Why don’t you try to read between the lines? Where am I I don’t feel safe I’m not buried yet

Chosen to close And closing to lose How do I prove to myself That I’m not bad news

The Holy Ghost Leaves me between Life and death What does it mean?

I’m here without you Far from the truth I’ll walk the line Tomorrow without you

Where is my comfort Where is my closure It’s not over I’m just getting older

Exposure, exposure Make me sure

Through trials And virtues I’m left with this gun Pointed at my head screaming “what have you done”

Between life and death I find myself unclear On what’s left of my health What’s left of how I felt

The lines blur The colors fade We’re all to blame I’m the underworld

If I’m right then so are they We’re all to blame We’re all to blame

Priceless smiled Coming from above Taunting me You’ve already won

They sat together their feet planted on the floor, shoulders hunched, necks stiff. The girls face was downcast, her eyes slowly scanning the floor and only occasionally daring to look up; the boy was wide-eyed, as if he was experiencing something he couldn’t fully comprehend. The two never thought they would be in a room like this, waiting for something to happen — something that they would not dare to understand for many years. In their minds, it would be over quickly, forgotten, and left in a dark and musty corner of their mind. Surely, denial would get them through.

“Shh… Can you hear it?” “No.” “Listen close.” Her eyes close. Her ears open. Her heart slows to the beat. A snail slips by. It’s spiral shell but only a way in. It’s eyes stretch out towards the sun. Retching, hoping for today to be the day. Only once will it be the day. “What am I listening for, Grace?” “Not sure.” Grace paused to breath in the fresh spring air. “But then again, no one really knows.” Addie sighed. “I don’t get it.” She said with a bit of a scowl. “Look here.” “Look at what?” Asked Addie. “This stick. Right here.” “Why? It’s only a broken stick.” Said Addie, unknowingly “Now that’s, that’s where you are wrong. That stick is not nothing. It could be everything. It’s the universe!” Grace said, beaming at her revelation. Addie only roles her eyes. “It’s a stick. Not - the universe.” Addie stated plainly. “How can you be sure, Addie? Did you ask the stick?” Addie scoffed, “Of coarse not! The universe is what everything is in. The universe is not a stick.” “No, the universe is everything. It’s you and me and this stick. The universe is that snail and this red berry. You don’t know what the universe is capable of. This stick could have dreams, it could have fears and joy just like us.” “Yeah, sure, Grace. Whatever you say.” And in that moment Grace began to think about that stick. She thought of it’s hopes and dreams and fears. “Maybe the stick’s name is John!” “Wait! - what!” “Yeah! And John wanted to be a rock star and grow a big, leafy Mohawk but he couldn’t.” “Oh really. And why couldn’t he?” Said Addie in a sarcastic tone. “He cannot because he was…” Grace pause for a second thinking. “Because he was attacked!” Grace began to fall into her story, and her glee brought Addie in with her. “A giant bird attacked John. It just swooped in and broke him right off the tree. He fell six hundred feet to the ground. He went into a coma.” Continued Grace. “He was unconscious for a whole week. None of his family or friends knew where he was.” “But then,” added Addie, “John woke up. He traveled across the whole yard, back to his tree.” “John did not need to be a rock star for every stick to know his name.” Grace smiled as she pictured John’s happy ending. She saw John getting embraced by his huge family and all of his friends. She saw the biggest smile she had ever seen on John’s face. There were cries of joy and relief all though the night. “And with that, John lived happily ever after.” “Maybe you do have a point about the whole universe thing.” Admitted Addie. “At least in the sense that we are all connect and we are all the universe.” “Only a few atoms separate us. Nothing more. So then why do we act as though we are all a world apart?”

“Okay,” I said to no one. “This is not at all what I expected purgatory to look like.”

I was standing in a room with crisp, white walls. There was a painting of a sailboat on one, and against the other there was a line of plain beige chairs. It smelled sterile. A single flowerpot with a green plant in it sat on an end table, wilting slightly.

It looked like, well. A waiting room.

“Speak for yourself,” someone snorted. I whirled around. There was an older man sitting in one of the chairs, idly flipping through a magazine— I swear he hadn’t been there a second ago. “I’d rather be here than burning in hellfire, thanks very much.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t say this was bad. I said it wasn’t what I expected.”

