After

The soul goes to heaven, the body to the ground, but what of the mind?

After

 

All the world was frozen, save him.  A lake yards from his feet glowed, with a glass smooth layer of ice.  Yet above, no sun or moon gave light to reflect, just a ceiling of grey clouds wrapping from horizon to horizon.  Every other moment the sky sunk down closer and closer, but with a blink or movement of the eye the field of clouds would retreat.  And, with one change of focus to force back the sky, he saw something that lay closer.  Even the water vapor in the air had frozen.  An unmoving snow storm hung all around as if the night stars had fallen to be an arm’s reach away.  Each flake stayed just where it was born, not falling from the greater heights, but forming and holding to its place in the world.  The light coming up from the ice gave each its own shine, the only beauty in this world.  For the grey bled onto the earth, dulling even further the muddy brown and pitch black where he stood.  Not even a speck of green could be found anywhere within sight. 

He looked down to assure himself his feet were still there; still secure in his most comfortable shoes.  Above that was unrecognizable, the suit he wore had never adorned his body before.  There had to be something else.  He took one step to the right, to see what may be behind, and as his foot took his weight, nothing.  No noise came from the impact.  Then he noticed nothing sounded right.  The ice spread out beside him cracked and groaned, a slight whistle of the wind came in from the right, and even with snow hanging in the air, dampening any noise, there should have been more to hear.  The ground lay bare except for an undulating shadow like an oil slick across the ocean.  As the silence crept further and further into his ear a sound suddenly arose to fight it back.  Distance muffled and confused it, but growing near the sound became music.  A deep drum with a slow beat grew close.  With each thump the other instruments it led followed down out of the air to join in.

He moved to the dirt road not too far away, searching for a glimpse of the band that had to be coming.  What was a beat became a harmony, which then grew close enough for him to recognize it as a song, a dirge.  From around the bend came a pair of torches.  They glowed with the same light that came from the iced over lake.  The flames burned white with a blue core, as every few yards another pair came into view.  He couldn’t tell who held them though, as he couldn’t see beyond the light.  They grew closer, soon enough he’d see. 

He had to step back from the road, to let the procession pass.  He couldn’t muster the breath to call out.  Even if he had no one would have heard.  Black suits with matching black ties; some tailor fit, others off the rack, and a few stretched or sagged from being borrowed.   Dresses of many shapes and styles, all conservative and many accented with well chosen jewelry. The drum he heard, as tall as his navel, being flanked by horns; and a coffin held up as high as possible on the shoulders of several of the suits, all passed him by.  There were no people, just the things.  Some weight filled out each coat and skirt, gave them will to move, but no bodies.   The last three sets of clothes captured his gaze.  Two small outfits toddled by, clinging to a dress he didn’t know, with a ring he knew all too well.  His eyes orbited them, not able to escape as they continued on, leaving him behind.

As he looked after them, one more figure came down the road and stopped at his side, “Hey there.”

He jumped back, even though he saw the man approach, there was still a shock that someone else would speak to him.  An unusually average looking man in a suit about ready to fall off him stood there.  A seam on one shoulder had burst leaving the white shirt underneath exposed.  His shoes were scuffed up to a point it was hard to tell if they were black or brown.  Though, what was especially nagging on him was the style of the man’s suit, a style he could only remember seeing in paintings.  Portraits of important men with long tails down to the back of his knees, as stockings were pulled up to them, and several layers of clothes wrapped around his chest.  As out of date he may have been, he turned out to be equally patient, as he waited calmly for a reply, which did eventually come, “Hello.”

“Name’s Reginald, but been going by Reggie as of late.”  He jetted out a hand.

“Tim,” he reciprocated as he put his hand out to be shaken.

“Well Tim, its damn fine to meet ya.”  Reggie proceeded to jerk the other man’s hand up and down without much of a pattern.

“What’s going on?”  Tim asked desperately.

“Oh, you’re new!”  Reginald stiffened his back, wiggled a few times to get his suit settled and after a brief clearing of the throat started, “I’ve given this speech a few times so wait until the end for questions.  So then, firstly you are dead.  If you’ve ever heard of the whole mind, body, spirit thing then that’s pretty much what we got.  Your body is rotting in that box over there, your spirit has gone on to Heaven, Hell, Valhalla or where ever, and you’re mind is listening to me.  The you that is right here is the emotions, knowledge, experiences, baggage and all that which made you, you during your life.  They don’t need this you up there or over there or where ever, so they discard it, which is also why your body is in the box being discarded as your family will no longer be needing it.  And that’s all; I think I need to rewrite that a bit actually.”

