The Twin Trials of Death and Despair

“Listen, I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I’m in a bit of a hurry, so I’m just gonna sneak past you here.” Tevid awkwardly shimmied between the radiant palace wall and the lolling, round, multi-eyed creature that was continually retching and vomiting all over the floor. Its many eyes seemed to be pleading with Tevid as he shuffled past, getting vomit on his fancy leather shoes. “Ugh. So much for making a good appearance,” grumbled Tevid as he left behind the disgusting angel–demon ball and continued down the hallway. Before coming to this place, he thought angels would be sweet. Like babies playing harps, or beautiful people with halos and white, feathered wings. These are the images that his holy books contained. But reality was something else.

The shimmering light was still blinding, so Tevid walked on with one sleeve up, shielding his eyes. He heard one last ugly burp from the alien creature behind him as he rounded the corner. Finally, Tevid came to the grand doors to the throne room. Ostensibly, the center of the universe, though who knows if the palace had drifted a little bit since the beginning of time. Had it? No real way to tell from here, but it would be mighty difficult, Tevid thought, to keep a throne in exactly the center of the universe without it moving an inch. Besides, if the universe is infinite, which the holy books insist it is, then how can there even be a center?

The doors were huge — a bit much, in fact — and it took Tevid a while to even walk up to the massive doors. A knobbly-jointed, many-armed angel leaned against the wall next to the door, watching Tevid but saying nothing and not moving. Greasy, Tevid noticed. And a bit hairy. Not one of the attractive angels that God sent to the material world as a messenger, Tevid took it. Nothing like the bird guy he rode up here on. It was holding an intense lantern of some sort, which was the source of the brilliant rainbow light which suffused the heavenly palace. When Tevid reached the doors, he gave the angel a skeptical, sideways glance, then leaned his body weight against the giant door to the right, trying to muscle it open.

“Not going to work,” the angel said, nonchalantly, in a creaky voice. Tevid looked at the naked, bony creature.

“And why not? Is it sealed with some divine magic?”

“No,” replied the angel, “you have to turn the knob.” Tevid looked down and saw a pair of small doorknobs, one on each door, each about a foot from the ground.

“Ah,” replied Tevid. He knelt down, still protecting his eyes with his left sleeve. As he knelt down, he reasoned that the low height of the knobs must be for the benefit of some of the smaller angels he had seen, like the weird, vomiting sphere he had just passed, though Tevid wasn’t sure exactly how such a creature would turn a knob. Putting such thoughts aside, he reached toward the small knob and tried to turn it. It clicked, but wouldn’t turn.

“It is locked,” said the angel, still leaning against the wall.

“Thanks, I see that. Why didn’t you tell me it was locked?”

“You did not ask,” replied the angel. Even though it was several meters away, Tevid could smell its breath as it talked. Rotting flesh. Awful.

After a moment of silence, Tevid replied. “Could you, maybe, open it up for me then?”

“No."

“God damn it, why not?” asked Tevid. The angel stayed silent for a moment, only tilting its head slightly to the right, and furrowing the spot above its two eyes where its eyebrows should be.

“I do not have the key. I lost the key ages ago.”

“Well, great,” said Tevid. The angel lost the key. God goes through the effort, expending every drop of his infinite willpower, of designing a massive heavenly palace with such majestic, stone doors, and I go through all the effort of getting here, just for the angel to say he lost the key. Wonderful. “I guess that puts me in a difficult position, then.”

“I guess so.” The two of them stayed quiet for a minute while Tevid thought.

“What does the key look like?” asked Tevid.

“Oh, it does not really look like anything,” croaked the angel, “The key is a pure heart. I had a pure heart once, but no longer. Evidently, you do not have one either. A shame.”

“Can you put that lantern down?” asked Tevid, still shielding his eyes. “It’s very bright.” The creature let out a dramatic sigh and then creaked as it moved one of its many arms to the lantern. With the turn of the knob, the iridescent light beaming from the lantern was reduced to a glow. Tevid thanked the gangly angel and tried again in vain to open the giant doors. The angel just watched, not seeming to care about the outcome.

