by Thomas Cannon
Her freckles and small eyes gave her a strong resemblance to Laura Ingalls from the TV show. She even had two thick braids of brown hair, but she also had a nose ring and a scorpion tattoo on her neck.
Her looks were an odd juxtaposition of innocence and rebellion. However, it was her glass leg I found disconcerting. I see all kinds of things at my post at the Gates of Hell. Yet, I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as this young woman and her appendage.
Her boyfriend was also dead in the car accident, and I couldn’t figure him out either. He had his septum pierced and an 80s rock band hair style. This did not jibe with how he was togged to the bricks right down to Italian shoes. Side by side, he made Ronald Reagan look like a shabby dresser.
“Ronnie, step aside so I can take these hipsters’ photo ID. I told you Nancy is not coming.” I shooed Reagan away and turned my attention to the newbies. “Come on up to the counter, you two. There you go. Becky Rhodes and Jason Fremont, welcome to Hell.”
“Shit,” Jason said.
Jason had his hands on his hips like he just found out his flight was delayed, but Becky, I could tell, was shaken by the news. I wanted to put her at ease, but knew the first thing to do was give Jason the skinny on how thing run down here. “It can be quite a shock to realize where you’ve ended up. But we don’t use words like that down here.”
Jason drew up a grin on the left side of his face. “Why? Because the Bible says not to swear?”
“Well, Colossians Chapter 3 Verse 8 says, ‘But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.’ But no. We don’t use it because it shows ignorance and conceit.”
“What? Dude, what language you speakin?”
I cleared my throat. “We don’t use offensive language because only morons that don’t have brains enough to express themselves with more effective words curse.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fair enough. If you’ll sign here.” I turned the thin, wire-bound registry toward them.
“And what if we don’t?”
Now I smile my little sly smile. “Nothing. I don’t actually need you to sign in. We do it because people expect some sort of ceremony.”
Becky stepped forward and signed the book. She did not look at me. “When does the burning begin? Or is it more individual like on The Twilight Zone?”
I leaned over the counter towards her. I think just to get Jason out of my line of vision. “It’s not like that here. And how do you know about the Twilight Zone? That’s more like from my era. A few years after actually.”
“Nick at Night. I used to watch it with my dad.” I saw color return to her face. “So, no eternal torture?”
I shook my head.
“No torture at all?”
“What a rip,” Jason interjected. “All the stuff I didn’t do because my Grammy told me I’d go to Hell for them.”
“Oh, you did enough. You were sent straight to here after all.”
I watched Becky watch Jason as he printed his name. Then she looked around what I always refer to as the lobby. It’s official name “Gates of Hell” is a bit of a misnomer because it feels more like a foyer to a nice hotel. As Jason continued on with writing his full name, she peered out the large front windows. It was bright outside with a light haze. It was always a hazy sky, but sometimes it was a light haze and sometimes it was a heavy haze.
“You’re going to be okay here,” I told her.
“So, if this place isn’t bad,” she asked without any of her face muscles relaxing, “then why all those stories about burning and torture?”
“Well, there are lots of ways to explain that. Everyone in the afterlife recognized that some people were not ready for Heaven. But I liken it to the whole Greenland is cold and Iceland is nice situation. It’s all in how you advertise. If people found out it’s not that bad down here, everybody would just do what they want on earth.
“It was Satan’s idea to make some sort of deterrent; that’s why he was so, well, demonized, but God was on board with it.”
Jason put the pen down. I was pretty impressed with his next comment. It showed more intelligence than I gave him credit for. “It’s like good cop/bad cop.”
Normally, I let a bellhop show the newly departed to their suite where they stay until they decide what they want to do with the rest of their time with us. But I wanted more time with Becky. And it’s not that I was influenced by her looks that got her further in life than they should have. She is not the first woman down here to look innocent, but in reality has come to the right place.
Actually, we get a lot of those.
It was that glass leg. Her intact leg shrink-wrapped by her tight skirt was shapely enough with a rose tattoo and another of Mickey Mouse (smaller eyes, the way he looked in my era). The glass one had the same shapeliness with a natural looking knee. But it was like a fine crystal sculpture. The upper thigh part was clear, and you could see right through it while the calf reflected light like a diamond.
“I still don’t get it,” Jason said in the elevator. “Why all those threats of eternal fires and crap?”
“Your analogy before was an apt one. It summed it up well.” So well I wondered if there was more to him than just his looks.
“Is that what I died of? An analogy? Did my analogy become apt?” Becky giggled. I sighed.
