June 2026 - Vol. 23, Issue 3

As Becky passed through to the outer darkness, the serif on guard paid her no attention. Engaged in angelic business with the rest of the heavenly host, the angelic being viewed Becky’s leaving with celestial indifference. There were no laws against sneaking out of Heaven; for such laws should not be needed.

Without the walls, Becky took some time for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. For good measure, she picked up a stick, reminiscent of the cane she’d used in her times before the restoration of her sight after the judgement. Then, she’d used a cane when she’d been between guide dogs.

She needed no sign—print or braille—to find her destination. She’d merely followed the sound of barking to the dog runs kept by the kennel master.

Through the oppressive gloom, she picked her way around the debris of God’s holy war—the outer darkness was a messy place—following the plaintive cries of her guide and friend Brandy. She shouldn’t have heard Brandy but something in the darkness, maybe profound loneliness, had ruined Brandy’s training.

The kennel master knew why people escaped from Heaven. He’d seen enough dog-lovers searching the outer darkness looking for their erstwhile pets. Indeed, he’d made an avocation of keeping said pets for dog-lovers. Most of them he knew by name.

He knew that Becky’s dog had been more than a pet. Brandy had been Becky’s help in a world not made for her. Why the Three-in-one should cast Brandy into the realm of the damned was something the kennel master would never understand. Not that the Three-in-one cared about the kennel master’s questions. The Three-in-one did their own thing, to them, the counsel of mere humans meant nothing.

“Hello Becky,” the kennel master said. “You know where Brandy is.”

“Sixth run on the left,” Becky replied.

Becky was a power user of the kennel master’s facilities. She’d paid the kennel master back by teaching him the art of the cane, arts he didn’t need when he lived in the light.

“Yep,” the kennel master said as Becky headed down the row of dog runs.

As Becky approached, Brandy began a loud barking cry. Becky undid the latch, and Brandy came out to meet her.

“Yes Brandy,” Becky said as she scratched behind the ears of her former guide. “I’m here.”  But Becky knew that it was only for a while.

She’d earned Brandy’s love with such acts of affection, a coin more precious to dogs than gold. She learned such things at the guide dog school in upstate New York.

As Becky re-aquainted herself with Brandy, the Kennel master considered the cosmos as he now understood it. In life, he’d been unsure about who, or what, ran the universe, or whether it was run at all. But in these days, every tongue confessed the sovereignty of the Three-in-one, and every knee bowed. The damned were as assured of the existence of God as were the blessed.

For the kennel master though, there was no joy in this acknowledgement. For him, the existence of God was more like the existence of the tyrant of North Korea than the existence of a loving father.

“And why,” the kennel master wondered, muttering to himself, “were dogs singled out for God’s exclusion?”

He thought that he could be reconciled with the Three-in-one if he could just understand. But for him, the knowledge of God’s existence did not come with understanding. The kennel master realized that part of the reason he opened this post-apocalyptic kennel was to spite the All-mighty by softening the blow of divine injustice.

Meanwhile, Becky cuddled with Brandy remembering travels they had taken, and the time that Brandy had saved her life. There was that day when Becky had been on a mission to buy food for a special meal, a meal for a friend from whom she wanted more than just friendship.

She was only paying partial attention as she wandered across the road. She did not notice the electric car speeding at her. Suddenly, Brandy blocked Becky with her body. She barked with great urgency. Shocked by the sudden sound, Becky jumped back as the car sped past so near that Becky could feel the wind from its passage.

For a while, Becky scratched Brandy’s stomach, but the time came when she needed to return home. She left bidding farewell to the kennel master for now.

The kennel master said goodbye in return. He remembered Becky, the day he’d been driving to a meeting of great import. He’d needed to be on time. He’d seen the lady and her dog; he didn’t stop. He was thinking about everything but the road. He was happy that the dog had saved her, of course, but he was not sufficiently sorry for what he’d almost done, to waste time with an apology.

Of course, he’d been reminded of this act, along with all his other sins, at the judgment, for it was a feature of damnation that your sins were always before you—in your face—so that they could not be forgotten. Another reason he’d opened the kennel was for Brandy and Becky, an attempt to atone. Of course, it was too late.

It might have surprised those of the elect that he could feel remorse, or empathy at this time. However, the kennel master had found that the damned were much like the blessed. The difference was grace, given to Becky but denied to the kennel master and all dogs.

And then he left that old rage, a profound anger never far from his heart. It arose whenever he remembered how the Three-in-one had rejected him, how God had treated the good he’d done as mere trash. Meanwhile, God had embraced, with loving grace, millions of inferior people. Among the saved were people whom the kennel master despised.  He’d worked to ensure their exclusion from society for the common good; now he was the one rejected. The injustice of it all burned him with a fire that neither purified nor consumed, a bitter heat that would torment the kennel master forever.

#

“Halt!” cried the angel at the gate.

Becky started at the unprecedented command. Obviously getting back home was going to be more challenging than she’d anticipated.

“The Almighty is angry that you have gone out into the darkness,” the angel said. “Why must you do this?”

“Why does God keep dogs out of heaven?” Becky asked. “I don’t understand.”

“You need not understand,” the angel replied. “You need only obey; something you are not doing. God has been merciful and patient with you,” the angel continued, “but God’s patience is at an end.”

Becky remembered the last time she’d seen Brandy before the judgement. The vet had given Brandy an IV drip to put her to sleep before adding the drug to stop her heart. There had been tears from Becky and from the rest of her family, but they’d believed that Brandy would cross the rainbow bridge to a better place.

Of course, this was before the end of days, before Becky had learned that Revelation 22:15, the verse in which it was stated that dogs must eternally be outside, consigned to the outer darkness, was as inerrant as was the rest of the inerrant Holy Bible. With this memory, Becky wrestled as the angel confronted her with her act of disobedience.

“But Brandy saved my life,” Becky said with all the pleading that was within her. “She was my best companion for many years.”

“And who allowed this predator to be a friend to you?” the angel asked. “Was it not the All-mighty, the Three-in-one who made this possible? Should you not love the tool maker more than the tool? Should you not love the potter more than the clay?”

“But…” Becky asked and found that further words had fled.

“And so,” the angel said, “choose to love God or choose to love his creation that cannot be here.”

At first, Becky did not answer. She teetered on a cliff edge of internal struggle, the hardest choice she’d ever confronted. She wasn’t sure whether it was love of God as much as it was dread of the lightless heat and misery of the outer darkness that drove her decision. She only knew that there was great anguish in the making of her choice. After her heart-rending struggle, she replied, “I bow to God.”

In the time that followed, she kept herself from Brandy. When she found a fellow dog lover on the golden streets, she consoled them with as much fervency as one could, for this was the way of the blessed.

#

After days without visitors, the kennel master realized that dog-lovers could no longer visit from Heaven. This made him sad. It also gave him a problem. What would he do with the dogs? He was not a dog lover, and he did not want to hear their plaintive cries throughout eternity.

Then, one day as he picked his way through the wreck of the dark country using the cane skills he’d learned from Becky, an idea came to him.

Becky had used a dog as a guide. Maybe he could find dog-lovers among the damned who would also be interested in Becky’s type of blindness skills.

On one of Becky’s visits to the kennel, she’d confided to the kennel master that she’d only been successful in life because she’d done things that sighted folk had said were beyond her, things that blind people could not do. Her quality of life depended on defying these expectations of failure.

In that spirit, the kennel master decided to defy the expectations of the All-mighty. Yes, it was time to do the good the damned were deemed incapable of, to spite the Three-in-one once more.