You know, it’s hard being funny on demand, even in a good cause. I don’t know if this is particularly funny, but I know a lot of you could stand to have something to take your minds off things today. Enjoy, and feel free to let me know what you think:

NOTE: This is not Theology.

Prologue

In the beginning,

             I died. I have to say I met my death with a certain degree of ambivalence. On the one hand, it was what I’d always hoped; a surprise.  On the other hand, there were way too many bodily fluids involved – and none of the fun ones.  Like most people, I’d managed to get through life without an abundance of dignity, but some things are just too much to bear.  I believe I may be the first person in history to actually die of embarrassment. 

Chapter 1

            I awoke, for lack of a better word, in the middle of a desert. I have to say, the afterlife was pretty disappointing, at least at first glance. I’d hoped it would be a lot greener (like Ireland, maybe), and feared that it’d be a lot hotter (like – you know – hell). Instead, it looked and felt like . . . Arizona? I lay there looking at the sky and feeling the earth below me. I felt better than I had in years.  My arthritic joints didn’t hurt, my smoker’s wheeze was gone, and the only bodily fluid on me was sweat.  I felt peaceful despite the geographical confusion. It was hot, but not unbearable.  Not at all what I’d expected, although, truth to tell, I hadn’t had a lot of expectations.  After a while, l realized that wherever I was was where I was, whether I understood it or not, and laying here was not going to change the situation, so I stood up and had a look around.  Yep, it looked like Arizona.  Kind of disappointing, really.  Still, I told myself, it could be worse.

            I saw a group of backpackers about a quarter-mile away. Waving my hands and yelling got no response at all. Maybe they were farther away than they looked.  I was about to try again, when a voice behind me said, “They cannot hear you.”  Startled, I yelled and jumped about four feet straight up.  When I landed, I looked around and saw an Indian guy (of the Asian persuasion), about 50 years old, dressed like an Amish farmer, complete with the beard, straw hat, suspenders, and heavy brown brogans on his feet, crouched down along a cliff wall, poking around in the brush with a stick.

            “Listen,” he said without looking up, “you want to quit fooling around and help?  We don’t have a lot of time.” His voice had a lilting accent that matched his face and clashed with his clothing.

            “What are you looking for?”

            “Snake.”

            “Any particular kind?”

            “Rattlesnake.  A really big rattlesnake.”

            “Why?”

            “It is my job.” He smiled. “Well today, it is our job.”

            “I kinda feel like I’m missing something.”

            “Just help me find it please.” He went on poking around in the brush.  “I was going to tell you all about it, but you lay there so long I was beginning to think you were dead.”

            “No kidding.  I thought I was dead too.”

            “Please. Less talking, more looking.  There are only a couple more minutes before they get here.”

            In fact the hikers had approached to within 50 yards or so, close enough that we could hear their voices.  One of them, a pretty blonde who looked strangely familiar, was complaining that she really had to go, and the others were teasing her, telling her not to think about waterfalls.  She didn’t seem particularly amused.

            Well, I didn’t understand any of this, but I decided to play along, at least until a better option presented itself.  I made a show of searching for a snake while keeping one eye on my new companion.  While working my way around behind a large boulder (I like to keep large, solid barriers between myself and any possibly unbalanced persons whenever possible), I heard a rattle like a castanet player on speed.  Looking down, I saw what was possibly the largest rattlesnake on the planet coiled up in a hollow under the rock.  Trying to stay calm, I said quietly, “I think I found it.”

            “What?”

            “I think I found it.”

            “Oh good. Please grab it then.”

            “Hey man, you want it, you grab it.”

            “Hang on.”  He eased around the rock and stood behind and a little to the side of me, “Where is it?”

            “Right there!”  I pointed.

            He craned his neck, “I still don’t see it.”

            “How can you not see that thing?  It’s the size of a baseball bat!”   Exasperated, I pointed again, “It’s right . . .” The snake struck, and I was running across the desert with a baseball bat-sized rattlesnake waving like a flag from my hand.  It’s hard to say who was less happy about this, me or the snake, whose fangs were apparently stuck in the bones of my hand.  I made it about one hundred yards before everything went black.

            I awoke, for lack of a better word, face-down in the hot desert sand. With a groan, I rolled over and sat up. I looked at my hand – at least the snake was gone. I crawled a few feet to a large rock, and sat on it.

