Rapture

It was the last day before the end of the world, and Peter had a headache. The Rapture- though it sounded cool in practice, all the do-gooders beamed up at once- was a logistical nightmare. 

The line before him stretched so far back into the clouds it was impossible to see where it ended. IF it ended. Behind him, the gates were polished to within an inch of their lives and the seraphim were singing to beat the band. Peter wasn't a party pooper, but he preferred songs where the lyrics were a little more complex than the word 'holy' repeated seventeen thousand times. Holy, holy, holy, holy-

"Holy shit." 

A man stood in front of him with his mouth hanging open, wearing a plaid button-up and a ball cap. "I can't believe this place is real," he said. "Ma was always telling me to go to church, but I never-"

"Name?" Peter reached for his tablet, poised to type. He liked to nip the small talk in the bud with a line this long. He normally would have been amenable to a good jaw-wagging session. Earth was interesting these days, and he liked knowing what was going on, particularly given that he wasn't exactly allowed to leave his post. Ever. This was in direct opposition to the archangels, who could apparently fuck off whenever they wanted. Try asking an angel for an apt description of Earth. It didn't work. They were all, 'it's too loud down there', 'it's soooo dirty', 'it's RIFE with sin'. Fellow humans were different. They talked about bars and houses on the sea and discount stores. 

"Dan Matthew Hicks," the guy said in answer to his question. 

While he was talking, Michael bustled up behind him with a metal detecting wand and ran it up and down the man's body solicitously. 

"Hey, man, what are you doing?"

"Arms up," the angel barked. A beeping sounded and he narrowed his eyes. "Got anything in your pockets?"

The man rolled his eyes and pulled out a giant key ring. Michael snorted as if he'd just been caught with contraband. 

"Give it here," he demanded. "Thou shalt not enter heaven's gates with any earthly possessions, for they but burden you."

"Actually," Peter broke in, having thoroughly searched the roster. "He's not on the list.

For a moment, no one said anything; he could hear Gabriel shouting further down the line, something about straight spaghetti and patience being a virtue. 

"Fuck," said Dan Matthew Hicks. "Can’t I like, repent of my sins and be glad or something?"

Michael pursed his lips. From directly behind him in line, one of several people dressed fully in some weird white getup- likely members of a cult with a suicide pact- cleared their throat disapprovingly. 

"That takes a lot of time, and we haven't exactly got the resources right now," Peter said. Something didn't make sense. He scanned the list again before asking, "Are you here on account of the rapture?" 

Dan Matthew Hicks looked at him blankly. "The what now?"

"So you're a death," Peter muttered. That made a lot more sense. Dan Matthew Hicks didn't look like the average person who got front-row tickets to the gates of heaven at the end of the world. If he even believed in the end of the world, he seemed more the type to barricade himself in some self-made shelter with a bunch of guns for when the living dead began to rise (the living dead were not going to rise, being dead and all, but someone had once had a zombie movie among the things confiscated at the gate, and Peter had had a watch of it and was actually quite tickled by the concept. Such creativity! And the special effects!) 

"I'm not dead," Hicks scoffed. "I was riding my bike, right, and then I just kind of turned up here."

"You are deceased," Michael said. "Step aside, while we order an interfaith audit."

"Okay, give me those back then," Hicks said, reaching for his keys. Michael looked reluctant to part with them; He had a thing for keys. He kept a room full of them he thought no one knew about (everybody knew about it).

Peter spent the next few minutes going through the line- the cult members, unsurprisingly to everyone but themselves, were not actually on the list of the saved. He passed a few others and was in the middle of assuring an older woman she wouldn't need her inhaler past the gates, when Gabriel came huff-and-puffing up to him.

"We've got a problem," he said ominously.

“Oh?” Peter asked politely. Gabriel thought a lot of inconsequential things were problems.

"Yes. I- Will you stop that?" 

Michael had begun to go over Gabriel with the metal detector and it let out a long, bleating beep (angels were infamously precious-metal rich, so naturally metal detectors went haywire on them. It was actual a sizeable problem for those of them going undercover on earth). 

"People," Gabriel said once he'd waved Michael off, "Are talking. Some have even left the line."

"Oh?" Peter still failed to see how this was a major problem. 

"They're talking about free drinks and some kind of rave."

"Oh." Understanding hit him. "You think it's-?"

"Of course it's him. Who else? He's trying to take our people!"

"Maybe they're not really our people," Peter suggested, tipping his head at Dan Matthew Hicks, who was a few yards away, trying to fondle a cumulus cloud. "They could be confused spirits like him, delusional sinners, or...you know. That kind of thing."

Gabriel shook his head really fast side-to-side, blinking fast like he did when he was trying to keep from stress-crying. "We can't be sure of that. And remember God said he wanted our numbers to be better than his- you know, to prove this whole experiment was a success before we wrap it up. I think-"

Peter's tablet buzzed with an incoming text message. It was the green kind. There was only one guy Peter knew who had a Samsung. "Hold on. God just sent me something."

HE IS CHAETING. I SAID NO!!! TEMPTATOINS LAST MINUET. TELL HIM NOCK IT OFF!!!

"I'm on it," Michael said. He'd sidled over to read over Peter's shoulder, and now he took out his own mobile device. "Siri, FaceTime Lucifer Morningstar."

The phone made the strained noise it typically did when making extremely long-distance calls. After a moment, there was a rustling sound as it picked up and Peter got an excellent view of Lucifer’s nostrils, as he picked up, breathing heavily.

"Yeah?" 

"On order from on high, you are to stop what you are doing immediately. Lucifer."

