Hi Guys, this is my first post. It is the first chapter of a book I'm working on. Please let me know what you think! Also, I'm planning on adding more about when she was alive, but haven't done it yet. Happy reading!
Okay, now I've edited it a bit, following your reviews.
Chapter 1
I peered out the window, trying to see out of the windows past the sheet of water cascading down the windshield. The windshield wipers were on the highest setting. Swish-swish; swish-swish back and forth they went.
I glanced in the rearview mirror. The single back windshield wiper looked lonely, trying to do the job all on its own. A blurry outline could be made out, a truck maybe. It was coming closer, and even though the rain made it hard to tell, I could have sworn that it was moving far too fast. Then I realized with a sickening jolt in my stomach that it was coming straight at me. I grabbed the faded wheel and spun my ancient Volvo as fast as I could to the right. I watched the world turn into a blur as my car spun. I was thrown against the wheel, and something caught me in the ribs. I looked down to see that the airbag had deployed. The pain peaked. I heaved over the steering wheel. Then a crunch. Another stab of pain. Stars dancing in my mind, my vision blurring. Something sticky in my hand. With an effort, I raised it in front of my face. It was crimson with my blood. I gave a small gasp, and that was the last thing I remembered for a while.
* * *
When I woke up I was lying in a warm place. I felt something soft brushing against my bare skin. Wait, bare? Yes, my hips were pressing into ground, not through clothes. I was definitely naked, but it did not bother me as there was no one about. Mentally I took an inventory of my body. Wiggling my toes, fingers. Moving my hips. I instinctively felt my ribs, which had surely been broken by the airbag. They felt fine. Slowly, to try to ward off the pain I knew must come, I sat up. When I felt fine, I got to my feet and gazed around. The ground stretched away, white and pillow-like. The sky was light blue. There was no one in sight, no one for miles.
“Not exactly,” said a male voice behind me. I scrambled to cover myself. “Don’t worry,” said the unknown man, “I am God. I see all anyway.” He was looking at me appraisingly. He gazed up and down my nude body. I felt angry to be examined by a total stranger. However, I also felt powerless. I stared at the man. He looked to be about thirty. Caucasian, but very, very tan. Long, black hair past his shoulders, worn down. A strong jaw, and piercing black eyes. Those eyes looked so deep that you could have held the world in them and had room to spare. Then I did what any reasonable woman would have done. I turned around and ran as fast as I could away from him.
“Please come back, Becky, dear.” I was totally disarmed to hear the strange man’s voice echoing inside my head. That he knew my name scared me as well. “Well, of course I know your name. I am God, you know. I know everything about you. You are Becky Mason, twenty two years old. You enjoy biking and drawing. You had a boyfriend named Jon back home. You resented your twin sister, Addie because she was better than you at school and sports. She went to Princeton and you went to Rutgers.” I continued to run, clapping my hands over my ears to block out the voice. “I am God and you have outdone my patience. YOU WILL COME BACK HERE!” The instant the voice in my head spoke, my feet turned around. I tried to stop them, but they were taking me back to where the man who called himself God stood.
“That’s better. I apologize for losing my temper, but you really do need to give me a chance to speak. All you atheists are the same. Never realize where you’ve come. You shouldn’t really be here at all, but you did lead an honorable life and most people who die at the fault of others end up here, Christian or not.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This man actually thought he was God.
“But I am, Becky.” Weird, so he was telepathic, too. “Yep, that’s right.” No way. “Yes way.” No way. “Yes way.” Okay, so this was all just a really weird dream. I could live with that. Maybe the crash was a dream, too.
“Think what you like, you’ll realize soon enough.”
“Will you stop listening to what I think?” I asked impatiently. Then I remembered that I still had no clothes on. In fact, I actually caught him staring at my pale breasts.
“And you had better get me some clothes, now!” I stomped my foot.
“Fine, if you insist.” He snapped his fingers and I was clothed in a silk t-shirt and jeans that I could never have afforded.
