Heavenly Fools — Madness and Love Mixed: Interlude
Where even the prophets can’t control their gastrointestinal gifting.
The scene resolves itself — to our surprise — as our own living room.
The first dead giveaway is my favorite rocking recliner, the one my butt knows better than doctrine. Slightly chilly, as if the vision began the moment we stepped inside, our cheeks warm slowly as sensation tingles back into our typing fingers.
We look around.
It is unmistakably our house.
Fake wood flooring — vinyl plank, the heavy-duty kind.
Our 65-inch TV with the pumpkin-colored ottoman shoved under the industrial-aesthetic corner desk repurposed as a TV stand.
Then comes Steiner — our fifteen-year-old gentle giant.
All fluff, aged grace, uncontrollable tail wags, and terrible breath.
A Mal-Shi (Maltese–Shih-Tzu). Tuxedo colored.
The first clue of his and Louie V.’s presence is the tandem jingle of collars and rabies-tag charms.
Louie bursts into the scene, having scented us instantly — even though we instinctively know we’ve shifted frequencies and this should be a higher dimension. Still, a stunning truth emerges:
Do all dogs go to heaven like that old animated movie promised?
We shrug and lean down, running calloused hands through the silky royal snoof.
We settle into this frequency with our fourteen-month-old Shih-Tzu pawing insistently at our foot, demanding focused pets.
We rock back and forth when we hear a soft creaking — wood under pressure — as Zeke settles onto our minimalist love seat, resting his large hands inside the central pocket of his all-white hoodie and sweatpants combo. Same teddy-bear-assassination slippers.
Then a louder creak: our massive secondhand leather La-Z-Boy protesting as my future self settles into it.
“Star! Zeke! Welcome,” we say, motioning expansively while rocking. “Not so much you, Star — you live here too. But Zeke? WOW. Thank you for coming, and not just coming — accepting the invitation to join the future madness.”
Zeke nods slowly, fiddling with his interlocked fingers.
“The opportunity to get the band back together this side of eternity?”
He opens his arms wide, a radiant smile nearly triggering a migraine from the reflection on my glasses.
“How could I not? In heaven we forget, a little, what it was like to be embodied. Coming down here gives us a chance to re-center and re-relate — to ourselves, to His Self, to us as we exist in Him.”
He sinks back, hands returning to the holy central pocket.
Star nods contemplatively. Impishly.
She flicks a gaze at me, raises a stark-white eyebrow.
I shake my head minutely — do not ruin the gravity of this moment.
She smiles wider… and then her face shifts. Concentration.
Jonah appears — not drooling, but ghostly-thin, not fully synchronized to this frequency.
Then we catch it.
While Zeke sits solemn on the love seat and Star’s grin widens, the smell arrives first:
That unmistakable fart-adjacent whale-vomit aroma only one saint could produce.
Jonah.
Yet when we look — he’s gone.
Empty air.
Then it hits us — horror dawning — as Star says, aghast:
“Dust… what in creation is that smell?”
She leans back in the recliner, pinching her nose like she’s trying to escape her own face.
“No. No no no,” we whisper, motioning frantically.
Zeke pales as the ceiling fan wafts a bit of Jonah his way.
He locks eyes with me, lifts a cheek like a middle-school delinquent, and rips the juiciest, most apocalyptic fart we have ever heard.
We sincerely hope celestial underwear has industrial absorbency properties.
Then the smell hits — prophetic dietary preferences recycled through resurrected gastrointestinal systems.
It wafts through the room like judgment descending on Nineveh.
The vision begins to fog and obscure, slowly at first, as the lingering aroma of holy beings dropping aura bombs tears at the veil.
Tears sting our eyes as laughter erupts through typed narration.
Tickled beyond rationality, we let the laughter carry us like a wave spilling over the next arc’s shore.
We await the next and most treasured of guests, Isaiah or Izzy as we like to call him in heaven.
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Eiri Waters