happily ever after
Hiro and Christian are dressed completely in black as they sit, two boys taking up the entire back seat of the bus. They’re not dressed in all black because they’re emo or they’re goth or whatever, but because they’re on their way to a funeral.
“What do you think happens to people after they die?” Christian asks quietly.
“Well,” replies Hiro, taking a moment to think. “You probably get to ask any question you want and you’ll get an answer. Only if you go to heaven, you hear whatever answer you want to hear-like if you ask if your girlfriend cheated on you, they’ll say ‘No.’ But if you wind up in hell, they give you the answer you’re afraid of-so in that example, they’d say, ‘Yes, you’re girlfriend was a dirty slut who cheated on you, like, a hundred times.’ And then I guess if you don’t really care either way what the answer is, like if you ask why zebras have stripes or something, they just answer you honestly no matter where you are.”
“But what if there isn’t a heaven or a hell? What if everyone winds up in the same place?”
“Then I guess everyone gets honest answers-I dunno. Why d’ya ask?” Christian sends his friend a sort of are-you-kidding-me look, and Hiro coughs and asks a new question: “What do you think then?”
Christian, too, takes a pause of thought before answering. “I guess when you die, you go somewhere a lot like where you lived. Only, like, if you were bad, maybe you get stuck somewhere shitty-like in a ghetto or in Kansas or something.”
Hiro laughs, and the girl in front of them turns around in her seat. “You know what I think?” she asks, then, without waiting for any sort of answer, she carries on. “I think that-well, you know how after your body dies, some people think that the brain is still active for a few minutes after that? I think the entire afterlife exists in those few minutes, like when you fall asleep and it feels like it’s been hours but when really it was, like, five minutes. And I think that the afterlife is exactly what every person believed it was going to be before they died. You live and entire life if you believed in reincarnation, you go to the land of-what’s it again-milk and honey if you were, like, a Mormon or whatever, and you get that seventy-two virgins if you were one of those suicide bomber dudes.”
“But what if you were an atheist?” Christian challenges. “What if you didn’t believe in an afterlife?”
The girl fixes him with a look, then replies coolly: “Then you don’t get one.”
xxx
august 2008
“What do you think happens to people after they die?” Christian asks quietly.
“Well,” replies Hiro, taking a moment to think. “You probably get to ask any question you want and you’ll get an answer. Only if you go to heaven, you hear whatever answer you want to hear-like if you ask if your girlfriend cheated on you, they’ll say ‘No.’ But if you wind up in hell, they give you the answer you’re afraid of-so in that example, they’d say, ‘Yes, you’re girlfriend was a dirty slut who cheated on you, like, a hundred times.’ And then I guess if you don’t really care either way what the answer is, like if you ask why zebras have stripes or something, they just answer you honestly no matter where you are.”
“But what if there isn’t a heaven or a hell? What if everyone winds up in the same place?”
“Then I guess everyone gets honest answers-I dunno. Why d’ya ask?” Christian sends his friend a sort of are-you-kidding-me look, and Hiro coughs and asks a new question: “What do you think then?”
Christian, too, takes a pause of thought before answering. “I guess when you die, you go somewhere a lot like where you lived. Only, like, if you were bad, maybe you get stuck somewhere shitty-like in a ghetto or in Kansas or something.”
Hiro laughs, and the girl in front of them turns around in her seat. “You know what I think?” she asks, then, without waiting for any sort of answer, she carries on. “I think that-well, you know how after your body dies, some people think that the brain is still active for a few minutes after that? I think the entire afterlife exists in those few minutes, like when you fall asleep and it feels like it’s been hours but when really it was, like, five minutes. And I think that the afterlife is exactly what every person believed it was going to be before they died. You live and entire life if you believed in reincarnation, you go to the land of-what’s it again-milk and honey if you were, like, a Mormon or whatever, and you get that seventy-two virgins if you were one of those suicide bomber dudes.”
“But what if you were an atheist?” Christian challenges. “What if you didn’t believe in an afterlife?”
The girl fixes him with a look, then replies coolly: “Then you don’t get one.”
xxx
august 2008