Poetry by Poem

The Untimely Death of a Telemarketer

One Saturday evening Phil Hearndt sat patriarchally at dinner with his family and complained about his job as a telemarketer.
“You wouldn’t believe some of these people,” he hollered between open-mouthed chews of meatloaf. “We tell them they’ve won a free vacation to the Bahamas – or a three hundred dollar stereo or a flat screen TV and they hum and haw like a bunch of donkeys.” When he “hummed” and “hawed” little bits of mashed potato sprayed onto the table and his twelve-year-old son, Christopher, who burst into gargly giggles – at which his food shot from his mouth, onto his sister’s plate and into her iced-tea.
“They don’t want it,” Phil griped on incredulously. “They tell me it has to be a scam. A multi-national, billion dollar-a-year company scammin’ people! Well how do you like that? Dumb as a damn post.” He waved his fork and some carrots flew across the room. Christopher was almost in tears.
“All they have to do is sign up for a year of service – and we even install the dish and the receivers free – who wouldn’t want satellite TV, anyway? Tell me that. With cable there’s no comparison.”
Phil’s wife, Cynthia, looked listlessly at the dining room wall and said flatly, “well, honey, some people just can’t afford to have satellite.”
“Can’t afford!” Phil erupted, hitting the table with his knife-clutching fist and upsetting the water in his glass. “Dear, we’re offering them a free four thousand dollar vacation – the monthly fee – and you get about three hundred channels – is nothing compared to that. Besides, we have to make our money somehow.”
There was a food laden stream of spilled water running from the bottom of his glass and into his lap. Christopher was cackling so hard he flopped sideways onto his sister, Sara, and started pushing her out of her chair. She shoved him with a scowl and an irritated, six-year-old whine.
“Why don’t you get a new job, sweetie?” his wife asked dutifully. And then the phone rang. Phil exploded from his chair, still in the throes of disbelief at universal stupidity, and strode into the kitchen to answer it.
“Hello?” he complained at the handset.
“Hello, is this mister Hearndt?” said the cheery, plastic voice on the other end.
“Yes.”
“Well, hi mister Hearndt, my name is Holly from AOD Services and I’m calling to inform you that your name was entered into our monthly promotional drawing and you’ve won our grand prize for this month. Congratulations.” Phil turned toward the dining room and laughed triumphantly.
“Ha, ha,” he shouted, “talk about timing. Now I’ll show you how a promotional contest winner ought to handle himself.” He turned back to the phone and fairly yelled at the woman on the other end.
“So, tell me, what do I have to subscribe to – what did I win?”
“Well, sir, AOD Services is the Angel of Death’s customer benefits provider, and since our records show that you are already a subscribing member to the Angel of Death’s basic services, and your number has been drawn at random by our computer, you’re eligible to receive, absolutely free, passes for you and four friends or family members into paradise after death.” Phil was silent for a moment, then he bellowed raucously,
“Alright, but what do I have to sign up for – what’s the scam?”
The woman hesitated – obviously not used to being so easily and quickly received – and then said indignantly: “There’s no scam, sir. This is an international corporation that has been operating in the United States since nineteen ten. We serve millions of customers a day. Scam, oh.”
“Ha, ha,” Phil forced, “just kidding. I’m in telemarketing myself, and I was just explaining to my family the way people are about these calls – morons, in my opinion. Now, you say you guys have been in business since nineteen ten? I would have thought the Angel of Death had been going a lot longer than that.”
“Of course, you’re right,” she replied pleasantly, “but this branch of the company was only incorporated in the US in nineteen ten. But, yes, we have a history much longer than that.” Phil was cleaning his teeth with his fingernail as she went on, “So, you said you have a family? I’m sure they’ll be excited. All you have to do to redeem your four, totally free passes into heaven is join one of our monthly payment plans based on a yearly contract. If you’d like, I can quote you the prices for just the family plans.”
“You see,” he boomed, slapping his knee, “I know about these things – it’s no surprise to me. Shoot.” Then aside to the dining room: “I’m handling this, kids, just wait till you hear what your dad’s won for this sorry crew.”
