Pince revisits childhood favorites

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That's the way we get by, the way we get by, the way we get byy-yyyyy

This's the way I get by, the way I get by, the way I get byy-yyyyy

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Pince got back to her secretary job after her long lunch painting legal pad roses. Back at her old desk with hard edges and the computer with the terrible operating system. She’d really envisioned Heaven would be free of these kinds of things. Seriously, the color palette of the start menu alone was unbearable. And her office...shouldn’t Heaven naturally have perfect feng shui?

Her boss asked her to staple something 100 times.

At least stapling was fairly brainless, just keep your fingers out of the way and then you can let your mind wander. Pince began wondering if there might be a place she could travel to that had dark jade colored mountains and pale blue trees.

Her boss asked her to unstaple something 100 times.

It took 45 minutes.

She had nothing left to do but still had two and a half hours left. Pince began throwing the stapler at the wall.

With no one around to see and feeling mildly entertained she started trying to create a design on the wall with staples. It’s harder to aim an open stapler than you might think. But then Pince threw the stapler and it stuck in the wall and she could not pry it out. Defeated, Pince sat down next to the printer and dug in her pocket for chapstick. This wasn’t exactly what she wanted to be doing. Did she even need to be here? What was she earning money for? Nobody had ever made her pay for anything in Heaven. She had just landed this job––literally––and now felt obligated to see it through. Through to what? What did she owe them? They weren’t really doing her any favors. And on top of everything else her chapstick was particularly waxy.

Wax.

Pince looked down at her hand where she held a purple crayon.

You know, there’d been a book she’d read as a kid, Harold and the purple crayon. It was about this bald kid who’d had a purple crayon and anything he drew became real. Or rather, it was about the magic of imagination but that was the point wasn't it? Imagination was magic. It molds reality. 

Pince wrote her resignation letter in purple crayon and then she drew herself a set of wings and snapped them on. She shrugged her right shoulder, and the right wing shrugged and a few tiny shavings of purple wax fell to the floor. She shrugged her left, and the left wing shrugged, too. She lifted her right arm––the right wing didn’t lift. Maybe they operated by thought control?

Flap. Flap. She rose in the air a couple of inches.

Ah, that was it.

Pince drew a battering ram and punched a whole in the office wall, then she climbed through and flew up into the sky, straight to the clouds.

This was delightful, this was perfect; exhilarating––the wind through her hair, across her cheeks, her neck, down to the slight drag pulling at her toes. There needed to be someone else here for this. Able, where’s Able?

There had been a pond near the corn with the black binder crows, could she find him there? Would she be able to find him if she got under water somewhere?

She flew to the pond and dove in, trying to shout Able’s name with only bubbles coming out. But before when she’d been able to swim for hours with Able underwater, now she could feel the weight of the water pressing on her chest, the water coming in her nose as she tried to breath; the straining of her lungs to get more air. Pince struggled to the surface and floated on her back in the middle of the pond, her wax wings twisted and tangled around her arms.

OK, no Able in this water.

She checked her pocket, found that her purple crayon was still there and held it out in front of her.

What to draw? What did she want?

Rain.

But Pince would not draw rain, she would not mess with the weather. That was a thing for Mother Nature who understood the balance of creation, not for a confused girl.

It didn't matter, though, that she hadn't drawn rain. It rained all the same. She floated in the pond and watched the clouds roll over in grey blankets, felt the first sprinkles and then the build to a steadier stream, felt as the storm continued to cold sheets of water blinding her and still she stayed out in the middle of the pond. She'd been warned of being in water during a storm, it was supposed to be bad, what if there was lightning? But what did lightning matter when she was already dead? What could happen? This rain was so very cold but she didn't want to stop floating, it was always relaxing to be immersed in cool water.

Let it wash everything away.

So very cold.

A hand closed around her ankle and pulled her downward.