by Cory Hiles
September rolled into October which rolled into November. Thanksgiving was a special event at our house that year, and June invited several of the women she had met during her chemotherapy sessions to join us for supper. We all had things to be thankful for that year.
Elle rarely joined us at the dinner table. For one she did not need to eat, nor could she even if she wanted to, and for two, she understood that dinner, as well as our morning time, was an important ritual for June and I that we both cherished and needed. Elle was not jealous of the time I spent with June, but she was slightly envious of the fact that I had such a wonderful mother figure in my life, which was something she’d never been blessed with.
However, I did ask Elle to join us for our Thanksgiving dinner that year. I had never told anybody about Elle, and she agreed with me that it would likely be best if I kept that part of my life private, if for no other reason than to remain free of institutional life.
She politely declined my offer to be given a seat at the table but did agree to stay nearby where she could see me, and I her, and thus we could both feel like she was a part of the festivities.
I spent Thanksgiving Day slaving away in the kitchen, trying to prepare a grand meal for nine people. By the time the dinner was all prepared, the guests had already been there for about an hour and I was fairly certain that the chatter of eight women who had been through similar trials of ovarian cancer and chemotherapy, and who now found their cancer in remission was a similar racket to what one might find when a fox slips into a hen house.
I struggled through the dinner, listening to the ladies chittering and chattering, clinking and clanking, and making more ungodly noise than I would have thought possible for women who had been at least as sick and weak as June had been.
By the time supper ended, I had a splitting headache and politely excused myself from the remainder of the incessant chatter and went to bed. I loved June enough to die for her, but apparently that love did not extend to the torture of sitting through the equivalent of a women’s social club meeting.
Thanksgiving had come and gone, and soon it was time for Christmas. Fortunately, June wanted to spend Christmas alone, which we did. Elle was present but June did not know it. And then, before we knew it, it was New Year’s Eve.
June and I spent the night sitting on the front porch staring out at the moonlit snow, and discussing how much hope we had for the future, and how different this New Year’s Eve was from the last.
While the rest of the world had been terrified of Y2K the previous year, June and I had been only scared of losing one another in the blackness of death. The Eve of 2001 was filled with hope, rather than despair.
That was New Year’s Eve. That was the last time I knew what hope of any kind felt like. On January third of 2001 June had a doctor’s appointment for a checkup. We were both so convinced that her cancer had been beaten that we were doubly devastated when the doctor found that June’s cancer had recurred; she was no longer in remission, but in the throes of an aggressive second attack.
Her aura had begun to grow again as well.
June’s options the second time around were limited and she chose none of them. She had been a fighter her entire life, and had never backed down from a fight, but she was not willing to step into the ring with Chemo again.
“I’ll either beat it by the grace of God, or I’ll go visit Him personally and punch Him in the nose if He decides not to cure me.” June said, on the few occasions that I tried to dissuade her from a course of inaction.
June’s health deteriorated alarmingly fast. Although many years have passed since her struggle, I still try to block the memories from that period of time from my mind. They are too painful.
Through the entire ordeal, June never whimpered or complained, at least not when she thought I would hear it, but some nights, when the pain was particularly bad for her, I could hear her whimpering from her bedroom.
Elle tried to console me through the process, but I was pretty much inconsolable. June stubbornly refused any type of medical treatment, and had come to peace with the fact that this would probably kill her. I found no peace in the prospect of her death.
On June third, 2001, one week before my eighteenth birthday, and one day after I graduated high school at the top of my class, June lost her painful struggle with ovarian cancer, and I lost everything.
CHAPTER 31
On the morning that I found June lying cold and stiff in her bed I went numb. Elle followed me around talking to me, but I have no idea what she said. I couldn’t hear, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t feel, and I couldn’t think.
At some point I must have dialed nine-one-one because an ambulance pulled up the driveway at about nine-thirty in the morning and I led the men to June’s room. I turned away as they did the gruesome work they had to do.
I vaguely remember one of the men clasping a strong hand on my shoulder and asking me if I was going to be ok, and I think I gave him a vague reply indicating that I’d make out all right, I just needed some time to settle into reality of her death.
The men loaded the gurney into the back of the ambulance and drove down the long driveway. I watched them pulling away and Elle stood beside me, with her head on my shoulder, offering me all the comfort she could and watched with me.
June had been determined to see me graduate. She was far too weak to make it to the ceremony the previous night but I brought home a video-tape of the ceremony and sat on the edge of her bed with her while we watched it together.
When the tape revealed me in my cap and gown, shaking hands with the Dean and claiming my diploma, June wept openly.
“I am so proud of you, Baby,” she said in a weak and tear choked voice. “You are so special to me Hon, I hope you know that.”
I looked at her frail, skeletal face, and wept just as freely as she was weeping.
“I know, June. I really do know. And I love you more than words can ever say. You are my hope, my salvation…My true Mother. I would be either dead or worthless if it had not been for you June.”
