Something Happened On The Way To Heaven

DATELINE: THE PEARLY GATES - May 15, 2007

Admittance into the vast kingdom of heaven (a concept as yet unproved and taken, for the purposes of this story, by this reporter on faith) was delayed for hours today, while the administrators of paradise scrambled to find records relating to one Jerry Falwell, who earlier today passed out of the earthly realm and ascended, at least at first, toward the pearly gates and his supposedly preordained place at the right hand of that magic carpenter.

A massive bookkeeping error was uncovered when it was learned that all of the material related to Falwell had been awaiting express elevator shipment to hell upon his death. When this reporter inquired as to why the records had even been stored temporarily in the upper realm, he was referred to a spokesangel for the carpenter, who said that the carpenter had grown weary of rerouting the daily calls - all spoken in a quite loud tone of voice - from Falwell, who insisted on being heard, more often and more loudly than even the most ardent of his own followers.

Instead of taking time to reroute the calls through the Kansas switchboard and straight down to the Styx network, the carpenter simply took the calls (his capacity for patience, at least, seems to have been accurately described in his dad’s earthly bestseller) and then rerouted them later, at his leisure, into his Pensieve. As the Pensieves filled, he stacked them neatly into cupboards, apparently hoping that the inanity of the missives would vanquish some of the Boggarts that have been bothering him of late.

As word from earth began to reach heaven that Falwell was on his last legs, the carpenter enlisted the help of twelve of his lackeys to remove the Pensieves from the cupboards and stack them in the express freight elevator to hell, where they would be met by the body of Falwell and transported to his actual preordained resting place, Fiery Roasting Spit #666, nestled right between Hitler and Ken Lay, across the aisle from the one reserved for Osama bin Laden, which should have been occupied long ago, except that no one earth can seem to locate him.

The desk clerk, one St. Peter, had the unenviable task of informing Mr. Falwell upon his arrival at the Pearly Gates and the hearing of his petition for entry (which was so loud that most of the other officials in the administrative section of the front room ran for cover, leaving the unfortunate Mr. St. Peter to deal with Falwell alone), that he was, in fact, going to hell.

Falwell then got very red in the face, and thundered around the place, booming at the top of his voice, and very nearly raising Cain, so to speak. Finally, the carpenter had to be called, and Falwell began to quiet down. The carpenter put his arm around Jerry, and walked him back toward the light - this one a bright red beam, leading down at quite the steep angle - and said, “Jerry, Jerry, Jerry...what am I going to do with you?” And Jerry replied, “Accept me into your kingdom, Lord. I have waited for all of my life for this moment. I lie prostrate at your feet.”

And the carpenter leapt backward in revulsion and cried, “Jerry! Get up, you frog! Sully not my presence with your clumsy prostrations!” And behold, for the voice of the carpenter was greater and boomed more than even the voice of Falwell, powered by all of that hot, empty air. “But...my Lord,” Jerry said, tears welling in his eyes, at a loss for words for the first time in his - well, for the first time ever, anyway. “There is no one here for you to save with your brand of poisonous hate speech, Jerry.” And then he pointed at the red light. “Go to hell.”

And it would have been a sad sight, had it not been so funny - to watch Jerry Falwell, that subhuman gasbag, moping away from the white and looking up with teary, haunted eyes at the approach of the dark and dreary red (which seemed to be radiating a not inconsiderable amount of heat). The carpenter watched him go, and then turned back to St. Peter and snapped his fingers. “Double time, soldier!” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the departing Falwell. “His followers are marked now. That should cut down on the processing time, and the paperwork." St. Peter waited until the carpenter had turned his back, then rolled his eyes and bent to his desk, eyeing the line of souls awaiting admission or rejection. “The hell with marking them,” he muttered. “This would go a lot faster if you would just me do some miracles now and then.” And then he grabbed a blank form and looked up. “Next!” The first soul asked after Jerry, and St. Peter saw the mark on this new soul’s forehead. “No salvation for you!” he cried, and pointed toward the red.

(Disclaimer: I made all of that up, except the part about Jerry Falwell being an asshole who is going to burn in hell. That part is true. Well...it’s sort of true. He was an asshole. Now he’s dead. Also, if Jo Rowling ever wanders in here and takes umbrage at my use of certain words that she came up with, I'll gladly remove them.)

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