PodCastle

* Author : Vajra Chandrasekera
* Narrator : Peter Adrian Behravesh
* Host : Summer Fletcher
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh
*
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Previously published by Liminal.


Rated: PG-13, for cursing at heaven’s door.
When Leopard’s-Bane Came to the Door of Third Heaven
By Vajra Chandrasekera
We stand at attention all day at the top of the green tower. L and I stand on either side of the door to the third nonsensual heaven. The rifle is heavy and I develop a lean as the day wears on, until L hisses at me from the far side of the door and I straighten up, my back creaking and popping. I’m a sloppy guard because I’m new, ink still fresh on the lottery ticket. When you’re always new at everything, you never get a chance to get good.
L hasn’t been a guard much longer than me, but she always says she doesn’t want to get good. She says you can’t pry the world open if you don’t have a kink in you. She says how come the lottery is supposed to be so fair but princes always win a king’s ticket when it’s time? She says a lot of things like that and if I say we haven’t been a monarchy in two hundred years or whatever, she’ll say I’m being obtuse. Then we arm-wrestle for it. She usually wins those, but only just.
We don’t actually have to stand at attention all day. So we don’t. Sometimes we take turns to nap. The guards of the towers of heaven don’t have supervisors, except someone from the lottery board who shows up twice a year, and of course some of the stewards are informers in case we’re breaking any rules. Here at the top of the green tower we see less foot traffic than every other heaven. There are too many stairs for the pious, who just take the first door they see. The doubters tend to climb a bit, but then they get tired and take the second door. Or they change their minds and climb down again. Maybe go home. Maybe go over to the red tower to try the sensual heavens instead of the nonsensual ones, after the dull ache in their feet reminds them that they have bodies. Nearly everybody prefers the sensual heavens. The red tower is always busy, crowded all the way to the top, a queue that moves step by excited step. Our green tower is for the perverse and our door is its highest, the least accessible. We only see the most stubborn, the axe-grinders, the scab-pickers, the most damaged, the ones who most want nothing — the ones who absolutely need to be sure that it’s nothing that comes after. Of course, sometimes it’s just people who aren’t paying attention.
Our first visitor of the day, for example, is a left-path orgiast — we recognise the type as soon as he appears, puffing and sweaty, at the top of the stairs. He kneels there for a little while, blowing out his breath and massaging his thighs. He’s red-eyed, clean-shaven, smoking a roll of something mildewy sweet. We try not to laugh, though L is grinning so broadly her face is all teeth, when he says he thought this was the door to the third sensual heaven.
“Nope,” I say. “This is the green tower. That’s the nonsensual one.”
“You spent nine hours climbing the wrong tower,” L adds, smiling like this is the best thing that’s ever happened to her. He’s not even the first person to make this mistake since we started working here, but she loves it every time.
In the end, he goes through the door anyway.