The Mortality of Eustace By Eric Anderson
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Eustace Fudge began her day on November ninth 2005 just like any other. At 5:37AM Eustace rose from her bed, removed the curlers from her hair, applied her usual amount of makeup, and prepared a marvelously unappreciated breakfast utopia for her family. Fluffy pancake mountains, a savory sea of scrambled eggs, and glorious hills of bacon were consumed without even a simple phrase of gratitude. After dropping her children off at school, she returned home to bake a pie for her pastor, like she did every Wednesday. Eustace was the type of woman who believed every word her pastor said, even though he had been secretly embezzling a significant portion of the tithes. “What?” Oh don’t you worry Eustace, be more concerned with the fact that you didn’t notice your kitchen timer go off two minutes ago. “Oh goodness!” she shouted, and scurried to the oven. Eustace left her pie to cool in the windowsill of her picture-perfect suburban home, and made her occasional trip to the gym. The gym was quite crowded, as usual, yet Eustace found herself lucky that day when she spotted the available Stairmaster. She climbed aboard and began her therapeutic practice. As she pushed herself to continue climbing the ever-rotating steps, she noticed the woman on the Stairmaster next to her, not breaking a sweat at much higher intensity settings. She had heard of this woman, “the Victoria’s Secret model” Eustace’s gym friends nicknamed her. Eustace suddenly felt more insecure about her appearance and increased the intensity level on her Stairmaster to match “the Victoria’s Secret model”. Eustace was in no way physically prepared for such a rigorous workout, and her heart began to race. She was determined to overcome the feelings of inferiority she was feeling while around this woman.
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Eustace powered through the pain and reflected on why this situation affected her. In truth, she did not in enjoy her life. Eustace hadn’t found intimacy from her husband in what seemed to her like an eternity. She hadn’t wanted to be as large in size as she was, but genetics, combined with the lack of love she received in return from her ungrateful children, drove her to over eating in order to find comfort in the difficult situation that was her family. But this is not a story about Eustace’s life. This is a story about what happened afterward. Her heartbeat began to extend past a healthy range for intense cardio. At 1:13 PM Eustace’s heart ceased all function. The life vanished from her before her back hit the cold gym floor. Then… there was light. *** This was the first time Eustace had ever heard “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin. She was a bit too flabbergasted at the time to fully realize the irony in that she was climbing the literal staircase to the beyond. As it turns out, Led Zeppelin’s agent got them a pretty extensive recording contract—with quite a far reach. The music selection in the beyond was absolutely spectacular. They had all the greats, John Lennon, Elvis, Beethoven, etc. However, Eustace was fully aware of the tragic oversight in that after meeting a tragic end climbing away the calories on the Stairmaster at the gym, she would be met with more stairs. “I mean seriously—do they pay no attention to detail? You’d think the big man would show a little sensitivity.” I agree, Eustace. I agree. The beyond, so far, began with a flat expanse of bright clouds, and ended with a similar layer at the top of the staircase. Wide open blue sky was all that separated the two. Eustace climbed the staircase which, for her, felt more like Mount Everest. Upon reaching the top, she
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gazed at what was before her: suburbs. Eustace let out a disappointed sigh. She had lived most of her entire life in the suburbs, dreaming of the gloriously beautiful Heaven that generations of pastors had promised her, and now would be spending eternity in the unfortunate familiar. “Hello there new arrival! We’re oh so very super-duperdy-duper happy you’re here! My name is Becky and I’ll be your orientation guide!” chirped the overly peppy angel approaching Eustace on the suburban street. “Oh! Hello! I’ve never met an angel before!” gasped Eustace. She stared at Becky in awe, marveling at the flowy white gown she adorned and the large pillowy feathered wings protruding from her back. Overall, Becky resembled more of a young woman than an agent of