Review at the Gate – a story by Chris Klassen

Review at the Gate

I was looking at an angel.  A live white-winged, white-robed angel, standing in front of me, a closed golden gate behind, a few white cotton-ball clouds above with bright rays of sun shining through.

Yesterday I experienced a massive stroke in my apartment.  I didn’t die immediately.  It took a while, actually, but since I lived alone and it was impossible for me to move or speak, I had remained sprawled out on my floor until I died.  Now I was standing in front of an angel.

“Do you want to say anything before we begin?” the angel asked.

I swallowed and looked down.  I was still wearing the same clothes from my last day.  That struck me as odd, although really, how was I supposed to know what was odd and what wasn’t?

I looked at the angel and my new surroundings.  “This all seems a bit, um, corny, no?”

“What did you expect?” the angel replied.  “You’ve read the Bible.  Doesn’t the Bible describe it just like this?”

“I guess so.”

“Well don’t blame me if you didn’t take the Bible at face value.  You should have.  It’s all literal.  You know the story of Noah and the flood?  It really happened just like that.  And the burning bush?  And the loaves and fishes?  And Lazarus coming back from the dead?  All literal.  You and your liberal society, so supposedly enlightened.  You like to say that the Bible is just a collection of myths, no different than the stories from ancient Greece or Rome.  Well, it’s not.”

I looked back down, not sure what to say.  If I really was where it seemed I was, I certainly was not going to start a theological argument with an angel.

The angel asked again, “Do you want to say anything before we begin?”  I shook my head.  “I bet you’re feeling a bit stupid now after scoffing at right-wing fundamentalists all your life.  Never expected that they’d be right, did you?”  I shook my head again.  It was becoming clear that, whatever this was, it probably was not going to go well for me.

“Ok, well this shouldn’t take too long,” the angel began.  “We don’t have to review your whole life, just a few select incidents will suffice.  Based on what I know about you, I think the end result is a given anyway.  But you know, protocol…”

I smiled.  It was an instinctive response.  “Why am I still in these clothes?” I blurted out suddenly.

“What should you be wearing?” the angel asked.

“I don’t know, it just seems strange to still be in these clothes.”

“I just review you.  I don’t dress you.  Any more questions?”  I shook my head.  “Ok then.  First incident.  January 1973.   You were seven years old, grocery shopping with your mom.  You used to go with her every Saturday.  Sometimes you would stop for French fries and gravy first, remember?  On the day we’re talking about, at the check-out, as she was taking everything out of the buggy, you stole a chocolate bar.  Put it in your pocket without anyone seeing.  When you got home, you went to your room and ate it and loved it.  Intellectually, even at seven years old, you knew it was wrong, and you never stole anything again.  But, at that moment in time, you were completely guilt free.  What are your thoughts?”

“I don’t know, it was just a chocolate bar.  Sure, I stole it and I knew it was wrong, but I was seven!  It was a whim, a stupid impulse.  All kids steal something at some point in their lives.”

“You broke a Commandment.  Thou shall not steal.”

I shrugged.  “I was seven,” I said again softly.

“You never felt guilt.”

“No.”

“Next incident.  March 1979.  You and a friend were walking to school.  It was your first year in high school and you were feeling somewhat arrogant.  You heard a voice from behind you.  It was another friend, not a close one, more of an acquaintance really, but still someone you had known for a while.  He yelled your name, said “Hey, wait for me”.  But instead of waiting, you and your other friend started to run away.  He obviously saw you but you didn’t care.  You felt cool.  When you finally saw him at school, you could see that he was upset.  But no one ever said a word about it.”

The angel stopped speaking, looking at me emotionlessly.  I stood in silence, uncomfortable.

“Any thoughts on this?

I hesitated.  “It was a mean thing to do.  For whatever it’s worth, I did feel bad about it later.  I’ve thought about it often, to be honest.  I actually think it may have affected how much I trusted people when I got older.  But still, we were teenagers.  Teenagers do stupid things.  Seems a bit of an over-reaction if the decision on my Eternity is based on how I ran away from someone when I was a teenager.”

“We’re not talking about any ultimate decisions on your Afterlife yet.  Don’t be so dramatic.  But do you know what happened to your friend because of that incident?” the angel asked.

“No.  I never saw him again after graduation.”

“Nothing happened.  It was totally irrelevant.  He’s living a happy and completely average middle-class life with a wife and kids, much more content than you ever were.”

“So that’s good, no?  It didn’t matter then.”

“You’re right.  For him, it didn’t matter.  But it could have mattered and that’s the point.  It could have traumatized him.  You were just lucky that your friend was mentally and emotionally mature and healthy.”

I shrugged again.  I was doing a lot of shrugging.

The angel’s wings fluttered slightly.   For whatever reason, I got the feeling that it was an involuntary reaction to being frustrated with me and our conversation.  “Your wings moved,” I said.

