The banquet hall was endless, or at least it appeared that way. High vaulted ceilings arched overhead, painted with skies that shifted from dawn to dusk depending on where you looked. Long tables groaned under platters of celestial delicacies: roasted quail stuffed with figs that glistened like amber, candied roses crisp with frost, goblets brimming with wines from forgotten vineyards. Beside them shimmered starlight sorbets in crystal bowls, nebula honey oozing in iridescent streams, and clusters of aurora grapes that shifted colour with every glance. The air itself seemed flavoured, carrying hints of spice and sweetness. The place looked like it had been set for eternity, as if the gods themselves would drop by for a nibble.
The gathering was unusual tonight. Writers, thinkers, poets, and scribblers, dead and alive, were summoned for the Banquet of Eternal Ink, an afterlife salon where words, not trumpets, set the tone.
“Who’s that sitting in the corner over there?” whispered a young man with the posture of a seminarian, eyes full of mischief.
“Oh, that’s Dickinson. She’s been here a long time,” replied his companion.
Emily Dickinson sat alone at a small table, as though she had imported her Amherst drawing room into the celestial feast. A plate of untouched sugared almonds rested before her. She observed the crowd like a sparrow at the edge of a cathedral, half-wishing to vanish into the wallpaper.
“Let’s go see her,” the young man urged. “She needs to lighten up.”
But before they could rise, a ripple of expectation swept through the hall.
Stephen King had arrived.
“He’s not dead,” Dostoevsky muttered into his goblet through his beard.
“No,” came the reply, “but he gets a special pass each year. Where do you think he gets some of his material from?”
King strolled in wearing jeans and a Red Sox cap, looking mildly dazed, like someone who had walked into the wrong wedding. He waved at Shakespeare, who ignored him, and made a beeline for the food.
“Try the Venusian venison,” Hemingway bellowed as he approached. “It tastes better if you imagine you shot it yourself!” He raised his arms as if sighting down a rifle, fork still clutched in hand, before tearing into the meat with a grin.
Dickinson raised one eyebrow, then went back to scribbling something in her notebook.
At the main table, Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde were already locked in verbal combat.
“You never managed to keep yourself out of scandal for long,” Austen teased, ladling celestial punch into Wilde’s cup.
“And you never managed to escape the drawing room,” Wilde retorted smoothly. “We are both victims of our eras, Jane, though mine was infinitely more stylish.”
She raised her eyebrow at him while laughter rippled around them.
Dickens spun, slamming his tankard onto their table. “Style is nothing without substance! What do you know of debtors’ prisons or starving children? The banquet is only sweet because bitterness exists.”
“Spoken like a man who insists on being paid by the word,” murmured Virginia Woolf. She was staring into a shimmering pool of water nearby, seeing not her reflection but entire novels forming and dissolving in its depths.
King pulled out a chair near Dickinson. “Mind if I sit?”
She blinked at him, silent as stone.
King settled into the chair, running his finger along the rim of his goblet.
“You know, Emily, I’ve read Poe all my life. He knows how to rattle your nerves. But you, your poems sneak into my head at night. It’s not terror, it’s that existential whisper about death and eternity. That’s the stuff that keeps me up. Hell, it’s worse than Insomnia, it makes me feel like Ralph Roberts, staring at the ceiling, afraid to close my eyes.”
Dickinson glanced up, her voice quiet but precise.
“The Soul has moments of Escape—
When bursting all the doors—
She dances like a Bomb, abroad—
And swings upon the Hours.”
King grinned, half-unnerved, half-admiring. “You said it in four lines. I’d need a hundred pages.”
A rare smile flickered on Dickinson’s lips, gone as quickly as it came. “The Soul selects her own society,” she added softly, “then shuts the door.”
King laughed, holding up his hands. “Fair enough. I’ll just sit here until the Reaper sends me back downstairs.”
Across the room, Dostoevsky was still frowning into his wine. “All of you speak of wit and fear. Where is suffering? Where is redemption? Without pain, there is no literature.”
“Without champagne, there is no party,” Wilde countered, raising his glass. “Balance, my dear Dostoevsky. You bring the torment; I’ll bring the sparkle.”
Homer suddenly bellowed in Greek, and silence spread like a wave from his outburst. He stood tall, cloak shimmering, eyes clouded but fierce. “Sing to me, O Muse,” he roared, “of banquets that outlast death, of poets who dine on memory, of storytellers whose tongues burn brighter than any star.”
A cheer erupted. Even Dickinson clapped, albeit quietly, like raindrops against glass.
Mark Twain leaned back, cigar smoke curling into halos above his head. “You all talk too much. Let’s eat, drink, and tell lies. After all, Heaven’s just another riverboat, only the cards are always in your favour.”
Shakespeare finally rose, adjusting his ruff, eyes gleaming with that stage-born self-awareness. “If this be Heaven, then let it be a stage, and all of us players still. For we wrote our lines in life, but here, at this endless feast, we improvise eternal.”
The tables erupted into applause. Ego was his truest understudy, and it took its bow with him. Chaucer flirted outrageously with Mary Shelley. Tolstoy and Baldwin debated morality at a furious pace. Dante sketched a new circle of Hell on a napkin. Milton frowned, muttering that true damnation required sterner architecture.
And through it all, Emily Dickinson scribbled, quietly anchoring herself in the corner. When King peered over her shoulder, he glimpsed a fragment:
“Heaven is a banquet where silence dines—
and poets, drunk on words, make gods of wine.”
He smiled. “Guess I’ve got my next story.”
And just like that, the banquet carried on, spilling into the endless night.
