Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-35711173-20180531153309

HELP! My story was deleted and I honestly don't understand why. For all I can tell the guy read the first paragraph and didn't like it.

I have posted the deletion log and the story below. Where did I go wrong? What do I need to do?

--- This page has been deleted. If you are wondering why, please be sure to check out the deletion and move log for the page provided below.

11:51, May 31, 2018 MrDupin (talk | contribs) deleted page El Fantasma (Does not meet the wiki's quality standards: content was: "I waited in the alley behind Chalio's Carniciera. It was a dark January night. The rain was pouring down hard and the wind was blowing hard. It was cold and miserable. The streets were dese...) ---

El Fantasma I waited in the alley behind Chalio's Carniciera. It was a dark January night. The rain was pouring down hard and the wind was blowing hard. It was cold and miserable. The streets were deserted. The stores were all closed and the house across the alley was dark. It was the perfect night.

I hid behind the alley dumpster dressed in a green plastic poncho with cheap rain boots and RainGrip golf gloves. The dumpster reeked of rotten meat and she was late but I could afford to wait. I glanced up at the big tag on the carniciera's back wall and smiled. It was too dark to see it but I knew it was there. MS13.

Finally, a blinged Chrysler 300 pulled up and killed its motor, rolling a window down. I leaned over. "You Papa John's?"

"Oh yeah, I am the hook." She was black, fat and ugly. Not that it mattered. What mattered was that nine I could see peeking out from between her seat and the center console.

"Let's see."

"You ain't gonna run off on this plug. Give me the cash."

I fanned out thirty $100 bills in front of her. She tried to take it, but I pulled it back. "Show me the stuff."

The hand next to the gun angrily snatched out baggies of white powder. "Three z's of the very best product."

I shook my head. "How do I know it ain't baking soda?"

"I serve you the best, moises."

"You say it's good. Give me the picture."

She scowled but spooned a sample on a key. I made the big act of snorting it. It was diet coke, cut big time. She took me for a goofy little narcobeaner. It didn't matter. I nodded and passed her the money, managing to drop most of it on the floor and pedals. "Stupid Tecato," she said, bending over to pick up the money. I sliced the base of her neck open with a razor-sharp hunting knife and then plunged the knife straight down in between her neck bones and worked it back and forth hard to cut through her spine. She twitched for a minute and then was still. Nobody deals without paying their dime to the Mara Salvatrucha 13.

I looked all around but nobody was looking back. I sat her back up, took the money and her coke and silently crept down the alley. I could hear the trash truck in the distance. Right on schedule. The poncho, gloves, knife and boots went in a trash can. In minutes they would be on their way to the dump. I was El Fantasma, the ghost. I did business and vanished without a trace. I continued on to where Fat Tony was waiting and slid into the passenger seat of his BMW. "What took so long," he asked with concern.

"Mayate was on dealer minutes."

He shrugged understandingly, knowing how "Just one minute" became an hour. "Business done?"

I nodded. "Right under the tag."

Tony flashed a shark's grin. "That sent a message. Nobody muscles us." He grabbed an eight-ball size bag. "Time to celebrate, little brother." I couldn't turn down an offer like that.

As he lit up a blunt, I snorted two lines, feeling my nose and throat grow numb. As it spread to the roof of my mouth and the back of my throat I finished the bag. I began to feel that wonderful euphoria but it didn't go the way I thought. I became sleepy and short of breath. I couldn't understand what was going on. My mouth turned to powder and I was shaking in my seat and things looked dark. I tried to get out but Fat Tony held my arm and said "Sorry, little brother." The world went grey and then to black.

I wasn't where I was before. I knew that much. My eyes couldn't focus. Everything was too bright. This was the weirdest trip I had ever had. "Come this way, Mr. Camacho," said a voice behind me, not quite a man and not quite a woman's voice. His face shined like the sun, how my mother always described angels. I looked around. There were thousands of these angels crowded together and it was the light from their faces that was so bright. Besides each angel was a man or a woman in a white bathrobe. Even though their robes were spotless they seemed dirty compared to their glowing escorts.

