Your Choice

[In the movie "The Bucket List" Morgan Freeman tells Jack Nicholson about two questions. This story grew out of that interaction. I doubt if the writer of the movie envisioned anything like this. Please vote and leave me a comment. I have trouble putting some of my stories in the right genre. This is in Science fiction/fantasy where any story with religion belongs, IMHO.]

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Derek walked into the bedroom of his suite and saw Nancy on the bed, naked and asleep. She was not covered. He walked to the bed and slapped her on the ass. She jumped. The slap wasn't hard enough to hurt, just wake her.

"Your husband will be here in an hour. We have time to do it one more time before you need to go."

She rolled onto her back, opened her arms and legs and welcomed him inside her. As they met and joined she asked, "Does he have a key?"

"Of course. A little danger makes the sex even better." She smiled. She had been in Derek's bed many times and always there was a risk. Her husband was Derek's business partner. The first time he had sex with her was two hours before their wedding. He was the best man. He offered her fifty thousand dollars cash for sex that day. She took it.

That was the last time he gave her money. That was three years before they met in the suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna. She arrived at ten in the morning and her husband was due to arrive at three that afternoon. They both knew that her husband, Mark, was a punctual man. Derek had reinforced his punctuality by an event he staged just for Mark two years before. He had given Mark a key to his suite and a time to arrive. Mark was ten minutes early and when he opened the door Derek was cock deep in a black woman bent over in front of him in the middle of the suite. He finished fucking her and had her lick his cock clean before dismissing her and beginning their meeting. Mark had never been early again.

He lifted her legs and spread them wide, watching as his swollen cock slid in and out of her shaved pussy. She had started shaving when he told her he never ate hairy pussy. He slammed into her and she encouraged him with words and with grunts, groans, yelps and gasps of breath.

For a second he felt a stabbing pain followed by tightness in his chest. He almost let go of her ankles, then it was gone and promptly forgotten. She didn't notice anything. She was using her fingers on her clit so she could cum with him. She knew that neither man cared if she came. Sex was for their pleasure.

He bent to her chest and sucked her entire areola into his mouth. He loved sucking on her tits. She worried that one time he would leave a hickey and Mark would see it and kill her. So far he hadn't left one. He had left her tits sore and swollen, but no visible marks.

His mouth sucked hard on her tit as he shot his load into her. Suddenly his body went stiffer than his normal orgasm. He bit down on her tit and she hit him on the back and screamed, "No!"

He didn't stop. The pain in his chest blocked everything else out. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. He bit down harder and blood spurted from her breast. She screamed and hit him many times. Then he collapsed on top of her.

Her legs were pinned under him and she tried to lift him as she cried and bled. He didn't move or respond. She realized he wasn't breathing. She grunted hard and shifted his two hundred dead weight pounds off her, just as his bowels released. She ran into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She scrubbed and got the bleeding to at least slow to a seeping rather than the flow it had been. She dressed and wiped as many of the places as she could remember touching. She knew that if the police wanted to identify her they could, but she hoped they wouldn't care that much. She had watched CSI often enough to know she left evidence behind.

She looked at her watch. Mark was due in eight minutes. She saw cash on the bedside table and she took all of it. Derek wouldn't miss it. She exited the suite and went quickly to the elevators. As she got in the elevator on the sixteenth floor her husband Mark got in an elevator in the lobby. They passed less than twenty feet apart seconds later. When the doors opened in the lobby Nancy Walker stepped out and glanced quickly around. She sighed when she saw no sign of Mark. She walked to the ladies room off the lobby and changed the bloody paper towel from inside her bra for a clean, dry one. The flow of blood had almost stopped.

Mark stood in the hall until exactly three o'clock. He knocked and waited another minute. He hated this part of the partnership. He knew Derek was fucking his wife and had known ever since the day after they were married. By before he met Derek he had never made over a hundred fifty thou in a year. Since they became partners Mark was making almost a million a year. He was counting the days until he could ace Derek out and let him take Nancy with him.

Until that day he couldn't afford to catch them in bed together. He slid the key through the lock and opened the door.

"Derek? It's three o'clock."

He stepped inside. Derek's suit coat was draped over the back of a chair. His shoes were by the chair. Mark called out again.

"Derek? Are you in bed?" The door to the bedroom was almost closed, but not quite. He didn't want to look. He needed two more weeks to make sure he could oust Derek.

He stood outside the door for two minutes then pushed it open. I saw Derek on his side on the bed. A foul smell hit him and he knew what it was. Derek was dead. He was nude. The bed had lots of blood on it as did Derek's face and behind Derek the pile of shit Derek had become.

Mark didn't touch anything. He went into the living room and used a napkin to hold the phone as he called 911. Ten minutes later the hotel security and the police were inside the suite. Half an hour after that the crime lab folk arrived and took his prints and printed the suite. He was allowed to leave.

Derek sat up in a room that was small by his usual standards. The room had two pieces of furniture, the bed and a chair. He was in the bed and a woman sat in the chair. She was slender, very short red hair and her body was covered in a body stocking. All the body stockings he'd ever seen had an open crotch, but not this one. He didn't notice that until she stood up. Then he also noticed she was over six feet tall and was not wearing shoes.

"Derek, do you know where you are?"

"No, and I don't know who you are or how I got here."

"I can be called Twenty-six. You are between and you got here by having a heart attack that ripped the muscles of your heart and filled your chest with blood."

