May 20, 2026

Heavenly Escape
​by MN Wiggins

​A dark and twisted tale about identity, memory, and manipulation.
Truth, sometimes, can be worse than death.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.


Bullets rizzled, drowning out the obscenities as an army of Feds raided our office building. Alone in my office, and farthest away from the gunfire, I typed furiously on my desktop, deleting as many financial documents of my employers as I could. If agents breached this room before I was finished, if I just missed deleting one file, there would be a bullet just for me—and it wouldn’t be government-issued. 

I wiped the sweat from my forehead as the deletion progress painfully ticked away at its own chosen speed: seventy-five percent gone, eighty, eighty-one percent. Come on, come on. Why couldn’t they have upgraded the system when I’d asked? 

The gunfire drew closer, and I could hear doors being kicked open in the search. That meant several of our guys lay dead out there. A stray bullet pierced my office door, zipped past my head, and exploded into the wall behind me. I ducked low behind my desk, popping up every few seconds to peek at the screen like a whack-a-mole. Ninety-two percent, Ninety-four. Just a little more. 

Then it paused. An alert popped up asking if I wanted to save my work on a minimized open document. Why on Earth would I want to save a document I desperately need deleted? I reached up to click no, but my hand was enveloped in an ephemeral white glow. “No, not now!” I cried. But it was too late. My fingers passed through the mouse as if it wasn’t there. Another stray bullet whizzed through my office, but it didn’t matter now. Nothing could touch me. The progress meter stood at ninety-six percent. “Dang it, Chloe!” I yelled. “I was so close!” 

She wrapped my body in her glow, and we levitated a foot off the floor. A moment later, she pulled us backward, phasing through the wall and hovering us in the crawlspace behind.

“You couldn’t have waited thirty more seconds?”

“You’re my kick-ass, killer sister,” she replied, bear-hugging me from behind. “I can’t let you die. One dead girl’s enough for this family.”

“Just release me for a couple of moments. You don’t understand what’ll happen if I don’t delete the last of those files.”

“Sorry, Shel. Don’t blame me for your poor life choices.”

My mouth fell open. “What poor choices have I ever made?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Every little girl wants to grow up to be a CPA for organized crime.”

“Oh, please. These guys aren’t that organized, and they’re not that bad.”

