Utopia (A Hilson Fanfiction)

I

Heaven is a horrible concept for the dying man. Wilson once read a book on it. It was very short, and very illiterate - he could have sworn that it was a meta written by a ninth grader about death.

Its title was something along the lines of, "Managing Grief in Terminal Patients With the Help of the Lord," and although Wilson was a great (agnostic) grief counselor - hell, is - he picked it up and read all two hundred and twenty three pages in one go. House chastised him when he found the book, hiding under a chair.

It said some useless stuff about the Lord, asking for absolution, amnesty. How there was something beyond this life, something to look forward to. Golden streets and your loved ones and those in touch with God, all praising him in this glorious ruby palace, a spiritual ecstasy rippling through the crowds. (Of course, Wilson would later admit to himself that he'd rather spend his time skydiving and watching reality television and fucking/fucking with House.)

This man wrote about heaven like it was some magnificent truth. He wasn't even a Jew, so he said some crap about Jesus that Wilson didn't really believe, and when he was done with the book he threw it under the chair because it made him so goddamn angry he could hardly think.

Heaven wouldn't stop him from drowning in his own lungs. Religion wouldn't keep his lunch down, and God wouldn't keep his heartbeat steady as it fluttered into cessation. There was nothing about heaven that appealed to Wilson, besides the fact that it wasn't hell. That book didn't manage his grief, or even cauterize the anxiety. It perpetuated it. It made Wilson freeze up and pray to Jehovah that there was no heaven, or if there was, that He'd spare him of it. Send him to the place with the darkness, eternal emptiness.

He figures that's better than the alternative: fear. Of everything. He'd wake up in the morning and know that judgement was coming soon, with no comfort in the knowledge, like an inmate about to be admitted or put on death row. There is no positive, only a lesser of two evils that Wilson can't choose between. Somehow, the presence of a higher power doesn't comfort him like it should. He should be going to the synagogue. Celebrating the Sabbath and holding Jewish parties and communions and lighting his menorah that's currently rotting deep inside a closet. Instead he wakes up and he makes cereal and pushes it away because he doesn't feel like eating, and then he goes to brush his teeth and he notices how concave and haggard he looks in the mirror, yet is too fatigued to anything about it.

But then - utopia.

What of that? What if, when Wilson dies, there's a shining light and mix of chemicals and then he's reawakened in a small seaside house on the coast of Italy? And House is there, and he's making them coffee in their one bedroom home and he doesn't have a limp and Wilson can't quite remember why that's important, but he doesn't care; he doesn't care at all. What if he dies, and only then can he be happy?

It scares Wilson, honestly: heaven, hell.

Utopia.