Escaping Heaven

by Cliff Hicks

  As they lined up to file out of the auditorium, Jake caught his own reflection in the halo of the person before him, seeing himself with the gold ring atop of his head. Perhaps he was taking this blending in thing a bit far, but certainly no one would question his authoritative presence now, as he certainly looked the part of an angel. If only the angels who’d held him hostage could see him now, Jake thought to himself, he wondered what they’d have to say about this.

  * * * * *

  “When I get my hands on that miserable little shit, I’m going to spend the rest of eternity cutting him up into penny-sized bits and letting him regrow,” Randall growled. The five of them had begun hammering away at a bit of the wall in the back of the small compound they were trapped in.

  Shelly paused, wiping sweat from her brow. There was a good chunk of Heavenly stone beneath them at this point, gathered in piles of rubble. They had chosen a specific spot, one wall that was thinner than the rest, which they figured would connect them over to the next cellblock over, and begun digging. They had even talked the souls into helping, moving rubble out of the room and making things out of it. It seemed the only way to keep them distracted, since it was quite clear they weren’t doing a shift change any time soon. But, for the most part, the souls simply puttered around, doing what they were told, unaware that anything unusual was going on. The sedatives would keep them placated for up to two weeks celestial time before they would start to get antsy.

  “You’re sure this’ll get us into the next block?” Shelly asked Terence.

  “I’m sure,” he replied. “When we were constructing these blocks, these walls were cut the thinnest, and we always joked that a really determined prisoner would be able to get himself from one cellblock to another with only a year’s worth of work or so.”

  “Well we don’t have a year, now, do we?” Randall fired back, angrily. “We’ve been in here two days celestial time, by my estimate, which means in five more days, they’re going to come and get the weekly report and find no one in the goddamn control room!”

  “Relax, Randall,” James said. “Judging by the sound of the stone, we’ll be through here in another day or two, which gives us plenty of time to get someone back into place in the reporting station.

  “And how in the host would you know that?”

  James paused a second. “I was a stonecutter back on Earth.” He said it with a certain amount of solemness, a quiet tone that filled the room, even with the pounding of the hammers. None of them had talked about their time before they came to Heaven. It was something they simply didn’t do. None of them had so much as mentioned a word of it until now. James had been in Heaven the longest of the five, some three thousand years, but none of his fellow angels knew that. It was almost as if he had shared his most intimate secret with them. Their pasts were not something they discussed, because it reminded them of Earth, and each of them occasionally felt homesick for it, even if they would never admit it to anyone else.

  There was a long pause before anyone spoke again, the revelation hanging in the air uncomfortably. “I was a priest,” Byron said quietly, an almost relieved tone to his voice, as if he was finally getting something off of his chest. “Not a very good one, really, because I wasn’t certain whether or not I believed in God, but apparently I was good enough, because here I am, halo and all.”

  Shelly snorted, moving a large chunk of rock over to one side. “That has nothing to do with it and you know it.”

  “Doesn’t it?” he replied as he paused in his digging, pointing at her. “You’re so smart, what were you, then?”

  She looked away from their gaze. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Oh no you don’t, Shelly,” James said. He’d always been the one with the most volume to his voice, on the rare occasion when he wanted to employ it. “You wanted to get all high and mighty, so let’s hear your story.”

  “Isn’t there some sort of rule that we shouldn’t be talking about this?” Byron asked meekly, suddenly trying to defuse the situation even as he took a step back away from the others.

  “Isn’t there some sort of rule that we shouldn’t let our wards out while getting ourselves locked in?” Shelly snapped at him as she swung the hammer down on the wall again.

  “And whose fault was that?” James growled as he kicked at the wall, knocking a chunk of stone loose from it.

  “QUIET!” Randall boomed. The other four angels immediately fell silent, staring at him, as Randall tapped the small hammer he’d been using to slowly chip away at his section of the wall. He tapped it again, leaning his head very close to the wall. Then he paused before striking the hammer down hard, as a portion of the wall opened up, a hole giving way to a tiny view onto the other side. They could see another room, another cell, another subsection of their stockades. “Okay, go.”

  As soon as he spoke, all four of the others began again with renewed vigor, breaking open the section as fast as they could, widening the hole with efficiency, all conversation lost for the moment.

  * * * * *

  After a while, Bob had eventually found the list of contraband he was looking for, although he found himself almost wishing he hadn’t once he did. The “list” turned out to be an entire volume by itself, a seemingly endless collection of things considered improper to bring back into Heaven. Some of these things were obvious, like explosives or sexual toys. Some of them were unusual, like chocolate or soda. Some of them were just downright strange, like crayons or matches.

  He had to search through page after page, cross-referencing and building a list on a sheet of white paper he had sitting next to the massive tome. Many of his first ideas, a walkman, a radio, a record player were on the banned list, but as he started to move further down, he noticed that newer things weren’t listed. Maybe the person or persons responsible for keeping the list updated didn’t care. Maybe they didn’t notice. Or, more likely, there was no one assigned to keep it updated any more and it was passing into disuse.

