Short Story: A Special Place In...

This is something I wrote in 2010 shortly after a record number of LGBT youth had committed suicide.  It was my response to the pain they had felt, and what I feel is deserved for those who caused it. 

Milton Knox opened his eyes to see nothing but the clear blue sky and the sun shining down on him.  He didn’t know at first why it wasn’t raining any more, but it seemed clear something had happened.  As the car had crashed into the side of a ravine and skidded off the road, flipping on itself, his first thought was how he was going to hurt.  It didn’t quite turn out that way, though.  He didn’t hurt at all.  In fact, his small aches and pains of arthritis were gone, along with the gnawing headache that had distracted him so much it had caused the accident in the first place.

The 48-year-old man stood up from the unusually soft surface he had been lying on and simply stared in wonder.  He was there…he had made it there.  For a moment the full meaning of his view was lost in the simple sense of self-righteous pride.  He had been right to fight for so many years to condemn the evil ways of those who would defy God’s word.

As the husky southern man moved towards the line of men and women milling around in night clothes, business shirts, and other less fortunate choices for one’s last outfit he thought about his many years of sacrifice.  And he had sacrificed a lot more than anyone who knew him had ever known.  The disappearance of Milton’s son hadn’t been so much a disappearance as it was a mishap in one of his attempts to cure the young man of the perversion he was afflicted with.  But it was God’s will to keep the facility running and he accepted it.  He never mentioned the relief he felt in no longer having to be burdened with him.  He had lost his wife and years of time to the cause. All that was over now.  Now he would reap the rewards for doing God’s work.

“Excuse me, Milton?” A man’s soft and distant-sounding voice said.  Milton turned to see what could only be called an angel.  He was a tall slender man with white fluffy wings on his back.  The white robe had a gold cord at the waist hanging in a somewhat off center way.  The look of him seemed so perfect.

“Yes,” the word came out so softly.  He was in awe of the being that stood in front of him.

“Where are you going?”  The angelic man asked looking down on the newest arrival.

“I need to get in line,” Milton looked at the angel and wondered why it wasn’t obvious to him.

“No, no,” the creature shook his head, smiling down on the man.  “You don’t need to go there.”

Milton stared at the angel as if he didn’t make sense. “But I have to meet St. Peter.”

The man smiled and began to walk past the crowd of men and women waiting in line. “There are some people whose deeds on earth are so obvious they don’t need to be judged first.”

Milton walked behind and worked to catch up with the stunning man.  He couldn’t help but gloat a little.  He had done such good work in his life that he could actually pass the whole process of being judged.  “What’s your name?”

“Well,” the angel smiled, looking down at the man as they passed golden bars that seemed to tower higher and higher, “it’s not really easy for people like you to say. I go by Ron to those like you.”

There was something strange in his words.  Though still said in that mesmerizing distant voice, they seemed condescending…but Milton wasn’t about to argue with an angel.  As they walked, the newly-dead man looked past the gold bars to a truly idealized world.  The grass couldn’t be greener.  The sky shone with such beauty Milton just stared in wonder.  Men and women of all ages and races seemed to be moving from one joy to the next.  It was so wondrous Milton missed the most obvious things.

They walked for what felt like hours, tracing around what seemed like a huge enclosure.  As he looked on he saw different scenes.  One even had dogs running up and down with men, women, girls, and boys playing with them with love and affection.

“Yes, the dogs who’ve been abused and tortured wind up here, especially those who were never shown love in their life.”  Ron smiled, looking in on the people laughing with the animals. “The people who gave such tireless care in life spend their time here showing them how love is supposed to work.  Of course the people can come and go as they wish and even invite others to visit.”

“Their time here?”  Milton wasn’t a believer in reincarnation.

Ron smiled again. It seemed to be his general response to things. “Well, some people and animals aren’t done living. They’ll be reborn.  Until then they can live out their greatest fantasies.”

It wasn’t something Milton had thought worthy of its own special Heaven, but perhaps it was more to keep the dogs away from those who hated them.  That did make sense.

After passing huge areas that didn’t seem to have any conventional barrier between one and another, the two travelers found what looked like a gold brick shed in the fencing.  Ron opened a wooden door with a set of gold keys and walked through, his wings giving a small flutter.  “Come on.”

It seemed he was coming in the back way, but again, Milton didn’t question. He had never questioned the divine in his life and wasn’t about to in death.  He passed in and the small room suddenly seemed huge.

Ron seemed to float up high in the now unbelievably tall building, as though searching for something.  As he did, Milton looked around and noted the door suddenly seemed huge.  How could it have gotten so tall?

