Faithlift

When Eric Martensen died he found himself in a lift. Happily for Eric, the lift was going upwards.

 

'Where am I?' Eric wondered. 'I was asleep in bed just now, and here I am in a lift. What has happened?'

 

A practical man to the core, Eric checked his surroundings.

 

'I was wearing pajamas', Eric thought, 'What am I wearing now?'  But though he tried to see what he was wearing, there was nothing to see. He wasn't naked, he wasn't anything, Eric discovered that he had no physical form.

 

'Hmm, I must be dead', Eric reasoned, 'I have left my physical body behind me. In which case I must be going to heaven'. He checked the panel, the top button of which was illuminated. It read 'Heaven'. There was one other button, which read 'The Other Place'. 'At least I'm going the right way', he thought.

 

It was a long journey. Eric tried to be excited at the prospect of Heaven, but in truth, he was sad to have died. He'd enjoyed the physical world, for all its faults. When he died, he was three quarters of the way through a really good book and he was sad not to have finished it.

 

The lift stopped, suddenly, and with no explanation.

 

'What did I do?' Eric wondered. 'Was I wrong to was I was still alive, that I could finish my book? Will I be punished for such blasphemous thoughts, will I go to Hell for it?"

 

There was no answer. The lift did nothing. Eric thought about pleading with God, promising to amend his ways, but then he had a better idea. He looked for instruction, and sure enough there was an emergency button.

 

"Hello, Saint Peter here", said a voice at

 

"Hello, I'm Eric Martensen. I'm in the lift to Heaven but it seems to have stopped."

 

"Oh that wretched lift, that's the third time this week. I'll send some angels along to fix it."

 

"How long will they be?"

 

"Oh time, we don't really do time up here." The line went dead.

 

Eric was reassured, obviously. He was still on his way to heaven, he hadn't committed a mortal sin after he'd died, which would have been ironic, he hadn't lost his place to heaven on the way there. 

But still. He was now stuck in a lift waiting for angels who didn't have a concept of time. It could be weeks, he had no way of knowing.

 

He was slowly getting used to his non-physical form, and as he did so he realised that he had powers, something like angelic powers he assumed. He could see behind the lift's panel, he could move the components. And so he started to tinker, because although he had never ever seen angelic machinery before, he was confident that he could fix it. He was that sort of man, and being dead hadn't changed him.

 

To his delight the lift started to move.

 

The delight didn't last long. He soon realised that lift was going downwards.

 

'Perhaps I'm going to return to my body', Eric thought. 'This is going to be one of those near-death experiences. I wonder if I'll remember.'

 

But when the lift finally opened Eric didn't return to life, he was in a new place, but one he recognised, a great furnace in front of him, fire all around, heat - overwhelming heat and pain.'

 

He fiddled with the lift again, and to his great relief the doors closed and he started to rise.

 

'Thank Heaven', he thought. 'I'm back on track, no harm done'.

 

But even as he thought it, he realised that he was no longer alone in the lift. There were others with him, lots of them.