  Regardless, after a few hours of skimming through every page of the book, Bob had his answer, and knew what he had to do.

  Bob would bring an iPod into Heaven.

  * * * * *

  After Jake and the other trainees had filed out of the auditorium, they’d all gone their separate ways. He didn’t feel any different. He noticed, however, that people were cutting him more room now that he had the hilt and the halo. Of course, Jake was still as lost as ever.

  He was amazed at how big Heaven seemed to be, but more importantly, how disorganized it seemed to be, especially in terms of layout. It seemed like Heaven was a series of wings, each sort of hobbled together at the very last minute, with no real thought or planning going into each one. While one block would have “residencies” (as he learned the cellblocks were called in the center), in another they would form an outer perimeter and in another they would be divided up into many sections. There was no consistent floor plan. Some of them seemed to have even just been made up as they went along, with hallways that dead-ended with no discernible purpose at all.

  No one block was at all like another, with only a few commonalities between all of them. They were all ridiculously white, they all were teeming with people, no one seemed to be in charge, very few people came and went, they all contained the same basic make up, none of them had any direct link out of… wherever Heaven was, exactly, and no one really seemed to talk much about the other blocks, other than processing and control. It wasn’t that it bothered them; they simply didn’t care.

  Processing, Jake figured, was the main channel that he’d been brought in through, although he had a hard time remembering many of the actual details of their transport into Heaven. It was mostly blacked out by the memories of the long lines, the ridiculous paperwork and the other annoying souls, none of whom he’d seen since.

  And Control, well, lots of people seemed to know about Control, but the one time he’d asked how to get to Control, he’d gotten a rather suspicious looking stare,
and so he’d made himself scarce rather quickly. But Control seemed to be the place he was looking for, if he couldn’t find his way to Processing.

  Control was where all the orders came from, although there wasn’t any specific protocol to how orders came down, Jake had determined. He’d talked about having “orders from Control” more than once now in his attempts to deal with obstinate people, and mostly they just wilted away and gave up all resistance. They hadn’t asked for papers, they hadn’t asked for who the orders came from, they simply took his statement at face value and gave him a wide berth. So if he couldn’t find a way out, Control would definitely be where he was looking to get, if for no other reason than to have a chat with God about what a mess Heaven was.

  He also wondered why he no longer had trouble understanding foreign languages. It had dawned on him when he’d been in the middle of the orientation that one of them had been speaking a foreign language. Still, even though the person had been speaking in a foreign language, he’d still heard it as English. He wondered when that had happened and why he hadn’t noticed it before, but chalked it up to the daze he’d been in since his arrival.

  “Stop! Runner!” someone shouted. For an instant, Jake’s heart skipped a beat, wondering how they had finally figured out he wasn’t supposed to be loose. But the moment passed when looked over his shoulder. There was a young man, barely out of his teens, barreling at Jake at top speed, with a group of three pursuer angels (Taggers, Jake remembered they were called) running behind him, their swords out. Jake could tell the young man hadn’t seen the sword hilt on his belt otherwise he might have changed directions. With a slight turn and whip of his arm, Jake clotheslined the kid, knocking him down to his feet. As much as it pained him to send someone back to detention, it was either the kid or Jake, because his cover would be blown if he wasn’t careful. The kid had been running straight at him, and if Jake hadn’t done something, it would have been obvious that something about him was amiss.

  The kid scrambled, struggling to get back up before Jake drew his sword, pointing it downward at the kid, holding it level at the young man’s face. He was scrawny, a shock of black hair pointing every which way, and pale, with deep blue eyes that were imploring Jake to let him go. “Forget it, kid,” Jake said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “You… you don’t understand! You don’t know what it’s like!” the boy whimpered, staring up the sword at Jake. He looked like he was about ready to cry, his body shivering and shaking in fear.

  All three of the Taggers closed in on Jake and the boy, glaring down at him. The three angels all looked better built, and angrier than Jake, who was doing his best to stay calm. The kid wasn’t moving, so Jake figured they would simply grab the kid and drag him away.

  They didn’t.

  One of the three, the most built of the three, lifted his sword up in the air and brought it down, slicing the boys legs off, with one clean cut. Jake jumped back suddenly, letting his thumb slide off the gem on the hilt, his blade vanishing as the boy beneath him screamed, realizing the cut had been made, although he felt no pain. “What the hell did you do that for?” Jake demanded.

  “So he can’t run no more,” the Tagger replied with a toothy grin. “Besides, you know they’ll just grow back.” The angels descended upon the boy, picking up the main portion of him, taking up the legs as well. “He’ll be fine in a week or two. It all grows back in the end.” The burly lead angel sized Jake up, shaking his head. “Lemme guess. Rookie on beat detail.”

  Seeing his opportunity to dispel suspicion, Jake leapt on it. “Yeah, just had preliminary training this morning,” he answered. Two of the angels were carrying off the boy while the lead angel stayed to chat with Jake a bit longer, nodding his head.

