Post by Noodleguy on Jan 18, 2009 0:45:08 GMT -5
This is a short story I entered in a short story conetest. The theme was "the value of innocence"
Enjoy! Constructive criticism welcomed.
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Well, it wasn’t exactly the pearly gates. I’d lived my whole life a good Christian, or at least, well, a decent Christian and there wasn’t any god damn pearly gates. It seemed a bit cheap. No, instead I stood before a simple massive stone wall, made of sandstone and extending upwards and in every direction as far as my eyes could possibly see. The wall was entirely covered in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics: a sight I hadn’t expected to see since I graduated from 7th grade Global Studies. There didn’t seem to be any point of entry to me, as I stood before this wall. I nearly laughed at the strangeness of the situation. Just minutes ago, it seemed, I had died. That fact I knew for certain, there was no doubt in my mind of my state. I had just died and now I was…where was I? I pondered this liek a grocery shopper who has just forgotten whether they have gone down aisle 13 just yet.
It’s a funny thing about being dead, focus. Well, there are quite a few “funny” things about being dead, but this was one of them. Nothing in the afterlife there really had detail to me. It was as if I was surrounded by empty void. Then, when I looked at something for a long time it sort of filled in. As if it was too lazy to go on existing without my watching it. When I looked at the ground underneath and around me, I could see that it was thick black sand. Off to one side there seemed to be a grove of ferns and green life. liek the rest of the world, that disappeared from view when I stopped watching it. For some reason none of this seemed to be particularly odd. I just took in all the data and pondered it for a short while. Dead people apparently can think very clearly. It helps not having all that grey stuff in your head obstructing your thoughts. And I was pretty sure that I barely had any grey stuff left in my head at all, what with it being splattered on the pavement of the parking lot and all. Damned drunk driving. Well, my drunk driving, but still.
Slowly I decided to advance towards the grove of ferns. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do here. As I walked I had the curious sensation that my feet were not quite touching the ground. Or maybe there was no ground at all. What was the difference? Before I could go far though, a Voice from behind me came loud and clear. It clearly was a Voice deserving of a capital “V”.
“I WOULD NOT,” the Voice came “GO TOO MUCH FARTHER IN THAT DIRECTION.” I stopped dead in my tracks. The Voice had a strong commanding aura about it, and it held contained within it as much power a sheer force as a hundred atomic bombs. I felt that there was no way I could possibly deny that voice. I swiveled my head around and saw the origin of that voice.
The Voice originated from someone incredibly strange and impressive. If this wasn’t the Pearly Gates, I was even more positive that this wasn’t the Archangel Michael or whoever the hell it was supposed to be here in the Bible. Instead of feathery wings and fiery swords, it was a man approximately twenty feet tall. In one hand he carried what looked liek a shortened shepherd’s crook, in the other a massive flail. His skin was a dark forest green color. Oddly contrasting with the rest of his appearance, though, was his clothing. He was wearing an incredibly tacky white suit with a yellow tie. The suit looked so far out of place on this giant’s body I was simply stunned.
“Ummm, a suit?” was about all I could manage at the moment. In my defense I was feeling rather light headed at the time.
“YES. I HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT I OUGHT TO ‘MODERNIZE’ THE OCCASION.” The green man said.
“Osiris, you fool!” came another voice. This one had a harsh, guttural, barking quality to it. “I told you, the mortals always hate the yellow tie! You should have worn the green one, it matches your complexion far better!”
Soon a body came to match the second voice. Another figure stepped out of the shadows, just as tall as the first. This massive man was, in fact, not quite a man. His head looked liek that of a greyhound or some other sort of middle-eastern dog. In the crook of his arm he held a flail, similar to that of the green man. The dog man was dressed equally tastelessly: he looked more liek a worker at Hot Topic than anything else. All of his clothing was black, complete with a long silver chain hanging around his neck.
“WELL, ANUBIS, YOU COULD DRESS A BIT MORE FORMALLY FOR THESE THINGS.” came the voice of the green man. He sounded a bit reproachful. I simply watched this conversation between the giants in awe. The dog man looked liek he was going to respond, but before he could he was interrupted by a third figure.