Chloe huffed. “A bullet almost took off your head. You don’t exactly work for Habitat for Humanity.” She sniffed. Is that smoke?”
​
“Yeah,” I said sheepishly. “We call that Plan B. If I don’t erase all the evidence in time, they set everything on fire. Dang it, my purse is still in there. And it had my phone, my keys, my wallet. You couldn’t have given me just one more minute? I loved that purse.”
Chloe descended us through the floor and underground. We glided around rusted pipes and electrical conduits until we settled into a large sewer main. 
“Don’t you dare unmerge me here,” I warned. But she dropped me anyway. I landed on my feet in an ankle-deep brown river of who-knows-what with a splash. “Darn it, Chloe. These were my best shoes!”
She flashed a devious smile as her glowing white form levitated above the stench of infected feces that now tickled my toes. “Did you just say, ‘Darn it’? You’re a thirty-two-year-old woman, Shel. It’s okay to use an occasional swear word. Go on, try it.”
I straightened my glasses and smoothed out my conservative outfit. “I will not be made fun of. Now, take me out of here.”
She shook her finger. “You could show a little appreciation for my Guardian Angel-ing your ass out of harm’s way. Your little situation down here interrupted my party time in Heaven. Do you know what I was doing?”
I looked away and sighed. “No, but I imagine you’re going to tell me.”
“I was playing Marco Polo with Marco Polo. He’s a cute little dude.” She put a finger to her lips. “He was a little confused at first, but once I let him win, he figured it out, if you know what I mean.”
“Everyone knows what you mean, Chloe.”
I could see the gears turning in her head. “Who wears their best shoes to the office?”
I blushed. “I had a date after work.”
“Bullshit. While I totally believe you’d pick that funeral gown for a date, what I can’t believe is that A, someone asked you out, and B, you said yes. All you’ve ever done is look at numbers all day, sis. And that’s why your number is zero.”
“Just take me home, please? I need to get ready.”
“You almost got killed today, and you still want to go out?”
I waggled my head. “As you so astutely observed, I don’t get a lot of gentlemen callers. So, yes, I’m going. Can we leave now?”
“Who asked you out?”
“Just a guy I know.”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything.”
Chloe shook her head. “Nope. I smell bullshit.”
“You did drop me in a sewer.”
Her eyes narrowed, then widened. “You do have a date, don’t you?”
I tossed up my hands. “Yes! Can we leave now?”
“Holy shit, you’re paying someone, aren’t you? Shelly Dumont, look me in the eye and tell me you did not hire some gigolo to deflower you.”
I folded my arms. “I did no such thing.”
“Girl, that’s messed up. And sad, even for you. Why can’t you get that shit for free? We’re twins, so you’re obviously hot enough. Is it because your personality is so off-putting? Or your zero fashion sense? And most days, you don’t smell particularly nice. And why do you wear glasses? I don’t have to wear glasses.”
I closed my eyes. “Could you please stop? And you don’t wear glasses because you’re dead. Dead people don’t require corrective lenses.”
She smiled. “Do you think once the gigolo meets you, he’ll give you a discount—or charge you double?”
I bent down to grab a handful of brown sludge to sling at her, but thought the better of it. It’d pass right through her anyway. “You are so mean. And for your information,” my voice lowered into a whisper, “I’ve had sex before.”
Chloe’s back straightened. “No, you haven’t. I would’ve known. There would have been banners all over Heaven. They would’ve read, ‘Local girl finally gets some. Corncob fully dislodges from her ass. Film at eleven.’”
“You are so terrible. Why do you make fun of me? Just because I don’t go around jumping into bed with Ben Franklin?”
“Hey!” Chloe snapped back. “Don’t pick on Ben. That dude invented the kite.”
“No,” I replied, pushing my glasses up. “He flew a kite doing an electricity experiment.”
“Yeah? Well, I did not jump into bed with him—at least not alone.” She grinned. “Benny’s a non-starter unless it’s a threesome.”
I stamped my foot and immediately regretted the splash. “I never thought I’d say this, but I refuse to stand in a sewer and listen to the sexual preferences of our nation’s forefathers. Now, take me home. I need a shower.”
Chloe shook her head. “You say you’ve lost your virginity. I want details.”
I sighed. “It was eight years ago, okay? His name was Steve. Happy?”
“That’s it? Where did this guy work?”
“What difference does it make where he worked?”
“Oh, it makes all the difference. Come on, Shel. I can wait here an eternity.”
I mumbled unintelligibly.
“I can’t hear you.”
“I said, he worked at Splitsville. Can we leave now?”
Chloe laughed hysterically. “You schlepped a dude from the bowling alley?”
“He had great hair.”
She laughed harder and drifted upward. 
“Wait, where are you going? Aren’t you going to take me out of here?”
 “I’ve gotta go tell Betsy Ross. She’s gonna laugh her ass off. Besides, this place smells like a sewer.”