  “Basic training? Basic incompetence is more like it. They still don’t teach the important things down here. Heaven help us, we have to learn it all as we go. Don’t worry though, son,” the Tagger said, slapping a big hand against Jake’s back, nearly knocking him off his feet. “You’ll get paired up with a partner, and he’ll teach you the ropes quick enough. Those two you saw with me? Why not more than a century ago, they were total wet-behind-the-ears rookies just like you. And if they can be whipped into shape, well then, I don’t have any fears for you. You look like a smart young man.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Jake said. Humility was going to get him through this, if anything did. Smile, nod, look attentive, as if trying to absorb every bit of knowledge instead of looking like he was just trying to keep the guy busy until he could find a way to beat a swift retreat. Play the part, he told himself. Be the inquisitive rookie who wants to know everything he can, so he can grow up big and strong and train into one of the heartless killers who just cut a defenseless kid in half. It was just another role, a different form of confidence, and if this was what it took to stay under the radar, so be it. He drew his breath as he tried to focus himself. “So he’ll just regrow those legs?”

  “Yeah, that’s why we tell all the rookies to be violent. It’s not that we’re mean at heart,” the Tagger said as he turned to spit into the white floor beneath them. Of course, the spit vanished before it hit the ground. “It’s just the easiest way to subdue a perpetrator. These runners will give it as much as they’ve got, Heaven only knows why, and it’s our job to stop them. So if that means cutting off their legs, arms, or even beheading them, then by God, son, you’re gonna do what needs to be done. A few hours and it’ll all just grow back, and a few weeks past that and they’ll have forgotten it was ever gone in the first place.”

  “Forgotten?” Jake, of course, knew about the lulling sweets, but was curious to see if angel training was as haphazard as the rest of this place.

  The burly angel nodded, his hand still resting on Jake’s shoulder, making him nervous. The man had such huge hands, Jake felt like his whole head would easily fit inside of one. “Almost all the population up here is kept passive. Maybe it’s soundwaves, maybe it’s the food, maybe it’s in the air – I dunno.” Jake had to try and not laugh, because sure enough, the Tagger hadn’t the slightest idea about something they had spelled out very clearly for him in basic training. But if the Tagger was as old as he claimed, perhaps they weren’t talking about it then. Or, more likely Jake figured, the training was just sloppy and each training session was cobbled together at the very last minute. (This seemed infinitely more likely.) The burly angel continued. “But something about Heaven keeps the majority of people nice and docile, just like we like ’em. Every so often, though, for some reason, one of ’em goes rogue and decides they think they can do better than Heaven.” He snorted, derisively. “Like that’s gonna happen. I mean, come on, this is Heaven!”

  The very phrase sent a chill down Jake’s spine. It seemed obvious in retrospect – there was always some form of control that made people simply passive to whoever was giving some form of leadership, so all the people in the cells with him hadn’t been mindless idiots on Earth – they were simply pacified by something or someone here. And Jake wasn’t. And it couldn’t have just been the sweets either. The people in line had all seemed so docile, so well behaved. Anyone in a line that long would get unruly. It was basic human nature.

  There had been something disturbing him from the moment he had arrived in Heaven and now he knew exactly what it was. He was different. It was a frightening realization. He was the freak in Heaven. If only he’d been like everyone else, he wouldn’t have been… no, he told himself. That was no way to think. He was the lucky one. He was the one who saw the strings on the puppets and refused to have his pulled. “Yeah,” Jake agreed. “Seriously.” He paused for a minute, and struggled to find any conversation thread he could before the Tagger could ask questions, and defaulted on the only bit of gossip he had at his disposal. “So did you hear this whole thing about Lucif…”

  “Shh!” the angel interrupted, hushing him. “Of course I’ve heard. What, you think I’m deaf? But the last thing we need is one of the big guys getting wi
nd about it. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I sure as Heaven don’t want to go war with a great big army of evil just because we happened to find it. If no one says anything, maybe people will pretend like no one saw it. I’d rather they’d never even heard of the bastard. I wish they would stop talking about it, otherwise Michael’s going to find out, and God only knows how many of us he’ll send into the fray.”

  “What’s the matter, tough guy?” Jake said, punching the angel’s bicep. “I thought a warrior like you would love a standup fight.” He was falling into this role nicely, and the Tagger he was talking to didn’t seem to suspect anything unusual about him.

  “You know what they say – when Heaven and Hell fight, everyone loses, nobody wins. I’ve heard stories about the last one. Not a lot, mind you, but every so often, Michael will get wound up and tell a tale of the Last Great Battle, and let me tell, that scares the willies out of me. Because if you’re killed by a Blade of Hell, nothing can save you. There’s no coming back from that.”

  Jake paused a minute, peering at the angel. “What do you mean by ‘no coming back’ anyway?”

  The Tagger peered back at Jake with a curious expression. “You really are green, aren’t you? Anyone who’s killed by a Blade of Hell has their corporeal form dissipated. They’re gone as in gone forever.”

  “Gone where? How do you kill a dead spirit? Or an angel?”