The Face that Employed a Thousand Angels [Jim #6, Short Fiction]

Annual Cleopatra Lottery

Spend a Night with the Egyptian Queen!

Enter in person at: 777 Lay Lady Lane

We accept both chance and fate.

The Cleopatra Lottery is run by the Paradise Grant Committee and is in full compliance with the Pussy Pact. All participants enter willingly and with full knowledge that their indulgence rights will be abused.

Jim read the flyer three times before he looked at the man who had given it to him.

“What is this?” he said.

“It’s the Cleo lotto,” the man said. “We run it every year. Winner gets to bury his bone in the Queen of the Nile.” He failed at handing out another flyer. “You must be fresh from the circus if you haven’t rolled for Cleopatra.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Jim read the flyer again. It was a plain piece of paper, black and white and matter-of-fact. “She’s the one with the face, right? I mean, the thousand ships.”

“Nope.”

“Oh.”

“You there! Cleopatra Lottery! Lay Lady Lane! Chance or fate, don’t be late!”

***

Lay Lady Lane was a long shining broadway of neon lights. Marquis flashed the names of history’s most beautiful women. Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, Mata Hari, Pocahontas, Brigitte Bardot. There were more that he didn’t recognize – Wang Zhaojun, Madhubala, Hwang Jini – and Jim lost count. Above them all in the center of the broadway Cleopatra glittered.

Jim walked in through the revolving doors. The lobby was crimson and gold. The men in front of him and the ones pushing past him went through one of two doors, above which read Take Your Chances and Accept Your Fate. He went to the help desk.

“First time?” the man said. His nametag said Butch, Angel in Training.

“Yeah,” Jim said.

“Well, it’s pretty simple. You go through that door, you get what’s coming to you. You go through that one, you get something else. It’s like, you walk the path or you roll the dice.”

“Dice?”

“Yep.”

Jim checked his pocket. The dice were still there.

“What about this bit where my indulgence gets abused?” Jim said, showing Butch the flyer. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Jesus. Really?”

“What?”

“I mean, you’re here to roll dice for a chance to spear the queen and you’re asking me about the fine print.”

Butch, Angel in Training, had a point. Jim laughed, shook his head, shrugged. “Man, sometimes I just want to know what the hell’s happening to me.”

“Tell you what,” Butch said, “Here’s the short of it. Lucy, her whole thing is everybody gets what they want, right? She hates rules. But what’s the first thing you want to do when you get to Paradise? You want to fuck Cleopatra. So Cleopatra’s got, like, millions of dudes trying to fuck her every day. And that’s a shitty Paradise. So Cleopatra rounds up all the scorchers, you know, your Marilyn Monroes and your Joan of Arcs, and they all march on Lucy. And Lucy’s cool – have you met her?” Jim nodded. “Yeah, you seem like the type. Anyway, she sets up this whole infrastructure and assigns a team of angels to field requests, they sort it all out and pass on the good ones. Now Cleopatra just gets an email every week, and if she sees something she likes she can jump on it.

“It all sounds good, except Cleopatra – just Cleopatra – needs a thousand angels to sift through all these requests. There’s a shortage of angels. And there’s millions of dudes that are pissed off because of the selection process – they know damn well Cleopatra isn’t gonna blow some salesman from Alabama. So there’s hardly an angel in Paradise that isn’t on fuck request detail, and everything with a dick is crying foul. I mean, they don’t even have the personnel to do the whole meet and greet thing. People are getting hit by buses, waking up here, they don’t know what’s going on. They’re still clogging up traffic. It’s a fucking mess.

“Finally Lucy comes out with the lottery and the Pussy Pact. She tells Cleopatra and every other scorcher if they spread their legs once a year they’ll get angelic privilege. To the hard-ons, she says you’ve got an eternity to win, if you don’t like it the Truth Road is that way. That cooled everybody off, and we built Lay Lady Lane.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Jim said. “So, this is just saying I might not win.”

“Pretty much.”

Jim said thanks and went to take his chances.

***

He walked out of the casino, rattling his glossy reds and shitting a grin. He hadn’t lost a roll. The room he walked into was all windows and cushions. Light played on the marble floor. An angel, not in training, greeted him.

“Congratulations,” the angel said. “Please, if you’ll take a seat, fate will present the final challenger soon. Feel free with the fruit and wine.”

“Is Cleopatra –” Then he saw her. She lay draped over a sofa, a bare and tan leg dripping from its side, one arm a triangle behind her head. What fabric she wore was white and pulled taut by golden rings that pressed against her skin. Midnight hair, cropped short, cut straight across her forehead. Blue eyes. They looked at Jim.

“Uh, hi,” Jim said. He aborted a handshake mid-step, failed to convert it into a wave, tried to save it with a scratch and tripped over a pillow. His dice skittered over the marble and came to rest at Cleopatra’s hand. She picked them up and held them in her palm.

“Well?” she said.

“Those are my dice,” Jim said, pointing.

The angel chuckled. Jim flushed.

“Einstein gave them to me,” he said.

The angel snorted.

“They are lovely dice,” Cleopatra said. They were still in her palm.

Jim stepped carefully over the pillow. He stood over her. She saw him look at her breasts. He cleared his throat and took the dice.

The other door opened. A man in a white suit strolled through it. Jet hair slicked over a sculpted head. One hand disappeared into his jacket pocket, the other held a boot.

“There’s at least one man back there,” he said, “who thinks if you can throw a boot, you can change destiny.”