How can the doors say I’m not pure of heart, just like that? thought Tevid. I’m here for somewhat selfish reasons, true, but that doesn’t mean I’m a bad guy. I’ve helped plenty of people. The parishioners. My brother. Not my father, but fuck that guy anyway. If you wanted me to save your job, you shouldn’t have been such an asshole to me for, oh, I don’t know, my whole life. But anyway, most of the people I’ve come across in life, I’ve either helped or left alone. And I thought morality was supposed to be a spectrum, or some vague concept that nobody can really pin down. But these damn doors have just up and decided I’m a bad person? Fuck these fucking doors! He started kicking the giant doors, which didn’t budge or seem to care. After several good kicks against the unyielding stone, he gave up. He gave a look that said What are you looking at? to the angel. The angel didn’t respond, but seemed to be smiling.

Okay, think rationally, thought Tevid. My heart is not pure now, but that doesn’t mean it was never pure. It must have been pure when I was a baby, at least. What kind of a God — or door — could say that even a little baby has an impure heart? So at some point, my heart must have been corrupted. He paced as he thought, his moving feet not visible below his long, pastoral robes. I’ll bet it was when I stole that chocolate bar as a kid. That was probably the first thing I ever did wrong. I just couldn’t resist! Well, it doesn’t really matter now. Maybe I can have a pure heart again if I just try really hard to want the best for people, and to put others above my desires for chocolate. His face became slightly strained as he focused hard on kindness and love, and not wanting chocolate more than kindness and love. He strutted toward the doors again and bent over to try the knob again.

Click.

“God fucking motherfucker!” yelled Tevid as he kicked the door again. The angel let out a short, restrained chuckle, but kept quiet.

Tevid caught his breath and then asked, “Angel, when was the last time someone came through these doors? How many people even have a pure heart?”

“A pure heart? Not many humans. The last human who got through the doors came through, oh, maybe a few hundred years ago. Angels, though, most of us have pure hearts. Not me, not the bird guy, and definitely not the ventriloquist. But most of us, yes. Pure as a purecumber, as they say.”

Tevid’s eyes lit up. “That’s it! Wait right here,” he yelled as he took off and scurried around the corner.

“I was not planning on going anywhere,” sighed the angel. After a few seconds, Tevid came back around the corner, arms fully outstretched, holding the sickly, many-eyed ball-angel as it left a trail of vomit behind them. Tevid’s face was twisted from the smell of the vomiting angel. Tevid held it up to the doors, vomit dripping down his arms and into his robes.

Chunk! The deep thud of a mechanism unlocking. Tevid dropped the ball-angel to the ground and kicked it down the hall. It let out a little whine as it rolled, then began to vomit more profusely than ever. Tevid shook his head with contempt and then turned to the doors. Using his body weight, he shoved the left door open and proceeded through.

The throne room was largely made of the same refractive, opalescent stone as the rest of the palace, and was likewise bathed in the dim, iridescent light of the gangly angel’s lamp. Along either side of the long pathway to the throne lay uneven piles of corpses. Eyes and mouths open in surprise. No sign of rotting. Wearing clothes from various periods in history, or no clothes at all. Thousands of them. The throne itself was as tall as a really tall throne, and as wide as one too. On it sat a titanic, flawless, grey human-looking creature, wearing no clothes. God. It matched the description Tevid had found in an old prophetic manuscript — it had to be him. It had no mouth, and no other facial features, and on top of its head, like a hat, was a bulbous red creature. Another angel. The red creature had many tendrils of flesh that burrowed into the grey titan’s otherwise featureless face, and a round body with a giant, toothy mouth. Other than the mouth and the tendrils, the creature had no other features.

As bad a sign as the thousands of corpses were, he had come all this way. Besides, thousands may have perished here, but who knows how many thousands more have received blessings and went merrily on their way? Tevid made up his mind to press on. Cautious, he slowly and respectfully approached the throne. As he walked on the radiant stone, the corpses at the edge of the pathway seemed to be looking up at him in their eternal grimace. He kept going. After making the long journey to the throne, the titan god looked even more impressive, towering way above Tevid, even seated. The red creature’s giant mouth began to move.

“PLENUS VENTER NON STUDET LIBENTER!” growled the red blob from atop God’s head. It seemed to speak for God, presumably because God himself lacks a mouth.

