victims wondered if this was their chance to rush him, to tackle him to the ground, to save themselves from a possible execution and a certain lecture. There was no need.
Neil began to relate a story of how he had forgiven his friend for breaking his Action Man, when he squeezed the trigger. The resulting blast shook the small room to its foundations. In the street everyone was now awake and alert.
The rattling resonance of blasted gunpowder and the stench of blood, defecation and cordite was still in the air when Neil came to his senses. He found himself looking at his own bloodied body; his hand still cradling a smoking gun, his temples tapped with entry and exit wounds.
“What was that?” he asked calmly.
“Looks like you shot yourself.”
He looked up to see the silent man, the man who had been reading a book in the bar whilst he waved his gun, just standing there.
“You?” he said softly. “What is this? What’s going on?” he paused, contemplating his current clarity. “Why am I sober?”
The previously silent man simply shrugged. “Death seems to have a sobering effect on people.
He held out his hand, and, after staring it for a few seconds -- trying to soak in what the newcomer had just said -- Neil grasped it and the two men left the house.
When the deafening residue of the blast had disappeared and the sound of police sirens were hovering on the horizon, Neil’s former best friend was the first to break the resulting silence.
“Well, I never saw that coming.”
His partner in crime couldn’t withdraw her eyes from the lifeless body of her former husband. The chill creeping in from the open door suddenly felt all too poignant. She was cold and shaky. She felt exposed and ashamed.
“What should we do?” she asked, a little hysteria creeping into her voice.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m still horny.”
****
In the tranquil waiting room for the recently deceased, the untroubled and uninhibited souls of the dead awaited their destination. A plethora of former people -- a mixture of the sinful and the slightly less sinful -- all contently gazing into the middle distance.
Neil sat in complete silence amongst those quiet souls for several minutes before finally turning to the man that had accompanied him on his journey and asking the question that had been niggling away at him since they arrived. A question which had further bothered him after witnessing other confused people enter the waiting room, each accompanied by a man or a woman who, like his accomplice, seemed to know what they were doing and where they were going.
“Are you my guardian angel?”
The apparent angel had been staring disinterestedly towards the front of the room, where a short female receptionist sat behind an open desk, calling out names and room numbers.
He laughed softly at the question
Neil smiled politely, but still wanted an answer. “Are you?”
“No,” he said softly.
Neil nodded solemnly and turned his attention towards the front. A short stubby man guided a confused youngster down a corridor where they both disappeared through an unseen doorway. Moments later the short stubby man emerged with a slip of paper in his hand and a smile of contentment on his face.
“You are an angel though?” Neil wondered.
“Something like that.”
The receptionist called the room to attention by clearing her rattling throat over the loud speaker. “Michael Holland,” she said, looking up expectantly.
The man next to Neil stood.
“Is that you?” Neil quizzed. “Is that us I mean?”
Michael nodded.
Neil stood, feeling a twinge of trepidation for the first time since entering the room. “Where are we going?” he asked as Michael led him down the corridor towards a beckoning black door.
Michael shrugged his shoulders and the last words Neil heard before entering the room were: “I have no idea.”
****
The smile of contentment that Neil had seen on the face of the stubby man, was moments later plastered on the face of Michael Holland. It was a smile of relief, of a day’s work completed.
He took his slip of paper to a small computer terminal embedded in the wall near the reception area. When prompted he typed his serial number onto the touch screen and inserted the paper into the slot provided. A series of electronic beeps followed before the details of Neil Simon’s life flashed onto the screen.
His date of birth, his date of death: The cause of his death was listed as “Accidental Suicide”. His destination as “to be decided”. In the end that was