s Real and Looks Suspiciously Like a Certain Theme Park in Orlando, Florida
by Brilliant Building / Published by Brilliant Building
Copyright 2014 Brilliant Building
DISCLAIMER
This is a work of fiction, but just like Heaven, there are many aspects of it that are real.
Will and Jada Smith were used to sympathy, their mother having suddenly died the previous year, but Will, being the younger sibling, was used to just a bit more sympathy than Jada, being about the age where everyone expected her to act like an adult while still treating her like a child. Their father, William Pinkett Smith, Sr., being a child-like idiot, also attracted more than his fair share of sympathy as a helpless widow. The worst part of it was of the three of them, Jada was the closest to Mum, and so Jada was already feeling like she’d pulled the sympathy short straw.
Then Will got sick.
If the sympathy they had gotten before was a bus, what they were looking at now was a freight train of sympathy barreling down on them at pity miles an hour, but whatever sympathy coming Jada’s way from that point on was really sympathy for Will. “Your little brother is sick? How awful!” That sort of thing. The worst thing about it was Will looked absolutely fine, which made everyone say things like, “oh, what a trooper!” Jada wanted to roll her eyes, but she could just imagine what people would say about the cold-hearted sister with the bad attitude. It really couldn’t get any worse.
Then it got worse.
Visiting Will in the hospital was bad enough. Gift baskets and flowers and stuffed animals were slowly turning Will’s partition into an unkempt jungle of well wishes. Of course Will Sr. was too distraught to take care of things so it was up to Jada to write thank you notes, water flowers, clean out dead ones, and when Will Sr. broke his only pair of glasses sitting on them, Jada ended up being everyone’s chauffeur. This wasn’t the bad part.
This was the bad part.
Here it comes:
Will sat up when they entered the room. “Dad! Sis! I have something incredible to tell you!” Will paused to catch his breath, even though he wasn’t out of breath. He just paused to catch another breath anyway. “I saw Heaven!”
Dad was as credulous as Sis was incredulous. This gulf in belief was to widen tenfold by what Will said next: “... and it looked exactly like Walt Disney World!”
Will said this in a bright, animated voice, not unlike that of a cartoon character in a Walt Disney Production. “A HEALTHY cartoon character,” thought Sis as she mentally rolled her eyes while struggling to keep her actual eyes in an expression that wasn’t too obviously dismissive. This struggle made her eyes quiver in a way that made her look like she wanted to know more, and there was, indeed, more to know.
“... and you know who I saw there? Mom!”
This was it! Jada couldn’t take anymore. She stormed out of the room with a face getting redder and redder. Dad thought Jada was overcome with the good news that Mum was in Heaven and went out to hug her.
“Finally, our long nightmare is over!” Without his glasses, Will Smith Sr. had mistaken a nurse for Jada. Nurse Wynn Ratchet’s nightmare was just beginning; her biggest fear was being hugged by strangers. She had just last week attempted to get over this fear with a bout of exposure therapy, which was terminated by her therapist over tears as they found that exposing Nurse Ratchet to hugs did not cure of her phobia; it simply made it much, much worse.
News in their podunk town always spread fast, but none could recall news spreading faster than the news of the boy who had seen Heaven (and the incidental revelation of its resemblance to Disney World). Will was interviewed by school reporters, the local free weekly, several morning zoo DJs, absurdly all in the space of a few days, and all throughout what should have been an exhausting process, Will looked happier and healthier with every escalation of attention that was brought to him.
The opposite was true for Jada. She began having problems with her jaw from it being clenched so hard and so often when her fellow classmates would barrage her with questions about Will and his fantastic vision. Throughout all of these interactions was the unspoken question why Jada herself was not also blessed with such a vision, and its accompanying unspoken but totally assumed-to-be-correct answer: that Jada was not worthy of such a thing and that it was she who deserved to be sick, not Will. Jada had taken to eating alone at lunch to avoid it all, but her foul mood had spoiled her appetite. Also, Will Smith Sr. was an awful preparer of sandwiches, which he blamed on being in mourning, but it was Will Smith Sr. who insisted on preparing the sandwiches in tribute to their dead mother, who, unbeknownst to Will Smith Sr., often just gave the children $10, because she, too, shared a genetic predisposition to making terrible sandwiches.
