"Holly Lisle - Sympathy for the Devil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

he and his most recent girlfriend had flashed out of existence before
they’d had a chance to know what happened to them.
And right now, Dayne thought, down in Hell, someone was
torturing Torry.
She stood in the center of that room, thinking of the pain she
inflicted—and the fact that she inflicted it as gently and quickly as
she could, and of the fact that it ended—that no matter how badly
she hurt the people she cared for, their pain ended. Dr. Batskold
couldn’t make them live forever, even though he tried. Sooner or
later they would die and escape.
Torry couldn’t escape. And when the universe blew out of
existence and all of Time came to an end, someone would still be
torturing Torry.
He’d been twenty-four when he died—young and beautiful and
foolish. His fundamentalist parents had jammed religion down his
throat until he’d thrown it up; he’d come to despise churches and
religion and everything he connected with them, and his life had
been one big attempt to spit in God’s eye. Dayne had loved him
anyway—not wisely, but with her whole heart.
In spite of everything, she still loved him—and for four years,
she’d gotten up every morning and gone to bed every night, thinking
of Torry in Hell.
This day, this hellish day that had come hard on the heels of a
week of hellish days, had brought thoughts of Torry to the front of
her mind, and heated up her anger until she couldn’t hold it in
anymore.
She looked up toward Heaven, and with her eyes wide open, she
said, “Okay, God. I’ve had it. I’ve thought about this until I can’t
stand to think about it anymore, and now we’re going to have to do
something about it. You said that whatever we asked of you, if we
had faith, you would give to us.” She took a deep breath, and her
hands clenched into fists.
“Hell is all wrong. You claim that we have free choice—the choice
to love you or not, to follow you or not. But there isn’t any choice to
it. If a thief held a gun to my head and told me to give him my car
keys or he’d kill me, I’d give him my keys . . . but nobody would say
I did so of my own free will. And if he stuck the same gun to my
head and told me to love him or else, I might pretend to love him . . .
at least until I got hold of the gun.
“You’re holding a gun to our heads, God. You’re saying ‘Love me
or writhe in torment for eternity’ and eternal torment is a pretty
damned big gun for anything a person could do in eighty years.
“You claim to be a God of love. I say that only a sadistic, spoiled
child would torture someone for eternity, no matter what reason he
had.”
She exhaled slowly, and her eyes narrowed. “You said ask and
believe. So now I’m asking. Let them have the chance to repent,
God. All of them. Every single soul in Hell. Let them have the
chance to learn from the mistakes they made; let them into Heaven
if they repent.