Salt

When you come to sit in this room, you will be rigid as though you are trying to avoid the eyes of some predatory goblin. The people who sat here now felt as though they were being watched, but by what they didn't know. It didn’t feel human; it didn’t feel malevolent. It was a feeling as though if you did something wrong you would be caught eventually, like you were being recorded by hidden cameras. They all had a headache pulsing behind their eyes, brains feeling swollen. Their throats felt the same, vocal cords paralyzed, so they sat in a pestilent silence, curling their toes inside their slippers and biting their dry, cracked lips.

           A woman, to avoid the crushing sense of doom, distracted herself by being displeased with the drab aesthetic of the place. She was the pretty, peak-in-high-school type. She'd never bothered to be serious in the daytime because the nights were so fantastic. She’d walked into bars and the air had become filled with the stink of testosterone as once-decent men became lost in a lust so flagrantly primal they forgot themselves. To a woman like that, the aging process seems like a cruel plot by the universe. She married in haste a man who was enamored with her beauty and endured her personality, and their family tree became a footnote tattooed on the face of the American Dream.

           A man across from her had brown, beady eyes that drank in her pretty face. He even liked the wrinkles by her eyes; they made her look more mature and experienced. He was a Wall Street wannabe who’d worn cheap suits with expensive ties, taking himself seriously when he shouldn’t have and marching into every job interview as though he had signed the paychecks of everyone in the building. One step away from printing his resumé on gold leaf, he was a narcissist in everyone’s eyes except his daughter, who thought everything he touched turned to gold. He taught her about the stock market, and she turned out to be far more strategic than he, financially set for life by the time she was thirty. Even as she matured emotionally and intellectually, and finally saw the flaws in him, she still dwelt on every word he said.

           This was just one corner of one table in the impossibly vast space. Fluorescent lights shone down from low ceilings; it was claustrophobic and dehydrated. The tables were made of not-quite-polished steel, tops scratched and full of dents. If you caught your reflection once, you’d use every ounce of your willpower not to do it again. In the warped surface the expression was vague, but it looked like the blank mask of a dead person, and if you thought about it too hard you began to wonder if that was how you looked now. Everyone who came here realized where they were, but oddly enough no one ever panicked, for the very essence of this place was neutrality.

           This was the afterlife, but a version no one knew about. Heaven was on reserve for those who were wholly good, those rare humans who were born polished and selfless by default. Hell was the other extreme. The black gates made of neutron stars parted for the very worst, the lowliest persons ever to blink in the sun. This was the middle ground, the waiting room for the perfectly human. If you had done both good and bad in your life, had acts of selfless care nestled amongst periods of chronic self-indulgence, you came here.

           The souls entered single-file, ushered forward by an instinct they couldn’t name. Coming to a stop at their reserved seat, they looked down at the cold, hard surface of the bench upon which they would be planted for the rest of time, and stepped over it without complaint, letting their roots embed. Upon the table rested a plate piled high with a mush very much resembling mashed potatoes. The color was gray and it smelt of mold. It was at this moment each soul was struck with the vague sense of hunger. The meal began. They watched as the mush seemed to undulate after every spoonful, expanding until the plate was full again. No matter how much they ate, that subtle sense of desire and the instinct to keep eating never dissipated. It tasted of bitter carrots.

           Next to every plate was a plastic cube, perfectly transparent, encasing a small amount of glittering salt. Everyone picked up their cube, turning it over in their hands looking for the holes to shake the salt out of. Everyone threw the cubes on the ground, against the walls, hoping it would eventually break and they could make this endless meal palatable. The cubes never broke, and the meal went on. 

           The man lifted his spoon and offered it to the woman, and she did the same. They each fed each other their twelve-millionth mouthful. The moment was something new, and they reveled in it. They looked back down at their plates to scoop again, and were met with a sight most unusual. The pit they’d dug had not refilled. There was less mush on their plates now than there had been a moment ago, and after so much nothing this one something was a miracle. The man and the woman looked around, and found all their fellow numb souls staring at their plates in shock, for they had also made an inexplicable dent.

