I gaze out the half-open curtain at the moon. Tonight she was a crescent, so small that my old eyes could barely see her. The moon was the thinnest I had ever seen, and I was at my very weakest. Unlike her, I would not be reborn in a couple days’ time.
Or would I? I turned my attention to my small room. On the floor was a scruffy rug trying desperately to take some of the chill out of the cold tile floor. There was no real carpet here because tile was easier for the nurses to clean up, after those in our seventh stage relieved ourselves on it. The thin curtain that separated me from the other elderly in the room was a sickly green color. I could see Mr. Johnson’s bed, recently vacated, through it. The florescent lighting, off at the moment even though it was just seven-thirty, flickered so that it often sent Mrs. Penning into hysterics. The walls were off-white and cracked, the sheets were scratchy, the food was mush, I could go on… In short, “Pleasant View Estates” wasn’t very pleasant at all.
Would I be reborn after this? That was my definition of hell. I had lived a very long time; nearly a century had passed since I was a tyke. I was so tired. Tired of being pushed down the frigid hallways in a beaten-up weal-chair, tired of being force-fed baby food, tired of having preppy nurses a fraction of my age call me “honey,” or “sweet-heart,”… Tired of living.
I didn’t have anything to live for anyway. My family, if my great-great grandchildren could be called that, had put me here. In this hell-hole of a retirement home instead of letting me live my last in dignity. They knew I would be gone soon, so they didn’t care. They had children of their own to worry about now. Children that I hoped would put their sorry backsides in a cut-rate retirement home. I had lived through an entire century. For what? To die a slow death of consumption and boredom in this retirement home?
It was starting to look like that. I gazed at my withered hands. Age spots covered what had once been a strong tan. The skin was paper over what had been leather. Hands that shook when I lifted a glass of water had once built a house for my wife, Helen.
Ah Helen, my most lovely wife. She was the reason I had kept going so long. But she was gone now. She had died a couple days ago, in this very nursing home. I had held her hand. She didn’t even recognize me at the end, Alzheimer’s was what took her, but she kept calling my name. Ah my sweet Helen. She’d borne nine children without complaint. Christine, Koreen, Mark, Steve, John, Charles, Paul, Merrill, and Leanne. They’d all had so many children… I couldn’t remember all their names, but they were all dead. None of them had lived passed their sixties. My descendants were many, but see if any of them took time to remember me. This nursing home was proof that they didn’t.
But I did get one up on them, I left them all out of my will, and it was a tidy sum, about half a million dollars. I had invested in the computer industry while it was still young. Fifty dollars. Helen thought I was crazy. I gave the money to charity. My ungrateful relatives wouldn’t see a dime of it.
That was the happiest thought I could conjure as I drifted off the final time, and I did drift. As I let go, as I relaxed my hold on the world, I simply drifted in a dark sea. So dark, No sight, touch, sound… nothing.
I realized that I, to, was slowly becoming nothing. I was fading. No! This wasn’t how I was supposed to go! There was supposed to be a bright light, my life flashing before my eyes! Panic set me to flail around my limbs, like one falling. With great relief, I saw that if I kept moving, I wouldn’t fade. If life had taught me anything at all then I could survive death. I changed my random rhythms to a steady stroke. Going somewhere, anywhere at all, was better than staying here, to drown in this dark sea.
I kept at it for a very long time. It could have been hours, or days, or years even, but I kept at it. I hoped to any god out here in this strange afterlife that Helen had had the strength to do so too. Eventually the tiredness came back. Not tiredness of limbs, they felt as strong as in my youth, but in my soul. I was tempted many times to give up, and let the darkness take me, and I nearly went insane from isolation, but finally I came upon the shore. I still couldn’t see, but when I felt under me solid ground I was relieved. I walked up the sloping hill. At the top it was… crowded. As my mind adjusted to the new sense, I came to better understand the incredible sight before me.
There were people everywhere. I was first aware of the sizes of the people. Most of them were of average height, but some were head and shoulders above the crowd. With a start, I noticed another level among the mass. Small people were everywhere. Yes, some of them were midgets, but mostly, they were… children. I could see their little faces. Sad empty faces. I was shocked at their number. The majority of the crowd was children. There were even infants, abandoned, on the ground. All of them had a soft glow about them. I noticed there were several adults with this same glow…
As my mind began to register other things, I saw that there was a great variety of people too. Black people, who were almost as dark as the night, and on the other end of the spectrum, though these were much fewer in number, people who were completely white, with pink eyes. There were Chinese with strange tattoos along their arms and backs, there was Swedes, with the blondest tresses I had ever seen, and Native Americans with feathers in their hair, but the most astounding thing of all was the mixes! If you’ve ever seen an albino African-American, you’ll know what I mean. And they were all wearing different clothes. Apparently, looking down at myself, you stayed in whatever clothes you died in. I was still in my hospital gown from the retirement home.
