The Quarantine Onion

 

"Quarantined Onion June 2020" by Jeffrey Randolph Bond. Mr Bond will be the featured artist next Tuesday.

A man rolled over one morning and found that he had slipped his mortal coil.

As he awakened, he found himself in a vast crowd of people. Scanning, he noticed that he was in a huge pit surrounded by 12' high walls.

Being a man of some importance, he elbowed his way to the side of the pit. Somehow, he was prescient and realized that the man above him was Saint Peter.

"Let me out of here" the important man commanded.

St Pete stroked his beard and asked, "What evidence do you present that you are fit to enter heaven?" Clearly, newly on-boarded souls were kept in some kind of quarantine before they were allowed into heaven.

"I gave a poor man a meal the day before I died" the important man claimed.

"You gave him an onion" St Pete corrected him.

"Well, yes. It was an onion" the man admitted.

"Did it look like THIS one?" St Pete asked, holding forth the very onion the rich man had given the beggar.

Gulping, the rich man said..."Yes".

"Let's see if an old shriveled and rotten onion is enough to lift your soul into heaven" St Pete suggested. And then, holding the onion by the bulb, he lowered the onion to just within the man's reach, should he jump his highest.

Leaping, the rich man was just barely able to grab the very tip of the onion.

Ever-so-slowly, St Pete started to draw the man up into heaven. It wasn't much of an onion but then a soul does not weigh very much.

As the rich man's soul was being lifted up, other souls...thousands of them...saw what was happening and rushed to grab on to the rich man's legs.

Cursing, the man kicked at them. The tip of the shoot he was holding was connected to the bulb by the most tenuous of fibers and he could feel it flexing as he swayed under the impact of the tide of souls.

Then he began bellowing "Let go! Let go! Dammit all!"

St Pete said "OK" and released the onion. And the thousands fell back into the pit.

(Incidentally, I heard this is a story from my maternal grandmother, less the "dammit all". A million thanks to Mr Bond for the evocative picture he painted.)