“Alright, you ready?” she chirped boredly. “Our Family Choices Plan starts at nineteen ninety-five a month for the basic and twenty-nine ninety-five for the deluxe plan and ensures that you and your family will have comfortable or exciting deaths. Our Family Life Plan is twenty-nine ninety-five for the basic and forty-nine ninety-five for the deluxe and it guarantees that you and your family will all live to ripe old ages and die comfortably. We also have a Parents and Kids Plan which allows family members to decide their death orders amongst themselves and that’s a special rate of nineteen ninety-five. Finally, in case you’re interested, all plans come with a free Euthanasia service, which provides painless, instant death at the time of request.” She took a deep breath and then plunged back into the quick monotony of her schpiel. “I just need to get the number for a major credit card, assuming you have one, and your plan preference and those four passes as well as free equipment and installation are yours.”
“Hoo, whee,” said Phil scratching his underarm, “So, even the ol’ Grim Reaper’s turned into a Capitalist. Can’t say that I blame him. Now, before I go and give you the keys to my bank account over here, you’re going to have to sell me a little better on this prize I’ve won – I’m a faithful Baptist church-goer, you know. And I provide an all-important warm body for our weekly street evangelism team – helps draw the crowds. I look every bit as secular as the best of ‘em, too. Sometimes I even hand out a few tracts. So why should I want these passes to paradise of yours?”
“Well, a telemarketer and a witnesser,” she said, sounding impressed. “Look, between you and me, with all the different religions and stuff floating around these days, it’s really hard to be confident about any specific one. Besides, with these passes, you and your family won’t have to worry about going to church and street evangelism and so on or keeping the commandments or saying sutras or any of that, ever again. And on top of that, you’ll have the peace and confidence our family plans offer at incredibly low prices. You have to admit, you’ll be hard put to find these kinds of supernatural services at these kinds of rates.”
“Hmm,” he said breathing in with enormous gusto and puffing his chest paternally. “You’ve got a good point about that church thing. That’s a hell of a prize you’re giving away. You give one of those every month?”
“Not always this one, but our prizes are formidable.”
“Well, I think that family life thingamy sounds pretty good.”
“Basic or deluxe?”
“Basic should do ‘er.”
“Alright, I’ll just need information from a major credit card and then you’re address and we can have a serviceman over there to complete your free installation and drop off your prize as soon as tonight.” He gave her the numbers, tossed a goodnight and sauntered into the dining room to proclaim the omni-benevolence of the father while Christopher blew bubbles in his glass and sprayed meatloafy water onto Sara – and Sara made mortified, princess faces in return.
The doorbell rang a little before eight and Cynthia opened it to find a turnip-faced, youth with an AOD baseball cap and a box full of packing beans. He trundled his load into the living room, as sparkly and fresh as morning dew, and began unpacking the box. The family bunched around him domestically – like cows – and he handed them each a shiny, chrome loop and a little plastic bag of fitting accessories. Then he poised himself in front of them – his teeth a perfect octave of polished ivories aching to be tickled.
“All we’re gonna do tonight is get each of you fitted with one of these patented, AOD neck rings and make sure it’s all snug and comfortable and then we’ll do a couple of tests. Once you’re satisfied, I’ll give you your free passes – congratulations on winning those, by the way. What a great prize, eh? This shouldn’t take more than half an hour or so.”
“What are these things for?” Phil squinted, eyeing his ring impotently.
“These are guaranteed to protect you all from the Angel of Death’s scythe or sickle or whatever you wanna call it, for at least another fifty years – in the case of Mom and Dad – and maybe, what? Seventy or eighty for the kids?”
“I thought the Angel of Death provided this service,” Cynthia piped with sudden anxiety and a sharp, doubtful glance at her husband.
“He is, he is,” cooed the installationist, reassuringly, “but it’s not easy for him, with his work load, to distinguish special service subscribers from regular, non-paying customers. So he designed these to stop himself making a mistake – they’re a unique alloy, the only thing his sickle can’t cut through.”
“Couldn’t he just cut off half our bodies or slice our brains, or something,” said Christopher wickedly. And his sister exclaimed, “Ooh, you’re so gross,” with what seemed a lapse in her usual witty form.
“Nope,” said the lad, “it’s pretty tried and true the neck is the only reaping spot – someone did die after a swipe to the head, but that’s only happened once. I think you’ll find, as you go along with our service that he’ll occasionally get you elsewhere – in which case you might experience some temporary tingling or numbness in a limb or muscle group – but don’t worry about it. It’s just reassurance that the collars are working properly.” Everyone watched him raptly as he spoke, eyes as narrow as portable lavatories and just as vacant.