"Is that supposed to be a nice way to tell me I'm dead?"

"It worked. As for being nice, you can make up your own mind."

"Ok. I'm dead and I'm between. What does that mean?"

"It means we examined your life and found you to be someone who doesn't have something they believe about what happens after you die. So, you come here to choose."

"I choose? Ok. I want you to back up the clock to two o'clock and fix my heart. Then I can go on with my life."

"Sorry. It doesn't work that way. On Earth you died three days ago. Mark has tossed Nancy out, the police are asking her lots of questions and Mark had taken over your company. The Palestinians have bombed eighty more people and three thousand babies have been born. We cannot back up the clock."

"She didn't kill me, did she?"

"No, your heart attack did."

"Ok, what are my choices?"

"Come with me." She stood. His eyes went to her crotch and she smiled. "I don't need the opening you're looking for."

"I'm naked."

"Come with me. You don't need clothes."

He got up and followed her through a door that wasn't there a minute before. As he entered the room he saw a wheel that looked a lot like the wheel from Wheel of Fortune. Each panel on the wheel identified a religion, a belief system, a philosophy and there were three panels painted flat black.

Twenty-six stood by the wheel and asked him if it looked familiar. He said it did.

"Good. You can choose any panel on the wheel or you can spin. If you spin you will get what you land on."

"Can I ask questions?"

"Yes, and I will tell you what will happen to you if you choose that panel. However, you can only ask about four panels."

Derek looked them over. He read: Catholic, Baptist, LDS, Shinto, Zen, Tao, Hindu, Orthodox Jew, reform Jew, Reconstructionist Jew, on around the wheel. He counted and there were eighty seven panels, counting the three black ones.

"Four questions only?"

"Yes."

"Then I have only one question. What happens if I land on a black panel?"

"You cease."

"I cease?"

"You will no longer exist. Nancy will remember you as will Mark and the people you knew until they no longer remember you and then you will no longer exist, even as a memory."

"Does that happen if I land on any other panel?"

"Yes."

"Can you tell me which ones?"

"You can ask three more specific questions and I will answer."

His eyes looked at the wheel and landed on Catholic. Nancy was Catholic. He knew that because she got married in a Catholic church.

"Catholic."

"You were not baptized Catholic and you never did any of the rituals of the church. You fucked Nancy in the church on her wedding day. You will go to hell and suffer for eternity. The church still has some disagreements about exactly what happens in hell, but they agree that it is continual suffering."

He grabbed the wheel and spun it hard. When it stopped he read "Per-T Em Hru." He had never heard of whatever it was and looked at Twenty-six for help. She smiled and pressed a button on a pedestal beside the wheel.

He looked around and she and the wheel were gone. He was standing beside a river of gray water. The land he stood on was also gray and devoid of life. The light was dim and seemed to just be, but not from any single source. He looked around and saw no structures or people.

The instant he moved a man stood before him. The man was darkly tanned and nearly naked. He had no hair on his head or body and wore only a loin cloth that reminded Derek of something he had seen in a museum exhibit about Egypt.

He spoke and Derek understood him, although he was sure the man did not speak English.

"We you taught the songs, the rituals?"

"No."

"Then to pass you must answer both questions."

"Two questions?"

"Yes. Answer the first to get the second. Answer both satisfactorily and you may move on."

"Ok."

"Have you known joy in your life?"

"Define joy."

"Have you known joy in your life?"

He thought. If the question had been, have you known success his answer would have been immediate. Yes! If the man had asked about achievement, sacrifice, goals, even satisfaction he could easily have answered yes. Joy. Derek thought back through his life. He replayed each relationship with a woman, each business relationship, each working relationship and none gave him the answer he wanted.

He thought about his childhood. His father was a harsh man. He never felt his father approved of anything he did. His mother. He recalled being sick when he was five or six. He caught pneumonia and stayed home and out of school for weeks. His mother and his aunt took turns caring for him. The fed him, bathed him, and held him for hours each day. If he laid flat he couldn't breathe so they took turns holding him in their laps.

He remembered a day when his aunt bathed him and got very wet. She wrapped him in a warm towel and she undressed and used a towel to dry herself. He had never seen a woman naked before. She sat him in her lap and held him close to her skin. Before he fell asleep he found her nipple at his lips and he suckled.

Every day for the next two weeks she repeated the bath and suckling.

Derek looked at the man and answered, "Yes, I have felt joy in my life."

The man smiled and the area around them got lighter. The gray river became bluer and the gray ground was covered in green grass.

"Have you brought joy into other people's lives?"

Even without the examination of every relationship he knew the answer was no. He looked at the man and said, "No."

The man turned and walked into the river. The light went out and he felt pain. He felt squeezed and it got tighter. He wiggled and tried to move but he had lots of trouble. Suddenly he was in the light and it was too bright. He couldn't turn away.

He felt another pain and tried to yell in protest. He heard a baby scream. He saw a blurred face close to his and heard voices he didn't understand. He felt water and rubbing and hands touching and carrying him. He yelled again and heard the same baby's cry.

"Shit!" He thought, "It's me!"

He was carried and wrapped in a blanket. Then he was put next to a warm, breast and the nipple was shoved into his mouth. He knew what to do with that! She sucked as hard and long as he could. Then he fell asleep.

He got another chance.