Chosen Hell

By Mansi Rathore

Mia enters the chamber of God in purgatory where they are assigning hell or heaven to the dead souls.

God - Why so early kid?

Mia - Is that relevant?

God - Everything is relevant here.

Mia - I was lonely.

God - I gave you a big family.

Mia - Not big enough.

God - Did you talk to anyone ever?

Mia - There was no one.

God - I gave you many people to live along.

Mia - Still there was no one to hear.

God - Why didn't you wait inside your home until there was a way you could walk on?

Mia - Home you gave did not feel like home. Walls were too big, the air too thick to breathe.

God - Why did you not use the door I make doors in all my creations.

Mia - What was beyond doors looked scarier than inside. I couldn't alter the painful reality of what laid ahead so I stayed inside for far too long. When it was time to go out, the world had no hope.

God - World is not hopeless, it always has hope.

Mia - Help it then.

God - I can't. My job is to create it, not to help it survive.

Mia - Why make it if only to let it die at its own hands.

God- It's the way of creation. Everything that has been born has to die.

Mia - Why question my death then?

God - You could have lived longer.

Mia - If I could have I would have. It's difficult to survive when those who're supposed to help us, abandon us.

God - Did I abandon you?

Mia - No but you taught your creation to abandon their own. If not physically then mentally and emotionally but there is always that distance that is same the every path we take.

God - I have never had this complaint before.

Mia - It's okay I can explain. You abandoned your creation. You look upon us from your massive castle but you never come for help. People talk of miracles that you make happen but what about what about those who live and die waiting for one? Humans turned on humans, the difference of privilege is too big to ever be filled by any number of your miracles. You never intervened, never held our hands when it would shake, never let us cry on your lap. Is this what a creator do? Create and abandon and when we decide to leave your creation, you question us.

God-(Had no answer) Do you prefer hell or heaven?

Mia - (Walk past God and step through the arc of rotten fruits and half burnt leaves, the name on top says hell) this is more like the home you gave me. I am used to the brutality now.

God - You can go to heaven and not face it.

Mia - But it won't make hell a happy place. I might get use to it now so I won't

feel the pain when you abandon me, once again.

By Mansi Rathore