After death, p.27
After Death..., page 27
I’d told her that morning I was fed up with her. I’d lost all respect for her because of the constant carping about my weight and my heavy-duty diet. I hadn’t mentioned Beth, though the implication was there in my whining. After all, I exercised. My reasoning was that such activity would cancel out the effects of over-eating and overweight.
I’d smile if I could. My heart obviously disagreed.
At one time I believed that the reason for this constant resistance to easy options was to test us. Life was a series of tests, and the way you solved the problems and dealt with the obstacles determined the level at which you entered the next phase of existence.
Then I became cynical, and the cosmic joker idea grew in my mind. I found comfort in this because it meant that whatever I did or didn’t do in my life would make no difference in the end.
I wonder about that. Perhaps my belief has landed me in this mess. Maybe the next level of existence is determined by the beliefs you adopt during the preceding existence.
God is what you understand him, or her, or it, to be.
Ending up in Sheila’s lunch, perched above a beautiful city, is the biggest joke of all. It may be that, as the food decays, so will I. My soul, and with it my anguish, will fade away and I’ll simply cease to exist.
I snigger into the coleslaw and, to my surprise, make it bubble. When the panic is over, Sheila may wonder what happened to her lunch. She’ll probably decide that someone threw it away when tidying up.
After all, there has to be a logical explanation, doesn’t there?
Paris is coming alive. Spring is here and birds are singing. People move along wide gray streets, and vehicles carry others to work. The sound of engines drifts upwards like a soft exhalation. The smell of carbon mixes with sunlight and the scent of apple blossoms.
The city fades away. Colors melt and slip into grayness. I hover over the plate as the solidity of the food shifts like a bowel movement. There is an echo of laughter.
I’m sorry. I don’t want to believe in a cosmic joker.
I’m embarrassed to find myself in the middle of a four-poster bed. To either side are mounds. Beneath the covers, two people lie; a bride and a groom. Confetti is everywhere, spread around the room from the open suitcase, in multi-colored confusion.
Once more, I’m confounded. Where am I? How did I manage to transport from the Eiffel Tower to this intimate boudoir? The impish echo of laughter fades as I puzzle over something I have no hope of understanding. The cosmic joker analogy is all I can use to try and rationalize my situation.
Despite my confusion, my curiosity is stimulated. Why do they sleep with their backs to each other? Newly-weds make love, don’t they? Newly-weds hold each other close in the private warmth of the bed. They sleep, exhausted after consummation, clinging together at the edge of destiny.
There’s a stirring. She pulls herself from sleep and sits up. Her face is pale and her hair hangs in tangled webs of blonde. The shock of recognition stuns me.
Beth!
But it isn’t her. This is the same room in the same hotel. From the window, between gently billowing net curtains, is the Eiffel Tower, silhouetted against the dawn.
She rubs her eyes and looks again.
“What’s this?” she says, shaking him and pointing at me.
He grumbles under the covers, dragging himself from sleep. As he sits up I’m almost overturned.
“What?” he asks.
“This plate, this . . . stuff.”
“I don’t know. Did you order a late supper or something?”
“No, but I might as well have, for all the use you were last night.”
Guilt glistens on his forehead.
“Yea, I’m sorry, love. Had a bit too much to drink.” Echoes from the future.
She laughs. The sound is rough and coarse. “You’re not bloody kidding! How d’you feel now?”
He smiles at her, his lips sticky from sleep. He wipes them on his arm and moves closer to her.
“A bit stiff, actually.” He smiles again, and the resentment between them evaporates.
They come together, and I’m thrown to the floor. I feel myself scattering across the carpet. The shock makes me weak. I remember falling on the sidewalk as a child. The hard flagstones scraped the skin from my hands and knees. I cried.
I want to cry now as I survey my broken life. The anguish of knowing that this is what it has come to crushes my soul as I moisten the carpet with mayonnaise, coleslaw, and cottage cheese.
The bride and groom moan in ecstasy. I want to warn them:
Live for today. Love for today. Hold on to life while you can, and don’t treat it as a joke. Grasp the opportunities that come your way and use them.
They don’t hear, of course. They climax in ignorance.
The room is fading. I’m lost again. Loneliness overwhelms me. If I had a body, the tears would never end. I don’t want to be like this. I want these thoughts to end. If only the memories of failure would slip into grayness, like the city.
The anguish melts away as if it had never been. Wisps of light gather together and solidify. Brightness and warmth surround me as the universal soul eases me from the ruins of Sheila’s lunch.
I am an empty vessel.
I wait to be reborn.
Trevor Denyer has been published in many magazines including Scheherazade, Nasty Piece of Work, Enigmatic Tales, Symphonie’s Gift, and Night Dreams. He received an Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror and has appeared on-line at Time Out Net Books and Gathering Darkness. His work has appeared in a number of anthologies including Nasty Snips and Gravity’s Angels.
More recently, he has been published in the Evil Jester Press anthology, Help! Wanted: Tales of On-The-Job Terror and A Feast of Frights From The Horror Zine. His work has also appeared in the e-zines, Estronomicon (Screaming Dreams Press) and Tales From The River (Dark River Press).
