Ruh was sleeping under his headset again, beneath the bed, where he had a dream of his uncle, no longer standing on his own tail, collapsing the scales of Al Sirat, claiming Ruh tossed the last guy off the bridge on another blog called “Three Rivers Raidho.”
  “What now?” asked Ruh, the bridge was the only thing beautiful.  The sky was grey above and below and the bridge remained iridescent and melting ice.
    Dayī reached into his side bag and produced a deceptively large box with a smile that spoke of violence as much as benevolence.   The simple brown cardboard box was moving as if filled with some insatiable lovecraftian horror of muffled squeaks and loud, high-pitched, inhuman screaming that clawed from within with multitudes of limbs and digits.
   “Well, open it.”  Dayī smiled- the top of his bald head shined against the gray sky as if lit by an invisible halo.
    …and with human hands Alex opened the box to find it full of a seemingly endless amount of affronted, screaming kittens.
   “Congratulations- if you want a break, you can likely make it across Sirat for a little shore leave.”
      “…and all these kittens?!”
       “Put them down – they’ll find you… most of them,  anyway.” the old man replied, so Alex complied – as the kittens sloppily poured from the box
        “Where are you going?” Ruh asked
         “Home, if I played my cards right.” Replied the Palace Cat.
           “Where does the bridge lead?”
            “California, probably.”
     ….and with two simple bags an 80 year old man showed properly how to depart, just as Alex realized at least one of the kittens was a raccoon when it bit him on the ankle.
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So Alex continued on the melting Bridge Al Sirat, one orange Creamsicle kitten cried as he stumbled to follow so Alex picked him up and while kneeling noticed the cardboard box had a false bottom, cedar above and beneath it so thick Alex did not understand how he didn’t feel the weight.
  He could see the corner of a fine saffron color suit with overlong arms and winced until moving it revealed an equally fine suit of simple black with an equally fine black tie, reversible, with a fine accent line that had a different color accent line depending on how it was fashioned.
Alex carefully passed the orange suit behind him to his feline companion on Al Sirat.
     Alex carefully put on the perfectly tailored black satinesque suit and tied the black tie into a Windsor knot with the blue stripe outward, found his own rings in his pocket as well as one extra of banded red aqeeq he had never seen prior, carved with Ayutul Kursi finely into the face of the gem.
  Alex could hear the movement of the cat in the orange suit just slightly behind him, and offered the ring to his traveling companion behind his own back before their walk on the ice Bridge Sirat led them to the edge of an expansive topiary lawn with a white mansion before them.  Fountains and flowering trees brought endless birds in concertos of noise and without any Burda,  Mosque, or Bayah.
   There sat the prior Pole of all Sufism.
  Wearing an all black button-down shirt, grey slacks, sunglasses, and his silver hair swirled like a wave across his increasingly youthful brow.
     “CAN YOU MAKE ME A LEMONADE, ALEX?  THE BAR IS TO THE LEFT UNDER THE PARROT FOUNTAIN”
      Alex seemed excited to oblige leaving the tall man in Saffron alone with the Uwayse in the lawn chair.
       A whole squeezed lemon,  castor sugar, a tiny slice of squeezed lime, grenadine, & crushed ice shaken in a cocktail shaker and served neat as if it were leaded.
   The man in the orange suit didn’t move
   “NICE YOUNG MAN, YOU FOUND THERE- IS HE A NEW RECRUIT?”
    “He defected.”
     “HE DEFACATED?” Replied the old Uwayse
      “HE DEE-FECT-ED!” Shouted Alex in reply.
     “I KNOW.  I JUST WANTED TO HEAR YOU SAY IT AGAIN.” Replied the silver-maned Molana of the highest stage. “I CAN SEE THE FUTURE FROM HERE- NOTHING BUT SUNSHINE AND BLUE SKIES FROM HERE ON OUT, BOYS.”
     “Thank you, Sir,” replied the man in the fruit-colored suit.
       Alex had just concluded that if the Feline Bureau of Investigations ist in himmel that implies the Kitty Intelligence Agency is in-
     “-Careful there, Alex” Replied his brother in an entirely different orange suit,  “Yavosh.  There is no harm in taking things slowly and enjoying the idea of Jannah with David Lynch if it makes you happy.”
“So, is heaven a delusion?”  asked Alex to his brother as the first man in saffron tried unsuccessfully, at first,  to juice tropical stone fruit in a one-handed metal citrus squeezer.
   “Not necessarily, but in this case, you wrote it yourself based on exhaustion, overwork, and undersleep. “
  “It’s 1242 hundred hours boss- midday.  Let me finish my Alaraf backlog first.”
   The kittens from Al Sirat were now playing amongst the flowers.
  Alex felt a hand supporting the small of his back, but which one?
The Director loudly slurped an oddly vivid sunset colored lemonade.
There were no fires here.
  No crisis.
Everyone dressed in fine suits and drinking lemonade in the yard of the mansion facing the remains of bridge Al Sirat.
“Alhamdulillah.” Replied one of the two men wearing orange –
…The nuclear sunset made all seem scarlet as they remained in the shade, drinking virgin cocktails watching the Apocalypse they all left behind.
Almost none of the kittens from Al Sirat even noticed