The angel came down with a set of chains and a pair of large scissor-like trimmers. “Now, let’s get you fitted out.”

The statement brought the man to a panic.  He wanted to cry out but suddenly found he had no mouth.  He saw Ron wasn’t still flying. The angelic man stood tall above him. Ron was at least four feet taller than Milton now. He had shrunk and now couldn’t even speak.

Ron worked to put on the chains which held the right arm to the left leg and the left arm to the right leg. “There’s no point in panicking.  Everything will make sense if you just calm down.”

Again the conditioning that said not to question kicked in and he followed the angel out another door.  This time he was in a vast verdant field.  Tall trees, ripe with fruits of all types, stood in small clumps.  The lush green grass was covered in flowers of every variety, and each bush was filled to the brim with either ripe berries or more flowers.

The angel looked on the space with obvious pride. “It’s our newest addition, and I think it’s just perfect.”

Then Milton noticed the people, and with horror he recognized some of them.  He had protested their funerals.  One young man was in a passionate embrace with another man, kissing while lying on a bed of grass near a tree.  It was his son.

“Yes,” Ron laughed at the man. “You finally figured it out.  I told you it’d make perfect sense.”  Ron looked down at Milton, his face just as angelic, but with a sense of retribution in him.  “You know the saying, ‘there’s a special place in Heaven’?  It’s used to mean that some people who’ve survived certain things, or have done incredible good, deserve something extra special when they die.”  He had a wistful smile as if he were remembering something sad but was now happy with the outcome.  Staring at a rainbow arc in the sky, he said, “This is that special place in heaven for those who died for being gay, fought for the welfare of gays, or were driven to kill themselves for being gay.”  With a cold and now unyielding glare the angel continued. “It’s also the special place in Hell for those who sent them here, and those who made the fight even necessary.”

Milton had been so lost in disgust and anger he hadn’t noticed the effect, but when he tried to back up he did.  His chains had shortened as he grew angrier at the sight.

“It never ceases to amaze me how you can be walked over here under guard and never question why or how.  Perhaps if you had actually done a bit more questioning in your life you could have been able to enjoy a loving and devoted son instead of watching him in his afterlife.  You would have seen the utter stupidity in what you did.”  Ron smiled, walking Milton to a set of shrubs near where his son was beginning to make love to the young man in the grass.  “As long as the words you say are those of hate, you’ll have no voice.  As long as your hands are used to harm, you’ll be unable to affect anything more than the grooming of the garden.  And as long as your heart is filled with hate, your chains will grow shorter to keep your movement hampered.  Welcome to eternity.”

Ron walked off, giving his last word. “They will never see you.  Even if he saw you he wouldn’t recognize you. His memory has been washed of all pain.”

Ron roamed the grounds after introducing his newest member.  During the burning times gays lived with those who had been persecuted for witchcraft since their fates had been the same.  They hadn’t wanted anything special then, just peace and freedom.  In the Holocaust, the gays went with those who had been killed in the concentration camps.  Their deaths had brought unity and no one cared.  Ron enjoyed going to see the people enjoying plenty of good food and good wine, and having the chance to practice, as they saw fit, all the things the Torah required.

Ron liked visiting the special places in Heaven.  He smiled at the human word.  It wasn’t what they called this place, but humans thought of it that way and it was a nice idea.  He smirked at the miniature Nazis in their uniforms forced to help maintain the things needed to practice Judaism.  The little KKK members in their stupid white cloaks kept the grounds for those who died during slavery and up into the civil rights movement.  There were still some of both trickling in.  The lovely music playing there with such rich diversity made it a true paradise.

The sheer arrogance of each person who had gone out of his or her way to cause so much harm never failed to astound Ron.  All of the men and women who kept the grounds were convinced that, of all the faiths in the world, they and they alone had gotten it right.  The utter lack of concern for their fellow man was more than he could stand, and he had stood a lot in his six thousand years.

Ron walked up a path leading to a hill where the newest members of this space lounged talking and laughing.  They had only been there a year, and no matter how great this corner of Heaven was it brought the fury out in the angel.  The youngest was only thirteen.  When he reached the spot he smiled at the boys and girls making small talk.  He unfurled his wings and flew into the sky past the rainbow.

The youngest of them stared off at the angel in awe and wonder.  The pain of his life was over.  He didn’t remember that part.  Only that in the end he found himself here.  He missed his parents though, and thought about the day when he could show them this wonderful place.  He felt the regret of not living a full and happy life even in this paradise.  They all did. The children filled their time with ventures out into the rest of Heaven, inviting people in to see the new place they called home.