discover fire

^{This post is Copyright 2007 Jeremy Osborne, All Rights Reserved.}

I reach up to wipe away David’s tears and drop my tingly arm into the red bath water. His tears slide down my face but I feel nothing at all; they cross my lips but I taste no salt. His voice, and the entire scene, drops into the foreground. I see David’s red soaked, sleeved arm around my back, holding my naked body upright. His favorite white shirt soaks up the spattered red water. I reach out to him, touched by his compassion after all these years. The arm I reach with extends from another body I now inhabit and I look at the scene from eyes that retreat farther and farther away from my old flesh.

My stomach drops out, and the view of David pulling me out of the tub disappears beyond the darkness I fall into. I peer through a rapidly shrinking peephole, and see water splashing, painting everything shades of pink. A few seconds later my out of body view into my own life winks out of existence.

Darkness wraps me in a blanket of cold. I turn my head and blink but see nothing. I touch my wrists and feel smooth skin. My hair floats around my head, tickling across my nose. Silence except for the breath escaping my filled lungs. I’m falling, as my stomach reminds me, but I wonder why the wind doesn’t whistle in my ears.

I look for the top of the hole I fell through. Someone must have plugged it up because there isn’t even a pinprick of a shining star. I look to the left and only the muscle strain in my neck reminds me that I rotated my head.

“David!” I shout and hear the lone sound of my voice. No echo returns. Tingles of numbness crisscross my limbs.

“Where am I?” I ask myself aloud. I place my hands over my eyes, and then uncover them. Cover, uncover. Slight difference now, perhaps? Cover, uncover. Black, deepest of reds. My eyes provide the wrong sort of clue for an answer to my previous question.

During my descent I must have rotated onto my side. Deep in the distance onyx seeps into a red atmosphere. The brimstone glow pushes back the darkness by inches.

Some unknown force slowly spins me around. Solid red fills my vision. I see again: my body, my legs, my breasts, my stomach, my feet, my arms. I’m naked and whole and distinct. Warmth surrounds me, like the energy that gets sucked out of my body after a long run on a cold day. Discomforting.

I wanted to believe that the continuing ache in my stomach happened as a physical reaction to falling. My mind lied to me, I even encouraged it to lie, but I caught myself this time. My stomach churns and burns out of utter terror. I fall, and I’m terrified of what I fall into.

“No!” I shout. I crawl at the empty space around me. “I made a mistake!” Silence answers my cries.

An orange speck breaks through the distant membrane of red. It grows unevenly as I drift closer. Oblique pools mar the surface orange dirt. A jagged stitch extends from the center of the mass and heads away into the redness beyond my field of view.

“I’m dead,” I say, and try to rationalize my situation. “I’m dead, and I’m definitely not in heaven. David, you were right once again, you bastard.” My dissatisfaction does nothing to even slow my drift toward what has grown into a large, orange asteroid.

A white rectangle extends partially along the left side of the stitch, slightly ahead of an exact duplicate located parallel to it on the right side. There are seven distinct pools. One large one off to the left, right behind one of the rectangles. One pool churns away directly behind the end of the stitch. Five more pools are on the right side, situated behind the other rectangle. My destination appears to be the largest pool on the left.

The stitch clarifies into a railroad track. The edges of the rectangles bevel. Most of the pools coalesce and froth, fleshy tones stirring together at different intervals. One pool is calm and motionless. A giant fence-like barrier encircles each pool of… people. A literal sea of bodies moving and churning and, in one case still as an indoor pond.

Fear contracts my abdomen. Thousands of people inhabit my destination. How many men are in there? Will I be separated from them? The stories David told me, my parents told me, the people at the church told me, the movies showed me with clear pictures, the blood and terror fill my mind.

I curl into a ball and wrap one arm below to cover myself. I want to cease to feel anything. I close my eyes and see nothing but the visions of hell’s depravity. The more I try to avoid thinking about the inevitable, the sharper the image becomes. I try to push everything aside with a good thought; I see the picture David’s tear landing on my face.

A gritty surface pushes against my shoulder. I open my eyes after my landing and see hundreds of legs standing sideways against the orange rock. Naked legs disappear behind the ragged cloth surrounding their nether regions. I brace myself, waiting for my punishment to commence.

“Hey,” a masculine voice says, and dirty-gray cloth obscures my view. “Put these on, would you?”

“What?” I say, reflexively grabbing the ratty cloth out of his hands. No one else pays any attention to me as I push myself upright. I turn my head and see the man standing with his back turned to me. I shake out the pair of ragged granny panties and tank top he handed to me.