He shrugged. “Same difference.”

I sighed, sinking into another of the beige chairs. (Not the one next to him, though. I may have been dead, but that didn’t mean I had lost all concept of social disposition.)

“So,” he asked, without looking up from his magazine, “How you die?”

I almost laughed. “What?”

“We’re in purgatory,” he said flatly. “What else am I supposed to ask you?”

He had a point there.

“Fine,” I said. I blew out a breath. I hadn’t died the most valiant of deaths, but it could’ve been worse. Besides, it didn’t even matter if this guy judged me, right? We were both dead. Nothing really mattered anyway.

“I was murdered,” I told him.

“Oh?” he continued to leaf through his magazine, as casually if I’d mentioned the weather or a casserole recipe. “How?”

“I don’t really know,” I admitted. “We— my wife, my daughter, and I — were on a rock cliff. It was one of those natural landmarks she found online, you know? Out in the middle of nowhere. She thought it would be fun. Anyways, it overlooked this beautiful river— gorgeous, with the sun reflecting off it and everything. And it was all well and fine, until…”

I swallowed thickly. “Until this gang showed up. They pulled out guns, cornering us. My wife and daughter put their hands up. So did I. But apparently not fast enough.” I closed my eyes. “It’s funny, though. The last thing I remember is my murderer, holding the gun with only 4 fingers. And I thought, ‘well, that’s peculiar. He’s got no thumb.’ And then… nothing.”

The man chuckled. “Well, that’s quite the story.”

“I suppose so,” I said.

I thought I would be grieving more after reliving all of that, but then again, I was dead. Could I even feel anything anymore?

“So what about you?” I asked, brushing that thought away. “How’d you get here?”

“If I’m being honest?” the man said. “No idea. I remember a falling sensation in my last moments, and seeing a woman’s face from above, growing smaller and smaller as I fell. She looked… furious. Like I’d done something unforgivable to her.” He shook his head. “But like you said. After that, nothing.”

“Oh.”

“Mhm.” The man flipped another page. “Now, I might ask you. Where do you think you’ll end up? The good place, or the bad one?”

“Right,” I huffed. “Like I’d prefer to think about that right now.”

The man arched an eyebrow. “You really don’t know? Or at least have a suspicion?”

I sighed slowly. “Like I said, I’m trying not to think about it. I’m not really the brooding type.”

“You don’t seem like it,” the man remarked, the corners of his lips quirking up.

Just then, a door opened from the other end of the room. I hadn’t even been aware there was a door in here.

It was a young lady who entered, clipboard in hand. Her face brightened when she saw us. “Ah, good, you’re both here! The Almighty is ready for you.”

“Splendid,” the man said. He placed his magazine on the end table, then looked at me. “Might as well go together, shall we?”

“Sure.”

I followed him through the door, behind the young woman. But just before we stepped out into the light, I glanced down, and my eyes widened. I could now see the man’s hand, no longer covered by the magazine.

No thumb.

My mind whirled as I put the pieces together. He killed me, and didn’t remember it. Either that, or he was lying. I wasn’t sure which was worse.

And my wife?

She’d been the one to kill him.

It was so hot in the waiting room at the doctor’s office that I was fanning myself. There was a fan but it’s effect was minimal. I felt so uncomfortable that I started to feel faint. Next thing I knew,I was looking up at a couple EMT’s. “What is going on?” I asked, trying to get up. “You had a mild heart attack brought on by heat. We’re going to take you to the hospital.” “Wait a minute- I’ve got an appointment. I can’t leave-“ “That can wait. Besides, the doctor will check on you at the hospital. You’re going to be admitted.” “No, I can’t afford that. I’ll be ok. You won’t find out anything at the hospital anyway.” I stood up, but fell back down again. I was too dizzy. I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was on a gurney being taking to an ambulance. What a bummer.