“The rings can be removed easily, like so,” he demonstrated with one of them, “for bathing and so on – just don’t forget to put it back on.” He chuckled and winked at Sara like an old uncle.
“Let’s start with you, Dad,” he said after a long pause had reassured him there were no further questions and proceeded to tinker with Phil’s ring in a vastly un-gentle manner – to the detriment of both Phil’s neck and his temperament. It took him a little over an hour to get everyone properly fitted, either because “Dad” couldn’t keep his head still long enough to get the size adjusted or because Sara’s chin kept getting in the way as she attempted to catch a glimpse of herself in the new accessory. When he finally stepped back and said, “there we go,” with drawn out syllables, the family looked like a lined-up traveling gospel group of upper spinal injury victims.
“These aren’t very comfortable,” Christopher complained, but Sara was of a different opinion: “I think they look pretty,” she peeped happily, continuing to strain her head for the impossible peak at her own neck.
“Don’t worry,” said the installer, “You’ll get used to them in a few days. Now for the main event.” And he produced the four free passes to paradise which had been inscribed with the names of each person in the family – Phil noted that he had provided no such information – and were every bit as impressive as anyone could have hoped. They were shimmering gold and had very realistic holograms of the heavenly city on one side and the Grim Reaper himself on the other. Phil hallooed victoriously.
“Ha! You see? Old Dad’s pulled through this time, eh kids? No more Sunday School for you two, no way. Tomorrow we’re going to church just to wave those pompous stiffs a goodbye and good-riddance.” And he began dancing around the room, drunk with how impressed he was at himself, and grabbed his wife and spun her around. For her part, she wasn’t exactly “sitting loose in the saddle” and kept grimacing and adjusting her head in its new stirrup. The two kids were first paralyzed with disbelief and then, as it dawned on them that their dad meant what he said about Sunday School, became gleefully animated. There was even a sort of Hearndt abomination when Christopher grabbed his sister’s hand and they danced together, whooping and clapping with their Davidic father – who, thankfully, did not develop that patriarch’s state of undress.
The delivery and installation boy yelled that he would leave the company contact number on the table in case they had any questions and left without so much as a have-a-nice-life. The celebrations continued for some time after he was gone and only melted away when they all realized how sweaty they were getting “under the collar”.

They arrived at church the next day early enough to get in a full ration of gloating without actually having to attend the service. Sara’s Sunday School teacher had her stand up in front of the class and show everyone her golden pass as well as explain what her pretty chrome ring was for – which, of course, she was totally incapable of doing. After show-and-tell she sat back down on the floor out of sheer habit and was happily listening to the story of the rich man and Lazarus – who “didn’t get to heaven just by being poor, kids” – when her brother came in to remind her they didn’t like Sunday School and wouldn’t be attending.
In his class, Christopher was teased obtusely for wearing a “girly” ring around his neck but his classmates quickly changed their tune when he told them the neck guard assured him a free pass to heaven and, more importantly, a ticket out of Sunday School.
Phil, for his part, whirled directly into the sanctuary to flaunt his golden pass under the broad Baptist nose of the pastor and some deacons, all of whom examined it sanctimoniously. In fact, the Pastor breathed in so authoritatively when he had it between his digits that one diminutive deacon was almost nasally raptured. He was duly impressed – “this depiction of the eschatological city is very true to life” – but, in the final analysis, advised Phil not to take his family out of church. One of the deacons even reminded him of a faith pledge for a thousand dollars he had apparently made at the beginning of the year.
“Gentlemen,” Phil said to them expansively as he walked towards the lobby, “faith pledges are strictly for non promotional-competition winners.” And he yelled to his kids and floated piously to the car where his wife had been waiting proverbially, nervous mouth taut. They spent the rest of the day celebrating at a restaurant and being ogled by everyone that saw them.
Christopher tried jumping off the roof of the house, that evening – something he had only avoided until now because no one had been able to assure him a deathless landing – and found that, while the collar worked well at keeping him alive, it did nothing to assuage his searing rump pain. Nevertheless, they all went to bed in high spirits.

