[WP] When you die, you are presented with a staircase to heaven, with each sin adding a step to your staircase. Your staircase is as tall as Everest.

I stepped out of my body like a cartoon character. The street, illuminated by my remaining working headlight, was covered in a carpet of shattered glass. Off in the ditch across the road I could see the car I hit. More disturbingly, I could hear the cries of children coming from the wreck.

But my attention was entirely focused on the stairs. They hadn't been there moments ago when I'd come speeding around this curve. Yet here they were. Made out of solid marble with a gold railing. I walked over my own corpse toward the first step and touched it with one finger; it was cool to the touch, and certainly solid. As soon as I touched it, a chain appeared around my neck with a slender silver key looped around the end. Words also appeared on the stair: Coveted thy neighbor, 1/5/1986. The next stair up said: Took the lord's name in vain, 9/15/2014. The list of sins didn't seem to be in any particular order, but I knew that it would go on for some time.

Sirens wailed in the distance: ambulances, firetrucks, cop cars. The first officer on scene quickly stooped to put a hand to my neck and shook his head at his partner. Then they ran over to the other car to see if there were survivors to be helped. They pulled out the mangled body of a little girl, not even six years old. She squirmed in her blood-stained dress. Not dead yet, but she'd be seeing her own staircase within minutes unless the ambulance arrived soon.

I got started up the stairs. It's not like I could help, and I wasn't really in the mood to watch anymore. Dying had really killed my buzz, and I wasn't in the mood to see the consequences of my actions while stone-cold sober. Hopefully there's booze in heaven, I thought to myself. Not that I'd expected to be rewarded with eternal bliss after all that I'd done, but the stairs leading upward were a pretty good indication that at least it wouldn't be the fire-and-brimstone fate.

Soon enough the earth below vanished and I was lost in a pea-soup of nebulous clouds. Ahead of me, the stairs stretched on forever, further than I could see. Behind me, they vanished after a dozen or so steps, leaving a dangerous precipice. Out of curiousity, I walked back down to see what was there. No going back, I thought to myself as I stared behind me into the empty void. I briefly wondered what would happen if I fell, but decided not to find out. Best case scenario was crashing back down to Earth; worst case was going further.

I saw something through the clouds as I walked. It grew more and more obvious as I got closer: there was another staircase that joined up with mine. They intersected up ahead, not too far. And once I was almost at the top, I realized that there was someone else on the other set of stairs. He had a grizzled beard and a buzz cut, with a square jaw that was practically cut out of granite. Would have been handsome, if not for all the scars running up and down the left side of his face. It took me a second to realize that one of his legs was prosthetic. And I noticed that he had a key around his neck just like mine.

We met up at the landing at the same time almost as if we'd planned it. We nodded at each other. I hadn't really realized how tired I was until I stopped for a moment. "You know how far this goes?" he asked. At the same time, he reached down to adjust the strap of his prosthetic leg. "This thing is killing me."

"Sorry. No idea," I told him. I took a deep breath and took another step. No sense in standing around. "See you at the top," I told him. He didn't answer, so I headed up the stairs. I wasn't in the mood for company anyway. As soon as I got a dozen steps ahead of him, he vanished into the fog and the steps were gone.

I ran into others along my journey when our staircases merged. First, A middle-aged woman who looked like she hadn't gone up a set of stairs in twenty years. She took up nearly the whole stairs, so I had to squeeze my way around her. Sweat was pouring down her cheeks, and she was gasping for breath along the way. It made me wonder if you could have a heart attack and die in the afterlife.

Next up, another young guy, just like me. His long straight hair was nearly down to his shoulders, but that's about all I could see of him because he was sitting down on the stairs sobbing into his hands.

"You OK, man?" I asked.

He looked up; his eyes were swollen and puffy. I wondered how long he'd been here. Time seemed to have lost all meaning. I couldn't even remember how long I had been climbing. "I shouldn't have done it," he croaked. It was only then that I noticed a rope burn around his neck, and understood that it was self-inflicted. He wasn't wearing the chain with his key, but it dangled from one of his hands.

"Errr... sorry," I said, not quite sure what I was supposed to do. If he wanted forgiveness, he should get moving up the stairs. That's what God was for, right? Judging us and all that? I followed my own advice and continued past him.

My final encounter was with an old lady, even dressed in a nun's habit, for Christ's sake. Behind her were only seven steps, and then solid ground. I stopped, having already forgotten what the earth looked like. And I was even more stunned when I glanced up the stairs and saw that the end was in sight. A door, large enough to swallow my whole house, loomed over us. I'd been staring at my feet for so long that I hadn't even realized it had come into view.

"Is that what I think it is?" she asked in a frail voice. She was holding a hand up to her neck, clutching not just at her silvery key, but a wooden crucifix as well. Kiss ass, I thought to myself, which made me smirk a bit. It probably added another step to my staircase, but who cares? What's one more after fifty thousand or so?

"It better be!" I told her. "I've had a long walk!"

I charged up the rest of the steps, forgetting everything else. I left the old nun in my dust and started jumping two steps at a time, not even reading the sins on them anymore. Finally I was close enough where I could count down. Eighteen steps! I sucked in air, ignorning my burning lungs. Ten steps! Eight steps! Six steps! Four steps. I slowed down, savoring the end of the journey. Three steps. Two steps. Then, at last, the final stair. One more step, and my feet landed on a soft cloud in front of the door. My legs felt wobbly, threatening to collapse at any moment.

I tried the handle, but the door was locked. Of course, I thought, remembering the key around my neck. I ripped it off and thrust it to toward the keyhole... only to realize that there were five keyholes. And when I turned around, the stairs were gone.