THE SECOND HAPPIEST ENDING EVER

I suppose that somewhere, somehow, misery has its own rewards...

Luke Goddard gazed into the beautiful Marina's eyes and the way the light from nowhere seemed to dance in them like glittering dust, now here, now gone, fracturing light and then blinking it away.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“You know me, silly,” she replied. “I am your guardian angel. I was with you when you jumped. I was with you when you splashed into that dreadfully cold water. I was holding your hand as you drowned. I kissed you as you died. It was all that I could do.”

“You mean … I'm dead?” he gasped, and looked down at his own body. It was naked. Marina had dragged his wet clothing from him and cast it over the side of her pink and candy boat, and even now he could see his jeans, soaking blue, rushing away from him, and his tartan boxers like stumpy legs dancing on the water.

“From the moment you landed with a humongous splash!” she laughed. “Landing like that doesn't do a living body much good and is quite capable of changing it into a dead one!”

He was confused, but the sun started shining and white cotton-wool clouds drifted where only moments ago there had been the gun-metal skies that had so depressed him and, in part, driven him to the bridge. Though they weren't really why he had jumped. That had been down to other stuff, bad stuff, utter and complete misery and a blackness that had swept over his spirit, and stayed there.

“So if I'm dead, how come I can see you?” he asked. It might have sounded like a silly question, but to him it wasn't anything of the sort. He needed to know.

“Look at you,” she pointed, her wonderful eyes shining and her hair like magical wisps.

Not far from his dancing underwear was an ugly chunk of flesh, and as he concentrated on it he could see men in wetsuits treading water next to it and then pulling it along with them towards the bank of the river, easily fighting with their fit bodies against the foaming current of the river. And the chunk of flesh was him, inert, past saving. As he watched the blubber that he'd been being pulled almost heartlessly along he shuddered. He'd been an ugly b*****d!

“There you are,” she whispered, “but I prefer you like this. Naked you came into the world and naked you lie on my little boat, and I can see all of you as you were meant to be seen … isn't it wonderful?”

You could be naked too he grudgingly thought, but she wasn't and he was suddenly glad. The way her pleated plaid skirt hung from her waist, the way her breezy top rippled like a fabric rainbow, teasing her breasts with every random ripple in the breeze, all were totally essential, complementing that wonderful face like nakedness rarely does. Then it crossed his mind that everything about her reflected his own particular image of erotic perfection, everything down to the tilt of her bosom and even little things like the hem of that skirt.

“Who are you?” he repeated.

That smile embraced him with its moisture like a physical thing. It was like a brand new texture on the day, a cloak made of a fabric a million times lighter than gossamer, and it told more stories to his singing heart than mere words ever could. It told him who she was.

“I am Marina,” it told him, “and as I said, I am your guardian angel...”

If I'm dead you didn't guard me very well, he thought, but didn't like to say: not in words, not loud for her to hear. It would sound too much like criticism, and Marina, he decided then and there, was beyond criticism.

She tinkle-laughed again with her mouth, her eyes, her perfect voice. Then, for a moment, she became serious.

“You wanted to die,” she said, frankly, her eyes suddenly moist as though they had seen something monumentally dreadful and needed to weep the anguish from her soul. “Life had become less than tolerable for you, and death was your decision. And you were right! Had you continued with the daily grind that had drawn you so remorselessly into your misery things would only have got worse. Your sweet little Abigail would have died...”

He caught his breath. “Don't!” he almost shouted, but it came out as a whisper. Everything seemed to come out as a whisper now that he was … what was it she had called it? Dead?

“But you must know,” she chided him. “You would have killed her.”

What?

“You must know that you were heading for a breakdown,” she chided him almost soundlessly. “You must know that everyone you knew was touched by the way you were. And Abigail would have died. There's no easy way to tell you. People do die, you know: after all, you have!”

“But now?” his voice wavered.

She giggled, her voice a fairy sweetness that hung in the air like a glorious fragrance.

“She's alive and well,” she whispered. “And will be. Have no fear. Your death changed quite a lot of things. It saved lives. It altered the thread of history. And it brought you to me.”

The thread of history...?

“Could I have changed anything without dying?” he asked.

Her tinkling laugh filled the brilliant blue skies with a ripple that went on and on and bathed him with its almost overwhelming sweetness.

“Of course,” she replied. “We have so many choices. So many crossroads in the ways of life, lives lived in a kind of binary way with on and off, left and right, good and bad, here and then...”

“So many chances...” he sighed.

“And you made all the right ones!” she giggled. “Clever old you!”

“Right ones?”

“Of course! For you are here and your guardian angel is here and when you feel exactly in the mood for it we're going to make love like you never made love before … the two of us, you as you are and me as you most desire me, dressed as I am... and then … when it's over and we're both exhausted...”

“Yes?”

She giggled once more. “We'll probably make love again...”

“And this is death?” he asked,

“Not quite,” she breathed, and stroked him gently, intimately, “not quite death. This is Heaven, your Heaven, unique to you, and besides being your guardian angel I'm your god...”

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[Peter Rogerson]

I suppose the happiest ending ever would have been "and he lived happily ever after"...