Afterlife

Richard Orion has died. It was a Tuesday in Ohio and nowhere near any city, Richard crashed his oldsmobile in a fit of self rage. It was suicide. No one was around. No one heard the car screech on a patch of ice and go careening off of a hill to smash into the ground going somewhere between sixty and seventy miles an hour. To Richard’s surprise, he felt everything. The vertigo of the fall and the panic it created. The immobility of fear as he sat in his seat. The determination of his decision. When he felt the impact, he upchucked his breakfast, saw the red in it, then lost consciousness.

Upon awakening, he saw paradise. A great hill floating in the sky. But it fell slowly past him, and he could not steer himself toward it. Upward he flew to where the sky darkened and all was stars and the vastness of space. Onward he travelled, a meteor without destination. Or so it seemed. Within a few hours he descended, quickly, and found ground beneath him before he could breathe. Maybe it was the dust choking him. He had landed on a floor covered in hardened mud. It stretched as far as he could see. He thought to himself: “I’m damned.”

Rolling over, Richard spit onto the land he had seemed to have been banished to. It was as if he knew that suicide was frowned upon in heaven. And as he remembered watching paradise pass him by he began to weep. Suddenly and without control. So there he was, aged by many seasons of life and dead by his own hands. There was no safety to be found in visiting a church or tuning in to the Christian station in his oldsmobile. Those days were gone. Yet what lay ahead? He didn’t know.

When he stopped crying, he pulled himself to his feet. Finding himself clothed in a dark green cloth wrapped like a greek toga about his frame. He desired to move, but he didn’t know where he was. He made a motion to go left, but thought better of it. He looked up, but the sky was just as dark as his ascent. In any case, he figured he might not be in hell. Hell was a place beneath the earth. Whatever banishment this was, it was definitely a place far from the world he lived on. Sure that he was still dead, he made his way forward. It was the surest way he knew.

He wondered if there were others here. Surely it was a divine effort that placed him where he was. Whether it was God, he didn’t know. It could also have been extra terrestrials seeing as the flight went through space itself. Therefore he had come to the conclusion that he was stuck on a strange planet in the universe. One saved for the dead. The thought chilled him. He felt human, and weak as such. As he walked, guilt began to wrestle with him. He wrestled back. It was no complex matter, he had grown to detest life.

From the american president to the homeless shelter humanitarian serving meals out of their van to the desperate, there was no escaping the senility and pessimism that never escaped his mind. He drove by it all, listening to the radio station after station hearing nothing but overplayed songs and worn out conversations, all without companions. When he could, he would pick up a hitchhiker and give them a lift to their home or grocery store or the big game. Then he had a friend. For as long as the ride would last he would forget the solitude he had sought when he got in the car and would have a conversation with someone other than the sound system.

That day there were no hitchhikers. Not even on the highway. It was terrible. Terrible to feel so alone. Like all the people in the world had stood you up and there you were, the only person at the concert without an act on the stage to be found, the only one in the theater with no movie playing. That was the final straw. He saw the bend first. The patch of ice so conveniently at the apex of the curve. His foot was on the gas first, then he was flying, flying, flying…

Surrounded by dust he moved into a wind that had picked up in this strange land he had come to. No one anywhere. It was as if nothing had changed between life and death. Richard felt it’s pain sticking him like a gangster from the 1920’s. It’s knife stuck in his chest, leaving him limp. He dropped to his knees and cursed his poor balance. The breeze whipping dirt into his white hair and his face. Would he suffocate? He pondered this. How would whatever phase of death this was pass him?

As the guilt harassed him again, he had no patience for it. Attempting to banish it from his mind, he got to his feet and continued on. Straight ahead. Daring his mind to ease it’s attack on his soul. But he wasn’t going to give in. There was to be none of that. Richard faced the way before him and kept walking. As he went, he felt the wind growing stronger. He must have been walking into a storm. He wondered if it rained on this planet, star or speck of dust as it seemed to be.

And in his loneliness, he began to speak with himself. “How can this be my destiny? Where have all the people gone? My earth, my home. Well it’s no big wonder what happened to my fucking car! Heh! Drove the fucker right over the… well I, I don’t think that will do to speak much of that. I-” The wind grew in heaviness again. All around him, there was sand, wind, and space.

Then he confronted himself. “So what? So I- I killed myself, eh? I never wanted to be alive anyway! My mother and father, they both hated me. Ever since I pushed my little sister off of the swing to have a turn, and she fell, they- they could never get her to stop crying! And the blood. All that blood running down her leg. They never saw me the same again. But it was my turn! So I thought of myself before I thought of her, or anyone. That’s what a man has to do! I read that. When no one was around! No one’s… No one’s ever around.”

The wind howled around him now. He was fumbling in his stance, trying to maintain his ground, but the wind shook him too much. It made him angry amongst his sadness. “I was the best friend no one ever had! Where were they when I was ready to settle down? Where were they when I faced the world on my own, with the world falling around us all-” A funnel formed where he was standing, and the ground opened up as did the sky. He fell with the land and the rain came in after him. Pounding his skin and soaking the rag he wore. He sank lower and lower with the mud carrying him beneath. The planet swallowed him, and his consciousness was lost forever.

fin.