“Anyway. The whole fracas between God and Satan was blown out of proportion. They’re still on the same team. It used to be that God just kept sending people back into lives until we got it right. But our own Prince of Darkness thought people needed time to reflect and I guess do a little penance. Some people graduate to Heaven from here and some have to go back to earth, but at least they had time to think things through before heading back.”
Becky folded her arms. “So, Hitler, and Stalin, and Genghis Khan are down here not being tortured, but sitting around contemplating?”
“Hitler is back in life giving it another shot as Lindsay Lohan. Karma seems to be roughing him up a bit. But that’s the way it works.” The elevator door opened. “This is our floor.”
I got to the door with Jason’s name on it and swung it open to show a room with a large screen TV, a pool table, and the décor of Graceland.
We walked in. “Nice digs,” Jason said.
“Your thoughts make the room. Just like on earth, your reality is what you make it. But here we focus on your possibilities and not your fears. What you do with your time. Who you spend your time with and even what you wear is all up to your true desires.” I raise my eyebrow. “Which you start out in the clothes you died in. It makes being dead less of a shock than showing up at my check-in naked. But you don’t seem like a suit and tie guy.”
“I was driving home from court, Dude.”
I open the double doors of the closet. It looked like Steven Tyler’s dressing room. “Now we’re talking,” Jason said. “Check our set up out, babe.”
“Oh no,” I said. “This is only your room.”
“Everything in here came from you.” I walked over to the posters of Celine Dion and the Hanson Brothers on the wall. “Interesting. Anyway, Becky’s room is down the hall.”
“You mean we can’t live together anymore?”
“You determined that. And Becky. I don’t see anything of hers in here.”
Becky was staring at the posters.
“I like their music,” he said, guiding her toward the bedroom with its large waterbed. “I mean, it’s my idea of a joke.” He gave me a little wave over his shoulder. “We’ll both just stay here. Thanks, Dude. Do we tip you?”
I did not respond because I knew Becky would stop. And she did. “I want to go check out my room,” she said sliding out of his grasp like a wet bar of soap. “Want to see it with me?” she called over her shoulder.
Jason looked at the bong on the piano in the corner. “I’m going to hang out here.”
I think she might have responded sure, but she was already out the door by that time.
We were alone in the hallway and for the first time in decades, I was nervous. She smelled nice.
“Is it close by? My room.”
“No. It’s a ways.”
She nodded. The tattoo of the scorpion on her neck had almost faded away. But her tattoos of flowers and a peace sign on her arm had become more colorful and bright. I didn’t dare look to see what the tattoos on her leg were doing. I come from a time when a woman didn’t show that much of her gams.
“Do you like it here, John?”
For a moment I thought she intuitively knew my name. But then I remembered my name tag. Still, most people don’t take the time from their new reality to read it or find out anything about me.
It was peaceful walking down the hallway with her. “I like meeting people and getting them settled in. But like everyone else, I’m waiting for Nirvana.”
“That will be a thrill for Jason. But I’m not much into grunge,” she said. “Oh, you mean Heaven. I guess Jason and I are here instead of up there because we have damaged our souls in some way and have to figure out how to fix them up.”
I nodded. She was perceptive, and that was something special. But of course, I knew she was special the moment I saw her leg.
We turned a corner and kept walking. “I have lots of questions,” she said. “But I guess the one I want answered first is why do I have a glass leg?”
“Yes, your leg. It was severed in the car crash. With death, we can clean up cuts and abrasions and even breaks. But once part of your body is separated, it’s gone.”
“So if I had been decapitated, I would have a glass head?”
“A glass body,” I corrected. “But it’s different with everyone. Their missing limb becomes something that seems appropriate to their souls. I knew a guy whose torso was composed entirely of manure. And those with a message like that usually figure out their problems pretty quickly and move on.
I opened her door to find a simple room. A single bed with a nightstand and some books on it and a writing table with a pad and pencil. “It looks like Ernest Hemingway’s room,” I said. “Minus the fishing reels and cats.”
“I used to be a poet,” she said. “When I was a teenager. And lonely.”
I wanted to ask her if she knew the difference between alone and lonely because I sure didn’t when I was twenty-two. But I had a gang member with a fatal gunshot wound waiting for me down in the lobby and they usually flipped their wigs. “Do you have everything you need?” I asked even though, of course, she did.
“Will I be happy here?” she asked after a moment.
“If you want to be.”
“And if I go back down to the lobby, will you be there?”
“If you want me to be.”