There really wasn’t a response to be made, not a question emerged from the void of his mind at that moment.  He just stood there. 

“Come on, let’s go.”  Reggie wrapped an arm around Tim’s shoulders and pointed him the other way.  Within a few steps, though the gesture was rebuffed.  The newly dead man started after the parade of mourning.  Reggie called after him, “What are you going to do?”

Without even a glance back Tim yelled, “Stay with them.”

                “You’ll watch over them right?  Even though you can’t do jack s**t.  You’ll watch them mourn you for awhile and be sad they’re suffering and hope for them to move on.  Then when they do stop and move on, you’ll be pissed you’re forgotten.  And what if you’re wife remarries.  You going to like watching someone else get into your bed with her and raise your kids?”  Tim stopped, not looking back, but listening as Reggie continued, “Or what if she doesn’t remarry and you just watch as she ages alone, not able to get over you.  Not that you will actually watch.  You aren’t going to actually see their faces, being in the room when your grandkids are born.  Just a bunch of hospital gowns floating around.  Doesn’t matter if they have good or bad lives, it will still tare at you, because you can’t do s**t anymore, you are done.  The credits are rolling.  Best to let go as soon as you can.”

                As the rant ended the music again rose.  Sad and aching, the melody tried to pull him along.  Tim watched the parade disappear into the grey, and catch a final glimpse of the dress he didn’t know with the ring he knew all too well.  The melody faded, leaving only the thump of the drum.  The bass dropped away, leaving nothing behind.  More quickly than its arrival, the precession was gone. He said nothing as he turned and fell in behind his only companion.

                Down the road they went.  The only sound to accompany their trek came from the wind so gently blowing that anything else would have drowned it out.  Not even their steps came along with them. They walked truly in silence.  Without the slap of leather against the ground, he began to question if he was even walking or if he lacked the weight to even create such a slap.  Perhaps it wouldn’t matter as much if only there was something else.  Only the wind, which seemed to be passing through a cotton ball, made it into his ear.   Maybe it wouldn’t be so odd if it had something to brush against, but the black void surrounding the road didn’t give enough to the wind for it to sound right.  The blackness flanked the road, ready to invade.  The landscape was nothing but nothing.  It hugged the ground too jealously, except for the tendrils stretching up to the sky, trying to claim another domain.  A few of the giant tree like forms even hung out over the road, ready to pick him off from above.  His own thought gave him pause, tree like.  What reached up were the branches, the undulating darkness was the grass.  Rather what he saw were the shadows.  Same as the clothes, nothing but second hand knowledge of what stood. 

Minutes or hours passed as he looked skyward.  Then he noticed a light breaking in through the clouds, not just in one spot, but every where all at once.  Rays pierced the clouds like storm waters breaking through a dam.  Light consumed the grey, growing brighter, fatter as it took control.  Something was happening, something had to be happening.  When all became light, a momentary dimming, as if resting a second after the hard push through the cloud cover.  In that second he saw a crystal reaching to every horizon.  Ripples of color raced each other across the geode that the world had become.  He thought it must be Heaven coming for him.  Those thoughts became crushed when the sky fell.  A single sheet of ice the breath of his vision came down.  The last sight of a suicide jumper, as everything came rushing upon him.  Instinct tapped his shoulder and he curled up, guarding his head with his arms, and waited.  Falling from such a height, he had several minutes to wait.  The force hit, but only waivered his legs.  A stinging up his back into his skull, but as soon as he felt it, the pain disappeared.  Instantly he forgot what he had just felt.  He untucked to see the world had gone unchanged, nothing lay on the ground, nothing was damaged.  The snow that hovered in the air was wiped clean, but soon enough began to reform all around.  And there stood Reggie amongst the flakes, facing him from only a few yards away.

“That was just rain.”

“How could that be rain?” he asked still quivering.

“How should I know?”  Reggie asked back, then motioned his head to the left.  “Come on we’re almost there.”

“How long have we been walking?”

“Few hours, or something like that.”  He then released a single laugh.  “Time will give up on ya, if you don’t pay attention to it.”