But don’t let him near the kids

But don’t let him hurt you

But don’t bend like this

But don’t hurt your sister like this

But she hasn’t been the same ever since

But he’s going to hurt you

But I still hear him

But shouts shouldn’t echo this long

But I started having nightmares

But he told you he hated you

But he didn’t stop when you told him to

But he wrote you out of the will

But I thought you would stay with me

But I thought I wouldn’t be alone

But you were supposed to stay with us

But you heard me crying, wailing, and sobbing

But mom never cries, never loud

But I’m so, so afraid

But—

But I’ll never tell you a word

But this will all blow over, and you’re all too eager to forget the scars

But, it can’t blow over

Can it?

Luna was brighter than most people around her at any given moment. She was intelligent, yes, but more than that, she made anyone near her feel lighter, further from sorrow, if at least for small moments.

So it was ironic that the darkest disease had rushed through the airs, burst through her apartment, and entered straight into her body.

Now, what’s sad for Luna is that she was too honest. She lived in a nation where disease was seen as a commodity to profit from. I shall not name this country, but you may very well guess.

The problem with her honesty is that the doctors didn’t believe that she was sick. She told them, time and again, what she was experiencing, but the physicians didn’t listen. She was in the prime of her life, and, though she had some character flaws she was working on, she didn’t deserve what was to transpire.

The more they didn’t believe her, the most honest she became, sharing more and more details about her past, her present, her travels, and her problems.

This was a curse that seemed to fall upon her from the clouds, much like the disease. She had never been doubted so fiercely by anyone.

She could not fathom it. Why would they not diagnose her?

Why would they let her decay of body and mind? The questions haunted her day and night.

She was stuck in an in-between space that was closing in on her more and more as each day passed.

The symptoms were self-evident. Her friends were aghast. They advised her to change doctors until she found a decent one, and when that was of little help, they changed their tune.

“Stop doctor-hopping, Luna. They’re going to start thinking you’re a lunatic.”

She had no more words for her friends anymore. She had become a burden on them, though they would not say it. She sensed that her deterioration was slowly becoming off-putting to them, and that they were frustrated that their advice was only making her more ill.

So she became a hermit, like the pet crabs she cared for in her youth.

Once a beautiful young lady, with a prestigious education, sharp mind, kind heart, and an, until-then, inspiring history of resilience, she slowly witnessed in horror her life becoming needlessly stripped.

They took her apartment. They took her car. They took her friends. They took her cat. They took her body. They took her mind. She held on by the slimmest of threads, for they could not relinquish her spirit.

For four years, she dedicated her life to finding the name of the disease. She was trained academically in literature in multiple languages, so she used that to read medicine, of which she had known close to nothing.

She read thousands of medical journals. The doctors didn’t answer her questions, and when she asked them scientific ones, they simply didn’t answer and looked at her as if she had gone mad.

Perhaps she had become mad, perhaps it was a symptom of the disease, but I believe madness for Luna was the most reasonable explanation for her situation.

She could not be rude or aggressive to doctors. Despite the ugliness she had witnessed, and the scars inflicted upon her beautiful body and soul, she promised herself she would never lose her kindness. She reasoned that if the disease robbed her of that, it had completely devoured her and life was no more.

Perhaps it was an unreasonable decision, but she was only human. And she desperately wanted to stay that way.

After years of voracious reading of medicine and disease, of pharmacology and diagnostics, she was unable to see any doctor in her state. She knew too much for them, which had become another curse.

For doctors in her country were very arrogant whilst also very insecure. She would have to find the diagnosis on her own.

And she did.

She did so by requesting a test that had never been run on her. A specific blood test that should have, given her travel history. The doctor thought she was mad upon requesting it, but hey, at least he got a financial kick-back to run this test.

When the result came back positive, every muscle, tissue, cell in her body screamed. Screamed for finality, for a route of escape. She spent the weekend in a state of delirium, for her body, mind, heart, and soul could not fathom how they missed this diagnosis, for she couldn’t contain the extreme exhilaration upon finding the answer that was coupled with an extreme sense of permanent loss of time. The scarring was the headiest notion to battle.

She collated the evidence in her medical records with the corresponding medical journals that agreed with her illness.

She thought she could finally move on.

But they wouldn’t prescribe her the correct medications. The disease was an ancient one, and she was happy it was curable. She needed to be on two medications at the very least, but they would only give her one.

The more she sought help, the more the doctors evaded her.

