{"id":2022,"date":"2025-04-21T15:04:47","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T15:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/?p=2022"},"modified":"2026-09-02T03:53:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T03:53:08","slug":"the-last-person-on-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/the-last-person-on-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last Person on Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-1 wp-block-paragraph\">Saint Peter greets Pope Francis at the Pearly Gates with a warm embrace. \u201cWelcome to heaven,\u201d says Peter. \u201cWe weren&#8217;t expecting you quite so soon.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-2 wp-block-paragraph\">A choir of white-robed angels with harps strike up the heavenly anthem reserved for the most holy and distinguished newcomers arriving at their celestial home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-3 wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI&#8217;m surprised too,\u201d says Francis. &#8220;I didn\u2019t expect to arrive in heaven the day after Easter.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-4 wp-block-paragraph\">Saint Peter looks perplexed. \u201cWhat happened, my friend? Did you offend God? Did you commit a mortal sin?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-5 wp-block-paragraph\">Pope Francis shakes his head. \u201cNothing I know of. But can we ever really know when we\u2019re on the right side of God?\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-6 wp-block-paragraph\">He pauses for a moment in thought. \u201cYou know, I had a meeting with Vice-President JD Vance yesterday, and shortly thereafter, God called me to the hereafter. I was recovering so nicely from my recent illness when, whoosh\u2013suddenly I\u2019m here!\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-7 wp-block-paragraph\">Francis snickers. \u201cI think God has a sense of humor.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-8 wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHow so?\u201d asks Peter. \u201cI know God pretty well after all these years, and he\u2019s not usually the humorous type.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-9 wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWell, I think he is,\u201d chuckles the Pope. \u201cWhen I once said that JD Vance was the last person on earth I would ever want to meet, I didn&#8217;t think God would take my words so literally.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-10 wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saint Peter greets Pope Francis at the Pearly Gates with a warm embrace. \u201cWelcome to heaven,\u201d says Peter. \u201cWe weren&#8217;t expecting you quite so soon.\u201d\u00a0 A choir of white-robed angels with harps strike up the heavenly anthem reserved for the most holy and distinguished newcomers arriving at their celestial home. \u201cI&#8217;m surprised too,\u201d says Francis. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2023,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20,26],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-2022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humor","category-satire","tag-microfiction"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":7}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/Pope-and-Peter.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2022"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4206,"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions\/4206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}