“I love you too Sugar-Pie. I love you too.”
With those words she let her head sink deeper into the pillow and fell asleep. I leaned down and kissed her feverish forehead and whispered to her that I loved her, and I crept silently out of the room, closing the door behind me.
The dust cloud that the ambulance had kicked up had already settled when I snapped back from my memory and I wondered how long I had been standing there staring out the window but not seeing the world.
Elle was still beside me, trying to comfort me, trying to snap me out of my daze, trying to save me from drowning in the deep lake of despair that had welled up suddenly inside me.
I understood that June had held on longer than necessary, suffering the pain willingly, just so she could see me off into adulthood. Once she saw me safely across that threshold, she let go.
I was lost. I wasn’t even sure where I was at. I wandered through the empty house, room by room and marveled at the silence that pressed in on me from the oppressive walls and high ceilings.
Elle followed me and I could see her lips moving but I seemed to have become deaf, for I could not hear her words.
I wandered into Miss Lilly’s bedroom and stared at the empty space. I wept for her. I missed her. Next I wandered into June’s room. The smell of death still hung in the air, June’s body having voided itself when her muscles relaxed in death, but I could only barely smell. I called her name and was strangely surprised when she did not reply.
I heard Elle screaming at me to stop, to look at her, to snap out of my grief before it consumed me, but I wasn’t listening. I wanted the grief to consume me.
I wandered through June’s bedroom and confirmed to myself that it was really and truly empty before I crossed the hall to my own room. I sat at my window and stared outside.
Spring was just beginning to make way for summer and all the flowering bushes, shrubs and trees were wearing their most regal o
utfits of the year, ushering in the summer with all the pomp and circumstance of a royal coronation.
As I sat and stared out the window, Elle seemed to have given up trying to speak and instead just stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders, weeping quietly. I reached up and put a hand on one of hers and stared blankly out the window for awhile before speaking.
“The blooms are beautiful, Elle. It’s like nature sent a bouquet for June’s funeral, isn’t it?”
Elle responded but all I heard was a murmur.
I turned and looked at Elle.
“You are beautiful too, my Love. You are the most beautiful, precious person that has ever graced this world, Elle. I am glad I have you. I’m truly glad, my Dear.”
I heard another murmur from Elle.
“Elle, did you know that June was the last physical thing in this world that ever mattered to me? My brother…dead; my mother…dead; Miss Lilly…dead; June…dead; and you, my Love…dead. What is left for me here my Love, but emptiness and sorrow?”
Elle murmured.
I looked at Elle and said, “Of course, Dear,” even though I had no idea what she had just said. Then I said “Well, my Sweet, I’ll see you in the antechamber.”
Then I jumped onto the window shelf and leapt through the glass panes of my second story window. I plummeted to the ground and landed squarely on my head, breaking my neck and dying instantly.
CHAPTER 32
From Elle’s description of the events following death I had fully expected to find myself in an antechamber with exits on either end. I was certain that I would be able to see Elle standing through one blurry exit, and I would go the her and grasp her hand, and together we’d walk hand in hand into the antechamber and through the other blurry doorway and find ourselves in eternity, happy and carefree, surrounded by loved ones.
Instead, I found myself in the dark. I was surrounded by absolute darkness without so much as a single photon to illuminate even a tiny speck. The darkness seemed to have a physical presence to it and I found it suffocatingly familiar. I was in the basement, in the pitch darkness of the dead of night.
I screamed in terror. I could not imagine a worse fate. My voice carried no weight, but instead sounded hollow. The darkness seemed to absorb my scream even as it flew from my lips.
I began to panic. Although I had never been claustrophobic before, I was suddenly overcome by the sensation that I was being pressed in upon from all sides at once, trapped in a shrinking box.
I tried to relax, tried to calm myself, tried to assure myself that this wasn’t real. My assurances carried no more weight than my voice had. I knew where I was and what had happened with absolute certainty.
Although I was in the basement, I was not really in the basement. I was in Hell.
Hell is not, it turns out, a fiery lake of burning sulfur. At least it’s not for me, and I imagine that for millions of other souls trapped in the pits of eternal suffering, Hell does not resemble fire and brimstone either.
Hell is the eternal embodiment of those things which we fear the most while we are alive. It is different for each person. For one man, Hell may be a pit filled with giant, hairy spiders, and glass smooth walls that can never be climbed, for another it may be a pit of snakes. I imagine there is probably some poor lost soul who’s Hell is a small room filled with leering clowns.
For me, Hell is darkness; darkness and silence and caustic loneliness. And this is the Hell I found myself in shortly after committing suicide.
Another interesting note about Hell; Hell exists outside the flow of Time. While in the physical world, Time is a cruel master to whom all mankind finds themselves enslaved. Humans will never, in the physical world, find a way to overcome the ravages of Time and exist happily or eternally.
I think, perhaps that when Adam took a bite of the fruit in the garden, he unleashed much more than knowledge and death; he unleashed the demon, Time.
