by James Wymore
He held down a button on a console on his desk. “Fayngol,”
“Yes, sir,” a raspy deep female voice sounded over the intercom as if she were bored.
“Place a bet for me on…” he checked the screen on a red tablet in his hand, “…on Mr. Trey Reyborne. I’m giving him two hours for reality to set in.”
“Two hours? He sounds like a real piece of work.”
The demon nodded. “He’s sitting here laughing as if he still had his whole life ahead of him. Thanks, Fayngol.” He lifted his finger from the button.
“Why am I here?!” the brown-haired woman erupted. “I don’t belong here. I went to church. I’m saved. I know I’m a sinner, but that’s the whole point, isn’t it? I’m saved . There’s been a mistake.”
“Please calm yourself,” the beast said. “You may be right. Our plans for Mr. Reyborne will not be the same as yours. I keep telling the guys at distribution to group the souls together that share similar destinies, but no one ever listens to me. You have no idea how many thousands of souls I have to doom in a day. It would be nice to assign them in large groups. In fact, I’d like you two women to head out that door behind you to the waiting room. If you don’t mind waiting a bit longer, I want to speak to this gentleman alone.”
The demon stood up and bee-lined for the door. He opened it and waited for the two women to rise and follow him into the lobby. Both were excited to leave; perhaps they thought they might be redirected to the Pearly Gates. After exiting into the waiting area, the praying woman turned to the demon.
“Which church is true?” she begged in an Italian accent. “It is the Catholic Church, no?”
“Always the same question,” the beast said, placing his huge clawed hand on her back. “Sorry,” he said dryly, “the true church is Zoroastrianism.” He shoved her into the hall and slammed the door.
“Now that was just cruel,” I said, snickering. “Zoroastrianism. Good one. Excuse me if you don’t look like Ahura Mazda to me. How many Zoroastrians even exist in the world? A few hundred thousand maybe?”
The demon ignored me, frowning as he clomped back to his seat. He stared at me as he walked, the way a lion might stare at a chicken dinner. “Let’s get down to business, shall we? They call me Gordairn. You’ll have to excuse my lack of… uh… organization skills. I’m just an intern. My trainer, Xandern, is usually here to make sure I’m doing this right, but he’s on break. Fortunately for you, I’ve seen plenty of your type lately. I know just what to do with you.”
“Indulge me,” I said.
I could not wait to hear what kind of afterlife the dark side of my subconscious mind would conceive for me. To be honest, my heartbeat was racing. I found it increasingly difficult to doubt my senses. I hadn’t always been a disbeliever. The clarity of my memories made the faith I’d harbored as a child as powerful as the many subsequent years of skepticism. I hadn’t questioned my own beliefs so powerfully in many years. I didn’t just want answers. I needed them.
“Very well,” Gordairn said. “I serve my master. It is His bidding that I direct souls such as yours to the eternal destiny you earned in life. Normally, I explain the situation in more detail, but we both know you don’t want to hear it. There’s no point in my explaining anything to a man who refuses even to believe I’m sitting here talking to him.”
“Why should I believe?” I said, no longer smiling. “Why would I believe any of this? It makes no sense. If God exists, he supposedly created the universe. He hides from us, prompting thousands of diverse belief systems to arise. He gives us no clue which religion is true. He supposedly cares about us, yet he allows innocent children to suffer. Then he sends us to a devil like you to torture us for eternity because we didn’t happen to obey the right god? He basically created us so he could punish us. Even if he does exist, why would I worship such a being? I lived a good life. I did good things in spite of all my perfectly logical doubts about God. Considering what I had to go on, I would say I did the best I could possibly do.”
The demon grinned at my outburst. “This is what I love about you mortals. You are fully aware of your mental limitations, yet you still insist that you are sufficiently knowledgeable to question the wisdom of your all-knowing immortal God. I have a lot of souls to deal with today. I do not have the hundreds of hours it would require for me to explain every iota of my master’s superior reasoning to you. Since you listen only with the physical aspect of your reasoning ability, there is no pathway for communicating anything spiritual to you.
