He’d always had a strange theory about the afterlife. He’d read about it on the internet, or perhaps it was one of his wife’s thoughtful, drawn-out 3AM musings when he had four hours and fifty six minutes of potential sleep before the radio show. The theory went that the afterlife was whatever you last accepted it to be.

Whether she’d invented it or not, The Wife had suggested something rather prudent concerning this theory: that they better accept the same thing or risk an eternity of unparalleled peace and quiet apart. They’d settled on a sort of heaven, a heaven which was a restaurant. A restaurant filled with the most awful, greasy, glorious crap imaginable. Parmos. Bacon. Special sausages. And cheese showered from on high via a wonderful sprinkler system that The Author had seriously been considering investing a patent in in the during-life. Good lord, the fatty fun!

The Author saw that restaurant ahead right now. It had worked.

He wasn’t underwater like he should have been, because he was dead. The slow, jubilant realisation that the business trip was cancelled sunk in better than he’d sunk into the abyss seventy miles off Iceland. He looked through the windows.

His stomach began to rumble.

He could see The Wife already inside, seated in a cosy-looking booth by the kitchen. She had started with dessert, obviously. It was a gorgeous, steaming brownie, drowning in chocolate sauce better than he had drowned in the abyss seventy miles off Iceland. And she’d already picked up her fork.

His stomach stopped rumbling and did a pretty nifty somersault instead. It would be gone in sixty seconds. He better get moving.

He stepped quickly towards the doorway across a bright expanse of nothingness. He looked around and cursed himself for an entirely out-of-character lack of imagination. Why had they stopped at the restaurant? They could have had an entire world at their spiritual disposal. Or at the very least a mini golf next door.

They better have a good sausage menu.

He got to the door, and there was a person where a person hadn’t been before. It was neither a man nor a woman, and as it looked down softly upon his hopeful face, The Author decided it must be an angel named Terry. It was wearing an apron with a badge saying Terry - Angel anyway.

“Hi, I’m Terry,” said the angel. The Author was right, as always.

“One fork, please,” The Author said. Beyond the being’s shoulder, the plate was looking cataclysmically short of chocolate. He wasn’t too sure heaven could keep up with his wife’s demands.

Terry raised a holy-looking hand and laughed musically. “Hold up, hold up! A bevy of my brethren are waiting beyond this door to satisfy your every culinary fantasy. I’m just the doorman. Just need to ask a few quick questions to make sure you’re authorised.”

“But I’m awesome!” The Author protested.

But the angel wouldn’t budge its elegantly proportioned arse. It took The Author’s personal details, which he hadn’t had to give out since his novel got published five years back because literally everyone knew who he was. It was beyond disappointing that he had no avid Scenario 66 fans beyond the veils of nothingness in his own private afterlife, he decided miserably as he struggled through the address of his little holiday mansion in Italy.

Many minutes of boring technical dialogue passed. Many spoonfuls of exquisite baked confectionery oozed down the throat of his beloved, who as usual was studiously ignoring his plight. At long last the angel took out a golden file from its divine apron and cross-referenced the provided trivialities.

“Well,” it began, scanning whatever lay on the other side of the glittering page, “You gave that homeless man a pound once near Christmas, and you never slept with the strippers, so overall, you’ve done pretty well for a rich and powerful global superstar.” He shut the file decisively. “Come on in.”

The space without a person returned. The door was open. The Author stepped inside.

As promised, there was indeed a bevy of Terry’s brethren, blocking his way to the missus and her table of delights. One of them stepped forward, blue eyes piercing deep into his soul.

“Good death-day,” The Author said.

“This one, officer,” replied the angel.

“What?”

A man in uniform rose from a booth to the right, where he’d sat, perfectly invisible, behind a precisely held newspaper. He glided across the sparkling tiles, upon which he left no shadow, and set a hand heavily on The Author’s shoulder, upon which he left no hint of affection.

“Barry,” he said through an almost completely unmoving slit of a mouth. The Author shrunk back. He looked very stern. “Deputy for the Office of Obscure and Entirely Irrelevant Promises.”

The officer rummaged in his jacket and brought forth a sheet of paper. Automatically, The Author rummaged for a pen, and discovered a couple of home truths instead: that he wouldn’t find one because he was dead, and that the ghastly creature in front of him that looked like it was getting ready to wipe him from existence probably wasn’t after an autograph.

“Upon the publication of your debut novel, Scenario 66, on lines six and seven of page four hundred, you chose to enter your work of fiction into The Voluntary Scheme for the Prevention of Godawful Sequels.”

“I created the Voluntary Scheme for whatever it is!” The Author blustered.

“You kept your promise for precisely two short story collections,” the officer warbled on, unmoved. “Then, in your third collection, Old Riding Author Lunatic Asylum, you published a sorry excuse for a tale entitled Scenario 79: Sausage Fingers, containing...” (Here he ruffled his paper importantly) “....direct parallels with, allusions to and themes reminiscent of the original work entered into the scheme.”

“What?” said The Author. Just because he was amazing on paper didn’t mean he could talk to someone, did it?

The thin lips curled upwards like a pair of slugs staring at a passing bird. “What was it, then? Why now? Was it writer’s block, no more ideas, a washed-up has-been, mind erased by an endless procession of complimentary beverages at your little reading parties? Or is it just an attention grab, a vain attempt to actually get someone, anyone, to read a short story? To stop your slow yet inevitable fall into obscurity through your suicidal decision to write exclusively for goldfish?”

“Goldfish?”

“You know.... the memory thing...” said the officer awkwardly. Then, he threw up his hands, and the waiters and bartenders and chefs and chocolatiers scattered in sudden terror. “I’m an ambassador of hell!” he proclaimed. “Humour isn’t my strong-point.” He looked about wildly, and, snake-like, plucked a sausage from a nearby trolley between two fingers. “Enough of this! We’re out of here!”

He marched into the plain of white, turned, and beckoned. The Author slid helplessly from the restaurant after him.

“Help! Darling! Arrrrrgh!” he cried towards the softly shutting door.

“Mmmmmmmmm!” said The Wife, eyes closed, head rocked back on her chair in unbridled ecstasy. The first dessert was gone.