And with that, my sister and her Heavenly glow disappeared. I stood alone in darkness, wondering where in the city I was, which direction to go, and what just swam past my foot. Awesome.
***
A few hours later, I felt my way up a ladder and out through a manhole cover. Yes, they’re as heavy as they look. With my keys lost in the fire, I begged my apartment manager to unlock my door, which she hurriedly did to get the smell out of the hallway. 
A very long shower later, I put on a clean bathrobe, grabbed some popcorn, and plopped on the couch to watch my favorite movie, Hot Tub Time Machine. I didn’t technically lie to Chloe. My date just happened to be with Clark Duke, who was on my TV and didn’t care what outfit I’d chosen. Real-life dating was overrated anyway. I’m sure it only led to disappointment and loss. I’d already experienced enough loss to last a lifetime.
All in all, I suppose my life was just like everyone else’s—everyone who worked for criminals, lived in fear of relationships, and was frequently visited by her dead twin sister. I really didn’t expect life to turn out this way. Aside from my current employment history, deep down I’m a rules follower. I thought I’d have more in my life by thirty-two than a tiny apartment and three dead plants that apparently required water. Besides, Chloe was the reason I ever got into trouble.
She was the baby of the family, born two minutes after me. And while I was a model child, if there was a rule to break, a bad idea to be had, or a cabinet to be climbed to reach a forbidden cookie, Chloe couldn’t resist. And she always had to drag me along.
Then that day came. We were six-years-old and lived in a big house with a pool. Dad was a hedge fund manager, and Mom, well, you couldn’t expect her to watch us every minute of the day. 
We were forbidden to go near the pool without supervision, and that’s all the encouragement my sister needed. We were playing dolls on the pool’s edge that day when Chloe announced that she knew how to swim. I said she couldn’t and that we should leave before we got into real trouble. That’s all it took. 
Chloe climbed up on the diving board and jumped. I screamed and stretched for her as she struggled, but she was out of reach. I ran for Mom as fast as I could, but by the time we returned, Chloe had gone to Heaven.
She was dead, and it was all my fault. I knew because that’s what my mother told me, over and over. And six months after Chloe died, Mom was gone, too. She scheduled an early-life check-out time and joined her favorite daughter. 
Dad sent me to therapy to cope with the loss, but I didn’t need it. Chloe came back from Heaven not two weeks after she’d died and kept me company. She made me promise not to tell anyone, and I kept our secret. She helped me all the time. For example, she told me how to play pranks on my teachers at school, convinced me to release our class hamster back out into the wild, and taught me how to make a proper fist to punch girls who picked on me. And she told me all about Heaven and how much fun it was.
I asked her lots of questions, like how it felt to be a ghost. And Chloe, being Chloe, instead of telling me, gave me a huge hug, merging us until we were a ghost together. She explained that she really wasn’t supposed to come down here to see me, but that sneaking out of Heaven was easy as pie because who would want to leave? It was sneaking back in that was the tricky part. But if anyone could slip past Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates, it was my sister. And she was good at it, appearing over and over as I grew up, always matching my age to make me feel better, and always appearing when I needed her most. I never asked if Mom was in Heaven with her, and Chloe never mentioned her. I suspected Mom had gone to that other place, and thought I’d feel bad for her, but strangely never did.
As you might imagine, Chloe’s ideas got me kicked out of several expensive private schools over the years. Dad always fumed after being summoned to a meeting with the Headmaster. But the very last time that I got called to the office over a Chloe shenanigan, Dad wasn’t there. I was sixteen and was told, in the usual fashion, that my presence at the school was no longer required. But I was also informed that my father had been arrested for insider trading. The government froze our assets, and a social worker placed me in a small town with my diabetic, alcoholic, Aunt Cathy, who proceeded to die eight months later.
I didn’t much like foster care after that, so I left for the city, where I got a job, earned my GED, and ultimately put myself through college to become a CPA. It wasn’t easy. I worked hard to ignore most of the stupid things Chloe wanted me to do. 
Next thing you know, I’m a thirty-two-year-old virgin working in a back room for bad people. Yeah, I lied about Steve. Oh, and now I’m unemployed. And possibly on a hit list if anyone makes bail. At least I still have Clarke Duke.
