Read by Paul Clarke
Welcome to Purgatory!
You are
currently held in a queue.
Please keep your
luggage with you at all times.
We value your
presence here.
To assist us in deciding your final destination, please press 1 to access the Afterlife Choices Menu ...
Beep.
Thank you. This is the Afterlife Choices menu.
Press 1 if you are a committed and devout monotheist and you have no doubt at all that there is a place called Heaven.
Press 2 if you are a wishy-washy air-head with no firm opinions about anything but who nonetheless says ‘Really I am quite spiritual,’ without having a clue as to what such a vacuous phrase could possibly mean.
Beep.
Thank you. To help us in deciding your final destination we need to scrutinise your life on Earth more closely. This is the Sins Assessment menu.
Press 1 if you are an unrepentant sinner, or an unreconstructed bigot, or Jim Davidson or Nick Clegg.
Press 2 if you are a moderate sinner who, seeing that we mean business, is willing to recant.
Press 3 if you have occasionally given to charity, or you have expressed concerns about the environment, or you have responded to news footage from the world’s nastier trouble spots with comments like ‘How terrible. Something really ought to be done.’
Press 4 to speak to a Sins Assessment Advisor.
Beep.
Thank you. You are currently held in a queue.
It will help the Sins Assessment Advisor if you divide your sins into categories. The main categories are criminal sins, financial sins, sins of emotional dishonesty, sins of ambition …
‘Hi this is Wayne. How can I help?’
‘Er. Yes, well before I died, I think I was experiencing lust.’
‘Yessss!... that’s right. Vicky. Big bazookas!’
‘You know about that?’
‘Hey, sure. We’re omnipotent up here. Sure we know. Yeah, Vicky. Nice one!’
‘Oh ... well ...I thought that would count against me.’
‘Oh no. Lust is fine these days. If that’s all, you can go straight on through.’
‘Really. I can go straight up to...?’
‘Hey, Heaven’s full of gorgeous women. That’s the whole point! ... Say, you’re a bit young to be dead. How did that happen?’
‘Heart attack.’
‘That’s right. Too bad.....’
‘Yes. Actually I was eating a nice steak meal and a little piece lodged in my throat I couldn’t get my breath and ...‘
‘Excuse me? You choked on a piece of steak? You were eating meat?’
‘Err ...’
‘Just hang in a moment buddy. I’ve got to check that out. I’m gonna put you on hold, OK?’
Stupid mind-numbing music.
Stupid mind-numbing music.
Stupid mind-numbing music.
Stupid mind-numbing music.
Stupid mind-numb-
You can press 1 at any time to return to the Afterlife Choices menu.
Beep.
Thank you. This is the Afterlife Choices menu.
Press 1 if you are a committed and devout monotheist and you have no doubt at all that there is a place called Heaven.
Press 2 if you are a wishy-washy air-head with no firm opinions about anything but who nonetheless says ‘Really I am quite spiritual,’ without having a clue as to what such a vacuous phrase could possibly mean.
Press 3 if you are a Hindu or a Buddhist and you believe in the Transmigration of Souls.
Beep.
Thank you. This is the Transmigration of Souls menu.
Press 1 if you would like to return to the Earth as a lotus flower or a butterfly.
Press 2 if you would like to return as a small furry mammal.
Press 3 if you would like to return as an insect or reptile.
Press 4 if you would like to return as another human being.
Beep.
We’re sorry. That option is no longer valid. There are already more than seven thousand million people on the Earth and there is no further capacity. Press 7 for the Catholic Church’s Excuses menu. Press 8 to hear a message from The World Food Programme. Press 1 to return to the Afterlife Choices menu. You can press Hash at any time if you would prefer to go straight to Hell.
BEEP.
Thank you, and Welcome to Hell! Otherwise known as the BT Residential Line Fault Reporting Service. This introductory message has been recorded in a bright, optimistic, and even happy fashion, because we know that you are none of those things. We know you are not making this call from your residential landline because it has a fault, so that would be impossible.
Press 1 if you are making this call from a public phone box, meaning that you have gone out in the cold and wet, that you are standing in a vertical coffin which stinks of piss, and which has already been vandalised, and that you are suffering abuse from a man banging on the one remaining window because he’s desperate to call the Department for Work and Pensions who still haven’t sent him his benefit.
Press 2 if you are making this call from a public phone box in central London, where you at least have the guilty pleasure of reading the prostitutes’ naughty post cards.
Press 3 if you are making this call from a mobile phone.
Beep.
Thank you. Have you considered switching to BT Mobile? We have some fantastic offers ...
BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.
You’re a little annoyed, aren’t you? Press Star if you would really prefer not to have a telephone at all, or a supply of gas or electricity, or a bank account, or have dealings with Jobcentre Plus, or your local Hospital Trust, or the Passport Office, or your supplier of internet services, or any organisation stuffed with people who, despite trying to sound sincere and cheerily giving their first names, have nonetheless been instructed to remain firmly behind a cloak of anonymity, unaccountability and unhelpfulness.
BEEP.
Press Zero if you have just killed your cat, or your spouse, or your children, or yourself.
BEEP.
Thank you.
Welcome to Purgatory!
You are currently held in a queue ...
(c) Graham Buchan, 2013
Graham Buchan has written and directed factual films for television, government departments and industry. He has published two books and a pamphlet of poetry, several short stories and dozens of film and art reviews. He has sold photographs around the world and held a photographic exhibition in France and London.
Paul Clarke trained at the Central School
and always got cast as a baddie or a monster. Or, for a bit of variety, a bad
monster. Now a photographer, technologist and occasional performer, he finds
the
League's stories to be islands of relative sanity in his life.
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