The weathered wooden box speaker with the cloth front that had been tucked into the upper corner of the room buzzed slightly.  A womans voice, the same voice that "recalculates" our GPS systems, crackled with just a hint of impatience.

"Ten minutes everyone. Ten minutes."

A voice in the green room answered back, "Thank you,  ten minutes."

The room was unbearably hot and humid and a noxious sweat poured from the wrinkled bodies of the two imps who were busy with Bin Laden.

One was swabbing the floor and the other was trying to dry their guest with paper towels. The bullet holes had stopped pouring forth blood, for there was none left in that thin, familiar angular body.

The imp with a limp hopped around to face his guest. "Ossie," he said, "You look horrible." He grinned, all teeth and squinty eyes. "Those slugs that took off half your head did a great job." He giggled maniacally and dabbed at the places that  once held the brains of a mass executioner.

Bin Laden looked stunned. His eye, for his other was back in a sumptuous mansion in  Pakistan, flicked wildly from side to side. Where is this? He shook his head, causing the second imp to leap away from the gore that splattered about.

"Oh for Lucifers' sake, Ossie. Watch where you're spraying that stuff." This imp was bright red with a small tail and dark vermilion bats' wings. "We gotta clean up this crap, you know."  He clucked in dissatisfaction and continued to dry off the sea-water oozing from the body.  

Over in the corner a sopping wet plain cotton kafan  that had been wrapped around his body before being buried at sea, was already a-crawl with cockroaches and many legged vermin, and slowly being dragged towards a rotting hole in the floor.

Bin Laden thought he would awaken in a palace of silk and perfumed virgins; where cushioned delights surrounded him and  the air was filled with the gentle sound of the oud and tables ladened with every kind of the richest food imaginable were spread just for him. 

That's what the Holy Book said. Didn't it?

Instead he felt pain stabbing through every part of his body.

What was left of his nose only detected the smell of rot and  putrefaction.

He was in a shabby waiting room of some sort, with a rickety coffee table filled with old newspapers where the headlines screamed the outset of wars, the sinking of unsinkable ships,and the massacre of innocents.  One paper in particular caught his eye. It featured pictures of the flames and smoke pouring from two high rise office buildings.

He looked around and suddenly knew; he knew with the sharpness of a razor and the clarity of crystal exactly where he was.

He tried to scream but all he could manage was a muffled gurgle. He tried to run, but his feet were shackled with chains of iron.

The imp with the red wings cackled and whooped.

"Hey, big guy. You must be somethin' with what ya did and all" he rubbed his scaly hand across a snotty nose, and then crept closer to the new arrival and whispered conspiratorially. "Cause they're sendin' the 'Big Kahoona Kraut ' to bring ya down stairs."

The speaker crackled once more. "Five minutes. Five minutes"

Together the imps cried, "Thank you five minutes."

A door opened, the only door in the room, and a hideous figure shambled in.

It opened what was left of a blackened set of teeth set in a skeletal head. It spoke with a mixture of German and English.

"Vell. Comenze here dumbkoff! Schnell! Come on. Every one is waiting for you! Hurry" And the voice paused to utter a harsh laugh.  The burned, rotting corpse of Hitler still held, even in death a certain hypnotic charisma. The remaining shreds of his uniform held most of him together. On his chest an iron cross, on his sleeve the scorched remains of a twisted one.  

Behind him, crouching and limping piteously with eyeless sockets staring from beneath tattered blonde hair, now matted and rotting like hay, Eva Braun would follow her husband through eternity.

The imps chuckled and pushed the dead body of Osama Bin Laden through the door, into a filthy corridor now filled with a smoky haze and towards an open elevator.

Hitler grabbed his arm and hustled him inside the cramped conveyance, while curls of sulfurous smoke clogged the nose of former leader of Al-Qhuida.

"Guten tag, Herr Charon. Seig heil!" The skeletal remains of Adolph Hitler's arm flew rigidly outward in a mock salute toward the old man running the elevator.

Charon had ferried many across the river Styx that surrounds Hades for centuries. Then, Lucifer had an elevator installed and so, after several hundred years, the ferryman was laterally transferred.

He still wore a long scraggily yellow beard, but his tattered robe was replaced by a tattered elevator operators maroon suit with a faded yellow stripe up the pants and a scuffed, red, pill-box hat; the cracked black strap disappearing into the hair on his chin.

"Yes, Adolph." His milky eyes saw nothing and saw everything. "We have quite a guest of honor today, don't we?" He chuckled, and when he chuckled one could feel the monotony of years transporting the wicked and fallen.

Inside the elevator, music blared forth. Their were no lights on the control board. Only one arrow down, and the one up had a piece of tape over it labled, "Out Of Order". The logo on the identification plate read, "Acme Elevators."

