The hearse arrived just after dawn on a drizzly Monday morning in February. Out in the street, two crows were fighting over some roadkill. A third crow looked on. It had a broken wing, and in its beak it held an overdraft charge notice letter.
I had died three days earlier. My family were devastated by my death - not at losing me, but because with my death the disability payments I had received over the past few years, & of which they freely partook, would now cease.
Inside the house, the radio was playing, though no one was listening to it. One could faintly hear BBC Radio 4: John Humphreys was bickering with a politician about NHS funding.
"The hearse is five minutes late," my grandmother complained. "I'm going to give them a piece of my mind." My father said nothing. Since my mother's death some years ago his only adult company was his mother-in-law, my mother's mother.
Although my earthly remains were now on their way to the crematorium, my soul had left my body & was now in hell. The discovery I made in death was that there is indeed an afterlife, & it is much as is predicted among the living. Heaven & hell do exist. The difference is that heaven is barely populated, owing to the great difficulty in getting there. Its only inhabitants are babies & a few saintly eccentrics. Everyone else goes to hell. This is because every rule of conduct issued by every religion on earth is strictly enforced. The violation of the most apparently trifling obligation or prohibition results in immediate & irrevocable eternal damnation. Hell is not as described by Dante, with fire, rocks & devils. It is dark & featureless. All that remains of the individual psyche is a sense of time, which is if anything enhanced. Hell can be simply described as a very long, very boring wait.
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