Bob Wagner woke up in what appeared to be some massive line. For what he had no clue. His mind was still foggy from his actual death. In front of him was a Hippopotamus along with a few other dozen animals in a seemingly endless single file line. He saw tigers and snakes, possibly other humans. It was quite bright, and the ground felt exactly how it looked...like a cloud. He noticed the mouth of the hippo moving as if it was muttering something to itself. Looking behind him, he let out a high pitch shriek.
'AHHHHH!!!!" Bob screamed.
"Hey whoa, come on guy. What's with all the yelling?" Bob's jaw remained open. He was frozen in awe or perhaps fear at the talking T Rex.
"He probably just woke up. Dumb bastard doesn't stand a chance."
Bob turned to see the hippo addressing him.
"You can talk?"
"Let me save you the trouble here and speed this along. You are dead. This is day 3 waiting in line to fight God. Now if you don't mind, I am trying to focus here." The hippo appeared to be doing some sort of pushup that maybe only hippos can do.
The T rex nervously rubbed his hands together. "I hope it's not boxing. You think it's boxing?"
Bob's brain dusted off its cogs as it spun slowly and slowly until the words from the hippo dawned on him. He is dead. But what was that about fighting God?
"Wait so I am in heaven?"
"What's heaven?" The T Rex leaned in closely with its inquisitive nature.
"You know the place you get into if you are good. Hell is the bad place." Bob couldn’t believe he just explained heaven to a T Rex and a hippo.
Everyone in the line started laughing. It kept carrying down the line. “There’s a first timer over here thinking this is heaven!”
“What an idiot!”
Bob, humiliated, disoriented, almost stumbled forward until he heard a shout coming from beneath him.
"No cuts asshole! This my twenty fifth time and I am not going to be stepped on again!" A spider shook its leg as if it were a fist toward Bob. He stumbled backward into the T Rex.
"I knew I should have given more change to that homeless guy. I should have gone to church more. I am so screwed." Bob cried uncontrollably to the point that hippo again lost focus from its pushups or squats.
"Change? Church? No, no, no. You got it all wrong man. You were supposed to spend your time fighting."
"Yeah. Getting really good at dodging and rolling away!" A mole rat exclaimed.
"Throwing large rocks as hard as you can!" What or who said this really caught the attention of Bob. It was tall perhaps eight or ten feet. It had wide shoulders and a fearsome jowl to its mouth.
Hair covered it everywhere. Could have been a yeti or perhaps even bigfoot or a sasquatch.
Holy shit bigfoot is real?"
"My name is Kyle, and my feet are the right size for my body." The creature turned back around ignoring Bob's further confusion
.
"I have never been in a fight. I worked part time at Walmart." First off Bob was astonished that everything here spoke perfect English. American English to be exact but Bob was never a deep thinker. He took things as he saw them and could not question the hippo, he clearly remembered dying so the hippo was telling the truth. He would like to put his death as far behind him as possible. If fighting God is really what was going to happen, then perhaps its best everyone does not know of his loss fighting food.
"Five seconds tops." A chimpanzee shook his head in disapproval.
"Five seconds for what?"
"You will only last about five seconds fighting God." The hippo chuckled.
"Ok this is all crazy. Fighting God? He made everything why would we fight him? I thought he loved us or something like that. I don't know I didn't go to church...but fighting him?"
Suddenly Bob had the attention of only the Hippo as everyone returned to their own mental preparation.
"You got your stories mixed up." The hippo began to explain to Bob in greater detail about what was going on. He woke up on day three which technically means four more days until Bob gets his big fight.
"You see he created everything in six days and on the seventh...he fights!" Everyone in line cheered and let out their own version of a war cry.
The hippo then further explained how time lasted is what really matters. The faster you lose the more likely you are to return to life as something with an even greater handicap in the next fight.
"Yeah, so you see you got no fighting in you, you probably go down in five seconds. Shit you probably come back a worm next time."
"Hey fuck you." The worm was not pleased with the hippo's slight.
All this information was just too much for Bob to handle. His poor brain was struggling, trying its best to process all this information. Now Bob began to question everything he had ever heard about God. It was probably several hours before the silence was once again broken by him.
"What about Jesus?"
"Who?" The hippo looked irritated that Bob broke his concentration again.
"He is the son of God."
"Oh that guy! I think he lasted about seven seconds. I don't know but Glen has done this the most so far. HEY GLEN!" The hippo yelled and got the attention of something way ahead of the line.
"WHAT!?"
"WHAT HAPPENED TO JESUS!?"
"HE LOST IN SIX SECONDS, I THINK. HE CAME BACK AS A POTATO AND THEN A WEED PLANT OR SOMETHING!"
The hippo shrugged "There you go."
Time was impossible to grasp. Was it day four? Maybe it was day five. It did not matter. It could have been four hundred more days and Bob would not know the difference. God crushed his supposed only son in six seconds so exactly how would Bob fair against the Almighty? He looked down at his hands that were stubby. His fingernails were still dirty for some reason. His gut hung over his belt as his eyes raced down past the ketchup stain on his khakis to notice his shoes were untied. He tied them back up while the T rex shouted.
"DAY SIX BABY!"
The line was now in an infinite warehouse like a Costco on steroids. Shelves and aisles filled with anything and everything imaginable. Every creature ran frantically like a black Friday madness sale reaching for anything to aid their combat.
The hippo grabbed a skateboard. "Oh fuck ya baby this is it!"
The worm tried to grab hold of a large chainsaw but then remembered it was only a worm.
A rifle drew the attention of Bob.
"Can I use this?"
"Uh...you can try, I guess." The hippo was too focused on the skateboard. He flipped it several times checking its proportions before finally grabbing a second skateboard.
The chimpanzee had a Smirnoff bottle and a single pair of nun chucks. Kyle grabbed a large pogo stick and two boxes of fireworks. Everything and everyone else seemed to have had an idea about what would give them an advantage. Bob naturally thought a rifle would be his best choice. As quickly as it appeared the endless warehouse vanished. Everyone again was in a single file line awaiting their fight. The hippo stuck with his skateboard choice. The worm had a candy bar, the spider had thumb tacks and Bob held his rifle. Behind him the T Rex stood but now with giant mechanical arms flexing in anticipation of his fight.
"Oh, I hope it's boxing now!"
Bob thought he perhaps should have looked further in the warehouse, but it did not matter. It was day seven...the fight.
Bob, out of shape, stood in a circle of dirt. Like a gladiator pit while shaking from anxiety and nerves. He pulled up the rifle, unsure if aiming down sight was the right call. His finger squeezed the trigger, but a bullet didn’t fire. It was a stream of water. He foolishly grabbed a water gun.
"Dumb choice." Echoed from above. Bob looked up to see a foot the size of the sun come hurling down towards him. All he could do was scream.
"OH GOD!"
The next thing Bob saw was sunlight through the dirt he was buried in. Sunlight that took him so long to reach but finally he swayed in the wind standing next to large blades of grass. A small boy reached down and plucked Bob from the ground.
"Look mommy a dandelion."
Bob screamed in horror, but the child of course did not hear him. He was just a dandelion. The child blew on him, giggling as all the white floaties escaped in the wind. The child then crinkled the remaining Bob in his hand and chucked his corpse aside.
A long line formed in front of him. He stood there again but this time holding all the white floaties in one arm. He overheard another person in line.
"So, is this heaven?"
If only that poor bastard knew what this really was. If only Bob could tell him of the sheer horror that awaited him. But Bob was just a stupid dandelion.
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