The Peace of the Deceased

      There’s a hole in my chest, but I don’t remember the pain. My bones are shattered, but I don’t remember the impact. There’s a crow pecking at my eye, but I can’t feel its shadowy beak ripping through my retina. 

            There was a girl, yes, a girl. She was standing on the edge of a bridge over a drop that would’ve killed anybody if they decided to step into the air. She had been trembling, her hands were wound so tightly around the railing that I wondered if her palms would forever be etched into it. She was about midway down the stretch, but even standing on the other end, I could hear her fearful tears dripping down her cheeks and falling to join the rushing water below. Was it the melting snowflakes on her warm skin, or the tears streaming down her eyes that made the bright streaks upon her cheeks?

The scene was familiar, but there was a chance this time, right?

            “Ma’am?” I had called to her, but she either couldn’t hear me, or she acted like she couldn’t. I took a few steps closer, and tried to get her attention again. 

            “Leave me alone.” Barely an inside voice, but loud enough for me to hear here. She leaned forward into the drop and looked down, but quickly pulled herself back to the edge. 

            “There’s a better way. There always is.”

            “Get away from me. You don’t know me.” Her auburn hair whipped back behind her like a raging fire in the wind, and as I moved closer, I saw how puffy her face was under the streams etched into her makeup. Her prom dress was smeared with dirt. 

            “I just think there’s a better way to deal with this, don’t you think?”

            “Get away from me old man. This is my choice.”

            “Old? I’m only forty.” It was on instinct, and I had to let out a small laugh, though it immediately felt inappropriate. I looked at her for a moment, her chest was rising and falling rapidly. Another petal fell off her corsage. “The only good thing that will come of this, is that you’ll get to meet my son.”

            She looked at me for a moment, her eyes wide open. Her mouth began to open, but words struggled to leave her. I could hear letters forming in the back of her throat, and I responded with the warmest smile I could give.

            “Get away from her creep!”

            That’s what it was. That’s why I’m down here. That flannelled, open-carry-clad hero thought I was too old of a man to be near that girl. I’d turned around, and the last thing I saw in front of me was a ragged ballcap with some fishing propaganda scrawled across it before my eyes were pointed to the sky. The grey ceiling quickly faded into the distance as my marred body slammed into the roaring waves below.

            If I were a betting man, I’d wager my life savings that this crow was to be my Charon as my body flowed into the underworld. I’m glad I could give him something to do while he perched on my chest and pecked out my eyes. I’m sure by body was cold to the touch, a mix of the lack of blood flow and the freezing waters that grew more vast with the falling snow that gracefully fell onto my body. 

            I wondered if the bullet had tunneled through me, or if my heart was to forever have metal lodged into it. Surely they’d take it out during an autopsy, right? Part of me wished they wouldn’t. I think some egregious English teacher would find a way to make that metaphorical, and I liked that idea. 

            The snow is beautiful, though I’ve never been able to look up at it for this long without wincing. The fluff is mesmerizing, it’s as though a shower of angelic confetti is falling from the sky to celebrate my big life event. It’s almost certainly piling up on my body, there’s no heat in me to make the snowflakes melt. If it were any other day, I’d make some sort of joke about being white for a change. 

            Though what I find ironic, is that the grey sky is as far from gloomy as any piece of prose would lead you to believe. There’s a sereneness to it that the snowfall elevates, though I’m privileged to be able to witness this weather from this angle. We spend so much time looking horizontal, I wonder if the vertical is ever saddened that despite holding such beauty, we hardly ever look at it. 

            My crow has moved on to my other eye, yet my vision hasn’t changed. I hope he likes what he sees, I don’t have anything else to offer anymore. 

            The river is prime for a rafting journey, with rushing waves and absent from any other people to avoid. It’s sliding my corpse down with ease and if I could feel, I’d hope it felt like a cruise down a lazy river. I always liked those.

            To my surprise, yet another crow has come over to me and is joining in on the festivities. Another friend has come to join me on my voyage. She’s pecking at my eye socket for whatever he left for her, before joining in on the feast of my right eye. 

            But now the sky has been replaced with a flurry of black feathers and the occasional avian anus, which is displeasing, but I quickly reconcile this because I can’t do much about it. 

After an eternity of this, the crows leave me, and I wonder how I look. It’s not too soon after their departure that my body stops moving along the river, and my back is dumped on the shore where the snowcapped forest and river meet. I can still see the dark sky through the white tree branches, but while the beauty from before is gone, to my surprise, I’m infatuated with the foliage above me. I want to admire it, but a clump of snow falls from one of the weaker branches and lands on my face, and then there is darkness.