His collection, The Edge of the Country is available through the website below. He is the creator and editor of the critically acclaimed Roadworks, Legend, and Midnight Street magazines. Visit the website at www.midnightstreet.co.uk.
Mankind is a complex species with an exceptional amount of variation across the world, from the philosophical differences in politics and religion to the physical differences in the patterns of our fingerprints and the nitrogen base of our DNA. So what is it that links us all together; what is the origin of our “commonality”? Is it that we share the same traits, we can reason and communicate? Or is it that we all descended together from the same random mutation of a primate? Or, perhaps, is there something even greater linking us all together? I Was The Walrus follows the revelation of one man as he seeks the meaning of our existence. Goo Goo Ga Joob, indeed . . .
My mother says that when I was four years old I told her I was John Lennon’s friend. She was driving into the city, me strapped safely in the back seat, when I Am The Walrus came on the radio.
“It’s John,” I said. “He’s my friend.”
“What?” my mother asked, not sure if she’d heard correctly.
“John,” I repeated. “He played on a rooftop with Paul. John’s my friend.”
My mother stared at me in the rear view mirror. A moment later she rear-ended another car. Once we got home, she asked me about John. I couldn’t recall him at all. From that time on my mother was a rabid Beatles fan.
And a firm believer in reincarnation.
There is no way I could have known about The Beatles’ rooftop session, or even who John Lennon was. I was paraded before a stream of past-life experts and child psychologists, Buddhists monks, and psychics, but none of them retrieved any further memories. As an adult I’ve watched the rooftop session of Let It Be many times, looking for clues as to who I might have been. I’ve scoured the faces of the friends, the families, the assistants and employees; all those who were there on that cold January morning.
I’ve recently come to suspect that I was probably their roadie, Mal Evans.
I suppose I should tell you about myself.
My name is Rob Winters. I’m a forty-three year old insurance assessor, a pretty awful guitar player, and an amateur astronomer. I have a passing interest in science and have been known to read big books that I can barely understand. I’ve been dating a woman named Sandy Allen for around three years. She’s taller than me, blonde and lithe with a toothy grin and a crooked smile that I absolutely adore.
One night late last year we had a fight. I had planned to go stargazing with a few friends. Sandy planned for us to visit her sister. We argued. She called me selfish and uncaring. I said the same things about her. She pleaded with me not to go. I went anyway.
I still think I was right and she was wrong. The problem is, I can see her point of view and believe she was right as well.
That was the night I now call ‘wine on the fire.’
I told you I was an amateur astronomer, right?
Several times a year I head out to a dark sky site with my telescope and a few friends. We listen to music, have a few drinks, and observe the wonders of the universe. Sometimes we simply sit and talk and watch for meteors and satellites.
It was the night of the argument with Sandy. We were just about to set up the scopes when a band of heavy clouds rolled in, obscuring the entire sky. The stars gradually faded from north to south and put an early end to our night’s viewing. The four of us, me and Mick and Emma and Jeff, retired to the bunkhouse, a corrugated iron shed with a few beds and a kitchen area attached. For hours we drank, and talked, and laughed. Sometime after midnight we went back outside. It was cold and we lit a gas barbecue and gathered around, trying to keep warm. Some nights are beer nights, others are scotch. This was definitely a red wine night. We had a few bottles of local shiraz and drank quite liberally. Emma spilled some on the hotplate and the grill. She said it was deliberate, but I’m not so sure. There was a loud sizzle, a plume of white steam, and a pungent, burnt fruity odor. We all laughed, so she did it again.
Over the next few hours, as we drank more and more wine, I think we all poured some on the fire. We huddled closer, trying to stay warm, and discussed string theory, quantum entanglement, and other scientific concepts none of us understood completely.
Jeff then told us about a theory he’d recently read.
Apparently some PhD suggested the entire universe consists of one single particle, endlessly bouncing back and forth through time from the big bang to the big collapse. On each trip it passes through every point in time in a slightly different position. As such, everything in the universe consists of a combination of the one particle on different trips.
I’m not a physicist, but it sounds like complete crap to me.
So why do I now believe I was Mal Evans in a previous life?
A few weeks after ‘wine on the fire,’ I had a disturbing dream in which I was shot. I dreamed I was in my bedroom. I’d just had a violent and noisy argument with a friend who came to visit. I picked up an air rifle and laughed as I pointed it at him. We were both stoned, and I decided to leave rather than keep fighting. As I tried to push past him, shouting voices told me to drop the weapon. My girlfriend had called the police. I tried to let go of the gun, but I was confused and waved it around instead. I heard a series of shots and felt the burning impact and immediate pain as four bullets pierced my chest. I crashed to the floor and my mouth became metallic. Everything sounded muffled, as though underwater. I died a moment later.
The air rifle wasn’t even loaded.
Did you know Mal Evans was shot dead by police four years before John Lennon died? Did you know that John says ‘shoot me’ over the opening bars of Come Together? Were you aware he was fascinated by shootings? Or that when John met Andy Warhol all he could ask over and over again was how Warhol felt when it happened to him?
For John, maybe happiness really was a warm gun.
