The Rest Of Time

Henry awoke in a cemetery on a breezy October night atop a sloping hill looking down upon a gleaming city. He lay surrounded by bare maple trees whose naked branches ran exposed against the grey sky like protruding veins against flesh.

He stood on weak legs. Cautiously he looked about through glazed eyes. Gravestones, tombstones, mausoleums, marbled angels, and erected crosses filled his gaze.

As if he were preparing to push a wall, he lifted his arms out in front of him; for a moment, his hands and arms appeared, then they disappeared.

He screamed, "Ahhhh!"

Shooting up from the ground, a man in a tuxedo emerged in front of him, "No, no, no, you stop that. Don't you have any respect for the dead?" He was a short brown man with a full white beard and a full white head of hair; his attire was formal as if he had just come from a ball, and the glint of the moon lent a polished shine to his dress shoes. 

Henry peered at the well-dressed man with a tilted head and an exhaustive look of astonishment. None of this man had disappeared from Henry's gaze, but when he looked down at his own torso, legs, and feet, they all appeared for a moment and then vanished like smoke. All that remained of him was the voice in his head and his thoughts. But how could this man see me, he thought.

Henry took a swift step to the side.

The well-dressed man sighed and rolled his eyes, "Yes, I can still see you," he said while walking toward Henry. "Look, I know this may be very startling for you, I know. So, allow me to formally introduce myself. My name is Maynard Jackson. I've been assigned to be your Welcomer. Welcome to The Peace." 

Maynard Jackson retrieved a small sheet of paper from the inside of his coat pocket and began to read from it. "You arrived here on October 8th at 12:48 pm. Your assigned burial place is Lot B, Section 2, Row 12."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm reading you your whereabouts."

"I don't care. I have to go now. I don't know what kind of game this is, but-"Henry lifted his wrist to check the time, only to find that his watch was not there. "What time is it?" he asked.

"Time is irrelevant to you now, Henry. Can't you feel the lightness of not having to be weighed down by time any longer?"

"I have work to do!"

"What work, Henry?"

"I have surgery to perform. I must leave."

"Henry, there's no longer any work, any time, or any place to be. You're in all places at once. I'm your Welcomer to The Peace, so it's my obligation to inform you that you're resting."

The well-dressed man's eyes and chin lifted toward the ground where Henry had just arisen. The black marble tombstone had Henry's name engraved upon it, along with the year of his birth, the year of his death, and a short list of his roles whilst alive - doctor, son, brother.

Henry felt nothing, not even the slight press of wind that swayed the short bush beside him, an emptiness he'd only possessed for subjects that bored him now encompassed his entire being. A blankness. A void. He could only see, hear, and smell; he felt nothing.

"I'm dead?" Henry asked sternly.

"What's that phrase that the alive ones say," the well-dressed man thought, then smiled when the phrase came to him. "Yes, dead as a doorknob."

"Where did I die?"

"Funny that you ask that. Most newcomers want to know how they died before asking to know where they died," the well-dressed man pulled out another small piece of paper from his coat pocket and read from it, his eyes squinting, his brow furrowed. "Says here that you died in Atlanta, Georgia."

"How?"

The well-dressed man grimaced, "Gunshot, to the head. Self-inflicted," he looked up, "You know, for someone this surprised, I wouldn't have taken you as the suicidal type."

Henry's face fell to his hands before shaking his head. He knew that he didn't commit suicide; he knew this. Though his hand squeezed the trigger of the gun aimed at his temple, he knew that he didn't consciously kill himself. His next question would prove if he were right.

"What time did it happen, my death. Does it say?"

"Yes, says that you deceased at 2:32 am."

"I did it in my sleep," Henry said to himself.

Instantly he felt regret for having ceased taking the sleepwalking medication prescribed to him. Still, he had reason to stop taking the medication, it made him nauseous, and the effects would carry over into the next day, making him feel drowsy. Still, he never imagined that the medication would be what kept him alive. He always sleepwalked.

His family nicknamed him Sleepy because of this. From the age of 9, he would wake up amazed at the stories his brothers would tell him about his sleepwalking escapades from the night before. 

The first embarrassing story occurred around the age of 9 when he slept walked into his kitchen one night while the rest of the family was awake; his mother and uncle, and brothers were conversing inside the kitchen until he came inside, and all eyes followed his zombie-like movements as he pulled out a stepping stool from the closet, climbed atop it, pulled down his pajamas, and casually peed in the kitchen sink before returning to his bedroom to lay back down. Through laughs and uncontrollable smiles, his family told him about the event the next day when he awoke. He listened to them, stunned that something like that could take place indifferent to his volition. Similar stories, but less embarrassing, would follow him throughout his childhood and adulthood. 

However, the event that inspired him to seek medication took place 2 years ago. While asleep, he got fully dressed, grabbed his wallet and car keys, and then proceeded to drive into the woods. He awoke on his knees whilst building a fire, match, and wood in hand. When he suddenly awoke, he looked about his surroundings with a fierce determination to figure out where he was, hoping that maybe he was in a lucid dream, but he wasn't. He was stooped in the reality that he had just driven 30 miles unconsciously. After waking up that night, he couldn't go back to sleep, and when he got home, he turned on all the lights in his apartment and sat in front of his computer, researching the cures for a sleepwalking brain.

"I didn't intentionally kill myself," Henry confessed to the well-dressed man. "I did it in my sleep."

"I understand, young fellow," the well-dressed man said while patting him on the back, "No one intentionally dies. Everyone goes whilst asleep. Humble, ignorant, arrogant, brave, most of the ones alive aren't fully awake. They're all asleep in one way or another. Young or old. They're already dead, and they don't even know it. We only differ from them in that we know where we lay."

Henry looked past the rusted metal gate and down at the city below his final resting place. Lights were flaring and flashing, and the jumbled sound of the city came to him in tandem. And beneath all the noise was an absence of noise, not silence, but the absence of silence and noise, yet still a sound, constant and unaltering, a tone, like a vibration, a tune new to his ear. The sound gave way to nothing and engulfed everything. It came like a call, a chant, beckoning to be answered, echoing to be heard. Although it didn't house the faculty of silence, it possessed silence's distinguishing facility in that it felt inevitable. Everything returned to the state of silence, and this vibration, this tune, foreign to Henry's ear, seemed to possess a similar facility - it was a state in which everything sprang, and all things shall return. A million fates all beckoning to be heard now flowed to him because he had met his, this was the sound.

The well-dressed man threw his arm over Henry's shoulder, and they both looked down upon the city, "I know the sound that you're hearing right now may be disturbing. You never heard the sound of fate before. No one hears her until they're dead. As your Welcomer to The Peace, I can assure you this, you'll like it much better up here than down there. The sound only amplifies the closer you get to the ones alive. Now, let's go. I have a lot to teach you about the rest of time."