“Only the finest for a lady.” I got the impression that he was mocking me.
“Where am I, anyway? The asylum?”
“Didn’t I already tell you? No, I guess I forgot. Well, here. I’ll do the initiation.” He spoke in an official voice now. “Welcome to heaven. I am sorry that your life was taken, but all is well here. Because of the absence of bad deeds on your record you have been granted status of an angel, which you may become once we have been through the proper ceremonies. Yadayadayada and I hope you don’t really expect me to keep going because it’s getting pretty boring and there’s really nothing else important in the speech.” He finished with a small bow. I didn’t crack a smile.
“Okay, so you’re god and I’m dead and purple pigs fly. Where’s the exit?”
“What exit?” he looked deadly serious. “This is heaven. You’re not supposed to find an exit.”
“If this is heaven, where is everyone else?”
“Do you want to meet them?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Well, I could chain you to a rock and leave you here to biodegrade.”
“I’ll meet them," I said grumpily.
“Good.” He winked at me, and a city began to spring up out of nowhere. The towering walls were marble, the gates golden and gleaming. At God’s command the glorious gates swung outward and a bell pealed. God entered and I followed.
The city was bustling with people. They all appeared to be living and healthy, though I noticed that the majority were old. However, the entire population of the city had huge white wings sprouting from their back. At least half of them were wearing white dresses or tunics and pants, tied with belts of gold braid. However, the rest were dressed in an assortment of clothes from all ages of history. There were people wearing clothes like mine. Then there were hippies and men in britches, women with long skirts and women with no tops on, only skirts. There were people who were covered in hair and wore little or no clothing at all. All of them were smiling as they went about their daily business. And all had those strange wings.
At this I felt suddenly both tired and dizzy. My head seemed to be spinning. In fact, the entire city was spinning. I swayed and almost fell down on my knees. God caught me before I could. His hands were strong and warm, and very solid. I grabbed his arm to right myself. Like the rest of him it was muscular but warm. I steadied myself on his arm and stood upright again.
“Wow. What is this, some sort of play? You must be really rich!”
“Of course I’m really rich. I’m God. But this is no play. This is my city.”
"Uh, how exactly did we end up inside a city when there was no one around for miles?"
“I wanted us to be here, so we appeared. I’m God, you seem to forget.”
I sighed. Here he went again on ‘Oh, Becky, I’m God, and everything you believe is wrong.’
“Not everything. Just everything religious.”
Please let me wake up now.
“Maybe you should sleep for a while, get used to the idea.”
I tried to protest but immediately felt my eyes getting heavy. They closed and I was asleep where I was standing.
* * *
Some time later my eyes fluttered open again.
“Good,” said a voice directly over my head. I blinked, trying to focus in the bright light that had flooded over me the moment my eyes opened. As my eyes slowly started to make out where I was, I sat up, groggily. I must be alive after all, my crazy dream of God and heaven over. Then my eyes adjusted. I was lying under the covers of a very comfortable bed, staring up at a woman who was bending over me. With a jolt in the pit of my stomach I realized that she had wings. I was still in the dream. She was wearing very old looking clothes, and looked to be about my mother’s age-maybe fifty five or sixty. Gray hair was tucked under an old fashioned bonnet, and a long skirt fell to her ankles.
“She’s awake,” the woman called over her shoulder. An old man considerably older than she was, but in the same clothes that looked straight out of the 1800’s appeared in the room beside her. Literally appeared, like stepped straight out of thin air. Weird.
“Hello, dear,” he said, addressing me.
“H-hi.” My throat was very dry. Instantly a mug appeared in the woman’s hand, which she offered to me. I tasted it. Sweet, but refreshing, and I knew without asking that I was tasting honeysuckle nectar for the first time in my life.
“Who are you?” I asked when I was refreshed.
