Aska Lindgren knew exactly where she was going when she died. She was going to Hell. Seriously. She was actually going to Hell. She was dead and she was going to Hades. She knew this because she was, at the moment, headed there. But, of course, it had to be a mistake. People didn't go to Hell for things like that.
The last thing she remembered was being in the grocery store. Aska had slept in. She would have to stop at the store after work. She would have preferred to have gone beforehand. After clocking out she always looked forward to doing absolutely nothing. But after work it would have to be.
She rushed into the all night grocery store, grabbed a small bag of of dog food and a TV dinner and made her way to the self-checkout. And that's when she met the old woman. Now, if she had been keen as to the ways of the world as it was, as it really was, she would of taken what happened next as a sign of things to come. But as most people lack this keenness so did Aska. But she would learn.
Aska would soon learn that when you find yourself, "why is that old bat out so late at night?" the answer was not to just "piss you off," but to irritate you to high Hell...literally.
That scornful old woman had cut in front of her in line. You could see her resentment for the young in every wrinkle that crossed that sagging skin mask. The look she wore on her face said, "I'm old and my life is nearly over. I don't know how, but it's your fault. And , I WILL inflict every minor transgression against you I can before I take my last breath. I'm ENTITLED to it."
She was tired and one of her headaches was working itself up to terrible. So, Aska called her a cunt, because that was, after all, what the old woman was. And Aska didn't believe she should be punished for simply telling the truth. No, if anything she should be commended for having the courage to speak up and let the old biddy know she was behaving poorly. Shouldn't someone let her know that being old and bitter wasn't an excuse for being rude? Keep it to yourself or complain with your bridge partner. It was possible this poor wretch of a human had ended up in her current state because no one had ever before addressed the issue. Aska believed herself to be a good Samaritan. Besides, the Good Book said it was LIARS who went to hell, NOT honest people with a hard truth to tell and the balls to tell it. But regardless, she was headed to that land down under. Perhaps she should not have lied about her weight on her driver's license application. Did fudging ten pounds really warrant damnation?
And that's when the men came to collect her. Store security was on the ball and was heading over to where Aska stood to escort her out of the store. And the old woman was still standing there scanning her groceries at what should have been Aska's self-checkout station. She hadn't gone anywhere to complain (most likely because she knew Aska's declaration to be true and she had gotten what she wanted—she got to go first. So who were these men? Grocery store security didn't wear tailored suits or have bluetooth.
She didn't have time to ask. Without a word the two men approached her and, each taking an elbow to lead her by, and in doing so indicating that they would do so with force if necessary, and swept her out of the store. With the wicked headache setting in she didn't put up much protest until they guided to her to a nondescript car, most likely a towncar, waiting by the curb to collect them, implying wordlessly with a gesture that she should get in. Now having doubts about these men she hesitated when they opened the car door. The men's silent request that she should get in then turned into a silent command as they PUT her in the vehicle.
Looking back later, especially after learning the identities of the men (ambassadors of Hell) she would think it odd how nonthreatening they had seemed and how willing she was to just be taken away. She had thought she had a little more fight in her than that. But she supposed it was understandable—the headache, which turned out to be a fatal aneurysm, had been distracting. Amazingly the headache disappeared the moment she was buckled up and the car door closed. She was feeling much better and could now sit back and think about things. For example, she thought that she was extremely tired and that all this business was just too much to process without a good nap under her belt.
It was a long drive. Through the endless miles of barren desert--Aska thought it looked like Arizona they were driving though. The undulating landscape made her feel drowsy and her eyelids became heavy. She dozed off only to find herself at the end of a very long, slow moving, and official looking line upon awakening. She knew exactly where she was. She was in Hell.
And Hell looked like the unemployment office with very long lines that didn't move more than an inch each turn of the wheel. And when you finally got to the window, they were either closed, or the attendant made you wish they were. Unhelpful was a standard held to a high degree here. At all times, in Hell as it was on Earth, peons were expected to have a bad attitude and no answers, if they even had them, to give.
After an eternity, funny that she should think of that expression now that she was in the middle of it, she reached the window. The desk person handed her a tome of forms to fill out without telling her what they were for before driving her off with a complimentary push with a cattle prod. Because of Hell's mandates, there were no chairs to sit in, which was just as well because the chairs of beauracray were not meant for sitting unless you felt like being punished. So she squatted in a corner and opened the file. They were the "petition for relocation to Heaven" forms. Apparently, that's what half the lines were for. The other half were for persons seeking a return to Hell.
As it turned out, Heaven was a place as cold as Hell was hot, meaning they were both lukewarm. She would learn this and other things about Heaven as she went through the process of processing her paperwork. That would take another eternity, seeing as no pens in this damned place worked. It felt like home. When it was revealed to her that the residents of Heaven were mainly zealots and pedophiles she stopped her attempts at filling out anymore forms and threw the file in the trash, deciding that Hell was as good a place as any to be. The people here were bound to be interesting, and so far it wasn't much worse than life. Death was as dreary and depressing as her life had ever been, but it did have the advantage of no expectations.
Dreams of an everlasting paradise were a crapshoot, even if you played with weighted dice. Besides, who really knows what paradise is? Aska was comfortable with Hell, and now she had an eternity to finally carve out a place in it for herself, and that sounded like paradise to her.
