But he couldn’t reach into his pocket. He had no pocket, and his hands dangled limply from his wrists, flopping weirdly about as if all muscle control were gone from them. Indeed, he couldn’t move or feel his fingers.
He looked down, and saw that he was dressed in a white kimono, the sleeves long like in a Noh play. And he was not standing on the ground, but floating just a little above it, for he lacked proper legs and feet. Below his waist, he faded into nothingness, like an illustration partly erased.
Then he heard the wailing. It seemed to come from all around, from every direction, from dozens, hundreds of voices. The previously quiet, empty forest was suddenly crowded with sounds and movement.
He saw pale shapes drifting like fog among the trees, white, wispy shapes, legless. Yet they certainly had heads and bodies, for their cacophonous, disordered lamentations were terrible to hear, like the ravings of the mad. They passed close and far, wandering without any apparent destination in mind.
Manabu was terrified these ghosts were coming for him, but they took no more notice of him than they did of each other.
He saw that some were pale and black eyed, with long black hair, and some looked like rotting corpses, the flesh dripping from their brown bones. He even saw the woman at the end of the yellow ribbon, her limp hands slapping in a frenzy like a chimpanzee’s against the sides of her own swollen head, as if she was trying to shut out the terrible sounds all around her. Her own shriveled lips were parted and she was shrieking in short, shrill blasts, a terrible, hair raising sound.
Manabu hugged himself with his useless hands and grimaced at the noise.
Then a tall, thin figure all in black came out of their midst. He was quite calm and obviously not one of their number, but he was terrible to behold, obscenely long necked and fish belly pale, with teeth like a piranha, clawed hands that brushed his ankles as he walked, and large, luminous blue eyes like wavering pilot lights.
Something scuttled along beside him, trying its best to keep up with his long strides, an impish little thing in a loincloth with a great hairy belly and face like a boar, his head encircled by a wreath of spiraling ram horns.
The pilot-eyed thing stopped before Manabu and looked down on him.
“Manabu Nakamura!” It proclaimed, in a dreadful, gravelly voice that was loud enough to be heard even above the screaming.
Then it waited, observing him with a look of patient disinterest.
“Yes?” Manabu ventured sheepishly.
The thing sniffed and looked to its stout, many-horned companion expectantly.
The horned thing held a clipboard. It paused to set a pair of ridiculously out of place black rimmed spectacles over its eyes, which had previously dangled from a beaded chain around its thick, brushy neck.
“Manabu Nakamura,” it said at last, in a squeaky voice, “aged thirty two. Accountant.”
“Accountant, eh?” rumbled the tall blue eyed thing. “Well, you’ll fit in well. We’ll get you situated at a desk just like the one you had in life, and you can get set up for the next one hundred and fifty years.”
“I don’t understand,” Manabu stammered. “Am I dead?”
“As dead as dreams. You killed yourself only a minute ago.” It raised its hairless brow. “Have you forgotten already?”
His shoulders hunched and he felt a coldness spread all through him. He did not want to look back at the tree. He did not want to see himself hanging there, ripening and blackening like an unpicked fruit.
But slowly, he did turn around.
There was his own body, the belt tight beneath his chin, his neck purple, his head so far to the left his ear nearly touched his sagging shoulder, the tip of his tongue protruding from between his lips, eyes bulging. A tear slipped down his paling cheek.
His despair was compounded when saw that his pants were around his ankles. His knobby pale knees were ugly to behold, but thankfully his underwear was hidden by his shirt. One shoe lay in the mud.
He had done it! He had truly done it!
“Oh,” said Manabu, more than a little disappointed, turning back to the two figures. “No.”
“Alright then, Manabu, let’s get you to your desk.”
“Wait. What desk?” Manabu said. “Who are you?”
“Just your shinigami, Manabu. Our job is to get you situated in your new work environment.”
“Work environment?”
“What do you think? That there is no order to the universe? There are millions of stacks of etheric ledgers kilometers high that need going through. They won’t balance themselves. Come now.”
“What are you talking about? What ledgers?”
“The karmic records, where the deeds of every man, woman and child are recorded and reviewed. We cannot be expected to determine the placement of souls correctly unless balance sheets are kept in proper order. And you have the qualifications.”
“I don’t want to be an accountant!”
“You don’t?” the shinigami looked querulously at his diminutive assistant, who thumbed through some papers and shrugged, shaking his grotesque head.
“It says here you have been an accountant your entire adult life,” said the horned thing. “If you did not want to be an accountant, why did you spend your life that way?”
“Well I’m not going to be an accountant anymore,” said Manabu. “I refuse to accept that I am expected to spend eternity doing that.”
“Not eternity,” corrected the horned thing, “only until you earn enough karma to move on.”
“What? You mean to say I have to work in the afterlife for karma?”
“Yours is a special case, Manabu,” said the shinigami. “When you take your own life you enter into debt. Any positive karma you may have accumulated during your lifetime is of course applied against the balance of that debt, but there are standard penalties for suicides and unfortunately according to our records, you didn’t have much to begin with.” The shinigami chuckled, his eye flames dancing.
