The scenery was perfect, but he felt a tingle of fear in his chest. Eternal pain was a bit much.
               He was dead, he knew that much, but this he had never expected. Heaven and hell, of all things.

               The sun bounced over the clouds to the right, sunbeams bouncing over the clouds. The sky hung, like a perfect backdrop, clear, bright blue, and almost idyllically, a set of golden gates barred the way. An angel stood in front, emanating faintly, vaguely smiling. Heaven.

               The left was different. The gates were swung wide open, rusty red, coated with a dark liquid – blood, he realized. The staircase led down, creaking; the prisoners manacled to each other, dripping sweat. The ground was slick with blood, the stumpy guards armed with cruelly sharp knives and guns. Patrolling the gates was a heavyset, solid human form, with a distinctly Hitler-like mustache and gleaming red eyes. Hell, without a doubt.
               The only part religion forgot to mention was the crowd – enormous, sweaty, loud. It was a massive pushing crowd, with him at the center, forcing their way through toward the rosy gates of heaven. The heat bore down on them, and he could feel a sunburn coming on. Did they have sunscreen in hell, he wondered, because that was surely where he was going. Demons laced the towering battlements of hell, seizing victims almost at random; screaming the descended. Never to be seen again, he relished, sneering.
He wasn’t theirs yet – maybe he could avoid it, with this crowd. One slip into heaven, and he was safe.
               His face had a certain chiseled quality – handsome, despite his past. Lined maybe, but not old. He was tall, over six feet, and powerfully built. A dark stain was still spreading across his shirt, and he could still feel the pain piercing deeper than the bullet that had killed him.
               He was never a religious man, preferring to spend his time amassing his fortune – not entirely legally. He had, he admitted, murdered, committed arson, treason, blackmail, and torture. It hadn’t seemed too big of a price to pay for a couple million dollars before, but now he was having second thoughts, for the first time in his life – or rather, death.
               He had done it before, he would do it now. He charged through the crowd, picking and throwing aside men as easily as scraps of paper; he trampled one child, an infant, pale in death, in his haste, and took a second to enjoy a moment of dark pleasure.
               He pressed quickly to the front of the crowd, and was about to slip through the gates as he felt his arm caught in the grasp of an angel. The angel’s touch was as light as a cloud, but cool, like water; yet immobile, fire burning in the angel’s eyes. His features were not clearly male or female – somewhere in between.
               “You are?” the angel asked, his voice sweet but low.
               “Nelson Mandela,” the man spat.
               “As if,” laughed the angel. He let he man through the gates.
               The man’s heart was pounding, and he pushed past the angel. The air was cool, the clouds beautiful. All around were haloed angels and other humans drifting through the air and clouds, endless clouds for miles and miles and miles.
               It was nice, pleasant.
               Not a few thousand years later. He was bored to death. Three thousand years, and all he had done was look at clouds and sun. The weather never changed, the people never spoke, and all he did for three thousand years was drift. No food, no sleep, no laughter, no adrenaline.
               He wanted out.
               He drifted back to the golden gates, where the crowds were larger than ever. A strange longing  rose up on him. Now he felt nothing but melancholy and emptiness, and he missed emotion. He missed the reckless daring of his life, the gambling, the money, the risks.
               The same angel sat at the gates of heaven as had three thousand years ago. The man banged on the gates, and the angel slowly turned his head.
               “Yes?” he asked softly.
               “I’m bored.”
               The angel said nothing.
               “Make it more interesting. It’s almost like hell in here.”
               Now the angel’s face twisted, and an echoing laugh rounded the gates. The glow faded, replaced by flashing red eyes and clawing hands. “Who said it wasn’t?” he laughed as the ground disappeared beneath the man. The man fell, for a second, deeper into the dark, heaven’s light receding, into the stifling heat and cursed fire.
               Pain.