“Welcome, and congratulations,” the angel said.

“Angel,” the man said. “Cleopatra.” A nod for each. To the angel – “So which kind are you? The kind that takes my coat, or the ethereal kind?”

“I can manage both.” The angel took his jacket, and the boot, and showed him to a seat.

“This is a lovely apartment. Say, you there, I’m sure the lady loves the view, but mine’s obscured. What do you say we dispense with flirtation and get down to business?”

Jim realized he was standing right in front of the Egyptian Queen with his ass in her face. He took a breath, gritted his teeth, composed himself. He wasn’t any less of a man than this guy.

“Business it is,” Jim said, and sat down. He could see the angel biting his lip. God he wanted to punch that fucking angel.

“It is customary for the representative of fate to choose the final game,” the angel said.

“I represent myself,” the man said. “Fate’s your word, it isn’t mine. I don’t want any part of it. Besides, I’ve been out of ideas since I woke up in this crazy joint. Let the kid decide, he’s good for it.”

Jim held out the dice. “One roll,” he said. “High roll wins.”

“Short and sweet. I like it. Who’s first?”

“You.”

He rolled a nine.

Jim shook, blew, rolled. Eleven.

“Yes!” On his feet, fists in the air. “Eat shit, Bogart, the queen is mine!”

Humphrey twirled a finger. “Reel it in, cod slayer. I’d say you should play it closer to the vest but you wouldn’t know how to wear it.” He stood up, leaned over, spoke from the corner of his mouth. “And I didn’t want to say this in front of the lady, but Joe Louis is taking a dive.”

“What?”

“The unknown soldier is going for a walk.”

“I don’t . . .”

“Your zipper’s down and I can see your testicles.”

Jim coughed and pivoted. With his back to the queen he checked his crotch. It was fine. He double-checked. No Joe Loius.

*Shit.*

He turned around and Bogart had her slung over his shoulder. The actor kicked open a window, pulled a gun from his jacket and fired a zip-line into the gardens.

“What the hell, man? You lost! Angel, stop him!”

Bogart give him the dramatic profile, the last look back.

“It was a good roll, kid,” Bogart said. “It just wasn’t meant to be.”

The two of them zipped out of sight. Jim ran to the window and watched as the actor stuffed Cleopatra into the back of a Packard Super Eight and drove away.

“Can he do that?” Jim said. “Why aren’t you doing anything? You should be doing something!”

The angel was laughing freely now. “Don’t beat yourself up,” he said. “He does that every year.” He doubled over. “The boot!” he gasped. “Oh, I almost died.”

“But I won,” Jim said.

“Eat shit, Bogart! Eeeeeheeeheehehe!”

Jim Home

Next Jim Story

Jim v Logic [Jim #5, Short Fiction]

Jim couldn’t take it anymore. He looked away. The angel laughed, grabbed the telescope, and looked for himself.

“This is nothing,” the angel said. “You should have seen Carthage. Or Nanking. Or Rwanda. Hell, I’ve seen prison-rapes that were more entertaining.”

“Entertaining,” Jim repeated. He just couldn’t wrap his head around it. “So this – this is all happening right now?”

“More or less.”

The images burned. Jim had always known that people did awful things to one another, but he’d never really seen it. He certainly hadn’t seen it through an angel’s telescope before.

“So you just watch this like it’s TV? Do you ever watch the good stuff?”

“This is the good stuff.”

“I mean, like weddings, things like that. Celebrations. People building things. You know, art and science. Babies.”

The angel pulled himself away from the scope. “Did you ever watch those things?”

Come to think of it, he hadn’t. Jim hated shit like that. He shook his head.

“Think of Earth as a bad dream,” the angel said. “It’s awful while you’re in it, but when you wake up it’s pretty gnarly.”

“But why is it so awful?” Jim said. “Why do people suffer like that?”

The angel had his mouth open with a response, but a faerie burst in through the window. Another crashed through the ceiling. A third walked in through the door. Jim had always pictured faeries as Tinkerbelles, but these were bespectacled bald men, two feet tall, and all business.

The door faerie didn’t see Jim, and he puzzled at the angel.

“Angels don’t ask why,” he said.

The angel pointed at Jim, and Jim was soon surrounded.

“You’ve been served,” the faeries said together.

One of them handed Jim a manila envelope, and he opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper. It read,

Jim v Logic

You are hereby commanded to appear in Paradise Court to defend yourself in the above-titled case and to answer to the following charge(s).

Charge(s): Asking a loaded question.

Paradise Court

Jean Paul Sartre Courthouse

Downtown, Paradise

When Jim finished reading, the faeries were gone. He looked at the angel.

“I think I’ve just been summonsed,” he said.

***

Jim had defended himself in court before, but that was for a traffic violation. Defending a loaded question at the Jean Paul Sartre Courthouse sounded like it was above his pay grade. An ad in the Yellow Pages (William and William: Defense Attorneys for the Anguish’d Heart) had pointed him to a small office near the courthouse, and the receptionist told him to go right in.

It was a cluttered office, littered with books and parchments, and William Shakespeare sat behind the desk. His nose was buried in a tome.

“What’s the charge?” he said without looking up.

“I, uh, I asked a loaded question,” Jim said.

“The question?”

“Why is there suffering. In the world. Why do people suffer.”

“Well,” closing the book, “you’ve come to the right place. Have a seat.”

Jim sat down. “I thought you hated lawyers,” he said.

