The Pearly Gates

When I woke up I wasn't in my bed, though I recognised the place clear enough. The Pearly Gates, I'd seem them many times in illustrations and the like. I was outside the Pearly Gates. I had died and gone to Heaven. Oh well, I thought to myself, I'd had a good life. And at least I'd gone upstairs.

I stood there not quite knowing what to do, still taking in the fact that I was dead. It was a lot to take in.  I guessed that you must go through some form of self-grieving process, though I was still in the where-am-I stage.

"You need to take a ticket," someone said.   Someone dressed as an angel. No, I remembered where I was, this must be an angel, a real, angelically-winged angel. I stared in marvellous wonder at the angel's form.

"You need to take a ticket," the angel repeated, with a tad of angelic impatience. "There's a lot of spirits to process, if you don't mind."

The angel pointed to a ticket machine and I took a ticket as instructed. I looked at the number, 82964786213. The next ticket, I noticed, was number 97293782626. I didn't understand the system, but I suppose that god works in mysterious ways, or at least his queuing system does.

"The waiting room's to the right," the angel said, pointing to a near-heavenly structure nearby, "St Peter will call your number."

I found the waiting room and sat down next to a fellow ... well, whatever we were, dead people I suppose, only dead people without bodies. Spirits the angel had called us. I sat there a while trying to make sense of it all. The figure said nothing.

"Been here long?" I said eventually.

"This is Heaven," the figure replied. "The realm of heaven, at least, Heaven itself lies on the other side of the Gate."

I nodded, wondering whether he'd understood my question and whether I should repeat it.

"We have left the mortal world behind us," he continued. "Time doesn't apply here."

Ah, I see.

"We have left the mortal world and its ageing, ticking minutes, wearisome weeks, your lifetime rushing by before you can do anything you'd planned to do. There is no time here, there is just Now. Eternal Now."

"I see," I said.

"Though if I was counting, which I'm not, having left the wearies of time behind me, it'd be 25 years."

"Twenty-five years? You've been sitting here twenty-five years?"

"There are just too many people dying, millions of them every day, the system just wasn't set up for it. I'm sure St Peter's a great bloke, but there's only one of him."

"Surely God would have foreseen the rate at which the population would grow and would have designed a system to cope with the subsequent death rate?"

"You'd think wouldn't you. But it's the same system now as it was at the beginning of things, when Peter was sitting around waiting for Adam or Eve to die."

"What's the delay, anyway? Can't they just magic us through? I mean, I appeared here in an instant. Why can't we go through the other side in the same way?"

"Judgement."

"Judgement?"

"Your entire life is assessed before you can enter heaven."

"You mean I might not get in?"

"Oh no, most don't, you need to have lived a very virtuous life. Most of those waiting here have an eternity in Hell to look forward to. Look, Peter's about to do another Judgement, let's watch."

I could indeed see a spirit in front of the Pearly Gates. Suddenly the ground on which the spirit was standing opened up, great fires leapt out from the hole thus created, into which the spirit plummeted.

"Yep, another one cast into eternal torment. There's more every day, the world is clearly getting wickeder."

"So that could happen to me? I could be cast into the fires."

"Only if you're a sinner." The spirit paused, allowing me time to contemplate my fate. "Are you a sinner?"

"I've never really thought about it," I said. "I mean, religion, God and all that, I try to be good, but I've never really lived my life as if I'd be answerable for my every sin."

Our conversation was interrupted by loud shouting. I looked up to see a new arrival, who was busy bellowing at the greeting angel. "I'm not taking a ticket and sitting with a bunch of atheists and sinners, I'm a bloody bishop. Bishops should get to the front of the queue. I did my bloody theology thesis on St Peter, I should get to see him straight away, fast track."

A flurry of angels arrived from nowhere and ushered the shouting bishop away, not to the front of the queue, but to somewhere out of sight and sound.

"It's always the bishops," my fellow spirit said. "They expect to jump the queue. God knows what they're like once they get inside. It's not my idea of heaven, a load of smug, shouty bishops bossing around the place all the time. Anyway, you were telling me your sins."

"Well I've never killed anyone," I said, "So there is that. Though I did cheat on a couple of girlfriends."

"What about more recently?" the spirit asked. "Say the last week or so, it's a good indicator of your tendency to sin generally."

"The last week?" I tried to think. "Well, I didn't kill anyone, that's the plus. No wife or girlfriend to cheat on, chance would be a fine thing."

"What about the small things. Little lies told, losing your temper with anyone, insulted anyone?"

"Well I did have a go at the woman in Tesco who bashed her trolly into mine. And I told the cold caller from an insurance firm to fuck off, I always tell them to fuck off. Is that a sin?"

"It is if you use language like that. Plus, think of the person on the other end of the phone, they're only doing their job, whether it's a sin or not it's not very nice."

"Frankly, I'm in trouble if God's on the side of the cold callers."

And so it went on. I went over ever little sin I'd committed, over the past week, the past month, the past year, and gradually, the whole of my life. Somehow I had perfect recall of everything I'd done, or not done. It must have taken forever, though I guess time wasn't a problem. The spirit listened attentively and never complained.

"Gosh, I really have sinned a lot, now I think about it," I said finally. "I'm going downstairs aren't I?"

However, as I was speaking the spirit changed. I was no longer in the waiting room, I was at the Gates, talking to St Peter.

"It's never too late to repent you sins," St Peter said, "Even here, outside the very Gates of Heaven, you still have time to confess your sins and take responsibility for your wrongs.

"You mean this take a ticket routine was all fake. This was just a test?"

"Yes. I am pleased to say that you have confessed all of your life's sins and shown suitable remorse at your behaviour. You may pass though."

Behind me, as I passed through the Gates of Heaven, I could hear the sound of a bishop shouting.