The Bessie Series - Books 1-3

26. Heaven

Angel Court looks pretty much the same as it did the last time Bessie was in dire trouble, only this time she has Ash behind the defendant’s podium to keep her company. Once again, her grandparents sit on the spectator benches. Her grandma touches her 4-leaf clover brooch reassuringly. Grandpa Will has another brown paper bag in the shape of a small jug in his hip pocket. Millie swats him with her elbow. Angels Mel and Jigjag are chattering, no doubt, about one of Mel’s latest screenplays.

“I feel sweaty,” Ash complains, looking down at her blouse.

“You’re sweaty now? Wait a few minutes,” Bessie tells her. “You’re gonna feel like you’re in a steam bath.” She jabs at Ash, busy examining her damp spots. “Here they come.”

Angel Boyd, magnificent in his gray uniform, moves to stand beside the judge’s bench. His voice bellows like a thunderclap. “All rise. This Angel Court is now in session. The Honorable Judge Rachel presiding.” Like a well-rehearsed play, which perhaps it is, Angel Rachel sweeps out once more from behind the recesses to take her place at the bench.

After the formalities are completed, the eyes of the judge bore into the defendants. She takes her sweet time before speaking. “Ashley Sophie Moreno. Bessie Millicent MacIntyre.” She tilts her head sideways like a puppy. “Well. You’ve really outdone yourselves this time, ladies.” Her soft tone takes everyone off guard. “In one fell swoop, you’ve managed to disrespect the most sacred laws in all of Heaven.” Her glare doesn’t falter. She takes a linen handkerchief to clean her reading glasses ever so meticulously. “I could send you back a couple of thousand years to a previous lifetime for a do-over.” She leans forward with her cat smile. Raising her left hand in the air, she twitches her fingers in a fast, jerky rhythm while whispering some indistinguishable syllables under her breath.

In horror, Bessie and Ash gaze down to see they are dressed in Stone Age clothing, draped in decaying animal skins. Their bodies are filthy from head to toe; their hair is matted. The courtroom rings out in a united gasp of shock.

Angel Rachel calmly continues, “Or, I could send you back to the Dark Ages, when females were indiscriminately tortured or burned as witches.” Again, her fingers twitch while strange sounds emanate from her cherry red lips.

The girls’ eyes dart down to their long, bulky skirts; shawls are draped over their heads and torsos. The muffled sound of distant horse hooves and the shouts of men fill the air. Bessie and Ash scramble to hide under the podium.

“But I won’t,” Angel Rachel’s voice trills out, her fingers twitching. The girls transform back into their current attire. “This time.”

Trembling all over, Ash and Bessie return with difficulty to an upright position, grasping the podium for dear life. They stare at her every move. Rachel’s long fingernails that are painted in the same bright red hue as the lipstick scratched across her thin, grim lips, fiddle with her reading glasses. Her diamond ring glitters like a captured star. It seems forever before she perches her glasses back on her nose, beginning to read silently from her notes.

Even though she’s in Heaven and out of her Earthly body, Bessie can hear her own heartbeats; they seem to boom like a bass drum solo. Sweat is dripping inside her blue blouse and into her underwear. Her feet begin to ache in her sensible, newly-gifted-by-Grandma brown flats.

Even Angels Mel and Jigjag look nervous. And despite the consequences to follow, Grandpa Will takes a long swig from his paper bag. Grandma snatches it away from him, not to hide it, but to take a swig of her own.

The deep brown eyes of the unflappable Angel Boyd flicker sideways to the judge’s bench. Even he, it seems, is off his game.

In a shock to end all shocks, something so bizarre happens that it is without precedent. Angel Rachel flies up and out of her seat like an electrocuted bat, zip-zapping back and forth, here and there across the entire ceiling. All necks in the courtroom snap backwards. Grandpa Will almost tumbles over the back of his seat.

The honorable judge flies and flies, dipping and swooping like a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain. The crowd below her sways and wobbles, craning to follow her flight path.

Just as suddenly, Angel Rachel reverses direction and flips upside down, right in front of the defendants at their podium. Inexplicably, her flowing black gown remains in an upright position. Not a strand of her hairdo dares to wander from its ordained place.

Now the angel is inches away from Bessie and Ash. One upside-down face confronts two very terrified, right-side-up ones, eyelash-to-eyelash. Bessie and Ash grab each other’s hands, squeezing with all their might. Still Angel Rachel hangs there, unblinking. Minutes go by. Hours?

“Moritnlasjuitss!” the upside-down angel hisses. And two teenage defendants crumple to the floor in a dead faint.