When you were somewhat recovered from the shock of all the people, you could look around at the scenery. We were all on a flat plateau, spanning as far as the mind could comprehend. The only features on the plateau were a golden spiral staircase, and an escalator, going down. I was drawn toward the spiral staircase, but I couldn’t get close because of a fight that had broken out at the bottom.
About twenty people were fighting there. Punching and pulling at each other’s hair, ears, and noses. Every once in a while, a person would break free of the mass and attempt to run up the stairs, but someone would always catch their ankle and drag them back down. Just next to it, was the escalator. There was a large open space, about twenty feet across, surrounding it. Apparently, no one wanted anything to do with it, and I didn’t blame them. There was something wrong about it. Something both calling you toward it, and warning you against going anywhere near. The escalator disappeared from view about halfway down, but every once in a while, when there was a lull in the noise of the crowd, you could hear a slow rumbling.
I felt a tug on my hospital gown. There was a little girl standing next to me, she looked about five.
“My mommy’th there,” she said, pointing toward the stair. “Thee wanth to go up but Daddy won’t let her” now she pointed to a man, yanking on an ugly woman’s hair. “That’th him.”
I felt sorry for the child. It enraged me to see her parents fighting for the gate. If they were fighting to go up, but not having a thought for their child, they obviously didn’t deserve to walk up the spiral stair.
“Hey!” I said, “Look here, stop fighting.”
“Shut up old man” said the ugly woman, who was now twisting the child’s father’s ear. “No one asked for your opinion.” This was followed by some rather cruel twisting, whereupon the man screamed and pulled some of her hair out.
“I beg to differ” I said, seething, “That man’s daughter did.”
“Tell the little brat to shut her trap.” He said while kicking his wife in the spine. She screamed, flipped around and knocked him on his backside. While he was down, she tried to make a run for the stair, but he grabbed her ankles and pulled her back.
I assessed the little girl. She looked just like my littlest daughter did, when she was young. She had long brown curls, big green eyes, and a little pink nose.
I picked her up. “Come on, We’ll find our own way.” She sucked her thumb at me. “What’s your name?”
“Alith.”
“Get your thumb out of your mouth, Alice.” She complied. “Hasn’t anybody ever told you not to suck your thumb?
“No.”
I sighed. “Nobody has ever bothered to tell you anything, have they?”
“Daddy tellth me ta thut my twap.” I scrutinized her.
“How did you die, Alice?” her eyes widened.
“Daddy comed home.”
I was silent for a while. I looked at all the little children. They far outnumbered the adults. All of them were glowing softly, like little angels. Children from newborns to teenagers, all glowing, all with a strange empty look about them. Some huddled together, some clung to adults, but none of them looked like they belonged in this strange half-way point in death. I wondered about my own children, and my Helen. Did they make it through the dark sea? Come to think about it, how did Alice make it?
“Alice? Did you come out of the dark sea?”
“No.”
“Where did you come out?”
“I comed from da thtaircathe.”
“Were you on it?”
“No, I were at da bottom. I got push-ed out of da way ”
I sighed and changed the subject. “Isn’t there supposed to be someone here to supervise?” I asked, staring around the crowd, hoping that maybe someone would come out of the crowd and fix everything. That was unlikely, but one still hoped.
A woman was listening. “Yeah, wasn’t it like, an Angel of Death?”
“Maybe,” I told her.
“I’ve been here a while.” Said a voice behind me. I turned, startled, to see a glowing adolescent boy.
“Really” I said gruffly. “Shed some light on our circumstances then.”
“There was an angel once.” He said scratching his backside. “He-
“It was a She!” cried a middle-aged woman.” Her name was Eve!”
The boy interrupted, saying “no it wasn’t, Eve was the first woman.”
“I know that, but then she fell in love with the Archangel, Gabriel!”
A new voice interjected with quiet certainty, “She fell in love with Saint Peter, who guards the gates of heaven.” At first I thought the owner of the voice was a child, because she glowed, but she was a young woman, possibly in her twenties. “My name is Bryr. I’ve been here the longest of all the crowd.”
I knew she was telling the truth. We all knew. Every one within hearing distance quieted down.
“Bryr, why are you glowing?” I asked.
“The glow means that I would be immediately accepted into heaven, without having to endure the Test.” She said matter-of-factly.
“What tetht?” said Alice? Concerned, “Wiw I know the anthwerth?”
“It doesn’t matter right now.” Bryr said. “Just listen to the story.”
“The angel guarding the gates is named St. Peter.”