“A man cannot always choose how he employs his talents,” Shakespeare said. “But he is only lost if he doesn’t employ them at all.” He searched for an empty sheet of paper, and not finding any turned one over. “It bodes well to begin with a name.”

“Jim,” Jim said, and Shakespeare wrote it. Jim stared.

“What?”

“You – I mean, Shakespeare – just wrote my name.”

“Ha! Well, at least there’s someone left in Paradise who appreciates a red-blooded jot.”

“What do you mean?”

“When that French lunatic shot his monkeys into space, my lays lost all appeals. What authorship remains is culled from a squall of apes.”

Jim nodded his head. He decided it was a metaphor and didn’t want Shakespeare to think he was stupid. “Yeah, man. The shit they come out with now. Bunch of apes.” He coughed into his hand.

Shakespeare snapped his fingers. “The summons,” he said. Jim handed it to him and he sighed. “These relativisms are wearisome. What were the circumstances?”

“Well,” Jim said, “I was looking through this angel’s telescope, I think it was Russia or Ukraine or somewhere, and some really nasty stuff was going on. We were talking, and I just asked him about the suffering.”

“What did you say exactly?”

“Umm, I said, Why do people do awful things to each other? Why do people suffer?”

Shakespeare made some more red-blooded jots. He looked over what he had written, scratched some out and made some more. He finished with a flourish of the pen, folded the paper and put it in his pocket.

“Well, Jim,” he said, “take comfort in this. It is not merely your heart, but the human heart, that is on trial. These existentialists reach too far.”

“Great,” Jim said. It sounded like good news. He stuck out his hand and Shakespeare took it. “So, you think we’ll win? I mean, you’re Shakespeare, right?”

“I’ve yet to win a case,” Shakespeare said, patting him on the shoulder. “But all morrows begin without sorrow, and tomorrow these hearts will beat against the narrows. Of logic. Beat against the narrow . . . straits that constrict the mind. Hmmm.” He looked at a wall, perked up and snapped his fingers. “Embattled hearts are empty in their quivers, but beating shake the world that minds but scratch.”

Jim was stuck on the first sentence. “Am I fucked?” he said.

“Pretty much.”

***

The courtroom was a courtroom. There was a judge, a bailiff, a reporter, lawyers mulling about. Prosecuting on behalf of Logic was Immanuel Kant. As Jim waited for his case to be called, Kant made short work of a young girl whose slippery slope “regarding the origins question” was an “assault against reason.” As punishment, she was given a signed copy of Kant’s book about metaphysics.

Jim leaned over to Shakespeare. “Well, that doesn’t seem so bad,” he said.

“You’ve never read Kant,” Shakespeare said.

“Now appearing before Judge Russell, case twenty-three, Jim v Logic.”

Jim followed Shakespeare to the defendant’s table. They stood.

“The defendant is accused of discharging a loaded question into the face of human suffering.”

“Plead,” Judge Russell said.

“Guiltless,” Shakespeare said.

“Prosecution, go ahead.”

Kant took the floor. He was small and arrogant.

“The defendant,” Kant said, “hereafter referred to as Jim, asked of an angel, Why is there suffering? This is not an innocent question. It is has been sufficiently established that this line of inquiry leads nowhere, and that it debases logic and fugues the mind. As it is the purpose of this court to disabuse Paradise of bad thinking, it is the court’s imperative to hold Jim accountable for these words. The question was loaded, and he fired it like grapeshot over Prussia.”

“Prussia?” Jim said.

“Objection!” Shakespeare wagged his pen. “There is no Prussia!”

“Overruled.”

“Damn.”

Kant continued. He paced the open court with his hands clasped behind him.

“Why is there suffering? The underlying assumption is clear: The suffering has a purpose. Embedded in the question is the bold assertion that the tragic nature of mortality is somehow transcendent, that it is tragic because. The question asserts that pain and misery have defensible, perhaps even noble, functions. It is a claim whose magnitude embroils the most practiced minds, and Jim offered no evidence to support it. He blithely assumed it, and he buried the assumption in six retarded syllables.

“The prosecution will happily drop all charges if Jim can defend the assumed position. If Jim can make the case for meaningful suffering, and raise a foundation to support his assumption, he is free to go. If not, the prosecution is bound by Reason and Logic to seek the maximum reprisals.

“And if I may append an editorial, the presence of an angel compounds the depravity of offense. It is disheartening that not even the wards of heaven are safe from these stupidities.”

Kant gave Jim a glare before sitting down.

Judge Russell stifled a yawned. “Can the defendant provide evidence that humankind suffers meaningfully?”

“That’s what I was asking in the first place,” Jim said. “That’s my question. You’re asking the same question.”

“No,” said Judge Russell. “Your question was unlettered, and it arbitrarily presupposed an ontological argument. Do you have such an argument prepared, or don’t you?”

Shakespeare put a hand on Jim’s shoulder.

“If it pleases the court,” said Shakespeare, “I’ll set these quibbles to rights.”

Judge Russell sighed. “Get on with it then.”

Shakespeare had a swagger on the floor. He belonged there. Jim had only ever dreaded Shakespeare in high school reading courses, but seeing the man perform struck Jim with awe.

Shakespeare began,

“What soul in Paradise would shine so dull

As one by Reason painted nub to skull?”

“Objection. Poetry.”

“Yes! Sustained. Guilty. Bailiff, remove the poet.”

