The only way to get it out, to get it right, and live right, is to write it all down. After torturing my characters, I always feel a bit better, but then the relief is minimal. I can’t suspend disbelief forever.
When I really get down to it, when I dig deep and let those death fears descend and then tackle them head on, it all comes down to the mystery of the afterlife and our egotistic, human sense of self-importance. There are people in this world that can look you in the eye and actually tell you that they are not afraid to die. I have a hard time believing them. I believe that they believe that they are not afraid, and I envy them for their faith, but in the end, on the cusp, I can’t believe they are impervious to ball shrinking fear. You can have Big Faith and a near crazy, spiritual ethic, but at the end of the day nobody really knows what really happens. And that frightens the living piss out of ALL of us.
I don’t want to believe it, but I fear that in the end we just snap out. I am not an atheist. I believe in something, but I think it’s bigger than us. I think we are no more special than animals or plants or rocks. I think whatever’s out there is unconcerned. There are simply too many people, alive and dead, living and dying, for an afterlife to make logical, logistical sense. So then, as much as I hate to believe it, I am afraid that when we die, things just go black and consciousness just disappears like it does when we have a dreamless sleep or when we get too drunk and pass out. Mind you, this isn’t a terrible thing. What you don’t know won’t kill you (especially if you already dead), but then I imagine not existing and my imagination darkens down and my heart breaks into a million little pieces. That ache in my chest intensifies. I get nauseous. But why?
Why does any of it matter?
If things go black, if we become nothing, it doesn’t matter anyway. Right?
I blame the promise of an afterlife. I grew up catholic. I went to church every Sunday, and after every mass I went to Sunday school. At seventeen, I received my confirmation and I continued going to mass for a while longer, but as life got busier and busier and I became a man ( a sad, lost man), I let it all go. Floating through my twenties (or what I like to call my idiotic years), I rarely thought about death or god and I was free. I was totally uninhibited. I was out there defying death – no seatbelts, skydiving, jaywalking – but then something happened – I grew up – and everything inside went from unbreakable to extremely fragile and just, like, that, my every thought passed through a filter of the purest dread.
I guess that from day one, from the moment my parents began to raise me, I felt safe. I felt assured. I mean, I was pretty good kid – I lied on occasion and did crap I wasn’t supposed to do, but I kept myself in check and avoided going too crazy (unlike some of my godless friends) because I honestly believed that god was watching. I was too dumb to realize that maybe, just maybe, god wasn’t real, but then, I was too smart to live in the moment and do whatever I felt like doing because I thought that our lives were tests in preparation for the afterlife. For me, it was simple math. Let’s see, less then a century on earth versus an eternity in heaven? There was no way I was taking a chance and screwing up eternity.
Although I’m glad I had religion, it kept me out of trouble and I think it has done a lot for my character and moral center; it also gave me a false sense of security.
The moment I dared to consider that there might not be a heaven (in my mid-twenties – yes, I’m a late bloomer), I freaked out. Not because I tried to live life following rules that probably don’t even matter – no, I think the commandments are a fine set of rules to live by – but, because I came face to face with the possiblity that there may come a day when I’ll never see my wife or daughter or mom or dad or brother or sister or brother-in-law or niece or nana or any other member of my family again. There might come a day when I don’t exist. Finito! Finished!
I keep thinking: had I come to terms with this probability when I was a kid or a teenager, then maybe it wouldn’t bother me so much. Maybe I would just be able to accept that we have this life to live and when it’s done it’s done.
Or maybe not.
Maybe I would have freaked out earlier, started in on this death kick earlier.
Maybe I’d be a better writer.
Either way, death sucks and I can’t shake it. I can’t stop dreaming about funerals and coffins and meat…cold, dead, meat.
Blood.
Gristle.
Ineffectual.
Unimportant.
Pointless.
And I can’t stop the thoughts. And neither can my characters. And one upon the other, gathering in my brain like Romero’s lumbering zombies, getting a hold, pulling, ripping, gnawing, they keep trying to take me down, they keep trying to make me dwell upon the probable possibility that in life we are nothing but rotting biology, we are nothing but hot blood and steaming gristle, and in death, when everything cools and congeals, we are nothing at all.
Table of Contents
BLOOD & GRISTLE
LICENSE NOTES
More from Bad Moon Books & Crossroad Press
DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS
BLOOD & GRISTLE
Contents
HEAD TWO
CHEKOV’S CHILDREN
THE BOX
THE CURRENT
BRIMMING NOBILITY
EVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES
GELL-US-SEE
ARMOR
CONSUMED
THE GIRL WITH NO HANDS
SPIRALS (UNDEAD DESIGN)
ZOO ETIQUETTE
HOLLOW MEAT
WALLS OF GLASS
THE VELVET GOD
THE PLACEBO EFFECT
THE PATHOLOGY OF HUMAN SOUND
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
FOREVER AND A DAY
BLOOD & GRISTLE
Blood & Gristle Page 18