Another Perspective on This Odd Place, Pt. 3

Arthur Simmons reporting.

Now that it was absolutely, surely, undeniably certain that we had discovered Purgatory, we had to evangelize others about this belief. Also, there was another pressing question that could not go unanswered in our hearts: If this was Purgatory, why could we not find Heaven or Hell?

First, to evangelize others all of us believers stood at the entrance and exit to Purgatory. When someone came in, we would say, "Welcome to Purgatory," or, "You are now entering Purgatory." When someone left, we would say, "You are now leaving Purgatory," or, "You are exiting Purgatory." We tried to convince the old people swimming that they were also in Purgatory, but they would not listen. The vast majority of people seemed to understand what we meant, but they did not seem to believe that this was in fact Purgatory and not some health club's swimming pool.

Although most of the people who we shared our findings with knew what Purgatory was, a few did not. Alexandra was one of these people. She boldly asked, "What is Purgatory?" Maxwell, a great theologian, responded, "Purgatory is a place in the Catholic tradition where many dead people go to be purified of their sins before entering Heaven." Absolutely beautifully said. I could not have put it any better myself. I reminded myself to encourage Maxwell to find some kind of theological career when he grew up. A Catholic priest would seem the most fitting with his vast collection of knowledge on that particular religion.

As mentioned above, we were still wondering where Heaven and Hell were located. If Purgatory was easily found on Earth, shouldn't they be too? And how come only a very small number of dead inhabited Purgatory from the way we saw it? Shouldn't there be many more people in it? The answers to all of these questions would be answered in time.

First, we decided that the pool party outside the exit to Purgatory was Heaven. It was a nice, beautiful place with many happy people, good food, and a nice pool (although, oddly enough, Purgatory had a pool as well.) As for Hell, it was decided amongst all of us that the locker rooms that we came out of must have been Hell. There was a burning sauna room in here, presumably the fire that picture people when they think of Hell. There was also a news magazine that implied the Republican Party was dead, obviously Hellish. There were old naked men taking showers (no further comments necessary.) Yes, this was definitely Hell.

Now, there was still the pressing question of why so few people were occupying any of these three areas, Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory. Teeler thought of an answer that we all generally accepted. These were simply places in the afterlife from our dimension. There would be countless other Purgatories, Heavens, and Hells, just from other people's point's of views. Now that we had all of these questions figured out, one last question remained: How had we been able to travel to the world of the dead if we ourselves were, in fact, not dead?

Another Perspective on This Odd Place

Note: I am not the same person who made the previous blog entry. He is Mark Greenman. I am Arthur Simmons. I am just another one of the people who discovered this Purgatory.

Anyways, I had done close to the exact same things that my friend had done in the previous entry. I was exiting the locker room at a health club to go outside to the pool for a swim party on the last day of school. On the way, I came into a strange dark room with a large pool, smaller hot tub, and lots of other strange objects and very old people doing laps slower than sloths move. Now, for some reason, it immediately occurred to me that I had to be in Purgatory! It was a warm, dark, somewhat peaceful place, but at the same time kind of annoying and a little hard to breathe in, and I wanted to get out of it.

Now, for my religious history: I had never been terribly religious in my life. Sure, I believed in God and tried to follow his ways and everything, but I was definitely not a Bible-toting religious extremist or anything. I did have a Catholic father though, so I knew very well the doctrine of Purgatory. Like the vast majority of modern-day Catholics, I thought it was a doctrine not to be taken entirely literally (i.e. it's not millions of years in a place basically like Hell) and I thought that Medieval Christians using it to gain financial support were definitely doing the wrong thing with it. However, I saw nothing wrong with the teachings of Purgatory as a whole.

So, with two other friends, I found a door that led outside to the pool. When I got outside, I said to one of them, Maxwell, "Hey, that room seemed an awful lot like Purgatory, you know?" He laughed pretty hard (he laughs at most things) and replied, "Yes. It is Purgatory in there."

Now, initially this was just a little joke between some of my friends and me, but we would come back many, many times to this extremely odd, and yet extremely fascinating, place.