Kenny G's version of "Highway to Hell" spilled out of the little round speakers in the ceiling. Hitler would have grimaced had he a face.  He hated that song. He preferred Wagner, or Sainte Sans' 'Danse Macabre'. Yes, the dance of death. But not 'Iron Maidens' cacophony. 

He mused. 'Highway to Hell' had been number one with a bullet on "Hades Hit Parade" for years. When he first came there, it was that "..geshtunkin schwartza Robert Johnson and his song about being chased by a 'Hell Hound', what ever that was."  

The murderer of six million people considered this for a moment. "Osborne was probably a Jew." he thought as the elevator reached it's destination and just before the door slid open. 

A roar that was deafening greeted Bin Laden and he recoiled from the sound. Ahead was a monstrous cavern that reached back into infinity and rose beyond sight.

The heat was like an oven and so hot that his skin blistered, shriveled and burned. He was in agony and tried to escape, but was dragged along by Hitler and the imps to a stony basalt griddle before a grotesque red and black jagged throne.  

Upon it sat Lucifer, his terrible face wreathed in curls of heated smoke. Demons uncountable flapped and flew around him; screeching and chattering with glee.

And then, most horrible of all, Bin Laden saw "them" before that awful throne.

Hundreds of blasted, broken bodies that had at one time worn bombs or piloted planes that had killed and maimed so many innocents, and who had been assured by Bin Laden that a place in heaven was waiting for them when they had completed their deeds, were about to wreak their own justice.

They now inched and crawled and groped towards the man who had lied and cost them eternity and began tearing his body apart. Arms and legs and organs flew in all directions. Bin Laden screamed until he could scream no more.

And later, when his body had been reduced to a mass of gore, Lucifer waved his hands and the gore was assembled into Bin Laden once more. To be torn apart again, and again and again until the end of time.

Above, He sat in his garden while small and colorful birds swooped and darted back and forth whistling and warbling with glee. A brown cocker spaniel pup cavorted at His feet.

A shimmer in the air and Michael stood before him, armor glittering and eyes flashing. He held a sword, now stained with blood which he quickly wiped on a towel that contained the blood of many evil people that would never dry. He snapped the towel in the air and it disappeared.

"It was done, my Lord. Just as you had written." Michaels voice was firm and strong. He bowed. 

The Lord stood and embraced his faithful servant with compassion and pity. Then He looked over a nearby low wall to those on the Earth below.

Crowds were gathered; shouting and singing for joy. They embraced in wild abandonment as the news of this mans death crossed the planet on wings of tweets and twitters.

And, at the same time, just as many more shrieked with grief and despair; hurling oaths and vowing bloody vengeance.

After a moment or two He turned and began walking slowly towards His office, His mighty arm around the shoulder of the arch-angel.

As they walked through the patio doors into his office, Michael spoke.

“Why did you give them free will?”  He stopped and looked at his Lord.

The Lord continued across the room and sat with a sigh behind His massive desk, piled with letters, petitions, pleas, wishes and the fancies of mankind.  He put on His reading glasses and picked one up at random.

“I’ll tell you why, Michael. ” He held up the letter written with crayon in a children’s scrawl. “’Dear God’” He began. “My puppy Rosco was very sick and the doctor couldn’t fix him. And I prayed and prayed and my daddy prayed and prayed but he just got sicker and then the dog doctor put Rosco to sleep forever. My daddy said that Rosco is in heaven with you and that I will see him again some day. I was sad, but I know Rosco is in a happy place with you. Please take good care of him and don’t yell at him if he pees on the floor, because he’s just little and doesn’t know any better.’ And it’s signed “Sean, age 7”  He looked over His glasses at Michael

“Sean made a conscious choice to pray with his father to somebody he couldn’t see, but, somehow knew was real.  He and especially his father used the gift of free will. ”

“Why did you let the puppy die?”

“Because the puppy had contracted a disease that kills 90% of the dogs that it infects and if I had let that puppy live, both he and the child would have been hit by a car next week when Sean made a conscious decision to run after Rosco when he ran into the road. ”

Michael nodded.

 “Free will is a gift. It’s only a curse to those who make it so. ”  The Lord swiveled in His chair and pointed to a book shelf behind Him. He read the titles.

“The Torah”. “The Talmud”. “The New Testament. ” “The Book of Mormon”, “Shinto-ism”  “The Life of the Buddha”. “The Koran. ”  He pulled the last title and leafed through it. “This has some very important things to say. ”  He gestured. “They all do, if folks would just pause long enough to look at them. ”  He sighed and put the book away.

The arch-angel spoke. "Do you think the people down there see what evil brings?"

He turned to Michael.

"I think so, my friend."

"Will they pray for peace?" the angel asked.

His face softened and He sighed again.

"There are some who will. But..." and He shook His head. "There are too many who can't."  He paused.

"Or won't"

(C) May 2, 2011 by George Locke

1 comment on “There Is No Koran In Hell”

randallaustin Says:
Monday, May 2, 2011 @6:18:32 PM

nice

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