“What?” shouted Tevid. His shout echoed in the grand throne room.

“DULCE EST DESIPERE IN LOCO.”

“Excuse me? Is that Latin or something?” yelled Tevid. “Forgive me, I don’t mean to be rude,” he added, nervously.

“ACTA DEOS NUMQUAM MORTALIA FALLUNT,” sputtered the red beast.

“Great. I come all this way,” said Tevid, “I sneak my way into the grand palace of heaven itself. And I find God. Greyer than I thought he would be, I have to say. And of course, he doesn’t speak English.”

“ENGLISH? OH, YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?”

“Umm. Yes? Yes,” Said Tevid.

“OKAY. COOL BEANS.”

“Okay. Well, I suppose you must know why I’m here, since you’re God and everything, so let’s get this thing going.”

“YEP. I KNOW WHY YOU’RE HERE. BUT GO AHEAD AND SAY IT ANYWAY. FOR THE SAKE OF CONVERSATION. I GET LONELY.”

“Umm, okay. I,” Tevid choked, “I am Tevid Cunningham, High Priest of the Holy Church of the Second Coming of Christ and Friends, and I have come seeking immortality. If I find immortality here, I will return to my people and spend eternity spreading the good word of the Lord on Earth, as God’s chosen prophet. This is the will of God. Of you, that is. I think.”

“OH. THAT’S NOT WHAT I WOULD HAVE GUESSED AT ALL.”

“What?” asked the astonished Tevid. “What do you mean, ‘guessed’? Don’t you know everything? Aren’t you God?”

“I AM GOD. I AM ALL-SEEING, TRUE. I AM ALL-POWERFUL AS WELL. I AM TECHNICALLY ALL-KNOWING. BUT I AM NOT ALL-INTELLIGENT, AND IT TAKES A LOT OF MENTAL RESOURCES TO CONSULT MY INFINITE KNOWLEDGE, SO INSTEAD, I USUALLY RELY ON HEURISTICS. I GUESS A LOT.”

Tevid stood in stunned silence. This God is not quite the one from the holy scriptures. But it is real, whereas the God of the scriptures is merely a tale. A legend. A gesture made in the image of the real thing. Tevid decided to make do.

“Okay, well, I’m here to become immortal. Can you make me immortal?”

“YES. I CAN DEFS DO THAT.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Tevid closed his eyes and waited for the power of almighty God to wash through him and purify his body. But it didn’t happen. After a while, he opened one eye. “My lord?”

“YES, DUDE?” asked the toothy, red blob creature on God’s head.

“Are- Are you going to do it?”

“DO WHAT?”

“Make me immortal?”

“YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER? WHAT FOR?”

Tevid sighed in exasperation, then quickly gave a halfhearted smile to conceal his annoyance. “It’s like I already said, my lord, I want to live forever as your chosen prophet on Earth, spreading your message to the four corners of the planet. Or the galaxy, even.”

“AND WHAT MESSAGE IS THAT, MY MAN?”

“Umm. You know,” mumbled Tevid, “like, being nice to other people, and believing in God, and donating to my church. Stuff like that.”

“THAT SOUNDS FINE, I GUESS.”

“You don’t seem very enthusiastic,” said Tevid, looking up, puzzled, at the red blob. “Isn’t that basically what you wrote in your holy book?”

“AH. I SEE WHAT YOU MEAN BRO. BUT I WROTE A LOT OF BOOKS ACTUALLY. ALL OF THEM, IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT. KIND OF DEEP. IN ANOTHER SENSE, I HAVEN’T DONE ANYTHING AT ALL SINCE I CREATED THE UNIVERSE, AND HAVEN’T WRITTEN ANY BOOKS. LIKE, WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT OF WRITING A BOOK, WHEN I COULD JUST SET UP THE INITIAL CONDITIONS OF THE UNIVERSE SO THAT THE BOOK WOULD COME INTO EXISTENCE? I DON’T EVEN SPEAK, AND YET EVERYTHING I WANT TO SAY WILL BE SPOKEN. I NEED NOT LIFT A FINGER.” Tevid furrowed his brow harder. He found the Almighty’s informal speech patterns troubling, and his cavalier attitude toward Tevid’s religion wasn’t helping either.