“Hwell,” came the third voice. This voice was that of an elderly English gentlemen. The H was clearly pronounced. “I do believe that you have sufficiently convinced the Mortal that we are all fools without any sort of fashion sense. Now, could we please, ahem, ‘Get on with it’ as they say nowadays?”
This figure stepped into line right next to the green man. I half expected from the voice to emanate from my English professor from community college, and I half expected to see another giant monster. I got some mixture of both. Equal in stature to his companions, this monumental figure had the head of some kind of long beaked bird. He wore a maroon sweater vest and had a pair of half-rimmed glasses sitting on top of his beak.
I stepped backwards one step from these massive apparitions, partly out of fear and partly out of shock. A loud growling came from behind me and I immediately stopped and looked back. Crawling out of the reeds was what appeared to be a massive alligator. At least at first glance that is what it seemed to be. In truth it was far too large for that, and I quickly realized that it had thick hippopotamus legs. Its feet were lion’s paws, each with a set of massive claws. Its alligator-mouth seemed to be stuck in a brutish and nasty reptilian grin.
“Hwell, hyess, this is why we do not, ahem, hadvise Mortals to go that direction. That is, ahem, the Devourer.” Came the voice of the bird man. I gulped. The Devourer? A fairly descriptive name. I already had several unpleasant images involving the monster using my body as a toothpick stuck in my head.
“NOW, NOW, THOTH,” Came the voice of the green man again. “WE OUGHT TO EXPLAIN THINGS BETTER TO THE POOR CHAP. HE LOOKS TERRIBLY FRIGHTENED.”
“Yes, not a bad idea at all, for once Osiris,” the dog man said. I now recognized that it was in fact the head of a jackal, not a dog. With that realization I recognized the giants for what they were.
“You-You’re the Gods of Egypt!” I stammered. “You, you’re Anubis,” I said, pointing to the jackal god. He nodded slightly. “And you’re Osiris,” the green man nodded solemnly, “And you’re…”
The bird man sighed. “Mortals never remember me. Anubis the jackal headed they remember, yes. Osiris the Judge of the Dead they remember, yes. But not poor…” I cut the god off.
“Thoth! Thoth, god of knowledge!” I shouted triumphantly. Truly, that course I took in “Cultures of the Ancient World” freshman year of college had paid off, even if I did spend the whole time staring out the window. Thoth looked rather pleased at this. Who knew that knowledge of the Egyptian gods would prove to be so useful in the afterlife? My professor would probably be pleased.
“Hquite right. And I expect you know hwhy we are here as well. We are the Judges of the Dead.”
“INDEED THOTH,” came the booming voice of Osiris, “AND ALREADY WE HAVE DALLIED TOO LONG. IT IS TIME FOR THE WEIGHING.”
In front of Osiris there appeared a huge golden set of scales, several feet taller than the top of my head. The scales were of the old fashioned kind, the kind you see as an emblem of justice everywhere. On one side of the scale their laid a stone shaped liek a heart. On the other side their sat a feather. The scales were clearly tipped towards the feather.
“We don’t use people’s actual hearts any more, it was quite a bit…messy.” Said Anubis. He looked a bit ashamed for some reason.
“WELL, IF YOU DIDN’T ALWAYS EAT THEM BEFORE THE DEVOURER GOT TO THEM!”
“Sorry! Sorry!” Anubis squeaked. I wondered if my afterlife was truly in good hands. Quickly though the jackal-god regained his composure and spoke in his normal tone. He spoke in the manner of someone who has said the exact same words many times, in this case for millennia. “Thy heart shall be weighed against the Feather of Truth,” he said.
“AND SHOULD THY HEART BE HEAVY WITH CORRUPTION IT SHALT BE DEVOURED AND THY ETERNAL SOUL SHALT BE DESTROYED,” Osiris continued.
“And should ye heart be light with Innocence, you shall pass through the Gates of Yaru to the Afterlife.” Thoth finished.
“Oh my.” I added, rather cowed by the spectacle. Everything was happening so quickly…and so strangely! I lost my senses and foolishly spoke again.
