Unforgettable Melody - S01 E69

Story 3 days ago

Unforgettable Melody - S01 E69

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 69

Stepping through the gates, Mike turned back and asked Pete, “By the way, you haven’t happened to see my wife come this way, have you? A girl about my height, red wine hair, gorgeous emerald eyes… have you seen her?”

Thinking for a moment, Pete replied, “I see a whole lot of people come through here, so I can’t be certain, but that description does sound familiar.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Mike waved goodbye to Pete and entered the enormous building as the gates locked behind him. As he stepped inside the warm brown hallways of the building, Mike was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people in the building, all in a flurry of activity. He noticed that all of them were dressed in tan suits identical to his, with pants and ties for the gentlemen and skirts and scarves for the ladies. Quite a few had on blue ties or scarves as he did, but a great many had on yellow ones. He couldn’t be sure, but the ones with yellow seemed a great deal more stressed than the others he passed. As he looked around for his hallway, a pair of little boys flew past him.

“Hurry up, John!” one of them called.

“Ok, ok, wait up Rich!” the other said.

“Huh, interesting,” Mike mused to himself. “Those kids were wearing green ties. Wonder if all that means anything?”

Turning down the first hallway, he waked for a few paces before arriving at a door labeled “107.” Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and stepped inside, finding an office with chairs, a huge desk, and a rolling chair turned away from him.

“Hello?” he said as he entered. “Is anyone here?”

“Well, well,” said the occupant of the enormous desk chair. “It’s ‘bout time you showed up here boy.”

As the chair slowly turned, Mike did a double take and rubbed his eyes to be sure he was seeing properly. In the chair sat a man, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, wearing a dark black suit, with jet-black hair and thick, round glasses. The Texan drawl and huge grin on his face seemed familiar, but the hair was completely throwing Mike off.

“You… sound like Harry Weston,” Mike said cautiously. “But there’s only one way you could actually be the Harry Weston.”

The man chuckled. “Welp, the only way I could be Harry Weston… is to be sweeeeeeet,” he said bleating like a sheep on the last word.

As Mike’s face turned to one of joy and exuberance, he exclaimed, “Oh my GOD! Granddaddy! It is you! It’s really you!” He instantly found himself wrapped up in one of Harry’s signature bear hugs.

“Boy, I tell you what, you’re somethin’ else,” Harry said as he released his grandson.

“Ok, tell me. What’s going on here? Is this Heaven or not? Pete out front said it was and it wasn’t.”

“He’s right, boy. Think of this building as the customs house. Everyone comes through here first before learning where they’ll go next,” Harry explained.

“Customs house… does that mean that Melody is here?” he asked excitedly.

After a brief laugh, Harry said, “Melody’s already come and gone. Sweet girl, I tell you what. She was so excited to meet me; apparently you’ve been talkin’ me up.”

“Come and gone? Where is she?”

“Well, she’s already on the other side boy!” he replied happily.

“Other side?”

“Sit down, sit down, I’ll explain everything.” The pair sat at Harry’s desk as he began to elaborate. “When you first entered the building, I’m sure you saw that everyone was dressed alike, save for one thing. Did you notice that one thing?”

“Uh, yeah. Everyone had different colored ties and scarves on.”

“Right. Those colors are an indicator of a person’s status here in the customs house. There are four colors: green, blue, yellow, and red, and they each mean different things. Now, which colors did you see?”

“Quite a few blue and a whole lot of yellow,” Mike replied.

“Very good. Did you happen to see any green by chance?”

“Umm… yeah, there were these two little boys that ran past me. They had green ties on.”

“That’s the first status. Green means that you’re automatically guaranteed to get into Heaven, with no waiting or facing of your sins. Greens are relatively uncommon, since it’s mainly reserved for children who die before they can fully grasp the concepts of good and evil and make their own choice. Additionally, anyone who was enslaved in some way or had no choice or free will in the circumstances of their life is typically a green as well. We call these people the ‘Innocents,’ in that they never had the chance to accept or reject God to begin with. As a matter of fact, Melody was a green herself.”

“Really?” Mike said in surprise. “But, I gave her free will, and she willingly chose to learn about God and his teachings.”

“That’s true, and believe me, that’s a big factor in your status as well. Ultimately, though, she was still enslaved from birth and had no choice in the direction her life took, granting her the status of green.”

With a sullen look on his face, Mike said, “I… participated in that enslavement. Guess that means I could be in serious trouble here…”

Laughing, Harry gave him a friendly slap on the head, saying, “Not so fast, boy. Look at your tie. What color is it?”

“It’s blue.”

“Exactly. Blue is the next status, and the second most common of the four. What it means is this: you’ve been deemed unworthy of going to Hell at all. Unless you specifically request to go, you won’t be sent there. Where you go from the customs house depends on your upcoming hearing. In that hearing, you will have your sins and shortcomings made clear to you, and you will have to respond to them. If you respond well, you’ll be granted immediate entry into Heaven. If not, then you’ll have to work through your shortcomings in Purgatory.”

“Purgatory?!” Mike said, laughing to himself. “Are you tellin’ me that the Catholics had it right all along?”

Harry laughed out loud at his realization. “Yep, that they did! You ever read Dante’s Divine Comedy?”

“Yeah, about his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.”

“Well, he basically hit the nail on the head, at least as far as Hell and Purgatory are concerned. Purgatory is essentially a mountain, just as he described, that one must climb to work off their sins and be deemed worthy of entering Heaven. How long you’re there for just depends on the severity of your shortcomings and your own will and determination. For example, another blue, Gandhi, was going to be admitted into Heaven, but he felt that he was not ready, and, in an unprecedented move, asked for time in Purgatory to better himself. When it was all said and done, it took him only six hours to climb Mount Purgatory. It takes most people days, weeks, sometimes many years to do so.”