Perchance to Dream

The thing about death is that it’s sort of like living in that nobody tells you what to do once you’ve started the process. It doesn’t hurt as much as you might think. After all, it’s life that hurts and it’s life that kills you. I know it killed me. Well, if you want to get technical I killed myself; the details of which I’ll get to later. I specifically remember being out breath and cold knowing I was dead but not completely sure until I got my bearings and realized I was nowhere. It was as if I was walking on solid ground but there was nothing underneath my feet like I was floating in a sea of white nothingness. Fear would usually be the first thing that would come into someone’s mind but really I was more confused than anything. I wasn’t exactly religious or atheist so I was unsure what to expect after ending my own life but knew that where I ended up was the opposite of what conventional knowledge of the afterlife should have been.

“You’re in purgatory if you’re wondering,” a woman’s voice answered from behind me. I turned around and saw a beautiful woman with red hair that came just past her shoulders. She seemed familiar and as I strained to remember who she was I fell to my knees. A man helped me up and I looked around to find the red haired woman only to see that I was alone with this mysterious stranger.

“I guess you’re not quite ready yet,” the stranger said. He was tall, skinny, and relatively young. He wore a long coat, a nice suit with a handsome tie, and carried around a walking cane though it looked like he didn’t need one.

“Ready for what?” I asked. “Where is--? Who was that redhead?”

“I’m in no position to tell you who she is. Though technically it was me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Usually it makes my job easier to take on the form of someone you’re familiar with. Ah, I’ve said too much already.”

“I don’t understand. Who are you?”

“Before I answer that, do you know who you are?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“And you know where you are?”

“I think so. I thought the afterlife would have a little more going to be honest. Are you an angel?”

“Not quite. So how did you end up here?”

“I grew impatient so I got here on my own.”

“Ah, a suicide. Okay. Well this is purgatory and I’m Death.”

“Death?”

“Death. The Grim Reaper. Thanatos. Some people confuse me for Charon but that’s not me. He’s a greedy one, that guy. I mean what would he do with all that ferry money?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer so I just flashed him a look of confusion.

“Right. Shall we get going?”

“Where?”

“Wherever it is you need to carry out your afterlife. Purgatory is more of a waiting room and the fact that you committed suicide sent you straight there. So here I am to pick you up and take you where you need to go.”

“And where is it that I need to go?”

“Either heaven or hell. Eventually. The thing is it seems there are details of your life and death that are missing which means you’ve got some unresolved issues. There’s only one place I can take you.”

“And you’re not going to tell me.”

“I could tell you but that tends to distract people. And until we reach your destination, I’m going to need your full attention. Is that understood?” he asked as he reached his hand out towards me. I was unsure if this Death was someone I could trust. For all I knew he was some demon luring me to hell for some sordid plan to break out of perdition. But I would rather be anywhere than the solitude of purgatory so I grabbed his hand. He held it tightly and we walked in the same direction until the white nothingness of purgatory whorled into the dark shadows of our first stop.

Purgatory was lonely and quiet but there was a different sort of loneliness and quiet in this shadowy place. Despair clung to the air. I could literally feel it in the air like humidity weighing me down but Death grabbed my arm firmly and made sure I didn’t relent to the hopelessness. The ground on my feet was smooth like rock worn by a glacier and almost invited me to take a seat and rest. Death assured me that that was the last thing I wanted to do in this place.

“Do you know where we are?”

“Hell?”

“Do you see all those people?” he asked as he pointed to what looked like a melting mountain. It was, in fact, countless souls melded into the mountain itself. They wailed and screamed for help, each one alone for what I could only imagine is all of eternity. “The atmosphere here drags you down with them tempting you to take a rest from this road which is the only way through. Once you let yourself fall to your knees (and that’s the key, ‘letting yourself’), once you make that decision to give up even for a second then this place consumes you and you become a part of it. So come on! Get up! You’re not meant to stay here without finding those missing memories.” He grabbed my arm and yanked it up. It was only then that I realized my knees nearly hit the ground. I pulled myself up and held onto Death’s arm as he marched on up the road.

