Being Dead: Part Two

Peter meets his alternative self.

It was as if I’d wandered into a fairy tale where my familiar world has been twisted by an impossible magic leaving me numb and confused. And I was being led through it by the angel of my real life, the beautiful and exciting Megan. Or should I say the late beautiful and exciting Megan.

We had tea at Megan’s cottage, the same sort of tea I’d have had at her parents’ house before she became ill and had rapidly left our world, way back when I had called at her parents’ home or got dragged into it by the love of my life. To all intents and purposes this was the same Megan but very little was actually the same, as I remembered it. We talked, but none of our words made a huge amount of sense to me, as if we were chatting about two different things with just ourselves as a common factor.

I mean, what are dimensions when you’re talking about life? Yet more than once she talked about them as if they were a physical reality And more importantly, it was two years since I’d seen the coffin containing the same beautiful girl being lowered into Mother Earth and much as I hated the thought I was sure that her flesh will have long since started to decompose, to reduce in its dark under-Earth world until there was nothing left but crumbling bones, and not even they would last for ever either. Because that’s what life and death are all about. Entropy.

And when she took me by the hand and led me seductively up the stairs her grip on my fingers was warm, all the signs of her flesh were vital and alive. In fact, she was more alive than she’d ever been, yet the memory of her funeral still hung in my mind. I mean, it had really happened: I had been there, sobbing like a wimp, convinced that she was gone for ever.

“What’s happened?” I begged her even though she’d explained more than once, about going to sleep in her old bed and waking up in this one with all the pain of her inoperable cancer completely gone.

“Silly boy,” she said and then pulled me through the door into her bedroom. “I told you downstairs. We’re dead. Both of us, in the old world but in this one we haven’t died. We’re alive, and you t learn some history at Saint Jude’s.”

“What’s Saint Jude’s…?” I began.

“You’ll find out when you go there tomorrow morning. And you will do that. It’ll seem that you’ve always gone to the place as a kiddy. You’ll even know the kids by their names because the Peter you were is dead, and you’re the Peter that was always here, born here, is very much alive There are so many seeming obstacles to making sense of it, but it works.”

“What about the alternative me, the one who was alive yesterday here?” I asked, “did that me die as well, and has he gone somewhere even more spooky than here?”

She smiled at me wickedly. “That’s the contradiction,” she said, “or at least, it’s one of them. You haven’t descended into this dimension and taken over someone else’s body. In a way there was nobody to take over until you arrived. I don’t really understand myself. Come on, get your pants off and climb into bed with me and let nature take its course!”

And I needed no second invitation. Nature most certainly took its course exactly like it had before… before we had died.

And then we went to sleep. At least she did. I could tell by the even smoothness of her breathing that she was sleeping deeply.

It was then that I slipped into a dream. To me dreams have always been a mystery because, no matter how vibrant and active they’d seemed to be I forgot most of what they were about by the time I woke up. Always.

The boy was about eight years of age and I recognised him or thought I did, though I have no idea where from. I didn’t have a younger brother, not even one of any age actually, and my two cousins were virtual strangers to me. I wouldn’t recognise them if I passed them in the street, and anyway they were older than me. Probably.

But the boy in my dream was eight or nine, or something like that. I’m not a great judge of kids’ ages. And anyway he didn’t do much in my dream. He was there, a child, short pants and colourful tee-shirt, slightly scruffy hair and a grin to die for. At least that’s how I saw it, and I’ve no idea why.

Then he came up to me and for no reason I could think of he decided to talk to me

“Hello Peter,” he said, grinning with all of his face.

Then he wandered off, not waiting for me to reply or ask him how he knew my name or saying anything more than hello Peter. I wanted to call after him but I was in my garden. No, correction, not my garden buy a garden, kneeling on the grass and pulling things that may have been weeds from a cultivated border. By the time I’d stood up in order to be sociable the boy was way out of sight, and then, as if he knew the way my mind works, he came past me again. The same boy, the same clothing, the same cheeky grin, and,

“Hello Peter,” he said before walking or half-running (whatever form of locomotion kids of that age choose to use) and waiting a few minutes before repeating the exercise yet again.

It was a dream. An odd one with precious little happening excet it involved a kid I thought I recognised walking or running or hopping or skipping his way past me and greeting me like he had.

Then Megan spoke to me. “Hello Peter, or rather, good morning sleepy-head,” she said while I was still in that hazy state that is the b*****d child of sleeping and waking.

I remained silent, not wanting to trust myself to speech lest I upset the lovely young woman and send her back to her coffin.

“It.s a wonder you didn’t sleep for the whole day after last night,” she said, “it might be two years since we last you-know-whated, but you’ve lost none of your wild enthusiasm!”

“I dreamed of a boy,” a stammered when it was clear I ought to say something without making any reference to our physical jerks of the night before, which had been marvellous. “He was only a kid. He called me Peter…”

“And that’s your name, silly,” she told me, “was he about nine or ten?”

I nodded. “Have you dreamed of him as well?” I asked.

“I haven’t needed to, silly,” she said, “I slept with him last night, and before we slept we made love like only lovers can… Peter, he’s you, my own true love!”

And there were so many contradictions whirling around in my mind that I thought I might be going quite mad.

© Peter Rogerson 23.08.24

xxx