“What would you do if you took a day off?”
Off-off. Off the computer. Off the phone. Off responsibilities. Off the hook to play hooky. Here’s what I’d do. I’d go to the train station. Take the next train out. Doesn’t matter where.
*
I buy a ticket without checking the destination closely. In fact, I tell the cashier, “Don’t tell me where it’s going.” He nods knowingly as if this is quite common. He smiles into my eyes to keep me from looking at the ticket. He even puts it in an envelope, so I won’t see it!
“Have a good trip.”
I’m standing on the platform and feel the vibration as the train nears. I close my eyes and listen. The hugeness of the train pushes the air as it nears. I am forced to open my eyes so I do not fall, my stability threatened by the rush as the train rumbles into the station. Plus, I don’t want to miss its lovely massiveness.
The train looks like the Hogwarts train! Steam pulses from the stack. An impressive grate probes the tracks in the front. And the gigantic wheels squeal and hiss as they roll to a stop before me.
“ALL ABOARD”
I pull my eyes from the time-stricken train to look for my ticket, and as I straighten, I realize the smells have changed and that other travelers are wearing clothes from two centuries ago. Me too!
“ALL ABOARD”
I pick up my skirt and my carpetbag and walk toward the train. As I lift a dainty shoe up to the lowest step, my fluffy white petticoats peek out from under my dress’s rich blue satin skirt, tightly cinched at the waist. I catch a glimpse of myself in the train’s large window as I make my way back to my seat. My hair is bundled on my head, curls frame my face, and a matching blue satin hat accented with feathers perches atop my coiffure.
“TICKET?”
The conductor smiles down at me. He looks like Tom Hanks in “The Polar Express,” which doesn’t surprise me in the least. “Ticket?” he repeats kindly.
“Yes.” I pull the ticket from its little envelope, look down and see that we’re headed to someplace I’ve never heard of. Luckily, that’s exactly where I want to go. I sit back. Close my eyes. And I smile.
Joy seeps into my consciousness. “Hello there,” I say.
“Hello,” she replies. “It’s been too long.”
cky to live in an age when we can publish our work without censor from a publishing industry that, while wonderful in its own way (thank you, publishing industry), has made the “author” word fearful. They also made publishing itself nearly impossible. Not so much now. We can author all sorts of stuff. But the coolest part is that we get to practice our art form (our writing) and eventually we can be a golly gosh darn gee published author! We learn every time we try and fail. If we don’t try, we don’t fail, and if we don’t fail, we don’t learn.
The Deathlist was a big help to me. I didn’t have to keep everyone’s dates in my head. Births, deaths, and all the Smiths were difficult to keep apart. It’s hard to concentrate on my golf game with all the going on in my head. We thought Death would want her job back but she is pretty stubborn. I had a good time after all. It scared me when Death quit. Who would we get to do her job? Anyway, I’m glad Kathryn Atkins wrote the novel the Deathlist. As the Holy Spirit said, it gets boring up here in Heaven. We had a good time hanging out together in Kathryn’s book. 
‘Twas three weeks before Christmas and all through the towns.
From the open window, the aroma of freshly baked bread wafts in from the nearby bakeshop, followed immediately by stale urine odors rising from the alley three floors below. She stretches and then remembers. She’s no longer a female. She’s no longer a powerful part of the team in Heaven. And she is no longer Death. She’s a human on Earth, her body reeks of New York summer humid, and her mouth tastes the bitterness of her predicament.
Hi. I’d like you to meet Ariadne. She’s the one on the lower left of the book cover. Curly red hair. Yup. And a little surprised. She’s the only character who is not a heavenly being. Or at least she’s the only non-human because the devil is not heavenly. He’s a jerk and hasn’t been in heaven in a long, long, long time. The story was that he was one of the angels but he did something so bad that he was banished from heaven. Don’t you like that word? Banished. It’s so final!
