by David Connor
Nine Minutes in Heaven
By David Connor and E.F. Mulder
Published by JMS Books LLC
Visit jms-books.com for more information.
Copyright 2019 David Connor and E.F. Mulder
ISBN 9781634869638
Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
* * * *
Thank you to JM, my editor, and everyone at JMS Books! To the angels who watch over us and show us hints they are near, thank you, too.
* * * *
Nine Minutes in Heaven
By David Connor and E.F. Mulder
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 1
The day of my death had started out as normal, in so much as I could call my existence that since I’d acquired the ability to speak with ghosts and seemingly travel to other realms. By the time those twenty-four hours reached their end, however, despite searching my racing thoughts for any other possible explanation, I couldn’t help but wonder if my offbeat life had reached its end as well, an end or a new beginning, perhaps.
“What…what happened?”
I opened my eyes. Though the visual was hazy, I immediately heard a cardinal—twelve tweets, twelve notes. More than a bit disoriented, I wasn’t sure where I was, but I just had a feeling.
“Jefferson?”
“Yes.”
An angel made sense, with the light so golden around and behind me. I had to stop thinking of Jefferson and Calvin as ghosts, now that I knew they had both crossed over.
“Hello, my Jefferson.”
Yes. An angel made sense.
“Hello, Goose.”
Not nearly as blinded as I had been just before I’d stepped through from the other side, I still had to shield my eyes to see his face. Jefferson was just as small and boyish looking as I recalled, with that puppy soft beard of his I wanted to stroke and eyes as green as the grass beneath my feet.
“You’re still dressed like a motorcycle cowboy.”
His dark hair was slicked back, like James Dean, and the leather jacket he wore made noise when he moved. “That is how you’ll see me,” he said, tugging at the cuffs.
I gasped, a habitual thing I would likely always struggle to curtail. “You’re here as I dressed you, because you’re visiting me this time.” That made sense, too. Maybe it did. “You’re visiting me, here in my world, and I can see you, and hear you, and…and touch you? Can I touch you?”
“Of course.”
I didn’t though. I just stood there, somewhat afraid to close the gap between us, a space of several feet. “The first time you visited me, I couldn’t see you at all, remember, Jefferson?”
“I do.”
“But I heard you and sensed you there. In January, when I hit my head and visited you, I call that a vision. Patrick didn’t remember any of that. He was there. I thought he was, but I had to describe it all to him. I wish he was here, now. If this was a vision, like that, I would have brought him, I think. Yes.” It took only a moment to decide. “I know I would have, if I could. That was real, though, in its own way, wasn’t it?”
“It was.”
“Good.” I tried to take in my surroundings, blue sky, sunlight, nature, to make sense of them, and to quiet the chaos in my brain. “This feels different from all that.”
“Yes,” Jefferson said.
“How did I get here?”
“What do you remember?”
I remembered a black night, without a single star twinkling above me as I lay in distress. There was dirt and gravel and weeds deadened by weeks of winter before and a spring that was taking its time. It was definitely warmer, now, warmer than the early April night I’d come from, but also in some sort of ethereal way, like a hug bringing comfort after a bad dream or a loss. Before the bright light, total darkness had surrounded me. Now, it was daytime, and the grass where we stood edged a field of wildflowers proclaiming summer, the smell of exhaust and gas fumes replaced by the pleasant aroma of them. None of that came out in words, though, because my next thought was of my sister.
“Can you guys meet Shelby, now, you and Calvin? Where is Calvin?”
“He’ll be here shortly.”
“Good. Jefferson and Calvin, Goose and Patrick, they should always be together.” The smile I offered was returned, even though mine had already faded, as I wondered why neither couple was. “I assume you could have met Shelby anytime. Rip, too. They can meet you, now. Shelby will be blown away, if you can actually talk to her. All of them know so much about you,” I babbled a bit, relishing the chaos in my head for once. Settling on one thought, the obvious one, the obvious explanation for where I was and why, seemed almost frightening. “Shell and Rip, my bro-ham in law, I’m not sure they believe my stories about you, not a hundred percent. Rip was at the reenactment when I first found your diary. Carrie believes them. Carrie is the girl Patrick and I found sleeping in her car during the blizzard after I got back from the last time I hung out with you and Calvin. Do you know her story? How her parents don’t accept her as a daughter, because she was born as their son, even if she never felt that way?”
“A light flashed in the parking lot allowing you to see her car,” Jefferson reminded me.
“Right. Yes. You did that for us. Thank you. Carrie lives with Rip and Shelby, now. They make wonderful surrogate parents. Carrie’s in a play. If you stick around long enough, you can come see it. I’ll spring for your tickets—unless you decide to come but not in the flesh. Then we won’t need seats.”