Were they frightened that she would litigate? Were they truly in cahoots for her to perish? She tried her hardest to keep clear of mind, at least as clear as one in her situation possibly could. But it didn’t add up.

Had she discovered the name of the illness at any other moment, she would have fled her “rich” country to any in Latin America. She spoke the languages of those nations and had lived years there before, for study and work.

Unfortunately for Luna, a global pandemic hit within days of finding her diagnosis, a pandemic the world hadn’t seen in a century. Her once powerful passport was now essentially just an identification document.

Her friends from college tried to help her, but they too were frozen in their home countries. Her extended family simply could not understand, and trying to make them understand would only render her more ill.

Her mother and father had abandoned her when she was a child. Her brother was battling an addiction to a heinous substance that her country knowingly let proliferate.

She thought about the Greek myth of Cassandra, a woman cursed by the gods to correctly prophesize coming events only not to be believed by anyone.

During the past half-decade, she had fought off the incessant thoughts of being on a slow-moving train that was edging closer and closer to a disastrous crash.

She decided to let go, falling asleep, whispering, “Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment and cast lots…” over and over until she floated peacefully in dreams.

She looked so pale, so beautiful, so still in the light of the moon.

                            ***

I suppose that, for me, my story began not at the start or at the end, so to speak. It started between the two. Sort of… liminal.

The crimson pool around me spread into nothingness as the sickly coloured carpet of my childhood home appeared. But I knew it hadn’t really. This was just a part of the process. Still, memories washed around me, healing the wounds on my body. I had to smile, it was like when I was a kid and my Ma cleaned up the cuts on my leg from playing at school. The good times, when we knew no better then to play what we liked.

My reminiscing was cut short by the shriek of a child. Ear splitting, the scream pierced my very soul. If I still had one. Instincts kicked in and I raced towards the child, following the scream. Screams. I could hear millions of then now, children and adults. What sort of place was this? Had I gone to hell?

Quite the opposite. I ran out the house to the garden, trying to find where the screams were coming from. But, to my amazement, where the little vegetable patch had once been was not a huge theme park! Slides spiralled overhead, a Ferris wheel spinning in the distance. What was going on? The smell of popcorn, ice cream and sweets wafted towards me, tempting me to go to a stall. I handn’t realised how hungry I was.

“How much for a Pick-a-mix please?”

“How much?” The man chuckled, as if I’d said something extremely funny. “Why, my dear, it’s free of course! You must be new around here! Just die? Poor soul, it’s tough going so young. Still, you’re a teen, so this place will suit you perfect. Here, I’ll give you an extra large Pick-a-mix and, if you don’t let on, you can have my last Cake Pop too.”

“Thank you? What is this place?” I was so confused.

He laughed again. “This is the waiting room! You’ve made it into heaven! Congrats! I’m surprised nobody told you sooner. Here is where we wait for God to take us to heaven. A waiting place for the dead until the end days. Theme park here, libraries and golf course seven miles south, take a cab, town two miles north, shops east and, well, if you need to find anywhere else just ask! This place has it all!”

Wow! This place sounded great (especially the library) but it seemed the more was explained to me the more questions I had. “Sir? Can I get a pet here?”

“Yup! Did you have one that died or do you want a new one? If you want to find an old pet just go to the town hall and they will trace it for you. For a new one go to the shopping mall and Furry Friends and Co, terrible name, I know, will get you a new pet! The animals might be a bit scared to start because most are abused animals whose owners didn’t make it here for obvious reasons, but they all make very loyal pets.”

It was official: this place was perfect. How had I never heard of it before? I thanked the man and walked in the direction of the town hall, excited to finally be reunited with my snake. It was amazing here, but I still had one request. So, when I reached another stall with a kindly looking woman selling earrings, I went up to here.

“How do I find my parents?”

There is a certain romantic fascination with airports. Bodies intertwined in a cocooned embrace move across the concourse with syncopated precision, parting ways when the dance finishes and one’s flight departs. Lives that touch for a brief moment in time, the lingered memories are not easily forgotten. Some scorned passengers vow never to return while others look forward to a reunion when their paths intersect with one another again.

If I had to fly on a regular basis, my feelings might be different. The alluring curiosity of airports would be demoted and become no more than a means to an end.

