Planning Purgatory

The Industrial Revolution played havoc on God's civil engineers. Oh sure, Heaven and Hell were always pretty easy to organize. The people in Heaven were always treated like kings only much much better, and Hell was set up to treat its residents like some combination of prisoners and peasants, only worse. That way everyone felt appropriately awarded or punished. Purgatory, post Industrial Revolution, however, was a nightmare. It used to just be luke warm gruel and a typical day in the fields for the poor and for the wealthy a calf that was kind of fatted followed by a jester who had a couple of good jokes, but were all pretty obvious. Differences between men and women, the quality of tavern food, and complaints about work. With the rise of the middle class, and then further, the striation of the upper, middle, and lower classes into their own self contained upper middle and lower classes and the number of purgatories that God's civil engineers had to coordinate became a hydra to slay, for each slice of the population had to have an afterlife carefully blanded to their own life experiences. A hundred tv channels was a perfectly fine purgatory for the lower-middle class, but was practically heaven to the upper-lower. Supermarket beef wellington and chicken cordon bleu for dinner each night was hell for the lower-upper class, heaven for the middle-middle, but perfectly so-so for the upper-middle. Purgatory's designers breathed a sigh of relieve that at least a long work day with stupid co-workers stayed consistent through each level. After carefully constructing the Nine Circles of Purgatory, funding for the afterlife skyrocketed. Too many special orders, too many administrators. “Maybe it would save us money,” the engineers said to God one day after a budget cutting meeting, “if we just re-widened the gap between the rich and everyone else like the good old days.”

- Originally mailed to M.J. Navoy in Picayune, Mississippi

The Shopping Demon

Oh the ridicule Beelzebub endured every year come late December when he haunted the halls of the uptown mall, searching for the best deals on clothes and shoes and sunglasses. The other denizens of the infernal pits would torment him for this (verbally, of course, not the blades and fire and acid sort of torment reserved for their day jobs, because who wants to take their work home for them?). Not that they had a problem with shopping. No, demons loved the infatuation people had for mindless consumption and consumerism. It was like gluttony and greed and pride and avarice all rolled into one, and on Black Friday, they could even squeeze in a little wrath. Few activities aside from genocide and DVRing Jersey Shore* could be so evil. No, they teased him for going to Christmas sales.

“I'm just shopping to over commercialize the religious holiday. Just trying to undermine the message of goodness and generosity and care for one's fellow man by spreading the enthusiasm for rampant selfishness.”

But they knew the truth. He was an amazing demon, but his shopping addiction had nothing to do with it. Sometimes a demon just wanted a stylish suit.

*Jersey Shore may not seem so evil, but it is actually a lynchpin in one of the more diabolical and secretive of Hell's nefarious schemes too complex to discuss in this post card. 

Originally mailed to M. Wilkes in Ridgeland, Mississippi

The Angry Vine

The Tomicraw people had a myth about the end of the world. They believed that the gods made the world for all mankind to enjoy save for one plant, a leafy vine that kept to one tiny patch of dirt in the forest.

“Do not touch this vine, for it is a plant of anger,” warned the gods.

But people did not know what anger was, for the world was still peaceful in those days, and they did not understand the danger. Thus, when two young lovers strolled through the forest one day, mindful only of each other, they thought little when they accidentally stepped on the plant, crushing the vine to the dirt.

Though the plant brimmed with anger, it had never had an opportunity to grow until then. When it was brought low to the earth, it reached into the dirt and took hold, and this was its first runner. As the lovers returned to their village, and one tripped on the runner, and was angry at the other for not warning her, and the plant grew. And families quarreled over who was at fault, her for not looking or him for not telling, and the plant grew, and soon it had reached the fields where crops grew and overtook them, and the farmers were angry, and they looked at the fields of other farmers whose land was not blighted, and from their anger grew envy, and in the night, as their babies cried for hunger, desperation grew, and from that grew theft, and the vine grew. In the morning the other farmers rose and saw what had happened, and they too became angry at the first for bringing the vines to the edge of their lands, and from their anger grew hate, and from their hate grew violence, and violence grew to war, and all the while, the vine spread, covering everything in its path.

The world, the Tomicraw said, would end when the vine finally covered the world completely. Scientists laughed until the vine spread and began choking out native plant species, which disrupted entire ecosystems leaving only vines in their wake. And they were angry at the Tomicraw for not warning them sooner. And the vine grew.

- Originally mailed to P. Mathis in Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Starfall

“The night of Starfall is upon us again even as it has been foretold!” cried Many Points from his pulpit at the top of the hill. “Even as our parents told us, as they heard from their parents, and theirs on unto our ancestors before the men of sticks and stone lost their hair and created their own mountains, the new judgment is upon us!”

