The short cut
b
y patty ©2004

Gillian was beside herself, “Forty centuries in purgatory,” the man told her. “And then, your case would come up for review by the parole board? All things would be weighed again.”

“How will I stand it here through all that time? It’s so boring, and wretched!” Gillian had existed there, and wandered the streets for a week already. Every time she turned a corner, someone came around and bumped into her, or opened a door in her face, or cars splashed her driving through puddles. Every time she lay down to sleep, the phone rang, or the kids next door started a pillow fight. Forty centuries of every thing that could go wrong, going wrong, and every conceivable inconvenience cropping up every where she went no matter how brightly she tried to smile? “Please God! Give me another chance!”

“I wasn’t even all that bad! Was I?” She’d gone back and asked the sad little man, Saint Peter, at the gate that question several times now. All he’d ever say was, “Pittance child, pittance.” Gillian wanted to throttle him.

“Four thousand years? Just for being occasionally cranky? Taking a few dollars from under the seat cushions at the neighbor’s? Shoplifting a few lipsticks and some cashew nuts? Maybe telling a few lies to my husband? For that forty centuries is pittance? What would I get if I was a murderer, or robbed banks?” she sobbed and wailed when it seemed like the saint showed her no empathy.

Finally this last time, instead of the empathy and loophole she was hopping for, what she’d gotten was a booming reprimand that made her shrivel.

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“You young lady have never once accepted responsibility for your capacity to affect others’ feelings. You have bulldozed through your life expecting everyone to serve you, or make allowances for you. For that you will spend a mere fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a pittance of eternity experiencing the inconvenience of time and circumstance on someone else’s terms.”

“But?But? I wasn’t THAT bad?” she’d whimpered and cringed.

“You were worse than that bad!” came the withering answer.

“But? Can’t I have a do over? Or a make up exam? I went to church didn’t I? I gave to charity! I fed stray animals!” Gillian complained. “I died young didn’t I? Can’t I have some credit for not getting to finish my life?”

“Those things have already been weighed in your favor. There are no do-overs here!” Saint Peter was intractable. He was worse than that mean old crotchety teacher in grade three who wouldn’t let her cry her way out of trouble like all the other teachers and baby sitters and adults had done. “Your life ended because you didn’t take time to listen. You rudely bulldozed through a roadblock because you didn’t have time for it, and you got in the way of a policemen doing his job. Your self centered, bossy, nose in the air habits caused you to get in the way of that train. And just look and think! Even in dying you were selfish. That poor policeman will always wonder what else he could have done to protect you and save you from yourself!”

“But nobody’s ever done this to me before? I can always talk my way out of a jam! Why are you being so mean to me?”

“You lived 40 years of shrewish selfishness. For that you have been given 40 centuries to experience the wake of lives like the one you lived!”

The cloud Gillian stood on started to darken and rumble under her feet, and Saint Peter’s expression got even darker. Her petulant posturing and tears were making a thunderstorm for those on earth. Saint Peter warned her that she might get another century tacked on if she didn’t cut it out.

“Gillian use this time wisely. If you are a smart girl you will learn this! Good people don’t get out of jams! Good people make amends for getting themselves into them! Good people don’t expect others to fix their troubles and hardships for them. Good people fix it themselves. There are NO short cuts Gillian. You will have to learn that lesson before your soul can be forgiven.” Saint Peter had gotten an odd look in his eye, and he hesitated just a few minutes before continuing. “Be warned little girl. Loopholes in heaven always have strings attached. You may be tempted by short cuts. But just remember God is merciful and he has given you the most merciful choice first.”

Gillian had kept her tongue and done her best to show the aggravated man deference, but something he’d said to her kept resonating. “Short cuts?” He’d said, “She [sic] may be tempted by shortcuts.”

