by Borne Wilder
The great cathedral mimicked the architecture Nolte imagined the Vatican would have. The ceilings were made of gawping heads, supported by tall columns of chomping heads, which arched into the ceiling in four directions, disappearing into beams of drooling heads. The windowless walls were slobbering heads, dotted with other shadows and stink clouds working diligently at fitting new arrivals into place. All motion once again ceased, a wave of horror crashed around Nolte’s brain, as the misdeeds of some foul soul were shared with all. Another bell tolled, without the heads to muffle it, this time, it was deafening. The cathedral shook as all the heads roared again in unison.
The length of time it had taken to assemble such a multitude, truly horrified him. Some of these heads must have been here since the beginning of time. Where was death? He didn’t think he would last five minutes in this shit hole, let alone eons. Nolte found himself praying to God for the first time. “Please let me have death.”
He could feel the reaper twisting his head as it tried to create a niche for him in the wall; pressing and tapping, much like a hammer-lazy mason might try to force a misshapen stone into place. One of the faces next to him bit down hard on his chin. The shadow brushed the biter away and pushed Nolte into position in the wall.
Nolte felt his bodiless head begin to shake and seize against the reaper’s manipulations. A strange, dislocated nausea overcame him. He was being pushed back out of the wall, repelled like the polar opposites of magnets. The more the reaper pushed, the more severe the seizure became, shaking and pushing his head out of place. The reaper replaced the chin biter and repositioned the faces on either side of Nolte’s head so that they could bite his ears, and hold him. His head began to rapidly pulse and seize again, one of his ears began to tear. The wall didn’t want him.
The darkness was so complete, during the trip in through the dark chasm, that even the shadow hadn’t noticed the long thin, silver thread stretching out behind them. Even when it had become taut and began to pull at Nolte, the demon hadn’t noticed, even though the silver thread held the sheen of the most polished mirror. In a perfectly balanced chaos, there is no light, therefore, no reflection. Add to that, the fact that demons are not trained to be aware of thread issues, and the oversight becomes understandable.
Although the demon had made this particular trip hundreds of thousands of times before, this was the first time it had encountered a soul that required so much effort to push through the rift that separated the higher dimensions
There was always a struggle, but it usually came from regret within the soul itself, as it fought and begged for another chance at it all. A battle that was usually easily crushed, once the point where time could no longer be measured was breached. The gravity of their situation and the vastness of space, void of measurable existence, usually rendered them confused and as passive as a stone.
Most of the time the souls became puzzled and paralyzed with fear, as soon as the absence of time sunk in, though it sometimes appeared to them as an impenetrable darkness, it was overwhelming, nevertheless. The idea that eternity is now and now was going to last forever confused them, humans are not meant to think in such a manner. The shock and abject horror the souls went through pleased the demon, it thoroughly enjoyed its work.
By all accounts, this soul had been unremarkable, though it had screamed and cried enough for two souls, there was nothing that made it stand out in any way, but the fact that the wall appeared to be refusing this one, was confusing in and of itself. Normally, even the slightest void in the wall, once found, would suck the soul into place and hold it fast, but this one was actually being rejected.
The demon felt its grip on Nolte slip, and realized too late, it wasn’t the barrier rejecting the soul, but that the soul was being pulled back toward the dimension of time. Since this was not a prearranged warning trip, designed for ‘important’ or ‘key’ souls to get their lives back on track, the demon was unprepared for the sudden jerk on the soul. Few were sent this far in before they were reunited with their bodies and never without prior approval, so the demon was caught unawares. Suddenly the soul was ripped away from the grasp of the puzzled demon and lost to the darkness.
Even with the limited understanding afforded minions at its level, the demon knew something dreadful had just happened. Finding it again was not going to be easy, and truth be told, the incentive plan in Hell, left a lot to be desired.
