Excerpt: Elle, Apparently

In Between

I was surprised to find that heaven was black. Or maybe it was hell. Either way, black was not what I was expecting. Heaven should be white and hell red, right? Not dark and sightless. Was this what I was going to have to stare at for eternity?

Whichever place I had landed – up until recently, I would have said that there was no reason that heaven wouldn’t want me, but I had a feeling that leaving someone to burn, attacking someone else with lightning, and getting your friends killed did not put you at the top of the “Heaven’s Most Wanted” list – was also making me very claustrophobic. I could feel pressure crushing me from all sides. It was looking more and more like Satan had stepped up and called “I choose Elle” for some sort of biblical game of kicker before God got his shot.

Or maybe I was in purgatory and they were still fighting over me. The ground around me was shifting, everything was becoming lighter and redder at the same time. I guessed I could be in between the two places, waiting to finally settle down for the rest of time, if it turned out that was how things worked.

I was glad there was no pain. I had really expected there to be pain, but it made sense that it would be gone now, after everything was done. Maybe that gave credence to the heaven idea.

There was a voice calling my name. I expected that even less than I had the lack of pain. I couldn’t make out whether it was the voice of an angel or demon. What did demons sound like, anyway? Were they rumbly and angels sounded like bells? This voice was neither. If anything it was… frantic. Huh. I hadn’t expected anyone here to be frantic, regardless of where “here” was. What sort of problem would make anyone in the afterlife frantic?

My dark coffin continued to shake around me. Without warning, other than the tiny earthquakes, the pain was back, searing through every cell of my body, making my nerves sing. Ah, hell then. But then what was this bright light I could see? So confusing, this death thing. Was it like this for everyone, or just those like me, those whose souls would be in question? Had Lexa gone through something like this, or had her trip downward been swift?

Sirens accompanied the pain. Definitely hell. Heaven wouldn’t have fire alarms. Regardless of my own personal beliefs, which were definitely in question at this point, I was pretty sure about that. Heaven definitely equaled no fires and therefore no need for fire alarms.

My name again, closer than it had been before. Still frantic. Still not rumbly or chimey. But… familiar, somehow. It came again and this time the pain, steady since it had arrived back on the scene, fluctuated just a tiny bit, abating ever so slightly at the sound of my name. Well… that seemed like a trick up heaven’s sleeve. How long was it going to take them to figure this out? The uncertainty was killing me. Again.

The quaking around me stopped and the pressure was gone. A decision was made, then? I couldn’t wait to find out who had won.

“Elle…” My name fell to my ears and this time the pain diminished even more than before. My body jerked – or was jerked – and then I was floating. Heaven had dibs on floating, right? This was looking better and better. My mom would be very proud.

I could hear voices swirling around me but they were in a language I couldn’t understand. I guess I would have to take some lessons in order to be able to understand my new tongue. I thought I was done with school, but languages had always come easy to me. This one wouldn’t be any different, right?

I was still floating and the bright light was gone. The sirens were louder now. Maybe they weren’t sirens but bells announcing my arrival. Was everyone’s entrance treated this grandly? I felt honored.

“Elle?” A sense of peace was coming over me. I would have thought I already felt peaceful, even with the pain, but now I knew that I had not. The tranquility that now flowed through my body – or whatever it was I had now - was unlike anything I’d felt before. Strong and serene and quiet. If this was how it would be for the rest of eternity, I had no problem with that. Even if I didn’t understand the language.

The light was back. I was suddenly aware of new things, things that hadn’t been there just a moment ago. Like my eyelids. Hmm… eyelids in heaven. Maybe it was an illusion to make newcomers like me feel more comfortable, less like we had just left our only lives, our only bodies, to begin our new bodiless existences. If I had eyelids, could I…? I thought about opening my non-corporeal eyelids and they were open.

Well, look at that. It turns out heaven had won after all, and something I had suspected all along was true. Angels have green eyes.