“I could tell you which belief system is true and why. But you know everything already, don’t you? You understand science. You have a perfect grasp on all the philosophies and theories and religions of the world. Clearly you don’t need me to tell you which religion is true.”
“I don’t claim to be all knowing,” I said, hopefully subverting any attempt by this demon to deny me an explanation. “I never claimed to know the truth. I just don’t believe anyone else knows it either. If God exists and he is all powerful, he chose not to give me a way to know the truth. No one has ever proven to me that their particular god existed. No one convinced me to believe in their particular idea of the afterlife. I read tons of books on religion. I sought for the truth more than most of my religious friends ever did. I contend that it is God’s fault that I couldn’t find it.”
“Yes, well. You got us there. I assure you my all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing master fully accepts the blame for his failure to satisfy your demand for physical evidence of that which could only be supplied to you spiritually. That is why he has authorized me to assign you to a life of eternal paradise. You wrote off the true religion along with all the false and nearly-true ones. Fortunate for you, my master is pleased that you at least studied the true religion at one point in your life. You understand it better than most of the people that come through here.
“Nevertheless, your presence in this office tells me you still have something to learn. We’ll need to take care of that before introducing you to your eternal happiness.” He turned his gaze to the red tablet on his desk and searched for something on-line with his large knobby fingers.
“I want to speak to your master.” My fears wouldn’t stop harassing me. What if I really had died? What if some eternal torment truly awaited me? I had considered myself an atheist for most of my life. Yet I had always maintained an emergency plan in case I turned out to be wrong. God could not justly condemn me to Hell. I had questions God had to answer before denying me a place in Heaven.
“Do not fret, my friend,” Gordairn said. “My master will be more than pleased to speak with you. Learn the minor lesson assigned for you, and he’ll be at your eternal service.” He tapped the tablet and all went black.
In a flash of light, my eyes opened to a verdant tropical jungle of lush green trees. My face lay against fine white sand. I turned my head to discover a vast expanse of crystal blue water. I supposed I had awoken on some island in the Caribbean. I couldn’t guess how my body ended up there. I assumed my real body still lay prostrate on a hospital bed, my mind lost in a deep coma. At least this place promised to be far more delightful than that droll office space in the demon’s cave. I congratulated my imagination for the upgrade in quality.
Pulling myself up, I found I still sported a fuzzy white robe. My feet were bare. A moist breeze washed my cheeks as I stared out over a vast azure sea. The wind carried the perfume of flowers and exotic plants. Birds of brilliant hues fluttered about, singing among the endless trees and ferns. For a moment, I played with the possibility that I really had died and moved on to the afterlife. Perhaps my ingenious defense against God’s justice had convinced that demon. Maybe I had earned a seat in paradise.
Yet something still did not feel right. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it hit me. This place brought me no sensation of pleasure, no feelings of joy. Memories from my life screamed at me, reminding me I should be reveling in this paradisiacal bliss. But I felt nothing. The pleasure cent
er of my brain inexplicably had been switched off. I sensed no beauty, no serenity, no excitement, no curiosity, no peace or fear.
Back in my high school years, I had a girlfriend who dumped me. I fell into such severe depression, I could barely function for days. No amount of sunshine cheered me up. The same feeling beleaguered me now, except this was no dark prison of depression. I simply could not sense the pleasure in anything.
I spied a white-painted message board at the beach front, stretched between two white wooden posts. Someone had painted, Instructions in bold black letters on a panel nailed to the top of the message board. I dragged my bare feet through the soft sand to look. The matte white panel conveyed a message written in fancy lettering. It said:
Welcome. Your eternal reward awaits you. Please write down the true purpose of life using the pen and paper provided below. Deposit the correct answer in the receptacle located at the peak of the hill behind you.