The other animals looked on in awe as Many Points spoke, the burning sky behind him silhouetting him against the fierce glow, his antlers a burning bush atop his head.

“What can we do?” cried Farleap Long Ears as she clutched her children close, trembling like the earth beneath their feet.

“We must do even as our ancestors did when the stars crashed to the earth to punish the great lizards,” he replied. “We must seek out the dark places. We must hide in the caves and in the deep burrows until the sky is dark again, and then we must stay warm for it is our warm blood and fur that saved us from the first judgment, for it will be a world cold and without mercy. We must change and adapt as we did in the past. Eat not of the sickly, neither plant nor neighbor, for so shall it be your undoing, even as we have been taught since time immemorial.”

“But how can we survive this?” cried Nutfur Tinysqueak. “Some of us are so small, and have such little strength.”

“Know this,” said Many Points. “Each and every one of you, no matter how great or how small, is descended from those who survived the first night of Starfall all those years ago. I ask you, how can you not survive?

The animals agreed that this was wisdom, and so they bid their farewells until they should meet again, after the stars ceased their assault, after the earth no longer shook and the fires in the sky went out and the Long Winter had begun.

- Originally mailed to M. Haley of Lake Orion, Michigan

The Glenndale Seven

The Glenndale Seven thought they planned the perfect crime. They would break into the gold vault at Fort Knox using techniques a court injunction has barred me from describing on a post card, leave with seven hundred gold bars, and lay low at a local church while waiting for a fence to restamp the gold and sell it to buyers waiting in Eastern Europe and Central and South America. One member of the Glenndale seven was a federal agent who used his understanding of FBI investigation procedure to avoid detection, and another member served as custodian for the Greater Life Baptist Church of Glenndale which gave him both 24/7 access to the large building and an thorough understanding of which rooms were never visited, and thus ideal for gold storage. Their plan would have worked flawlessly, but for one thing. God took none too kindly at being made an accomplice in this daring crime. Of course, the age of miracles had long since past, and God, being older and more mature, decided the somewhat subtle approach would be best. He waited patiently for a detective with a fondness for Irish folklore to pass the church, and He set a rainbow in place above the building, knowing the detective would remember that the gold is found at the end of the rainbow.

- Originally mailed to W. Murphree in Rosenburg, Texas

Advertising Cthulhu

 

 

 

 

Cthulhu's followers were a secretive bunch, but it seemed the harder they tried to conceal their existence, the more problems they had with police, private detectives, academics, and pulp writers doing everything they can to delve into their mysteries and throw monkey wrenches into their schemes. Not that these daring individuals could help themselves. Man was by a nature a creature of immeasurable curiosity and insatiable discontent. He wants nothing more than to have what he has been told he cannot possess or to learn what he is not meant to know. For centuries the cultists presumed the answer was more secrecy. After all, if the rest of society knew nothing of the Old One's existence, how could they pry? But then jealous wives wondered where their husbands went when they claimed to be bowling and meddlesome police inquired into the disappearances around town.

In 1987, when the stars were almost right, they stumbled upon the answer. The old truth held that the more man was told he should not have something, the more he wanted it, but so too was its unspoken reciprocate. Man wanted nothing to do with anything required of him. The cult began to publicize their activities, to print books and games about their dark lord. They merchandised action figures and vests and Franklin Mint commemorative plates. They preached door-to-door. They made Cthulhu so ubiquitous that cultists could now freely do as they pleased, for the last thing anyone wanted was to learn a fellow was into the Great Old One and be forced to spend the rest of the night listening to him prattle on about how glorious it would be when Lord Cthulhu rose from his slumber and devoured the world.

“What are you doing?” police would ask cloaked men holding knives to a bound man's throat.

“Making a sacrifice to Cthulhu, who-”

“Enough!” the police would cry. “I don't need to know all that.”

And he would then fake an important call from dispatch to extricate himself from the ensuing lecture.

 

- Originally mailed to J. Tahon of De Haan, Belgium

 

Concentrate of Thailand

Feeling misunderstood on an international level, Thailand felt they needed to promote an awareness of their customs and culture. Unfortunately, with the global economic downturn, they lacked the resources to do a full on world wide public relations effort. What they lacked in wealth, however, they made up for in two things: top notch researchers and pineapples. Through careful crop breeding and flavor manipulation, they distilled all that they felt it meant to be Thai and genetically encoded the taste of Thailand into their world famous pineapples.