The worry I felt concerning Patrick’s absence was starting to needle me, but I blathered on, trying to squelch it. I yammered and fidgeted, with my sweatshirt sleeve, my hair, never quite neat, and even my eyes, rubbing them to see if the sights before me would change to something more familiar and logical. Just because an angel made sense didn’t mean I understood why and how he was here, or why, how, and where I was.
“I can’t wait to do twenty-first century things together. It’ll be hard to top Halloween with your entire family, back in the 1800s, but I’m sure we can find something fun. I’ll introduce you to QVC, and CNN, and the NFL on ESPN. We’ll eat M&Ms, look at IG, and shop for BVDs or 2Xist online. That way, if you’re not too busy to stick around seven to ten business days, I can introduce you to my UPS man. His boyfriend’s an angel, too. That’s kind of a joke. Noah’s boyfriend’s name is Angel. He’s not an actual angel, like you and Calvin. I think he’s a
lawyer.”
Though I realized Jefferson was likely aware of everything I was telling him and describing, I was a bit nervous about what he might say if I stopped talking, so I didn’t.
“Maybe all six of us can just hang out some night and watch RuPaul’s Drag Race or Grey’s Anatomy, maybe fire up some Super Mario Brothers or Netflix. The twenty-first century has so many things to marvel at, not the least of which might be our indoor plumbing and toilet paper, if you have need for such a thing.”
Jefferson had been in my time before, in ghostly form, to take it all in. Now, he was like a real living person, as alive as I was, it seemed.
Something made me shiver.
“I’m sure all that would sound boring to a lot of people, especially people who’ve been to Heaven. This century is about a lot more than TV and TP. We’re not in the midst of a civil war, at least, not like the last time you were all the way on Earth.”
I had to rethink that, the statement and our location.
“Well, sadly, in some ways, we are…two sides against one another with little compromise, racial lines, hate crimes…” I decided to ignore the other thing a while longer. “There are good things, too, though. Cost-Mart stopped selling guns. Good for them. I should take you there. Everything you could ever imagine under one roof. Except guns, now. I even found love there, but we don’t sell it, or anything.”
“Ah.”
“It’d be fun to see you at the store.”
I kept turning in a circle, looking behind me and in both directions side to side, hoping to see Patrick, maybe, or just to recognize a landmark or even a particular tree out of the dozens behind us.
“We should do something more adventurous, I suppose. I’d offer to take you to Hawaii or France, but that’s a little out of my price range and comfort zone. Sorry about that.”
I couldn’t stop rambling, there beside the meadow with chirping birds, dancing flowers, and butterflies. I spotted two yellow ones flitting from beebalm to lupines. That quieted me, but only for a moment.
“We’ll definitely take another road trip, Jefferson. For real, this time. I don’t mean to suggest our trip to Massachusetts and Tennessee last fall wasn’t real, but now…” I gasped again, then touched my chest. Something else was off. “Maybe I can teach you how to drive a twenty-first century car. They don’t fly or anything, like on The Jetsons, but you don’t need to crank them, and you don’t need a horse. We can take turns driving, and when it’s my turn, you can hold Wilbur on your lap. Little French bulldogs love to be held. He’ll love you even more, now that you have a lap.”
I had to stop again, this time to catch my breath.
“Oh.”
The pain I’d been expecting with a deep inhale never came. That’s what it was.
“Hmm.”
I shook it off and chattered on.
“You can’t drive and hold Wilbur at the same time. There are rules of the road. Seatbelts are a must—and no texting and driving. I can show you how to text!” I’d been cautious with my breaths for a while, because of how much everything hurt. Now, “Look at that. In and out, in and out. No problem.”
“Not here,” Jefferson said.
“Here?” I went to touch a white daisy that shouldn’t have been flowering for at least two more months, June, not April. I jerked back, though, just short of its petals. “Where are we?”
It wasn’t my sister’s backyard. That was the last place I recalled being, at first. Going a little deeper into the recesses of my mind, I remembered I’d been at the high school with Carrie. Did North East High have an acre of wildflowers there? It was possible, but I doubted the football field doubled as a meadow during the off season. “Dang it. Is this a vision after all, like the night I bumped my head at the store? That’s a bummer. A bummer means something is bad,” I explained. “A disappointment.”
“Ah. Well, this isn’t a vision,” Jefferson said. “This is real.”
“Real.” I repeated the word, with the hope that doing so might help me believe it.
“Real, dear Goose. And whether or not it’s a bummer, that’s up to you, as is whether or not you stay.”
“Oh.”
“I believe, however, we are overdue for a hug.”
“Yes.” I took a step, but then stopped short, worrying about the crisp, white cleanliness of the T-shirt under Jefferson’s leather jacket. “My hands are kind of messy.”
“Look again.”
They were clean.
“How?” I wondered. “There was so much blood.”
“Not here, Goose.”
“Not here?”