The camera angle straightened and zoomed out, and Satan himself came into full view. He was wearing aviator shades and a cutoff tank that said RAWDOGGIN' IT. "Oh, heyyy Mike. Long time no see. Pete. Gabe. Wassup." He was partially shouting, due to the terrified screams in the background, interspersed with equally unhinged laughter.

"Are we...interrupting something?" Peter asked. 

"Lucifer," Gabriel started in at the same time. "We know what you're doing. God knows what you're doing."

"Is this because of how I told him he probably has DID?”

“Dee eye… no?"

"Dissociative identity disorder. You know, like the time he roleplayed his own son. And then the whole holy spirit thing. 'It's not me talking, it's the holy spirit'- I mean, come on. I'm trying to help him. He's in severe denial. You'd know about that, Pete. The denial thing." He did some very undignified snorting laughter. Peter flushed. 'I mean, THREE times before the cock crowed? You hated that roleplay shit just as much as me."

Peter flushed. "That was you, tempting me."

"Oh, sure. Blame Lucifer for everything. I had a human feeling- must be the devil!'" 

Peter's tablet lit up with another text before he could respond.

WERE NOT DISOCIATIVE WERE A TRINITY ASLO TELL HIM VEN MO ME FOR LAST MEAL

"Lucifer, this is about the coup you're staging right now, as you very well know," Gabriel cut in. 

The former angel chuckled. "It's not a coup, Gabe. You need to get your blood pressure checked. It's just a little party. A soft launch, so to speak. People don't even need to go to Hell. They can just come and sample our wares, you know, take their minds off the imminent heat death of the world as they know it for a while. If they decide to stay, that's not on me. Maybe you should have more fun stuff up there. Speaking of which, thanks for all the gays." 

"Call it off," Michael said, edging into view of the camera and flexing his sizable arm muscles. "Call it off, or I'm coming down there to beat you up."

Lucifer rolled his eyes- or it looked like he did behind his shades anyway. “Get off the steroids, Mike. Face it, you guys're just afraid you can't compete. You're welcome to come down, though. We've got like forty vendors right now, an open bar..." he snapped his fingers. "...oh yeah, and we've just launched a Taco Bell for a little nostalgic taste of home."

"Taco Bell," Peter said out loud; Gabriel and Michael briefly looked over at him, but he didn't notice. He was remembering someone he'd met recently, a guy who'd died of a heart attack. He'd brought with him, clutched in one hand, to the gates, a brown paper bag which he'd given over to Peter along with his other earthly possessions. 

"You can have that, if you want," he'd said. "Clearly, I had too many of them in life."

Peter had unwrapped a curious hexagonal loaf, still lukewarm. "It's a Crunchwrap Supreme," the man informed him. Peter acted disinterested, setting it aside. It felt undignified. But once he'd processed the man through the pearly gates, he'd picked up the 'crunchwrap' again and taken a bite. It was...heavenly wasn't the right word. They had nothing like that here.

"No one wants to eat out with a bunch of murderers and dictators," Gabriel was saying heatedly.

Lucifer laughed. Someone was crying in the background; flames cast strange shadows on the dark rock that was his background. 

"Everyone here doesn't have the same privileges here, chico. Dictactors can go to the Taco Bell, but they can only order those crispy cinnamon curls no one likes."

"I hate those," Dan Matthew Hicks opined. He had edged up to them to listen in. Some of the people in the front of the line of deceased mortals (raptured and naturally dead alike) were starting to mutter amongst themselves. One of them raised their hand. 

"Yes?" Gabriel asked in a harried fashion.

"Is there a Taco Bell in heaven? Or any other restaurants?"

"No, of course not. Why would there be? You don't actually need to eat when you're dead."

"But you still can, right? If you wanted to?" someone else asked.

"Of course you can," Gabriel puffed. "But these are earthly desires. The whole point of heaven is to transcend that-"

"I like to eat," a person further back in line said.

"Hey, sorry to break this thing up, but I got to skedaddle," Lucifer said. "We're chasing serial killers around with replicas of their own heads on stakes. That Bundy fucker's hiding somewhere in the sixth circle and I gotta help ferret him out. Ciao." 

"Now wait just a second-" Michael started to say, but the call dropped abruptly, leaving them all standing in an awkward semi-circle around Peter's desk. Peter's tablet buzzed again. 

U DIDN'T TELL HIM ABOUT VEN MO

"Well," Dan Matthew Hicks said, "If the wait's gonna be long anyway, guess I'll mosey down thataways, check out the scene."

"If you go to Hell, you cannot come back to be admitted at the gates," Gabriel warned.

"I thought I wasn't on the list."

Gabriel looked at Peter sharply. Peter shrugged. "He's not," he said. "We'd have to waitlist him for repentance and-"

"Ughhhhh!" Gabriel groaned, turning and storming off down the line again. Some people near the front were starting to turn away, following Dan Matthew Hicks. 

Sweat broke out on Peter’s brow, like it usually did before he did something risky.

"Hey, Michael," he said, hurrying to get the words out before he thought better of them. "Want to take over my duties for a while? You can have all the keys you want."

The archangel’s eyes, which had started to narrow suspiciously, brightened. He shrugged his heavily muscled shoulders. "Sure, man. Why, what's up?"

Peter directed his feet to the stairs leading down through the clouds, to a place he hadn't been in centuries. 

"I'm taking a lunch break," he said. "See you guys around."

He wasn't sure if that last part would be true, what with him breaking the rules and it being the end of the world and all, but right now he didn't care. All he knew was that there was a Crunchwrap Supreme with his name on it.