by Suphil Park
When our Star Author died, I was sent to Heaven to retrieve the final draft of his last manuscript. The head of our small literary agency had sighed, “Acts of God, for heaven’s sake–why now?”
Being the newbie with nothing better to do, I was told to set out for a trip to the sun. Summer was an ever unapologetic presence upon those desperate to flee the city. I placed a kiss on my tabby’s head and joined them, hoping Heaven would be a cooler place.
Into then far out from the Penn Station; past the buskers with radios gurgling out some 80s’ tunes and past what could only be described as an infested alley, right next to which there was a cafe selling Asian doughnuts sugar-speckled and stuffed with sesame chocolate and red bean paste at 80%-put-towards-lease prices; past a scarce public bathroom where a homeless woman stood patting her bloody thighs down with the last swaths of tissue; beyond the cities full of empty duplexes; through the thick of dictators and their concentration camps; through the bloodmist of honor killings and half-starved, half-blitzed nations; into the terrain of blind faith; around the perimeter of a celestial conversation (“Who left the sun half-eaten on the spoon?” “Don’t you drop Pluto, we don’t need another hole”); and at long last, towards the neighborly-faced angel waiting like a timely verb, I went.
“Greetings,” I hollered.
Talking to the angel felt like addressing a full auditorium. The angel rippled, something I would have called a smile in a human being.
“What brought you here, kiddo?”
I explained. As it turned out, the angel already knew all about it, because knowledge, they said, is nothing more than understanding the advent and its overarching aftermath, but we humans love the pleasantries of verbally reiterating the knowledge, and unfortunately, by the way, the Star Author was not in Heaven. Where would he be then? I asked, Hell?
The angel nodded benevolently, “Yes, yes, you call the clinic Hell, I’ve heard.”
The Angel offered me a dip in a pool of light (a great cleansing for an urban soul, they cooed), which I declined, eager to leave this know-it-all, socially clueless authority figure.
After rounds of saltless shots on an empty stomach and bouts of loud gagging, singing, and drunkenly reliving the memories of to-hell-with-you’s and go-to-hell’s that had traumatized and made me feel like I’m living in literal hell, I was in Hell. A real one this time–flatland with nothing in sight.
“No visitors allowed,” said the devil, not lifting their eyes from a funny zine, but in a tone familiar with the human ways. Keep nagging, the tone said. Find a way around, room for bending, bribe and coax and butter up to me, and I just might, it said.
I eased into a question: “Where’s the Clinic?”
“I am the Clinic,” said the devil, looking up, and I saw the devil had the face of everyone.