Running With Scissors

Deux Ex Fried Redux

"I haven't watched it yet," said Peter. "No spoilers."

"Anyways," said the figure, pulling the lapels of his trenchcoat. "Let's make this quick. I have to get back to the gate. There's a queue already, and I don't want to draw any more unwanted attention towards me."

"Seems good to me," said Peter, grabbing a piece of bread from the bench and throwing it at the heavenly duck.

"Last time you were here-" began to say the figure, but Peter quickly interrupted him.

"I've been here before?" he asked.

"Yes. Don't you remember?" asked the figure. "Oh right. I erased your memory."

"That's rude of you," said Peter. "Everyone here is rude. Especially the space duck."

"Heavenly duck," said the figure. "And I had to do it. You complained to my boss and got me in quite the pickle."

"That sounds like me," said Peter.

"And because of it, I sent you back to Earth."

"So, we are not on Earth," stated Peter.

"Yes, we've already established that," added the figure, whose patience was beginning to run thin.

"Then that's a space duck," said Peter as he pointed at the duck.

"Sure, whatever," said the figure. "Thing is, I had a performance review, and apparently I'm not allowed to send people back to Earth."

"Seems like you really fudged up, pal," said Peter.

"Wait, it gets worse. So I go and tell him that I sent you to hell, since that's where you were going anyways."

"Wait," said Peter. "I was gonna go to hell? What the fudge, man?! I'm a delight!"

"No, you're not," said the figure.

"That's your opinion," said Peter, tossing a piece of bread that hit the duck squarely in the third eye.

"It's a fact," corrected the figure. "But now, I'm in a bind. He didn't quite believe me, so he went to hell to find out if you were there. The bureaucracy there is hellish—no pun intended—so he will be there for a couple decades. But he will eventually realize that you're not there."

"Seems like you need a lawyer," said Peter.

"Thing is," said the figure. "The only other place you can be other than there is here in heaven."

"Makes sense," said Peter.

"So I have to make sure you get into heaven," said the figure.

"Oh, cool," said Peter, jumping from the bench. "Let's go!"

"Not now," said the figure. "As you are right now, you're certainly bound for hell."

The figure snapped his fingers, and a balance appeared in front of him.

"For someone to enter heaven, their good must outweigh the bad, if only by the weight of a feather," said the figure. "Right now, your wrongness outweighs the good."

As if to illustrate, the figure materialized a figurine of Peter and put it on one side of the balance. "This figure here represents your badness." He then took a cheap plastic figure of Peter, so thin it was see-through. "And this is the good."

The bad side immediately sank, making the good figurine fly through the air, crashing right on top of the duck.

"As you can see, the bad outweighs the good, which should be the opposite."