Tick (Short Story)

"Such a conflicted life was by no means uncommon. Life is, and never was, as black and white as humans think. I like to think of life as a tapestry. Some threads are stunning and make your tapestry look so. Others are not quite as nice, and once they are woven in, they taint the whole picture forever. What they do not realise is that every thread counts. Some threads are harder to make up for than others - a few are almost impossible.

So when I finally ended the process to determine Richard's pathway, I was hardly surprised at all by the percentages on the screen.

Heaven: 36%, Hell: 64%."

Meet Griffith Reaper, Gatekeeper of the gates to Heaven and Hell. He must judge every life that comes before him, ticking boxes until they are reduced to no more than a couple of percentages. The job pays well - of course, that's not much use when you're stuck behind a desk all day and you get a break once every thousand years or so. Things change when Griffith is forced to face up to the fact that he is just as flawed as the humans he serves.