***
The floating head sensation was gone, so was the sensation of motion, and even though it was too dark to see, Nolte seemed to be in a body of some sort. The crushing atmosphere was also gone, but screams still echoed in his head. If he hadn’t seen it for himself, he would never have conceived that a place so bleak and completely bereft of hope actually existed.
Later, he would learn the place he had just left was nothing more than a waiting room, a place to reflect on one’s past and access the true meaning of a life wasted, while awaiting Judgement Day. Had he stuck it out, he would have been presented with an opportunity for redemption, but in his present state, as he recovered from levels of fear he could have never before imagined, he assumed he just cheated Hell. He couldn’t envision a worse fate, but in short order, as the human mind is wont to do, selective memory would smooth out the edges of what had happened. Time would tame the horror, diminish the reality of it and resize it so it could be compartmentalized and tucked neatly away. A decade or so down the road, it will be ready to be taken out and re-examined over a few beers. A ‘someday we’ll laugh about this moment.’
Human memory is inclined to filter out the worst of our experiences so that we might function from a relatively clean perception of what is and what isn’t. It’s what keeps us from playing with fecal matter in rubber rooms. The truth is not the right size for us to comprehend; it is too large, and too small, and too scary. The truth is what turned Moses’ hair white on Mount Sinai.
On several occasions, Nolte had told everyone, everyone being barflies and dredgers too drunk to move out of earshot, that he would tell the devil to suck his dick if opportunity ever presented itself, that is to say, if the two ever came face to face, but he no longer kept to that opinion, nor did he wish to engage Satan in conversation, nor did he feel the need to issue such a challenge. Let bygones be bygones, was Nolte’s new motto. The tormented screams from the millions of heads had filled him with a level of fear that would make any fire and brimstone preacher shudder and cringe in a puddle of urine.
The sounds of his own screams were beyond embarrassment, though he figured, with a little creative thinking, he could blame most of the girly sounding ones on the little coward in his head.
The shame and regret he was feeling, Nolte knew would pass, he had learned to bury those sentiments long ago. If it were possible to look in one of Nolte’s ears and see the landscape of his mind, it would look like the backyard of someone who had buried ten thousand dollars in a Mason jar, but couldn’t remember where. Nolte had holes dug all over the backyard of his mind. Even though Nolte’s ability to justify even the most disgusting misbehavior was unrivaled in the realm of Pervdom, he still dug holes.
The mental image of the head cathedral would probably soften over time, along with the memory of the stench, though smells usually took longer, but the sensation of being mentally violated and truly exposed was going to stay with him for some time to come. Nolte had never before realized how profoundly he cherished his secrets.
Although knowing that what he had witnessed was real and eternal terrified him, it was the realization, that he had been the one to put himself in that position, that really cut him to the bone. What had really driven the experience home for him, was the hopelessness he heard in the screams. The desperation and despair he had witnessed was overwhelming. What could be at the root of such sorrow? Was it the lack of time, the collective horror sharing? Regret? The questions prodded his curiosity, but not enough to go back and find out. He found himself, for the first time, wishing he could have a do-over on his life.
For the last twenty years, he’d been worried whether or not the witch had cheated him, in spite the things he’d seen her do. The honesty of witches was beyond Nolte’s scope, he was inexperienced as far as witches were concerned, only having dealt with the one. He had hoped to hell that he was wrong, but the total impossibility of it all had constantly haunted him. He’d had a hard time convincing himself an antique coin could keep him from the clutches of Satan.
Another thing that bothered him, ate at him really, was that the witch had seemed so damned sure he would be going to hell. He had thought it awful presumptuous of her to make such a snap judgment, considering she knew nothing of Nolte’s past. Of course, she knew he had made her acquaintance by way of a fifty-dollar hooker, but for all she knew, Nolte might have been a good Samaritan, set about correcting the path of a poor misguided Jezebel, instead of purchasing one of the more pleasurable blow jobs he could recall in years. For all she knew, he might have been an honorable man, in fact, as far as he was concerned, he was an honorable man, at least he considered himself to be better than most. When it was all said and done, there were worse people out there, and of that, he was sure as shit. She didn’t know him, but her prediction had been spot on, as it turned out.
