one chance for a second chance

Second chances is like a TV show. I don’t know how else to describe it. There are no TVs here, if you want to see it. It will be broadcast in your head. I don’t know how. I only know that it is. This place is not of earth. It is neither heaven nor hell. I suppose it is what people would call purgatory. The people here are all dead. All of us. We are here I presume because we lived mediocre lives. We do not deserve eternal damnation in hell or the sanctity of heaven. So we hover between. Second chances is a chance to prove if you went back you would make it to heaven or hell. One chance. Ironically coming here again does not get you a second chance on second chances. This is why you see on the news a good person will suddenly snap and commit a terrible crime. My theory is that they have been here and they don’t want to come back. When they feel they have not been good enough, they go bad. It’s easy to go bad. Kill someone, bang! Hell for you in the after life, mostly. Heaven? That takes a kind of goodness people who come here don’t know.

Take for instance Helen sat over there. She’s just auditioned for second chances. She doesn’t understand why she is here. She was loving mother of three children. She never, cheated, drank or smoked. She was respectful to her elders and nursed her own parents, her husbands parents and her husband as they died before her. If that isn’t heaven material, I don’t know what is. Theory is she did something in childhood or as a young adult that heaven didn’t like.

That guy opposite is called Marcus. His wife cheated on him so he killed her and the two men she had cheated with, spared the baby, even though it wasn’t his. In Jail he found god and became the prison priest, problem is when he died. God bother didn’t finding him. I think the murders and the priesthood cancelled each other out. If he wins a second chance, I think he is going bad.

Hell may be torture, heaven maybe blissful but purgatory is nothing. Literally nothing. I don’t blame these people for wanting to go one way or another. In purgatory you have a body. That’s it. We are surrounded by white, we can’t talk to each other. There are no books, no music. Nothing to do except wonder. The only time we can really see and hear and talk is by going to second chances. If you apply and are accepted only the people who have never applied can ‘see’ what’s going on. If you don’t get picked you lose everything. That’s where they get their audience from. The people who don’t believe in themselves enough to believe they could make a go of it again. These same. Cowards, at least to me they are, are the judges. It is up to them who go and who stay. This show is live or well, not die because we already are. I’ll say become a nothing. A vague body surrounded by the white.

I’m up. I stand in front of four main judges. I can feel others watching me. As they watch in their minds I can’t see them, but I can feel them. I clear my throat and start my pitch.

“Erm, hi. My name was Christine or Chris for short. I didn’t live a full enough life to be able to go one way or the other. If I get my second chance this time I will. I was kept home as a child as my parent’s wouldn’t let me leave. When I did, I ran away. Then I lived with my gran. I moved out because I didn’t want to become her carer. I never wanted kids. I got my own place, good job then… well then I got agoraphobia. Out the blue. I was scared of dying, too. Now I have, I’m not so scared anymore. If I get a second chance I swear I’ll do better. Please give me a do over!” I begged stoic faces.

That was it. I had no more to say. Neither a saint or a sinner I had been. No one wanted me. Next time I would do better.

The process of judging took 24 hours. Three people had a chance to be reborn. Only one would be chosen. It was exciting. I could hear the thought’s in my head. One way, they could not hear mine. It was like being on one of those stupid talent shows. They went for the sob story, or the most exciting one. I hoped mine was pathetic enough. Life is no fun when you don’t live it.

They allowed you imagination on second chances. I imagined a game show setting. a faceless crown all pressing in their votes on the hand held ABC machines. The four judges conferring amongst themselves. Myself and the other contestants shuffling our feet nervously. There was no round two. No time to think up a better story of why you should be chosen. Another only chance on second chances.

“She wasted her life, she doesn’t deserve another” Said one

“She does more that the minister murder” another replied

“I think the kind lady should go again, what did she do to deserve being trapped in here?”

“I think she did something and she won’t tell us. Maybe she was a teenage whore or a puppy killer!” a voice spoke up.

I sat and listened to the faceless voices I felt surrounding me. It was true. Even I felt like the woman deserved a second chance more than me. The faceless opinions went on for hours. The contestants sat quiet. We couldn’t have spoke if we had tried. I felt like I had been put on mute. The time came. The day was up. One of us was about to be reborn.

The whiteness around me grew brighter, then dulled. I felt a mist surround me. I looked down and saw my body disappearing. The voices once so loud in my head faded into nothing. Was this it? Had I by some miracle been chosen? I tried to look around but my eyes had stopped seeing. I knew then.

I was nothing.