“Wait, so, you’re liek the ancient Egyptian Gods and all? So the Egyptians were right?” I burst out incredulously. I had been thinking this question from the start.
“Not ‘liek’ the Egyptian Gods we ‘ARE’ the Egyptian Gods. And yes, they were very right.” Anubis said, looking irritated. Whoops. A word of advice to you: never insult the twenty foot all jackal god of death whose eternal soul is in your hands. Never.
“NOW, YOUR HEART SHALL BE JUDGED.” Osiris boomed. All of us, me and the Gods included, turned to look at the scale. The heart and the feather appeared to be equally weighed.
Thoth pulled a scroll out, seemingly out of nowhere. He said reproachfully, “You are charged with the murder of no less than Three Point Two persons.” When he said this, the heart sank down on the scale and the feather lifted.
I was shocked. “Three point two? How is that even possible? And I never killed anyone! I’m completely, utterly Innocent!” Well, that was partially true.
“Not quite true!” Anubis said, almost gleefully. “The value of your innocence has already been determined at approximately 3.2 grams. The value of your corruption, on the other hand, has been determined at approximately 6.2 grams. These combined, you have killed approximately three point two people.”
“But…I didn’t do any of those things!” I protested once more.
“You, ahem, fool!” Thoth said angrily. “Do you think you can lie to the Gods? You’re a con artist! A swindler! A cheat!”
I was taken aback. Well…that was true. But how could they possibly know? I’d never been caught, as far as I knew.
“WE KNOW EVERYTHING, MORTAL,” Osiris said loudly. Anubis covered his huge ears miming out pain in his ears. “SHUT UP ANUBIS. AND, YES MORTAL. YOU HAVE KILLED THREE PEOPLE.”
“You, ahem, have stolen no less than thirty three thousand dollars from stockholders in the company of Herbert Investors in a rather clever Ponzi scheme, if I do say so myself. In doing so you cause the early death of a Mrs. Herbert, widow of John Herbert himself and primary stakeholder in the company. She had a heart attack no less than three years before her time was due.”
Did I really do that? I remembered the Herbert blow out, it was a brilliant one. The suckers! I had celebrated the deal with my partners over a fine bottle of Yellow Tail Chiraz. It had been one of the defining points of my “career.” Now, for some reason, the victory did not seem so sweet.
“Hmmm, and that is just the most direct one. You have reduced the quality of life of no less than fourty-seven other people by enough to add up, in fact, to the deaths of 5.2 people. I have to say, you must have stolen rather a lot of money for that to work out that way. Busy career you had, eh?” Anubis said.
Yes, a busy career indeed. I had lived a life of petty thefts and corrupt business, bribing politicians, moving money around, laundering from companies. It had all seemed so harmless. It was just numbers on pieces of paper, right? Just…numbers. But now the numbers had come back to face me an entirely different way. 6.2. 6.2 deaths. That was the value of my corruption.
“OF COURSE, THAT’S NOT QUITE THE END OF THE STORY. YOU HAVE SAVED NO LESS THAN THREE POINT TWO PEOPLE’S LIVES.”
I had a feeling I knew at least one of these.
“Ah, yes, yes a certain Mrs. Angela Whiter. Age 4. You appear to have donated no less than half a million dollars for her radiation and chemotherapy treatments? An admirable act.” Thoth said, looking down his long beak at me.
“Errr, well, she is my niece and all. And…there was nothing else to do, y’know.”
“An admirable act nonetheless,” chuckled Anubis. “And we have it on record that you were an organ donor too. That saved no less than two point two lives, we have calculated.”
Did it really? I had no idea it would have such an impact. Signing the little card had just seemed liek…the right thing to do.
“THE RIGHT THING TO DO INDEED. WE EGYPTIANS LOOK VERY FAVORABLY ON GIVING UP ORGANS AFTER DEATH, AHA, AHA.” The laughs of Osiris were as mirthful as a suicidal clown’s funeral.
3.2, eh? That didn’t seem too bad. 3.2 ounces. So that was the value of my innocence. Maybe my life wasn’t worthless after all. Still, compared to my corruption it seemed rather small.