“Well, I’m Beth and this is my husband Jacob.” The woman had a tinge of some accent I could not place. “We’re from Luxembourg.”
“You speak very good English,” I said politely.
“Oh no, dear, not English! This is German, silly girl. Well, to me, anyway.”
At my bewildered look Jacob intervened.
“Becky, here in heaven all languages are the same. You think you’re speaking English. I think I’m speaking French, and Beth hears German. Whatever language we are most comfortable with is what we hear. I sighed. More heaven nonsense. To be polite I merely nodded.
“I’ll let you get settled in,” said Jacob kindly and he left the room.
“Here, I’ll get you a bath,” said Beth once we were alone. As she said it a golden tub appeared, full of steaming, bubbly water. She glanced at me and I was instantly naked again. I did not enjoy having other people control my clothes, but I was starting to get used to it. She took my hand and helped me into the bath. A thorough scrub-down ensued. I had never had such a comprehensive bath in my life. Using a coarse washcloth, Beth proceeded to rub every inch of my body raspberry pink. She also washed my hair vigorously.
“Normally we don’t take baths here, except for pleasure,” she explained as she worked, long sleeves rolled up to expose muscular forearms, “but you aren’t an angel yet, and, no offense, you reek of pollution. They just don’t know how to get the mortal smells off of you before they send you up here. You’re initiation’s tomorrow and we need to get you polished up before then!”
After three changes of bathwater and what felt like every particle of dirt on my body, Beth was satisfied. I was somewhat surprised that she chose not to remove my hair, which seemed to have grown more than on night’s worth. I noticed that her legs had not been shaved either. Perhaps they didn’t bother here.
Beth dressed me (with a glance) in a baggy pair of tan pants made of some thin cloth and a loose linen shirt. She explained that I was an outsider until I had been initiated and that it would be best not to stand out too much.
“Initiated?”
“To become an angel we have to go through your file and make sure you deserve it. Then you are presented with wings. In case you’re wondering, time has no meaning here. You’d think we’d be flooded with dead people-so many people die in the world every day. It doesn’t really matter. Heaven lasts for eternity so we deal with people one at a time. For all I know, you could’ve been dead for a hundred years before you woke up here.”
I felt slightly disconcerted by this. Beth seemed to understand how I was feeling.
“How about we give you a tour around today and then turn in early? You’ll want to be well rested for your initiation tomorrow.” I nodded weakly.
“Where’s Jacob?” I asked.
“I expect he’s gone to work already,” Beth replied.
“Work? You have to do work here?”
“Well, not really. Jacob’s work is what he loves to do the most. He tried to relax when he got here but couldn’t do without it. So it’s more pleasure than work for him, but it is a job.”
“What does he do?”
“My Jacob is a baker, and a fine one. Of course, up here he has the finest materials to work with, but even at home when we had coarse flour and very little sugar he still made beautiful works of art.”
“So does everyone here work?”
“Only those who choose to.”
“Do you?”
“Oh, no. I was born in 1812, Jacob in 1801. In our day, women didn’t work. We kept house and took care of the children.”
“So your children are here too?” I immediately regretted asking because Beth’s eyes filled with tears. She silently shook her head. No.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
“No, it’s okay dear. It’s not your fault; it’s natural to assume that children would follow their parents. No, my little ones did not fear God. They did not go to hell, for they had committed no crime, but they are not angels. They simply are. They live outside the city, for they would be outcasts here.
“So what do you do if you don’t work?” I asked, trying to change the topic.
“Whatever you want, or nothing at all,” she replied. “I make it my personal goal to help a young person accomplish something every day. We angels can’t change what happens down below, but we have the power to send dreams. I give people messages through their sleep.”
“Very kind of you!”
“I like to think that, even though I am dead, I can still do good in the world. I can explain more when we go into the city.”
“Can we go now?”
“Of course, I just need to fetch my satchel and brush up a bit.”
It didn’t take her long at all.
Maybe you could reconsider this part?