Damned (11 page)

And yes, I've sworn off hoping, but a girl can still carry a torch.

As we approach the tail end of one long queue, Leonard says,
"Spustati. Sledeic."

Babette says, "Is this even the same
year?”

Only in Hell do you wish a wristwatch included the day, date, and
century
functions.

At this, Psezpolnica sinks to one knee, leaning forward to carefully,
gently lower us back to the ground.

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. If you can tolerate yet another
admission on my part, I've never been very adept at taking tests. Trust me, I'm
not trying to lay the blame elsewhere, but I loathe the kind of game-show
context in which so much of our lives is determined: proving my memory and
mental skills in a sedentary situation under the pressure of limited time.
While death has its obvious drawbacks, it is a blessing that I now have an
unassailably valid excuse to not take the SATs. However, it seems that I've not
entirely dodged that dreaded bullet.

At the present I'm sitting in a small room, seated in a straight-backed
chair next to a desk. Picture the archetypal all-white room, featuring no
windows, which Jungian analysts say best represents death. A demon with cat's
claws and folded leathery wings leans close to adjust a blood-pressure cuff
which is wrapped around my upper arm, inflating the cuff until I can feel my
pulse throbbing along the inside of my elbow. Sticky pads hold the wires of a
heart-rate monitor to the skin of my chest, snaking between the buttons on my
blouse. Adhesive tape holds another wire which monitors the pulse at my wrist.
Other sensors are wired to the front and back of my neck.

"To monitor the tremors in your speech patterns," Leonard
explained. One sensor sticks to the cricothyroid muscle on the front of your
neck, he says. Another sensor, the cricoarytenoid muscle on the back of your
neck, near your spine. As you speak, a low-voltage current runs between the two
sensors, registering any microtremors in the muscles which control your voice
box, indicating when you're telling an untruth.

The demon with the leathery wings and cat's claws, his breath smells
putrid.

This comes after Babette escorted us into the headquarters building,
sidestepping the endless lines of waiting people to usher our little party
through a crumbled portion of the building's simultaneously unfinished yet
decayed facade. Babette shepherded us into a cavernous waiting hall as large as
any stadium, wherein countless souls stood around, constituting a sort of
Department of Motor Vehicles mélange: people wearing soiled rags next to people
wearing Chanel couture and carrying briefcases. All the plastic scoop-seated
chairs were booby-trapped with wads of fresh chewing gum, so, really, only the
people who've succeeded in abandoning all hope risk sitting down. An enormous
reader board sign mounted at the front of the hall said,
Now
Serving Number 5
.
The distant stone walls and ceiling looked
to be brown. Everything earth-toned, sepia, the color of grime, the color of
nose pickings. Almost everyone stood, their heads sagging at a slight angle,
dispirited, like the heads of broken necks.

The stone floor teemed, almost carpeted by legions of fat cockroaches
feasting on the ever-present popcorn balls and nonpareils. Hell is very much
like Florida in that the resident bug life never dies. As a result of the steamy
heat and immortality, the roaches achieve fat, meaty proportions more
associated with mice or squirrels. Babette watched me hopping, one-legged,
always holding the opposite leg aloft, storklike, to avoid treading on roaches,
and she said, "We need to steal you some high heels."

Even Patterson, wearing his football shoulder pads and jersey,
practically danced, skewering an ever-thickening layer of cockroaches smashed
under his steel cleats. World-weary Archer also pranced, the chrome chains
clanking around his boots, his feet skidding and skating on the crushed
beetles. In contrast, even falling to pieces, Babette's fake high-heeled shoes
allowed her to stilt-walk, impervious, above the roachy debris.

Outstriding the rest of us, elbowing aside the aeons of people already
waiting, Babette arrived at a counter or long desk that ran the entire length
of the far wall. There, a row of demons appeared to work as clerks, standing on
the opposite side of the desk. Babette plopped her fake Coach bag on the
countertop, addressing the demon who stood closest, saying, "Hey,
Astraloth." She produced a Big Hunk candy bar from her bag and slid the
candy across the counter, leaning into the demon's face, and said, "Give
us an A137-B17. The short form. For an appeal and records search." Babette
jerked her head in my direction, adding, "It's for the new kid,
here."

It was clear Babette meant business.

The air in the assembly hall was so humid that every exhalation hung
like a white cloud in front of my face, fogging my glasses. Cockroaches
crunched beneath my every footstep.

No, it's not fair, but my mom and dad were always happy to tell me the
sordid details of every sex act or fetish that existed. Other girls might get a
training bra at thirteen, but my mom offered to have me fitted for a training
diaphragm. Beyond the birds and the bees—and tea-bagging, rimming, and
scissoring—my parents never taught me a single thing about death. At most my
dad pestered me to use moisturizer with sunblock and to floss my teeth. If they
perceived death at all, it was only on the most superficial level, as the
wrinkles and gray hairs of very old people fated soon to expire. Therefore they
seemed heavily invested in the belief that if one could constantly maintain
one's personal appearance and mitigate the signs of aging, then death would
never be a pressing issue. To my parents, death existed as merely the logical,
albeit extreme, result of not adequately exfoliating your skin. A slippery
slope. If one simply failed to practice meticulous grooming, one's life would
grind to an end.

And please, if you're still in denial, eating low-sodium, heart-healthy
skinless chicken breasts and feeling all self-righteous as you jog on a
treadmill, don't pretend you're any more realistic than my loopy parents.

