by Mon D Rea
“You speak as if you have a choice. Have you looked in a mirror lately?”
All at once the Lachesis monitors switch to the scene inside the office. I can see the head reaper's back and his surprisingly vice-like hand still poised in the air, but the figure chained against the elevator wreck isn’t anyone I recognize. My wetsuit appears to have fused onto my skin and the result is somehow tattery, sort of hazy and distorted in its own aura of water. Worse, my face is grotesque, with what appears to be the cheeks and jawline of the missing link between humans and fish. In fact, I have scales for skin and fins where my ears should be.
“In case you haven’t noticed, you're dead, Nataniel Cuervo!” Sephtimus shrieks and laughs. It’s twice shocking to hear my name in this place. For one, I can't remember the last time I was called by it and for another, the fact that this monster has access to what I thought was my only remaining layer of identity plunges me to utter despair.
“I hope you don’t mind but the Fate Weaver has taken the liberty of dressing you in different clothing. As if you were one of the souls cleared for reincarnation. But before you rejoice, know that you’ve been reduced to a slave-wraith – to be precise, a shipwreck fershee, a wailing spirit – until the time that you outgrow your usefulness to me.”
I feel the scream rising in my chest. I’ve been transformed into a monster, a freak that belongs to neither land nor sea, to neither the living nor the restful dead.
“A nonperson in your mortal life, you shall still remain trapped in this subhuman form for all afterlife!”
Sephtimus, having morphed the fingers of his other hand into overkill talons, rips one ear-fin off the abomination on the wall as a boy would tear the wing off a fly. I feel great waves of pain coursing from the left side of my face then throughout my body, all nerve endings humming at the violence as ice-cold, silvery ghost blood squirts out of me in jets.
I shriek - an inhuman, screeching noise at all the abuse I’ve suffered through the day - and great rivers of tears course down my cheeks. My voice has taken on a life of its own in the supernatural world; it’s now high-pitched and echoey. And I cry out of, more than the pain, the desolation that grips my heart now that I feel my new shape slowly laying its claim on me.
“Shut it!” Sephtimus screams and behind him all the screens take on the menacing grayness of a tempest at sea, his voice coinciding with the boom of very close thunder. I’m taught the literal meaning of the words “zip your mouth” when I feel hook-pieces instantly pull my fish lips shut.
“What manner of man are you that you cower and wail at the consequences of your own act? Now, THIS IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO DO...” Sephtimus enunciates the words while pressing his lips close to my now amorphous, smoothed-out mouth. The thin strip of his human lips is bent into the snarl of his mental voice. “You shall be my slave and perform your tasks as a fershee reaper. More importantly, you shall instruct me on how to walk and talk like one of your filthy kind. Because I shall take her soul one way or another like what has been promised. And in the end I shall squash her like the leech that she is!” The reaper’s eyes are once more fiery-red. “Do as you are told and I might even let you visit that hot ex of yours. Samantha, isn’t it?”
Leave her out of this, you snake! I scream inside my head. I feel faint, having lost a great deal of blood out of the torn side of my face.
“You mortals have called me many things,” Sephtimus roars. "But one thing I shall not stand is a human accusing me of playing false!”
Sephtimus grabs the fershee’s gory cheek with bone-crushing tightness. I can only whimper as my brain dimly registers the narrowing of my sight.
“You shall tutor me on your ways and accompany me to your world. Or you can go back to the Seventh Circle and be skinned and gutted by the Harpies every minute of every day! Till all the light of the universes shrivels up and sighs!”
With the sound of what should be a bloodcurdling scream but drowned out by Death's heartless laughter, a whole new ear – still horribly alien – emerges from my bruised and ragged flesh. Like some mutant newborn, this quivering fan of spines and skin is matted with mercurial blood. At last I slip into blessed nothingness.
Chapter VII: The Reluctant Reaper
God, why is this happening to me? I rack my brain for answers. I know now that there’s life after death and I’m in hell for being sinful and taking my own life. But of all seven billion people in the world, or the hundreds of billion people who have died from the beginning of time till now, why did Death choose me to be his plaything?
It feels utterly empty pondering the weight of these statistics. It’s like I’m flickering between two planes. The first a vast wasteland, the post-apocalyptic world in my vision where I’m the only human not allowed to die, and the second, the familiar world indeed populated by billions of people but not a single one able to hear my voice or feel my touch.
I have slept fitfully, tormented by vivid, psychotic nightmares that I know are poor imitations of the real horrors that await me when I succumb to consciousness. I’m still in shock from everything; all the irreparable psychological damage. There’s also this creeping feeling of having made a mistake and now paying for it far beyond human capacity.
Of course I’ve done many other stupid things in life, bringing harm to myself and sometimes to others, but everything just pales in comparison to this. It’s like what the Angel of Death himself said, all a human can do is face the consequences of his own actions. Still I can’t help wondering how different things might've been had I not died when I did. Being always alone, depressed and scared I could’ve probably borne or spent my whole life trying to, but eternity’s a phenomenon whose scope and limits I can never dream to grasp, let alone survive.