The only other writing, a small note at the base of panel, said:
These directions are subject to change without notice.
I turned to study the hill behind me. Its peak rose high above a legion of trees. A trail wound up a shallow slope into the dense vegetation. I loved hiking. I grinned. I could play this game. I figured I could reach the top of the hill in less than half a day’s time. I looked forward to the task. First, I needed to come up with a general purpose-of-life statement that would have to be true. An answer quickly came to mind. I scribbled it down.
Life is about making others happy.
I felt proud of myself. The god of any religion would have to agree with that statement.
To reduce the risk of delivering a wrong answer, I snagged the whole stack of cards. I didn’t want to make more trips than necessary. When I tried to grab the other cards however, they disappeared from my hands and reappeared at the message board. I shrugged. I felt healthier than ever. I could make this climb a few dozen times if it came to that.
Eager to make some progress, I jogged along the trail. After half an hour or so, I marveled that I suffered no fatigue. I felt no hunger or thirst. I continued running. Tall green ferns, exotic orchids, and a kaleidoscope of other colorful flowers dotted the trail. Brilliant orange birds darted past my head among fluttering sky-blue butterflies. It made me crazy not feeling any interest or pleasure in them. Even spending time observing them only irritated me and tried my patience.
In spite of the physically effortless aspect of the task, the hike began to tax me mentally. I could hardly stand it. Devoid of the many pleasures that used to fill me with joy, the trek soon became excruciatingly tedious. Instead of enjoying a hike, I merely endured a constant repetition of footsteps, one after another after another. I would have as easily read massive books in languages I did not understand. I surmised the catch to this supposed life of paradise. Without the ability to feel pleasure, there could be no paradise. The more enjoyable my surroundings should have been, the more they taunted me in denying me their emotional treasures.
The hours dragged along. I couldn’t guess how many had passed. The path grew shallower. I ventured to hope I might arrive at the mountain peak within the hour. That hope evaporated when my next step sent me floating above the ground. Momentum carried me about eight feet into the open air where I abruptly stopped. I could bend and spin around upside down or sideways, but I couldn’t move forward in any direction.
“I get it,” I cried, smiling in spite of my anger. Since I knew the demons had sent me here, I couldn’t help entertaining the notion that they were watching me constantly. I pictured myself as the subject of a vast cruel social experiment. “You claim to want me to take this card to the receptacle up there, but then you stop me so I can’t move. Real clever, Gordairn… or whoever you are.”
No one replied.
I wiggled and spun around weightlessly for about five minutes before it occurred to me that I could remove my robe and swing it out to possibly snag a nearby plant or tree. After a few dozen attempts, I finally snagged the waist belt of my robe on the rough, coppery bark of a gnarly old tree. I almost cried when a swift yank sent me gliding toward the trunk.
Giving myself a shove, I floated rapidly to an adjacent tree trunk. I practiced pushing off several more trunks and found I could move much faster launching myself from tree to tree than I could move trudging along on the ground. I hurled my body from branch to branch like a huge white-robed squirrel, remaining at one tree only long enough to launch myself to the next. This should’ve been the most fun I’d had in ages, but I felt nothing. I consoled myself with the knowledge that at least I’d arrive at my destination soon.
At one point I thought a spied something white a few hundred yards to my left, probably a white-robed neighbor. I didn’t slow down to find out. I just wanted to get to that receptacle. As I continued leaping between trees, I started to gain some serious altitude. Far fewer obstacles stood in my way thirty feet up in the treetops. I saw no reason to hug the ground. A reason soon showed up.
I reached out to grasp a sturdy vine when gravity came back to life. I never found out what my neck slammed into as I dropped. After a flash of light, I found myself lying on the same beach where I’d started this adventure, staring into the same blue ocean. At least I could now answer one of the questions that gnawed at me. Now I knew what would happen if I died on the island. I didn’t want to do it again.