The last time I flew, a police officer pulled me aside to perform a thorough search of my belongings. In a post September 11th world, the additional security measures were expected, though it was surprising to be singled out as a potential terrorist. I asked about it and was told that using a one way ticket without checking any luggage were red flags. My boarding ticket had been marked with a special code that alerted officers of the suspicions. At least he didn’t expand his investigation to include a full cavity search. It would have made for an uncomfortable plane ride home. On the other hand, maybe he could have checked my prostate at the same time. Two birds, one finger.

The larger airports with international destinations are the ones where watching people hurry about are often the most enjoyable. Every traveller has a story, a reason for the expression on his face and motivation behind his interactions with others. It sometimes feels like cloud watching; creating a narrative from a third party perspective. Regardless whether my assumptions are accurate, it’s a great way to pass the time between flights on an extended layover. When space travel becomes available to more than just the mega wealthy, I imagine the perceived stories will become even more entertaining.

In between flights, I sat at the Atlanta International Airport watching passengers scramble between airline gates. Each in their own world, they remained unaware of my silent observations. In the middle of the concourse, a woman was engaged in an upsetting conversation on her cellphone while her ten year old daughter meandered into a crowd of strangers. Whoever she was on the phone with appeared to be a higher priority than safeguarding her child.

Upset by her ignorance, I said to no one in particular, “Cellphones are going to be the end of us.”

“I betcha she’s the type that blames all of her problems on someone else,” replied the man sitting next to me. “God forbid her kid gets snatched, she’ll tell the cops she was watching her the entire time and has no idea how someone took her.”

“Everyone is in a rush to go somewhere.”

“And yet most people haven’t got a clue where they’re headed.”

I turned and nodded with agreement. Although he was considerably older than I, we were dressed similar. He wore khaki colored pants compared to my cargo shorts which were the same color. Our polo shirts, both white, were also an identical style. Although each of us had white beards, his was short cropped and well manicured; mine was bushy and hung six inches off my chin. Too lazy to cut my beard with scissors, I gave up maintaining it when my electric trimmer broke.

“Did you raid my bedroom closet this morning when you got dressed?” I asked.

He pushed back with an equal amount of sarcasm.

“Well, I knew we’d be sitting together and thought it best to be color coordinated. You really should have trimmed that beard.”

“Who am I trying to impress? Besides, six more months and it’ll be a Santa Claus beard.”

The man leaned over and whispered, “You aren’t really Santa Claus, are you?”

“What if I am?”

“Then I’d bribe you to make sure I didn’t get coal in my stocking.”

“Wouldn’t bribery be an offense worthy of coal?” I asked.

“I never thought of it that way.”

Hoping to avoid any confusion between me and jolly Saint Nick, I extended a hand and introduced myself. Much like God, Santa Claus had a way of hearing everything, so I didn’t want to be the one that wound up with coal for suggesting to be someone I wasn’t. For all I knew, they both were the same person. No different from Clark Kent and Superman, God and Santa were never seen in the same place at the same time.

“Nice to meet you,” my new friend said as he shook my hand. “My name is Jesus. Jesus Christ.”

“THE Jesus Christ?” I asked.

“I know I haven’t aged well, but do you really think I’m over two thousand years old?”

Regardless whether he was the actual Jesus or just some guy with the same name, I was uncertain how best to respond. Part of me thought I should kneel down and confess my sins. The other part wanted to ask him for identification.

“If that really is your name, you must have gotten picked on growing up.”

“Middle school was pure hell. Every kid that passed me in the hall used to punch me. I guess they thought it was funny to beat up Jesus.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the characterization. When I noticed the offended look on his face, I felt like a heathen, no better than the classmates he grew up with. I apologized, then quickly changed the subject.

“So where are you flying off to today?”

“I’m returning home to Bethlehem. I haven’t been there in awhile. It’ll be nice to visit the old stomping ground.”

“In Palestine?” I asked, dumbfounded by the location.

Jesus sighed with impatience and shook his head from side to side, retrieving his wallet as he did so. He flipped it open to reveal his driver’s license and pointed to it.

“Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,” he explained.

