Story #57 - Dying And What Not To Expect

Dying And What Not To Expect

Dying wasn't supposed to be like this, or so I'd been told. I mean, no one's really prepared to go no matter what line they feed you but when it comes at the hands of some psycho you've never met and you're just past the three decade mark, going is about the last thing on your mind.

First up: it hurts.

I think the guy used a knife, but all I really know is that there was a twisting sensation in my guts and down I went, kicking at the air and chopping out a few brief bleats for help before the pavement met the back of my head and it all went black.

Silence, right? The silence of the grave or maybe a softly glowing light, accompanied by a too-perfect harmony of chorused angels? Not so much.

And no, not Hell either, no demons rising up from ground to swallow my soul or the dark one himself pointing with cloven finger to whisk me away.

Pain, darkness and then light again, light like the kind you'd have if you were looking out your own eyes except – and it takes you a minute – you can't seem to control them. In fact, nothing is under your control, nothing is the way you expect it to be and you panic; you try to cry out but you can't, and you start to have a nice secondary freakout, owing to the fact that well, guess what sweetheart, you've just been killed. Murdered, more accurately.

Of course, that's when I realized – that's when it all sunk in, hit home, whatever metaphor works best for you. I was looking down, through some alien set of eyes, and guess what I was seeing? Me.

There was a period of complete madness after that, I'll admit.

***

When I “woke up” the second time, my eyes seemed to work they were supposed to and I was, surrounded by beings that looked suspiciously like angels. No wings were fluttering but we were indoors, so I took a wild guess that they were like hats – you took them off or put their feathered goodness away when you were inside.

The two men at my bedside, though, had all the other characteristics of angels; the too-perfect bodies, slightly cherubic faces and of course the white robes.

Sorry, let me be clear: the WHITE robes.

We're not talking the kind you bleach to get this white or the kind that just came from the store and isn't yet sullied by whatever blend of perspiration you create. We're talking about whiter-than-thou, blazing pure, you wish you owned clothes this white, white. If there hadn't been sunlight streaming in from an open window I was fairly certain these two could have lit up the room all on their own.

“Welcome, Brain,” the one on my left said. I almost responded with the obligatory “how do you know my name” but had just enough brains left in my head to let that one slip by. Judging on appearances – and smell, since these two were as fresh as daisies – I'd ended up somewhere that wasn't exactly lacking on information.

“We know this is going to be hard for you to accept, but you're dead,” he continued, face a perfect mix of sorrow and anticipation.

“I know,” I said flatly, “I got to see my corpse twitching through my killer's eyes.”

“What?” The other one asked sharply and I turned my head, but not before I caught the expression from the first one that had been speaking – he hadn't expected this. “That's not possible.”

“It is.” I made sure it was a declarative statement. Sure, I'd been murdered in an alley, transported to my killer's body and ended up here, but that didn't mean I was going to pretend I didn't know what had happened. I was sure, and that was that.

My companions were not convinced, of course, and took the route of ignoring my statement and bustling me out of bed and onto my feet, in the process bringing my attention to the fact that I now wore a similar white robe to their own, though of a shade much closer to gray. Guess I hadn't earned anything brighter.

***

The next two “days” were a mess; heaven or whatever the place wanted to call itself operated on a mostly day/night time-line and my two guides – Chris and Charles – always left me when the sun went down. As soon as that happened, however, I found myself twisted up and out of my robed form and placed back down behind the eyes of the man I was sure had brutally murdered me in the alley. He seemed to be a night owl – no surprise, given his nature – but he didn't actually manage to kill anyone else while I was down there with him, though not for lack of trying.

From my end, I could do nothing to stop him or influence anything he did; I was just a passenger in his head, along for the ride. I did learn that his named was Michael and that he lived in an apartment building not far from my own, but that was about it. Each morning when he fell into an exhausted slumber on the single mattress in his bedroom, I'd find myself back “upstairs” and with C&C knocking on my door.

Of course, I was starting to get a little testy, so I told them again what was going on.

“It's not supposed to happen that way,” said Chris, the more talkative of the two and the one that had woken me up, “it just isn't.”

Supposed to didn't mean “couldn't” and I told him that – not with a particular mind toward courtesy, either.

“I want a meeting with Him,” I said it with no intention of backing down, and they both drew in a sharp breath. From what I'd learned, everyone met Him eventually, but it required a period of good behavior and “fitting in” before it was allowed. My argument was that this was a special case – I had special circumstances.

More to shut me up, I think, than because they believed me, the two engineered a meeting with the big Him and off I went to his domain – after four nights more of hanging around in a head I had no business being in and couldn't wait to get out of. I was displeased, to say the least.

I went hot under the collar, ready to tell Him just what I thought, but he stopped me with a raised hand as I got twenty feet from the simple chair he was sitting in. Funny – he didn't look like much, just an older guy in white button-up shirt and slacks, short hair trimmed neatly and bare feet resting in the grass.

“I hear Micheal’s been giving you trouble, Brian,” he said. He had one of those soft voices, one of those ones just filled with power you didn't want to mess with, so I nodded quickly instead of opening my mouth.

He sighed. “He was always the most troubled of my Sons. Sit, and tell me what's he's done this time.”

- D