“Hug me.”
A part of me still feared the worst. A beautiful dream, that was one of several alternative scenarios to the one I still tried not to land on too long. Though I feared one wrong move might force me awake at the best part, I decided to risk it.
“It’s wonderful to be with you again,” Jefferson said against my ear.
Now close enough to do so, I touched his face, his beard, his chest, wondering if I could feel a heartbeat. I thought I did. “I guess you get the wings and the robes later on.”
He smiled and touched me back, my cheek, and my hair, to move it from my eyes. “Maybe.”
“Will you fly eventually, from one place to another, or just think of a location and automatically get there? I’m thinking of McDonald’s. I better stop, though, just in case, because I’m happy right where I am.”
“You think too much.”
Jefferson still had a way of putting me in check and making me smile while doing it. “For sure. It’s hard to stop, especially in this moment.” I wanted to. The feeling was mostly good, but the thoughts, thoughts that brought more thoughts, were rather unsettling. “Maybe they’ll fix that by the time they fit me for my halo.” That thought came out loud. “I’ll try.”
I kissed the top of Jefferson’s head, where his halo should have been. Because we were both short, I could.
“Tell me, have you and Calvin married?”
“We were waiting for spring,” Jefferson said.
“Would it be thinking too much to ask if Heaven has seasons?” I looked at the sky.
“I love the four seasons. I can’t imagine enjoying my afterlife half as much without them.”
I sang a few bars of “Walk Like a Man.”
“What song is that?”
“One by a group called the Four Seasons, from the sixties and seventies. We can listen to them.” I reached into my pocket. My phone was actually there. “Now, I know we’re in my world, unless Heaven allows iPhones.” I pulled up the song I’d mentioned.
“May I?”
“Sure.”
Jefferson took the phone from me. “Remind me. This is a…”
“An iPhone.”
“Ah, yes. The letter I, not the kind through which we see.”
“Exactly.” I gasped again. So much for my New Year’s resolution to cut back to two a day. “Did you come here so you can exchange vows at your tree all big and grown up? Patrick and I would love to be there. I can get ordained online in, like, five minutes, if you want me to officiate. I bet that’s it. It’s warmer in Tennessee than here, in New York. Though it’s warmer than it has been there…here…in New York, just so you know. Do trees in Tennessee get their leaves by the first week in April? If not, maybe you can make the leaves come in some sort of heavenly, ghostly way, like when you did what you did at Cone Heads in the rain last October, right? Wait.” I inhaled deeply, now that I could. “Are we in Tennessee?” Smelling my surroundings did absolutely nothing to help me identify them. “Did you ‘beam me up, Jefferson’ to Tennessee?”
He jumped ever so slightly, when “Walk Like a Man” switched to “Waterfalls.”
“There you go! TLC on iTunes.”
I never did get an answer, not right away, as Jefferson stared at the phone, entranced by the music and the movement on the screen as he stroked it with one finger.
“Maybe you two and Patr
ick and I can get married together. He asked me. He thought I was asking him. You probably know that though, right? Since you were there and all. I wish Patrick was here.”
“Your wish is my command.”
“Patrick!” I was afraid to turn around, the dream thing again, but when I did, he was real, approaching via a path through the grass. The big, tall beefy body, the beautiful eyes, the bifocals, the bushy orange beard, all of him, he was there.
“I’m here, too.”
“Calvin! I’m glad. In your presidential suit and tie.” I hugged them, Patrick, then Calvin, then Patrick again. “All four of us together. I still don’t know where we are, but this is certainly a heavenly moment.”
“My idea of Heaven would surely include you,” Patrick said, calling back to our declaration of love while snowed in three months earlier at Cost-Mart during my overnight shift.
“And you would be a part of mine,” I said.
Seeing his smile when we separated was almost as wonderful as the hug. Just almost, so, I copped another one of those.
“I’m so happy to see you both.”
“I’m happy to see you as well, Goose,” Calvin said.
“You’re meeting Patrick!” The loudness of my voice matched the excitement it brought me. “Patrick, you’re meeting Jefferson and Calvin for real this time. I won’t have to tell you about it later, because Jefferson told me this isn’t a vision. You’ll remember. It’s real.”
Patrick bowed to Calvin. “It is with great pleasure I make your acquaintance in the flesh once more, my guardian angel.” He bowed to Jefferson. “And you, my guardian angel’s beloved, who’s guardian angel to mine.”
“I like that,” I said. “Is it accurate? Can it be? Are you really now our guardian angels?”
Calvin smiled. “Our hands did go up the moment the call went out. If we can tear Jefferson away from whatever it is that has him so enthralled…”
“It’s a letter I phone.” Jefferson turned it toward us just a second.
“It’s distracting you.” Calvin folded his arms across his chest.
They were so cute, bickering over phone usage, just like ordinary people.