Jim watched helplessly as Shakespeare was removed from the court. Judge Russell waited for the doors to close behind him, then spoke.

“The defendant, Jim, shown here to be guilty of discharging a loaded question in the presence of an angel — “

“And over Prussia!”

“Yes, over Prussia.” Judge Russell removed a tiny cannon from a pocket in his robes. “As Jim loads his questions with superfluities, the superfluities of his person shall be loaded into this tiny cannon, and fired in no particular direction.”

Kant approached the bench and handed the judge three books. The two of them whispered.

“Furthermore,” Judge Russell said, “Jim shall be required to read and comprehend the ontologies of Sartre, Heidegger, and Spinoza before coming aground.”

Jim felt hands on him. The bailiff had returned. He was ushered across the court and towards the tiny cannon. The books were thrust into his arms.

“Now wait just a damn minute,” Jim said. “Dammit, just hold up. I might not be smart the way you guys are smart, but I know a stack of shit when I see it. You all just stack it a mile high. I’ll shit my own mountain before I climb up yours.” He threw the books to the floor. “And sonofabitch I wanted to hear what Shakespeare had to say!”

Judge Russell yawned. “Moot,” he said.

The bailiff stuffed him into the tiny cannon. The books followed, thumping him on the head. Jim heard a flick, a hiss, and a boom, and he crashed through a window and soared over Downtown Paradise.

The ontoligies flapped about him like pigeons. He grabbed one and began to read.

“Modern thought has realized considerable progress by reducing the existent to the series of appearances which manifest it.”

Fuck.

Jim Home

Next Jim story

Infinite Orgy [Jim #3, Short Fiction]

The Orgy was a floating ship with red sails. It was enormous and Jim couldn’t fit it into his brain.

It’s like New York City flying over Tennessee, he thought.

“How big is this place?” he said.

“You’re looking at it.”

“No, I mean, like, the whole thing. Paradise.”

Cherry flicked him in the nose. “Your head needs a leash,” she said. “Plenty of those up there. Only one way up.” She pointed to the catapult.

“Aren’t you coming?” Jim said.

Cherry licked chicken grease from her fingers. “I need some R’n’R,” she said. “You know, watch some Ghostbusters, ride some dolphins. That sort of thing.”

Jim strapped in. “Well, any advice?”

“Don’t freak out. Everything grows back.”

She pulled the lever.

Thwump.

“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

He flew in through a window and landed on feather down. He stood up and saw that he was in an empty room. There were four doors, and over each was a sign. One said “straight”, another “gay”, and a third for “either way”. The fourth was written in flames that read “MANIAC”.

Jim considered the flames but shook his head.

“Baby steps,” he said.

He went in through the straight door.

***

A woman mounted him. She had wild red hair. Jim hadn’t even known he was naked. Or that he was hard. She finished after nine pumps, shook with pleasure, leaned back and breathed fire.

“Hi,” Jim said.

But she sprinted away and dove headfirst into a pool of vibrating bedposts.

Jim was hard and lathered and disoriented. He grabbed another woman and tried to kiss her. She slapped him across the face and pointed to a sign that flashed high in the dome.

NO KISSING.

“Sorry,” Jim said. He shrugged and pointed at his erection. She obliged.

He looked around while she worked on him. Cages hung from the domed ceiling. Beds bigger than houses crawled with the wildest sex he’d ever seen. Trampolines threw couples mid-coitus through a goal post, their form and style judged by three serious men. Soft strobe lights and a bass drum gave it all a rhythmic pulse.

Jim finished and the woman stood. There was green on her face. He sniffed it.

“Guacamole?”

She pushed the rest of it into her mouth and sucked her finger clean. A coy smile and she was gone.

A brief stroll landed him in twenty-three unique holes. He climaxed several times, and the contents of his penis seemed to depend on the woman. One guzzled down his strawberry yogurt, another bathed in a spray of Jim perfume. The final shot was his, and a single firework exploded over the Orgy.

Beneath its flash he saw an angel standing high on a golden table. The angel was cut like a diamond with a white shock of greasy hair, violently itching his scalp and producing a flurry of snow. Five large-breasted woman collected the snow, cut it, diced it into lines.

“What is this?” Jim asked one of the women.

“The dreams of Beelzebub,” she said. She snorted some and her forehead parted beneath the lips of a quivering vagina. She fingered it and a dove flew out of her mouth.

“Angel dust,” she said.

Beelzebub threw back his hair and spread his arms. “Fly like the angels fly,” he said. “See what the angels see. Fuck like the angels fuck.”

“Okay,” Jim said. He snorted a line.

Thwump.

“Yyyaaaaaarrrrrrrggghhqwopeinvalsdkjhrlwkch!”

The nearest woman was a tiny brunette and he pounded her into the floor. He grabbed another and buried his face in her. When the top of his head sprung a dick, a third began to ride it.

“I’m a fuckin unicorn!”

A crowd gathered. They began to chant. “Un-i-corn! Un-icorn! Un-i-corn!”

“Fly!” roared Beelzebub. “Fly!”

The small of Jim’s back grew hard and he was mounted again.

“Fly!”

His fingers ballooned with veins and heads. There was a soft warm mouth for each.

“Fly!”

Elbows, ankles, ears, thighs. Jim was a spiny lizard, shaking with pleasure, drenched in tit sweat and twat skeet. He wanted more.

“Infinite dicks!” he cried.

The chanting stopped.

“Oh fuck!”