“Rather small indeed.” Came a harsh voice from behind me. I turned around and, to my horror, saw the Devourer once more. It was slowly walking towards me. I stood, frozen in place, my face a grimace of terror now. But the Devourer did not come after me. It went right past me. Past me to the scales that is. The Gods were gone now; I saw when I turned around.
“You see, when a heart has been determined to be more corrupt than innocent…” the Devourer said, ending the sentence with a nasty gnashing of its horrible pointed teeth instead of words. I wondered how it possibly could speak with such a strange and awful monstrosity of a mouth. The Devourer turned back towards the golden scales and walked up to my heart-stone. It opened its massive jaws up to their full size, probably mostly for show, but before it could bit down something happened. The scales moved. The heart rose up into the air, out of the Devourer’s reach. The creature stamped on the black sand ground angrily. What was happening? It hadn’t been thwarted for thousands of years!
Before it could do anything though, the Gods reappeared. They popped into existence as easily and silently as they had left. They looked a little rushed, and Osiris was visibly sweating.
“WE AREN’T TOO LATE, ARE WE?” he said, looking towards the scales. When he saw that my heart was intact he sighed in relief. “THANK GOD. THANK ME.” He said, chuckling.
“Har har, that one never gets old, does it Osiris?” Anubis snapped. “This is only a man’s eternal life we’re dealing with, after all.
“OH COME OFF IT ANUBIS!” Osiris said grumpily.
“Ummm…excuse me, sirs, Gods, whatever?” I asked nervously. “What’s going on? I thought I was going to get eaten now?”
“Well, hyes, that hwas the plan.” Thoth said. Anubis and Osiris were still bickering in the background but he managed to ignore them. “But, ahem, new circumstances arose. Your hwill. You should have told us about your hwill.”
I grinned and realized what had happened. “Oh, yeah, that whole thing. Nasty surprise I left my poke buddies, eh?”
“AND A RATHER NICE SURPRISE YOU LEFT THE RED CROSS!” Osiris butted in, turning away from his argument with Anubis. “A NICE SURPRISE WORTH NO LESS THAN 4 LIVES.
“Four lives?” I asked, incredulous. “That much?”
“Four million dollars is quite a lot of money, Mortal. More than enough to buy enough equipment and fund enough research to save four people who would otherwise have died. The value of your innocence has gone up by 4.0 grams to 7.2. The value of your corruption remains at 6.2 grams.” Anubis said, not to be upstaged by Osiris. “And if wasn’t for certain green skinned folk we would have realized this much earlier.”
“THEREFORE THE COMBINED WEIGHT OF YOUR HEART IS LESS THAN ZERO. QUITE IMPRESSIVE, IN FACT. AND HEY, THAT’S NOT QUITE FAIR YOU JACKAL HEADED FOOL!” Osiris boomed. Anubis made the mocking signs of covering his huge ears with his hands again at the loudness.
“Never mind them, boy. They’ve been going on liek this for thousands of years. Ever since Osiris came down and forced Anubis to share the whole judging the dead thing. Used to be just Anubis’s gig, and he’s resented the Big Boss’s involvement from the start. And I have to be the one to babysit the two!” Thoth said to me quietly, with the air of a conspirator. I wasn’t really paying attention to what was going on now, I was so relieved that my eternal soul wasn’t going to be devoured.
“So, I don’t get eaten then?” I asked loudly, above the din of Anubis and Osiris’s arguing.
“NO, OF COURSE NOT! YOU GET TO GO THROUGH THE GATES OF YARU. THOUGH I MUST SAY IT WAS A CLOSE CALL.” Osiris said. He waved his shepherd’s crook at the hieroglyph covered wall of sandstone and a vast doorway appeared within it. All I could see on the other side was darkness. I hesitated, unsure of what to do now. Anubis waved his flail and made two massive statues of himself on each side of the doorway. Osiris did the same, although his were much bigger. No wonder this religion had never really caught on: the gods were obnoxious.
“Hwell, those two are anyway,” Thoth said, reading my thoughts, “But you’d best be going before they change their mind, boy!”
Heeding Thoth’s advice, I hurried through the Gates of Yaru to the afterlife, leaving the bickering of Osiris and Anubis behind me. And all the while I had a single number stuck in my head. 7.2 grams. 7.2. That was the value of my innocence.