The next morning, however, those same high spirits seemed to have been dunked in old coffee and dropped between the cracks in the couch cushions. No one had slept a wink all night and everyone had the most horrible cramps in their necks. They oozed viscously to school and work, spoke to each other in grumbles and grunts when they got home and crawled grouchily into bed at some unprecedented early hour. From there, the week only got worse.
Sara woke up two or three times every night and ran weeping to her parent’s bedroom to sobbingly complain that her foot or hand or fingernails had gone to sleep. “The reaper is after me,” she cried, “he never stops swiping at me!”
Christopher refused to remove his collar, even for showering. He claimed he was too frightened the Angel of Death was waiting anxiously to get him the moment he was off his guard, after that leap from the roof. Around the house, however, the suspicious point was made – by more than one person – that he had never liked showers in the first place and was just taking advantage of a convenient excuse. Whatever the case, his pubescent body became so rancid by the middle of the week that his mother stopped letting him eat dinner with the family. Naturally, when he was cut off from a nightly opportunity to gastronomically disgust his sister, the boy showed signs of depression.
His parents had problems of their own, however. Cynthia was not able to look down enough, thanks to the restrictive collar, to cut vegetables, do the dishes or mend anyone’s trousers. On Thursday they realized they had run out of forks, were all wearing sweat pants and were developing vitamin A deficiencies. She also refused to go out wearing “this hideous metal band” and Phil didn’t allow her to take it off for more than a few minutes at a time. Two children were left standing outside their school in the rain more than once – sweating profusely under the collars.
Work became an impossibility for Phil. The discomfort of the neck-band combined with his lack of sleep rendered concentration moot. His talents for customer service turned sour and lumpy. He told one potential that she was as likely to die now as in ten years, apologized for being so thoughtless and then shared with her that he was developing a horribly itchy rash on his neck. She, of course, received this well, having been overjoyed at the call from a telemarketer to begin with.
At home he was a nervous wreck. On Friday night he chipped a golf ball into the refrigerator along with a pitching wedge. On Saturday night he stood up at the table, called Christopher into the room, and made the following announcement:
“Dammit, I’m canceling this blasted service. I don’t care what the damn cancellation fee is. I’ve never seen a family so worried about dying in all my life. And if they don’t have some magic pills to make this rash on my neck go away, so help me, I’ll set a fire under ‘em!” And with that, he stormed into the kitchen, slammed the refrigerator door, which now only pretended to close, and violently snatched the phone off the hook.
“Hello, AOD Services,” said a monotonous voice on the other end.
“Dammit, I’m canceling this blasted service,” shouted Phil, quoting himself. “I don’t care what the damn cancellation fee – Oh yes, I know there is one, yes, yes, yes – and I better get some magic pills for this rash, overnight the damn things to me, understand?”
“Excuse me, sir,” the voice said patronizingly. “If you want to cancel your service you’ll have to speak to Debbie in the claims department. Please hold.”
The usual hold music ensued. Its mind-numbing, bass-less tones stole the air right out of Phil’s sails and he stood there slump-shouldered and becalmed while Christopher took the opportunity to make up for lost time with his food and his sister – both of which had not obviously missed him.
After a moment, a new, slightly more inflected voice came on the line, “This is claims.”
“Look,” said Phil as meekly as if the Fur Elise had given him rickets, “My name’s Phil Hearndt – this Family Life Bit isn’t working out too well for us and we’d like to cancel.”
“What’s the trouble with the service, sir? Maybe we can help you out,” she said as if she had found cancel under chat in the thesaurus. Phil grunted a knowing, porcine grunt.
“Well,” he said, hesitant to play her game, “these ring things aren’t too comfortable, my daughter’s having trouble sleeping.”
“Of course,” she said, without missing a beat. “If the rings are worn for too long at a stretch they can get uncomfortable.”
“Too long at a stretch?” Phil burst out, as if he had sat on a pin. “Too long at a stretch, she says!”
“Yes sir. Our deluxe package is specifically designed to eliminate any such discomfort – there is no protective apparel of any kind involved. We could switch you to that plan as soon as…tomorrow, I think. All I need is your authorization.”
“Now hold on,” said Phil with irritation – his dander was beginning to get up again. “I said I wanted to cancel. Cancel means no more to pay, no more service and some treatment for this rash on my neck – overnighted to me.”