            Looking back to where I’d landed, I realized that the snake wasn’t gone.  It was still attached to my hand. The hand of the me which lay where I had done the nosedive.  The me that was stone dead (again?). This was shaping up to be a tough afterlife. On the upside, I was apparently in much better shape than I had been ten minutes ago. Before I died (the first time) I’d have been lucky to make it twenty-five yards. Maybe things were looking up.

            My new snake-hunting buddy was examining the snake. “Oh dear. I think it had a heart attack, the poor thing. That really was not necessary you know. Also, you scream like a girl. They’re very sensitive to vibrations and noise, you know.”

            “Well, it killed me too ya know! I’m very sensitive to venom.” I’ll admit it, I was not taking this well at all. “And I didn’t scream, it just surprised me was all.”  

            “It certainly sounded like a scream.”

            “Well you get bit by a snake the size of your leg, and see how you respond, huh?”

            He laughed. “Yes, you are right. I would probably piss down both legs, especially back when I first got to this side.” He patted my shoulder. “Hey, check out our hikers.”

            They were standing stock-still in a tight group.  “Did you guys hear that?” asked the blonde, who looked strangely familiar. 

            “Hear it?  I felt it.  What the hell was that?” said a tall, skinny kid in a red muscle shirt, with matching hair and complexion. He looked like the “before” picture of spontaneous combustion.

            “It sounded like a little girl screaming.” This from a stocky kid struggling to loosen the grip of a tiny brunette who was frantically trying to climb him like a tree. “Ellie!” he begged, “Will you please let go!”

            She clung to him like a gargoyle on a cathedral roof. “It went right past us! Did you see anything? I didn’t see anything! What was it?”

            Skinny Red said, “I saw something, but it couldn’t be what I thought. There’s just no way.”

            “What? What did you see?”

            “Well…it looked like a flying snake.”

            “A flying snake? Oh shiiiiit! We need to get outa here!”

            “Ellie get offa me! I can’t breathe. Whatever it was, it’s gone now.”

            Skinny Red stepped in to help the stocky kid. “April,” he called, tugging at Ellie, “help me get her off Warren.” As the three of them struggled to disengage Ellie, April said, “Well it sure solved one problem.”

            “What’s that,” asked Skinny Red.

            “I don’t have to pee anymore.”

            As Ellie, Warren and Skinny Red took a couple steps back from April, I turned to my reptile-loving associate, “Okay, will you please tell me what’s going on?”

            “You see – you did scream like a little girl.”

            “Fine.”  I grabbed him by the lapels, “I screamed like a little girl. Wanna find out what you scream like?”

            “All right, all right, don not get so worked up…”

            “I’m not worked up. I’m confused and pissed off. Ten minutes ago, I was driving a school bus in Indiana. Since then, I’m pretty sure I died, woke up in Arizona, got bit by a snake, died again, got bitched at because the snake died, and had my masculinity questioned by a bunch of college kids who can’t see me.”

            “They should not be able to hear you either. In fact, they cannot hear you now. You certainly have some set of pipes. That is the first cross-dimensional scream I have ever heard. I have never even heard of such a thing before.”

            “I swear to God, I’m gonna…”

            “Okay, I apologize. There is no need for all this violence.” He pried my hands loose and made a show of straitening his suit. “All right, this is the deal. You died. Now you work with me – if you want to, that is. We work for God.” A grin slid slowly across his face, “You could say we are on a mission from…”

            “Please don’t say it.” I wasn’t too sure how much more I could take.

            “You really should try to lighten up. It does not pay to take things so seriously.”

            “But –but – what about heaven and hell and judgement and all of that stuff?”

            “That is all still to come, I guess,” he said soothingly. “Listen, this is how I understand it. When you die, a lot of different things can happen. Some go straight to heaven or hell, some just stay in their bodies sleeping, some become ghosts, and some of us get jobs. To be honest, I do not really know what all the options are.  Remember those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books? I think it’s kind of like that, but in real life – er, actually afterlife, I guess.”

            “And you chose to spend your afterlife doing reptile removal?”

            He smiled. “No my friend, it is not about the snake, it is about the people. It is always about the people. You see that blonde? Remember she was saying how she had to pee? Well she was going to go behind that boulder for a little privacy and get bitten by that snake. We were just supposed make sure she didn’t get bitten and die. How we did it was up to us, and I thought moving the snake was the simplest way, so mission accomplished I guess, although we do usually try to work casualty-free. Still, high marks for originality.”

            The hikers were hurriedly making tracks back along the trail the way they’d come, already arguing about what they had or hadn’t seen and heard.

            “What was so special about her?” I asked.