Enjoy! Constructive criticism welcomed.
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Well, it wasn’t exactly the pearly gates. I’d lived my whole life a good Christian, or at least, well, a decent Christian and there wasn’t any god damn pearly gates. It seemed a bit cheap. No, instead I stood before a simple massive stone wall, made of sandstone and extending upwards and in every direction as far as my eyes could possibly see. The wall was entirely covered in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics: a sight I hadn’t expected to see since I graduated from 7th grade Global Studies. There didn’t seem to be any point of entry to me, as I stood before this wall. I nearly laughed at the strangeness of the situation. Just minutes ago, it seemed, I had died. That fact I knew for certain, there was no doubt in my mind of my state. I had just died and now I was…where was I? I pondered this liek a grocery shopper who has just forgotten whether they have gone down aisle 13 just yet.
It’s a funny thing about being dead, focus. Well, there are quite a few “funny” things about being dead, but this was one of them. Nothing in the afterlife there really had detail to me. It was as if I was surrounded by empty void. Then, when I looked at something for a long time it sort of filled in. As if it was too lazy to go on existing without my watching it. When I looked at the ground underneath and around me, I could see that it was thick black sand. Off to one side there seemed to be a grove of ferns and green life. liek the rest of the world, that disappeared from view when I stopped watching it. For some reason none of this seemed to be particularly odd. I just took in all the data and pondered it for a short while. Dead people apparently can think very clearly. It helps not having all that grey stuff in your head obstructing your thoughts. And I was pretty sure that I barely had any grey stuff left in my head at all, what with it being splattered on the pavement of the parking lot and all. Damned drunk driving. Well, my drunk driving, but still.
Slowly I decided to advance towards the grove of ferns. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do here. As I walked I had the curious sensation that my feet were not quite touching the ground. Or maybe there was no ground at all. What was the difference? Before I could go far though, a Voice from behind me came loud and clear. It clearly was a Voice deserving of a capital “V”.
“I WOULD NOT,” the Voice came “GO TOO MUCH FARTHER IN THAT DIRECTION.” I stopped dead in my tracks. The Voice had a strong commanding aura about it, and it held contained within it as much power a sheer force as a hundred atomic bombs. I felt that there was no way I could possibly deny that voice. I swiveled my head around and saw the origin of that voice.
The Voice originated from someone incredibly strange and impressive. If this wasn’t the Pearly Gates, I was even more positive that this wasn’t the Archangel Michael or whoever the hell it was supposed to be here in the Bible. Instead of feathery wings and fiery swords, it was a man approximately twenty feet tall. In one hand he carried what looked liek a shortened shepherd’s crook, in the other a massive flail. His skin was a dark forest green color. Oddly contrasting with the rest of his appearance, though, was his clothing. He was wearing an incredibly tacky white suit with a yellow tie. The suit looked so far out of place on this giant’s body I was simply stunned.
“Ummm, a suit?” was about all I could manage at the moment. In my defense I was feeling rather light headed at the time.
“YES. I HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT I OUGHT TO ‘MODERNIZE’ THE OCCASION.” The green man said.
“Osiris, you fool!” came another voice. This one had a harsh, guttural, barking quality to it. “I told you, the mortals always hate the yellow tie! You should have worn the green one, it matches your complexion far better!”
Soon a body came to match the second voice. Another figure stepped out of the shadows, just as tall as the first. This massive man was, in fact, not quite a man. His head looked liek that of a greyhound or some other sort of middle-eastern dog. In the crook of his arm he held a flail, similar to that of the green man. The dog man was dressed equally tastelessly: he looked more liek a worker at Hot Topic than anything else. All of his clothing was black, complete with a long silver chain hanging around his neck.
“WELL, ANUBIS, YOU COULD DRESS A BIT MORE FORMALLY FOR THESE THINGS.” came the voice of the green man. He sounded a bit reproachful. I simply watched this conversation between the giants in awe. The dog man looked liek he was going to respond, but before he could he was interrupted by a third figure.