When bottles appeared on store shelves and in kitchen pantries across the world, no one noticed. Not until the cracked open the safety seal and took that first sip of the nation's new pineapple juice did they notice the new flavor contained within. Like the nation's Buddhist past, the juice was a perfectly balanced blend of flavors with no one part overpowering another. Their taste buds danced to “Phleng Chat Thai,” and they savored the flavor of sixty-six million people with a GDP per capita of $9396. Mingling with the rich sweetness was the taste of tropical forests, green fields, and towering mountains. It tasted not of rice, but a thriving rice industry, and a culture deeply enriched by its agrarian roots. Though the pulp had been removed, the juice still had hints of respect toward one's ancestors and elders, and a strong spirit of generosity. It packed the energy of soccer and muai thai with the tranquility appropriate to the golf capital of Asia. Those who drank the juice felt a certain kinship for the small nation that they had not known before. True to the country's hopes, appreciation for Thailand blossomed in markets where the juice could be purchased. The effect was short lived, however, as people soon stopped purchasing the bottles. Though the experience was pleasant, former customers said, the juice didn't taste much like pineapples.

- Originally mailed to M. Blackwood of Los Angeles, California

Recursive Shrine

Wanda Oslomeier visted a Tibetan monastery once as a child and it inspired her beyond words. When she was finally old enough to buy her own home, she built a small reminder of that shrine and placed it on her coffee table. To her, however, the shrine seemed empty. One replica bell and one clay monk hardly captured the life-changing majesty of the secluded temple. So she expanded. She got rid of her coffee table and began to build a diorama of the room in which they housed the bell, but a room on its lonesome was a sad thing to behold, so she cleared out her living room and recreated the monastery's entire meditation building. Of course, this suggested the monks lived one-dimensional lives, so she had to tear the house down around her display to make room for the homes, and then her yard became their farms from whence they drew nourishment. But where were the views? Those breathtaking vistas she had known? Those must be recreated as well, so she bought out the neighborhood and created the mountains and forests surrounding.

Then she remembered that, as the monks taught, nothing exists in isolation. We are all connected. So she expanded her diorama and it engulfed her town as she recreated all of Tibet. It spread as she created artificial continents and oceans. She recreated the Great Wall of China, the bustling cities of Hong Kong and Tokyo. She carved out a scale version of the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii, and the West Coast. Then she reached her home and realized to do her diorama justice, she must create a miniature version of her miniature world, and from there a smaller once she reached her home again, ever recursing downward and downward into infinity.

- Originally mailed to H. Witten in Oxford, Mississippi

Nonviolent Kidnappers

Jillian Wabash was kidnapped and held for ransom in 1996 by a sect of pacifist Buddhist monks. The monks, who had seen a great many ransoms in movies, knew they had to send some part of their hostage to prove to her parents that they were serious. Unfortunately, being non-violent by nature, the Buddhists could only bring themselves to cut off the child's hair. When her parents received the package containing a lock of hair and a note made of letters cut from magazines which read

“Dear sir and madam, we have your daughter and are taking excellent care of her, ensuring she receives three healthy meals a day, a warm bed, plenty of exercise, and proper education while she is in our custody. If we receive three million dollars in unmarked bills, we promise we will not harm another hair on her head. We apologize for the hairs we have already harmed, but we wish to assure you they will grow back and that for the time being, we have shaped her hair into a fashion that is stylish and esteem raising while still allowing her to learn that style is but wind, full of force but no substance and the esteem of others is but an illusionary boulder on the path to enlightenment. You may leave the money behind the dumpster at McDonalds on Washington Avenue.”

The Wabash family, after careful consideration, determined the monks would probably be able to do a better job raising their daughter than they could, and so for the next ten years, they politely replied to each new delivery of a lock of hair, “Thank you, but we do not have the money at this time. We appreciate you looking after our child in the meantime.”

- Originally mailed to T. Danley in New Orleans, Louisiana

Ghost Church

There is a small country church that only appears when it is raining. To say where this church is, however, is impossible except to say down lonely roads wherever it is raining, for indeed people have reported seeing the church in countless cities spanning several continents on the same day, perhaps during the same storm. There are those who say that it is a ghost church whose congregation of the dead and the damned beckons new parishioners to join them. They say the church is atoning eternally for some past sin. Perhaps. Who can say with certainty, for if legend is to be believed, none who enter are ever seen again to tell tale of the sermon. Of course, legends have a tendency to exaggerate, and if the church truly does appear all over the world, it would not be impossible for a man to enter in Topeka, Kansas and step out in the Amazon rain forest, and how should he get home then? He has not been taken by the ghostly church, but the difference is semantic to those back home. Then there are those who dare to wonder where the church's inhabitants go when the rain stops. To this, I say, I do not know, but it is always raining somewhere, so should you find yourself in a strange church on a rainy day, rest assured that if you step outside after the sermon and find your are not in Kansas anymore, you may at least take comfort in the fact that you are not lost forever, but merely misplaced for the time being.

