BRIGHT LIGHTS AND KISSING

I wonder what it feels like to actually die?

Abby had told me the last time she spoke to me, before she passed to wherever it is the Abbys of this world pass to, that she saw a light so bright that she loved it, and there were people in a strange land where nobody argued and fought and everyone kissed a great deal. Probably even a great deal too often for Abby, who hardly ever kissed at all. Not me, anyway. She hadn’t kissed me more than half a dozen times in her life, and moments after she saw the light she was pronounced dead, so as far as kissing was concerned that was very much that.

And here I am, lying in the bed on my own, which seems unusual, without Abby snuggling up to me but not kissing me, and I can see a bright light.

My first thought was it must be Abby’s light and I looked around to see how many people were kissing each other like people ought, but there was no kissing and there were no people. Just a light.

Then there was a voice.

“I can’t find a pulse,” the voice said, “and at his age I’d expect there to be something going on inside. But no, he’s dead.”

Who in the name of goodness was the voice talking about? It was a woman’s voice, or maybe an effeminate man’s, I couldn’t see the speaker, but then all I could see was the light and I’d closed my eyes for fear of it blinding me. After I’d tried to see Abby’s kissing crowds of peaceful people, that is. But what did the speaker mean about at my age? I’m no geriatric, I’m a cripple, and that’s bad enough, and hopefully years left ahead of me.

“His eyes were open and now they’re closed,” murmured the voice, “probably a last nervous reaction to this torch…” and the light seemed to waver about.

Then a second voice joined in, a sort of sympathetic and definitely female voice, “He’s dead then? I rather hoped he’d still be alive because I’ve got a question I’d like him to answer, but no, he’ll never be able to and I’ll never find out if he was the father…”

“He’ll not tell you anything about anything,” agreed the first voice, “look, we’ll get him to the ambulance, going carefully, don’t want to cause his lost soul any grief, do we?”

“It was my daughter he might have done it to,” sighed the second voice, “they always said he was a randy old fool, and she ended up in the family way after spending an evening with him.”

“The dirty old sod!” laughed the first voice, now sounding definitely female, certainly not effeminate male.

“But I suppose she might have been wooed by some other lad,” murmured the second voice, “it happens, you know. A young lass goes out to sit with someone because they’re in need of something or other, company, a friendly voice, even companionable silence or somone to make them a cuppa. And they hear a proposition and after a bit of thinking about things they let him into their nether regions, and nine months later a sprog enters the world.”

“It’s disgusting,” grated the first voice, “when was this?”

“Oh, a few years back now. Danny’s five or almost six, a nice kid even if he doesn’t know exactly who fathered him. But I reckon it was this chunk of cooling flesh and we’ll maybe get him tested. His DNA’ll tell, us. Danny ought to know whose genes he’s carrying around with him, even though it’s mothers that really matter when a kid’s growing up.”

The light went out at that. Right out, so I opened my eyes to see what the hell might be going on.

They had a wheel chair and one of the women was opening it up properly. It looked comfortable did that wheel chair and here’s me, been lying in this damned bed it seems for ever. It I managed to make a young bird pregnant I’d like to know when! Five or six years, they said. I’ve been like this for longer than that and I reckon it’s going to be a fair treat to be dead. Where are they going to take me in that contraption, I wonder? The funeral parlour and then the crematorium, at a guess.”

“You get his shoulders, and I’ll take his feet,” said the first voice, “look: there ain’t much of him, being as thin as he is we’ll get him out in a trice.”

I felt myself being moved. It was quite a delicious feeling, being pulled and pushed out of the bed that had been a prison more or less since my accident. Both legs had been smashed, but I hate thinking about it, so I won’t. Oh, the sense of movement, though, of muscles being obliged to move like they haven’t for ten long years…”

A decade. That’s a long time and no mistake. And Nurse Angeleyes will be only too happy not to have to come and care for me any more. How she hates washing my down-belows, as she calls my bits! But she does, and I try not to smile even though I feel like smiling! And even though she looks all grumpy I know she doesn’t mean it… you know what I mean? But I’ll miss her…

“Now easy down the stairs,” ordered the first voice, “We don’t want him to go and break his neck by falling down them, do we?”

“Would it make any difference?” asked the second voice.

Yes it darned well would!” I feel like telling her. It’s my legs that don’t really matter, not my neck, though I have been harbouring hopes that they’d start working one day..”

The wheels of the wheelchair clatter and jolt as the thing is edged down the stairs, and I find myself being bounced around with it. What fun! What a pleasure! If I’d known the dead could feel like this I’d have died years ago!

Then it happens. I don’t know which one of the talkative women caused it, but the wheelchair slipped and I found mself actually tumbling forwards.

“Watch it!” shouted the first voice.

“And you!” reacted the second voice.

But neither of them watched hard enough because all of me did a dive and llanded half way down the stairs, going head over heels to the bottom.

“That bloody hurt!” I succeeded in shouting, and then my eyes actually did close of their own accord and a bright light appeared again. But it wasn’t the torch. It was somewhere else, and there were people everywhere, some of them kissing. Kissing like there ws going to be no tomorrow in order to express their loving emotions… And that’s the only sort there were: loving emotions: I could taste them in the air.

And there was Abby! It was! Abby!

And she was kissing a young man, or it looked like a young man, and he was kissing her back, tongue in mouth, eyes adoring her. My Abby! Kissing!

“Hey! He wasn’t dead! We got it wrong!” declared the first voice.

“He said it bloody hurt!” gasped the second voice.

And Abby looked at me and winked.

“This is how it’s done, love,” she called to me, and turned and kissed the young bloke again. And again. And even again.

© Peter Rogerson 15.09.24