Being Dead
By Philip J. Lees
Being dead was not at all like I had imagined it to be. I had expected pits of flaming tar, demons with pitchforks, the screams of souls in torment, scenes of outlandish torture á la Hieronymus Bosch. In fact, it turned out to be quite boring: an eternity of quite boring.
You know when you have a first date and you’re waiting on the street corner, not knowing whether she’s going to show up, and you curse yourself for your nervousness, and you keep looking at your watch and only the second hand has moved since you looked last? Eternity is like that, except that the second hand doesn’t move either. There are clocks everywhere and after a while you’re too afraid to look, but that darned hope keeps dragging your eyes to the dial. It’s not that the clocks have stopped if you listen carefully you can hear them ticking.
All this was before I met Anissa. Looking back, boredom doesn’t seem so bad.
She found me sitting on a rock. I had learned by then that the best thing was to walk for a bit, then sit for a bit, then walk some more. If you walked far enough you could get back to the same rock you started from. Or maybe it was a different rock, after all: they all looked pretty much alike. The only thing that changed was the walls: sometimes they towered so high they seemed to meet over your head; sometimes they were low enough so that you thought if you jumped a bit you could see over them to the other side, but somehow you could never quite manage it. No matter how high or low they were, they never got any closer: walking towards them was pointless because they just moved away from you. The walls were on both sides, so it was better to keep going straight ahead, where the ground seemed to slope gradually down, although on the spot where you walked it was always uphill.
“Hello,” she said. I looked up. All I could see clearly was her face, but some subliminal comprehension of the rest set me instantly erect and I knew I would never be able to have her.
Her smile was Mona Lisa’s, constant, fixed in time; but above it her black eyes danced with mad, malicious humor. “I’m Anissa. I have an offer for you.” Her lips barely parted, did not sully the purity of that smile. “I just know you’re going to say ‘Yes’.”
I thought she was probably right. After all, I had spent my whole life saying ‘No’, and look where it had got me. I shrugged.
“I can get you out of here. But there’s a price.” Of course, there would be. I looked around. Dali must have dreamed this place, but then he added some ants to make it interesting.
“What is it?” I asked. I presumed I would be able to pay.
“You must atone for my sins.” That would be some atonement, I thought, sensing a lifetime and more of evil behind those eyes.
“So? And then?”
“And then you may leave. You will cross the wall between this place and the other.”
“What must I do?” One thing I had learned here was that there was little point in procrastination: it only made the ticking of the frozen clocks seem louder.
“Lie down and let me mount you.” So I was to have her, after all. What was the catch? There was sure to be a catch. I did what she said.
She sucked pleasure from me and rerouted it to my gonads, so that each moment was an ecstasy of pain. ‘Hard’ was just a word until I lay on the ground there, with her writhing atop me. I think I screamed, but she wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop, until she got where she was going.
Then, suddenly, I was above, looking down, seeing those dancing black eyes staring back at me from my own face. This time I know I screamed, and screamed again as the body I had left faded away, leaving me crouched, panting upon the stony floor.
So now I am Anissa. What the others see in my eyes I do not know, but anyone I approach mutters something and shuffles away. I must wait, pick the right moment, as she did with me; the window of vulnerability between hope and despair.
Where has she gone, taking my old body with her? Again I do not know. Has she truly escaped, crossed the wall to the other place?
Not knowing is hell.
- End -
© Copyright Philip J. Lees 2000