“Please,” the man, back now turned towards me, says without turning his head to either side. “Do me a favor and put those on. We’re not like those heathens across the tracks.”

I cringe, but pull the panties top on as commanded. No one pays any attention to me, other than the silly but helpful man with his back turned still to me. The fears of eternal torture dissipate. My heart slows and my breathing deepens, and I briefly wonder at the strangeness of the need of breath in death.

“Hey, um,” I speak to the back of the helpful man’s head. “What’s your name?”

“Red,” he says.

“You can turn around now,” I say. “I’m dressed.”

“Thank you,” he says and turns around. He has red hair and light pinkish freckles covering his exposed pale skin.

“You Irish?” I ask, making small talk.

“Of Irish descent,” he says.

“So,” I say and exhale into my palms, fascinated at the air escaping my lungs. This really isn’t anything that I expected, “Where am I?”

“You’re at the United States of America Way Station,” he says.

“Hell,” I say.

“No,” he says, “It’s one of the Way Stations, one of the waypoints on the way to hell.”

“How long do we stay here?” I ask.

“I’ve been here 334 days,” he says. “Some people here think it’s a big deal we can tell time, not like the other groups. Oh yeah, you’re in the Pride Waiting Area, if you couldn’t guess. The others are-”

“-Gluttony, Sloth, Wrath, Greed, Lust and Envy,” I finish.

“You’d be surprised how many young people don’t know that,” he says. “If you want a bit of news, I have some.”

“Sure,” I say. What else is there to do, I think. I mean, here I am, speaking to someone as dead as I am, and he’s behaving like we met for a cup of coffee downtown on Saturday morning. Maybe he has something interesting to tell me.

“A few days before my arrival,” Red says, “Wormtape elected himself leader. He convinced all of us we should stay here, that we’re better here than by being gratified by the pleasures of hell.”

“Pleasures?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says, “It’s supposedly way better than anything you ever had on earth. Makes sense considering I never hear about anyone leaving hell. Anyway, a day before I was to ride the train, Wormtape blocked the exit from the pen, forcing the conductors to hold up the departure.

“‘Friends,’ Wormtape said, ‘Why should we bow to anyone? We have everything we need here and we need not heed anyone but ourselves. I vote we show them what we’re really made of and stay here. I say we don’t board the train, we don’t give in.’

“A minute passed, and then the first one spoke in favor, and then another and another. Shocking to me, I was ready to ride the train. But everyone was agreeing, and what was I to do to go against the group? I went along to get along, as you can see.”

I look at Red’s face and body. There’s nothing visibly wrong with him even after 334 days. The orange rock below me warms my skin, but nothing burns me. The people here seem respectful, not hateful at all. No fighting, no violence, no torture.

A single picture flashes into my head, the red soaked sleeve cradling me. The scene I viewed as a spectator, a scene I couldn’t even be part of. Maybe I was actually wrong about David all these years. I frown at the thought of being wrong and finding out now.

“You know,” he answers my thoughts, “No one deserves to be here,” he answers. “Just ask anyone hanging around, we’re all innocent.”

I imagine everyone here, in their horrible excuse for clothes, arguing with themselves and each other about how innocent they are. The thought makes me cringe even more than my imagined punishments. I make up my mind.

“Red, when does the train arrive?” I ask.

“Every 12 hours,” he says.

“Good,” I say, “I’m getting on it.”

“They won’t let you,” he says.

“Look,” I say, angry and upset at this whole stupid situation. “I’m getting on that train because it’s what I came here to do.”

Red stares at me, mouth closed. A tiny smile nicks the corners of his mouth. Beyond him the nearby ambient chatter fades. My naked body got less attention than my short outburst moments ago garners.

“What?” I yell at everyone staring at me. “You’ve got to be kidding me?! I’m the only one who deserves to be here? Of everyone here I’m the only one who knows I should get on that train? Because, shit I don’t know, but it’s the right thing to do, strange as that sounds?”

“You,” A short, fat man huffs and puffs, pushing his way through one of the cliques off to my right. “You obviously have no idea what you are saying.” Strips of cloth hang down the sides of his face. A tattered suit, made from better cloth than I received, covers every inch of his body except his hands and feet.

You must be Wormtape, I think to myself. Then out loud, “Fine, then I am the only one, and that makes me different, just like everyone else. And for your information, whether or not you like it, I’m getting on that train.”