Tim only nodded a few times and took a glance around.  It seemed mere minutes ago that they were on an open country road, yet now he found himself at the outskirts of a town.  One he almost knew, its name circled the fence of his brain.  A vague notion that he had a job somewhere around there, a job he couldn’t quite recall either.  He didn’t dwell too long, for as he looked around something shot him in the eye.  Pain rang out, like looking directly at the sun after a night’s sleep on Mercury.  Again, though, the pain vanished quicker than it came and he forgot what pain even was.  Squinting he looked for what hit him and saw a sign.  Red and blue twisted to read, ‘Open’.  The light cut through the grey that permutated everything around.  That one beacon of color was so blinding that he felt it had reach out and physically poked him in the eye.  It was so bright that he almost missed that a woman sat just below it.  Not just clothes, but an entire other person.  She looked different than Reggie.  His suit still glowed with color; she was barely discernable from the brick she slung herself against.  Everything about her gave the same message of defeat.   She was a bag of grain the mice had gotten to.

“Don’t bother with her; she’s close to fading out.”  Reggie had again noticed his new pal had stopped and had popped in alongside him.  “I hear it’s not as bad as it looks.”

Almost like a whisper Tim asked, “How do you know?”

“In case ya can’t tell, I’m a very friendly guy and I talk to plenty of folks.  They fill me in.”  He paused long enough to see Tim wasn’t planning on moving along with him, so decided to try chatting him up.  “So, how did you die?”

The question flung at him barely made an impact.  As he stared at the woman he answered simply, “Fell off my roof fixing the gutter.”

“Ha!” Reggie exclaimed loud enough to jar the dazed man.

“What’s so funny about me dying so pointlessly?”

“Nothing, it’s just I died in the gutter choking on my own puke.”

“I still don’t get the joke.”

Reggie smiled broadly and gave the bewildered soul a slap on the shoulder.  “Well, which way would you rather go, choking on your own vices or helping out your family?”

“Helping my family.” Tim gave a confused expression as he continued, “But I still don’t see how it’s funny.”

“It’s not, but at least you’re awake.  Now come on, just a bit further.”  He forced them onward.

A few blocks on they came to a movie theater.  Unlike the neon lights of the sign before, the normal bulbs glowed as if a sheet draped over each one.  He couldn’t understand the rules of this place.  Only as they walked down the hallway to theater number seven that he began wondering what they were doing.  They sat down about in the center of the seats, a few empty ones between them.

As Reggie got comfortable he mentioned, “Pay some attention.  If someone sits on ya, it’s a pain in the a*s.”

“Why are we here?” he asked, some emotion starting to come to his words for the first time.

“You’ll see once the movie starts, trust me.  This is what I do with most of my time.  Hope you like cartoons, cause I kinda figured you needed something light.”  The confused and a touch angry face on Tim spurred him to continue, “Well this is like one of the few things we can do.  I mean you could go into a person’s house and watch TV but you’re stuck watching what they do.”

“No!” the, to this point, sedated man erupted, bursting to his feet.  “I’m f*****g dead!  Something has to happen!  It can’t just be this!”

“I told you, the heavenly is for your soul.  You aren’t your soul so you’re stuck here.”

“Are you f*****g kidding me!  This cannot be it!  Something has to happen!”  Tim screeched in a way he hadn’t since his brother broke his bike when he was ten.

“Look,” Reggie raised a hand and gestured for him to sit. Then began, speaking half with his lips and half with his hands’ gestures, “You want the climax of the story.  Problem is the climax was you doing a header off the ladder.  Your whole life was building to it, building to you dying while being a good family man, which aint too bad.  Shows you’re a pretty good guy.  That was the big moment, like in romances when the guy and gal finally get together, or action ones when the biggest explosion goes off chasing the heroes down a hall, or in the fantasy ones when the hero stabs the bad guy with a sword.  Where you are now is the closing credits and all the other s**t after the good part.  You are now passed anything happening, you are done.  The… F*****g… End.”

Tim didn’t sit; he turned to walk down the aisle.  “I don’t care what you say, I can’t just wait around.”

“So, what?  You gonna go back to, what was it, the dress he didn’t know with the ring he knew all too well.”

As he sank back down in a theatre seat he barely was able to ask, “What did you say?”

“Shhh,” Reggie raised a figure to his lips, before pointing it at the screen.  “Movie’s starting.”