The entirety of the crowd silenced. Every last man, woman and child was quiet as they waited for her to continue. Even those fighting at the stair stopped at the sound of her voice.
“Before God created the human race, Peter’s job had a different meaning. He protected heaven from an attack from Lucifer. But when the first woman begged entry, he was surprised. The first woman’s name was Eve.”
“Eve and St. Peter spoke at length, at first he was trying to make sure she wasn’t sent by Lucifer to invade heaven, but as she told her story, he began to fall for her.”
“After they died, Adam and Eve floated in the dark sea. Adam soon gave up the fight, but the punishment that God had bestowed upon her made her stronger than Adam, so she began to swim, and after a very long time, reached the shore. Eve saw the spiral stair and the slide.” Bryr paused, “That’s what it was before the renovations.” Continuing, she said “Eve chose to climb up. And up, and up. When she finally reached the top she came across the Farthest Plane, where she walked for a very long time. When she finally reached the Gates, she was glowing like a beacon, because she had passed the test. Peter was so taken by her story of hardships that he fell in love, and Eve felt the same.
“When the Lord saw this He was enraged. He had provided Eve as the perfect mate for Adam and she had scorned him by falling for another, yet her mate had drowned, so what was He to do?” Bryr had a far-away look in her eyes. “To solve both problems, He made a very… fateful decision. He made Eve the Angel of Death. She was charged with the duty of escorting each and every soul to their final destination. Eve had to find them in the Dark Sea and row them to shore in her canoe before the darkness took them and they downed. She had to carry them up the Spiral Stair, and Walk with them across the Great Plane.” Bryr smiled. “It was a very long way… Only after she did this could she spend a few precious minuets with Peter, before the next soul appeared.”
“So there was a sort of peace in the afterlife, Eve not happy, per say, but content to wait for her chance to be with the one she loved, Peter, saint that he was, always patient for her arrival. And it worked, for a while. Until the first Glow appeared on a woman.”
She sighed. “A glow means that you are transported directly to the foot of the stair. Once you touch it, you go straight to the gate.” Bryr shook her head. Eve was jealous. They could see her Peter immediately, without her. She wasn’t allowed-
“Why don’t I have a glow?” asked a tweedy little man. “I’ve done more than all of you for everyone my whole life, why don’t I get this glow; I don’t want to have to walk all that way!”
Bryr’s eyes ignited. Everyone else could see the danger here, except for the little man. She spoke slowly “That’s what the escalator is for. People like you, who have been…good their whole lives. They simply walk on to it, and they are carried straight to Hell. They don’t have to walk all the way, they simply stand.”
The man’s face grew beet red. He backed up and melted into the crowed.
“Where was I?” Asked Bryr, rubbing her temples.
“Eve was jealous.”
“Oh yes… The glowers could see Peter without her being there to supervise. She was afraid that Peter would fall for one of them and make her sacrifice not worth anything. She laid a trap.”
“When the next glower came, she was waiting at the stair; she told them that the staircase was a trap. That only those humble enough to choose the slide, as it was back then, you remember, would go to heaven.”
“The glower, sadly, listened to her.” We all looked toward the escalator in silence.
“When God saw that Lucifer had an especially powerful soul he knew Eve would be the cause. He was so angry with her, from her behavior in her life and afterlife that he eliminated her.”
There was a silence. “She didn’t go to Heaven, she didn’t go to Hell, she simply was not.”
“And God, being not yet satisfied in his fury, refused to appoint another Angel of Death.”
I was stunned. The people near the staircase started fighting again, but everyone else was silent.
“That’s it? That’s why were stuck here? Because the ‘almighty’ refused to give us an aid?” I was fuming now. “Fine then! I’ll do it myself!” My anger was so that I marched up to where the fighting had resumed as soon as Bryr had stopped talking. I barreled through the fighters with Alice still on my hip and said to the child “You deserve better than this!” I placed her on the rail and she disappeared before my very eyes. Still furious, I grabbed her fighting parents by the hair and threw them down the escalator.
Everyone was still.
“I will be sorting you now.”
The entire crowd began to form a line. I relied on my gut, and when I told someone to go down the escalator the people nearest them in line pushed them in. The others I sent to the stair went with great relief. There were so many people, and they just kept coming! On and on the line went, limitless, and I searched and searched for my Helen, to no avail! Had she drowned in the dark sea? Had she been a glower? But the people kept coming. My fury had waned, and now the soul crushing weariness was back. I just wanted to finish this last job, the sorting of the souls.
But there were so many! More and more people were coming out of the Dark Sea! It never ends!
I will be here, searching for my Helen, long after Judgment Day.
Check this out! http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/topic68507.html