“Hwell,” came the third voice. This voice was that of an elderly English gentlemen. The H was clearly pronounced. “I do believe that you have sufficiently convinced the Mortal that we are all fools without any sort of fashion sense. Now, could we please, ahem, ‘Get on with it’ as they say nowadays?”
This figure stepped into line right next to the green man. I half expected from the voice to emanate from my English professor from community college, and I half expected to see another giant monster. I got some mixture of both. Equal in stature to his companions, this monumental figure had the head of some kind of long beaked bird. He wore a maroon sweater vest and had a pair of half-rimmed glasses sitting on top of his beak.
I stepped backwards one step from these massive apparitions, partly out of fear and partly out of shock. A loud growling came from behind me and I immediately stopped and looked back. Crawling out of the reeds was what appeared to be a massive alligator. At least at first glance that is what it seemed to be. In truth it was far too large for that, and I quickly realized that it had thick hippopotamus legs. Its feet were lion’s paws, each with a set of massive claws. Its alligator-mouth seemed to be stuck in a brutish and nasty reptilian grin.
“Hwell, hyess, this is why we do not, ahem, hadvise Mortals to go that direction. That is, ahem, the Devourer.” Came the voice of the bird man. I gulped. The Devourer? A fairly descriptive name. I already had several unpleasant images involving the monster using my body as a toothpick stuck in my head.
“NOW, NOW, THOTH,” Came the voice of the green man again. “WE OUGHT TO EXPLAIN THINGS BETTER TO THE POOR CHAP. HE LOOKS TERRIBLY FRIGHTENED.”
“Yes, not a bad idea at all, for once Osiris,” the dog man said. I now recognized that it was in fact the head of a jackal, not a dog. With that realization I recognized the giants for what they were.
“You-You’re the Gods of Egypt!” I stammered. “You, you’re Anubis,” I said, pointing to the jackal god. He nodded slightly. “And you’re Osiris,” the green man nodded solemnly, “And you’re…”
The bird man sighed. “Mortals never remember me. Anubis the jackal headed they remember, yes. Osiris the Judge of the Dead they remember, yes. But not poor…” I cut the god off.
“Thoth! Thoth, god of knowledge!” I shouted triumphantly. Truly, that course I took in “Cultures of the Ancient World” freshman year of college had paid off, even if I did spend the whole time staring out the window. Thoth looked rather pleased at this. Who knew that knowledge of the Egyptian gods would prove to be so useful in the afterlife? My professor would probably be pleased.
“Hquite right. And I expect you know hwhy we are here as well. We are the Judges of the Dead.”
“INDEED THOTH,” came the booming voice of Osiris, “AND ALREADY WE HAVE DALLIED TOO LONG. IT IS TIME FOR THE WEIGHING.”
In front of Osiris there appeared a huge golden set of scales, several feet taller than the top of my head. The scales were of the old fashioned kind, the kind you see as an emblem of justice everywhere. On one side of the scale their laid a stone shaped liek a heart. On the other side their sat a feather. The scales were clearly tipped towards the feather.
“We don’t use people’s actual hearts any more, it was quite a bit…messy.” Said Anubis. He looked a bit ashamed for some reason.
“WELL, IF YOU DIDN’T ALWAYS EAT THEM BEFORE THE DEVOURER GOT TO THEM!”
“Sorry! Sorry!” Anubis squeaked. I wondered if my afterlife was truly in good hands. Quickly though the jackal-god regained his composure and spoke in his normal tone. He spoke in the manner of someone who has said the exact same words many times, in this case for millennia. “Thy heart shall be weighed against the Feather of Truth,” he said.
“AND SHOULD THY HEART BE HEAVY WITH CORRUPTION IT SHALT BE DEVOURED AND THY ETERNAL SOUL SHALT BE DESTROYED,” Osiris continued.
“And should ye heart be light with Innocence, you shall pass through the Gates of Yaru to the Afterlife.” Thoth finished.
“Oh my.” I added, rather cowed by the spectacle. Everything was happening so quickly…and so strangely! I lost my senses and foolishly spoke again.
“Wait, so, you’re liek the ancient Egyptian Gods and all? So the Egyptians were right?” I burst out incredulously. I had been thinking this question from the start.