holiness, but Eustace was too enamored to think much of this. “Oh how funny! That’s what they all say!” she giggled, “Now let’s get you on over to the orientation center and get you situated. It’s going to be an oh so very super-duperdy-duper day!” she exclaimed. Loudly. Eustace completed the generic “welcome to the afterlife” orientation, which was led by Sonny. During which, he continually plugged the release of his new album, Cher still isn’t here, stop asking: volume 9. Eustace spent the next several years in her assigned dwelling, a lovely home in an unremarkably similar style of the suburban living spaces she was accustomed to. Eustace was excited to see all of the cats she had loved over her life, but she was not expecting that she would end up living with all seven of them. At once. For eternity. Eustace’s minor awe of Heaven began to fade into disappointment over the years and eventually grew into frustration. Eustace had been lied to since the first time she had attended church at the impressionable age of sixty-seven hours old. The angels fulfilled the role of WAL-MART greeters, there was not specialness to this realm, and she had few friends. Most of those around her were quite old or
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sickly, having died from natural causes. Eustace mainly had her cats to keep her company. She began journaling to pass the time. “Dear diary,” she read as she wrote, “I have turned to you out of complete boredom. Everyone else in my neighborhood up here is awful. Aside from the bible-thumbing passively aggressive holier-than-thou folks, there’s a brigade of nuns who all powerwalk together. I’ve never seen any of them outside of their collective. They move as a single entity, I swear! They pass by my house while I’m watering my petunias and I swear they couldn’t possibly tilt their heads any higher in superiority. Just because they dedicated their mortality to God, they think they earned their keep up here more than anyone else. I swear whoever organized the housing around here had it out for me as well. Literally every non-heathen of society that ever died is up here! Out of the millions and millions of possibilities, anyone could have been my neighbor. The odds were overwhelmingly in my favor! But who did they stick me next to? My mother in law! Billions of options, and this is what happens!” It truly is an extraordinarily unfortunate coincidence. “Thank you!” I mean out of everyone that ever lived, they stuck you next to her? You really should file a complaint or something. “When she finally kicked the bucket,” she continued to write, “I thought I had finally survived her endless critiques of myself as a mother or a wife or my cooking or how I breathed to loudly or how I blinked irregularly! How did she even make it to Heaven anyway? Surely standards must’ve been lowered at some point. In other news, Mittens McCuddelsworth III has passed away and joined me in the beyond. I now have eight cats. Eight.”
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In the following days, Eustace’s angry discontent grew inside her like her prized geraniums in the springtime. It grew and escalated until she could no longer contain it. “That’s it!” she shouted one fateful afternoon, “I’m going to have a word with the big man!” She had finally had it—Eustace broke. Eustace was off to the orientation center. Surely someone there could grant her an audience with her lord and savior. Eustace’s hair collected into graying mats of exhaustion. The crow’s feet extending from the corners of her tired eyes represented the years of life she had unhappily lived. The burgundy velvet of her track suit clung to her large figure she so despised as she— “Ah-hem.” Oh, pardon me, Eustace. The burgundy velvet of her track suit clung to her curvy figure as she…? “Better.” The burgundy velvet of her track suit clung to her curvy figure as she hastefully powerwalked toward her target through the suburban sidewalks of the afterlife. Her nostrils flared angrily, as if she had just smelled an odorous cheese. If one looked closely enough, they might could see fire filling the blackness that once was Eustace’s pupils. She spotted her target and increased pace. Her entire expression was filled with annoyance. Sweat formed on her brow, and she literally began to drip with rage. Her index finger extended to forcefully prod the male orientation guide in front of her. He shivered in fear. Eustace’s voice curdled with anger, “Ey! Buddy! This is not what I bargained for!” she yelled. Yeah, you tell em’ Eustace!
