AT THE JOCKSTRAP AND BUNDLE – AND AFTERWARDS

We all die eventually, irresepctive of what weird things we believe in....

Colin Fatale knew one thing in life: he knew that when he died that would be that. He knew that there was no chance of any Heaven or Hell destination for his corpse because, by crikey, neither could possibly exist.

“My son, you might think of mending your ways or you'll end up in the devil's kingdom with hell-fire and damnation all around you,” breathed the priest in his usual dark and pyorrhoea-fragranced voice.

Colin moved a step backwards in order to avoid the worst of the fumes and muttered, “sir, I try to live an honest life, and I can't see any good reason for you to think I merit an afterlife (that I don't believe in) basking in the sulphurous fumes of hades, when few can have been more generous and kindly than I.”

“But that's the reason!” squeaked the Priest, a good man in his own eyes if not in Colin's, but then Colin knew of the priest's weaknesses, which occasionally involved strong liquor and florid language. “If you cannot believe in the good Lord and His Kingdom then there's no way you'll gain admittance to it. And the alternative … well, you know where I mean... it doesn't bear thinking about!”

“I've got a migraine,” announced Colin, who had been a martyr to such things for half his life. “I need some rest.”

He wandered off, almost in a state of confusion. He'd had this conversation with that same priest more than once, often over several pints of good ale in the “Jockstrap and Bundle”, an excellent country public house where the two of them occasionally enjoyed the odd evening of deep and meaningful but very contradictory conversation.

This time, though, he had more than theological debates on his mind. He had what he might have called the devil of a headache coming on and he wanted to relax in a darkened room. He had suffered from such dismaying interruptions to his life for many years now, and migraine medication barely touched them when they were at their worst.

When he finally arrived home and picked the post off the floor where it had lain since the morning delivery he almost blindly forced his way up the stairs and to the toilet where he endeavoured to squirt every drop of urine into its white antiseptic bowl, a scowl of utter concentration in the lines of his face. He knew he needed to sleep and not be woken up by a suddenly urgent desire to spend a penny. It was the only thing that would assuage that wretched headache.

Finally and empty of unwanted fluids he lay down, pulled his duvet over him, and closed his eyes.

The pain in his head wouldn't go away. In fact, in a searing bout of unbelievable agony it did quite the opposite and exploded.

And he knew no more. Not then, and not ever in this earthly existence.

His heart ceased its beating even though it had been a strong heart, his brain stopped its thinking despite its erstwhile considerable intellectual capacity and he lay so still that even a passing fly knew he must surely be dead and lay some eggs on him.

He was, in a curious way, aware of his own death. He could feel a kind of relief surging through him as the pain flickered out with his dying brain. And he could see his body lying on his bed, wrapped in his duvet and as motionless as he knew it would be.

Strange, he tried to murmur to himself, but sound was a thing of the past. He could no more murmur than he could...

Fly to the moon! Yes, he could do that. He knew perfectly well that he could do that in much the same way as a goldfish knows that it can swim round and round in boring circles in its goldfish bow.

And quick as lightning, confusingly quickly actually, he found himself somewhere else.

This is some odd dream, he thought, and he was quite wrong. It was odd, certainly, very, very odd, but it was no dream. Colin Fatale was as dead as a dodo, on his bed, and this spark of him was somewhere very different.

It was encompassed by darkness. It had the black of something he couldn't begin to understand pressing into him, moulding him with fingers that had no substance other than seeming blackness. And besides moulding him, stretching him, compressing him, kneading him with invisible fingers, it was transporting him at a colossal speed across the Universe until it got there.

Where there might be, of course, he had no idea, but wherever it was it seemed happy enough to receive him.

“So there you are, you naughty boy,” said his mother, who'd died in a tragic motoring accident days before his fifth birthday. “I've been waiting for you! You need a damned good smacked bottom!”

“Get in the queue, old woman,” squeaked his wife, who had passed away a couple of years earlier with a dreadful cancer that had consumed most of her body. “He's got to see his Maker first, and that'll be a shock, he being an atheist and all that.”

“An atheist, eh?” asked his Maker from a far and near place all around him. “That's rich, that is! Come here and join me, my friend! I always like to greet fellow atheists! We'll share a glass of absinthe together, under the shade of a nettle tree and cogitate over the good old days. It'll be fun! Come along and play, my dear fellow!”

“My Maker?” asked Colin weakly, finding a kind of voice that made no sound somewhere between one thought and the next.

“Exactly!” laughed the everywhere voice of his Maker. “Come on! I bags the high seat and you take the low one, and I'll get to Eternity before you!”