"Hello, Agnes."
Sister Agnes looked up from where she was kneeling in her vegetable garden. It was the spirit of Burt, Mayor of Heavenly Aden. It was hot and she wore only a pair of shorts and a sleeveless blouse. Burt was shirtless. Her hands were soiled with dirt. "Hello, Burt," she answered. "Welcome!" She stood up, rubbed her hands together to clean off the dirt, brushed strands of light brown hair out of her eyes, and walked over to where he was standing at the edge of the garden. Sweat streaked her cheeks.
"Melody tells me you're doing great. I came out to see for myself." Melody was Burt's buxom and bubbly wife.
"Things are going well." She looked around at her vegetable garden with pride.
"You've been here for three months now? I've seen you at Friday Fuckfest. I apologize for not paying more attention to you." Burt ensured his re-election every year by careful attention to the needs of his three hundred constituents. With the enthusiastic support of Melody they operated on the maxim of "No spirit unfucked." Burt had apparently not perceived that Agnes needed his sexual attention.
"Melody has been wonderful showing me around and we've had some good times together.
"So, I hear -- and with the Three Amigos! Are you enjoying the sex?" Sex, she had learned, was a common subject of discussion in the virtual reality of Heaven.
Agnes blushed. "It's been wonderful. I've met so many nice people. I was up-tight at the beginning, but I loosened up. I even volunteered for "Y'all Come" at the last Fuckfest."
"How was it?"
"Ten men came to me. They all came." she snickered.
"Ten! You're a popular woman. I look forward to enjoying you. But I'm here with another task for you.
Agnes was disappointed. She thought he had come out to her house to see her for sex -- and she was willing. Sex was a requirement at the Friday Fuckfest, but optional and voluntary at other times. Agnes had sampled a few men between Fuckfests. Life, or rather spirit, in heaven was sensual. Sex was casual. The sexual tension of earthly society melted away.
"We have a new arrival today and you're the best person to greet him and introduce him to our community."
"With pleasure," she responded. Agnes welcomed opportunities to be useful. "Once a nun, always a nun," she thought.
"He's a problem. He's eighteen years old and was killed in an automobile accident on earth."
"Eighteen," she grimaced to herself. "Why me? Wouldn't one of our eighteen-year-old girls be better at this than me?"
"Oh, no, they're much too forward. This boy was a choir boy and he is religious, conceited, and prudish. On earth, he wanted to be a priest. He is a virgin and declares his intention to never sully his body and soul with sex or sin." Burt added with a smile, "Given his personality, I doubt he had many opportunities to lose his virginity."
"If he wants to abstain from sex, why is he being sent here?
"God knows! Or at least Saint Peter does. Anyway, we have to make the best of the situation. I would appreciate if he could stay at your house for a few days while you introduce him to our culture gradually."
"Aren't I a little old to do this?" Agnes had selected the age of thirty-five for her spirit in Heavenly Aden; on earth she had died at age eighty-two.
"Given your religious background, you're the perfect person for the job."
"Am I supposed to fuck him?" Her language had become much more explicit in Heaven.
"Oh, no, not necessarily, but you need to prepare him for Fuckfest. Five days from now."
"Well, I can't refuse, can I?' she said with resignation. "Even in heaven a nun has obligations."
"I'm sure you'll succeed. He will be projected into our reality in two hours on the path in front of your house." He kissed her on the cheek. "I also have a second reason for coming out to see you today."
"Oh?" she answered, enjoying the arm that snaked abound her back and the touch of his bare chest against hers.
"Perhaps we could enjoy a little tryst. Our first of many, I am sure."
"I thought you'd never ask. First, I need to wash off the dirt and sweat."
"I want you like you are." He kissed her and she melted into his arms. "The boy's name is Joshua."
***
After Burt left, Agnes washed away the dirt, sweat, and sperm in the emerald pool below the waterfall a few steps out the back door of her house and put on a fresh pair of shorts and shirt. The shorts were short and the shirt was sheer. In bright sunlight the outline of her breast and the pink of her nipples showed through the thin cloth. "Not a suitable outfit for meeting an aspiring priest," she thought to herself. "But the Heavenly Host in her wisdom doesn't believe we need much in the way of clothing."
