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, Pt. 2

Note: This is an Arthur Simmons posting

What started out as a joke became hard-core religious belief for us. We had found Purgatory! This was it. And now we came to realize that it was nowhere near as bad as the Catholic Church had made it out to be.

Purgatory was a farily big room, about 20 ft. by 30 ft. There was a large pool in the middle of it, a small hot tub to the side, some strange pictographs depicting human figures in motion on a wall, some closests and other objects scattered hear and there, and some observatory windows, where, we assumed, God watched. The room itself was farily dark (although there were some hanging lights) and fairly warm. As mentioned before, it was harder to breathe in Purgatory than in the real world. A very distinctive feature of Purgatory, though, was the fact that many old men and women were swimming in its pool, moving unbelievably slowly.

Now, my friends and I found Purgatory absolutely fascinating. It was like Heaven on Earth for us (no religious reference or pun intended). One of my friends, Maxwell, was also convinced that we had discovered Purgatory. Another, Teeler, felt quite the opposite, holding in the tradition of Classical Lutheran Protestantism that Purgatory didn't exist. And others like Michke and Benny-J were simply shocked at the revelation that we had finally discovered the location of Purgatory.

I recall at that fateful swim party when Maxwell, Draw, and I introduced Benny-J to Purgatory. He seemed very distraught and sad, so we thought that it might cheer him up. "Whaa," he said when he saw it. Still, he was very weak and frail. We all sat down at a table in Purgatory. "I'm so sad," he commented, "I'm never going to be able to have kids." He then began to close his eyes and go to sleep. I became very concerned with this, and started to think about all of the moral guidelines and rules in Purgatory. "No," I said, "You are not allowed to sleep in Purgatory." With that, all four of us left and went back outside.

Now, this brought up an important topic for me: What was permissible to do in Purgatory? Obviously, you could not sleep, and Maxwell, Teeler, myself, and another friend named J-Ban decided that talking loudly was not permitted in Purgatory. When J-Ban asked Maxwell why, he simply said, "You must talk quietly in Purgatory." Immediately after saying this, a rather loud, gregarious friend of ours named Jackson was about to open the door to Purgatory and come inside with us. Maxwell recognized right away what would happen. "Now that I just said you have to talk quietly, watch Jackson come in here and scream," Maxwell said. As if a prophet in Purgatory, he was right. Jackson threw open the door, came walking in, and screamed, "Hey!!!" at all of us. Maxwell laughed hysterically at this. I failed to remind him that laughter is not typically allowed in Purgatory.

my day in purgatory

So. It began today. It wad the last day of school. We went to a pool to celebrate. First we came and I was in this mysterious room filled with lockers. I wasn't sure where I was, so I followed the hall until I came to a door. I went in and there standing before me was a dude.

The dude was tall and he had long hair and a mustache. I went up to him and asked him where I was. He then let out a loud shout "This is purgatory" I was like "what?" he said yes purgatory. And I told him I had no idea what he was talking about.

He told me to look around. I did. As far as I could tell I had no idea where I was. Then I turned around and I could not believe what I saw.


- to be continued -

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.

Departure and Arrival

So, it was just a normal day. Well, I guess it wasn't. It was the my last day ever at a school I'd been attending for 9 years. It was bittersweet.

Anyway, I'd just finished signing my friends' yearbooks (there were a lot of mistakes, as usual. Honestly, how is it so hard to differentiate between Math Club and Math Counts?) and I was walking to the bus that was going to take us to a pool party. So, my friend came up to me. He was sad that I was going, so he gave me a hug. I said, "I'll see you over the summer," and he said, "Yeah, but I'm still sad," and I said, "I know." Then we broke the hug and I turned around and walked forward. I saw a streak of yellow and... I don't know.

Suddenly, the air felt really heavy and thick. My eyes were closed for some reason. I opened my mouth to breath. Instead of air, fluid gushed into my lungs. I tried to yell and scream, but I couldn't. Instinctively, I jumped up, and I felt my head break out into air. I coughed up about half the water right there. I opened my eyes and saw through my blurry vision that I was in a pool. I swum to the edge, pulled myself out, and coughed up the rest of the water. What the heck is going on?

I turned my head to the side and saw a wrinkled, liver spot-covered foot in front of me. I looked up, and saw a wrinkled, liver spot-covered man in a Speedo that came with the food.

"Hello!" he said in a stereotypical old man voice. I just laid there, slightly in shock. "Welcome to Purgatory!"

I, being a slightly agnostic but mostly faithful Lutheran who believed that Purgatory was a scam made up by the Catholic Church in the olden days used to make poor people give them money, said, "You've got to be kidding me."

"Nope," he said. "You're in Purgatory."

I scoffed (fun word!) at him. "Okay, even if that were true, how would you know that we're in Purgatory?"

He explained, "Well, I'm not completely sure, but I've been here for quite a long time. Years, I think. The last thing I remember was climbing a very large mountain, I can't remember which, and then I slipped and fell for a while. Suddenly, I was laying in a hot tub."

I took this opportunity to examine where I was. We were in a closed room, about thirty by twenty feet. In it was a large pool and a hot tub. There were more people swimming laps. Very slowly. Like turtles (no offense to turtle lovers). "I still don't believe you," I said. Spotting a door, I marched to it, opened it, and continued marching. I reached a room that appeared to be a lobby for a health club or something. There were a few more people there, just sitting on chairs, doing nothing. I left the club and found that there was a city outside. So I kept walking, and walking, and walking... Trying to figure out where the heck I was.

I didn't like the answer.