It had been two years and a bit more since I had been sent to live in what I thought was purgatory. It was pretty average, and the only thing I enjoyed about it was that I could do everything that I used to be able to do. A couple of people-well ghosts...angels...whatever they were reassured me that I was in Heaven, but it was so plain that I couldn't help but not believe them. All I had been doing was cooking and gardening in my new suite, which was nice really, but it was far from my idea of Heaven. I was sure that there would be white clouds and pretty, sparkling things everywhere, but it was just like my old home, which is why I thought it was simply the level below Heaven.

After living a pretty simple life in the land above, I was sent back to an apartment it seemed like. It was nicely kept and smelled of alcohol, I was wondering why I was sent there though. Suddenly, there was that message again, "Be Arthur's guilty conscience."

I wanted to scream, but I decided to ponder it instead. What did it mean? Arthur wasn't even here, and I was in some random apartment. I hadn't seen Arthur in years and he was probably doing just fine without me. I was about to walk out into the sunlight or something, thinking that maybe they would take me back to my suite in Heaven, but I stopped myself to gape in horror at a certain object on the apartment wall. It was the wailing woman, that damn wailing woman.

A door opened behind me, and I turned to see who I believed I would see. "Ah, Francis?" Arthur stood in the doorway of what I guessed was his bedroom clutching the head of some poor soul, the body nowhere in sight. His hands were darkened with blood, he himself looked as if he was simply carrying a remote control. He came towards me, swinging around the dreaded thing instead of dropping it, "Francis? You came back?"

"Don't come near me with that...that thing!" I yelled, stepping away from him and the body part. He dropped the head and began to scuttle over to me. "On second thought, don't come near me at all! What the hell did you do?"

Arthur stopped in his tracks and frowned, "Well, you left me all alone, so I decided to take your advice and make some friends." He then went to pick up the head again, pointing at it and smiling, "He reminded me so much of you! His name is Francis as well!" I looked away from the horrified face of the man, Arthur chuckled solemnly down at the severed head then sadly glanced at me, "He was considering leaving and that reminded me of you also."

"So you killed him so he could stay forever." I assumed, acting calmer than I should have been. He nodded then hugged the head, "I didn't want you to leave me again. I love you, so that really hurt when you left." His gaze almost made me feel sorry for him, but I remembered that me leaving was not my fault.

I didn't choose to be sent off to purgatory or Heaven or whatever it was. It just happened, I didn't ask to be taken away from Arthur, though I wasn't against it either. I suppose he was upset that his "little friend" suddenly went away, I could understand, but my leave had little to do with what I wanted. "I'm sorry," I ended up saying. It ticked me off a bit that for some reason I couldn't quite tell him what I was thinking. I tried again, "I'm sorry but that wasn't my choice."

The bushy-browed man dropped the head again. "Well I figured that much, so I thought that if I did as you told, then you would come back...and here you are!" If he could have hugged me, then I think that he would have. "Any way, I need to get rid of the evidence, so stay here until I come back, alright?" Where else would I go? It was sunny outside, and apparently I had another "mission" as the afterlife people called it, and it was the same one. I followed Arthur into his bedroom to see the rest of this Francis person. That was my mistake.

Not only was he decapitated, but he was split in many directions. I quickly ran out and leaned against the counter in his kitchen. Never did I think he would do anything like that again, I thought that he was okay again before I left, but apparently my leave made things worse. He waltzed out of his room with a couple of bags, most of them dripping blood. "You're going to get caught," I told him, setting myself down in a nearby seat. The same message continued to echo in my head, the guilty conscience one. I didn't really know what to do. I had been sent there after the deed was done, so there was nothing I could have done to prevent him. There was never really anything that I could do except talk.

"Before you go out and dispose of that poor man, please tell me that you won't do anything like this again." I hoped that would stop him and that he was satisfied now that I was back. He looked down at the bags, noticing the dripping, then back at me.

I thought that he had been considering that his actions were wrong, that his idea of making friends was incorrect and sick, but I was wrong. "Use a different method? Yes, this one is quite messy. I'll look into another one." With that, he walked out to simply dump the bags in someone else's dumpster. I had thought that he meant that he would find another method of making friends, but I was wrong, which I found out later.