“You don’t seem like I thought you would, my Lord,” said Tevid. Turning his attention slightly upward, he shouted, “hey, uh, you red blob thing up there. I see that you’re speaking for God because he doesn’t have a mouth, or whatever. Are you sure you’re doing a good job translating what he’s thinking?”

“YEP. TOTALLY, I AM,” replied the blob.

“‘Totally’?” Tevid squinted his eyes suspiciously. “God thought the word ‘totally’?”

“TOTALLY,” replied the blob.

“Okay, so,” continued Tevid, “are you gonna make me immortal then?”

“I WILL, BUT ONLY IF YOU CAN PASS THE TWIN TRIALS OF DEATH AND DESPAIR.”

Tevid thought about it. He had not heard mention of such trials in any of his manuscripts, but the manuscripts were sparse with real information and rife with myths. Death and Despair. That didn’t sound good. But, any chance of death is worth a shot at immortality, Tevid thought, because he would be paying a finite cost for potentially infinite benefit. A classic Pascal’s Wager situation. Tevid agreed to take part in the trials.

“SOUNDS GOOD. FIRST, THE TRIAL OF DEATH.” As the red blob spoke, a circle of floating daggers descended from the ceiling, spinning, points inward, coming to rest around Tevid’s neck, a hair away from his skin. “IN ORDER TO SURVIVE THE TRIAL OF DEATH, YOU HAVE TO ANSWER A RIDDLE CORRECTLY. ANSWER INCORRECTLY, AND THESE DAGGERS OF DEATH WILL SEVER YOUR HEAD FROM YOUR SHOULDERS IN AN INSTANT.” Tevid gulped but did not speak. He looked determined.

“OKAY. HERE GOES IT THEN. VOICELESS IT CRIES. WINGLESS FLUTTERS. TOOTHLESS BITES. MOUTHLESS MUTTERS.”

“Umm, the wind?”

“REALLY? THAT QUICK? DAMN IT,” replied the red blob.

“Yeah,” replied Tevid, “I think it was from the Hobbit, right?”

“THE WHAT? DAMN IT, THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO KEEP IT A SECRET! OKAY FINE.” The dagger started spinning again and floated back up toward the distant ceiling. “TIME FOR THE SECOND TRIAL. DESPAIR. YOU’RE NOT GONNA PASS THIS ONE.”

Tevid could hear a rattling, hissing noise to his right, and turned to see a gigantic snake, beyond the size of any found on Earth, slithering toward him. He took one step backward but held his ground as the snake approached. It opened its mouth, exposing thin fangs as long as Tevid’s arm, and hissed violently, but did not attack.

“THIS GIANT SNAKE’S TERRIBLE VENOM WILL CAUSE YOU GREAT DESPAIR AND A TRAGIC DEATH IF YOU FAIL THIS TRIAL. PLUS IT WILL HURT A LOT. BEFORE YOU WILL APPEAR, LIKE, I THINK NINE IMAGES, BUT I CAN’T QUITE REMEMBER. SIX OR NINE. ANYWAY, AMONG THE VARIOUS IMAGES MAY BE AN IMAGE OF A MAN. AN IMAGE OF A CLOUD. MAYBE AN IMAGE OF THE MOON. BUT FROM AMONG THESE IMAGES, YOU MUST TOUCH ONLY THE IMAGE OF A BUS. MAKE ONE MISTAKE, AND THE SNAKE’S VENOM WILL TURN YOUR SKIN TO BLOOD AND YOUR BLOOD TO SKIN!”

On cue, nine images appeared before Tevid, each about a foot wide. Pretty much instantly, Tevid touched the image of a bus with his pointer finger, and the other eight images, along with the giant snake, turned to dust. The image of the bus glowed and then faded.

“REALLY?”

“Well, I’ve seen a bus before. That was supposed to be hard?”

“VERY,” replied the blob. “I GUESS I SHOULD PROBABLY CHANGE THESE TRIALS OUT MORE OFTEN. I THINK I DESIGNED THAT ONE, OH, A FEW MILLION YEARS AGO. YOUR EVOLUTIONARY ANCESTORS FOUND IT TO BE REAL TRICKY, I ASSURE YOU.”