“Get down!”

“Abandon ship!”

The feminine warmth disappeared and the music stopped. Each new erection sprouted two more, and each of those another two. He soon filled the entire dome. Glass shattered, beams broke. Screams fell out the windows.

“Fly! Fly!”

Beelzebub’s roar was distant now. With each doubling the red sails faded.

Jim was the groaning nucleus of an atomic cock.

***

And then there was orgasm.

Jim floated in a universe of his creation. Chicken wings and beer formed gaseous nebulae. Chevy comets barreled through open space. Baseballs and hockey pucks bounced around like quarks and kicked up atoms of whiskey, carburetors, fishing poles and labrador retrievers. Good old fashioned cum swirled in giant balls, combusted, became a thousand shining stars.

“You goddamn crazy hillbilly!”

The voice came from the driver’s window of a Silverado. The face was old, the eyes were deep, the hair was frazzled.

“Einstein?”

“I finally found it!” the old man said. “The edge of Paradise! And you blew it out your nozzle!”

“The edge of Paradise?” Jim said. “Dude, I was just thinking about that!”

“Well, it was right here before you nutted a big fuckin bang.”

“Where is it now?”

Einstein pointed. “I’d say it’s about a universe in that direction.”

“Well let’s go!”

Einstein narrowed his gaze. “You don’t have any Camaros in there, do you?”

Jim blushed.

“Well, if we run out of gas, you’re pushing.”

Einstein floored it. The engine purred. A red button throttled them through hyperspace. Light came in particle waves and time melted. It’s kinda like Star Wars, Jim thought. The thought was seven parsecs long.

With one hand on the wheel Einstein pulled a joint from his shirt pocket. He fumbled the lighter. “Shit,” he said. When he bent down to search the floor the Silverado veered. Jim reached for the wheel too late. The Silverado rolled.

They were ejected at light speed. The truck spun like a top behind them.

“It’s okay!” Einstein called out, holding up the lighter. The joint flared against the myriad. “An object in motion will stay in motion!”

A flick, and the joint somersaulted through the vacuum. Jim caught it, hit it, returned it. “How do we stop?” he called back.

Einstein shrugged. “How about that Camaro?”

“I’ve got something better!” He unzipped, closed his eyes, thought of Cherry, and masturbated. When he looked up, the Millennium Falcon was soaring.

They entered through the hatch.

“Your nozzle’s a goddamn golden goose!”

“Thanks.”

“What’s your name, hillbilly?”

“Jim.”

“Well, Jim, strap in. Next stop is Nowhere.”

***

The edge was an abrupt black wall. Einstein parked the Falcon and they went outside to have a look.

“What’s on the other side?” Jim said.

“I don’t have a clue.”

Jim was surprised. “I thought you were Einstein.”

“Fuck you, hillbilly.”

Einstein paced along the Falcon’s hull, observing the stark wall. He paused, chin in hand, lost in thought.

“What?” Jim said.

Einstein started. “Oh! This place, it seems to expand under pressure from the mind. If the expansion were physical, a static edge is out of the question. That’s not a mistake I mean to make twice.” He looked back at the universe. “Your ejaculation is puzzling, however. Perhaps the experience of it pushed the boundaries out. Then the ejaculate itself merely occupied the resulting space.”

“What does that mean?”

“Observe,” Einstein said. He put his hand out to touch the wall, but the wall moved back an inch. “I want to touch the edge. To want is to think. Thinking makes this place get bigger. The wall retreats.”

Jim snapped his fingers. “I’ll go! Maybe it’s because you’re Einstein. Like, your brain is too big. Maybe I can make it through.”

“I considered it, but your eligibility renders you incompetent.”

“What?”

“You’re too dumb to bring back any useful information.”

“Oh yeah.”

More pacing. Jim mimicked Einstein’s movements, thinking his brain might follow suit. It didn’t. Einstein stopped suddenly and counted his fingers.

“I’ve got it! Jim, you have to push me!” He stood on the Falcon’s edge with his back to the wall. “I’ll stop thinking and you just shove me right through!”

“Really? Just like that?”

“Simplicity is the engine of the universe. Do it!”

Einstein closed his eyes and folded his arms. Jim shrugged and pushed.

Thwump.

Einstein vanished.

“Oh shit,” Jim said. “Oh shit.” He peered over the side of the Falcon. Nothing. “I did not just push Einstein out of the universe. Unless I did. Think, Jim. Think!”

The universe expanded.

“Shit! Stop thinking, no more thinking.”

Jim was looking up at the wall, dumb and helpless, when the dull end of a chain emerged. When he grabbed it there was resistance. He put all of his weight behind it and drew it out of the wall link by link. At the end of the chain was an envelope. He opened it.

Dear Jim,

Nice fucking push. I’m going to be a while. Don’t wait up.

Albert E.

P.S.

I found these under a white hole. I won’t be needing them. Good luck, hillbilly.

There was something in the envelope. Jim emptied its contents into his hand, paused, scratched his head.

It was a glossy red pair of dice.

Jim Home

Next Jim story

Something different

The Freewillin Jim [Jim #2, Short Fiction]

“Fore!” Jim yelled. Even in Paradise he hooked the damn ball.

“Ha!” Hitler laughed. “Right in the trees!”

A bear-drawn chariot carried them up the fairway. Jim looked sideways at his companion, thinking he looked much better without the mustache. This was all the result of a lottery, the winner of which was balls deep in Cleopatra right about now. Golfing with Hitler was the consolation prize.