Having lived in a predominantly Catholic country, I’ve been preached at, laden with guilt and warned of a realm that arranges the eternal punishment of the wicked. Who could've thought such a place had any basis in fact? My flesh crawls and my insides chill every time I think of what other revelations lie in store on this topsy-turvy zoo tour, where all the showcased animals were once human, only they can't remember anymore how it was being anything but beasts.
I could pass out again just thinking of my own sentence: to be thrown at the mercy of potbellied, winged viragos, the infamous Harpies, every waking moment of insomniac death. Like I thought at the way station, there’s a thin line between real men and sissies in the face of hellfire.
And my body! It takes a great deal of positivity to hold back despair at the sight and feel of my wet and slimy flesh, as though all the time I was emerging from a moss-covered lake. Sephtimus has begun calling me by a foreign name, too, which at first sounded Egyptian to me but which my psychic connection explains is actually Welsh. It’s spelled Cyhyraeth and is pronounced Tuh-huhreth, meaning “specter” or “death-portent.”
I also learn that a fershee, like its female counterpart the banshee, is a type of wailing spirit.
Suicide’s not an option simply because you can’t kill someone who’s already dead. I’ve basically landed myself in the ultimate prison, a place akin to a mental institute where all the doors have no knobs to turn. Or there are simply no doors.
The only thing that holds me together in this accursed place, where God Himself turns a blind eye, the only thing that keeps me from unraveling is the fact that at least one person in the world of the living knows about me and remembers. Sam. My undying light in the pitch-black depths where I descend. Memories of her readily bring tears to my eyes.
I turn my thoughts back to Sephtimus Rex. The Chief Soul Deporter knows about my past; my being an orphan, a non-person, for most of my childhood. This could hold the key to the mystery of why I was chosen out of countless others. Unfortunately, when it comes to my past, I have walls put up for good reason. I simply don’t venture that deep inside.
I consider what the reaper has offered me, the possibility of seeing Sam again. Though I don't want to pin my last hope on the words of a dem
on, at the same time there’s nothing else for me to hold on to except the wish, no matter how improbable, that I could visit Sam one last time. I suppose looking forward to even the briefest meeting with her in my present state is better than facing eternity without a glimmer of hope. Just a few minutes in my appointed prison yard and I’ll surely cease to understand how I existed, whether I walked or crept.
But how could I volunteer to be used by the evil incarnate in his sinister plot? Isn't it more decent to suffer for my mistakes than drag down another person, the woman in the coffee shop, with the doomed plan of slipping back to the surface world? Maybe I should cling on to the last ounce of human goodness in me even if it means never again experiencing a smile or seeing Sam's. Just do my time and pray for the strength to last till the expiration of the universe.
And then there’s the other part of me that says I should live as everyone else lives in this place. Survival of the fittest, the meek are meat for the strong. The small voice in my head talking about morality is my last, obsolete connection to being human and I should just take advantage of this special treatment being granted me, use mounds of other people as footholds if I have to. Then again the moment I turn into that person is the time I truly deserve to be in hell. No, I have to keep believing the only reason I’m here is because I’m a suicide.
I’m on the horns of this dilemma when Death yanks away the illusion of choice. He whispers a threat in my fin-ear: “Since you don’t seem to be very pressed for time you should chew on this. Emasculated though I may be and prohibited from ever doing anything worthwhile, from laying a finger on a mortal outside their contract, you better believe it when I tell you, there are other ways to make the life of your precious Samantha a living hell.”
That and a mischievous wink. That’s enough to drive me to my knees like a sad, vacant-eyed genie summoned to do the bidding of his dark master.
****
It’s hard to believe but the only thing the Death Angel needs to masquerade as a human is the capacity for speech; the rest is child's play. For the father of wolves to fit in sheep's clothing it’s easy to mimic everything – the face of Brad Pitt, the body of Vin Diesel, the dough of Bill Gates –everything except the very words that’ll come out of his mouth. If forced, he’d appear like a character in those dubbed Mexican soaps who looks heavenly but is either a ventriloquist or possesses a hen's hyperactive butthole for lips. I believe it’s because the only real privilege that separates humans from creatures of the nether-realm, like in the Jewish legend about the golem, is man’s ability to articulate his thoughts.
Also, there’s a certain warped logic when a grim reaper that’s bored out of his mind attempts to cultivate himself. It’s only Sephtimus’ low opinion and abhorrence of everything human that has left him unlearned all this time.
As to the question of what human language to learn, although it’s said that French is the most romantic, English is still the most practical. First, should Sephtimus strike out and taste bitter rejection for the first time in his eternal existence, he’ll have a vast international sea of other fish to cure his wounded pride.
Second, Ms. Beatrice (I never did catch the name of the woman on the monitors) happens to be partial to English though she was born to both Italian parents, first-generation immigrants who had settled in an old Italian neighborhood in New York. Ms. Beatrice’s current location though is my home country, the sunshiny islands of the Philippines, where she’s been selected to endorse a clothing company’s Fashion Week collection. This confirms my earlier guess about her occupation and gives another plausible reason for my being selected as Death’s tutor.
