PRIMEVAL PARADISE

Prehistoric times are a great resource for the imagination....

“It has crossed my mind,” muttered Hobi to Bogey, “that after we've been growing old for a time we tend to die.”

“I have had the same thought,” acknowledged Bogey to Hogi, “and it has also crossed my mind, old friend, that we are both growing old! Indeed, my knees are stiff in the mornings, and, my willy less so!”

“Do you think we are going to die?” quavered Hogi, “I mean, do you think a morning might arise when we don't? The sun may pop up and we stay down, all cold and foetid?”

“From my observations that is highly likely, because it's what seems to happen to everyone else,” almost wept Bogey. “And you know, old, friend, I really don't want that to happen!”

Hogi nodded sagely. “We have both lived good lives and had wives and kiddie-winkles,” he sighed, “and those kiddie-winkles have grown up and have kiddie-winkles of their own. There are few who have attained what I might be tempted to call old age like we have!”

“And the future is to die.” Bogey started shaking with the anticipation of his own demise. “I don't want to die,” he whispered, “I want to see what the future will bring to the world... I want to see even more generations that will sprout from my seed and the seed of my seed and the seed of that, too.”

“Me as well.” Hogi was openly weeping, which was far from being a manly thing to do, but Bogey understood.

“Maybe death isn't the end like we think it is,” suggested Bogey. “Maybe there are other planes? You know, there must have been something before we were born, we can't have come from nothing...”

“A squirt of our father's cream into the right place?” murmured Hogi questioningly. “What's that all about? How can a person grow from that? Maybe there was a whole life that the cream woke up and we were brought from … from ...”

“Another place?”

“Exactly!”

“With fields and streams, mountains and rivers, blue skies... everything we love?” whispered Bogey. “Another world, another plane, another life?”

“I seem to remember something,” concentrated Hogi, “I mean, when I sleep at night I seem to remember stuff. You know, this and that I've never actually seen with my two eyes … maybe from an earlier life... that must be it! Shadows from a place and time that was somewhere very else!”

“Very else?”

Hogi nodded. “Very else,” he whispered. “I know what I mean...”

“And I do too!” croaked Bogey. “It's good to think we came from elsewhere! I wondered what the night-images were and now you've explained it to me I understand perfectly well! They're shadows of another place, a previous life, glory be! We have more than the one life! We have two!”

“And we're moving too quickly towards the end of the second,” sighed Hogi. “The situation with two lives is just as bad as it was when we only had the one! This is dreadful! This is terrible! We're still going to die, like my woman did last year, and be taken to the high plain where the vultures will get us with their cruel beaks and greedy guts!”

“But maybe...” breathed Bogey.

“Maybe what?

“Maybe, when we die, we go to yet another life...”

“A Paradise...” whispered Hogi, “a place where we meet our loved ones again, a wonderland where perfect things happen...”

“Old Logi will be there, and he was a b*****d,” sighed Bogey. “I hated him for his mean and spiteful ways and the way he thought he could do whatever he liked to any women he happened to chance on... I don't want to meet him again!”

“You won't,” said Hogi, triumph in his voice. “Logi won't be there! Of course he won't. He'll go to some place else, where bad folks go! Our Paradise will be for you and me and our loved ones and all the good folks we've known who've died and been taken to the high plain and the vultures! That's what this miserable life we've been obliged to live has been all about! It's been a preparation for Paradise!”

Bogey slapped his shrivelled thighs, and it made a hollow clacking sound. “Let's tell the world!” he creaked, “Let's tell our kinsmen! Let them all know....”

“Just a minute,” frowned Hogi, “we've worked out that there's a wonderful land waiting for us, a Paradise, and we're both keen to get there, but everywhere must have someone in charge or it would be chaos! Who's in charge of our Paradise, then?”

“It's probably a really important guy,” murmured Bogey, “someone unbelievably powerful. He'd have to be unbelievably powerful. Some god of some kind...?

Hogi nodded. “God,” he whispered, “Yes, that's who it'll be with his big bushy beard and staff! I can't wait to meet him! It'll be fun!”

Bogey grinned. “Fun,” he echoed, “and we'll be dead happy. Get it? Dead happy!”

Hogi cackled, and the two old men carried on trailing their prey in the primeval forest, whispering how they were going to spread the good news throughout the tribe.

Author's Note

I have trawled through prehistory many times in order tpo find the source of human misunderstandings and folly...

Reviews

[Chinmay]

The story was not only funny and amusing but also well laid. The last para proves that. Hats off to you for that. Your writings have diversity of every kind: people, places and actions.

[Peter Rogerson]

I'm pleased that you enjoyed reading it.