They have cable in hell
orman Wallace was dead. On a cold January night, he met his end on Trout Street in a car crash caused by an overpaid telemarketer named Quincy Templeton. Quincy had been at a company party, at which he became quite intoxicated, and subsequently mistook Norman�s nasal cavity as a highway onramp speeds. Anyway, Norman died and had to go before God to be judged. Unfortunately, his flight to Heaven had a two hour layover in Chicago. To pass this time, Norman decided to reflect on his life, now over.
He thought back to his service in Vietnam. The Lottery got him in November of 1968 and dropped him into a swamp the following month. He sat there for a year and a half.
"What are our orders, sir?" he once questioned his superior officer, a man who was similar to Norman, but got slightly more cigarette rations and an extra pair of uncomfortable Marine-issue wool socks.
"We are to sit in this swamp until the communists kill the entire unit. After that, you will be dead and I will be sent to Honolulu for a month of debriefing before being sent back to North Carolina to train another group of kids to shoot a gun at an unknown enemy." Norman was not impressed, so he shot the officer. He was given a medal.
That officer was one of two people Norman killed during the war. The other? A fourteen-year-old boy who was supposedly a communist. The truth is you couldn�t tell.
Well by this time Norman�s flight was ready to leave, and it did. The flight was uninteresting, as was the man that sat in the seat beside him. This man was a criminal defense lawyer, and apparently a very bad one at that. "I�ll probably go to Hell," the lawyer explained, "because I let so many murderers and serial rapists go to prison. That�s okay, though. I�ve heard they have cable in Hell."
Norman thought about his own role in life. He was a writer. Or was he just unemployed? The truth is you couldn�t tell. He only published one novel, which he called Dead Men Don�t Pay. This book told the life story of a Cuban hit-man who became a marriage counselor. Had this book really changed the world? Had this piece of literature made an influence on mankind? Well, maybe. It got a large commission for an alcoholic employee who found Norman�s book and recommended it to the executive board of North Dakota�s second largest publishing company.
"His book saved my life," claimed a middle aged man from New Jersey. This man was once shot with a semi-automatic machine gun by a fourteen-year-old inner-city youth who thought he had no future, and in reality, didn�t. Anyway, because the four hundred page novel was inside this man�s coat pocket, he was saved form the incoming bullets.
Norman, now feeling very good about his chances of getting into Heaven, walked off the airplane and into the terminal. After stepping out of the plane, he laughed. Before him lay a tunnel with an eerie light at the end. Were these the gates of Heaven or just the cheap fluorescent lights of the terminal? The truth is you couldn�t tell. Anyway, upon entering the main concourse, he found there to be half a dozen or so lines of people.
"Customs," he thought, though it was as much a question as a statement.
At the head of the lines were hung large red signs. The first line was apparently for plumbers, Mormons, and Albanians. The second was for dentists, guys named Phil, and Vietnam veterans. He joined that line.
Four years later, he found himself second in line. The man in front of him stood at the glass window, speaking to an attendant through a small microphone on the glass. The attendant shuffled through some papers that appeared to be some sort of biography.
"You were in Vietnam for two years," the attendant read of this man. "You killed more than forty civilians, raped a dozen girls, and burned two villages. But you did go to Confession every Sunday morning, like a good Christian. As long as you admitted your sins before God, you�ve got no problems. Very good."
The attendant stamped his papers, then handed them to the man. Heaven it said in large red ink letters. Norman moved to the front of the line and handed the attendant his papers.
"Writer...six years in the Peace Corps...Habitat for Humanity...coached your son�s little league team..." the attendant mumbled as she read his papers. "Only two?" She was referring to his kills.
"Yes."
She read on. "You�re not a Christian, are you?"
"No."
"Why you...you scum. You immoral killer! Have you no ethics? No values?"
His stamp read: Hell.
The truth is this: he didn�t mind living in Hell. After all, most of the world�s greatest people resided there. Thomas Jefferson, slave owner. Gandhi, radical revolutionary. Norman saw a man spray painting something on a wall. A vandal? No, it was Friedrich Nietzsche writing: "I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time."
Jesus was there as well. "I�m not a Christian. I�m a Jew," he explained to Norman.
"That�s true."
Norman then questioned Jesus, "What type of religion sends its own leader to the supreme place of doom and damnation? God only knows who�s running that organization!"
"Dad only wishes he knew...but really, Hell�s not so bad. I�d rather be here than spending eternity with those loud-mouth, holier-than-thou, born-again Christian crazies. They�re always telling you what to do and what to think and how evil you are for questioning the world. I can�t stand them myself. Hell�s great compared to Heaven. We have cable..."
After several weeks, Norman became quite fond of his eternal home. He spent his time reading and thinking, and was never preached to by the prejudiced or judged by the ignorant. Life was great. Or is that death? Either way, he eventually married a woman who died of cholera in 1789, but they never had any children because dead people can�t have kids. Now, that�s just silly.
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