Free Escaping Heaven by Cliff Hicks Page A

comfortable, it’s still going to be a bit. But you’re welcome to read a magazine or something while you wait. They might be a little out of date, but you have no idea how hard it is to get new magazines down here.”
    Jake moved to sit down at Gilbert’s desk and picked up one of the magazines. It was a copy of Time from 1983. Jake looked at it with a little sadness then nodded, opening it up and starting to read. It was something, and something was better than nothing, Jake figured.
    Jake didn’t always figure right.
     
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    I n another section of Heaven, Bob the Cherubim was sitting in a library, one of Heaven’s many libraries. He had at least three different rulebooks open in front of him, pushed into various sections of the white wooden table before him. They were massive tomes and one of the books, one of the more massive ones, was simply an index to the other books.
    Bob flipped through the pages with his chubby fingers, scanning the pages as quickly as he could. He had on a pair of reading glasses to make skimming through all of the fine print easier. And the print was fine indeed, small and in some cases, barely legible without the aid of a magnifying glass. “Section two-thousand four hundred and seven, four hundred and eight, four hundred and nine…. Here we go,” Bob said as he searched for the passage he was looking for. “Section two-thousand five hundred, subsection C, clause F. A Cherubim may not bring back to Heaven any alcohol, tobacco, firearm or any item listed on the contraband list found in Appendix 459. Great…. Where the Heaven is Appendix 459?”
    He stood up and glanced at the walls of books with a scowl. He closed up the books he’d taken out and put them onto the cart marked “Filing” and then started to pace among the stacks again before waving at someone he saw wandering around as well. The woman looked particularly put out to have to stop and talk to someone, but Bob was not the kind of Cherubim who was easily dissuaded. “Excuse me, do you know where I can find the Appendixes?”
    “ Which series?” the woman asked him, sighing exhaustedly, as if this was the most trying thing that had happened to her in months. The librarians didn’t see many people, so they tended to be annoyed by any contact at all. They’d much rather simply sit around and read their books again.
    “ Series?” Bob asked, scratching his head.
    “ Sure, you gotta know what series it is, otherwise you could be here all day!” the woman chided. “If you don’t know, you can file a request for series form. They’re over next to the archival retrieval forms near the door.”
    “ Can’t you just show me where the Appendix series are?”
    “ Nope,” the woman said, shaking her head. “Can’t do anything without the right form. You know how it is, buddy.”
    Bob hated the bureaucracy of Heaven more than just about anything else.
    And Bob hated a lot of things.
     
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    H ours passed. Jake would have even guessed that days passed, but of course days had no meaning here. Time was incredibly relative he was learning to realize. Not long ago, he would have been able to tell you exactly how long he had been in the lobby of Heaven for, but now, it was all sort of one big blur. Time sort of ran together like the shades of a freshly painted watercolor that was hung upright before drying. His notions of time were the streaks of color that had all dripped into one another. It wasn’t something particularly helpful, but then again, he couldn’t expect anyone had much use for time up here. However he did know that he had learned a lot about 1983 in the time that he had been waiting for Gilbert to read through all of his paperwork. Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek, Better Homes