It's a pretty simple heaven, as far as heavens go. A couch, some old chairs, a tumbler of decidedly average bourbon in front of a crackling fire. Sometimes it's a porch swing on a warm evening with the sun going down, fireflies flickering and cicadas playing their summer violins. But mostly there are no voices. She was tired of voices, she had heard so many of them over her time, and time was something she'd had a lot of. So much time, so many voices.
Before her heaven, there were the voices in her head. She had tried to drown them out but they just kept whispering to her like so many ghosts. Please let me go, they'd say. I want to go home, they'd say, and in another time and place she never cared, never heard them. But eventually she started to notice what they were saying, and it hurt her too much to listen. Then there were the voices around her, screaming and begging and making worse deals than the ones that got them so low in the first place. She recognised those screams, she'd made some of them herself.
But one voice stayed with her. Like a soft soled shoe walking over river rocks, worn edge rubbing on worn edge it guided her through. Her own broken voice didn't guide her anymore, it was this one that she heard when she had to make choices. This is what I am, her torn up voice would say. No, the rushing water over rapids would say, this is who you were. But I'm bad, says her damaged voiced. We're all bad, says the stones hitting each other in the current, but we can do good. And she did try. After she heard the voice, she did try. She was never going to be a saint, she knew that, but she never meant to be a martyr either.
She was so cunning in the beginning. She had a plan, she knew her role. This was never going to be anything but a success. She lined them up, she knocked them down. She was dancing, every movement measured and precise and they never even knew they were her partner until she was holding them and they couldn't let her go. She knew how it would end for her, that was part of the plan, but what mattered was when she went she was taking them with her. And then she heard the voice, and suddenly the plan didn't make quite so much sense. And after a while it didn't make any sense at all.
And then all the time in the world turned into no time at all, and her voice was stolen from her again. She was angry, so very angry. I helped you, she would think. I stood there and I watched you, then I fell, and I still watched you, and then you drove away while I watched you. And now I'm back here where I started with all of their voices, and none of my own. Where are you? What did you want from me? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME! She screamed.
She screamed. And screamed. And she didn't even notice she was screaming until her throat was raw. And then she realised she had her voice. It was hoarse and dry but it was there. And then she saw the glass of water. And then the chair. And the windows and the walls and the sun and the room and the door and the light. And Him. The Voice. Holding the glass out to her, offering her respite. What do you want from me? Quiet now. So very quiet. Like the beating of butterfly wings, like a breath of wind. What do you want? And the voice, footsteps on a mountain trail, shells tumbling over each other on an outgoing tide. What we all want.
So now she sits here in her heaven, one she never thought she'd get. She sits in front of her fire drinking her bourbon. Sometimes the fire reminds her too much of another time and her heaven becomes a porch swing. Sometimes she is there on her own, sometimes he comes to sit beside her. And her voice and his voice meld together and it is bells and gravel and music and they laugh and sometimes they cry. But unfailingly it is what they have always wanted.
Peace.