“I didn’t know you were a golfer,” Jim said.

“It was Plato that showed me golf,” Hitler said. “He said it would help me relax.”

Plato. He recognized the name from philosophy class. Something about a cave. Sometimes he swore heaven was like walking through a goddamn history lesson.

“So uh, I don’t mean to be that guy, but didn’t you kill a whole lot of people?”

“As a matter of fact, in this place I’ve only killed one person. Turns out it only counts if you pull the trigger.”

“Oh come on.”

“Honest pilgrim.”

“You were, like, the king of the Nazis.”

“Fuhrer.”

“What?”

“I was – it doesn’t matter. But when I came to this place, they only credited me with one kill, and that was me.”

Jim lined up his shot and swung. The ball sailed, bounced once on the green and went over.

“I don’t buy it. How is that even possible?” he said.

“Free will.”

“Free will?”

“You’re only responsible for what you do. According to the records, I mostly just talked a lot.”

“But you set everything up. You were the guy that gave the orders. Like, six million Jews and a bunch of Russians died. How do you not get credit for that?”

Hitler took out his pitching wedge. He had a graceful swing and stuck the ball pin high.

“Nobody had to listen,” he said. “Nobody had to do any of those things. Each one of them was free to say no.”

Jim shook his head. “Naaa. No way. Fuck that, you totally killed those people.”

Hitler shrugged. Jim walked up to his ball on the backside of the green. His shot skittered past the hole and found the far fringe.

“You need to be more open,” Hitler said.

“Gwa?!”

“Your club face. You are hitting the ball thick.”

“Oh,” Jim laughed. “I thought you were – I mean, for a second there, you know, I thought Hitler was giving me, uhh . .”

Hitler was expressionless and attentive. Jim shook his head.

“Forget it,” he said. “So, uh, who decides the kill count, anyway?”

“The Death Center,” Hitler said. “It’s on Corporeal Road.” His putt rattled home.

***

The Death Center was huge. A building map showed floors assigned to Haunting Holidays, Funeral Reenactments, Postmortem Vertigo and Trauma. Kill Records and Death Statistics was on the 27th floor.

When he reached it, a woman looked up from her computer.

“Kill records and death statistics,” she said. “What can I do ya for?”

“Yeah,” Jim said. “So, I was just golfing with Hitler, and he said he never killed nobody.”

“Well now that just won’t do, will it. Why don’t you just take a seat there and we’ll sort this all out for ya. Does this Hitler have a full name?”

“What do you mean?”

“For example, maybe Hitler Stevens, or Hitler Robinson . . .”

“Adolf. Adolf Hitler. You don’t know who Hitler is?”

The woman punched the information into her keyboard.

“There he is. Well look at that. Adolf Hitler has one kill, and it’s Adolf Hitler. What a coincidence.”

“That’s not possible!”

“Our records are absolute and infallible. Look there, it even says so on the screen.”

“But he killed millions of people!”

“Oh, I think I’d remember a seven figure kill count. Imagine that, seven figures. You’d have to wake up pretty early in the morning.”

Jim stood up and paced. He hadn’t studied much history, but he knew damn well that Hitler killed more than one person.

“Auschwitz,” he said. “Look up Auschwitz.”

The keyboard clacked.

“Oh, Nazi Deathcamp – that sounds exotic. You’re certainly at the right place. I don’t see any mention of Adolf Hitler here though.”

“But what about all those people?”

“Well, I have a Rudolph Hoss down for one hundred and ninety-two kills. Pretty impressive. And here’s an Albert Ostendorf, he’s got fifty. Let’s see here . . . Oh, there’s a Willhelm Attenburg, seventy-six kills. I don’t see any millionaires, though.”

“What about D-Day? The Battle of the Bulge? The Russian front?”

More clacking.

“The highest kill count I have for D-Day is fifty-nine, a man named Sam Anderson.”

“Sam Anderson.”

“That’s right.”

“Some guy named Sam Anderson killed more people than Hitler.”

“A bunch more.”

Jim pulled some jerky out of his ear and chewed on it. Jerky helped him think.

“Alright, so who’s got the highest kill count? Like who killed the most people?”

Clack clack.

“Paul Tibbets.”

“Who?”

“Looks like he was in that war with your friend. Says here he dropped a bomb on Japan. 287,598 kills. That’s a doozy.”

“The pilot?! They put that on the pilot? What about the guys that made the bomb? The president?”

“Oh, we don’t keep track of assists anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it turns out, what with all the going-about that goes on – ya know, the talking and the pushing – every kill had about a bazillion assists. Fried our computers to a crisp. We have a strict Kill/No kill policy now. No moochers.”

Jim finished the jerky. “This just doesn’t make any sense,” he said. But he thought there might be a guy that could help him out.

***

Plato was high on a cloud and looking down at a valley. With every brush stroke on his canvas, the valley changed.

Jim cleared his throat and the philosopher turned.

“Well, what do you think?” he said.

“It, ah, it looks good,” Jim said.

“Good, bad – Is it Valley or is it not Valley?”

“It’s definitely a valley. More flowers, maybe?”

“Mmmm.” He set down the brush and wriggled his fingers. “Daniel!”

A chiseled young man, naked and glistening, flew by and snatched the philosopher’s robe. Plato was naked too now, and instead of a penis a French horn dangled between his legs. Before Jim could look away, it flexed a B flat.