Many questions suddenly needed to be answered, but any words he may have had left as the forty foot screen came to life.  It was like the moment a miner dying in the dark first sees the light of the rescuer’s torches.  Reality became the movie, no longer a flat image across the room.  The created world pulled him into it.  The hero’s armor hung heavy on his shoulders, protecting his body.  The legendary sword lashed out from his arm, the resistance of the blade striking foes was felt in his hand.  The story’s monsters exhaled their foul breath on him, practically pealing a layer of skin from his face.  For two hours the story was his, from opening title sequence to closing credits.  Even the glowing words against the black washed over him, every word running over him on its way to oblivion at the top of the screen.  He gave up his reality to live someone else’s, but as soon as the light faded his mind went back to his own situation.

Turning to Reggie, he could immediately tell there was no use in asking him anything.  His eyes were closed, a few tears managing to squeeze out through the lids.  Quietly he altered between humming some unknown song and giggling to himself.  It seemed he had just taken a large hit off the celluloid.  There was nothing else for him there; the answers he wanted weren’t worth the time waiting for them or the risk of Reggie sucking him in again.  So, he got up and left, unsure where to go.

Outside everything was still frozen.  Some part of him hoped something would have thawed, but no, the snow still hung in the air and all of it stayed grey.  Then he just started walking.  He knew the town, not the name, but just knew he had been there before.  He took his kids to this theatre not long ago.  Memories were finding him, answering his pleas to return.  Specifics traveled slower, but vague images had raced back to him.  He knew he could find his way home.  Didn’t matter what Reggie said, he had to return to his family.  Besides, the word of a drunk couldn’t be worth much.  His entire life he was told that nothing was more important than family.  Some guy he just met couldn’t change that.  As he continued to reassure himself his choice was the right one the red stabbed him in the eye.

He retraced the same path that he had entered the town on, not even realizing it.  Stopped in his tracks, he considered what to do next.  That woman still sat under the sign, his wife mourned him miles away.  He could spare the time, his family wouldn’t move so soon. 

He shuffled over, squatting next to her.  He gave her a nudge and said, “Hello.”

The propped up woman’s head slowly rose and turned toward him, but she didn’t look at him.  Her eyes didn’t refocus, remaining off in the distance.  Facing him as she looked pass him she responded, “Hello.”

“Can you help me?”

She smiled, the way his mother did when he was sick as a little boy.  “What is it you need?”

“I want to know what’s going on.”  Tears began forming.  “What should I do?”

“Let it all go,” she answered.

“I’m afraid to fade away.”

“You will not fade, but melt.”  She spoke as if each sentence were a lyric, trying to wring beauty from every word.  “You are an ice cube on a picnic table.  Forced into a confining form that goes against your natural state.  You must melt, let yourself become water again, seep into the pours of the wood.  As you are, you can only feel the wood under you, see the trees in the distance, hear the wind moving by.  Melt and you will truly experience the wood, trees and wind.”

“What do I need to let go off?”

“Everything, you’re family, home, past, name, all of it.”  Her head then dropped, her strength to do anything more moved on.  The conversation ended.

And a new one began. “Whatcha doin’ there Timmy?”

“I asked this woman some questions is all Reggie,” he answered, each word angled as if to apologize.  “I just want to know what to do.”

“I told ya that already.  Watch movies and shoot the s**t.”  Reggie shifted his weight between each foot.

Not believing him any longer, Tim asked, “What did you say before the movie started?”

“How am I supposed to remember that?” Reggie shrugged, but he could see it wouldn’t be that easy.  An itch suddenly made itself known on the back of his neck and as he scratched it responded, “S**t.  Should of known you weren’t gonna stay.  You’re already thinking in the third person, which I can hear.  You don’t stick around as long as me without, what she call it, melting a bit.  Your thoughts are kinda poetic and weird.  Guess I gotta find someone else to hang around with.”

“Why?  Why are you sticking around?”

“You’ve known this for like five minutes and you’re gonna lecture me?”  Reggie pressed each hand to each peck.  There was a look on Tim’s face however that spurned him to talk on.  “Whatever.  Did the sit down and wait thing, boring, couldn’t keep doing it.  So, started doing this.  I told ya I died choking on my own puke, so ya know I wasn’t the most sensible of guys.  I was pretty well off though, then I drank and partied most of it away.  So, family got a load of debt.  Sent my wife right to the gutter I died in, she died alone, men weren’t big on old, poor widows back then.  Took three generations of kids  to climb out.  I watched it all, guess I was haunting them.  Guess regret stays with ya longer than love.  Anyway, gotta be moving on.  It’s too bad Timmy, I think we would have gotten along just fine.”

Those were the last words; never again would Tim listen to a word.  He simply sat down next to the woman under the sign and began to let go.  While Reggie walked off to spend decades more wandering.