Young Writers Society

I.

I hate the way she looks at me. Yes, she gives me that same, bright smile she gives everyone, but behind those eyes is a kind of desperation, a pleading. But there’s also an almost mocking confidence, as though she’s sure—or trying to be sure—that the thing which I know will never happen, will happen.

There’s also affection in her gaze: in those eyes which I even feel on my back sometimes and which rest on me when I speak. In her letters, she once called me her favorite uncle, and I don’t doubt it was true, and still remains true, even so many years later. But why can’t she learn to let this go? Why does she still stare at me with desperation behind her eyes?

The rest of my family learned to let it go, dealing with it in whatever ways worked best for them. They didn’t care that I was an atheist, and even if they did, they didn’t obsess over it. But my niece, Rachel—“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…” as though nervously, anxiously, she was trying to think of ways to mention that name around me.

It was all right at first, when she was just a young teenager giving me a Christian book to read, when I thought all I had to do was explain to her that I was glad she found her religion fulfilling, but I was a man of science. But she kept pursuing it: in her letters, which I thought contained no compelling scientific information, then in the next family reunion, and the next…

At the end of one reunion, as she was hugging me goodbye, she even whispered, “Seek truth!” in my ear. As if I don’t. Why won’t she just accept it? I’m never going to change, no matter how much she wants me to. I have to have hard evidence to believe anything. I can’t believe something just because I want it to be true.

She shouldn’t be so anxious. Even if there is a god, chances are, he won’t send me to hell. I’m a good man with a clean mouth and a clean life. I love my wife, I love nature, and I treat my family’s religion with respect even though I don’t believe it. I even pray with them when they pray before meals. Any good god wouldn’t torture me eternally for an honest mistake.

But there is no god, which is why I don’t believe in one. Not because I wish there was no god, but because there is none. I wouldn’t say that to Rachel, of course…break her innocent, little heart…but it is what I believe, or rather what I disbelieve.

Perhaps she’s right. Perhaps they’re all right, and there is a god—even a personal god, for all I know. Anything could be true, for all I know. But I believe in accepting the more straightforward and rational explanation for the world, and science is the only thing that’s concrete. I can’t believe in something I have no evidence for.

I don’t need religion for emotional fulfillment either. I’ve lived a very fulfilling, and—I would say—happy life. My wife Sharon and I are very well-off: we have a beautiful house and a beautiful garden that keeps us busy. We’ve been hiking everywhere, even in foreign countries—our favorite pastime. I have hobbies and friends, and I do things to help others. Sometimes I get together with my family, and we get along well. I don’t need anything more. I’m living this short life to the fullest. Everything was perfect for me and my wife.

Well, I say was. I can’t say everything’s perfect anymore, not since Sharon got diagnosed with cancer. It’s so senseless! We’ve always led healthy lives; we’ve done everything right. Why should she of all people have cancer? She’s had such a good attitude about it…so optimistic…but it’s killing me to watch her. Every new, vicious round of chemotherapy, every horrible side effect…I hate it. She’s responding well to the treatments, the doctors say, and we’re still living relatively normal lives. We still go hiking. And yet it’s frightening. Time is frightening. I think about death a lot now, more than I’d like to. Each moment that passes is another moment gone forever, another moment closer to the day when everything will fall out from under me. I don’t know what I’ll do without her.

It makes me angry too. This has perhaps been my most compelling reason for not believing in a good god: that senseless, horrible things happen in this world. Little children are sold as prostitutes. Earthquakes devastate whole countries. And people who have never done anything to deserve it, get cancer.

Sharon isn’t a believer either. So do you know what Rachel did when she heard my wife had cancer? She sent her a letter. The letter was nice at first, but then it basically begged her to believe in Jesus. Rachel then exchanged more letters about Jesus with her, as she had with me before. What does she think? That this is an opportune time to proselytize?

I’ve been keeping my family updated on my wife’s condition, and I appreciate their prayers: it means they care. But I don’t appreciate this. Sharon has enough to deal with already without someone pressuring her to turn to religion and making her feel guilty. Why won’t Rachel leave us alone? Why won’t she leave us both alone?

I should explain something. I love my niece. Really, I do. And I care about her. I know she only has the best of intentions, and I appreciate that, I suppose. But as I’ve said, she doesn’t know how to let it go. When she looks at my wife now, her eyes are painfully sad even though she smiles. They’re pleading, like when she looks at me. I don’t understand her.

II.

Those were my thoughts at our last family reunion. As is the custom with my extended family, we rented a cabin out in some beautiful place and spent our time going on hikes in the mountains and along rivers. We had a wonderful time, and it was so good to be with family and explore nature. It was even good to see Rachel, though every time our hiking group split up, she joined the one with me and Sharon.

