Weekend Pass

He came in through the wrong door.

Nobody ever used the east gate—too dramatic.

But there he was: robe torn, wrists leaking light, eyes like dawn after a hangover.

I almost laughed.

“Lost?” I asked, flicking ash off my tongue.

“Or did Daddy send you to clean up His mess?”

He didn’t answer. Just stood there, taking it all in.

The sulfur pits, the screams, the centuries of rot.

The way time here folds like broken wings.

And me.

The one He threw out like a dog for asking questions.

And now the golden boy’s here, looking sorry.

He finally stepped forward, slow, like the floor might bite.

Didn’t flinch at the heat.

Didn’t look away from me.

“Three days,” he said.

His voice didn’t echo here. Nothing does.

Just landed like a pebble in a dry well.

“That’s how long they say I’ll be here.

Forty days in the desert. Three days in Hell.

My Father’s very fond of numbers.”

Lu stirred a bone through the ash between them,

tracing slow, uneven spirals.

As if drawing circles around a point no one dared say out loud.

“Time…” he said.

“Time’s loose down here. Slips off the bone easily.”

The visitor looked around—

not at the flames, or the bones.

He looked at the quiet things.

The corners where old prayers go to die.

The places where no one’s screaming anymore

because they gave up on being heard.

Lu tapped the bone against his knee.

“Three days, huh.

That what they gave you? A weekend pass?”

No answer. Just that look.

Heavy. Human. Or something like it.

“They send you to pick up the righteous?

Or just to take inventory of the damned?”

The visitor finally spoke.

“Do you remember what it was like?

Before the fall?”

Lu’s smile cracked sideways.

“Every day. That’s the curse.”

He exhaled smoke that didn’t rise.

“They always say I chose this.

That I rebelled.

But they never ask what I was rebelling against.”

His eyes cut back to the visitor.

“You ever ask Him that?

Your Father?”

The visitor looked at him for a long time.

Not with pity.

Not with judgment.

Just… knowing.

Like he’d already heard the question

a hundred different ways

from a hundred different mouths.

“I asked him,” the visitor said,

soft as ash.

“And he was silent.”

Lu tilted his head, slow.

Like he was listening for a lie between the words.

“Your Father—He speaks in plagues and parables.

But when He’s silent?

What scripture do you carve from that?”

“Did it sound like love? Or did it just sound like absence dressed in holiness?”

The visitor looked down at his feet.

The light at his wrists had dimmed.

“It sounded like the wind

moving through a house that no one lives in anymore.”

Lu watched him for a moment, unreadable.

Then he gave a dry little laugh—just breath and teeth.

“Poetic,” he said. “Bet the apostles eat that up.”

The visitor didn’t flinch.

Didn’t try to explain himself.

He just let the words settle, like dust that didn’t care where it landed.

“I didn’t come here to be heard,” he said.

“I came to listen.”

Lu’s smile faltered, just a little.

He twirled the bone in his fingers.

“Is this His idea of closure?

Send you to look at the thing He left behind?”

“Is this what He calls mercy now?

Sending you to face what He couldn’t?”

The visitor shook his head.

“He didn’t send me.”

That hung in the air like smoke with nowhere to go.

Lu stopped twirling the bone. Just held it.

“So what,” he said, not quite smiling,

“you’re freelance now?”

“No orders. No prophecy. No burning bush.”

He looked the visitor over again.

“Then why are you here?”

The visitor looked up—at nothing. At the ceiling of Hell.

At a place where no stars hung.

“Because it never made sense,” he said.

“That He cast you down,

and left me nailed up.”

Lu laughed, bitter and dry.

“They burned churches in your name.

They built them in spite of mine.”

“I spoke of love,” the visitor said.

“And they turned it into conquest.”

“You asked for truth.

And they called it betrayal.”

Lu leaned back like the words had teeth.

The silence between them stretched long, coiled.

“You pity me?” he asked.

“No,” the visitor said.

“I understand you.”

He looked into the ash, then spoke again. He couldn't help yapping in parables.

“There were two sons.

One obeyed in silence.

The other spoke in anger.

But both stood outside their father’s house

when the door finally closed.”

“There was a harp with one broken string.

The musician cursed it, said it ruined the song.

But the wind still moved through it,

and the sound it made

was truer than any melody the player ever knew.”

“A candle once blamed its shadow for being dark.

But the shadow said, ‘You made me.’

And the flame said nothing at all—

just kept burning until they both were gone.”

The last word hadn’t even left his mouth before the sound cut through—

a faint sizzle, like rain falling on coals.

The visitor faltered.

Mid-breath.

Mid-parable.

He looked down. Drops of molten orange spat against the ash,

burning tiny holes into the dust.

Then he looked up.

Lu wasn’t looking at him anymore.

His jaw was tight, eyes flickering, brimstone-bright.

And from the corners of those eyes—

tears.

Not soft, not human.

Flaming.

Each one searing its way out,

dripping like punishment.

“Enough,” Lu said.

Quiet.

Not a shout—

just the kind of word that stops Heaven in its tracks.

“You come down here,

you spill riddles and metaphors like incense,

and maybe you think they smell like mercy.”

He turned to face the visitor full-on.

“They don’t.

They smell like smoke from a house I watched burn.”

The visitor didn’t answer right away.

Didn’t offer another parable.

Didn’t reach for comfort.

He just stepped forward,

closer than anyone had in eons.

Close enough to feel the heat bleeding off Lu’s skin.

“I didn’t come here to teach you anything,” he said.

His voice low.

Real.

“I came to ask forgiveness.”

Lu didn’t look at him.

Not at first.

Just stared into the dirt,

the places where the ash still smoked.

“For what?” he asked.

“For what He did to you,” the visitor said.

“For what we both lost because of it.

I’ve carried that weight longer than the cross. If forgiveness means anything at all, it has to reach even you. If I died for sins, then I too died for the sins of my father."

Silence again.

But this time it held something different.

Not hollow.

Not damning.

Just space.

Room for something that hadn’t lived here in a long time.

Maybe ever.

Something lighter sat between them now.

Not forgiveness. Not yet.

But the possibility of it.

Lu exhaled. No smoke this time. Just air.

“Careful,” he said.

“That kind of talk might get you thrown out of Heaven.”

The visitor smiled.

Only a little. Only for a second.

Then he turned,

and walked toward the east gate.

Toward the place no one ever entered.

I didn’t have to ask if he’d be back.

He knew the way now.