“You’re here about the Hitler problem,” Plato said.

Jim blinked. “Uh, yeah, that’s the reason I called. I, uh, I entered this thing to have sex with Cleopatra, and I ended up golfing with Hitler. We got to talking, and he said he’s off the hook for all those people he killed. I’m like, that can’t be right, so I go down to the Death Center — ”

But Plato held up a finger and closed his eyes. His horn climbed a Dorian scale.

“I know what troubles you,” Plato said. “And I think our conversation is better suited to the ground. Just follow the rainbow.”

Plato sucked in a deep breath and with some effort produced the cadences of Somewhere Over the Rainbow with his horn. A rainbow appeared beneath Jim’s feet and sloped gently into the valley. Jim scratched his head, shrugged, took a step, and he fell right through it. The ground rushed up and kicked him in the head.

“Ahhhhhhhhh.”

“Do you see your error now?”

Plato was sitting in an armchair next to him, already smoking a cigar. His horn lay flat against his leg, exhausted.

“Error? You just threw me off a cloud! That hurt, man.”

“No it didn’t.”

“You still threw me off!”

“You walked off the cloud.”

“You told me to!”

“I did.”

“Well?!”

A sigh. “Sometimes I don’t know why I bother.”

Plato stood up. He shook his horn and an F sharp drizzled out. He pointed at the cloud.

“The next time you hear a dick singing about rainbows, just take the fucking elevator,” he said. Jim followed his finger, and sure as shit one went right up to the cloud.

Jim was speechless. Plato finished his cigar, popped the butt into his mouth and chewed it while he considered his valley.

“You might have been right about the flowers, though,” he said.

And then he walked away.

Jim Home

Next Jim story

Something different

1 Truth Road [Jim #1, Short Fiction]

“Pizza? I didn’t think there’d be pizza in heaven,” Jim said.

“Why not? Pizza is the shit,” the angel said.

“And cursing. And beer? Is that beer?”

In fact, the table was laid out with all the things Jim loved. Chicken wings, malt whiskey, chili fries, club sandwiches, those little wieners wrapped in bacon. Over the table hung a cage where two beautiful women danced naked to 90’s alternative. The angel saw him gazing.

“You can have them after dinner,” he said.

“Are they being punished?” Jim asked. He was a man, through and through, but he didn’t like the idea of raping someone in paradise.

“Punished? Is that what you think we do here? They love it. Some women like to party. We don’t hold that against them. Cherry there has been welcoming our new guests for two hundred years.” The angel leaned close with a knowing smile. “There are no anal fissures in heaven, so go wild.”

Jim coughed. “So uh, well . . .” He coughed again. “What are the uh, ground rules?”

“Ground rules?”

“Like, what’s the forbidden fruit? What’s the catch around here?”

“No catches. The boss doesn’t care for rules. Everybody gets in, and everybody gets what they desire. Let’s say you were a Christian all your life, well I’d be all shiny and I’d take you on the holy tour, you’d get to look down at hell and pity the damned, that sort of thing. If you’re Jim from Tennessee, you get chicken wings and bitches.”

“Huh,” Jim said. “You know, I never really believed in this place, but I figured, if it was there, it’d be a little more uptight.”

“Not since Lucy reclaimed the throne.”

“Lucy?”

“Lucifer. He’s Lucy now. Or she’s Lucy now. We’re all a little confused. But hey, more power to him if that’s what gets her off.”

“Lucifer?! Lucifer is in charge of heaven?”

Jim knocked over his beer in surprise. The angel was laughing heartily.

“Oh, the shock on your faces, it never gets old! Yes, Lucifer fought a last resistance a very long time ago. He crushed the Usurper handily. As the Usurper fell, he passed through earth, and it was in retaliation that he saddled you guys with all those ridiculous books and laws.”

“No shit.”

***

Jim pulled out from long years of habit. To his surprise, he orgasmed a slice of apple pie, complete with a fork and a dapple of cream.

“Sorry,” Cherry said. She took a bite and melted with satisfaction. “I really love pie after sex.”

“No, that was awesome.” Jim was looking in awe at his penis. In Tennessee, whatever came out of it was generally a nuisance. It certainly hadn’t been pie.

Cherry laughed. “It takes a little getting used to.”

“Yeah, I guess it does.”

He lay down on his back with his hands clasped behind his head. While Cherry enjoyed her dessert, he tried to bring the last several hours into focus.

“So, you heard the angel and me talking, right?”

“Sure.”

“About Lucy and the resistance and all that?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“What do you mean?”

Jim had never given these sorts of things much thought, so he had difficulty articulating the funny feeling in his brain. He looked at Cherry’s breasts, ran a finger down her back, watched her eat the pie. Paradise . . .

“I mean, if part of this place is hearing what you want to hear, how do you know what’s what? How do we know what’s true?”

Cherry swallowed and shook her fork. “Oh yeah, the paradox thingy. You know, it’s been a long time since I thought about it. You’re pretty quick to grab it so fast. It’ll bother you for a while, but when you get to live the way you want to live the whole truth thing just kind of goes out the window. I mean, who cares?”

“But, what if what you want is the truth? Like, is there a truth?”

She held up the pie. “This is the fucking truth, honey.” The way she said it, he found difficulty finding any fault with it. Still, he was bothered, and he didn’t think a person should feel bothered in heaven.

“What if this is really hell? What if somebody really is looking down, pitying us?” he wondered aloud.

***

The walls began to shake.