After a moment, I realized the beach looked different. The sand somehow had transformed into a larger aggregate with a red hue. In spite of my substantial background in science, I couldn’t explain it. Patches of previously yellow flowers also now displayed themselves in bright blue.
As I stood up, I noticed movement on the white message board. Part of the written message changed in front of me, all by itself. It now said:
…insert your card in a bottle and toss it into a receptacle on a raft in the lagoon on the north side of the island.
I understood the game now. The difficulty did not reside in the performing of the task. It existed in keeping up with the changing directions while the laws of nature blocked your every move. I had no idea where to find the lagoon or the raft—or even a bottle. Did anyone even make bottles in this world?
I clenched my teeth and screamed. It infuriated me that I couldn’t feel any pleasure at all, yet nothing impeded my feelings of anger, regret, impatience, or frustration. Those emotions remained amplified in unfettered glory.
“I’ve figured it out, Gordairn,” I yelled to the invisible immortals. “Every time I come near a receptacle, you’re going to change the rules or cause some unnatural phenomenon to stop me. Is that the wonderful lesson you wanted me to figure out? Well, I got it, Gordairn. Can we move on now?”
Only the squawking of birds and the buzz of a persistent bumblebee answered me.
I refused to give up. Without the need for food, drink, shelter, or rest, I had nothing to do. The lack of pleasurable feelings made my existence unbearable. Placing my written answer in the right receptacle consumed my every desire. At least two months had passed without success. I say “at least” because I had no idea how to tell time on this island. There were times when the sun seemed to sit still in the sky for days. Other times, I actually observed celestial bodies slowly moving across the sky like high-flying birds.
One day, all sense of direction escaped me as the sun traversed the cloudless sky in the wrong direction—northeast to southwest instead of west to east. I had observed the stars the following night coasting at an unnatural speed through the heavens. Then they slowed down, stopped, and began soaring the other direction. Groveling for any explanation, I postulated that either time was running backward, or this bizarre planet was spinning at random speeds and directions through outer space. It was hard enough living on an island where the rules of nature defied all definition and consistency, but I could barely tolerate an entire universe subjected to the same contempt for physics.
In the past two months, the demons (for who could have been co
ntrolling this world if not those devils?) had mocked my love for everything natural and scientific. I burned my hand one day when a fern spontaneously burst into flames at my touch. I stumbled on some human footprints hardened into stone. I dodged a coconut that fell from a tree and sunk three feet into the ground like a ten-ton cannonball. Trees changed height or girth overnight—sometimes becoming larger and other times smaller. Rocks changed to rubber for a week. Plant life turned invisible for several hours. A few days ago, the fauna suddenly lost its mass. I walked through trees and shrubs like an incorporeal ghost. Then I stepped into a patch of grass and dropped into the earth. Who knows how far I fell before dying and awakening again on that same wretched beach.
This morning, after more than eight weeks without the slightest need or desire for food, every form of plant life suddenly beckoned me to consume it. Every living thing demanded a spot on my menu. I gnawed ravenously at the bark of a palm tree and might have chewed down the whole thing had I not spied an unfortunate grove of mango trees. I gobbled down every piece of fruit in that grove.
I came close to reaching a receptacle on several occasions. One day, the instruction board directed me to wad up my card and toss it from a ledge into a bucket at the bottom of a ravine. I just barely missed the bucket on my second attempt, right before the message changed. It then directed me to place my answer in the nest of a gray-legged eagle. Having never heard of such a fowl, I sat that one out.
After all this time, I still refused to believe I died. Perhaps I just wanted the satisfaction of knowing the demon lost his bet. Had I dared to be honest with myself, I would have accepted what my heart had known on day one, but my pride would not permit me to concede. If it meant an eternity of denial, I intended to argue forever that I merely existed as a victim of a Hell of my own comatose mind’s creation. Any day now, my relatives would pull the plug and this nightmare would end.