I Dream of Heaven
Heaven was shit, and even if it wasn't I was determined to hate it. I didn't want to go there in the first place: as the clever-clogs family sceptic and opponent of spiritual claptrap in general, it was a humiliation I wasn't about to face up to in a hurry. It took me months, or centuries, or aeons - time becomes impossible to gauge in Heaven since nothing changes - to stop insisting I be sent to Hell, once I'd finally accepted there was no such place. The moment I died things went from bad to worse. First the hovering on the ceiling above my body, then the flying down the bloody tunnel towards the white light, then the magical journey to the golden citadel in the clouds accompanied by serene angels: the whole thing was one big cringe, straight out of the mind of an unimaginative child, like a trip sequence from a third-rate TV movie. I was furious by the time I reached the pearly gates, which had all the showy class of a Premiership footballer's gates. Heav...