“I...I didn’t have enough time. I worked twelve hour days....”
“You had the entirety of your life. Plenty of time for most. But you cut it short. Backed out of the deal, so to speak, with your account in arrears. It says here you didn’t even attend your own mother’s funeral.”
The assistant demon sucked its teeth and gasped.
Manabu and the shinigami looked at it and it shrugged apologetically.
“Sorry.”
“My mother....will I see my mother?”
“Oh...we’re not really permitted to divulge client information, you know. Confidentiality.”
“Non-disclosure,” the hairy thing added.
Manabu sighed.
“How long must I work?”
“As I said, by our calculations, only about a hundred and fifty years.”
“What? I had no idea it would be so much! How was I to know?”
“Well, we do our best to educate the mortal world against suicide. No one reads the pamphlets, I’m afraid. To be fair though, this forest at least is clearly marked even in the mortal world, so....,” he shrugged, letting his voice trail off meaningfully.
Manabu shuddered, and then remembered the screaming ghosts all around them.
“What about them?”
“Ah, the yurei,” the shinigami said. “Of course, you do have that option.”
“What? What option?”
“You are legally allowed the right to enter into a ghostly state to repay your karma, but I must warn you, the exchange rate is not favorable.”
“Not favorable,” the assistant demon echoed, shaking its head.
“Quietus, what is the rate currently?” the shinigami prompted.
“Fifty to one,” Quietus answered automatically.
“Fifty to one,” the shinigami repeated. “There, you see?”
“Then,” Manabu whispered, “my choice....is one hundred and fifty years as an accountant, or seven thousand five hundred years as a ghost?”
“Yes,” the shinigami said. “You voluntarily enter a fugue state for the duration. Most of your memory is gone, and what you do remember torments you. As you can see, madness usually takes hold within the first few years.”
Manabu felt like weeping as he watched the confused ghosts chattering and wailing about the forest.
“But....it’s not like I thought it would be.”
“Things rarely are,” said Quietus.
“I thought...there would be peace. My mother said....purgatory....”
“Ah purgatory,” said the shinigami. “Well, that’s reserved for those who live out their natural span, you see. So there you have it.”
The shinigami must have seen his downcast expression.
“There there,” said the shinigami. “There is an old poem I have heard the dead sometimes repeat. A poem by....William Shakespeare. An Englishman. It goes (and Manabu felt ill as soon as the creature began);
Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life...
“Do you know what a fardel is?” Quietus interrupted, to his superior’s obvious consternation. The little demon smiled a snaggle toothed smile, very pleased with himself. “It’s alright. I had to look it up. It’s an Arabic word for burdens. Like a bindle.”
“Yes,” Manabu muttered.
“Ah,” said Quietus, somewhat deflated. He took his spectacles from his snout and folded them.
“Yes,” said the shinigami, frowning, the soliloquy quite forgotten now. “And so, what is your decision, Manabu Nakamura?”
Manabu watched the wandering, raving dead and wished the belt had broke.
This is the first humorous story I ever attempted. At least, I think it’s funny. I was laughing a little bit when I wrote it. I liked the consternation of the priest as the old lady called him out on his bullshit.
I grew up in a Polish Catholic parish, St. Andrew The Apostle in Calumet City, Illinois, and look back on my quasi-mystical upbringing fondly -on the personalities of the various priests and sisters and the old deacons and choir members, and on the antics of the altar boys, which could probably fill a book on its own.
Once the head sister in charge of altar boys took us seventh and eighth graders on a field trip to Enchanted Forest in Dundee where we all basically ran amok. I remember we all piled on the tram and Donnie, a kid a year younger than me asked the teenaged dude running the thing if we had to ride it all the way to the stop or if we could jump off midway, to which he replied negatively.
“Ah, you cunt,” said Donnie.
The tram guy spun around and roared;
“WHAT’D YOU SAY?”
To which Donnie, who looked like one of those “I Know I’m Somebody Cause God Don’t Make No Junk” kids, kind of embryonic, large headed and baby-faced with these big meek brown eyes, said quietly;
“I said....ah, we can’t?”
And we all blew his feebly attempted cover up by exploding in uncontrollable laughter.
Anyway, the thing about dropping the Host during mass actually happened to me as a kid, though it didn’t put me off God, just church.
The little old Irish lady I based off of various church ladies I have known, as well as this ancient but undeniably sweet Irish woman who used to come into the coffee and sandwich shop I worked at off the Paulina stop of the brown line in Chicago and ask for me. She’d stand there and talk to me for twenty minutes or more about her son and the people she met during the day, I guess because I was the only one polite enough to listen, or I reminded her of somebody. My coworkers used to roll their eyes when she came in and come and get me if I was in the back to “deal” with “my girlfriend,” but I didn’t mind. It got me out of washing dishes and I can still sit and listen to somebody read a phonebook back to front if it’s in the brogue.
The church from Philopatry is mentioned here.
Thy Just Punishments
The steady flow of sins petty and titanic, real and imagined, droned in hushed whispers through the confessional screen, punctuated each time by a myriad of variations on the Act of Contrition;
“O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all because they offended Thee, O Lord, who art all-merciful and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more.”
