The mahogany casket was still open when Max realized he had forgotten how to pray, a realization that felt less like a crisis and more like a mild inconvenience. He stood there in the humid air of the funeral parlor, staring at his uncle Morty, wondering if the “sinner’s prayer” he’d recited in a rented basement in 1990 had an expiration date or if it functioned like a dormant savings account, gathering dust until the moment of withdrawal. He hadn’t thought about the Vacation Bible School craft projects or the sticky-sweet taste of grape juice since he was ten, but the memory of that specific, desperate plea for salvation lingered in the back of his mind like a song he couldn’t quite place.

“I was a bored and curious ten year old Jewish boy invited to attend Vacation Bible School. I was mostly there to see Becca Carlson. That preacher scared me that I was going to Hell. It was a crock of shit, that’s all,” Max rolled his eyes at his old childish self.

The sheets were high-thread-count Egyptian cotton, and Chloe’s breath was a warm, frantic rhythm against his neck that made the funeral feel like a distant, muted memory. Just as the world narrowed down to the electric friction of skin on skin and the dizzying scent of her vanilla perfume, a sound tore through the bedroom—not a noise, but a vibration, a brassy, cosmic trumpet blast that rattled the windows and vibrated in his very marrow. Before he could gasp, the gravity in the room inverted with a violent snap, and Max felt himself ripped from the mattress, leaving a very confused and suddenly naked Chloe staring at the ceiling as he was vacuumed upward through the roof in a blur of blinding white light.

He didn’t even have time to scream before the atmosphere thinned, the blue sky of suburban New Jersey dissolving into a shimmering, iridescent vortex that smelled faintly of ozone and old library books. He was plummeting upward, his limbs flailing in a vacuum that felt strangely like warm bathwater, clutching at the air as if he could swim back down to the bedroom. The velocity was nauseating, a spatial distortion that made his stomach do a slow-roll, and for a terrifying moment, he wondered if this was some elaborate, celestial prank played by a God with a very dark sense of humor.

The transition was violent, a sudden snap from the frantic heat of Chloe’s skin to a cold, blinding expanse of white marble that stretched toward an infinite horizon. He landed with a wet thud, his naked body slapping against a floor that felt suspiciously like polished quartz, while the echo of that final, deafening trumpet blast still vibrated in his teeth. He lay there for a moment, blinking against a light that didn’t seem to come from a sun, staring up at a row of towering, winged beings who looked less like angels and more like high-fashion mannequins carved from alabaster.

“Name and date of commitment,” a voice boomed, though the speaker’s lips didn’t move; the sound simply materialized inside Max’s skull, tasting of copper and ancient parchment. Max sat up, squinting, and realized he was facing a creature whose eyes were the size of dinner plates and glowed with a clinical, bureaucratic indifference. He tried to explain the situation—the VBS class of 1990, the grape juice, the fact that he’d spent the last two decades actively ignoring every commandment—but the angel just sighed, a sound like a collapsing star, and began flipping through a massive, shimmering ledger.

The marble expanse wasn’t as empty as it first appeared. As Max’s vision adjusted, he noticed thousands of others blinking in the blinding light, all of them shivering in various states of undress and confusion. There was a woman in a power suit clutching a gold-plated iPhone that no longer had a signal and a man in a Hawaiian shirt who looked like he’d been plucked mid-sip from a Mai Tai. They weren’t singing hymns or floating on clouds; they were standing in a sprawling, organized queue, looking less like the redeemed and more like passengers stranded during a massive airport power outage.

The angel’s finger paused on a line of shimmering script, its expression shifting from indifference to a flicker of genuine annoyance. “Rosenbaum, Max. July 14th, 1990. ‘Acceptance of the Lord’ via the First Baptist Church of Hackensack,” the voice resonated, though this time it sounded like a disappointed accountant. “The paperwork is technically valid, though the discipleship was ... nonexistent. You let your traditional Jewish family and later your university faculty talk you out of it.” The creature leaned in, the scent of ozone intensifying. “The technicality of the prayer creates a binding contract, Max. The Lord doesn’t deal in refunds, regardless of whether you spent the last twenty years thinking it was a ‘crock of shit.’”

Max tried to stand, but his feet felt heavy, as if the marble floor were slowly turning into wet cement. He looked around and noticed that the queue was beginning to move, not toward a set of pearly gates, but toward a series of monolithic, translucent cubes that pulsed with a rhythmic, amber light. There were no harps, only the distant, rhythmic clicking of something that sounded like a thousand typewriters operating in unison. The other “saved” were being ushered forward by beings with four wings and eyes where their nostrils should have been, their movements precise and devoid of any warmth.