As we neared the exit of hell I noticed two figures in the distance beckoning to me. While all other souls resembled their living selves, these two were merely silhouettes: one a man and the other a woman. The man seemed vaguely similar and the other was clearly that of the woman whose form Death took just moment before. She stood there looking up at me from the lowest level that my eyes could see, the man trying to pull her back by her hand just as Death was pulling me away.

“Who is that?” I asked him.

“Who is who?”

“Those shadowy figures. They seem to know me, and I think I might know them.”

“I hope you never find yourself in this plane of existence again but if you do, you should be wary of beings made of shadows.”

“Why? What are they?”

“It could be any number of things. Shadows tend to look different to anyone who has seen them here. The devil has been known to take the form of shadow beings. It could be this place attempting to lure you here permanently. Sometimes it’s the image of your hate, your despair. If there’s someone or something you hate enough, you might see them here. But it won’t really be them. Come. We’ve got to get out of here.”

There was a stone threshold in the middle of the path that just seemed to be there but as soon as we crossed it the world around us melted. The darkness and the loneliness billowed into a soft mist and the atmosphere seemed to glow with pure white light. In the distance was a wall made of some material that resembled gold but was practically transparent the farther away you were from it.

“It’s a bit more difficult to get in here so this will be a short trip. There isn’t exactly a scenic route through heaven.”

“This is heaven?”

“The one and only.”

“I don’t understand. We were in purgatory and to get to heaven we literally had to go through hell?”

“Try not to think of traveling though these planes of existence like traveling from one town to another. It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“How so?”

“How can I put this so you can understand this? First of all, the only way you can travel from one place to another is with me. That’s the main reason for my existence. And there’s an order to these things according to each individual.”

“You have to go from purgatory to hell to heaven before we can get to where I need to go?”

“It’s certain parts of hell from a specific part of purgatory to a certain distance from the gates of heaven and that’s specific for this situation for this individual.”

“That seems confusing.”

“I imagine it is to anyone other than me.”

“It makes me appreciate things a little better though. That path put things into perspective in a way.”

“That’s good.”

“Sometimes I have to go through hell to admire heaven from the outside.”

“We’re nearly there.” Death took my arm with one hand and tapped his cane at what seemed to me a random pattern on the ground. In a blink I found that we had been transported into a small apartment which I quickly recalled was my own when I was living. It seemed time moved differently when you’re dead as it appeared that not enough time had passed for anyone to discover my body quite yet.

“What did you mean ‘missing memories,’ Death?” I asked, not sure what to be looking for in my cluttered apartment. “In hell, you told me that I wasn’t meant to stay there without my missing memories.”

“I meant you’re not to stay in any afterlife plane of existence without your missing memories,” he answered.

“But what missing memories?”

“When you killed yourself you were likely in quite a bit of pain: mentally, spiritually, and possibly physically as well. That can cause you to lose bits of your memory. And you can’t stay in the afterlife without all your memories intact, especially the big ones.”

“How am I supposed to know what I’m supposed to remember?”

“Typically, it’s whatever caused you the most pain just before you died. For some suicides the one memory they forget is their motivation for ending their life.”

“I guess I should start looking, then.” I rummaged through my closet and my desk and found an envelope from my office. It was empty and I searched the waste bin and found a letter torn in half informing me that my services were no longer needed. “I was fired. Could this be it? I mean, I didn’t really like my job but really I think it was the only thing I was living for.”

“If you’re questioning it, than it isn’t exactly the memory you’re looking for. Though you did forget it so it could very well mean you’re on the right track. Keep looking. You should feel a physical connection to clues that can lead you to the memory.” I don’t think he was allowed to help me because he did seem like he wanted to. Instead he just sat at the bed waiting for me.

“I still can’t believe I went through with it this time around.”

“Something must have really put you over the edge.”

“I guess so. I mean I’ve attempted this several times before. I would always chicken out at the last minute and end up crying myself to sleep. Then I’d refuse to get out of bed for a week. It’s really awful.”

“Didn’t you have anyone you could talk to?”

“Not really. I was always told that suicide was a coward’s way out; that it’s a selfish thing to do.”