“How do I find a short cut?” she asked herself the next afternoon, after surviving a terrible morning when she was woken an hour early by the newspaper hitting her window instead of the front step. She’d only just gotten to sleep thanks to the loud party next door. There’d been no coffee and the cream was sour, so she had to go buy some. And then she’d missed the bus and ended up having to stand all the way to the store and back because it was rush hour. The girl behind the counter was rude to her, and then a nasty kid ran over her foot with a bike, and the mother just laughed. “I don’t dare go back and ask Saint Peter and ask,” she worried.

Knowing it was going to be a hopeless afternoon, but anything would be better than listening to the squabbling children above her and the horny promiscuous couple getting it on next door, Gillian put on her coat and went out for a walk.

Her mind was spinning. “Forty centuries! Four thousand years of nothing to do but be stressed out and inconvenienced by everyone else’s lives! If I was alive, I’d kill myself!”

In the park there were more kids throwing balls in her way, playing in mud puddles that splashed her. There were rude women walking past her elbowing her off the path. Gillian was all set to sit down on a bench, and cry, when she saw a poster wrapped around a lamppost.

Are you in for minor life crimes? Rude insensitive acts? Forget a few courtesies? Piss off a few good men?

Are you looking to shorten your stay? Is God’s term for you too long? Is Purgatory getting you down?

We can help!

Guaranteed! Sentence reductions of up to thirty centuries or you don’t pay!

Give us a call
Pragmatic Purgatory Incorporated
968 227 3277

Pay your corporeal debts with our temporally shortened corporal program

Gillian didn’t see the small print on the bottom left of the poster she was thrilled that a short cut had cropped up so quickly. Feeling like she was being watched, and was cheating, she tiptoes over to the poster, and tore off one of the small tags that had the phone number on it. Turning it over in her hand she read a cryptic note on the back, but made no connection between it and the number. “You bare ass?” she shrugged, and then pocketed the paper and turned back to return to her small apartment and the telephone.

The phone was answered in one ring. The person on the other end of the line was polite. No excuses, no problems. She could name the time, and they would have a car there for her with no hassles. First thing the next morning? Of course! No problems. Shall we pick up breakfast for you?

It was like a dream! “This is so great!” she rubbed her hands together thinking things were on the up swing. That night it didn’t matter that there was a parade and fire works that kept her awake. And when the paper actually broke through her front window twenty minutes before her alarm went off she just laughed. “I’m getting out of here!” She repeated over and over again.

The limousine was on time as promised. Breakfast was exquisite. Gillian hardly felt like the vehicle was moving as she ate and enjoyed the ride to the offices. The suites were masculine and smelled of sandalwood. “Mmmmmm very earthy,” Gillian smiled. It was the first time she’d felt alive since dying.

Not even a second after the scheduled minute, the large door to the main office opened, and a tall very handsome man came through to the waiting area. Gillian didn’t even have the inconvenience of having to stand back up, as she hadn’t yet had a chance to seat herself. The man offered her a huge, well-manicured hand in a firm handshake, and gestured her gracefully into his space.

“Oh my! This is beautiful!” Gillian exclaimed as she scanned the expanse of windows beyond his desk. Each looked out over a different vista of the world. The Grand canyon and the Rockies beyond it, The Alps and Paris and London, Australia and the beautiful pacific islands. All of it could be seen.

“Let’s get down to business shall we Gillian,” the man smiled.

“Yes please!” Gillian was excited and encouraged.

“Shall we review your debt load first,” he opened a large ledger, and gestured for Gillian to sit where she could also see the pages.

Before her eyes, her life flashed. Every petty crime, nasty motive, gesture and act played out. Above the scenes the pages revealed, a clock ticked a various speeds. It accumulated days and years as each event and day of her life played by. The meaner she was that faster the chronometer spun. The nicer she was, the slower it scrolled. “What’s that?” she asked pointing to the quickly spinning numbers.

“That dear lady is the interest rate on unpaid favors and borrowed courtesies,” the man’s voice was seductive, caressing her ears like velvet.