“Are you certain you want to do that, Mr. – uh – Hearndt? We have an early cancellation fee of three hundred dollars. Besides, the peace of mind our plans provide is the best you’re going to find on the market right now – all of our products and services are designed by Mr. Reaper, himself.”
“I realize that.” Phil ran his hand through his hair vengefully and watched more strands than he cared to count fall morosely to the floor. “But, you know, it just occurred to me that I probably don’t need your stupid guarantees of long life anyway. Who said I’m not gonna live to be ninety-seven on my own, huh? Tell me that.”
This seemingly strong point did nothing to discourage Debbie from the claims department – in fact, her voice perked up.
“If you’d like,” she almost squeaked, “I can check on that for you.”
“You mean, check on how long I’m supposed to live?” he gasped. She had wrong-footed him.
“Sure, the Angel of Death has his personal appointment planner loaded into our database so that we can better know how to serve our customers. Give me just a minute, here.” There was a clerical clicking and clacking of keyboard keys and a number of concentrated mumbles. Phil’s heart thumped and yearned like a Psalmists.
“Ooh,” she said, with a tone that brought his dinner into his throat. “You’re scheduled for the thirteenth of May – sometime in the evening.”
“The thirteenth of May?” Phil screamed, “that’s less than a month from now.”
“I’m very sorry,” she said, obviously working hard to muster what pitiful resources of empathy she possessed. Then she was quiet. And Phil was quiet – except for his heavy panting into the mouthpiece.
“Alright,” he sighed finally. “Upgrade me to the damned Deluxe – but it better be good. I’m warning you right now. I know how these things work, believe me, I know ‘em inside and out. I’ll hang you out to dry if there’s anymore foul play with this.”

And so, the next day, the pale installation boy was back to beaming cheerily in the doorway, this time with a teetering stack of boxes he could barely keep afloat on the scrawny puddle of his body, and a wizened smile.
“Firstly,” he said when he had herded the family into the living room again. “We’ll get those neck guards off of you all. Uncomfortable, huh?” He said uncomfortable as if he had warned them against such impractical fashion accessories all along. There was weary jubilation. A tiny peep of joy even slipped from Sara’s worry-worn little mouth before her face suddenly tightened with concern.
“What if he comes to kill us?” she said with innocent terror – her family were all thinking the same thing, though their terror, for the most part, was not quite so innocent.
“Not to worry,” chuckled the installation kid condescendingly, “I’ve got a new solution for that problem – the Deluxe solution.” And he whipped a long length of bright orange tape from one of the boxes with the elegant grace of a rhythmic gymnast.
“Wow,” gasped the family together – it was one of those seemingly scheduled gasps.
“With three hundred feet of this stuff, you guys can kiss itchy, stiff necks goodbye,” the pale-faced one said. “While I’m helping you remove your neck guards be thinking of the places you visit or spend the most time at. When you’ve got your list we’ll surround each location with a barrier of this electromagnetic warning tape and then Mr. Angel of Death will know where not to go so he doesn’t send his service subscribers – you guys – to you-know-where.”
He set about removing neck guards to general relief – Christopher excluded, of course. He refused to let the delivery boy lay so much as a turnipy finger on his neck, insisting there was still the incident with the roof to think of. His father could be heard making an aside to the effect that there was still his excuse not to shower to think of.
The installationist, however, wasn’t the least bit phased by this objection and produced a bottle of skin-tone lacquer, which he vivaciously applied to Christopher’s guarded neck.
“No one will even know the difference,” the artist beamed, “the deluxe package comes with a few little surprises like that.” And he winked at Sara again who responded by pointing out that Christopher’s neck looked a little greenish – not to mention “puffed up like a hotdog bun”.
“It’s fine,” Phil grunted irritably. “How about these barriers? Let’s get moving – I’ve had enough of this bologna to last me ‘till next leap year.” But his voice was a tremolo – he hadn’t forgotten about the thirteenth of May.

