When I was six I knew that when I slept a witch came with a rattling shopping cart to carry me off to the land of dreams.
About the afterlife I had no questions. I knew that when I died the shopping cart would ascend through all the invisible worlds, which were stacked one on top of the other, like a multi-storey parking garage.
Actually two parking garages. One was Heaven and the other, Hell. Heaven was on the left. Sometimes. Other times it was on the right.
That was the problem. Heaven and Hell kept switching places. You had to be very careful not to choose the wrong one and wind up in Hell by mistake. Needless to say, Hell put on a good show. At the edges it looked absolutely splendid. What you saw was a woman sipping a cocktail beside a pool full of gentlemen. It wasn’t until too late, until you’d already chosen, that you saw the cocktail was molten lead, the pool was pus and the men were all talkers with big opinions and no genitals. You had to look carefully and try not to get dizzy, as the devil offered you unlimited free pinball machines.
Heaven, on the other hand, was honest and humble, and generally lost out.I looked, and waited, and tried to decide. Meanwhile, my shopping cart kept going higher.
Where was I headed? I hadn’t a clue. Only the cart knows where it is going, up higher and higher, someplace unimaginable.
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