“Oh,” she swooned her answer.

“As you can see, while your life progressed, you accumulated significant debt just in interest alone,” he tipped his head and raised his eyebrow with a stern fatherly shake of his head, as he flipped the last page closed.

“So how do I pay it back faster?” Gillian asked.

“We have three programs,” the tall dark man answered stepping out from behind the desk and hooked one leg over the edge sitting next to her where his seductive presence was even more intoxicating. “All of them let you pay down you pay down your temporal debt faster and guarantee that you will obtain the same soul saving lesson in the end.”

“How?” Gillian asked.

“You simply choose an alternative payment plan. One with shall we say equivalent consequences but a much accelerated rate of learning. We let you substitute the temporal lesson God wants you to learn with one more corporeally suited to your crimes.”

“How is it faster?”

“Well my dear, since the consequences you will agree to suit your crimes more appropriately in the physical sense, your learn your lessons more efficiently.”

“OK how do I start?” Gillian asked.

“First you choose one of the three plans, and then you sign the contract with your finger print in blood.”

“Blood?”

“Don’t be afraid. You’ll hardly feel a thing. Just a prick and a roll of your finger on the parchment, and it is done.”

“Show me the plans please,” Gillian was becoming more anxious, and as a result testy.

“Patience little one.Patience!” The man smiled and waved her toward the window on the left of the room. “Behold! The plan with the shortest pay down. You will be able to leave purgatory in less than a century, your debts fully paid, and your soul cleansed of all guilt.

Through the window, Gillian watched as a figure that looked like her was lead through a fiery pit, and then striped of her clothes. A cat of nine tails was laced across her back, and she was pushed into a chain gang to crush the sulfur and brimstone needed to stoke the fires of hell.

Gillian gulped. “A century in hell? Oh my! Was I that bad?”

“Sadly Gillian my dear that is not for me to say,” the man smiled softly.

“Gee whiz! You know, Saint Peter could use some lessons in empathy from you,” she smiled back. “Can I see the other options?”

“Certainly.”

In the next window, smoke and fog billowed away, and the ocean spray washed over it. Again Gillian saw herself whipped with a cat of 9 tails, but this time she was left tied to the posts while that salt water seared her broken skin. When the boat landed she was off loaded, and dragged to a platform where with many others she was sold. Taken from the platform by a cruel master she was herded along cobblestone streets all the way lashed with a leather strap. At the destination, she was put to work naked cleaning and working in the Master’s house.

“Slavery!?” she gasped. “For how long?”

“Two hundred years.”

Gillian’s throat was dry. Four thousand years might not be so bad after all. “And my last choice?”

The man gestured to the last block of windows. Below it an expanse of beautiful countryside was revealed, and a wagon train meandered toward the mountains. Gillian saw herself holding the reins behind a team of horses. A tall man on horse back seemed to be speaking to her. He wore a smile and looked very much like that of the man she was with now.

The scene drew her in. She watched herself and the party she was with. “How is that purgatory?” she asked after several minutes. “It looks like heaven!”

“It is a hard life. One you would live without conveniences, and with all of the hardships of the frontier.”

“For how long?”

“Three centuries,” The man lifted a brow, as if to warn her there was more.

“That’s all? But that’s almost too easy!” she exclaimed. “There must be a catch?”

“There is one Gillian,” the man nodded.

“OK what?”

“The man there? The one who will be your guardian and partner, he is uncompromising, and sworn to see to your lessons.”

“What kinds of lessons?”

“Humility, obedience and selflessness, everything you shunned and failed to learn in life. He will see to them dutifully and he will be stern with you if you fail to learn.”

“But he seems so nice?” Gillian questioned.

“He is, and he will be. If you learn quickly, your three centuries will be pleasant. If you don’t, they may prove to be harsh and even painful.”

“Could I be killed by Indians or something?” she asked, curious about how such a pastoral image could become so very harsh.