After a long discussion, the decision was to put the tape around the house, the car, the school, Phil and Cynthia’s offices and the supermarket. At the supermarket, however, Phil remembered that he had been intending to make Zanies Bar a new frequented haunt, now that Church was out of the picture, and he reduced the taped supermarket area to just the produce section – on account of their recent vitamin problem – and the ethnic foods, which was next to the produce. As it turned out, the tape, once laid, stuck permanently and had wires running through it that had to be connected at the end to a large electronic box. Christopher and Sara had both asked to be taped themselves but the box for the car consumed the entire trunk and they soon realized the impracticability of this plan.
When everything had been secured the pale lad gave them some final instructions:
“Stay within the taped areas and you won’t have any problems with Mr. Reaper until well into your nineties – got it? Good. Now, you may find that the color fades on the tape – don’t panic. The signal will still be just as strong – the Angel of Death has a detector that goes off when he comes near the perimeter and tells him not to reap anyone in that area. Have fun guys. Hope there’s no more problems.” And with that he was gone in a swirl of packing peanuts and piano-key teeth.
They all watched him go with secret despair. Phil stared at the bright orange stripe around his Explorer and murmured, “damn”, puckering his lips with oafish resignation.
Throughout the following month, Hearndt family life deteriorated predictably. The kids were quickly tired of being able to go only to school and back. At first, there were family car rides to look at their friends’ houses or McDonalds. But this was soon abandoned as more depressing than staying home and watching TV. Christopher continually bragged that his decision to keep the neck guard gave him the freedom to go anywhere he wanted, drove his sister and parents mad with it, and never actually made good on a single word – that leap from the roof kept him perpetually quaking in his boots, even twice protected.
Fruit and vegetables were the standard fare for breakfast lunch and dinner until “brother” and “sister” began seizing and foaming in epileptic rebellion and “Dad” began taking his meals at Zanies. Of course, discipline had been tossed the moment everyone realized they had no incentive for either behaving themselves or bothering to force anyone else to and the parental path of least resistance was embarked upon. This meant that everyone’s diet soon consisted of Ramen noodles or tortillas for breakfast and lard-laden Zanies for dinner. Pounds were gained, cholesterol soared, breath deteriorated.
Phil became as brittle as a communion wafer in the weeks leading up to the thirteenth. On the day itself he refused to get out of bed at all and spent the hours rolling around like a greasy, twitching melon, long overripe.
Once the day came and went leaving him relatively unscathed, however, his whole attitude changed and he quickly transformed himself into a thankless bigot – drinking as much as he wanted and washing it down with burgers and curse words and pie. What friends he had quickly fled – he could never go anywhere with them anyway – and his social graces with them.
Christopher’s decision to retain both his neck guard and daily layers of bacteria continued to produce fascinating outcomes. Everywhere he went – school – people asked him if he wasn’t feeling alright, he certainly had swollen glands, they said, “and doesn’t he look a little green around the gills.” It wasn’t long before he realized the sympathy value of green gills, started coming home early every day and spent his time sitting, un-showered, in front of the TV, learning absolutely nothing and grinning like an unreformed pope. His mother got so tired of picking him up from school and following him around the house with pot pourie that she snuck into his room one night and removed the festering neck guard herself. The next day, after a great deal of moaning and rolling around in bed, it was discovered that the boy was no longer capable of supporting the weight of his own head and the ring had to be reinstalled – to everyone’s dismay. As it turned out, however, his long abandonment of sanitation eventually paid off by thoroughly pickling him and transforming his reek into a savory, bitter-sweet aroma
About six weeks after the changeover to the deluxe package, the school officials decided the orange tape around their campus was unsightly and had a janitor scrub it until it was white. Sara was an emotional Sodom and Gomorrah – post-brimstone.
“How do I know if I go outside the lines?” she wailed. “What if he swoops down and cuts off my head? I want my neck ring back. I don’t want to die.” Once again, there was little sleep to be had at night by anyone within earshot – except, perhaps Christopher, whose ears were blocked with dirt and who had nothing to worry about anyway since he no longer left the house.
Cynthia quit her job so she could dedicate herself to fulltime nocturnal comforting and pot pourie burning during the day – the latter having become an addiction. Phil – who had already turned somewhat belligerent – fell off the deep-end, so to speak, broke a co-worker’s nose with a hurled keyboard and quickly lost his job as well.
Suddenly, there was a crisis. The Hearndts would only be able to afford the deluxe package, to say nothing of their house, school, car and nightly Zanies, for a month or two at most. Phil, hung over from the previous night’s one-too-many, dug up the customer service number in an apoplectic frenzy.
