TanGental

There’s a place that sits in the space where the City of London ends but before the City of Westminster begins. It’s nothing much, being part of what Londoners dismissively call mid town. Most know it as the bit of Covent Garden that attracts the itinerant entertainers, who juggle and tumble, confuse and create for the delight, if not edification of the equally transient tourists.

Maybe this spot attracts temporary denizens for a reason that has nothing to do with tourism, nor because of any passing faithful attracted to the imposing Church that faces the old market building.  No, it’s because there’s a space here that isn’t just ‘here’ but also ‘there’. It’s not large and sits in the space between the two public toilets, just behind the iron railings. It shimmers in the sun and slithers in the rain and you – poor five-sensed human that you are – will only catch a passing glimpse out of your side eye, just beyond your peripheral vision and even then you’ll not believe it.

Three entities sit at a desk. One is a face with no features; another a hand with hope and the third… it’s is perhaps best if I do not describe the third. These three entities sit in judgement though this is no Court of Appeal. These three have no interest in debate, in reasoned argument, in fairness. What after all is fair about death? It comes in many forms at its own asking, it takes many routes to achieve its end which is, after all the only constant. And it doesn’t pretend to care, to be rational. It does its job. And it is everywhere.

This is London’s Everafter Portal where the spirit of the dead of London come once the terminal event has occurred. Even before a loved one can grieve, even before a medic can pronounce the fact, the spirit arrives at the desk, aware of little beyond a need to know. Young and old, poor and rich, nice and nasty they all arrive as a miasma utterly confused and needing an answer; even those who’ve planned their end or those confident in what the Hereafter has in store, what comes next.

Indeed the Three Judges  – maybe the Three Arses might be a better title for ones so capricious as these  – love the latter arrivals, the confident dead. They see them coming – maybe ‘oozing’ might better describe their approach. And they fawn and toy with that confidence before dispatching the knowing, the faithful and the smugly good to the Oven of the Worthy to broil and bake for Eternity amongst their own kind, or until they realise how awful it is to be surrounded by an Infinity of Niceness – like too much sugar, or always being top of the class. It’s cloying, suffocating and bloody annoying to realise everywhere is flat and there’s no moral high ground to inhabit. At some point in this Eternity – and there’s no rush – such a realisation will dawn.

By the same token, the angry, the aggrieved and the mortally offended are likely to join the Interminable Queue. Here they are held in Limbo while their self-righteous belief in how unfair life was is considered, then adjudicated before they are moved to the next desk for their next grievance, their justified complaint to be considered. Again. And again. And so on. Ad infinitum. Until, that is, they hold their metaphorical hands up and accept their fate.

Those with no moral compass are left to spin in the Centrifuge  of Misplacement where they  continually confront themselves and their many infractions. In theory were any so confined capable of developing empathy for those they hurt they might move on, but that has yet to happen and anyway the chances are the Three Arses will not believe it and send them back.

Every category of the formally living is thus parked at the discretion – or maybe ‘whim’ is a better descriptor – of the Three Arses. Each miasma is processed with an efficiency all Governments dream about and there’s never a backlog. Each spirit understands this trial, while grim does have the potential for an end, something that is emphasised in the accompanying literature, which is never made available.

Not everyone buys it. Complaints about the workings of the Everafter Portal arise from time to time. One regular moan is it is not fair to dispatch the newly born and equally newly dead to a bespoke purgatory.

 To which the answer that is given is always that the Three Arses may not be godly or even godlike but they know how that child would have grown, the life they would have led. And they allocate accordingly.

It’s entirely made up, of course. After all where’s the fun in playing fair?

Some remain upset by their fate and their screams and wails might be heard even with the soundproofing, though those living that do hear anything almost always believe that it has something to do with plumbing in the gents, which is notoriously otherworldly.

And what then, you ask, happens to the spirits that finish their time in their Interim Allocations? When they return to the panel for dispatch to their designated Everafter? What does that entail? Is it, as often portrayed Heaven? Nirvana? Valhalla?

Of course not. With the ruthlessness of a sneeze, the deceased enjoys one final full dispersal, in a cloud of vapour. That is what creates the shimmers and slithers, the constant eradication of souls.

Of course you don’t believe me. It’s a trick of the light, or some such. It may even be a sneaky vape. But go and stand between the ladies and gents toilets on a warm afternoon and breathe in. That way you will encounter the End, in that waft of scented air that many say reminds them of three-day old unwashed socks.