“No Gillian, you will live to experience every measure of your debt. Remember it will be paid in full.”

“And this choice will see to it the debt can be paid in three centuries instead of forty?” she queried.

The dark man frowned and nodded.

“OK,” Gillian decided. “That is my choice. Where do I sign?”

“You are certain? You don’t want to watch longer?”

Gillian looked down at the scene. The man in the saddle seemed a little more animated, and she seemed to be pouting there on her wagon seat, but nothing was particularly amiss as far as she could see.

“This one,” she decided firmly. “I’ll have this one.”

“This one it is,” the dark man transformed in front of her. He was the man on horse back, only now he was holding a sharp needle and parchment. “Your blood will seal it.”

Gillian grimaced and gave him her hand. He pricked her finger. The pain seared deeply seeming to reach deep into her. “Oh my! That is awful!”

“That is your soul offering itself to the promise you make now! Fail to learn and it is forfeit. Do you understand that?” he asked her.

“Forfeit?” she suddenly had second thoughts, and tried to pull her hand away.

“If you fail to pay your debts, to learn the lessons you flaunted in life, you will be doomed to eternity in Hades. Surely Saint Peter told you that?”

“Oh that,” Gillian smiled. “Oh I thought it was something worse.”

“Worse than damnation?” the man’s countenance darkened.

“Well I did say I would pay my debts didn’t I? I just want to do it faster than in 40 centuries.” She reasoned.

“The debt will be paid Gillian. Faster does not mean easier.” There was warning in his tone. “Before you fix your print to this paper and bind yourself to this contract, think it over carefully. I will help you tend to your soul as if mine depended on it. Make no mistake.”

Gillian growled with impatience. She snatched her hand from his, and pressed her finger down onto the rough paper. Her print flamed as soon as she lifted her hand from the page. The room dissolved around her. In a blink of an eye she found herself lurching along in the wagon.

“Look at me when I speak to you wife!” her husband bellowed.

“Hey now! There’s no need to yell at me like that you old poop! I can hear you I’m dead not deaf!”

The horses stopped, and so did the wagon. Gillian flicked the reins, but the horses wouldn’t answer. “Gideup! You stupid animals! Gideup!” she yelled when they still didn’t respond.

Her husband was off his horse, and had taken the reins from her.

“Step down from there wife! We will see to your manners.”

“What? What do you mean my manners? I haven’t done anything wrong at all!”

“Do not argue! Get down!”

Gillian winced a little with the sharpness of his tone of voice. And then something struck her as funny. “Sir? If you are my husband and I am your wife, for the next three hundred years? How is it I don’t know your name?”

“I am Jacob. Obey me wife, or you will wish you had!”

Gillian sighed with a put upon huff, and turned to trounce down off the seat. Jacob caught her, and yanked her hard over to a fallen tree trunk. When he got there, he pulled her down across his lap.

“So wife, you will have an extra spanking today will you?” he announced as he pushed her skirts up revealing her bare bottom underneath.

“What? Extra? Spanking? What are you taking about?” Gillian struggled to get back up.

“Yes extra. Your debt can be paid with two spankings a day for three centuries. But if you fail to behave you will have extra. That is the case today wife. You have misbehaved.”

“Oh no!” Gillian couldn’t believe it. “Who said anything about spanking?”

“Of course you read the fine print on our poster? Corporal alternatives to temporal punishments, and surely you grasped the double meaning of our phone number? 968 227 3277 you bare ass?”

“No! I didn’t!” Gillian squealed as Jacob’s hand branded into her bare bottom.

“No matter now young lady,” he set to work. “Our deal is made. We will make the best of it now won’t we?”

With that Gillian received the first of 2 X 365 X 300 plus at least 1 spankings. Her bottom burned with the terrible flames of purgatory from the start. “Ohhhhhhhh!” she cried. “I wasn’t that bad God! This just isn’t fair!”