Page 11 of An Unexpected Ascension
Adultery
Arrogance
Apathy
Bearing False Witness
Bitterness
Blasphemy
Cheating
Complaining
Contempt
The list doesn’t seem to end. There’s categories and subcategories that branch off into different explanations and consequences. It’s no wonder my rap sheet is a mile long. Who can keep up with any of this?
Suddenly, I want to know how the Saints did it.
Growing increasingly bored, I decide to shut the book and venture around the neighborhood instead. I step out onto my front porch, which is really just a cement slab and follow the pathway down to the sidewalk. All the houses look like God had just copy and pasted each one. His creativity must have been at an all-time low or perhaps, it was all on purpose.
In the corner of my eye, I notice the curtains shifting behind the window of my next-door neighbor’s house. I wave, but the man only shuts his shades and disappears from view. I’ve only met a few of the folks around here.
Sarah May, the chatty, Georgian blonde woman with a pixie cut that acts like that one judgy aunt you try to avoid during the holiday get-togethers.
Anthony Hampton, the college baseball star who’s handsome and never fails to see the bright side.
John Billings, Heaven’s crankiest old guy. How he even got to Heaven is beside me because that man can’t be nice to save his life.
At one point or another, they’ve welcomed me to eternity,sharing helpful tips in processing death or telling me who to avoid if I don’t want my ear chewed out.
The only folks I haven’t met are the two people on either side of me. According to Sarah May, the woman on my left is Betty Blackwell, Heaven’s nutcase. She’s never left her bed, let alone her house, even when Sarah May visited to finally introduce herself.
Then there’s the man hiding behind his curtain, Marty O’Connel. Some folks say he used to be quite pleasant, then over time, he retreated into his house and hasn’t left since. I think he’s just quiet and reserved, but John calls him a dingbat who’s too stubborn for his own good.
I eye his house again and find a shadow behind a crack in his curtains. He watches me as I watch him, and a light chill washes over me. His lingering stare leaves me uneasy, so I avert my eyes and pick up the pace.
As I do, my shoulder knocks into someone else’s.
“Oops! So sorry,” I mumble, my hands trying to right myself on the other person’s biceps.
Hard, hard biceps.
My gaze lands on firm pecs pressed against a black shirt, the top just one too many buttons undone to reveal dark ink swirling and twisting around a muscular neck like a tattooed noose. I find a devilish smirk waiting for me, shadowed by dark scruff short enough to showcase the defined lines of a sharp jaw and then midnight eyes under thick, quirked brows.
“Oh, hey,” I say, finally realizing it’s the man I met at the gates when I first arrived.
“Hey?” he shoots back like I was supposed to say anything else but that.
I shrug. “Yeah, hey.”
A brutish chuckle rumbles in his chest while his eyes trail the length of me. I might have called him out if I weren’t the first to do the exact same to him just a second ago.
Before I have the chance to say anything else, he’s removing himself from my hold and brushing past me.
“Um, okay. Bye?” I call out after him.