“Ha!” Chloe said, suddenly appearing in my living room and blocking my view of Hot Tub Time Machine. “I knew you didn’t have a date. I’ll bet you lied about big-hair Steve, too.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
I cocked my head. “Why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be in a four-way with Cher, Genghis Khan, and Bon Jovi?”
“Oh, please. Half those people are still alive. But, I guess a dead girl can always dream. Look, can I crash here a while?”
I could tell by her voice that she was hiding something. “You’re a ghost who lives in Heaven, which, according to you, is all sex and drinking games. Why do you want to hang out in my crappy little apartment?”
“Can’t I just want some hang time with my kick-ass killer sister?”
“No. What’s up?”
Her shoulders slumped. “They might have caught on to my sneaking in and out of Heaven. There’s this small opening in the Pearly Gates that only I know about.”
“Well, God is all-knowing, so I’d imagine He knows.”
Chloe snapped her fingers. “Yes, exactly! And if the Big Guy’s cool with it, I don’t know why these other dudes were like, ‘You can never return.’ Because it’s like, never is a really long time.”
I sat upright on the couch. “Wait, you got kicked out of Heaven, just because you were comforting your sister on Earth?’
“I know, right? You’d think that would give me bonus points or something. Maybe extra time in the Cabana Room. Oh, do I have stories about that place. Once, I was playing Twister with Ponce de León, and the next thing I knew . . .”
I wiped a tear as I stood. “I can’t believe you got kicked out of Heaven for me. Come here.” I stretched my arms wide, and we embraced into a glowing specter, hovering a few feet above my rug. It was in that tender moment that the Police broke down my door.
They couldn’t see Chloe, and before she could hide me in the wall, I was face down in cuffs and hauled away. In retrospect, Habitat for Humanity might have been a better choice.
***
I sat handcuffed to a steel table bolted to the floor in an interrogation room. They really do look like the ones on TV. I wondered how long I’d be in here before Chloe rescued me. A young, clean-shaven man entered, sat across from me, and began typing on a laptop. He had nice hair. Under different circumstances . . . 
“Do you know why you’re here, ma’am?”
Ma’am? I thought. How old does he think I am? I pretended to cough as I subtly leaned and sniffed my pits. Chloe was right. I didn’t smell great. “I think it’s obvious, detective. I’m the CPA for the organization the Feds raided this morning. Let me guess. They’re on the other side of that mirror?” I waved at them in my cuffs and then looked back at the cute detective who reminded me of a young Craig Robinson from my movie. “Ask whatever you want, but I’ve done nothing wrong. I did everything by the book.”
Without a word, Detective Robinson closed his laptop and stepped out. I sat alone on a metal chair for three hours, wondering why Chloe hadn’t appeared. There had to be a good reason. Finally, Detective Robinson returned with his partner, a no-nonsense, seasoned detective who reminded me of CCH Pounder from The Shield. She looked at me with soft eyes. “Ma’am, are you Shelly Dumont?”
“Yes. Shelly Dumont of Dumont Accounting, LLC.” 
Robinson, whom I noticed was not wearing a wedding ring, typed on his laptop for a few moments, then looked at Detective Pounder and shook his head.
“Miss Dumont, there is no Dumont Accounting licensed in this state.”
My back stiffened. “That’s absurd. I’ve been in business for five years.”
Detective Pounder blinked. “You mentioned you worked for an organization under investigation. What organization would that be?”
I sighed. None of this mattered. I didn’t know what was keeping Chloe, but she would surely appear once I was alone again. My bottom was sore from the chair, and the cuffs were starting to chafe. They had nothing on me. I’d kept the books by the book, and any evidence to the contrary was up in smoke. Plus, I kind of had to pee. So, I cut to the chase. “I know what’s going on here. You’ll try to scare me with some sort of threat of prison time, which will magically disappear if I testify. But you know they’ll kill me if I do. What are you offering, witness protection?”
The detectives looked at each other. Pounder leaned forward. “Miss Dumont, who exactly do you believe you need protection from?”
I shook my head. “You know it’s the Bridges Family.”
“And you’re their CPA?”
“You know all this. Look, I will testify, okay? But I expect to be protected around the clock. Somewhere nice—with decent WiFi. Now, if you two would like to step out and discuss it, I’m sure I’ll be here when you get back.”
But they didn’t budge. “And where is your office?”
“Corner of Maple and 16th. Which you already know.”
Detective Pounder nodded at Robinson, who turned his laptop around. It was a screenshot of my office just before the raid. My cheap bastard dickhead employers had apparently installed a security camera to keep tabs on me. Chloe was right. Swearing was fun.
