I'm not entirely sure where to post this... Feel free to move it mods if you want. This short story is based on a dream I had at a young age, when my young mind, with very little exposure to religion was trying to put it all together subconsciously. It's written in child-like language. It also gets quite fucked up at the end. Also my great gran had just died and I was rather confused.

Heaven on a Hill

            My friend had told me that when we die we go up to a place called heaven. His mummy and daddy took him to a place called church which is where he learnt about this. Here I was now standing at the bottom of a small hill, my mummy on one side and my granny on the other looking up at this boring blue building which looked slightly like school, but shorter with only one or maybe two floors. School had four floors, it was a big building. This must be heaven, I thought, this is where they take dead bodies, because we’re going to see great gran and she died not long ago and so she’s a dead body.

            My mummy took me by the hand and my granny took me by the other hand and the three of us went up the hill towards the blue building that looked like school. Inside it was like one of those buildings like school, or hospital or the supermarket which are boring looking and have a funny smell. On one side of me there was a ball pool, like they have in Ikea or one of those big places mummy and daddy took me once. In the middle of the ball pool sat Father Christmas in a big chair and other children were playing in there looking happy, I think they were visiting too like me. I had a problem that I could never find my way into the ball pool, there was always the confusing glass screen which somehow made it impossible to get in and the way in was so confusing, it was something which everyone else knew except me. This was always the case and I felt sad that I couldn’t go in and meet Father Christmas and play with all the other children.

            Father Christmas is the son of a man called God. Or maybe he is God – I always forget which one it is. But if Father Christmas is the son of God then God must be very old because Father Christmas is very old. Fathers have to be older than their sons. God has another son and his name is something like Jesos and he is evil because in the Fantasia film there is a scene where Jesos is throwing lightning bolts at people below and God gets annoyed because Jesos is doing this so he starts throwing lightning bolts at Jesos because he’s been bad. Fantasia scares me.

            My mummy took me by the hand and me, my mummy and my granny went through a door with a round window in it into a narrow room. Along one side were windows and along this side there were beds with people on them lying perfectly still because they were dead. Dead people can’t move. We walked over to the bed where my great gran was lying and stood by her bedside.

            Her face was as I’d remembered it the last time I saw her alive. It was an old person’s face, wrinkled like when you’ve been in the bath too long, but more wrinkly than that. On her forehead there was a little lump. I don’t remember whether this was a lump she’d always had or whether it was something that dead people had. It was like a wart. It was small, not even a big wart but it stood out. I wanted to touch it, like when I’d wanted to touch a dead wasp last summer and it turned out that it was only sleeping and stung me. But this was different. I just wanted to touch this little lump on her forehead, just stroke it with the tip of my pointing finger. It would be like saying goodbye to the old woman that I’d known all my short life up until then, like when I used to sit on her knee, or when my mummy and her were talking in the lounge and I was sat playing with toys on the carpet. I don’t remember if these things actually happened but I’d like to think that they did.

            But my mummy said: “No Robert don’t touch.” in a way which wasn’t telling me off but warning me that I shouldn’t for some reason that I couldn’t understand. I was upset, but I withdrew my outreached hand and wondered why it was that I wasn’t allowed to touch the lump on great gran’s dead forehead. I began to cry slightly. I missed my great gran, but I knew she was old and that old people die. I didn’t know why old people died, I just knew that it’s what they did. It couldn’t be very nice though. It probably hurt a lot. And then there’s nothing, you don’t see anything because your eyes are closed and you don’t hear anything or feel anything because your dead. It’s just nothing and that must be really boring too.

            Then a man and a woman came along in blue uniforms like nurses uniforms and told us that it was time to get rid of great gran’s body.

            “No!” I shouted as the began to lift the body off the bed and carry her across the room. “No!” I shouted again and grabbed at their robes. I begged and pleaded “No! No! No! No!”

They carried her over to what looked like a washing machine in the corner of the room by the door. Except that it wasn’t a washing machine because it had tiny little blades which shone like broken glass. The man and woman threw great gran into the washing machine and closed the see-through door.

“No!” I cried again tears streaming down my face and I fell to the floor

The woman reached over to the button at the top of the front of the machine and turned it on so that it span round. The hospital clothes which great gran had been wearing were shredded up and then so was her body. I could see bits of finger and all of her insides get minced up, a golden ring floated about. I’d seen her for the last time ever. There was her body, floating about in pieces in the red goo inside the washing machine thing. I could make out different parts of her body and watched as they eventually became minced up by the shining blades. Eventually all I could see was the gooey red pulp that had become of her body. Tears flooded down my cheeks. I could hear my mummy sobbing quietly and my granny sniffling. Why did they have to be so cruel? Why couldn’t they just let her lie on the bed? It was so unfair! It was so unfair!