I condition myself mentally. At first I worry I’ll be hopelessly conflicted, but I’m surprised, even feel guilty at my enthusiasm. I suppose I still have more guts left in me than I imagine in these strange, troubled times. It’s like I’m being possessed by a completely different persona, one that’s been hidden deep in the recesses but has now taken over, a character that’s a hundred times a go-getter and a survivor.
This bare stratum of identity is the only bastion Death can't break down so I’m going to bet everything on it. This undertaking will be my lifeline to the human world and my diving helmet in this psychologically and spiritually toxic world. It doesn't matter who the student is, if it means passing on the last traces of my humanity to him, I’ll do it and do it well. I fancy myself as an underground figure like a surgeon paid to fix up the blasted bodies of gangsters.
Our predetermined deadline is October 30th, seven days from now based on Beatrice’s human clock. Sephtimus figures that if the Christian God managed to create an entire universe on such a tight deadline, surely he can learn a foreign language in the same amount of time, plus the extra day when God rested.
I suppose it is within the realm of possibility since in this world there appear to be no switching of night and day and no sign of anyone ever needing rest. The clock’s stuck at forever midwinter midnight so we’d have an infinite wealth of time if we only shut out all thoughts of the living. What awaits me, however, if I fail to meet Sephtimus' deadline is a fate too terrible to contemplate.
Lastly, it’s not immediately apparent but a hive of monitors that show each and every inch of the human world will be an invaluable teaching aid. With them, I shall become a sleeper trainer not unlike what the Soviets had, enlightening an extra-dimensional spy on even the most basic things so he can pass himself off as human.
Under all these conditions, I resolve to perfect my Sistine Chapel, however blasphemous it is.
Chapter VIII: Love after Death
These magic-mirror screens have a mind of their own. If I’m not careful, they’ll steal and turn my memories against me. As Sephtimus demonstrated, the monitors zoom in on any person anywhere in the world, all from ground level and at real time; but they can also show video feeds from both the past and the future, proving beyond a doubt that the lives we’ve been living are all predestined.
Or could it be my own making? When the monitors bring me back to memories where I least want to go, is it because what someone longs for is very seldom what’s good for him?
I remember one other moment when the din of the Lachesis supercomputers dropped low enough for me to hear myself think. As though the chime of a giant clock signaled the change inside me, there was a distinct half of my life when I believed human existence meant something.
100 billion galaxies in the universe. 100 billion star systems. About 10 trillion planets in our galaxy alone and 7 billion people on Earth. I am unique, I am not insignificant. Inside my mother’s body, hundreds of millions of gamete competed towards the womb yet only the smallest fraction would finish the journey.
There’s a genetic symphony inside me, a clockwork that sets off its designs at such precise timing. I am a book capable of writing its own stories.
I have the capacity to love and I, too, shall be loved. There is a corner in this universe where I am wanted, where I am needed, where I belong, and where I’m meant to be. It’s right next to the woman whose own genetic symphony has led her into my arms.
We are all of us, body and breath, made up of stardust...
Time was, I believed in the purposeful order of things, that there was a reason for everything. All I had to do to be certain was watch the miraculous ballet of constellations across the night sky while making wishes about the future with the one I loved.
I would point out to her the patterns above but not completely, just guiding her along to let her discover the shapes by herself. She would connect the dots in the darkness while I listened to the excitement building in her voice, and I would reward her every guess with a kiss while remaining vague about how that was a good thing for her. The chances were as many as the shooting stars towards daybreak. Or in the Geminids meteor shower in December. A whole rain of kisses.
King Cepheus, Cygnus the Swan, mighty Hercules, Boötes the Hunter, the Great Bear and the little one, Draco the Dragon…
Sam brok
e the kiss. “Tell me that story again.”
“What story? I don’t know any.” I nibbled on her ear, applying light kisses across her shoulder to push her and myself farther over the edge. But she wasn’t one to lose her cool.
“How our bodies are made up of stardust.” She shifted from under me.
I rolled onto my back on the cool grass, miffed. We were on the gentle slopes of People’s Park, our favorite trysting green whose gates we climbed at night and risked both neck and university name on.
The lagoon in the middle of the park slept as still as ink, and the scoop was that 15 billion years ago in the primeval Big Bang, the first simple chemical elements gave way to galaxies, planets, and stars and eventually people – through eons and eons of evolution, plus a fair share of telling and retelling to Sam.
“It’s all just esoteric mathematics,” I told her, purposely to make her feel bad. “It’s not even scientific.”
“Tell me about Orpheus’ harp.”
“There’s no harp. The things you see up there are what countless humans before you have projected of themselves into the sky. They’re not real. They’re simply a way for farmers and astronomers to remember which star is which – nothing more. You know mnemonics, right? Memory aids?”
She did, but something about the quiet that followed told me I had gone too far. Although she was two years younger and majoring in Art History, she had proven many times over that she knew a lot more than how to understand and present art: her sculpted figure, graceful walk and picture-perfect face, which in my mind would never be subject to the ravages of old age or decay.