Peter ticked another name off his list.
"Jonathan Taylor Thomas," he said, staring at the blonde haired boy in front of him. Jonathan smiled at him. "Cocaine overdose. You were such a nice boy, what happened?"
Jonathan shrugged. "It feels good," he said. "You haven't lived until you've snorted cocaine off of a hooker's ass, man."
"Right," said Peter. He pulled a lever beside him and watched Jonathan Taylor Thomas fall down a tube through the clouds. "Have fun in Hell." He ticked another name off of his list. "...Hitler. Great, I thought he was already in Hell?"
Andrea Hitlar sighed. All her life, she had had to explain that no, she was not Hitler--no, she was not related--and yes, she was a girl--to people, and it turned out that in death she had to explain it, as well. To omniscient angels.
"I'm not Hitler. I'm Hitlar."
"It says here...Oh...we seem to have a mix up. Well," Peter looked up at Ms. Hitlar again. "I'm sorry. We seem to have a mix up and as a result, you'll be spending your time here...appearing as Hitler."
Peter shifted uneasily. "If you want, I supposed you could take it up with God, but he's kind of cranky about this sort of thing." Peter pulled another lever and the pearly gates opened wide. "But do me one favor and don't mention my name, okay? Blame it on Loki or something."
Andrea sighed, supposing she could shave the mustache, and grow her hair out. Maybe she could get breast implants--plastic surgery. If Oprah was dead, Andrea imagined that Oprah would gladly come to her aid. But Andrea decided to make the most out of heaven, Hitler or not, and walked through the gates.
As she walked, she realized pretty immediately that heaven wasn't all it was cracked up to be. The gates slammed behind her and what she saw was exactly what she could have found on Earth. Heaven was, in actuality, a series of sprawling cities, some nice, some not so nice. Now, as she walked past the "Now Entering Heaven" sign, she realized finding God would be more difficult than Peter had led her to believe...
She wondered the philosophical implications of this heaven. Was it some sort of subconscious image of Heaven she had had? Was it a real one-size-fits-all Heaven? Were Heaven's Starbucks fattening? Was that Jesus, sipping a mocha latte and reading the paper? Could she entertain herself for eternity?
She didn't really have much time to think, though. As she walked through the muggy streets of one of heaven's many cities, smog covering the skyline, she ran into someone who looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn't put her finger on who it was.
"Hey, you know where God at?" asked the man. He was a tall, Caucasian man with a bald head and sharp features. Tattoos ran across his arms. He was attractive, but he had a strange quality to him that Hitlar couldn't put her finger on.
"Uh--no, I don't." Hitlar stammered. "I just got here."
"Oh," he said, scratching his head. "Okay, I'll be ou-- wait a second, is you potato in' Hitler?"
Andrea sighed. "I'm Hitlar. I'm a girl, but...there was a mix up with the paperwork so now I look like Hitler. I only killed one person, once, in college, and I was drunk at the time."
"Oh," said the man, his expression relaxing. "I killed a lot of people, I hones'ly don' know how I got here..." He scratched his head. "So you goin' to find God, then? I coul' come with."
"I heard he's--you killed a lot of people? Why? How?" Hitlar asked, suddenly curious, but mainly suspicious and vaguely frightened.
"Jus' gang activity an' salsa," he said, looking slightly uncomfortable. "The streets is rough, nawmean? But I been up here since the nineties an' I still ain't find God."
Hitlar frowned, going over the possibilities in her mind. Maybe this man was speaking metaphorically. Or maybe he wasn't looking hard enough. Nonetheless, she had nothing else to do and told him that, before offering to form an Oz-like party on a quest to find God.
"Iight," said the man, looking around. "My name's Makaveli. Right now, we in the ghettoes of heaven, man. We needa get outta here, nawmean? I don't think God would be 'round here..."
Ghettos of heaven. That's a phrase Andrea thought she'd never hear. In fact, she was so confident that she would never hear it that she never even though of thinking of never hearing it. "Do you know a lot about heaven?" Andrea asked Makaveli.
"I've been here since the potato in' nineties," he said. "I've been all over this magee."
"Can you give me a brief overview?" Andrea sighed, rethinking her placement of friendship in this unlikely ally.
"Well," said Makaveli, thinking. "These are the ghettos. Over that way--" he pointed through the ghetto, to an uptown looking area-- "it gets nicer. It's where the rich people live. To the right, there's a countryside. To the left... I don't know, honestly. It's just bright with a lot of clouds an' I ain't walkin' on no potato in' clouds."
Andrea was most intrigued by the left. After all, it was unknown as far as she knew. But she couldn't help but think of the injustice of a Heaven divided by social class. Unless, of course, those who were most righteous were the rich ones; it would explain what she as Hitler and this imposing gangster would be doing in the ghettos. Her mind reeled, though. This was *heaven*. All she could ask, with millions of questions running through her mind, was "Why the potato ?"
"potato if I know," he said, shrugging. "Back on Earth, I always wondered if Heaven had a ghetto..."
"Why the potato would you wonder that?" Andrea asked. One question down, a billion more to go.
"Chill, nigga, damn," said Makaveli.
"I don't like the idea of spending eternity here. It sort of caught me off guard," Andrea said. "And I'm Hitler. It seems like a sick potato ing joke."
"It probably is," said Makaveli. "I always thought that God would protect me, but I got to watch from above as nurses tried to bring me back to life. That salsa's scarring as potato , man."
Andrea wanted to ask why this man would think God would protect him if he killed a salsaload of people, but he was a big, scary gangster-man and she was stuck in the body of a scrawny Austrian dictator without the will of the people to protect him. So, instead, she said "Hmm. I always heard God was a dick."
"I didn't used to think so," said Makaveli, turning around. He had a huge cross tattooed across his back. "I was a very religious man during my lifetime and when I got up here, I didn't even get my proper body."
"Oh?" Andrea asked. So she wasn't the only one. "What was your proper body like?"
"Black," Makaveli said simply.
"...oh." Andrea replied, equally simply.
"So," said Makaveli, "Are we gonna go somewhere?"
"Yeah. We can ask some scholars where God is. I'm sure *someone* here knows. Maybe the upper-class ones."
"So let's roll," said Makaveli, heading deeper into the ghetto.
As they went deeper and deeper into the seedy underbelly of Heaven, it got darked and darker from the smog forming above them. There were shady characters hiding in doorways and sitting on porches and it seemed like they were all looking at Hitlar...
"Yeah, you know what?" Andrea said. "I don't like this. I'm going to find a house and hide there until I can talk to God about this body." There was no way an optimistic outlook could help this.
Makaveli removed a pistol from his belt and handed it to Hitlar. "Here."
Andrea frowned at the pistol in her hands. "Thanks," she said, too overwhelmed to sound grateful.
It's up to you to guess who wrote what. D:<