1. It happens in the future.
2. The settings are heaven and hell.
3. You can go from one to the other, but nobody wants to.
4. Everything in the story needs to be as consistent as possible with scripture.
5. Nowhere in the story can scripture, God, Jesus, Allah, Heaven, Hell, the Devil, or any characters from the scripture be mentioned by name.
6. The people in Hell chose to be there, but think they are in Heaven. They are happy with the choice. They think the people of Heaven are in Hell. They think the New Jerusalem is a huge work prison.
7. The people in Heaven chose to be there, and after thier initiation, cannot conceive of leaving and going to Hell. The people in heaven got there because in life they were selfless and dedicated to truth.
8. In Hell, there is no Faith, no Hope, no Love (except self-love), and no Truth.
9. The people in Heaven serve the population of Hell, providing basic needs and services, but only in the most servile positions (orderlies, janitors, bell hops, waitors, drivers, etc). Any position that would carry any ego with it is filled with the people of Hell. The people of Heaven are second class citizens in Hell. But they cannot be hurt. There is no pain or suffering for the people of Heaven.
10. Everything in the stories must also be consistent with physical laws.
That's it. In the novel, the main characters will be a brother and sister, late teens, who die together in a car accident. The brother, the driver, goes to Hell and thinks he is in Heaven. The sister, goes to Heaven. Everyone thought that he should go to Heaven and her to hell (viewpoint of the Pharasees). I imagine a trilogy. In the first book, the main character (Celia) dies, finds herself in heaven but thinks it is hell, worries about her brother, is relieved to find that he is not there with her, but at the end discovers that she is in heaven and he in hell, and is terrified. In the second book, she goes to Hell to find him and rescue him. He becomes the first person to leave hell to enter heaven. When he does, and he chooses to go to heaven, it brings on the final battle, which is the third book. Need to bone up on Revelation and Isaiah before I can tell you how it ends.
Some of these posts will be actual stories. Some will be working out the features of this new place, which I can't keep straight without writing them down. I invite comment, and if anyone wants to write a story or scene that takes place here, please post as a comment, or send to me and I will put in as a new post. Collaboration is appreciated. This all being said, let's get on with the first scenes.
Oh--one other thing--amid this serious backdrop, the characters need to be somewhat comical, and tongue deep in cheek.. The main character: Celia, nicknamed Silly. The greeter and welcome wagon leader for Heaven: Martha, who works on an island off the coast of Massachusetts and grows grapes and makes wine. The 7 mile cube that is the prison/work camp New Jerusalem: well, it's in Brooklyn.
The First Scene
It begins at the end. The plane of freezing heat enters at the back of my neck, and continues through my body. I feel separated, as if I am being pealed from my body like a three-dimensional Velcro, a wall of tiny tornados twisting the atoms of my being--untwisting me away from my body in a slow, orderly fashion, atom by atom and molecule by molecule. The line of freezing heat crawls through my abdomen as a patient caterpillar, painstakingly and patiently removing every atom from my being, one by one and with infinite precision. It is over in an instant.
The Jeep, top down, is below me. Its royal blue hood crumples against the asphault. the sun a Carribean sunset reflecting off the smashed steel. I see my head caught against the windshield, long brown hair tangled in my face with a palimpsest of a smile on my lips mixed with surprise. They drifts away and my face goes slack, vacant. My body somersaults over the Jeep as it rolls, my neck bending at an impossible angle. I drift away, up, as my body tumbles down, breaking under the rolling Jeep.
The separation, the tiny tornados, were not painful--but they left me feeling as if I had an organ removed, except the organ is my whole body. The new emptiness is cold, the frigid void of deep space, but I am only meters from where my broken body lies on the hot asphalt, leaking fluids onto the black tar. Like deep space, I have no feeling of up, down, or any proximity. Disoriented and dizzy, I watch the scene grow more distant.
I am joined by something else--a presence wraps me against the arctic emptiness of my new bodiless being, holding me as a mother holds a newborn baby newly entering a cold, loud world. I am the crying baby, the safe confines of my world shattered in a brief passage, terrified of the huge, loud cold place I have just been pressed into against my will. This presence is my mother, wrapping me with the comforting reassurance of total and complete love, lifting me slowly away from my body, guiding me gently away, up, until the line of tornados passes as last through my toes, my surgery complete.
I watch the Jeep complete a full roll and come to rest. I see my body, smashed on the road behind it, and also the body of my brother crushed in the driver's seat, a jagged piece of glass in his neck. The scene gets farther away as I watch; the entire world shrinking away growing more distant, the whole world shrinking away from me.
The presence gives me a gentle push gliding me away from the accident, like pushing a canoe from a dock, and I drift away. Then the presence is gone and I am alone, drifting I know not where.