“Oh, that makes more sense.” I glanced at the wallet and noticed the name printed on his license. He was exactly who he said he was; Jesus Christ. As I averted my eyes to the concourse, I asked, “How many gods does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

“Y’know, I’ve heard every joke about my name and, at this point in my life, they’ve all stopped being funny.”

“So much for suggesting we set up a duty free liquor store. With that water to wine trick, we’d make a killing.”

Before Jesus responded, I received a text message from the airline updating the departure information for my flight. The plane would soon be boarding. We shook hands and parted ways.

A few minutes later, a burly, clean shaven police officer leaned in Jesus’ direction and said, “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. Can you tell me how many gods are needed to screw in a light bulb?”

Incensed by another wannabe jokester, Jesus closed his eyes and sighed. He regretted sharing his name and wondered how many eavesdroppers were waiting to offer failed attempts at humor.

“None,” he replied. “There’s no need for light bulbs because I am God. I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness.”

“I thought that was you!” the officer said with enthusiasm. “It’s me, Nick. Nicholas Claus. You granted me sainthood a long time ago.”

A wave of recognition flooded the face of Jesus. He stood and hugged his friend from the past.

“I’m sorry, Nicholas. I didn’t recognize you without your beard.”

“You know how it is. Gotta be incognito during the offseason to stay off the radar. Otherwise, every kid will want to sit on my lap. The way the world is these days, if that happens too often, I’ll get arrested. Then Christmas will be cancelled.”

There is a time between then and now; between existing and waiting to exist.

It’s not a time of nothingness- nothingness rarely exists- just a moment when tiny inconceivable atoms coalesce in preparation for…something.

It’s hard to imagine what these energized atoms may someday become.

A chick newly hatched from a yolky egg

A baby swaddled in blue

A cherry tree

A mouse

A bed of ebbing mycelium

I wonder sometimes about this pre-structural moment, where something has yet to form.

How is it that ‘nothing’ becomes something?

What dictates a mass of atoms becoming a living breathing thing, or just a lump of rock?

What was I before I became this body?

I wonder if there was ever a moment, even the slightest fraction of a moment, where these dissipated parts of me almost became something else.

Could I have turned out to be another thing entirely?

A grove of olive trees whose fruits become the fragrant oil that flavours the dishes of the family that would never be my own. Or perhaps I could’ve been the smallest of creatures, destined to only roam the earth for one sunrise before my body decayed and my atoms redistributed.

I wonder a lot I think, more than necessary, about what comes before and what comes after. I wonder about how I became what I became and what I may someday be when this body runs it’s course.

I have a theory that at least some of me, a handful of atoms that make up my limbs, once belonged to the ocean. That maybe, at one point, I resided in the inky depths of the ocean, my lithe body untethered in the churning current. Perhaps that would explain my affinity for water and salt, my longing to wash up on unfamiliar shores.

Or maybe, after this, I’ll become something I hate. I’ll become a venomous viper that snakes on forest floors in search of prey, or maybe parts of me will redistribute into smaller increments and slip into other human forms. A patch of my essence could someday become the stomach lining in a body of a person the world will come to hate, to fear.

Those thoughts often make me think too critically of the underlying potential for evilness I may possess. It makes me look for glimpses of past evilness in the people I see today, like maybe those historical figures we wish to be nothing like somehow reincarnated into people today.

This is why I dismiss these thoughts as often as I can, lest they sour my perception of everything I see in this world.

Instead I would hope, maybe somewhat in part to the variability of humanity, that I will not be a human at all in my next life.

I would like to be diced and scattered amongst the earth, the atoms that once made up the cells of my muscles turned into writhing tree roots, my fingernails into butterflies.

I never thought too much about the science behind it all, preferring to segregate my childish notions from the logic and reason I study.

(Deep down I know my thoughts are foolish, if not naive. I did, after all, fantasize so much about this study of atoms that I made it my career)

No, for now I will fantasize about the things I once was and the things I could be.

This body, though not my preferred image, will still be well taken care of despite my disdain of the human form. Each and every atom will be accounted for and carefully maintained until this body expires and they scatter some place else. Wherever they end up, good or bad, I hope they have at least some memory of their time with me. I hope that they know I thought of them, what they were before and what they will someday be.

All I know is that there is a time between then and now, between existing and waiting to exist and I have experienced them both .