With his right hand, the agent opened up every file he had on “Sturridge, Dennis” and with his left hand, he licked a napkin to pat out a spot of mustard on his shirt pocket. He had Den right in front of him, and Den was different. Den wasn’t trying to say anything.

“You have to have some sort of reason,” the agent said.

“Nope,” Den said.

“What were your parents like growing up? Did you ever have feelings of being mistreated or ill-guided?” The agent said. He was giving Den a hard stink eye.

“Nope,” he said.

“You just-”

“I was late to work, and I was tired. Lately, when I wake up, I feel really depressed,” Den said.

“Thoughts of suicide?” The agent said.

“Obviously. I don’t know, I just didn’t want to go to work, and this thought had been coming up a lot lately. So I decided to be a man,” Den said.

“And so you-” the agent said.

“So, I did it.”

It was on his way to work when Den had done the trick. The way he was pedaling his newly-tuned bike was so lethargic. So slow. Right there, on a park bench under a park tree, a troubled jogger with a foam visor and a sonogram of a baby she would never have pinned in the waistband of her shorts; she would find Den. No breath. No pulse. No blood. Just moments before, he was on his way to work. Then he sat down on a bench and slowly killed himself, but it was a nice day outside and the jogger was not convinced that this was his own doing. She went to call the police and was much more emotional about it all than Den had ever been.

***

The agent went through his papers, trying to find something he could maybe talk about with Den. Nothing was resonating.

“So, it says you had a girlfriend?” The agent said.

“I did?” Den said.

“Yeah… Samantha? Samantha Hargrove?” The agent said. Den got wide-eyed,

“She was my girlfriend, sure. We saw a movie together.” Den said.

“Did you like her? What did you do at the movies?” The agent said.

“I liked her at the time, but no, I do not care about her now. She is in a sorority now and she is doing just fine. The only time we ever really hung out was watching that movie,” he said. 

“What movie?” The agent said.

“Ice Age 2,” Den said.

“Oh yeah… the um- the Ray Romano flick?” The agent said.

“Yep,” Den said.

“That’s pretty funny. Good movie.” The agent looked back down on his papers, “well, here is the deal. I think we should go with this whole Samantha fling. Make you sound truly heart broken and all. We need to really pepper in some detail as to why you would have done this to yourself. You can not just go up there and expect to tell them that you did not have a good enough reason to um- to-”

“To kill myself,” Den said. The agent got really wide eyed and stretched his face out of nervousness.

“Don’t say that. We like to say that you just didn’t want to live anymore. Don’t use “the ‘K’ word” when you are up there,” he went back to his normal voice, “well I am not seeing a lot that we have to work with here, unless you can think of anything else. Anything?” The agent said. Den looked behind the agent, and onto the window on the door behind him: Heaven’s Life Assurance “To assure you, that you had a life well lived.”

“What did you say your name was?” Den said.

“Gabe. Do you want a hot dog? Let’s go get a hot dog.” The agent said.

***

“My poor son!” Den’s mother had said. A cop had called only moments before.

“Barbara please. We need to be looking right now.” Den’s father said. They were going through all his stuff. They were looking for a suicide note of some sort. But there would be none, Den had done it strictly off of impulse. Before he left, he grabbed too many Benadryl’s his father would use for allergies. He would end up popping all of them in, and without water, swallowing them. And only a few hours later, things started to happen. At first he had a seizure. Then severe head pain. Severe chest pain. Stopped breathing. And then he became extremely agitated, anxious, and delirious.

“There is nothing here. He didn’t do it. I know he didn’t, oh my little Den,” she said. She found a shirt he had been wearing for years on the big pile of clothes he had made on the ground. It was a white shirt with unbleachable pit stains on it. It had Tony the Tiger saying ‘Graaaate-ful dead’ on it. She hated the shirt, but she loved it now. She grabbed the shirt and laid down on all the clothes. No matter what, he was dead. Anyway you look at it, he was not going to come back. She couldn’t help but to fall asleep right there on the floor.

Back up in Heaven, Den was going through everything with Gabe. He might have stood a chance if Michael had been his agent. Michael was confident, and modern, and really got the pathos out of the jury and judge. Gabe was washed up, and now found joy in things like hot dogs and football games. But Den liked Gabe. It made him think of his mother. How weird she was. How she had a big heart, she just did not know how to use it, so she just cried all the time. Or his manager at work, how he didn’t believe in firing people. “Everyone has a chance,” he said, “that’s the difference between morality and ethics.” This was not true. Den was raised up to know this was not true. It was just off. Everything did not always come down to morality and ethics. But more and more, Den started to miss the things down there. Sure, he had made his choice, and he knew heaven would be great. But he would be there forever, and forever would be a long time. He felt that there was still fun to be had. They got up from eating hot dogs, and Gabe had brought him to the entrance of the court, where he was to be judged. Gabe held the door and was about to open it,

“Listen, you are just going to go in there. I think you can do this on your own,” Gabe said.

“You are not coming?” Den said.

“Yep, I mean nope. Uh- you probably have been thinking a lot about your life. God is a perfect judge, and we can try to talk to him all day, but nothing His creation does surprises Him or catches him off guard. The whole thing should be pretty short.” Gabe said. He was only saying all of this because he wanted to see the Cowboys play the Bears at 7pm Eastern Earth Time and he was missing most of the first quarter, but he was glad to be helping out. Gabe opened up the door and pushed Den right in.

White. Gold. Bright bright light. The white silhouette of something beautiful, majestic and silky. A feather falling right on his nose.

“We are going to act like this never happened.” The silky figure said.

Falling. Falling slowly and comfortably. A picture of him as a kid with a bowl-cut drooling on a red toy truck. Him, holding his mother when his father dies. Him, holding a boy crying when he runs into a mailbox with his tricycle. Him, seeing a girl so young and so beautiful waving at him on the sideline of the soccer field, her legs stuffed in huge white socks, her hair up and ready to go. Him, a father. Always. Had he forgotten? This is what drove him. He never felt that he would ever get a chance, but he wanted to at least be around long enough to try. He started to cry and grabbed on a hand rail. He was going down an escalator. No one was on it. His feet were heavy. He could see his breath. He felt heavy. He was crying and he could feel that too. He felt warmth. Bright orange came through a fog so pure white. He was back on his bike. And he began to pedal. Faster and faster and faster.