Damned

XXXV

The sheet of paper Archer held aloft, it's my appeal. It's the blah, blah, blah form for reconsideration, which Babette filed on my behalf in response to the results of my polygraph-y salvation test. It could be that my soul has actually been found innocent, and the powers that be are righting their mistake. More likely, what's happened is more political, and my growing political strength — the newly dead recruits I've garnered from earth, and the armies I've gathered — poses such a threat that the demons are willing to release me if that means retaining their overall power. What it all boils down to is… I no longer have to stay in Hell. I no longer even have to be dead.

I can go back to earth, to be with my parents, to live whatever lifetime I have allotted. I'll be able to menstruate and have babies and eat avocados.

The only problem is, I told my parents we'd be together for all time. Yes, of course, I told them we'd all be in Heaven with the Buddha and Martin Luther King Jr. and Teddy Kennedy smoking hashish or whatnot… but I WAS only trying to spare their feelings. Honestly, my motivation was fairly noble. Really, I just wanted them to stop crying.

No, I'm not completely unrealistic about my parents' slim chances of attaining Heaven. To that end, talking over the telephone, I'd made my father promise to honk his car horn at least a hundred times each day. I'd sworn my mother to constantly use the word fuck and to always drop her cigarette butts outdoors. With their existing track record, these behaviors would way guarantee their assured damnation. Forever in Hell is still forever, and at least we'd all be together as an intact nuclear family.

Even as he wept, I forced my father to promise that he'd never pass up an opportunity to break wind in a crowded elevator. My mom I made promise to urinate in every hotel swimming pool she'd ever enter. Divine law allows each person to pass gas in only three elevators, and to urinate in the shared water of only two swimming pools. This is regardless of your age, so most people are already relegated to Hell by the age of five.

I told my mom she looked way beautiful giving away those dumb Academy Awards, but that she should hit Control+Alt+D and unlock the doors of my bedrooms in Dubai, London, Singapore, Paris, Stockholm, Tokyo, and everywhere, all of my rooms. By keystroking Control+Alt+C she ought to open all my curtains and allow sunlight into those sealed, shadowy places. I made my dad promise to give all my dolls and clothes and stuffed animals to the Somali maids we had in every household— and to give them all a sizable raise in their wages. On top of all those demands I asked my parents to adopt all our Somali maids, to really legally adopt them, and make certain those girls get college degrees and become successful cosmetic surgeons and tax attorneys and psychoanalysts— and that my mom can't lock them in bathrooms anymore, even as a joke — and both my parents yelled in unison over the telephone: "Enough! Madison, we promise!"

In my effort to comfort my parents, I said, "Keep your promises, and we'll be one big, happy family, forever!" My family, my friends, Goran, Emily, Mister Wiggles, and Tiger Stripe…we'll all spend eternity together.

And now, ye gods… it seems as though I'm the one who won't be in Hell.