Jada did, in fact, started having dreams about their departed Mum, but would dare not tell anyone about them, because they were all freakish nightmares of Mum standing in an inky void with her back turned to Jada, always out of reach.
So while Jada began to look and feel sicker and sicker while her supposedly sick brother looked better than ever, the Smiths received a portentous call from Good Morning America, a show on a network that was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Heavenly palace in question. Would they like to come to their studios to tell their story? “Yes!” said Will Sr. and Will Jr. “Nay!” said Jada, but her voice was too weak at this point, and she lost the struggle for self-composure as her eyeball rolled so far back you could only see white orbs peering from a sunken skull, but no one was paying attention to her, anyway.
Of course Will Sr. had not fixed his glasses, and so it was Jada who had to drive the nine hours to New York City. Jada found the whole thing sickening; she had always wanted to see New York, but not as a part of a freakshow. Will Smith Sr., for his part, had no desire to ever step foot in New York, which he had always heard was a brutal crime den. He had missed hearing about the Disneyfication of New York under the Bloomberg regime, and thus was pleasantly surprised by every aspect of their trip. Will Smith Jr., for the entire duration of the trip, recited the lyrics to his favorite rap song about New York, “Keepin’ It Real”
I’m keepin’ it real / so real / so real / keepin’ it real / New YORRRRRRK!
I’m keepin’ it real / so real / so real / keepin’ it real / MetroCARRRRRRD!
I’m keepin’ it real / keepin’ it real New York New York New YORRRRRRK!
Will Smith Jr. didn’t remember the remaining lyrics, so he just repeated these lines over and over between sips of apple juice. Jada brought up the point several times during the trip that Will Smith Jr., being deathly ill, probably should have stayed in a hospital bed instead of rapping in the backseat of an uncomfortable car, but she could not be overheard over Junior’s awful rapping. By the end of the trip, Jada had had enough.
“This isn’t the real New York!” Jada shouted as they pulled into an exorbitantly expensive parking garage in the middle of one of the world’s largest tourist destinations. “Real New York is full of art, artists, and culture!” Jada ran out and stretched her arms at their loud and electrically expensive environment. “This is all fake, fake, FAKE!”
“You’re just hungry, Hon,” said Papa Smith. “Let’s go eat there!” He pointed at a garish sign featuring a bleach-haired hobgoblin wearing sunglasses and an expression of crazed enthusiasm. As they entered what looked to be something that had equal chances of being a restaurant or a gun shop for toddlers, a wooden arch over their heads informed them that they were entering “flavor town,” and so they collectively brea
thed a sigh of relief at not having made a rube mistake.
Will Smith Jr. was not supposed to have spicy foods, but everyone agreed that the chance to try “donkey sauce” was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and so he had just a little bit.
Will rendered his verdict to the other patrons who, like the Smiths, appeared to be composed exclusively of tourists. “This sauce,” he paused to take an unnecessary breath, “is KEEPIN IT REAL!” The other tourists whooped and carried little Will on their shoulders while chanting “U-S-A, U-S-A.” For her part, Jada actually seemed to be enjoying herself, due in no small part of Will Smith Sr. having mistakenly ordered a cocktail for her, believing it to be a fruity, nutritious beverage to restore her strength after such a long drive.
Jada watched the GMA taping from the green room, which wasn’t green, but did have a basket with an absurd bounty of healthy snacks which Jada availed herself to recuperate from yesterday’s excursion into flavor town. The appearance went well, she thought, save for the fact that they could not get Will Smith Jr. to stop rapping, this time with slightly different lyrics:
Heaven is real / so real / so real / keepin’ it real / Disney WORRRRRRRLD!
Heaven is real / so real / so real / keepin’ it real / Mickey