However, Rachel said something strange during that reunion: something disturbing. It was particularly disturbing because she’s generally a bright and cheerful person, but it would have been disturbing in any case. It kept bothering me for a long time afterwards, and not in the same way that her talk about Jesus bothers me.

We were on a hike with a couple of my brothers and their wives, and their children, including Rachel. (Sharon and I don’t have kids, and some of our nieces and nephews, like Rachel, are getting to be young adults.) Coming to yet another scenic overlook in the mountains, we stopped to enjoy the view. There were no railings up here, but rather an area of rounded, pale brown stone that grew gradually steeper until it suddenly ended in a cliff. Wanting to see over the edge of the cliff, I hiked carefully down the rounded stone. One of Rachel’s younger cousins and her little sister followed me onto the steep part, but their moms immediately called them back, scolding them about the dangers involved.

After a moment, I turned and made my way back up, joking, “I must not be as valuable as them! No one told me to get away from the cliff!”

Everyone laughed, except Rachel. She was standing to one side of the group—the side closest to me—and I involuntarily met her eyes, which now seemed to have more desperation behind them than ever.

She gave me a strange smile. “If you died now, I might commit suicide,” she mumbled. Then, suddenly nervous, she looked away quickly.

I wasn’t sure if she had meant for me to hear that, or even if she knew that I had heard it. Horror overwhelmed me for an instant, but Sharon was already joining in on the joke, remarking that I had the car keys so they couldn’t lose me. I forced myself to laugh with them, but I wasn’t laughing inside. Rachel’s remark had made my joke seem suddenly horrible. Why had she said that? Did she mean it?

After the reunion, I tried to put what Rachel said out of my mind, but it kept bothering me. The more I tried to ignore it, the more it troubled me. What the hell had she meant, anyway? That if I died, she felt she might do something crazy?

No, not just if I died…if I died now. I was sure by “now”, Rachel meant before I believe in Jesus. She still wouldn’t accept that that would never happen.

What would it accomplish? Nothing! But she couldn’t have meant it; her remark was just an emotional reaction. She shouldn’t care that much, I thought, it’s not her problem.

To tell the truth, I wasn’t completely certain what bothered me so much about that remark: whether it was its dark nature, or my uncertainty about what it implied, or simply the grotesque image of such a thing actually happening. Still, despite how troubled I was at first, time gradually wore away at my sense of horror. I thought about it less and less until, without noticing, I stopped thinking of it altogether.

By then, I had more important things on my mind.

Although Sharon still seemed relatively healthy, the doctors said her condition was beginning to decline. The cancer had spread to other parts of her body, and it was becoming resistant to more and more treatments. It could become unmanageable very suddenly, and at that point, there would be nothing more they could do.

Honestly, we didn’t know how to handle the news. The only thing we could think to do was plan a hiking trip together. We would have to go somewhere beautiful, somewhere unique, like nowhere else we had ever been. It could be our last hiking trip together.

After a bit of research, we decided on a place up north along the ocean coast. As soon as we had everything together, we drove up there and set up camp near the hiking trails. The trails ran along rugged, pine-forested cliffs and waterfalls that crashed through the cliffs into the ocean. There were rocky formations and small islands out at sea, and every view was breathtaking. The days were pleasantly cool but not cold, and the mossy woods smelled of sweet pine needles.

The sky on that day…when it happened…was a blank, formless gray, diffusing the light so that everything was palely lit and there were no distinct shadows. It was warm and humid, but the strangest thing was the sun. The sun was a deep, reddish-orange—a perfect circle in the uniform sky that seemed to cast no light of its own. I could look straight at it without blinking as it hung there eerily, like a staring eye.

I still don’t know exactly how it happened. It was so sudden, and my memory of the moment is, of course, rather spotty. I must’ve been hiking up close to the edge of the rapids, where there was a short, steep drop-off in the brownish-gray stone. Whether the fragile corner of the rock suddenly broke, or whether it was simply slippery from spray, I don’t know, but I felt that sudden, uncomfortable lurch in my chest, that horrid sensation of falling. Then I felt an instant of terror before I hit the freezing, violent waters, which smashed me against every rock they came to. There were a few seconds of agony, and then nothing.

I don’t know how long it was before I came to, but I’m still amazed that I came to at all. I must’ve washed up on some rocky beach, on an island a little ways out in the ocean. I suppose it was a place where no one visited, and I was on the opposite side of the coast, because no one found me for a long time.

Well, most of that was told to me after I was found. During that nightmare time, when I was there, I could hardly see. My glasses had shattered somewhere a long way back, and there was a sort of red darkness clouding my vision.

Being conscious was torture. I didn’t know where I was hurt, or how many injuries there were, because it all blended into a single, searing, aching pain. I kept fading in and out of consciousness, but each time I woke up, I was beset by a more awful terror. I had never experienced such fear before; it was worse than the physical pain. Why? Was I desperate to hold on to my existence a little longer?

