – more like floated over to the desk and set down behind Cardinal Gregorio and Bishop Leo.

“Well, that’s not something you see every day,” said the woman behind Flossie.

“Angel Hazelica, this patron is not on our schedule,” Cardinal Gregorio explained.

Angel Hazelica typed extremely fast on the keyboard, Flossie thought. Her fingers moved like someone fast-forwarding a Netflix movie at the highest speed. Flossie thought it would be funny to ask her if she could make a good angel food cake but kept quiet.

Angel Hazelica pointed to the monitor, then yelled out, “Ah, hah!” She leaned her head back, took in a deep breath, bent forward, and bellowed, “Felix Pablooski!”

The open-mouth yelling sent out a blast of wind over the lines. A man wearing a Chicago Cubs baseball jersey had his toupee blown off.

Getting a whiff, Flossie thought the angel’s breath smelled like mint - like she just ate a peppermint Tic Tac. Flossie guessed angels wouldn’t have bad breath.

Felix’s workstation shook as if he was in a violent earthquake. Next, a fast-moving airstream blew over him. “Uh, oh,” he said.

Garmites quickly turned his head away and looked at his hologram to show he had nothing to do with this.

*****

On the Grand Jas Cemetery’s grass, Flossie lay on her back and opened her eyes. In a state of confusion, she looked up at a cloud that resembled the Pope Mobile. Her Aunt Beulah was slapping her face.

“Flossie, wake up. Wake up. Are you all right?” Aunt Beulah asked.

She grabbed her aunt’s hand to stop the slapping. “I’m fine. I guess.”

“You fainted.”

I was only going to pretend to faint, Flossie thought, then asked, “What the heck happened?”

Aunt Beulah helped her stand and put her hand on Flossie’s forehead, apparently checking to see if she had a fever.

Flossie pushed the hand away. “I’m okay.”

For some reason, inside her large purse, Aunt Beulah had one of the gizmos doctors used to look in a patient’s ear. She took it out and put it in Flossie’s right ear.

This too Flossie pushed away. “Seriously, Aunt Beulah. I’m fine.”

Beulah moved the ear checker away, took a few sniffs of Flossie, and asked, “Is that a new perfume you are wearing, dear? It smells like a peppermint Tic Tac.”

The End