- Originally mailed to D. Garner from Biloxi, Mississippi

Rain God

 

 

“I feel incomplete,” he says to me, “and I don't think I'll ever feel whole until I find my other half.”

“Don't you know that even if you find another to merge with, you still won't be whole?”

“You don't actually believe that nonsense, do you?”

“I do,” I say. “If everyone here united as one, we would still only be a fraction of what we could be. We would still feel something missing deep within our souls.”

“And you have all the answers, do you? Where we come from, why we're here?”

“I do,” I say. “The Holy Word tells us that life is a cycle. We are here to help others grow, to bring life into the world. We sink to the earth, we rise to the heavens, we return to earth again.”

I brush off his skepticism.

“We think we are individuals, unique and singular, but we're composed of millions of tiny little molecules. This is a pattern for everything, for as we are made of microscopic bits of matter, we too collectively make up a much larger whole which we shall return to one day, and there are those who believe that larger whole is part of a much larger whole which is in turn just one building block in a much larger universe.”

“How can someone so smart believe in the ocean?” he asks.

I want to protest, but a sudden gust of wind pushes him into me. There's a brief moment of resistance as our boundaries press against each other. Then they collapse and we rush into each other. There is a moment of confusion as our personalities swirl amongst the other, exchanging doubts and fears and beliefs, bonding and becoming one, a new being born of the old.

I look around unsure of what I know. I want to believe, but there's an emptiness inside me, and I look around for someone to complete me, to be my other half and fill that missing part.

- Originally mailed to W. Murphree of Rosenberg, Texas

The God Cloud

 

One day in late January 2013, God came to earth in the form of a large glowing cloud. Many religious orders across the world were surprised he had returned so early (since most did not believe it would happen in their lifetimes), and the conspiracy theorist bemoaned that He was twenty-nine days late. Though the glowing cloud never spoke, everyone assumed it was God because nothing could penetrate it and it tended to fill those beholding it with a sense of peace.

The most surprising thing about God's return, however, wasn't the date or the shape he took. It was that nothing changed. The Christians all assumed the cloud was their God, who glowed with the peaceful love of Jesus or burned with the righteous fury of an angry God looking to smite those nations that lost sight of His commandments. The Muslims knew the cloud to be their one true God because the Qu'ran mentions stars falling, and the glowing cloud appeared as though a star had fallen much closer to the earth. The reincarnationists viewed the cloud as a collection of all souls waiting to be reborn. The atheists decided even if it was God, they still wouldn't worship because of all the evil he let slide. Even the scientists continued on as they always had, saying that God or no God, it must be studied, quantified, and understood, for why do we have minds if not to understand the mysteries of the universe?

In the end, the glowing cloud drifted across the face of the world, and the world learned to shrug it off. No one behaved better because it was closer. People still prayed for lotto numbers and sports team victories instead of world peace and an end to poverty and hunger. The only real change was that many churches were constructed with transparent roofs, so preachers could point to the cloud when it was overhead as proof that what he said was true, or else why would God have chosen to be above this church at this very moment?

- Originally mailed to C. Munn in Keller, Texas

Talking Salad

Oscar Wilde once said “When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” For many, this is much hoped for money that is inherited from a lost loved one or a job that creates more problems than it solves. For one vegetarian animal rights activist, the gods had bigger plans. She would pray at night that the savages of the world would understand the suffering their food endured before reaching its plate. In the morning, her soy latte bemoaned the pain of being ground and boiled and her salad lunch cried at the agonies of being ripped from the mother vine and hacked to bits while still fresh and alive. By dinner, her perspective on food had completely changed. She would eat only nuts and fruit that had fallen from the tree, and of course meat she killed herself, the free range cow having had a fair chance to fight back.

- Originally mailed to K. Ballard of Owensborough, Kentucky

Sun Worshippers

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The Ashti peoples of the southern swamps were the world's only society of nocturnal sun worshipers. They praised the heavenly sphere for all it provided, warmth and light, and knew it was necessary to let the crops grow. They simply never were able to experience it. Every night when the sun sank beyond the horizon, the Ashti feared they had offended their god, and so they would pray together all through the night with only brief breaks for food. The hours were long and hard, but every morning, their devotion would be repaid and the sun would rise. The Ashti were elated that they had been spared, but alas, were so exhausted from a long night of intense prayer, that they would fall asleep soon thereafter, only to wake at dusk to see the sun, thus offended at the way he had been ignored, leaving the world once more.

- Originally mailed to R. Cox of Biloxi, Mississippi