I don’t want you to think Mal Evans is the only person I’ve ever been in my dreams. I’ve dreamed of many others since I was a child. My dreams have always been vivid and very easily recalled, but over the past few years they’ve increased in frequency and clarity. Most of them are just regular dreams; walking along a street, going camping, making love to Sandy. But some of them have been too real, too intense, and certainly too detailed and accurate for my own personal knowledge and education.
I’ve dreamt I was a Viking, arriving on distant shores in longboats with my brothers. We spoke in tongues I’ve never heard before and crept toward villages which we pillaged and torched. I’ve been a maid in a medieval castle, waiting upon a lady who wore the finest clothes and jewels. I’ve spent time as a miner in the north of England, and a woodsman in ancient Japan. With my husband I ran a bookstore in 1940’s New York, and hunted buffalo on the American plains alongside my fellow warriors. I’ve been a hairdresser in Sydney and a gangster in Chicago. I’ve even played the drum in a German marching band during World War I.
Do you believe in reincarnation?
I used to wonder why documented cases of past-life regression always seem to feature iconic figures from history. These devotees recount endless tales of having been the Queen of Sheba, or Louis XIV, or a famous Chinese emperor; never simply Maurice, the file clerk. I now have a theory as to why this is the case.
These famous figures impacted our history. Bigger stones cause larger ripples. They were generally larger-than-life characters, with egos and charisma to match. If someone has lived many times, experienced many lives, which one is most likely to be remembered; the Shah of Iran, or a slave in the American south? And so most people only remember the famous ones.
Two lives connected through time. Bell’s theorem of quantum entanglement. One particle is spun, the other responds accordingly.
Of course, I’m the exception to the rule. I can even remember being Maurice, the file clerk.
I’ve tried talking to Sandy about it, but she just laughs and says they’re only dreams. She’s a systems analyst and tends to think logically. Nothing I say will convince her of how real my dreams are.
I visited a church a few months ago and spoke to the minister. I sat opposite him in his functional office. Wood panel and bookshelves around us, a desk and belief system in between.
“Do you believe in reincarnation?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Do you?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Why?”
I told him of my dreams, about the memories I’d had of other people’s lives, about the day I told my mother I knew John Lennon.
“Dreams,” he said. “They can be surprisingly clear. A few forgotten memories and images that combine and create a narrative that seems to make sense to us in our sleep. We search for meaning within them, but we don’t really understand them or how they’re formed.”
“What about the Lennon thing?” I asked. “That wasn’t a dream.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Perhaps you saw a Beatles special on TV. A documentary with interviews and videos. Somehow you were later able to make a connection between the man and the song. The mind works in mysterious ways.”
“As does God?” I suggested.
“Indeed,” he said and laughed. “As does God.”
“But doesn’t the Bible say that men are born again? Doesn’t that suggest reincarnation?”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “I’ve heard that one many times. The Bible is not talking about literal rebirth, but a spiritual one. We live once, we die once.”
“I’ve read that Jesus and Buddha were different incarnations of the same being.”
“I’ve read that too,” he said. “Doesn’t make it true.” He smiled. “I believe Jesus was sent here by God, the Father, to show us how to live. Jesus came to Earth to experience everything man experiences so we, as humans, can relate better to God. So we can have a close, personal relationship with him.”
“God needed to experience the human condition?”
“He didn’t need to,” he said. “He chose to. He did it for us, not for him, so we could recognize he understood what it was like to be human.”
“He wouldn’t know what it’s like to be me,” I said. “He really only experienced being one man, Jesus. And even then, Jesus didn’t die. He doesn’t know what it’s like to die.”
“Jesus did die,” he said. “But then he rose from the dead and was lifted to heaven.”
Like smoke, I thought. Wine on the fire.
I thanked him for his time and left.
A few weeks ago I had another strange dream.
It was night. I opened the car door and stepped out, my wife beside me. I carried a bunch of cassette tapes. Together we walked the short distance to the archway that led to our apartment building. I saw a man standing in the shadows, and I knew I’d seen him before. As I passed, I nodded at him and he stepped out into the streetlight. He called my name just as I reached the entranceway. Before I could turn around I heard a loud bang, and then another, and some more. Four bullets hit my back, knocking me to the ground. The cassette tapes clattered across the pavement. I felt stabs of heat in my back and chest, and my throat filled with blood. I choked, unable to breathe clearly. I managed to get to my hands and knees, and tried to crawl up the steps.
“I’ve been shot. I’ve been shot,” I croaked, and then collapsed. All I heard was Yoko screaming. The dream was over.
This wasn’t the first time I’d died like this.
Now I have a problem.
How can my experiences be reincarnation when I’ve been both Mal Evans and John Lennon? They were both alive at the same time, spent many years together as friends, and died only a few years apart.
To make matters worse, last week I dreamt I was Sandy.
As Sandy, I sat at home reading the newspaper. The phone rang and I answered it. It was my sister. We chatted for a few minutes, then she told me she was taking a trip to Thailand and invited me along. I didn’t hesitate. I needed a break and thought Rob wouldn’t mind. He’d probably enjoy the time alone.
