Go to Hell (on hold)

TWO

I opened my eyes to a portrait of a beautiful woman holding a mallet in one hand and a scale in the other. Her blonde hair cascaded down her shoulders and curled around her elbows. Her ivory skin was flawless with the faintest hind of pink warming her cheeks. She stood on the edge of a cliff, waves crashing to her left and a forest fire blazing to her right. Despite her surroundings her face was one of serenity and honesty.

This wasn't a painting from my house.

I took in the rest of my surroundings, trying to gain my bearing. Stone walls led to cathedral ceilings, littered with intricate nature carvings and pieces of artwork. Marble floors were dotted with Persian rugs and wooden benches similar to the one I was sitting on. There were people here too. They ranged confused to bored, but they all looked terrifying. Most had varying degrees of blood on their rumpled clothes. Others looked ill, their faces ashen and cheeks drawn. They sat on benches or talked quietly amount one another.

With a glance down at myself, I could tell I was in the same rough shape. My pink blouse was mostly red now, starting from a splotch on my abdomen and blooming outward. My hands were caked in dry, crusty blood, though neither bore an injury. I poked my stomach, straining to remember what happened. My mother. She said I was lying to her. A knife. In her throat. In my stomach.

I'm dead.

I looked around the room again. This must be the afterlife because it definitely wasn't a hospital.

"Sang Sorenson," a shrill, feminine voice called. I searched the room, my eyes stopping on a plump woman with wings protruding from her back. So maybe I got into heaven? I stood up, and made my way towards her. She nodded and scribbled on her clipboard. "This way, dear."

I followed her through large wooden doors, one held open by another angel and the other by a woman with little black horns curling out the top of her shaved head. I kept my eyes on the floor as we walked past the two, afraid to make eye contact with either.

As we entered into the room I pressed a finger to my lip. Rows and rows of arena seating filled with white wings and black horns surrounded a small wooden platform. A woman with pursed red lips and elegant wings and a man with knowing gray eyes framed by glasses sat directly in front of me in a section of their own. The man seemed familiar, as if someone from a dream. The clipboard lady pushed me unto the platform and called out my name.

I shook as I mounted the platform and tried to make myself as small as possible. This definitely wasn't heaven. There was nothing I hated more than crowds and unwanted attention.

"Do you know why you are here Ms. Sorenson?" The woman with red lips asked.

"I'm dead?" My voice was hardly more than a whisper, reduced to nothing by fear. She smiled, though it didn't reach her amber eyes.

"Indeed. You would be surprised at how many people don't seem to get that part. I should thank you, you've sped up this ordeal by quite a bit. Now, do you know why you are here, in this room?"

I glanced at the man beside her, his glare forced my back straighter and my hands to my side. My instincts told me he was not one to disappoint. But how was I to know the answer? I looked up at the rows of angels and demons, good and bad. They all held the same expression: condemnation. I looked to the man and woman. Or rather at their podium. It was engraved with a scale. I vaguely remembered some Egyptian mythology about weighing the goodness of a heart after death.