after life, part five

Antje looked down at some sort of scale. “Fuckity fuck fuck,” she said, “we’re going to be short again. There isn’t enough.”

“Great, as if we weren’t in enough shit already,” Erich chimed in.

They were responsible for this farm. Thousands of cows with thousands of workers. Milking away. They literally stood in cow dung that came up to their ankles.

“Any chance we could fudge the numbers? “ Erich continued, “When was the last time we…”

“Fudge the numbers?” Antje interrupted, “Are you out of your mind? What if someone notices? What if an angel does an audit? Or worse, what if God is looking? Are you willing to take on that responsibility on behalf of all these people? We’ll all suffer for this.”

“We’ll suffer if we’re short, and we suffer if we lie. What are the odds?”

“I am not in the mood to play the odds. We’ve played the odds before and we have the scars to show for it.”

“We can try and recruit extra help.”

“Who will come here now? We don’t have the time to recruit people anyway.”

“Well, I spoke to the guys at the rooms not too long ago. They said they’d see what they could do.”

“Oh? Who did you speak to? I hope not to the Buddhists. There’s nothing more useless in hell than a Buddhist,” Anjte said with a slight smirk. The type of smirk that tried to balance itself between truth, humour and some sense of impending doom.

“No no. I spoke to almost everyone else, the Muslims, Christians, Hindus, atheists, agnostics. And a whole bunch more. I don’t know if any will come through.”

“Hmmm, but if they do we might be in good shape. Maybe.”

“Maybe.”

“But here we are now. And here we are still.”

“Still, it’s better than handling bees.”

“That it is,” Antje looked back down at the scale, “That it is.”