Detective Robinson pointed at the screen. “Ma’am, is this you in the frame?”
“You know it is.”
He nodded hesitantly. “Ma’am, this is Bridges Family Furniture Outlet, and, to our knowledge, not a criminal enterprise. There was no raid this morning. According to the store manager, you are not employed there. However, she reports catching you using the computer in the employee break room on several occasions, as shown here, and has politely asked you not to return.” 
He pushed play. “Here you are typing on the computer before you back away and stand against the wall. You appear to be talking to someone.”
“Who are you speaking with, Miss Dumont?” Pounder asks.
“A friend,” I replied, which wasn’t a lie.
Pounder nods. “But you’re alone, and I don’t see any ear buds.”
“I had it on speaker phone.”
Pounder shook her head. “The audio on the tape is clear. No one is answering you, and we see no phone. Who do you believe you’re talking to, Miss Dumont?”
“No one. You make me sound crazy.”
Pounder puts a hand on top of mine. “No one’s saying that, honey. But sometimes, things can be confusing.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I was talking to myself. People do that, don’t they?”
“Yes, they do. But they don’t do this.” She nodded at Robinson to advance the tape. 
We watched as I pulled a bottle of lighter fluid from my purse, sprayed the desk, and lit a small fire. It was like watching a stranger with my face. Then, my body jerked and walked backwards to the back door as if I were possessed. We watched as I backed out into the alley behind the building.
Robinson clicked a button. “This is a street camera that shows you sliding your feet as if on roller skates as you proceed to the next street, where you remove a manhole cover, descend into the sewer, and twenty minutes later reemerge and wander away.”
My eyes went wild. “What is this tape? That is not what happened. Bullets came through the wall. Bridges’s men started that fire. I swear.”
Pounder gave her best effort at a compassionate look. “The employees were able to extinguish the fire before any real damage was done. You’re lucky no one was injured. What were you hoping to achieve, Miss Dumont? Were you upset they’d asked you to leave? Is that why you tried to burn down the store?”
I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. “This is all bullshit.” Where the hell was Chloe?
Robinson’s eyes saddened as he looked at Pounder. “What do you think, doctor?”
She nodded and leaned forward. “I’ve pulled some background on you, Shelly. You lost your sister and mother in a short time span when you were just a little girl. You had disciplinary problems all through school, and when your father went to prison, you moved in with his sister, who passed away shortly after that. After your father was paroled, he came to live with you but died only a few months later. It seems you’ve experienced a lot of loss in your life.”
Detective Robinson raised an eyebrow. “It also seems people die when you’re around, Miss Dumont.”
Doctor Pounder waved him off. “You’re going to come stay with us for a while, Shelly. We’ve got some issues to unpack, but don’t worry. We’ll have plenty of time.”
***
Several days after my transfer, I lay in a locked room on my bed, staring at the ceiling. Why had Chloe abandoned me? This wasn’t like her. Had the Heaven Police caught her? And who made that video footage? Any way you looked at it, I was screwed. 
Chloe finally appeared. “Damn girl, I knew you were crazy boring, but they lock you up for that shit?”
I sprang to my feet. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been here for days!”
She smiled. “Swearing already. Prison life has changed you.”
“What took you so long?”
“I do have an afterlife, you know. I was with James Dean at his lake cabin. That man is all kinds of cool. You can’t rush that.”
“Let’s merge and get going.” I opened my arms. “They’ll be here any minute to take me to group.”
But instead of embracing me, Chloe floated down as if sitting on my bed. “Have you figured out what’s really going on here?”
It was a fair question, and one I’d racked my brain to figure out. “At first, I thought the Police were on the Bridges’s payroll. Locking me away as insane ties up a loose end. And that fake video gives them all they need. Then, I considered it could be the Feds. What if they saw me phase into the wall with you? They have the resources to give the local PD a fake tape, have me committed, and later quietly transfer me to a different kind of facility at an undisclosed location, the kind people never return from.”
Chloe’s eyes widened. “Wow. Didn’t take you long to dive down the conspiracy rabbit hole, huh? Have you considered the third option?”
“What third option?”
“That the tape is real.”
My sister loved tormenting me almost as much as she loved playing hero. That’s what sisters often do, but this was not the time, and my patience was wearing thin. “Stop screwing around and get me out of here!”
