JEZEBEL’S AFTERLIFE

The last account told of Jezebel's younger years. Now we skip over a life time...

In the darkest corner of a life that’s ending Jezebel, in what may well be her death bed, was tormented by some of the things that nature or God or the Devil had made her do.

Like with Colin, way back when she’d been no more than a teen herself. Lying in her sick bed with goodness knows how many angels circling in her imagination, she could picture him as he reached out his equally fevered teenage hand and made to touch her breast and the last thing she wanted to do was stop him. But he had withdrawn those fingers before touching her, and she had decided there and then that it mist be because he hated her body. After all, she had told herself, if he found it as delicious as he found his, and she had, the bulge in his shorts, the strength in his torso, the straggling nest of tender new hairs that tickled her own chin when he tried to kiss her…

But she knew he was bored with her and played a beastly trick on him, just to show him that your don’t mess with Jezebel! She had lowered her head as if to pleasure him with her own mouth, and then had bitten him as hard as she could where she knew it would surely hurt more than anything could hurt on a man.

And it had. Pulling himself painfully free of her shiny white teeth that were already starting to show stains of her blood, she had slashed him across the face and looked at him with contempt.

That had been Colin. And she had never seen him again, and he had been the first in a long, line of boyfriends who had declared their love for her, then gone their own way. She couldn’t remember them all, not that in all honesty she wanted to.

But she could remember Claire. Claire had been a girl and for a few months in their twenties when such things were unheard of the two of them had declared their undying love for each other.

In bed one night, Claire had said, “My English teacher, Mrs Grimback by name and grim by nature, once told us girls, that we can be like this if we like, like you and me, and it’s perfectly all right because when in the olden Victorian days when they decided it was quite wrong and criminal for men to love each other a law was passed, but Queen Victoria who had to sign the bill wasn’t asked to because she was unlikely to believe women could behave in this way…”

And she, Jezebel had merely giggled and tickled Claire where she liked Claire to tickle her, and Claire had leapt out of the bed they were in and stormed out shouting “there’s a lot more to love than that sort of thing!”

And had gone out of her life for ever.

Now, in these fading days, she would like to have called them years but she knew that was too optimistic, the fractured images culled from her life were all she had.

And night was falling.

Only yesterday she had regretfully recalled a precious incident from Bernie’s life with her.

They had been thirtyish and they were both single. She had already been married twice to men she had absolutely no memory of because they had been so insignificant and had only wanted her for selfish reasons of their own. Jezebel had consequently turned to writing dark romances and despite her own total failure in the lovey dovey corner of life she had found unbelievable success. So she was quite wealthy. One of her novellas had actually been made into a movie, a decent, well regarded film that was supposed to have people in tears in droves as they left cinemas the world over, and thus had swollen her own bank account.

The hero in the story had done his best to woo her for her money, and that much was clear to the cinema goer, and he had tried all manner of tricks to woo her, but to no avail. Instead, she had rejected his pleas and eventually he had seen sense and wandered off into the deep blue yonder. Then, several years later after he had earned a fortune for himself they met again.

“I did love you back then,” he had said, and she looked him in the eyes.

“And I suppose I loved you, but doubted your motives,” she said, and the last thing that the audience saw was the outside of a bedroom door.

And Bernie had almost copied that plot, but the trouble was he never filled his bank account up first, and although she, being a little close to old age had, for the first time wondered what her life would have been like had she lived in love with a man, seeing all sorts of reasons why Bernie might be after an old woman like herself, spurned him.

He died soon after that, and she patted herself on the back for avoiding that lump of sadness.

She turned over in her bed for the last time and slowly everything in her room, in the world outside her window, flickered out, but she neither knew nor cared because knowing and caring were two things denied to her.

In a new and, could it be, darker shadow it was quite clear who was standing there.

“Mum!” she whispered, and, yes, she could both recognise the woman standing in the shadow and even how to whisper that simple syllable.

“And your father!” said the brutal man standing with her mother, “say hello to daddy before the breeze carries you off to nowhere.”

“But … I was ill in bed…” she stammered, “and you’ve been dead for ages!”

“Not ages,” smiled mum, “but eternally.”

“I don’t understand…” she sighed, “have I gone senile?”

“No, my darling, you died in that dimension and now you’re in another,” whispered her mother.

“You see, Jez,” smiled her father, “you’re here. That’s the only word for it: here, and you will stay here for ever. There’s no escape from here via the gift of death! Oh, how much some of us want that!”

“I still don’t understand…” she stammered, she who understood everything and could write a startling love story, reduced to the stammer.

“It’s both easy and hard, darling,” said her mother, “but when we die a minute spirit that is all that’s left of us drifts off into nowhere. And it is minute, believe you me!”

“Like this,” put in her father, “that spirit or whatever you want to call it is really tiny. Remember at school you were taught that the smallest thing that can possible exist is the atom? Well the world of here is much smaller than that! If it were possible, and who knows, it may be, you could fit a million heres into an atom and have space for a million more!”

“What?” If Jezebel still had a brain it was struggling at the concept pf millions in an atom.

“It’s just a question of proportion,” her dad said wisely, “and we’re divided into two nations, if you like…”

“Well I don’t like!” Jezebel tried to snap back.

“Call them Heaven and Hell,” smiled mother, “and I’m in Heaven Eternally and wonderfully and in my Heaven for all of eternity, which is a nice way of saying for ever, while your father…”

“Me!” he growled, “is in Hell! And when you’ve taken a fresh breath and got to see things correctly, you will see is only right. And as for you: you’re in Hell with me, child.”

“You see, Zezebel, it’s how you lived in the thick air of life on Earth, and you were certainly no angel! The way you treated others!

“So I’m just a millionth of the size of an atom because I wasn’t always perfect?” she asked.

“It’s not that easy, and the bad thing about it is you’ll have to spend your eternity in the company of those you wronged,” muttered her dad, “like me, you see. I’m stuck with your mother: that’s my hell.”

“And I’ve got an unbelievably delicious time reminding him what a b*****d he was,” smiled mum, “and you, my dear, will be in the company of those you’ve wronged, and if it’s more than one I pity you because a torment that goes on for ever, they say, is no fun at all! Ask Hitler!”

© Peter Rogerson, 30.06.22

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