Saintly Girl Damned by Clerical Blunder

Heaven is to compensate the family of ‘good girl’ Abigail Hate with two free seats and a laudatory song. Abigail, a happy child known for her kindness, died rescuing a friend’s pet terrapin after it became lodged on high voltage cables outside her home in Butterworth, Suffolk. But scandal erupted in June when it emerged that trainee seraphim had accidentally damned Abigail to everlasting torment.

“I couldn’t believe it when the results came through,” said her spiritual mentor, Sunday school teacher Harry Starkley, whose office is filled with graphic depictions of the Netherworld. “Abigail was such a good girl, always lending a helping hand. If she can end up in the fires of Gehenna, what hope is there for wicked folk like us?”

“At first we thought nothing of it,” said village vicar, and vampire, Hillary Million, who stumbled upon the tragic scene, having been attracted by the scent of blood and the amphibian’s plaintive cries. “The little one was buried with full Brownie honours and we had a good old knees up in the High Street after, with British flags and hats and everything. And then this...”

A court has ruled that the admin angels were not given appropriate guidance in the use of new damning-machines which came on line earlier this year, and an enquiry found the heavenly host were under increasing pressure to deliver on perdition targets.

“Corners were cut,” summed up a group of travelling judges, who happened to drop in on the last day of the hearing.

“The computerised system was designed to speed up applications to eternal bliss,” said Dominion Esphixiel, Paradise’s Complaints Tzar, “but for Abigail it meant a speedy descent into hell. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do to bring her back. We hope though that this gesture will go some way to mollifying the family. Abigail’s parents will now be able to commit awful acts with impunity, and angels will sing their praises.”

But Abigail’s mother Lamia Hate is furious about allegations that seraphs had been ‘playing chicken’ with the devices shortly before the her damnation, purposefully seeing how close they could get a soul to hell and still hoik it back.

“It’s a bleeding liberty,” she said. “The license to do wrong is a Godsend, especially in sleepy Butterworth. But they can’t fob us off with that. We’ve spoken to Abby (or it might be Amy now, or Amélie, or Amalorum?) personally through one of this country’s top mediums (on a no-invoke, no-fee basis) and she’s literally seething!”