She tidied up her small, two-room stone house. Suddenly, she started in surprise. "Where is he going to sleep?" Her bedroom contained only a double bed. Her living room had cushions on the floor, a couple of chairs, and a wooden table that served both for eating and as a work place. Outside on a small terrace overlooking the emerald pool and the waterfall were another two chairs and a brazier on which she cooked her modest meals.
"Well," she said. "He'll have to sleep in the bed with me, or find a place on the cushions. I'm not in charge of accommodations here. It might be more heavenly if I were. Sorry to be critical, God." She looked up at the sky.
Agnes was waiting on the pathway in front of her house when the spirit of Joshua appeared suddenly. He looked around in puzzlement. "This isn't at all what I expected Heaven to look like." He studied Agnes, her long, brown legs, the curves of her chest, rosy lips, dimpled cheeks, large green eyes, and light-brown pony tail hanging over her shoulder. "Who are you?" There was disdain, and a bit of fear, in his voice.
"Call me Agnes," she answered. "I was a nun on earth. I've been asked to introduce you to our virtual reality." She looked him in the eye. Pious men had a way of ordering nuns around, and that was not going to happen to her.
"This looks like a farm. A poor farm," Joshua said, turning to view the surroundings.
"It is," she answered. "It's a rural medieval reality." She attempted humor to relax him, smiling and singing, "In short, there's simply not... a more congenial spot... It's Camelot, Camelot!" She trilled the last words like a Broadway singer.
He stared at her in disbelief.
"It's beautiful," she exclaimed. "The emerald pool, the waterfall. There's a hot spring for bathing over there and the cows in that field produce milk and butter of a quality you can't believe. And look at my garden. Squash, beans, corn. All delicious. You'll be happy here, I assure you."
He continued staring at her. Joshua was of medium height and slender with black hair and thick, pouting lips. He was dressed as she was in shorts and a shirt.
"Let me show you around. This is my house." She led him through the door. "No pearly gates here," she joked. "No harps, no angels, we're just ordinary souls living in a dream world without sin or pride or avarice. Heaven, in other words."
Joshua looked around her small stone house. "Am I supposed to stay here?" he asked with skepticism in his voice.
"Only for a few days while you get used to our customs."
Her poked his nose into the bedroom. "Where do I sleep? There's only one bed and one bedroom."
"I can fix you a pallet on the floor, or" -- did she dare to say it? -- "you could share my bed with me." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
He turned red. "Oh, no. I couldn't do that! You are as old as my mother and it would be wrong to sleep even in the same room as you. Not that I would be tempted to. I am pledged to God and must avoid temptation to sin." He stepped out of the house onto the small terrace overlooking the emerald pool and the waterfall."
"Pious prick," Agnes thought. She was not at all pleased to be compared to his mother. Joshua suddenly turned around, red-faced, demanding, "What is going on there?" He pointed toward the emerald pool.
Agnes looked where his finger was pointing. A couple was standing at the edge of the pool "Oh," she said, trying to be casual. "That's Andy and his wife, Mabel. They come out from the village to soak in the hot spring and to swim. They never wear clothes." Andy and Mabel were the ugliest couple in all of Aden. They were barely five feet tall and obese. His penis was like a tiny button beneath an overhanging belly; her vagina was concealed by rolls of fat and her huge empty breasts hung as low as her navel. Ugly as they were, Andy and Mabel were a popular couple. Their preference was threesomes and they were reputed to be artists of the flesh. Agnes hoped to engage with them in the near future.
"That's disgusting," Joshua said.
"Judge not lest ye be judged." When in doubt, she thought, quote the Bible.
"I can't tolerate sins of the flesh. You shouldn't either. You were a nun."
She changed the subject. "Are you hungry? I am making a soup of beans and corn." This was going to be a harder and more thankless task than she had imagined.
