The Bimbo in Limbo

Purgatory: Kind of Like Rehab

I watched a Paleyfest for Asylum once and recall Jessica Lange wishing she'd had more opportunity to perform as Judy the Jazz Singer. This story is for her; and for me, because I wished the same thing. Playlist follows and can be found on Spotify as "Limbo Bimbo" if you're interested.

Cutie Named Judy - Jerry McCain and His Upstarts

Judy Blue - Mitchell Rose

It's a Man's World - Etta James

Rehab - Amy Winehouse

Fever - Peggy Lee

Woman's Got Soul - Joe Williams

Valerie - Amy Winehouse

I Remember You - Dinah Washington

Right Down the Line - Jerry Rafferty

God Only Knows - The Beach Boys

Why Judy Why - Billy Joel

Let's Hear it for the Boy - Deniece Williams

Somebody to Love - Jefferson Airplane

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted - Jimmy Ruffin

Timothy Howard scratched surreptitiously at the inside of his arm again. This was not his expectation - this gleaming white...waiting room. He sat in the universe's most uncomfortable chair and took in his surroundings with a baleful countenance. Surrounded by blurring, weeping, smiling, or simply staring faces.

He supposed it was better than Hell, but not by much. He looked again at his ticket number, the tiny scrap nearly rubbed bare by his fretting fingers. 2,737,654,156,417,706,313. He wasn't certain what number that even was. But he knew he had quite a wait before him. Even though the digital display on the too-bright wall read 2,737,654,156,417,706,277. He watched it flick to 2,737,654,156,417,706,278 and sighed heavily. Scratched the inside of his other arm.

Again, he adjusted the plush towel wrapped low on his waist. Apparently, death was a 'come as thou art' experience. He vaguely wished he'd at least put on pajamas before butchering himself into oblivion.

He was plagued by rampant doubts: What if there was no Heaven, after all? What if the heathens were right all along and this was to be eternity? Jumping aimlessly from one interminable waiting room to the next? What if his arms never healed at all and he remained a pale, exsanguinated skeleton of a man forever, never released from limited human form? Or what if he did end up in Hell? (He 90% expected this outcome - the Catholics had ever been staunch on the subject of suicide.) What exactly would his Hell be? He'd read dreadful, terrible things - seen those surreal and grotesque Bosch tryptics. What if he ended up boiling forever upside down in a pit of human milk-fat with a spray of thorny lantana and daffodils sprouting from his ass while a dwarf goat-man marched about dooting a trombone made from sinners' hair?

He cringed.

A set of ornately carved double doors whispered open across from him and four nuns dressed in pure white habits tittered out talking about what they would have for lunch. His own stomach growled in response. Was it possible to be hungry in the afterlife?

Another digital display flared to life beside the first. From the corridor to his left, hundreds more faces drifted in - wandering as lost and confused as he had. Must have been peak time for souls. A second shift was added. He brightened a bit when the second display read 2,737,654,156,417,706,291. Things were looking up.

He was looking down. At the mangled flesh inside his arms. Opened like two gagging grins, his arms displayed their complex internal workings. Tendons. Muscle. Bone. A jagged artery (Or was that a vein? He'd never really studied anatomy.) dangled down his elbow. Self-consciously, he tucked it back into the wound. Didn't feel a thing, really. Bit of a tickle. Or he was imagining that. He absolutely wished he could feel something. Anything. Even if it was pain. A headache, even. Searing spikes up each arm. A charlie horse. Anything but the cold, penetrating numbness that made him feel so densely heavy in this scratchy grey chair.