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Reforming Hell
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2009 by Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen.
Published in 2009 by Wildside Press.
www.wildsidepress.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my friends and family who have been so supportive and understanding as I worked on this novel, especially my husband, Darrell Schweitzer, whose loyalty, love, and editorial feedback are treasured, and my mentor, Ray Bradbury, whose encouragement has always kept me going whenever the going got tough. Ray, you also hold an extra-special place in my heart.
I would be remiss to not thank my publisher, John Betancourt of Wildside Press, for his support and friendship over the years.
And lastly, I thank my readers who started this journey with my first novel, Claiming Her, and will continue and complete its tale here with Reforming Hell.
—Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen
October, 2008
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“People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not be hard upon those who believe less. I doubt if you would have believed it all yourself if you hadn’t seen some of it.”
—from The Princess and the Goblin, by George MacDonald, 1872
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“When any religion tries to enforce its superiority with violence, it has lost the battle.”
—Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen
August 30, 2007
CHAPTER 1
Stories in the Garden
I’m looking back from the present. For those of you who never met me, my mortal name is Leigh Ann Elfman. My eternal name is Leianna, given to me 35,000 years ago when I was born to the angels Eve and Michael, their only child.
It’s 2008. Sometimes you have to look back from the present to figure out where to continue telling the story. I left you guys, left off at the very beginning of 1972, and the world was so much easier to take then, when we didn’t have wackos blatantly masquerading as pious vigilantes or a flim-flam president. I know there were other sleazy presidents in the past. But our current brazen bozo in the Big House is beyond sane belief.
Back then, we didn’t have religious bigots telling us their beliefs were more important than democratic freedoms. We didn’t have extremists who kill over cartoons, films or books, unable to handle justified criticism of their distinctly unspiritual behavior.
It’s 2008. I’m 60 years old, my auburn hair is streaked through with silver, my face, I’m told, is still youthful despite a few new pounds filling out my chin and cheeks, and my brown eyes are still my best feature, even with a few lines at their corners. So much has happened in 36 years. Eve, as my mortal mother, Miriam Elfman, is 80 years old, and according to my spirit master, Quatama, also known as the Buddha, this is Eve’s last mortal lifetime. She’s outlived the rebalancing of humanity’s DNA, after the damage caused by the first Fall from Grace, when she and her brother Adam were trapped on Earth and interbred with mortals. That mixed angelic and human genes, but the damage has now been reversed. A subtle evolution will begin taking place; mankind will become a new, improved species.
Bear with me here. I know humanity still seems to be off its rocker. The last eight years I’ve been cynical, badly heartbroken, and angry. I get to do something about my anger. I’m the Queen of Hell now. I get to judge those who really sin in the eyes of the Creator. This doesn’t always match the perpetrator’s religious belief. God doesn’t particularly care what religion you are. Many souls who rise to the heavens are extremely perturbed by this at first. Then they realize that nobody’s listening to their complaint. Judgment really hinges on ethics and spirituality, not on what religion we follow.
I’m having one of those days when I can barely make it through without my muscles aching, just getting through the day job and cleaning up the dinner dishes. I tumble into bed, fall asleep, and wing it up to the eighth physical astral plane. This is one of the high heavens I’ve got access to, something you might not think I’d have, since I’m the Queen of Hell. But God asked me to take that position, to relieve Lucifer of his duties.
Few mortals even know about that change in management Down Below, or all the other changes there, that I get to do the judging. Actually I’m waiting for some really large rats, human ones, to come my way. You don’t just lie your way into world chaos, destroying other lives impertinently, and not expect to be called to judgment. On the other hand, Heaven doesn’t approve of fanatical religious leaders killing in the name of God. None of these people are going to Heaven. They’re heading for a total isolation cell for a thousand years or so to teach them the value of a human life.
I did freak out insanely in the beginning, when judging the 9-11 bombers, and initially stooped like the Furies to their violent level. But then I calmed down, put them back together, and it’s been isolation cells ever since for each of those misguided fools. And, believe me, isolation hurts a lot more than physical punishment. YOU try being denied all sensation, stuck in total blackness, with nothing for reference, nothing visible, audible, sensory or structural, just hanging in a void for even two days. Oh, yeah, you can hear yourself scream.
Hell is tidier and much more logically run these days. We even have social workers and behavioral therapists on our staff.
And then there’s my second job: President of the High Council of Heaven. I actually asked to be relived of that duty in 2003. They let me go for two years, and then told me I had to preside again.
I don’t like it. All these well-meaning people come up to Heaven to complain and half the time they want me to do what those zealous Muslims insisted Denmark should do: pass legal judgment based on one specific religion. I’ve had to educate both crowds of astrally-projected Muslims and throngs of out-of-body Christians and Jews, especially the orthodox believers, explaining that in Heaven we don’t bend rules to suit mortal religious beliefs. The Hindus, Buddhists and pagans have less trouble understanding that Heaven has no secular restrictions. Or perks!
Like the group that recently came, including that nauseous woman who kissed her son and sent him off to blow himself up, along with other children. They demanded that the suicide bombers be returned to the heavens and that the 70 virgins attend them. I dearly wanted to tell them that the 70 virgins married nice, peaceful boys whose mothers brought them up right. But I didn’t. I only told them that their sons had committed murder and were not expected in Heaven anytime soon.
They didn’t like that answer. They started clamoring and crying out to M—, but M—, though he sits on the High Council along with me, cannot change Heaven’s rules to fit human delusions. He told them, what many of their eminent scholars had told them: that they were interpreting Islam wrong. When they heatedly accused him of being an impostor, he took it stoically, his eyes sad. Later on, they realized their error and sent apologies to him, which he accepted. I told him—to cheer him—that if Jesus appeared on Earth today, some people would probably demand to see his driver’s license.
So now I wing my way upward to the eighth plane and rather than stop at my home there, I go straight to the Garden, heading to my favorite part, where the fragrant flower beds extend seemingly for miles. I especially love the hyacinth’s sweet aroma. When I arrive, J.C., Quatama and M—are already waiting for me.
They