           The consumption resumed, but with a fervor, until every plate was empty, licked clean, in fact. Everyone marveled at the pearl-white ceramic surface, just waiting for something to happen. One by one, they blinked, and their plates were piled high with salt.

           External to this madness, one would be disappointed. But having coveted salt for so long, trying in vain to break open those infernal, taunting cubes and being mocked each time it remained intact, all Earthly desires had drained from them, replaced with the salt.

           They picked up their spoons and shoveled it in, reveling as it scraped down the backs of their throats. The man and woman held a mouthful in their cheeks, blowing air from their noses in a huff of sudden laughter; they looked like chipmunks. The excitement lasted seconds, evaporating as the salt sucked all the moisture from their mouths and throats. The tickle made them cough and gag. Their eyes watered, and the salty tears cascaded in waterfalls down their cheeks and onto their plates. They watched, dismayed, as the tears dissolved tiny pinholes in the salt which immediately dried and were filled with more salt. They continued to eat, compelled by the same unknowable desire which had made them sit down here to begin with.

           Scoop.

           Lift.

           Chew.

           Swallow.

           Gag.

           Their stomachs twisted. They hunched in pain and went green in the face with nausea, but their dry heaves stayed dry. For eons they ate the salt. Grains spilled upon the steel table top, collecting in the dents. The woman thought they looked like constellations. There was a time when she knew all their names, sitting by her bedroom window staring out in the night sky, trying not to think of what excuse her husband would use for coming home three hours late. The Leo astrological sign was her favorite. It was her son’s. She couldn’t find it in the grains, so she leaned over and blew a gentle breath, watching them scatter as though they were taking flight and imagining for a moment that she could do the same.

           The man would think of his daughter often, who was assuredly in Heaven above, having watched all the children she’d saved through donation and mission trips live their long, happy lives. In life, he’d often wondered how a soul as pure and perfect as hers could be borne from his genetic code, and he wondered even more now.

           At one point his eyes met the woman’s, and they filled with tears. He did not know her life, she did not know his, and they were struck by the unattainable desire to dive deep into the other’s psyche, for no reason other than they seemed to know their mistakes had been similar. Somewhere inside the labyrinth of that moment, they found a kernel of peace. No matter how much they’d screwed up their lives, they were over now. It was that mysterious contentment that comes from knowing you cannot fix something, but you also can’t make it any worse. The door had slammed, and they sat on the other side. Now, after all these eons, perhaps they could find the resolve to stop knocking.

           They let it go and the salt was gone, soft gray mush in its place. A sigh escaped them. They felt something akin to relief, but the cubes of salt looked up at them cruelly. All that was promised to them were more eons of bitter carrot. Their open mouths accepted the mush dolefully, but instead of the expected dullness a sudden joy erupted within them. The bite soothed their raw tongues, and with the flavor of salt lingering, the bitterness was suffocated, leaving a salty sweet taste which brought euphoria. This was their one moment, the one bite in billions that they chewed behind smiles, moving it between their teeth for as long as they possibly could before their saliva congealed and threatened to choke them. They all swallowed simultaneously, and the wet convulsion echoed around the walls. It was a mere two minutes of orgasmic savor, but it was enough. They ate faster now, in the hopes that it wasn’t a number of years but a number of bites which would make the salt piles appear again, and they would be one step closer to another soul-saving moment. 

           The woman picked up the cube between her fingers, clinging onto its frictionless surface with her red-painted fingernails, and turned it beneath the light, watching the granules sparkle. At one point, the light hit it in just the right way, and the individual grains which shined brightest formed the Leo constellation. She smiled and motioned for the man to lean over. He pressed his temple against hers, and although he didn’t know what she was seeing, he could sense it meant a great deal to her.

           Then she shook the cube, and the stars scattered and were buried like her forgotten bones. She put the cube down and reached out to grasp the man’s rough hand, holding it tight. He didn’t object to the pain of her nails digging into his skin. He gripped her back, and the two of them didn’t let go for the rest of eternity.