“Not ‘liek’ the Egyptian Gods we ‘ARE’ the Egyptian Gods. And yes, they were very right.” Anubis said, looking irritated. Whoops. A word of advice to you: never insult the twenty foot all jackal god of death whose eternal soul is in your hands. Never.
“NOW, YOUR HEART SHALL BE JUDGED.” Osiris boomed. All of us, me and the Gods included, turned to look at the scale. The heart and the feather appeared to be equally weighed.
Thoth pulled a scroll out, seemingly out of nowhere. He said reproachfully, “You are charged with the murder of no less than Three Point Two persons.” When he said this, the heart sank down on the scale and the feather lifted.
I was shocked. “Three point two? How is that even possible? And I never killed anyone! I’m completely, utterly Innocent!” Well, that was partially true.
“Not quite true!” Anubis said, almost gleefully. “The value of your innocence has already been determined at approximately 3.2 grams. The value of your corruption, on the other hand, has been determined at approximately 6.2 grams. These combined, you have killed approximately three point two people.”
“But…I didn’t do any of those things!” I protested once more.
“You, ahem, fool!” Thoth said angrily. “Do you think you can lie to the Gods? You’re a con artist! A swindler! A cheat!”
I was taken aback. Well…that was true. But how could they possibly know? I’d never been caught, as far as I knew.
“WE KNOW EVERYTHING, MORTAL,” Osiris said loudly. Anubis covered his huge ears miming out pain in his ears. “SHUT UP ANUBIS. AND, YES MORTAL. YOU HAVE KILLED THREE PEOPLE.”
“You, ahem, have stolen no less than thirty three thousand dollars from stockholders in the company of Herbert Investors in a rather clever Ponzi scheme, if I do say so myself. In doing so you cause the early death of a Mrs. Herbert, widow of John Herbert himself and primary stakeholder in the company. She had a heart attack no less than three years before her time was due.”
Did I really do that? I remembered the Herbert blow out, it was a brilliant one. The suckers! I had celebrated the deal with my partners over a fine bottle of Yellow Tail Chiraz. It had been one of the defining points of my “career.” Now, for some reason, the victory did not seem so sweet.
“Hmmm, and that is just the most direct one. You have reduced the quality of life of no less than fourty-seven other people by enough to add up, in fact, to the deaths of 5.2 people. I have to say, you must have stolen rather a lot of money for that to work out that way. Busy career you had, eh?” Anubis said.
Yes, a busy career indeed. I had lived a life of petty thefts and corrupt business, bribing politicians, moving money around, laundering from companies. It had all seemed so harmless. It was just numbers on pieces of paper, right? Just…numbers. But now the numbers had come back to face me an entirely different way. 6.2. 6.2 deaths. That was the value of my corruption.
“OF COURSE, THAT’S NOT QUITE THE END OF THE STORY. YOU HAVE SAVED NO LESS THAN THREE POINT TWO PEOPLE’S LIVES.”
I had a feeling I knew at least one of these.
“Ah, yes, yes a certain Mrs. Angela Whiter. Age 4. You appear to have donated no less than half a million dollars for her radiation and chemotherapy treatments? An admirable act.” Thoth said, looking down his long beak at me.
“Errr, well, she is my niece and all. And…there was nothing else to do, y’know.”
“An admirable act nonetheless,” chuckled Anubis. “And we have it on record that you were an organ donor too. That saved no less than two point two lives, we have calculated.”
Did it really? I had no idea it would have such an impact. Signing the little card had just seemed liek…the right thing to do.
“THE RIGHT THING TO DO INDEED. WE EGYPTIANS LOOK VERY FAVORABLY ON GIVING UP ORGANS AFTER DEATH, AHA, AHA.” The laughs of Osiris were as mirthful as a suicidal clown’s funeral.
3.2, eh? That didn’t seem too bad. 3.2 ounces. So that was the value of my innocence. Maybe my life wasn’t worthless after all. Still, compared to my corruption it seemed rather small.
“Rather small indeed.” Came a harsh voice from behind me. I turned around and, to my horror, saw the Devourer once more. It was slowly walking towards me. I stood, frozen in place, my face a grimace of terror now. But the Devourer did not come after me. It went right past me. Past me to the scales that is. The Gods were gone now; I saw when I turned around.
