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Don "Johnny" Wilson sat impatiently in a wooden chair that looked like one of those old, dark oak chairs that we used to see in the old movies involving courtroom scenes. The weird thing was that there was a whole line of these chairs stretching as far as his eyes could see, lined up along a very tall stone fence that also seemed to stretch to the horizon, every one of the seats was filled with human beings of every race and age. On the other side of a two lane road, there was cracked sidewalk and a vacant field. There was a corner where another road intersected and a building on the corner. Across that street was an extension of a wall very similar to the one he sat before. There was also a lonely streetlight on that corner.
It seemed like he'd just opened eyes about an hour before, and he was suddenly there. Every one else looked puzzled and worried too. The sense of time passing felt kind of strange and more like that time was standing still. It reminded him of once when he was kid swimming in his grandpa's pond when he'd had a similar feeling. He was sitting on one of his grandma's a patchwork quilt on the grassy bank of the pond drinking a strawberry soda when Nova Hillsong, his grandpa's neighbor's daughter, emerge from under the surface of the pond, shake the water from her long, blonde hair and laugh. Nora was a senior in high school and the head cheerleader. Her body sheathed in a steel grey one piece bathing suit looked like the picture of the winged Venus he'd seen in an encyclopedia. He remembered that suddenly, all the sounds disappeared. Nora was smiling and saying something, but he couldn't hear. His little brother Tommy was tossing rocks into the water. Nothing. The weirdest feeling was that time had stood still. It only lasted a few seconds, but the feelingstayed with him all these years, and he had that feeling now looking at the line of chairs all lined up with their backs to the high stone wall that seemed to go on forever. His reverie was broken by an announcement that came over a loud speaker that was mounted the on streetlight across the street from where he was sitting. Someone had attached a bright yellow sign with the word REPENT written on it in blood red. A cracked voice suddenly came over the speaker saying, "Donald John Wilson report to the main gate immediately!" He sat up straight as he recognized his name." He was more than a little confused as he didn't know anything about any gate much less a main one. Perplexed, he looked all around him and noticed an old man dressed in an old timey looking police uniform sitting in a chair in front of the building across the street. The old man looked a lot like a character named Gus who used in sit front of a firehouse in an old time television show named Leave it to Beaver. The old man sternly pointed a bony finger in his direction and gestured for him to get up and start walking around the corner where the lamp post was. So he got up and started walking. Standing up was surprising because normally when he got out of a chair, the arthritis pain in his back made it almost life changing experience. This time there was no pain. And his knees seem to function a lot better than they had that morning while he was vacuuming his carpet. It dawned on him that he couldn't remember how he had gotten here. He was cleaning his small apartment and then, suddenly, he opened his eyes and found himself sitting in a chair. He walked twenty yards to the north where the corner was. The building looked like an Art Deco metal and glass store front from back in the Sixties. He turned the corner and saw, about a hundred yards away he could see two huge stone columns standing about thirty feet in the air and about that far apart with two, large, black wrought iron gates between them. There also looked to be a small group of people to the right side of the columns, some sitting behind what looked like three, large wooden desks. He noticed that there was chair just like the one he just vacated in the middle and facing the desks. |
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