Father Tim O’Herlihey half-listened, doled out Hail Marys and Our Fathers, muttered out rehearsed advice when prompted, and checked the passing of every other minute on his watch, fighting to keep from laying his head against the finished wood wall and snoring. He squinted at his racing form and wondered if he could hit the ATM and catch the Blue Line down to Suffolk Downs in time for the last run.
The Bishop had promised him a new priest this month, just in time for him to saddle the poor bastard with Saturday confession and free him up for next month’s Belmont Stakes Day.
Of course, first he had to pull a stake together. There had been questions about the lightness of the parish’s tithe last month. He had thought he’d had a sure thing with this maiden horse Norfolk Enchants, but the stupid nag had busted its leg on a turn and thrown its jockey over the withers, losing to Peony’s Envy.
“Bless you, Fadder, for you have sinned,” growled the next voice through the screen.
The setup of the booth was supposed to foment anonymity and ease the nerves of the confessor, but he’d been at St. Brigid’s so long he knew every one of the parishoners’ voices anyway, just as he knew the owner of the deep Southie accent was not one of them.
“How many months has it been since your last confession?” he wheezed. A bullet in the lung had given him that hazy whistle years ago.
Father Tim smiled into his hand. He knew where his stake would come from now. No heat from the goddamned Bishop this month.
He slid the screen open a crack, and glimpsed the fleshy, bulldog face of Peachy Muldoon. That voice, like a crocodile with a belly full of gravel, suited that meaty, half-lidded face, even if his nickname did not.
“Heya Peachy, you got something for me?”
A plain white envelope slid through the crack into his fingers. Thick.
“For the orphans, Fadder. You know you’re the surest thing Murphy’s had since Terry Dunne got sent up the river to South Bay?”
Father Tim slit open the envelope with his pinkie and counted out five hundred dollars.
“Is that a fact?” he said with the same disinterested tone he reserved for the confessions. His brain was already working out his spread.
“Don’t know how you do it,” said Peachy.
“What’s the name?” Father Tim said, slipping the envelope into his pocket beneath his vestments.
“Michael O’Bannon.”
“OK,” said Father Tim, sliding the screen shut. “Tomorrow’s Mass.”
“Tanks, Fadder.”
Creaking as he started to rise. The little light above the screen that lit to let the priest know someone had knelt down in the booth flickered.
“Hey Peachy.”
“Yeah?”
“Any word from Sullivan? What’s the fix today down at Suffolk?”
“Jesus, Fadder, the track closes in a half an hour.”
“So?”
“So you’re too late.”
Father Tim sucked his lips.
“Hey let me know if you hear anything about the Belmont next month, OK?”
“Awright, Fadder.”
The light winked out.
Father Tim rubbed his eyes.
“Peachy.”
“Yeah?”
“How many more out there?”
“I’m the last one. Go home.”
Father Tim listened to the door slam shut and folded up his race form in his bible. He flicked out the light and stepped out into the church proper, already unbuttoning his cassock, when he turned and nearly bowled over a trembling little old white haired woman in a tweed house coat and white knit cap.
“Oh excu
se, me Father!” laughed the old woman nervously, in a brogue as thick and whimsical as an extra from The Quiet Man.
Father Tim didn’t know this woman. They’d had an influx of new parishioners while Gate Of Heaven over on 4th Street was being renovated. She was probably one of the refugees.
“You’re Father Tim, aren’t you?” she said, smiling like a mummy and putting out her withered hand.
“Yes that’s right,” said Father Tim, his heart sliding down into the pit of his stomach. She had that hopeful, talkative look about her. Probably stood outside after the dismissal pumping her pastor’s hand and going on and on about her cats or her grandkids or both.
He tucked his bible under his arm and took her dry hand in both of his, being careful not to let her wrinkled fingers clench his own.
“I’m Mary Laidhe,” the old sprite gobbled. “I usually attend mass at Gate of Heaven, but you know...”
“Yes, the renovations, I know,” said Father Tim, keeping a thin smile plastered across his face. “Well, welcome to St. Brigid’s.”
He released her hand and began to step past.
“Thank you. Am I too late for confession?”
“I’m sorry, Miss Laidhe, but confession only goes to three forty five,” he said, half stepping into the aisle and looking apologetically over his shoulder.
“Oh is it past that now? I thought I was on time. I had trouble getting up the steps. We’ve got a ramp at Gate of Heaven, you know.”
“Well I’d plan for that next time,” said Father Tim, raising his eyebrows.
Miss Laidhe’s expression slipped a bit.
“Oh yes, well....do you have somewhere to be?”
“I’m afraid I do, or I’d surely make time for you,” he said, gaining the aisle at last and genuflecting to the altar, rapidly crossing himself. “I’ve a deathly ill lady to look in on. Mrs. Rodriguez.”
“Oh well, I suppose she can’t wait then.”
“No,” said Father Tim, hastily crossing to the sacristy door. “I’m sorry, Ms. Laidhe. It was nice meeting you.”
“Father?” Miss Laidhe called, her haggish voice echoing in the cavernous church, making the candles flicker, he imagined.
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