The irony is that in the physical world the existence of Time is merciless, causing much grief and sorrow throughout all humanity but in Hell, it is the absence of Time that causes much sorrow.
In the absence of Time, a minute lasts a thousand years, and a day is infinity. There is simply no way to comprehend how long one has been imprisoned in the pits of despair and every moment—if moments exist at all—is an incomprehensibly immeasurable unit which intensifies the hopelessness.
I struggled in the dark to understand just why I had entered the darkness instead of the antechamber. The only answer that came to me was that it was because I had committed suicide, which apparently was, as the Catholics had been proclaiming for centuries, an unforgivable sin.
The problem with my suicide theory was that Elle had also committed suicide, and yet instead of Hell she had found the antechamber and eternal bliss was only a doorway away for her at all times.
Unfortunately her fear had left her incapable of entering that bliss.
As the centuries passed every single second, I had plenty of time to unravel the mysteries of death and of ghosts.
In death, the consciousness seems to expand, allowing more comprehension of all things, physical and spiritual, than is possible while tethered to our earthly bodies.
Suicide, I decided, was the reason I’d been sent to Hell. The reason Elle had not been sent was because she had gone insane prior to killing her flesh. By releasing her sanity, she had also released her consciousness, and had, in reality, already died, even though her body was still functioning.
The body is a biological specimen that exists in three parts: the physical, the spiritual and consciousness.
The physical body is easy to explain; it is the flesh and blood and tissue and water.
The spiritual is also easy enough to explain, it is the soul. The soul is the battery that powers the body.
The consciousness is more difficult to explain, but it is to the soul what the brain is to the body.
When one gives way to insanity, they separate their consciousness from their soul and body. Most of the time the consciousness and soul—both being ethereal—will reunite after the death of the body releases the soul from its fleshy captivity.
They are drawn together like magnets which have their opposite poles turned towards one another. I’m not certain if the consciousness and soul are even aware that they were separated or that they have been reunited.
Once reunited, the spiritual being is once again whole, and unless they would have already been destined for Hell before their insanity set in, they will find themselves in the antechamber and faced with a choice.
When a consciousness is unable to reconnect with a soul after death, the consciousness is doomed to remain trapped in the physical world until Gabriel blows his horn and all bits and pieces of all humans who have ever existed are called forth from all realms in order to stand judgment before the throne of God.
At that moment, souls, consciousnesses, and bodies will be reunited and reassembled, but until then, a lost consciousness is an alien wanderer in the physical realm—or, in other words, a ghost.
A ghost is not the soul of the deceased, but the very essence of the deceased; an essence separated not from its physical body, but separated from its spiritual body.
Perhaps it would be easier to describe the consciousness simply as the soul of the soul and allow you to assume that a ghost is a lost soul.
A soul that has lost its consciousness and does not reunite after death becomes a poltergeist. Many assume poltergeists to be malevolent spirits, but they aren’t. They are simply masses of ethereal energy without a consciousness to guide them. As a result they become destructive, unable to control themselves.
A poltergeist is like a car. A car is not malevolent, but a car in motion without a driver to control it becomes a destructive force that is best avoided.
In short, for every ghost that is trapped in the physical world, doomed to wander restlessly until it either finds its soul or hears Gabriel’s mighty horn, there is also a poltergeist wan
dering about blindly, causing destruction without knowing it.
Since Elle had separated her soul’s soul from her physical body before killing herself, she was no longer responsible for anything that her physical body and soul did in the physical world. Her soul no longer had a brain—or a soul of its own, rather—and was therefore no longer controlled by Elle in any way. That lack of control made her innocent of suicide, unlike me, who knew full well what I was doing when I jumped out of the window.
Had I been insane I would have been allowed to stay behind as a ghost and could have walked into eternity hand in hand with Elle.
Dear God, how I wished I had been insane.
Instead, I am afraid I remained completely sane, and well aware of my actions. Despondency is not nearly the same as insanity and therefore my moment of selfish weakness cost me my life as well as an eternity of bliss and doomed me to an eternity in the dark.
Even worse, my actions had cost Elle an eternity of joy as well, for I was certain that she would not find the courage to enter into eternity alone.
CHAPTER 33
A hundred thousand years in the darkness, or perhaps only a second. I’m not sure, there’s no Time in Hell.
The more presence one has in Hell, the more terrifying it becomes. I must call it “presence in Hell” because one does not spend “time” there.
Eventually (however long it was really was I can’t say) I was no longer alone in the darkness. I felt the tiny feet of Dermestid beetles scurrying across my body. One does not wear clothes in Hell and the beetles had plenty of places where they could taste my flesh.
I swatted and scratched incessantly but could not ever seem to scrape the little bastards off of me. I could feel them biting me. They clawed, they squirmed, they bit and scratched without ceasing, for thousands of years in the darkness, or perhaps only a second. I’m not sure, there’s no Time in Hell.