Not even doing a dozen peyote buttons ever did anything like this. "Where am I?"

"You are dead and on the way to your afterlife."

I stopped for a moment to think as the crush of people around me pushed on. "None of this is real. I am tripping balls."

"Hurry up. Others are waiting."

My mind tried to wrap itself around what I was seeing. I closed my eyes but then the faint sound of beautiful music and a gentle garden scent overcame me. Was that a harp playing? "This isn't real. I'm in a hospital."

"The cocaine your friend Tony Padilla gave you was fentanyl and lidocaine. You died."

"Fat Tony wouldn't do that to me."

"Would you do it to him?"

I turned my face instead of answering. I had done it before when the price was right. I thought about all the times my mother and Padre Rojas warned me where I was going to but there were no lava pits or pitchforks here. This had to be heaven. "Are you an angel?"

"Yes. My name is Baruch. I serve God by guiding those who have died. Please move along."

As we followed the crowd forward beautiful music filled the air. I couldn't help see my whole life in front of me. I knew I had to be here by mistake but I couldn't let on. They must really make mistakes in heaven like in that TV show, The Good Place.

Finally, the crowd opened up and poured into a great open area. I could see glowing angels with their clients rise up and up and up until both glowed as brightly and they were lost in the clouds. Heaven really was where you played harps on the clouds. I kept my mouth shut.

Soon it was our turn. We stepped into a circle that looked like diamond and started flying up and into the clouds and the music. I waved to the masses beneath as I too began to glow. "This is so beautiful. I am really going to Heaven."

"There is a heaven and it is beautiful but nobody ever said you will go there," Baruch said as we drifted up towards the music together into thick clouds.

"But isn't this …"

"God has judged you, Pedro Camacho. God is merciful and just to all and so he can't allow your hate and violence to spill into Heaven. Even here, even after you died, you tried to cheat and trick your way."

"Please have mercy! I don't want to go to Hell."

"You aren't going anywhere, ever. Because of God's promise to abolish death, you had to be raised but He judged you as unredeemable and a danger to Heaven. This is your final destination." That was the last thing Baruch the angel said to me. Was I still going up? I couldn't tell. Everything was glowing white, like being stuck inside a lightbulb. I couldn't see anything.

It wasn't so bad, I told myself. I would wake up in some hospital. Everything was hospital white, I was in a hospital, it had to be that. But there was nothing to see except the white, nothing to feel or see or smell and nothing to hear unless I counted the harp that repeated over and over like an on-hold music nightmare. I could tough it out, I told myself. How long could it be until I woke up? Hours? Days? I had no idea. I screamed but my muffled cry went nowhere.

I was never tired. I never slept or got hungry or soiled or wet myself. I was unendingly alone, just me and my memories as I saw my life over and over moment by moment, everything I ever did and just how many people it hurt. I completely lost count of how many times I have seen my life over and over in my head. Tens, hundreds, thousands?

I tried to plug my ears but that harp rings through me. I tried covering my eyes, but the world was so bright that I couldn't tell the difference. I bit my lip as hard as I could but there was no pain and no blood.

The light, that damn endless floodlight. I couldn't even see my hands in front of my face, it was so bright. I tried gouging my eyes out with my fingers yet I still saw the light.

I tried singing "Cuerno de Chivo" but nobody could hear me, even me. I sang anyway, desperate for anything to keep my mind off of that endless movie of my life. It didn't work. My past leaked in. I sang harder. I talked, I argued, I cursed, anything to keep the endless movie out of my head. Nothing helped. Juan Soldado, ayúdame a cruzar, I prayed. Soldier John, help me across. I prayed for hours without stopping – or was it years? Nothing changed. I prayed to Jesús Malverde and Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte to deliver me to the lava pits and pitchforks. To feel, to see something different, anything different, even pain. For someone else to be there, even the devil.

I fade away, like a ghost. I forgot myself, even what it felt like to do something as simple as eat or breathe. All I remember or feel now is pain. I became one giant ball of hurt and each time they show me my life the pain grows worse. I scream but I can't even hear myself, just that damn harp. Forever and unchanging, bong, bong, bong. 