Stillness

by JUSTIN FINLEY

It was just as I thought it would be: infinite blackness in a silence that is entirely too deafening. Heaven sounded too good to be true since all it takes is getting dunked in a tub of water to be absolved of “sin.” Hell sounded too over dramatic, structured, and too easy of a night club to get into to be a real place. I was never a fan of the whole limbo idea either. Why does it share the same name as a party game, and if Heaven is above and Hell is below, wouldn’t the middle just be Earth? I think there are too many people for reincarnation to be a thing. The waitlist would be insane.

I have to say, I imagined dying and the afterlife would be a bit more poetic. Not like getting greeted at a five-star hotel with complimentary champagne or anything like that, but I thought there would be more warmth and comfort. I have so many questions, but no one is here to answer them. Like how am I still able to think if the neurons in my brain have been starved of oxygen? Will the mortician talk shit about my tattoos as he undresses me and drains the blood from my body like “juice” from a package of raw chicken breast? Did I shit and piss myself on my girlfriend’s favorite lavender bed sheets after the control of my bladder and bowels was stripped from me? What will happen to all of my books? How long will it be before my job notices that I’m not coming in?

This is worse than waiting in line at the DMV or waiting for your name to be called at the doctor. They say that even when your eyes are closed, you can see shapes based on the light your eyes were exposed to throughout the day. Here, all of five senses are absent. I want to scream. 40% out of anger and 60% sadness. I had so much left to do. I didn’t have time to propose or become a father before I drew the short end of the stick. Not even a 30th birthday.

I feel selfish but validated, wondering how the news of my death will affect everyone who knew me, especially Liz. I remember walking to the kitchen for a glass of water and petting our cat Duke right before going back to bed. I picked him up and held him for a while as we stared out of the window with a view of moonlight smiling across the ripples of the lake. Even through the shitty parts of an evolving world like war, homelessness, and inflation … life is a beautiful thing. In this case, it was for me. I returned Duke to his bed before returning to my own and kissing Liz on her forehead before dozing off forever, hearing Peter Griffin’s laugh because she loves to fall asleep with some form of noise other than my snoring. 

We met through Tinder when we were both students. Her at DePaul for a Psychology degree, and me at Columbia College Chicago for a Creative Writing degree with a concentration in Fiction. We started spending three nights a week together after meeting for dinner when our classes or jobs were done for the day. As she fluffed her pillows before laying her freshly dyed hair on them, she would play the sounds of oceans, rain in a forest, and sometimes whale moans with the volume always set to seven. I would wait until she was motionless before turning off the TV or speaker she was using, not realizing how much I would miss this connection to life when I was without it. I want to tell her I’m sorry and remind her to set her alarm, but the whole ghost thing isn’t going how I expected. I have no arms, legs, torso, or vocal cords here. I’m not even breathing. I want to speak to the fucking manager. 

I think throughout the time I was alive, I rarely ever felt real fear. I have been scared of many things, but real fear looks us in the eyes when you are fully aware that things are out of your hands, and your absence of control sets in. Like a rabbit trapped in a snare with no way at all of knowing if they will ever be free again or if they will even see tomorrow.

I remember feeling that kind of fear when my Dad got into an argument with his girlfriend when I was over. He had to travel for work, and she was sure he was planning on seeing another woman while he was away. She was probably right. My Dad didn’t see longevity with women. They were just fun until they weren’t, then he found someone new to play with. He could never see the harm in making a woman invest feelings in him, only to never return any emotion. Anyway, she pulled a sawed-off shotgun from underneath the bed and pointed it at him as he lay in bed. She held it on him for about three minutes, maybe wondered if prison for the rest of her life was worth showing someone she wasn’t fucking around. He laughed and asked if I could pass him a pack of cigarettes from the nightstand, even though it was right next to him. I did as he asked and waited to see if he would live or die while I hyperventilated. I thought if I ran for help, she would blow my ass off too. Eventually, I did force my nine-year-old legs to run for help until I found it. I have never forgotten the fear of not knowing if I would see his brain splattered on the wall as Elf played in the background.

I read somewhere that eternity becomes short when you stop thinking about time. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that it was probably morning and Liz had found me. Stiff and cold like an old, untouched biscuit. I don’t think she would scream, but imagining her crying was worse than death. I would die twice if I had a chance to say goodbye.

In the never-ending darkness, the fear took hold when I smelled something burning. A burning that was usually accompanied by black smoke, the same color as tar, and so far gone you wouldn’t tell if it was food or a living creature. Then the screams started. One voice leaked across the nothingness then, as if being chopped and screwed into a remix, split into an uncountable number of incoherent yells. Begging and pleading desperately alongside wailings of hopelessness. I couldn’t scream stop or cover my ears even if I wanted to. The voices would have drowned me out anyway. A low rumbling began as if an earthquake was splitting a street open beneath me. Even without legs, I could feel it moving everything in this realm of nothing. 

The burning soon reached where my head used to be, my face to be exact. I was sure my flesh was being boiled away by something unbelievably hot that made fresh coffee seem lukewarm. I mentally prayed for anything other than to be dropped into Hell. Hands were grabbing what I could only imagine was my soul. Shaking it and pulling like a family pulling the legs and wings off of a Thanksgiving turkey. I wasn’t sure what I had done to end up there, but looking back, I did steal a lot of bags of Flaming Hot Cheetos from Target whenever I was throwing a party in college.

Terrible timing but I was a bit curious to know who would be in Hell if I was about to get my one-way ticket there. Definitely Ronald Reagan, but what about corrupt world leaders, warlords, and the guys who had the idea to create taxes and gay conversion camp? If I had to spend an eternity at the lake of fire, as they call it, with an angry red guy who probably has goat feet then they should have to spend three and a half eternities there. 

“Up! Wake Up!” rings in my ears.

I opened my eyes and saw the cream-colored ceiling of our bedroom as Liz slapped me awake one more time. 

“Thank God! Are you ok baby? You were shaking! I burned the bacon trying to wake you up.”

“I love you!” I said as I kissed her and jumped out of bed to go pee. Duke was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, staring at me like a bored child waiting for their parents to finish grocery shopping. Liz dumped the charred remains of the bacon into the garbage and ran the small pan under cold water, opening the windows to let the smoke out and coming back to bed. Freed from my sleep paralysis, that shifted into an early morning daydream, I jumped back into bed and turned on Family Guy as I scrolled through UberEats in search of a replacement breakfast for us. This must be how flies feel on the rare occasion one escapes a spider’s web.

“Since when did I start dating Mike Tyson?” I asked her, putting a hand to my cheek that she had slapped awake.

“Today! I’ve never seen you stuck asleep that long before! What were you dreaming about anyway?”

I put in an order for two breakfast burritos with a bit of extra sour cream, just how she likes them. Thinking about how to sum up to her what I had just experienced was a Rubik’s Cube of complexity, twists, and turns.

“Oh … nothing really.”