She smiled, but didn’t budge. “Think about it, killer. Maybe this place is exactly where you should be. I mean, after all the things you’ve done.”
“I’ve never done anything in my life,” I huffed. “Certainly nothing compared to what you’ve done in your afterlife, screwing both Wright brothers behind the other’s back.”
“It’s not a competition, Shel. But as long as we’re listing our greatest hits, let’s start with Mom. You cried yourself to sleep every night she put you to bed and whispered that my death was your fault.”
“What about it?”
Chloe shrugged. “Who took her milk the night she supposedly offed herself?”
“I did, but only because you said it’d make her feel better.”
She nodded. “And I also told you that crushing up all those pills, putting them into her glass, and stirring it really well would make her never speak to you that way again. And it worked, didn’t it?”
My mouth hung open. “I didn’t do that. That’s not what happened.”
“Sure, you did. And when you couldn’t sleep night after night because of Aunt Kathy’s freight train snoring, who told you how to adjust the doses in her injections to make that go away, too?”
“Stop it, Chloe. This isn’t funny.”
“And then there was dear old Dad, the family ex-con. Couldn’t get a job and wanted to live off your piddly little salary. But that was never going to work. Wonder what was in that coffee you made him every morning?”
“I didn’t kill any of them. Why are you tormenting me with these lies?”
“Because that’s what we do.”
And there it was. I had killed three people. Chloe was right. I did deserve to be locked up. But why couldn’t I remember? And the way I’d moved on that tape. There was only one explanation. “You possessed me. You bitch.”
“Oh, please. I didn’t possess you. Haven’t you ever seen a movie? Clearly, only Catholics can get possessed. You did those things. Not me.”
I covered my face. “This is all a bad dream. I can’t be a killer. I’m a freaking CPA!”
Chloe laughed. “CPA, my ass. You didn’t even go to college.”
I wiped my eyes and shook my finger. “Oh, yes, I did. It may have been a community college, but I worked hard and graduated in three years.”
“Sorry, sis. In reality, you were on the janitorial staff at a junior college for three years until they fired you. You didn’t go to class. You scrubbed toilets.”
Tears streamed down my face. “I don’t understand.”
Chloe nodded. “I know. You see, the only ghost power we have is the ability to whisper ideas in your head. We can make you see the world however we wish. Believe whatever we want. The only trick is that the living must secretly desire to see and believe it that way, too. Think of all the people who believe something despite all the evidence to the contrary. And no one is better at that than you, Shel. You’re the queen of self-deception.”
A fire sparked in my eyes. “You’re horrible. How the hell did they ever let you into Heaven?”
She shrugged. “They didn’t. When I died, I had so much hate in my heart that Heaven turned its back on me, which was fine, because they have this stupid no-revenge policy that wouldn’t have worked for me anyway. So, I headed south for warmer weather. You know, to work on my tan.”
I folded my arms. “So, you’re what, some sort of demon?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Shel. You don’t automatically become a demon. You have to apply, fill out endless forms, pass a background check, and then, if you’re lucky, get an audition.” Her eyes lit up. “The best part is, you’re my audition. Based on how things turn out here, I might actually get the job. So, help a sister out, would you? Now, so far, you’re doing great, but I’m going to need you to confess to the murders. And once we wrangle a death sentence, I’ll make you decline all appeals. We’re going to throw such a party for you down there the day they snuff you out. Everyone’s looking forward to meeting you. Isn’t that exciting?”
“To Hell with you, Chloe!” I shoved a finger at her. “I’ll never let you manipulate me again. I’m telling everyone about you.”
“I’m buried so deep in your head that I’m a part of you, sis. You can’t stop me. And if you want to tell everyone in a psychiatric facility that your dead sister made you do all those horrible things, go ahead. I can’t wait to see what happens. In fact, I’ll post about it on our social media down there. Think of all the followers I’ll get.”
I fell to my knees. “Why? You’re my sister. What did I ever do to you?”
“Golly, sis. I just couldn’t say. I mean, I feel like we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if you hadn’t held my head under water until I drowned.”

                                                                         💀💀💀

MN Wiggins is an internationally published novelist, surgeon, professor, and voice actor from the American South whose short stories have been performed on multiple podcasts and published in several magazines. His narration credits include The Night’s End podcast and Thirteen. Dr. Wiggins’s latest novel, El Dorado, is available through Solstice Publishing. His complete works may be found at www.MNWiggins.com 
​