Over the course of those twenty years, many times, Nolte had thought of giving himself over to God. It had even been suggested by others, whom, he thought, might do well to mind their own fucking business, yet, whose testimonies, sometimes appeared to offer a viable alternative to the nest egg plan, but the thought of getting all squishy sickened him.
Nolte couldn’t wrap his head around the concept of forgiveness, besides, even if he was forgiven for all the nasty, depraved shit he had done in his life, he figured he would probably still have to scrub toilets and replace urinal mints in Heaven. What a fucking eternity of bliss that would be. However, in the light of recent events, his idea of Hell paled in comparison to the reality of it. Scrubbing toilets no longer seemed that bad. Anyway, what’s done is done; they could all kiss his ass because neither place was going to get him.
On the third day, he is risen. That’s what the witch had told him. Some unwritten rule from Heaven or Hell required him to sit it out, for three days, in the void. It was exactly this type of religious bullshit that had encouraged his decision to stay away from God.
There were, in Nolte’s opinion, too many rules and regulations surrounding the surrendering of one’s soul. Eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, that stuff kind of blended with his way of thinking, but the other stuff, thou shalt not kill, do unto others and the love thy neighbor shit, was simply unrealistic. Nolte wanted to kill most of his neighbors, and do unto others conflicted with his, serves them right, rule of thumb. It all looked good on paper, but try to love thy neighbor after thy neighbor’s dog has gotten into your trash cans. Try not to kill the sonofabitch, when he refuses to clean up the mess his dog made, it just wasn’t a sensible way to for a society to conduct itself. The way Nolte’s saw it, religious rules should apply to real life situations because someone had to pick up the trash.
The plan seemed to be back on track, at least the shadow was gone, but the witch had never mentioned the shadow in the first place, she had only said he would spend three days in another realm until the preacher prayed over his grave. Nolte had been under the impression that he would be unconscious for that period. He could use three days of sleep, the shadow, with his rattling sand and stink, had kept him awake for almost that long, but all things considered, Nolte had serious doubts if he would ever be able to sleep again, at least not without large quantities of alcohol to soften the memory of the dripping, screaming heads.
Now he had to wait for some hypocritical man of the cloth to pray over his grave. What a crock of shit thought Nolte. What fucking good would prayer do him? The whole point of this undertaking had been to separate him from the stipulations of religion, and the oppressive demands of the tyrant God. Perhaps it was like a break-up fuck, one last prayer for the road.
Nolte had made it perfectly clear; to his senseless stepdaughters, that time was of the essence when it came to getting his ass in the ground. They had asked why, of course, but he had explained to them, in no uncertain terms, that they were too stupid to comprehend his reasons. Beyond that, as a means to further ensure he was interred in a timely manner, he had shown both of them, his will. It stipulated, his funeral was to be no later than three days, precisely seventy-two hours after his death, or they would get nothing. Their greed would get him in the ground on time.
Greed was a friend of Nolte’s. He knew how to exploit it, and could wield a person’s love of money against them, like a weapon, if the circumstance called for battle, but more often than not, it only required bait. However, greed had no intimate ties to Nolte; he neither loved money, nor fancied a large quantity of it, and was especially proud of how little command it had over him. He might admit to being greedy for pussy, but that was instinctual, a built-in mechanism to propagate the species, and also, because he was a man’s man. It’s what men did, men got pussy, and that, was no doubt, something to be proud of.
He would see about getting some pride back once he was risen. It was hard for him to think about pride, with the echoes of bitch-like, girly screams ringing in his head.
Nolte looked around the darkness, it was a strange sensation. There was no feeling in his limbs, other than they felt like they existed. There was nothing to measure movement by, using sight, so looking around felt more like a thought, than an action. He had often wondered about true sensory deprivation, as a means of breaking the will of a person, as it would apply to others, of course. He told himself it was a matter of innocent curiosity and thought the information might come in handy, should the need to calm an unruly captive ever presented itself.
