Life after Death: The Afterlife of Hezekiah Chamblee

Chapter Fourteen: Dinner Party

Hezekiah's POV

Back in the Nexus...

"Welcome to SkyView Diner, Mr. Chamblee," the perky waitress greets me as I step inside the fifties-centric and spacious restaurant.

"Thank you," I replied, smiling gently at the young woman as she led me to a cozy corner-side table, the sounds of Whitney Houston playing on the jukebox while the scents of sweet dairy and hamburger grease tickled my nose.

Since my visit to Axis and my initial encounter with both Lucifer and God- with me still taking in on how I was originally created as a demigod and the two deities being my real fathers, I made it a small goal to start going out more often and begin making new connections with the people here in the Nexus. Of course, I didn't want to start running into Catalina Slade, the primadonna of the afterlife, since she was known to be enigmatic at best but a bit of a firebird at worst. I had heard some stories about her when I was making my rounds through the districts, some of them not being favorable than others.

"Hezekiah!"

I looked up from the menu that I was perusing to see the smiling faces of Catia and the arch-demons, the female cherubim dressed as if she was heading for a cocktail party while the twins were in their usual "take-no-prisoners" mafia businessmen getup. "Hey," I greeted them as they came to my table with Catia sitting next to me while Abaddon and Azrael sitting across from me. "What's new?"

"We heard that you finally had the chance to meet God and Lucifer, so we wanted to know how it was for you," Abaddon replied. "Did they tell you everything about you coming here?"

"Did they ever," I replied, deciding to give them an abridged version of what happened during the tea and not leaving one piece of information out. "I'm still taking it all in, of course, with me being God and Lucifer's biological kid and all. I only thought that it was Jesus who was the only Son of God himself."

"You might be surprised," Catia commented. "There's a lot of surprises here in the afterlife that no average human knows, never mind the fact that God and Lucifer wanted to keep under wraps."

"That's for sure," Azrael agreed just as a sleek and fox-faced red-headed waitress came over to take our orders. Catia and I settled for the chicken sandwich special with fries while Abaddon ordered the taco salad and his twin wanted the steak-and-potatoes platter. All of us wanted to try the quesadillas for the appetizer, cheesecake for dessert, and chocolate malts for drinks.

"I never been to one of these diners before, to be honest," I commented, sitting back in the chair. "With my family and all, I was considered lucky to be out of the house for even a day, which might as well considered to be never in a way."

"How's that?" Azrael wanted to know.

I inhaled deeply. "Well, most of my dinners were spent at home for the most part, even before I was soon sent to summer school after I entered middle school," I explained, the music changing to Alicia Keys on the jukebox. "Whenever my family was throwing dinner parties for their friends or just wanted to have a family-only event, I was mainly kept out of the way since I was seen as a 'bad-luck charm,' to quote my mother. Having Minnie Jean and the other servants stop by helped some, but I never had that true camaraderie that I knew that most kids                                                                                 would have at dinnertime...

FLASHBACK (Eight grade)...

The sounds of classical music emanated from downstairs while my family was preparing themselves for another dinner party which I wasn't allowed to attend. I was used to it since Mom thought that I would only trigger her memories of being raped by her attacker which resulted in my birth. Still, I was despondent in knowing that I wasn't allowed to be a true part of the Chamblee Diamond Standard even though I did right by them in every single thing possible.