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“Oh I intend to!” Erupting with rage, she launched a missile of anger from inside her soul, “All those painfully dry sermons I sat through, the days I’ve spent turning the pages of the bible, all that loose change I dropped in offering baskets—I could have taken several vacations with that—all those sinfully delicious suitors I never slept with in my youth, all of it! All of it, for this?!?! No sir, no no no no no. I could’ve married Bobby Horowitz and lived happily in the lap of luxury. But ya know why I didn’t? Ya know why? Because he was Jewish! This is not what I was promised. I was good, I behaved, I followed the rules and whatnot. I even did charitable things on the weekends! Where’s the peaceful eternity? Where’s my peak-of-perfection body? Where’s the goddamn-that’s right I said it, I’ve got nothing to lose left at this point- where are the goddamn little naked baby angles strumming sweet cherubic melodies on golden harps?!?! I don’t see it! I don’t see it anywhere! And another thing, do you know how I died? Do ya? I had a heart attack at the gym. On the Stairmaster. And what’s the first thing I see when I get here? Stairs! Do you people have no respect? I am dead. Dead! And I still have to exercise? My pastor told me calories didn’t even exist up here! I want to speak to your supervisor. That’s right, the big man. The G-o-d. I don’t care if he’s busy orchestrating the fate of the universe, I demand to be seen. This instant! You bring him down here, I need to have a word with him.” “Umm… ma’am I’m not allowed to—“ he quivered. Eustace grabbed the data pad from him, and began to fiddle with the buttons. “Surely one of these should alert him that I—“ “Ma’am don’t press—“ he muttered.
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“How does this thing even work?” “Ma’am. If… if… if you don’t—if you don’t give that back to me, I’ll have to call security!” “Hmm maybe this button is it? Nope…” “Security! Gaudian angels! Deploy!” he shouted. Several winged men and women of the large and muscular variety emerged from the orientation center and began surrounding Eustace. She looked up from the data pad and quickly realized she was in trouble. Get out of there! Run, Eustace, run! “I can’t! You saw what happened the last time I tried strenuous exercise! That’s how I got here in the first place!” she shouted as she scurried away from the scene. What then transpired can only be described as a miraculous feat of effort and luck of fortuitous proportions. Had Eustace’s tale been a movie, this surely would have been the point where the scene moved into an action-packed slow motion sequence. Eustace moved with the tactful finesse and grace of a tired, overweigh gazelle. As she attempted to escape from the clutches of the guardian angels, she rolled, leaped, dodged, evaded, stumbled, tripped over, and honestly mainly just knocked over all who stood in her way. Eustace quickly ran out of breath, but kept running away from the guardian angles, hot in pursuit. Eustace was soon merely inches away from capture when she suddenly tripped and fell to the ground. As she stumbled, Eustace rolled down a hill and crash-landed into a large pond. The data pad began to short-circuit in the water, somehow initiating the “redo sequence” locked behind several layers of required upperlevel security clearance. A bright light enveloped Eustace, and she was gone.
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*** A seventeen-year-old Eustace Andrews awoke in her bed to the sound of her alarm clock. She stared at the flashing digital numbers in disbelief for several minutes until her father yelled from across the house, telling her to get up. It was time to prepare for another day of high school. Eustace got out of bed and rushed to her bedroom vanity. Her mouth feel open as she stared at her reflection in the mirror. Eustace did not know how this had come to be, but remembered everything from her former life: her unaffectionate husband, her distant children, and her onagain-off-again Weight Watchers membership. Years later, Eustace Horowitz and her family were featured on the cover of Forbes magazine. The cover story highlighted her strong, loving relationship with her husband, Robert, her several appearances looking thin and fabulous on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine, her recent acquisition of Victoria’s Secret LLC, and her ruthlessly ground-breaking act of firing all the models and replacing them with new models of varying sizes. Eustace’s uncanny investment success with Microsoft, Apple, and other startup company stock predictions had wowed the world for decades. Her four children went on to become Harvard graduates, thanking their beloved mother for her support throughout their lives during their valedictorian speeches. Robert and Eustace eventually retired and spent the rest of their days together in a Hawaiian seaside villa—taking morning strolls on the beach and cooking romantic candle-lit dinners together in the evenings. When Eustace met her final end, she was surrounded by loved ones, content with what would come next.