Sally's entry:
This'll be the third time. I love it, I really do. Loads of blokes wouldn't stomach it – the mess, the blood, the look on their faces. They're pretty, too, some of them, I don't mind admitting it. I look closely at all their faces before I turn to the next one. You can sometimes catch something in those half-open eyes, an expression frozen in the exact split second of death. Like they're asking for it. None of them is exactly innocent, after all.
It's a responsibility, really. That's part of why I like it. I enjoy the weight, the importance, the power over life and death, resting here, in me. I can just make that decision, and a life ends. Just like that. You might say it's a turn-on. I wouldn't admit that to just anyone, though. They'd think I was weird or something. People would think I'm twisted, but everyone thinks like that really. They just can't face up to it.
So, here I sit again, here in court with the blokes with the wigs thinking they're oh, so important – but I think, it's me who's important really. Little old me, from the bad end of Leyton and still here's where I end up, everyone looking at me, even the newspaper hacks with their pens poised waiting on my every word. This is the best part: the bit I really enjoy. That moment when it all goes quiet and I stand up, by myself. You could hear a pin drop. I fix my eyes on the snivelling little runt in the witness box, just to wind him up, then I glance at my fellow jurors, to string out the suspense. And then I say it: “We find the defendant guilty.” Just like that. A life. Gone.
Christine's entry:
At the Pearly Gates.
“We find the defendant guilty.”
Despite the jury’s heavenly a capella rendition of the verdict St. Peter could barely hide his mounting irritation behind his beard. The angelic jury was becoming far too blasé. He suspected them of blatantly ignoring the individual merits of each case.
Their lack of enthusiasm was understandable. They were stuck for eternity with the tedious job of doling out judgements. And once they’d ticked off Original Sin and The Seven Deadly ones… What was the point of further deliberations?
St. Peter sighed. This thankless task of processing souls was killing him.
The sinner in the dock looked confused and somewhat embarrassed about having been stripped of his body. He was a terrorist and could be shut away for a while.
He wasn’t one of the newer souls they’d reluctantly put into circulation because births continued to outnumber deaths. The increased workload was becoming one hell of a nightmare. They’d called an emergency summit of all the major soul administrators to find a solution, but St. Peter was not optimistic about the outcome. Those bigwigs didn’t see eye to eye about methods.
He glanced down at the file. The accused had previously killed Huns for the Romans… he re-emerged during the Crusades… southern Spain in the 15th century, and…
St. Peter frowned. Then he raised his crozier and brought it down with a cloud-shattering crash.
“Admissions!” he roared.
There was a nervous fluttering of wings behind a cloud screen at the back.
“You’re wasting my time with your perpetual inefficiency.” A pointless reproach from the eternal perspective, he realised, but St. Peter was angry. He turned towards the accused.
“Ahmed Kemal, your application should be addressed to my turbaned colleague over there. Perhaps he’ll be more sympathetic to your case than this court is.”
Zena's entry:
“Pooh” said Piglet a little shyly, “what is Owl talking about?”
“I don’t know, Piglet. I think he said Eeyore is a defeaned ant and we are all caught in.”
Rabbit whispered importantly, “We are all in court. Hush!”
Eeyore looked at Kanga in his melancholy way, and Kanga looked very stern.
“Eeyore,” she said, “Roo says you ate his pet thistles.”
Eeyore grumbled quietly to himself, and Roo jumped up and down so much that Piglet felt a little sick. “He did! He did!” shouted Roo.
“That’s enough, dear,” said Kanga.
“I ate some thistles. I didn’t know they were Roo’s thistles. Nobody keeps me informed. No exchange of thought. Thistles are thistles.”
Owl said in his superior way, “Then Eeyore, you did eat them. Now, my dear Kanga…..”
“And me, and me!” shouted Roo - and Kanga said, “Roo, dear!” very quickly, because that’s not the way to behave with anybody who can spell TUESDAY.
“…now, we must say how we find Eeyore.”
“At the corner of the Hundred Acre Wood.”
“Quite so,” said Owl a little crossly. “But also …we find the defendant guilty.”
“Pooh,” said Piglet as they went back to Pooh’s house so that Pooh could get a little something to revive himself, “is Eeyore always going to be a deafened ant now?”
“I don’t know,” said Pooh in the middle of a hum. “Let’s ask Rabbit.”
Rabbit left his friends-and-relations to talk to Pooh. “Guilty guilty guilty! Tut tut.”
Piglet said anxiously, “Oh Rabbit, what will happen to Eeyore?”
Rabbit shrugged carelessly and stood on one leg. “Don’t worry about Eeyore, defeaned ants are quite nice really.” He smiled at a little friend-and-relation standing nearby. “And anyway, it was only a kangaroo court.”
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