            “I do not know. Maybe she is going to discover a cure for cancer or be president or invent a new ice cream flavor or something. Maybe God just likes her. You know, mysterious ways and whatnot. All I know is that she is your granddaughter, and the dispatcher thought it would be a nice way for you to start your afterlife.”

            “Wait. What?”

            “I said I do not know what is so special about her, that maybe she is going to . . .”

            “I don’t mean that! I mean the bit about her being my granddaughter. There’s no way. My granddaughter’s only five years old.”

            He looked at her retreating figure. “You are sure about that? Because she is awfully tall and smart to be five.”

            “Don’t you think I know how old my own granddaughter is?”

            “Well, you know how old she was when you died.”

            “Yeah, which was just a few minutes ago!”

            “Well, about nine million of them, actually.”

            “What?” I felt like my head should be getting ready to explode. A few minutes ago, before I died, my blood pressure would have been reaching critical mass, but instead, I just felt annoyed. “Nine million what?”

            “Minutes. As in how many have passed since you died. Actually, that is just a rough estimate. Math was never my strong suit, in any of my incarnations.”

            I resisted the urge to strangle him. “What – exactly – are you saying? How long ago did I die?” It seemed like kind of a stupid question to ask.

            “About 17 years, give or take.”

            “You’re telling me we’ve been hunting that snake for 17 years?”

            He laughed. Apparently at least one of us was finding all this funny. “No, no, no. We only spent a couple minutes looking for the snake. By the way, really good work on that. I was beginning to worry that we would not find it in time, but you . . .”

            Maybe begging would help. “Please – PLEASE – just tell me how 17 years passed in the blink of an eye.”

            He looked puzzled for a moment, and then a look of realization came over him. “Oh. OH! Yes, I see what you are getting at.” He smiled in what I could only assume was meant to be reassurance. “You see, time works differently on this side of death. Did you ever hear of the theory that time is circular?”

            “I’ve heard of it. I didn’t understand it.” Actually, I never actually tried very hard. It had all sounded like scientific wonkitude. I hated wonkitude of any kind.

            “Well, it is not circular. It is more of a kind of really tight spiral, like a watchspring – I mean, I guess it is like a watchspring, I’ve never actually seen one. Anyway, you know what I am saying, correct?”

            “Not even a clue.”

            “Well . . . try not to let it worry you too much right now, eh?”

            I felt like I was starting to figure this out. “This is hell, isn’t it? One of those ironic hells, where I know I’m being tortured, but can’t figure out how? And you’re my seemingly benevolent guide, who’s actually a malevolent demon in disguise?”        

            He thought about it for a moment. “You do know that’s just a show right? But to answer your question, I do not think so. It certainly does not feel like punishment. We get to go around and help people, get to see the world, do not have to worry about making a living or where we are going to live or what we will wear or eat. We do not have to worry about our cholesterol or blood pressure or what is this lump or that rash. We do not get sick, and if we die, we just get back up and get on with our work. Maybe this is not what you expected, heaven and all that, but as far as I am concerned, it will do until something better comes along.”

            “So I’m really no-kidding, no going back, dead.”

            “Yes, but do not take it so hard. It could be worse. Do not think of it as being dead, think of it more as being existentially evolved.”

            I sat there on my rock, thought about my life and everything I had done and everything I hadn’t done. I thought about my wife and kids and family and friends. About my successes and failures. About the plans I’d made that had never come to anything, like the novel I never got around to writing, or that cruise I’d always promised my wife we’d take, but never did. Oddly enough, I didn’t feel that bad about it all. I guess being dead changes your perspective somewhat.  I looked at him, “So what do I do now?”

            “Do what you want to do, just like in life. You have a job if you want it, but it is strictly your call. Do the job or do something else. Sit there on your rock and think. Wander around the desert. Go to the moon. Do whatever you want to do.”

            I looked at him, “I can go to the moon?”

            “You can if you want, but it sounds dull to me. Great view, lousy atmosphere.” He smiled, “Well I am going to head back home now, see what is up next. Are you coming?”

            “I don’t know.”

            He shrugged, “Suit yourself. Maybe I will see you around. If not, have a nice afterlife.” He walked away into the setting sun and I watched him go. I looked around and thought about what to do now. I’d have liked to go and check on my wife and kids, but had no idea how to go about it. Other than that, I had no idea what to do. I stood up and looked around. Desert in every direction, as far as the eye could see. Like the moon (apparently), a great view, but no atmosphere. I was getting bored already. I ran after him. Bored seemed a bad way to start an afterlife.