“Ha,” Death scoffed. “I have dealt with many suicides in my time and I can assure that there’s nothing cowardly or selfish about it. Putting that kind of label on it is as silly as calling it a sin or declaring that it’s against the law. That’s a horrible deterrent.”

“So you don’t see suicide as a selfish act?”

“Not too long ago I took a middle aged man to find his missing memories and you know what he found out? He was running his own company and had a beautiful family. But his wife was dying of cancer, his daughter had just graduated college and gotten pregnant, and his company went under all within the span of six months.”

“That’s terrible.”

“He couldn’t find enough financial help from anywhere and realized that his life insurance would be enough to take care of his family. It’s a temporary somewhat short-sighted solution to be sure but there is no way you can convince me that that was a selfish thing to do. What about soldiers who actively put themselves in the way of a bullet to save a colleague or a civilian in a crossfire? Honestly, you humans amaze me and I admire all of your accomplishments but some of your stigmas are so stupid.

“That’s not to say that there aren’t any selfish suicides out there. But to call someone who clearly has felt their usefulness on the planet had been used up and feels like they’re living on borrowed time selfish can only come from the most ignorant of people. People like you aren’t driven to kill themselves because they’re weak. They kill themselves because they have struggled to stay strong for far too long without help.”

Just as he finished that last sentence I was set to search my coat hanging by my bedroom door when a searing pain burned through my hand. The pain was blinding and knocked me to my knees. Death slowly stood up as if he was readying himself to leave.

“Get up,” Death said. His voice was stern yet calm. “It seems you’re nearly there.”

“What’s happening?”

“Something in that coat is a key to the end of this journey.”

“But it hurts.”

“It hurts because you don’t want to let go of this life. But this life is over. You’ve seen heaven and literally went through hell to get to this point. Whatever is causing you pain is only still doing so because a part of you is allowing it.”

I reached into the left outside pocket and found a wallet to thin and empty for any mugger or thief to really care much about. I opened it and a photograph fell out. It was a picture of me with the redheaded woman and a man who I recognized as the other shadowy figure in perdition.

“Who’s on the picture?”

“This is me. And I don’t know why I couldn’t recognize him before but that’s my best friend. He was also in hell—well, his shadow was anyway. And this woman—Oh, my God… That’s my girlfriend. Why didn’t I recognize her when you took her form?”

“You’re going to have to figure out the rest on your own. I can’t help you until you have it all put together. I’m sorry.”

My ring finger on my left hand started to burn. A black mark began to sear itself onto my skin when I accidentally touched the coat one more time. I looked at Death and he still had no expression on his face; no sympathy or sadness. He just waited patiently for me and didn’t rush me along. I reached into the inside pocket and pulled out a small red box. I didn’t have to open it to know what it was but I did anyway. The sparkle in the diamond almost sang to me and my memories flooded back to me. I looked back at the bathroom and stared at my corpse in pity when I realized what had happened.

Her name was Laura and we met in college. We had been friends for about two years before we started dating. My friend’s name was Jake and I had known him since high school. We lost touch when we went to different colleges but ran into each other a few weeks ago when we were interviewing for the same position. I had lost the job to Jake but I didn’t mind at the time. I took a job someplace else, not exactly what I went to school for but it paid the bills. That is, it did pay the bills until I got fired. That was a bad week and I went to talk to Laura and it was at that night that I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. My only impulse buy was that ring. I ran back to her place to surprise her but saw her and Jake through her bedroom window. I made my way back to the apartment and finally ended it.

“Your story is complete,” Death mentioned as he stood by the door.

“I suppose you’re right. That’s rather morbid. If I could do it all over—”

“You’d just be torturing yourself. It doesn’t do anyone any good to dwell in the past. Especially dead folk like you. That’s how things get haunted but that’s someone else’s story.”

With that Death took my hand and as I opened the doorway I saw that it wasn’t the hallway on the other side but my final destination. I’m afraid I can’t say where I ended up; Death’s policy and all that. But they do let me visit that living plane of existence from time to time. Maybe it’s because I used to be among the living and I visit to satiate my sudden bouts of nostalgia but I really do miss being alive. However, all that suffering makes me think that the living plane is a lovely place to visit but a rotten place for a permanent destination.