10. BLOWING IN THE WIND

The tenth and final episode.

“By golly!” muttered the fat man’s alter-ego as they stood at the end of the bridge and stared into the After-life which lay stretched out in front of them like a blasted eternity.

“Is this Heaven?” whispered Mary.

“It must be,” sighed Santa, “and now I see what it’s like I wish I’d stayed at home in my hospital bed.”

“Or my ditch,” sighed the pretty young woman, “it was muddy in that ditch, which was nice.”

Before them and blanketed by air that was as close to being black as black could be, but still allowing them to see the ground that stretched out before them for mile after mile after mile was a never-ending landscape of grey-black ashes, smoking slightly as though it had just been formed from some subterranean nightmare fault involving sulphur and fire, and wandering across it, blind, possibly, and purposeless almost certainly, were the shadows of millions of men and women, boys and girls, silent as ghosts in a silent world. And the vista truly stretched out for ever, with charcoal figures jostling and barging as they sauntered along, going nowhere.

“It’s hell,” whispered Santa.

“Neither Heaven nor Hell,” his alter-ego told him, that all-knowing and wise freak that had always been part of him and had almost always been right when it had expressed an opinion. “This is the Hereafter,” he added, “the much longed-for Afterlife, our residence for eternity.”

“What about Christmas?” asked Santa, illogically. But then he’d always been an advocate of the festive season and the pleasure on a small child’s face at the site of a tawdry toy.

“It’s here,” whispered Mary, “and look!”

To one side of the endless smoking plain was a small alcove, and set in it was a table with two chairs, plain but solid chairs, yet cosy in the meaningless chaos of everywhere else.

Mary led the fat Santa towards it.

“It might be nice to sit down,” she said.

The shadow of a small dog wagged its tail and yapped silently as they stood by the table. Overhead a blue moon shone invisibly, coating the table, the glasses and a glass bottle with a faded azure coating, like dust.

“This is Hell,” sighed Santa.

“It’s eternity,” informed his alter-ego.

“It’s like nowhere on Earth,” whispered Mary.

“We’re not on Earth,” confirmed the alter-ego, “and we’d better get used to it because we’re here for ever.”

“Please be seated.” That was a newcomer. One of the mass of shadows had detached itself from the humdrum morass of surging faded humanity, and it or he or she addressed them.

“Welcome,” it or he or she added.

“Where … where are we?” stammered Santa, “is this a nightmare? An endless dream of nothing? Or is it Hell?”

“Oh, it’s here. That’s all you need to know because it’s all there is to know.” The answer was hardly comforting. “Now please be seated and I will pour the wine.”

Obediently, they found themselves sitting on the two chairs as the genderless, characterless figure uncorked the bottle, blew dust in acrid clouds from its dull neck until it shone like burnished crystal, and prepared to pour whatever stuff the bottle contained into the two glasses on the table.

“As celebrants of the cold season, this is your reward,” the figure said, and turned to face Mary, who was sitting opposite Santa at the table.

“For your long suffering,” it murmured, and as the wine, or whatever it was, poured into her glass it was a rosy pink in colour and smelled of heather on a windswept hillside with a suggestion of a damp ditch.

“It’s nice,” she said, and took a sip.

“I wouldn’t have done that,” muttered Santa’s alter-ego.

Then the figure, showing neither amusement nor any kind of sultry mood poured the wine into Santa’s glass. It poured ruby red and rubescent and filled the air immediately with the rich aroma of a turkey roasting in the oven and its fragrant herb stuffing, and Santa could almost taste the brandy of a rich Christmas pudding that came as an afterthought.

“It’s not the same as hers!” he found himself whispering.

“Each to his own,” the genderless shadow murmured.

Santa took a sip. The liquid was dry, not the dry of a wine that is called dry but dry in the sense that it contained none of the qualities of a liquid and would never moisten any lips anywhere.

“What’s this!” he gasped.

“Your welcome toast,” intoned the androgynous figure, and he wandered off to rejoin the mass of humanity that was blindly staggering every which way in that dark and cinder-place.

“This is nice,” whispered Mary, and she took another sip from her glass.

“It’s like drinking ashes,” rebuked Santa, who took a second sip from his.

And then the wind began.

Not the sort of wind that blows down trees and wrecks ships, but an almost non-wind, more or less like a breeze. It breathed on everywhere at the same time, but the staggering, barging, aimless figures of a billion shadows didn’t seem to notice it.

“I feel strange,” muttered Santa.

“I told you not to drink it!” chided his alter-ego.

“As if I’d sipped and slurped and swallowed a gallon of high octane fuel,” added Santa, “I almost feel drunk!”

“As if I was about to melt and become one with the world,” sighed Mary, who started to melt. Bit by bit and moment by moment she disintegrated, face and legs and torso at the same time as though her diminution was being orchestrated by a conductor intent on his symphony of total destruction.

“What’s going on?” asked Santa, comfused.

But he was melting too. Or turning, rather, into the finest dust and driftng to form a puddle of the finest dust on his chair.

“That’s me done for,” muttered his alter-ego resignedly when all there was left of Santa and Mary were two piles of the finest grey dust.

And, gently, the wind from nowhere blew them until they did two things simultaneously. They spread like two clouds of thinning stuff and blew across the blasted landscape until they could no longer be seen, and they merged, finally, into molecules of two Christmas icons combined into one.

And the table with its glasses and its bottle were left to the tender mercies of an alter-ego who now had no ego to support and simply decided to drink himself to oblivion, which is probably where he properly belonged.

THE END

© Peter Rogerson 14.11.18