“You see, when a heart has been determined to be more corrupt than innocent…” the Devourer said, ending the sentence with a nasty gnashing of its horrible pointed teeth instead of words. I wondered how it possibly could speak with such a strange and awful monstrosity of a mouth. The Devourer turned back towards the golden scales and walked up to my heart-stone. It opened its massive jaws up to their full size, probably mostly for show, but before it could bit down something happened. The scales moved. The heart rose up into the air, out of the Devourer’s reach. The creature stamped on the black sand ground angrily. What was happening? It hadn’t been thwarted for thousands of years!
Before it could do anything though, the Gods reappeared. They popped into existence as easily and silently as they had left. They looked a little rushed, and Osiris was visibly sweating.
“WE AREN’T TOO LATE, ARE WE?” he said, looking towards the scales. When he saw that my heart was intact he sighed in relief. “THANK GOD. THANK ME.” He said, chuckling.
“Har har, that one never gets old, does it Osiris?” Anubis snapped. “This is only a man’s eternal life we’re dealing with, after all.
“OH COME OFF IT ANUBIS!” Osiris said grumpily.
“Ummm…excuse me, sirs, Gods, whatever?” I asked nervously. “What’s going on? I thought I was going to get eaten now?”
“Well, hyes, that hwas the plan.” Thoth said. Anubis and Osiris were still bickering in the background but he managed to ignore them. “But, ahem, new circumstances arose. Your hwill. You should have told us about your hwill.”
I grinned and realized what had happened. “Oh, yeah, that whole thing. Nasty surprise I left my poke buddies, eh?”
“AND A RATHER NICE SURPRISE YOU LEFT THE RED CROSS!” Osiris butted in, turning away from his argument with Anubis. “A NICE SURPRISE WORTH NO LESS THAN 4 LIVES.
“Four lives?” I asked, incredulous. “That much?”
“Four million dollars is quite a lot of money, Mortal. More than enough to buy enough equipment and fund enough research to save four people who would otherwise have died. The value of your innocence has gone up by 4.0 grams to 7.2. The value of your corruption remains at 6.2 grams.” Anubis said, not to be upstaged by Osiris. “And if wasn’t for certain green skinned folk we would have realized this much earlier.”
“THEREFORE THE COMBINED WEIGHT OF YOUR HEART IS LESS THAN ZERO. QUITE IMPRESSIVE, IN FACT. AND HEY, THAT’S NOT QUITE FAIR YOU JACKAL HEADED FOOL!” Osiris boomed. Anubis made the mocking signs of covering his huge ears with his hands again at the loudness.
“Never mind them, boy. They’ve been going on liek this for thousands of years. Ever since Osiris came down and forced Anubis to share the whole judging the dead thing. Used to be just Anubis’s gig, and he’s resented the Big Boss’s involvement from the start. And I have to be the one to babysit the two!” Thoth said to me quietly, with the air of a conspirator. I wasn’t really paying attention to what was going on now, I was so relieved that my eternal soul wasn’t going to be devoured.
“So, I don’t get eaten then?” I asked loudly, above the din of Anubis and Osiris’s arguing.
“NO, OF COURSE NOT! YOU GET TO GO THROUGH THE GATES OF YARU. THOUGH I MUST SAY IT WAS A CLOSE CALL.” Osiris said. He waved his shepherd’s crook at the hieroglyph covered wall of sandstone and a vast doorway appeared within it. All I could see on the other side was darkness. I hesitated, unsure of what to do now. Anubis waved his flail and made two massive statues of himself on each side of the doorway. Osiris did the same, although his were much bigger. No wonder this religion had never really caught on: the gods were obnoxious.
“Hwell, those two are anyway,” Thoth said, reading my thoughts, “But you’d best be going before they change their mind, boy!”
Heeding Thoth’s advice, I hurried through the Gates of Yaru to the afterlife, leaving the bickering of Osiris and Anubis behind me. And all the while I had a single number stuck in my head. 7.2 grams. 7.2. That was the value of my innocence.