“We’ve got to cancel,” he screamed before the operator could even say hello. “We’ve all gone mad. We can’t survive another day of this. We’re going to keep these free passes to heaven – understand? – cut our losses and let that be that. I don’t care if I die as tender as a veal! I’m the size of a barn, I haven’t slept in a week and I don’t think I’ve been sober in two.”
“Well, sir, our cancellation fee for the deluxe package is seven hundred and fifty dollars. We – ” but he cut her off, his voice finding a fevered, sermonic register.
“Why don’t you just go ahead and kill me now!” He paused to let his bitter rhetoric sink in. But the woman on the other end had apparently heard this a thousand times.
“Alright, sir, if you’re sure. I’ll go ahead and page Mr. Reaper right now. This may take a few moments,” and her voice gave way to the trebly Fur Elise.
The Euthanasia service! He had forgotten it. He screamed into the phone for her to stop, to call it off, to perform a slew of obscene acts. But there was just the empty, impersonal clunk of that hold music. He let the phone drop. He had come to it at last.

Several minutes passed. He pulled his now only remotely impressive free pass out of his pocket and clutched it childishly, praying long neglected bedtime prayers. There was a brightness and he was no longer in his kitchen – he was standing before the pearly gates themselves – every bit as glorious as any Sunday morning flannel-graf had promised – waiting in an only-too-familiar-style line to speak with the all-too-cliché gate-keeper. Frantically he looked at his hands – they were still clutching that pass, and on it, his name was still legible.
It took an hour of celestial inefficiency to finally bring him under personal scrutiny by an emaciated, scowling St. Peter behind a dizzyingly lofty podium. The skin on that apostle’s face was as loose and wrinkly as a deflated football bladder and his voice reminded Phil of the sound a roach makes when it is stepped on.
“Name,” he croaked.
“Philip Hearndt.”
“Let me see, Phil – F, F, G – H. Ah ha. So – a telemarketer and a witnesser, eh? Impressive.” The old man looked up over the predictable bifocals. “Make your claim,” he went on slowly. “Why should we let you in?”
Phil had to hold the gold pass all the way above his head just to put it in the keeper’s outstretched hand.
“Hm. A free pass, eh? Don’t tell me – you won this in a promotional competition?” Phil nodded.
“Hoo Hoo,” the old man cackled, putting a finger to his nose. “I know about these things. Know ‘em up and down and backwards and forwards. Yessir.” And he began to scrutinize the pass minutely, chuckling to himself abstrusely as he did so.
After a moment he murmured, “no, nope, I’m sorry, this pass is expired. See.” And he held it out pointing to some miniscule words on the back. “Mm hm, this was only valid for the thirteenth of May – probably your originally scheduled appointment – you can’t use it now. Unless there’s anything else, it looks like your headed…outta here, fella.”
Phil gaped at him in shock. He should have known.
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” he pleaded raspily. “I’ve clearly been victimized here.”
“Sorry. You did come in here a little on the tipsy side, after all, not to mention thirty pounds overweight.”
Phil fell to his knees in devastation. He ran his hands desperately through his hair. Not a strand fell out.
“Oh, if only I’d kept on going to church,” he sobbed to himself, “if only I’d just kept going to church.”
“You went to a Baptist church?” the old man inquired, leaning in nosily. Phil nodded.
“Ha. You kiddin’ me,” the crackling voice bawled. “AOD bought out the Baptist church years ago. Heck they bought out half of Protestantism and most of the Catholics. Only those Pentecostals stayed independent – but even with them you’re basically gettin’ the same sorta bait-n-switch deal.”
“What are you saying?” Phil whimpered, looking up out of his prostration.
“Well,” the old man replied, “old Grim knew some people just preferred other brands over his – you know, tithes and abstinence from this, that and the other over monthly fees, or Our Fathers or whatever – so he bought the others out and made them part of his parent corporation but kept the names and product packaging and all that. You have to hand it to him – guy’s got most of ‘is disciples in the old upper room.” The gate-keeper tapped his cranium, clearly impressed, then shouted, “Next”.
Phil was still staring at him blankly when there was a sudden resumption of the tinny Fur Elise, an overwhelming darkness and the growing sensation of heat under his feet.