This is the first darkness I’ve seen since my fall, and I’m scared. This is surely what eternity will be. Black, nothing, and void, I’m not even sure if i'm truly passed on, or if the snow is blocking my vision now. I know I’d normally panic, but despite my fear, I still don’t panic. I’m afraid, sure, but I’m already dead, so the most dramatic fear is already said and done. Why am I afraid?

“Whoa dude look.”

“Need a hand?”

“Nice one.”

They’re children.

“Seriously though, is that someone’s hand?”

“Is that a dude?”

“We won’t know until we pull him out.”

“I’m not touching that, what if he’s a zombie?”

“Wimps. I’ll do it.” There’s a bit of rustling, but after a few moments of childish grunts and groans, I can see the sky again. It’s stopped snowing and the scene is static. The children scream, and I’m alone again.

My body stays there a while, though the scenery shifts often. People fall in and out of my sight, all adults. I hear muddled talking, camera snaps, and flashing sirens. After some observation, my body is lifted for a moment, the first human touch I’ve had in a while, yet I can’t feel it. I’m quickly set down again, I haven’t moved an inch. Then I hear a zip, and the world goes dark again.

I’m sure he saw this too. 

Light floods into my sockets and standing over me is a mortician whose face is almost completely hidden by blue linen and thick glasses. He looks at me for a moment, then looks to his side and nods before stepping away and all I can see is the ceiling of an unfamiliar room with an unfamiliar, large light shining on me. The scene is static for a moment, with only soft mutterings alerting me that time is still passing. Then, just like before, a flurry of faces loom over me and quickly look away with mouths covered and eyes moist. I don’t see them for long, but I get a sense of familiarity looking at them. A newly anointed widow, a now childless mother, and mourning siblings that all feel so far away now. I feel like I know them, from a life before perhaps, but they seem to reside in the subconscious of someone more mortal, more alive. I can see them clearly, but something is blurred about them. Not their faces, nor the looks their somber eyes and mouths show me. Not their voices, nor the words I can’t remember how to define. Or the singular name they all recite like a prayer as it floats around from person to person as they all say what sounds like mourns—only their cadences tell me they’re sad.

That name…I don’t know if I’ve heard it before. The name is like a shadow of something that’s being highlighted by something too bright for me to see. Am I supposed to know these people? Have I hurt them? The answers are as far away as the people looming over me like labyrinth walls telling me I have a route to go, but no direction to take.

I wonder if the name is mine or his.

Black. The darkness came back right after they’d all had their looks at me. The masked man has dipped me in darkness once more, but it doesn’t last long, for as quickly as it had made its home, it disappeared again within the lights above. Another unfamiliar ceiling, and more unfamiliar, blurry faces taking turns staring me in the sockets. They look distressed. 

Before the darkness covers me again, a woman comes to the side with something thin in her hand. She stretches her palms over me, the piece of silk stretched between her hands, and places it over where my eyes once were. I see no difference. 

She gives me a soft kiss on my cold lips before, again, darkness comes, though this time the strange lights above are slow to leave as a monolith of black is folding over me like a blanket, slowly falling from the side until it completely closes over me. I see the last splinters of light peeking through the ever-shrinking crack, but soon it will die, and I will be alone once again.

The next time the darkness leaves, the ceiling is familiar. It is grey, with wisps of white sliding across its face like leaves in a pond as they soar through the air towards something far from my sight. Above, a faint snowfall lands on top of me, and the wave of sereness hits me once more. I wish I could feel the snowflakes brushing my cold skin, falling between my lashes, and wetting my hair ever so slightly. But what I have now is enough, and I enjoy it as much as I can.

But then a face appears, and if I could express shock, I would’ve. I know this face. Its essence isn’t blurred, and I remember.

Her hair is tied back and snowflakes shine amidst her fiery hair as she looks down at me with a smile. Her face is covered with tears, just like I remember, but their connotation is different. Sadness, just like before, but not afraid, like they had been. 

Mournful. I know that feeling. Yet she smiles.

She whispers something to me, but like with the others, I hear the words, but their meanings are lost. She speaks in tongues for a while, until the last sentence becomes as close to me as the crows. 

“You’ll get to see your son.”

She backs away out of sight just as two birds fly overhead to lead the dark monolith over me once again, and this time, the Earths light won't return.

And then, warmth. I feel something heating up to my side. It’s my hand, or at least I think it is. I can’t turn to look at it, but I know someone’s holding it and I know a pool of tears would have been filling up inside of my empty eye sockets if I was still on the other side. My fear is gone.

“Hey old man.”

“Old? I only made it to forty my son.”