Tevid furrowed his brow in confused disapproval. “I bet they did,” said Tevid. Because they were apes. And, worse, they had never seen a bus before. “Are you really God?” he asked. “I thought God didn’t make mistakes like this?”

“UH HUH. WELL, BRO, IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT, ALL MISTAKES ARE OF INFINITESIMAL SIZE TO A GOD WITH AN INFINITE LIFESPAN. ANYWAY, YOU JUST DID THE TWIN TRIALS OF DEATH AND DESPAIR, SO CONGRATS. I GUESS I’LL MAKE YOU IMMORTAL NOW.”

“Okay —”

“DONE,” said the blob. Tevid looked curiously down at his body, then at his hands, examining them like someone who just experienced an accident trying to find out if they are hurt somewhere.

“I don’t feel any different,” Tevid concluded. But, before he could get a response, another giant snake lunged toward him, this time from his left. Tevid only had time to cower to the ground before the giant fangs threatened to pierce his body. But they didn’t. They simply bounced off. The snake tried again twice more to bite Tevid, but each time, his body repelled the fangs, as if by magic. Frustrated, the snake slithered off and turned to dust.

“SATISFIED?” asked the red blob.

“I-I guess so, yes.” Replied Tevid, shaking from fright, who had still not gotten up from his cowering position. “Thank you, my—” Tevid’s voice caught in his throat. He swallowed and tried again. “Th-th-thank—” He swallowed again. Strange. He didn’t usually stutter, or have issues speaking. He was a pastor, after all, so any problems with speaking would make his job difficult. He tried to speak again, but only a gasp of air escaped his lips. A look of panic took over his face. He couldn’t talk. It felt like he could. It felt like there was nothing wrong with his voice. But he couldn’t control it correctly. He tried again to speak, and his mouth opened, but no sound came out.

God and the red blob sat silently while Tevid tried to stand up. He started to lean, then fell over, landing stiffly with a thud on the solid, shimmering stone floor. He let out a little grunt. His stiff arms and legs moved pathetically back and forth, slowly, trying to stand up or right himself, as he lost control of his body. Move! he thought to his body, but it didn’t help. He had the desire to move, but not the will to carry it out. The look of fear was still on Tevid’s face when he finally came to a stop, laying on his back, arms and legs splayed on the cold floor. His entire body had become paralyzed. Not paralyzed, exactly, because he felt that his arms and legs would move, if only he could tell them to. But he found himself unable to exert any willpower at all. He couldn’t move his arms, nor his legs, nor could he even remove the frightened appearance from his face. He was stuck.

Hours passed. There was nothing like night, nor day, in this hellish throne room of heaven at the center of the universe, but Tevid could feel the time passing nonetheless. His face muscles grew unbearably sore, but he could not relax them. He grew hungry and thirsty. When he turned his eyes to either side, which is all he could manage to do, he saw the corpses of strange people. They, like him, had terror written on their faces. They were all looking at him. They are still alive, Tevid realized. It strained his eyes to look at them for too long because he could not turn his head to look at them, but he looked anyway and examined them further. The woman closest to him appeared to be Japanese. A Geisha, with white makeup and a kimono. Her bright red lips were frozen in a fearful grimace, just like his. And, on her forehead, he could see several small holes, from which no blood came. He thought he could see brain matter, but he couldn’t tell, and his eyes were strained, so he returned to looking straight up at the grey titan in its gargantuan throne.

The red blob was shambling down the grey torso, pulling itself along with the tendrils that were once plugged into God’s big, grey head. Its drooling mouth looked hungry. It slid down the grey leg of God and moved toward Tevid. Tevid, being frozen, could do nothing except watch as the red blob pulled itself onto his torso. From underneath the blob, he could hear its ugly, wheezy breathing. The tendrils extended towards Tevid’s head, and he suddenly felt an intense pressure on his skull, and then several painful cracks, as the tendrils of the blob pierced his skull and slithered onto his brain. The feeling of the tendrils slithering beneath his skull was sickening.

After the tendrils settled into place, the mouth of the red blob opened as wide as it could go.

“AAAAAHHHHHHH!” screamed the blob. For days, it would not stop screaming.