“April 1980.  You were working at your first job as a bus-boy at a restaurant.  Your supervisor didn’t like you at all and he made you miserable.  He made fun of you, spread rumours about you, even knocked you over once or twice while you were carrying trays of dishes.  You know who I’m talking about, right?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Do you want to tell me what you did to him?  Or would you like me to continue the story?”

I didn’t say anything.  I felt the warm flush of shame on my face.

“I’ll continue then,” the angel said.  “One night, late in the shift, he was being particularly mean to you.  He had already tried to trip you once.  He had yelled at you in front of the other staff, called you an incompetent jerk.  He said he was going to get you fired.  And as he walked by after his tirade, he slapped you on the side of the head.  It didn’t hurt you but it was embarrassing and some of your co-workers laughed.  By the time you got home after work, you were furious.  Do you remember?”

I nodded.

“You didn’t sleep the entire night.  Thoughts were racing through your mind.  You had never been a vengeful person but you really wanted to get back at him somehow, right?  I’m being accurate with my description?”

“Yes, it’s accurate.”

“So you came up with a plan to shame him.  For the next three weeks, you went to work as if nothing had ever happened.  He still harassed you but you said nothing, you never complained and you didn’t react.  Since he saw that he wasn’t getting under your skin anymore, he actually calmed down and didn’t bother you as much.  He wasn’t getting any thrill because you weren’t reacting.  Still sounds right?”

I nodded and took a deep breath and exhaled.

“Once you felt that enough time had passed, you approached him.  It was at the end of a Friday night shift and you said you needed to tell him something.  He scoffed but you said it was serious so he humoured you and listened.  You told him that, a day or two after he had slapped you, you got a headache.  At first, it was mild, but it didn’t go away.  It just slowly kept getting worse, until finally you went to the doctor who did a quick examination and took a couple x-rays.  You told him that, the next day, the doctor had called you back and said you had to go to emergency immediately for more in-depth tests.  The x-rays had shown something odd.  Do you remember how he reacted to this?”

“He didn’t say anything.  But I knew he was getting nervous.  He was starting to look scared.”

“Exactly.  And you knew it and you could have stopped there.  But you kept going with your story.  You told him that you had just received the test results and they were as bad as they could be.  You said that, when he slapped you, it damaged some blood vessels in the side of your head.  A total fluke thing, the doctors said.  But it was irreparable.  The headaches would continue to get worse but the really bad news was that eventually the blood vessels would rupture.  You told him that the doctors gave you three more years to live, at the most, but that there was no way to know for sure.  Do you remember what happened next?”

“I made myself cry.”

“So clever.  It was a devious conclusion and a brilliant performance.  The perfect way to sell your lie.  He believed every word you said, the whole entire story.  The next day, you quit your job and he never saw you again.  It was quite the diabolical plan.  Ultimately ironic, too, when you think of it, since you actually did end up dying of a stroke which is caused by a burst blood vessel.  Funny how that worked out.”

The angel stopped speaking and looked at me.  I wasn’t sure if I should say anything.  There was a long gap of very uncomfortable silence.  Finally, the angel spoke again.

“Do you want to know the end result of your performance?  How it affected the rest of your co-worker’s life?”

“I guess so,” I replied.

“It was pivotal.  He never hit anyone again and the direction of his whole life changed.  He became a model citizen and a Christian minister.  The guilt and shame he felt because of what he thought he did to you changed everything.  He started searching for ways to make himself feel better and religion turned out to be the answer.  So he decided to make that his calling.  He works every day now trying to make other people feel better.  And it was all because of you.”

I didn’t know what to say.  It seemed that any response would be the wrong response.  The angel said nothing either.  Then I had a question.

“You know everything about me, right?”

“Of course.”

“So are we going to talk about anything else?  I mean, you know that I did worse things.”

“I know you did worse things, yes.  Do you want to talk about them?  Do you think there is a reason to talk about them?  You know what they are and I know what they are.  We can verbalize them if you want but, really, I don’t see the point.  As far as I’m concerned, my work with you is done.”  The angel started to turn away, wings fluttering softly.  The golden gate opened slightly.

“What do I do now?”  I asked.  “What happens now?”

The angel turned back and faced me and pointed a long delicate finger.  “Walk that way.”

“Where am I going?”

The angel showed no expression.  “You’ll know when you get there.”

Chris Klassen lives and writes in Toronto, Canada. After graduating from the University of Toronto and living for a year in France and England, he returned home and worked the majority of his career in print media. He is now living a semi-retired life. His stories have been published in Short Circuit, Unlikely Stories, Across the Margin, Fleas on the Dog, Vagabond City, Dark Winter, Literally Stories, Ghost City Review, The Raven Review and Close to the Bone.