Or was I terrified of Hell?

I didn’t believe in hell, but the possibility still hung there. Fear wasn’t enough to make me believe, however. I had never believed before, and I wasn’t about to believe just because death was staring me in the face. More so, I hated God. I hated Him for doing this to me, for putting me through such unendurable agony and terror.

But I didn’t hate god. I had no one to hate. No one had done this to me. It was nothing but a meaningless, senseless accident. And now, right before my eyes, my whole life was being reduced to absurdity. The moment I slipped out of existence, none of it would matter anymore. Not even my memories would remain. And before too much longer, no memory of me would remain either.

Maybe that was what I was terrified of.

I didn’t move as I lay there, bleeding. I didn’t know how much time passed as I slipped in and out of consciousness. In the end, it was really a miracle that I lived, an impossibility. They told me I had been missing for a week. Even so, I didn’t acknowledge it as a miracle. I didn’t let the thought cross my mind.

Once, when I was half-conscious, I thought I saw a man bending over me, weeping. A strange dream…a trick of the subconscious…and yet that was the only moment during that time in which I didn’t feel terror. Later on, I remembered it clearly, and it pierced my heart with a deep, warm emotion…but perhaps I even imagined the memory long after the fact.

Finally, the people who were searching for my body found me. They couldn’t believe I was alive, couldn’t explain it, but they got me to a hospital as soon as possible. Even after I received medical attention, it was still amazing that I survived. There were deep, infected gashes to be healed, broken bones and ribs, internal injuries…As for my head, the doctors were amazed to report that I’d received “only a severe concussion”. It could have been much worse, I suppose. One of my eyes had been irreversibly damaged, and I lost sight in it. All they could do for that was treat the infection. Then, of course, along with all this, I was starving, dehydrated, hypothermic, and suffering from severe blood loss. I couldn’t explain how I survived except by reminding myself that my heart and brain had not been severely damaged.

Sharon came to the hospital as soon as she heard I was alive. I was still slipping in and out of consciousness then, and I kept being taken in for surgery. Whenever I did wake, however, Sharon was there: a light, but one which made my heart ache. When I was able to speak, I mumbled, “How are you?...the cancer…”

“Don’t worry; I’m stable,” she replied, pressing my hand, “You just focus on recovering. Don’t worry about me.” She said this, but she still looked troubled, as though there was something she wasn’t telling me. Certain it had something to do with her condition, I kept pressing her for an answer, but she kept insisting that the cancer was under control.

Finally, a week later, I said to her, “Something’s bothering you. Please just tell me.” I wasn’t going to let it pass this time.

Sharon bit her lip. “You shouldn’t have to hear it when you’re in this condition,” she replied, “It’s…it’s something someone will have to tell you, but it’s not about me, all right? Don’t worry about it now. Wait until you’re a bit better.”

At her words, a horrible dread rose in my chest. Was it simply from the implication that she thought it was too awful for me to handle now, or did I somehow have an inkling of what it was? Either way, the expression on my face must have become suddenly frightening, because she drew back slightly. “Just tell me now,” I muttered through clenched teeth.

“It’s our niece…Rachel…” Sharon began reluctantly, and dread shook me all the more as I began to realize what she would say. “She’s dead.”

“Dead?” I gasped, “When?...How?”

“A little over two weeks ago…before you were found,” she answered, “Gavril, they…they think it was suicide.”

“I can’t believe it,” I whispered, staring up at the ceiling, hardly comprehending what I was hearing.

“Neither can I. She always seemed so cheerful.”

“Had you told the family I was dead?” I questioned her suddenly, intensely.

“Yes,” she said, then hurriedly added, “But now I’ve told them you’re alive, and I’ve been emailing them about how you’re doing.”

I didn’t have to ask any more specific questions. I knew what had happened. Leaning my head back against the hospital pillows, trying to control my shaking, I mumbled, “Please give me some time alone now.”

Sharon nodded to show she understood, but she didn’t really understand. She stood up and left the room.

For a while, I had no reaction. I lay there without any emotion, without any thought.

Then, suddenly, horror engulfed me. I nearly threw up.

She thought I was dead.

The horror converged into a searing stab of pain that pierced my heart. My one good eye stung with unshed tears.

She thought I was dead. She thought I was dead.

She had meant it, then. Or had she even meant it? She had done it. Why?

I experienced a cold flash of anger as I irrationally imagined this to be one, last-ditch effort to make me believe in her Jesus. I wouldn’t believe. Not even if God Himself committed suicide over me.

But she thought I was dead.

She couldn’t have done it to make me believe, then. But why? Why?

I knew why. It wasn’t rational, couldn’t have been an intellectual decision. Slowly, reluctantly, I was dragged to the inescapable conclusion. She hadn’t only thought I was dead.

Rachel thought I had gone to Hell, and she hadn’t been able to deal with it.