And do NOT get the impression that I miss being alive. AS IF I really
regret not getting to grow up and have blood gush out of my woo-woo every month
and learn to drive a fossil-fueled internal-combustion vehicle and watch crappy
R-rated movies without a parent or guardian, then drink beer out of a keg,
frittering away four years to snag a soft-ball degree in art history before
some boy squirts me full of sperm and I have to lug some big baby around inside
me for almost a whole year. Bummer—sarcasm fully intended—I am really missing
out on the Good Times. And, no, this isn't just Sour Grapes. When I look at all
the bullshit I'm skipping, sometimes I thank God I overdosed.

There, I said the G-word again. Ye gods! So kill me.

As it turns out, my damnation records have been lost. Or they have yet
to arrive. Or my records were accidentally destroyed. Whatever the case, I'm
forced to start from scratch, assigned to take a basic lie-detector test and
submit for drug testing.

Babette, it seems, is not quite as useless as I'd first imagined. She's
sidestepped no small amount of red tape and bureaucratic redundancy, leading
our little team through the maze of corridors and offices, bribing low-level
bureaucrats with Hershey bars and Sweet Tarts. Hell is aeons away from
establishing a paperless culture, and most of the floor is layered knee-deep in
misplaced records, disemboweled manila folders, the discarded polygraph
readouts, Butter Rum Life Savers, and cockroaches.

En route to my testing, Archer told me not to cross my arms, not to
look to the right or upward. Both of those: physical gestures that betray a
liar.

After we submit the filled-out appeal form and slip the attendant demon
a Kit Kat bar, Babette wishes me good luck. She gives me a little hug, no doubt
leaving dirty handprints all over the back of my cardigan sweater. Babette,
Leonard, Patterson, and Archer wait in an outer hallway while I go through a
door into the all-white testing room. The polygraph machine. The demon inflating
the blood-pressure cuff around my arm.

You might recall this same demon from the classic Hollywood masterpiece
The Exorcist,
where he possessed a little girl who was the
spoiled, precocious child of a middle-aged movie star. Talk about déjà vu. Here
he is now, watching my eyes for changes in pupil dilation which might betray
dishonesty. The demon's wiring my skin to test whether I sweat. What Leonard
calls "skin conductivity."

I say that I loved the scene where he made the little girl, Regan,
crab-walk backward down the stairs with gore spilling out of her mouth. More
out of nerves, I ask whether the demon has had any personal experience
possessing people. Did he make any other movies? Does he get any residuals?
Who's his agent?

Without looking away from his scrolling readout, those wavering little
needles that squiggle lines on the rolling belt of white paper, the demon says,
"Is your name Madison Spencer?"

The control questions. To establish a baseline of honest answers.

I say, "Yes."

Tweaking a knob on his machine, the demon asks, "Are you, in fact,
thirteen years old?"

Again, yes.

The demon asks, "Do you reject Satan and all his works?"

Easy enough. I shrug and say, "Sure, why not?"

"Please," the demon says, "it's very important that you
answer only either ryes' or 'no.'"

I say, "Sorry."

The demon says, "Do you accept the Lord God as the one true
God?"

Way-easy, no sweat, again, I say, "Yes."

The demon says, "Do you recognize Jesus Christ as your personal
savior?"

I don t know, not for certain, but I say, "Yes?"

The needles squiggle on the readout paper, not much but a little. I
can't feel for sure, but maybe the irises of my eyes suddenly contract. The
dogma seems pretty familiar, but this isn't any sort of catechism my parents
trained me to recite. The demon's own eyes never leaving the inky, wavering
lines, he says, 'Are you now or have you ever been a practicing member of the
Buddhist religion?"

I say, "What?"

"Yes or no," the demon says.

"What?" I say, "Buddhists don't get to Heaven?"

While my parents fell far short of being perfect, none of their
mistakes were intentionally malicious, so it feels downright traitorous to
disavow every ideal they did their best to instill in me. Mine is the age-old
conundrum of betraying one's parents versus betraying one's deity. Me, I just
want to wear a halo and ride on a cloud. I just want to play a harp.

Without missing a beat, the demon says, "Do you believe the Bible
to be the one and only true word of God?"

I say, "Does that include the way-crazy, loony parts of
Leviticus?"

Plunging forward, the demon says, "In your honest opinion, does
life begin at conception?"

Yes, I know I'm supposed to be dead, with no corporeal body and
physical needs or physiology, but I start sweating like a pig. My face feels hot
with blushing. My teeth sit on edge, softly grinding together. My fists
clenching, tight, the bones and muscles take shape under the whitening skin of
my knuckles.

I venture, "Yes?" "Do you sanction mandatory prayer in
public schools?" the demon asks.

Yes, I do want to go to Heaven—who doesn't?—but not if it means I have
to be a total asshole.

Whether I answer yes or no, those little needles are going to wiggle
like crazy, responding to either my dishonesty or my guilt.

The demon says, "Do you view sexual acts between individuals of
the same gender to be an abomination?"

I ask if we can come back to that question later.

The demon says, "I'll take that as a 'no.'"

Throughout the history of theology, Leonard tried to explain, religions
have argued over the nature of salvation, whether people are proved holy by
their good works or by their deep, inner faith. Do people go to Heaven because
they acted good? Or do they go to Heaven because it's predestined... because
they
are good
? That's ancient
history, according to Leonard; now the entire system relies on forensic
science. Polygraph tests. Psychophysiological detections of deception. Voice
stress analysis. You even have to submit hair and urine samples due to the new
zero-tolerance policy for drug and alcohol abuse in Heaven.