Closure

“Are you hungry, John?”

His mother’s voice was soft and comforting. John could picture her standing in his doorway holding a plate of food and a glass of water. She liked to make sandwiches, usually tuna salad, filled with more good intentions than flavor.

“Not right now, I’m sleeping. I’ll eat it later.” He mumbled into his pillow, which was oddly hard and sharp.

How can a pillow be sharp? He felt for the covers and grabbed only air. Why is it so cold in here? Did I forget to turn the air off? Why is Mom in my house? Mom is dead. His eyes shot open and he bolted upright to jump off of a couch that was no longer there. He looked around frantically, searching for the ghost that had just spoken to him. Long, thin, strands of something caressed his face and he swatted them away in a panic. They slowly floated up, carried on a breeze he could not feel. They were willow branches. He followed them up and across the sky, miles long, finally focusing on the trunk of an impossibly large willow tree. He could not tell how far away the trunk was but he sensed that he could walk for miles and still not reach it. Had he been a poet, his mind would have surely concocted a slew of grandiose descriptors to put the size of this tree into perspective. But all his brain could muster at the moment was; holy shit, that’s a big-ass tree.

Its size made him dizzy and he forced himself to look anywhere else. He looked up to the sky, coated in purple and pink clouds, and followed it down far below where a horizon line should be. He then realized, with a growing panic, that he was sitting on a floating platform of reddish dirt with only an endless pool of clouds beneath. The vertigo kicked in and he lost his balance, pitching forward towards the edge. He pushed his hands out reflexively and hit the ground, looking over the edge into oblivion. He felt rough dirt and sand under his fingers and cautiously looked down to see that two small patches of land had apparated beneath his hands, catching his fall.

He heard his mother’s laugh behind him and whipped around. A scream caught in his throat and came out as just a small squeaking noise that under literally any other circumstances would have been very embarrassing. The creature standing before him, about ten feet away, was most certainly not his mother and was just as certainly not human. The face was a swirling mix of features all shifting as one. The skin would darken and lighten as the eyes turned blue, green, red, and purple. It smiled and screamed and frowned and cried. One side of the face decayed into a skull and the opposite de-aged into a newborn baby. The hair grew as long as its body then fell off as one. It stood about the same height as John but its shadow stretched for miles behind it, growing as it went until it faded from view. He tried to look away but even though he could feel his eyes moving the world around him seemed to rotate and fix the creature in front of him. It spoke without moving its lips.

“My question still stands, John. Are you hungry? I know that your kind tends to get a little peckish when interdimensionality comes into play.”

“I don’t know.”

The creature held its hand out, palm down, and bent the fingers up in the wrong direction. An apple appeared out of the air and John watched it drop down towards the creature's hand. It passed in front of the hand and instead of hitting the ground, ten feet away, the apple landed right on John’s lap. He jumped back in surprise and tossed the apple back. It sailed over the edge of his dirt platform and fell down into the clouds. He leaned over the edge to watch it go and felt a hard pain on the top of his head. The apple bounced off of his head and went over the edge once more. He backed away and looked up just in time to catch that same apple falling down to him from the clouds above. He cautiously turned it over in his hand, looking for something unsettling.

“You eat it.” The creature said.

“Why would I trust an apple conjured from nothing by a monster?” John responded. 

He winced internally. Why would you talk back to it? You stupid, stupid, idiot. 

“That was not advice.” The creature said. “I am telling you what happens next. You eat the apple. Then we continue on with our conversation. Because you have no other options. To be honest I am a little disappointed. I was hoping to watch you flounder in your confusion for a bit longer.”

John slowly raised the apple to his mouth and took a bite. It was incredibly bland. He forced a smile and put it back down.

“Mm, it’s delicious. But I’m really not that hungry.”

The creature reached its hand out and stretched the full ten feet to pluck the apple from the ground. The apple decomposed down to a small puddle of brown sludge and a shiny new apple rose up in its place. The creature placed the new apple in John’s lap.

“Try it now. Flavors are always hard to get right between different life forms.”

It was the sweetest apple John had ever had. It tasted like home. He was flooded with memories of apple picking, baking pies, and fallen leaves. He could smell the cinnamon and nutmeg and feel the crunch of a perfect crust between his teeth. The fear left his body and he took a long, deep, breath. He watched the dirt beneath him transform into a patch of grass that stretched out to the creature, creating a bridge of green between them. The shifting whirlpool on the creature's face slowed and then settled on the smiling face of his mother. But it was not his mother as he had last seen her, pale and dying in a hospital bed. This was her as he had always tried to remember her. Long auburn hair tied into a tight bun that never seemed to stay in place. Kind, endlessly forgiving brown eyes and a smile with one crooked front tooth that was perfect to him. She was covered in flour and wore the familiar, hideously ugly, brown and yellow apron that had belonged to her mother. He had donated that apron when she died and told himself that someone else would appreciate it more than he would. Looking at it now he realised how wrong he was.

“Are you feeling better, John?” The creature asked.

“Yes,” John replied. “But why are you doing this? Why am I here? For that matter, where is here?”

“This is not a here. It just is.” The creature chuckled. “I do this because it is my purpose. I am a means to an end. I am a tool of the universe, or rather, existence. All things exist for a purpose, whether they are aware of it or not. I am as natural as gravity or a black hole. I just happen to have a little more charisma. Although, if we are speaking of pure attraction then the black hole beats me by a mile. But I digress. You are in this conversation because you need to be. And because she asked nicely.”

“Who asked nicely?” John said.

“You know who, John.” the creature said. “I’m going to let you talk to her. Do not waste this opportunity this is a rare thing I’m doing for you and her. Take all the time you need. It’s not really a thing here. I’ll see you later, John.”

The creature that looked like his mother then lifted off of the ground. Its body burst into a cloud of shadow and expanded to fill the sky. The shadow swallowed the clouds and John was left in darkness. He saw a small speck of light in the distance, very far off. It grew slowly and steadily, getting larger and larger until it was rushing towards him with the speed of a bullet train. He turned to run and immediately hit a blank white wall as the light overtook him. He shielded his eyes and braced for the impact that never came. After a beat, he lowered his arms and opened his eyes. He was inside a hospital room. A very familiar hospital room. He anxiously looked at the bed and saw his mother, still hooked up to a web of tubes and machines. She looked better than he remembered. Maybe three months before she died? He quickly glanced at the calendar on the wall and found that he couldn’t read it. The letters and numbers were too blurry. The clock above sat still, the second hand ticking back and forth between five and six seconds. He desperately searched the rest of the room for something to divert his attention away from the bed.

“Hello, Johnnie.” His mother said.

He reluctantly turned to look at her. She sat up a bit and looked at him, smiling that crooked-toothed smile. It had recently been a mask for constant pain but now it was soft like he remembered. That smile used to get him through anything. He swallowed hard and sat down next to her.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” John said. “I tried, so many times, but it was all too much.”

“I know, honey.” his mother smiled. “I know all of it now. That’s why I asked for this. I wanted you to have this chance.”

“This chance for what?” John asked. “I don’t know where this is or what’s happening. You were, are, dead. What will this change?”

His mother grabbed his hand and squeezed harder than he knew she could.

“The chance to say goodbye. To have one, last, good conversation. You can move on with your life knowing that in my last moments, all I felt was love. And I get to tell you that the only thing I want is for you to live your life. Plus, as a bonus, I get to hang out with my favorite person one last time.”

She smiled and leaned back into her pillows. “So, how have you been? Are you eating? You look a little thin.”

John laughed, “I’ve been better, honestly.” He looked at her and took a deep breath. “But I’ll live.”