If the darkness he found himself languishing in was any indication of true sensory deprivation, the evidence was clear, and he was sure, he would be a babbling fucking idiot after three days, and quite serene, if not completely tranquilized by insanity, upon his release.
As Nolte tried to resign himself to three days of abysmal darkness and mind numbing silence, the silence crackled. There was a slight tremor, through which he heard a soft warbling. It was the voice of a small child, small and far away, as it would sound, delivered through two tin cans on a string. He cocked his head or did something that felt like cocking his head and listened intently. He could definitely hear something; the shadow must have found him. Suddenly, a crackle of electricity and the sound filled his head to bursting.
“…for Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory. Forever, and ever. Amen.”
The darkness was gone. Nolte found himself standing in his living room, near the spot where he had died; Martha was kneeling next to his dead body. The shade of blue his skin had turned, unnerved him a bit.
The old saying was true, he thought, there is no dignity in death. He looked like hammered shit, lying there on the floor, his mouth gaped open with a fat tongue poking out. The tongue didn’t even look like it belonged to him, it was too big, could be, it was his lung. He appeared to be blowing a bubble, with gray bubblegum. His fingers were pinched together, and his hands curled back sharply at the wrist, as though he had died in the middle of shadow puppets, swans, possibly ostriches.
A big blue pile of hammered shit, he thought. He didn’t have all the details on how this living forever was going to work out, but he couldn’t see how the body on the floor, was going to be of any use, it appeared to be fucked-up-beyond-all-recognition.
Martha rocked back on her heels and stared at Nolte’s blue body, she had her hands together in front of her, as she peeled off another Our Father. He smiled at the realization. The churchy bitch had prayed his ass back from limbo, or wherever the hell he was just at, three days early. He was ahead of schedule! There was no need for some hypocritical man of the cloth to say the magic words, he had the churchy bitch.
Nolte took a quick inventory of himself. Two arms, two legs,
and a head, all attached to a naked body in a soggy diaper. He must have pissed himself when he popped over from the other side. How fucking wonderful, he thought, still incontinent, at least he wasn’t blue. He was the spitting image of the blue thing laying on the floor, only with a little more spring in his step. It wasn’t the twenty-something stud body he’d been hoping for, but it was better than the piece of shit the churchy bitch was trying to bring back to life.
If everything worked out as planned, he would see about doing a little potty training and getting rid of the diaper, but until he put a few miles on the new body, it was better to be safe, than sorry. He didn’t want to run around in haunting mode with shit dripping down his legs, he might chafe. His situation wasn’t perfect, but it was only a matter of time, and he would be shitting in tall cotton, diaper be damned.
“What up bitch? Look who ‘s home!” he yelled at Martha. She had stopped trying to revive Nolte with pleas to the Almighty and was starting to tidy the crime scene. She screwed the cap back on the mostly empty mescal bottle and pushed it beneath the couch. Nolte’s sudden appearance in the room drew no reaction from her. “Church bitch, hand me that bottle!” he waved, fanning his hand next to her ear and snapping his fingers. Martha remained oblivious to him. He took a step back, scratching his ragged beard, “What the fuck?” he thought, this was going to suck if he couldn’t fuck with people.
Maybe the witch had been wrong about the ‘haunting’ part. She had told him, whoever he let touch the coin, would tie to it and be able to hear his voice from beyond. Once convinced they weren’t, as she put it, “crazy as a shithouse rat with voices in its head”, they could be used as ‘helpers’, while he hung in limbo.
Nolte had decided to set up his helpers the day of Mommy’s funeral. The reality of her being gone for good, reminded him that his days were also numbered, and he needed to get some stuff ready before it was too late. He didn’t see how Team Retard could be of any real use, but the idea of crawling around in their empty heads had really appealed to him.