The room was simple. A table, and two chairs. A staircase leading up, and a staircase leading down. At each side of the table, sat two legal professionals. The surface of the table was split in two by contrasting paperwork.
White text on blue, Black text on red.
The man spoke with a snarl, brandishing one of the papers like a weapon. “This soul is ours.”
The woman recoiled, smelling the Sulphur on his breath. She rifled through her ordered paperwork, her evidence sorted neatly, an argument for her client’s ascent to heaven.
“I disagree”.
“You disagree because it is your duty to do so. You provide words of good deeds, but no argument as to why.” He continued speaking, not knowing how to take turns in a conversation, or to even pause for breath. He bellowed “The scriptures state that sin must be punished by an eternal baptism in the fires of hell!”
“Man can be forgiven”, She said.
It was an argument that often worked. It was a procedural debate. No scales of justice could weigh the selected deeds, the agreed facts, for justice wore a blindfold, and couldn’t read. She also wasn’t in the room at the time.
“You must provide a more compelling argument,” the man ordered, itching for a fight, for more rigour in the woman’s debate.
She smiled in response. “You would want a child down in your establishment?” Her palms extended skyward, above the paperwork. “We have a record of the deeds done to playthings of an infant.”
“He DESTROYED his toys. We will take him. He will be a good soldier.”
“He hasn’t lived a life to be judged!”
A disembodied voice emerged from everywhere, all at once.
“Then, we shall send it back.”
~
Somewhere else a rescue dog pulled a toddler from rubble. Somewhere else, A heart unbroke.
~
The man and the woman would take up the debate again in the distant future. For now, they had other clients to deal with.
AI Image