“Wow, that really must be bothering you,” Cherry said.

“What? Why? What’s happening?” Jim was on his feet now. “Is this bad?”

“Lucy’s coming. She comes around when the paradox gets to you. Don’t worry, she’s super nice. Tell her you like her dress.”

“What?”

There was a warbling, pixelating whoomf and a beautiful woman stepped out of a hole in the wall. When the hole closed, the room shuddered back to solid.

“Cherry!” the woman exclaimed. “You indigo slut, it’s been ages! How are you!”

The two of them hugged. Jim stood naked and speechless.

“This is Jim,” Cherry said, after a few more obligatory exchanges. “He’s worried about the whole where am I thing.”

“Jim.” Lucy held out her hand. The nails were painted, the fingers were milk white.

“I – I like your dress,” Jim said.

Lucy’s laughter was sudden, honest, and contagious. Soon all three of them were laughing. Jim began to feel embarrassed he had been taking things so seriously.

“Well, I do hate these formalities,” Lucy said, drawing a card from her blouse, “but there is bureaucracy even here.” She handed him the card. “If you ever want to know the truth, just find the address on the card there. They’ll fill you in on everything.”

“Really?” Jim said, taken aback. “Just like that?”

“Well . . .”

Aha! Jim’s head rejoiced. A catch! Finally a damn catch. It eased his mind immensely just knowing there was something up.

“If you go to the truth, you can’t come back.” Lucy’s frown was sexual. Everything about her was sexual.

“You can’t come back? Why?”

“I can’t tell you that. It’s part of the truth.”

Jim looked at the card. It was nothing but TRUTH in capital letters, under which read the enticing address, 1 Truth Road.

Lucy’s hand was on his arm. He hadn’t noticed her approach. When he looked up there was intensity in her eyes. It thrilled him. She spoke softly.

“My advice is always the same. You have an eternity to enjoy yourself. The truth can wait.”

He was in her mouth before he knew what was happening. It was pleasure beyond anything he’d ever known. When he finished, and Lucy took her leave, he and Cherry shared the bucket of chicken wings.

***

It took Jim 376 years to get bored. He stood at 1 Truth Road, thinking it was funny how small the building was.

When he walked in, the man behind the reception desk smiled.

“You seek the truth?” the man said.

“I suppose I do,” Jim said.

“If you don’t mind, there’s a series of questions I’d like to ask you. This is completely optional, but your honest answers help us improve paradise.”

Jim shrugged. “Shoot.”

“How would you rate your overall experience? These are all one to ten, by the way.”

“Ten.”

“How helpful was our staff?”

“Ten.”

“The weather?”

“Ten.”

“The event center?”

“Ten.”

“The wi-fi?”

“You know what, just put me down for ten on everything.”

The man nodded knowingly. It took him a good five minutes to fill in all the tens, and Jim was glad he made the request.

“If you don’t mind my asking, if everything is a ten, why leave?” the man asked.

“I could go for a few sevens.”

“Fair enough. Just go down that hall, and you’re looking for the second door on the right. Good luck.”

He found the room easily enough. It was smaller than the main lobby, but with the same setup. It was mostly white, and there was a man behind a desk and a single chair in front of it. Jim blinked a few times. It was the same man.

“Take a seat.”

“You’re the same guy,” Jim said.

“I run things around here. Go ahead, sit down. Alright, so before we proceed I have to make sure you understand this all correctly. For starters, once you find out the truth, you know that you can’t go back?”

“I do.”

“And you know that you’re leaving of your own free will, that you aren’t compelled in any way to leave?”

“Well, I can only assume that, really.”

“Good enough. And the last thing, you’re aware that billions of souls are perfectly happy to be happy in spite of the paradox?”

“I am.”

“Great. Now, as for the truth. For the last 376 years, you have been living in paradise, and paradise is awesome.”

That’s all he said. He said it as if that was all that needed saying. For the first time in a long time, Jim was angry.

“That’s not enough,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I’m afraid it never is.” The man nodded.

“What about God? The Devil? Heaven and Hell and right versus wrong? Who runs this place? Where is it?”

“Oh. Really? That’s not even part of the paradox. God and the Devil are the same thing, and this is where people go when they die. That’s all pretty much obvious.”

“But, but . . .” Had he made a mistake coming here? He suddenly wanted nothing more than to step back into the orgy’s oblivion. “But what about, I mean, who’s right?”

The man spread his hands. His face was brutally sincere. “If you can’t ask a meaningful question I can’t help you,” he said.

Jim was speechless. He had no idea what question to ask. All those years, the chicken, the women, the booze, he always just figured the truth was sitting here on a silver platter, waiting for him. God and the Devil are the same person? What kind of truth was that?

“The exit is through that door,” the man said.

It was a plain door.

“What’s on the other side?”

“I have no idea.”

“What??! This is 1 Truth Road! I’m giving up Paradise for this. The fuck you don’t know what’s on the other end of a goddamn door!”

“I never went through it.”

“Then you don’t know the truth!”

“I told you the truth.”

“What about the door?”

“That’s where you leave.”

“What’s behind it?”

“I don’t have a clue.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Not likely.”

Jim went to the door and threw it open. Before he went in, he looked back one last time.

“At least give me this. What’s the point of this place? 1 Truth Road. It sure as hell ain’t the truth.”

The man shrugged. “It wouldn’t be paradise with you moping around.”

Jim fell through the door.

Jim Home

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