I went back and continued my work. After my shift I found a turntable and a crate of LPs in my room. Now, your room doesn’t just change after your initial settling in period, so this meant something. It did make me realize I’ve been listening to whatever on Spotify as I read. So I picked up Farewell My Lovely and listened to Sinatra, Crosby, the big bands, and even some country swing. I hadn’t heard any Tex Williams music since he passed on to the other side while singing The Beatles’ “Let It Be.”
Every Sinatra song made me think of Becky.
In the morning, there were no newbies on my clipboard, so I did something I had never done before and went to check on a client. But when I knocked on Becky’s door, Jason, wrapped in the bed cover, answered.
“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Dude, come on in. It’s a party.”
Sleeping on the now king-sized bed was a naked blonde. Through the open bathroom door I heard the shower running. On the table were bags of fast-food reeking of onions and grease.
“Help yourself to a Whopper,” Jason said. “I got some food, but then found we weren’t hungry.”
“Yeah, you’re dead. People can eat if they want. Those people from Wisconsin insist on something called a Friday Fish Fry. But you don’t need food. The same for sleeping.” I looked at the woman lying face down in her drool. “We do them for enjoyment. Or to pass the time.”
Becky came out wrapped in a towel. “I see you guys made a friend,” I said with more jealousy in my voice than I thought was possible here. “Good. Good. Well, if you need anything, I’ll be at my post.” And with that, I made my retreat.
Weeks went by. For the first time, I marked time. We all keep track of the years to gauge how long we are here, but there is no need to measure time anymore. If we get an inkling, however, we call information, and it will give us the time in any demarcation we’re used to. I had been keeping to myself, so I had gotten into the habit of checking the time daily. One day I recognized the voice.
“Becky?”
“John? Is that you?”
“I can’t believe you work for information.” “I needed something to keep me busy.”
“Besides Jason, you mean?”
“Actually, that’s exactly what I mean. He’s always coming over. My room is different every day, and it’s becoming a clone of his. A job was the only way to get away from him.”
I was at my post, so I looked at the guy wearing only a tattered parachute and held up my finger to give me a minute.
“John, do you know what you did to get here?”
“I fell asleep smoking a cigarette.”
“No. I mean what bad thing did you do to get sent to Hell? Did you commit murder or were you a gangster?”
“God no. Although I know some murderers and gangsters. We like to go to jazz clubs. They’re not that bad down here. They still have their faults. Or they wouldn’t be here. But you get separated from your hang-ups with death and it kinda mellows you out. Plus you can’t murder someone already dead, so they see little point.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. I responded with my own silence. Then I spoke the truth. “I think I ended up here because I didn’t try to do anything.” I’ve never been asked this question before. “I never set out to hurt anyone, but I didn’t try to prevent someone from getting hurt either. If something didn’t affect me, I didn’t care what happened.” Honesty is the golden rule around here and yet I regretted revealing that to Becky. “How about you?”
“I think I broke my parent’s hearts. I did it even by the way I died. You’re too polite to mention I only got the one leg while Jason is in perfect condition. The asshole. We were coming from his court date where he got off scot-free and so he celebrated by getting stoned out of his mind. He had a heart attack while driving and was dead before we hit the concrete barrier. Meanwhile, I bled out where his janky car twisted apart and sheared off my leg.” “Janky car?”
“His, ahh- Jalopy. Crappy car he could never afford to fix up. John, can I talk to you face to face?”
“I can come to your room when you get off.”
“No, Jason will be there. His radio only plays Barry Manilow, so he comes down to my room all the time. Is there a park nearby? No let me guess. There is if I want there to be one.”
I smiled. “You’re catching on.”
We were sitting on an old park bench watching a babbling stream go by. The whole scene was Becky’s right down to the smell of lilacs. Except for the warm breeze on our faces. That was mine.
“Your glass leg,” I began, “is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.” It was a rather awkward way to begin, but I didn’t want to mess around. “Pain turns to beauty if you let it. The pain of the accident and of your whole life went into creating your leg. But you have to let it go. You have to let everything go. It’s the first step.”
“When I first got here, my burned skin had turned to shimmering wrapping paper. Dames kinda dug it, but I couldn’t shower or go out when it rained.”
She chuckled. “Really? John, you seem so nice. I don’t understand why you’re here in Hell.”
“I try. But part of me knows I’m trying to be good only to shorten my time here. Checking people in often leads to Heaven quickly. But not if that’s why you’re doing it. I know I should try something different to earn my way out. But like most people, I keep hanging on to what I know.”
“I thought you said Hell wasn’t a punishment.”
“It’s still Hell. There’s something better for those that are ready.” The haze was light today, and she squinted in the relatively bright light. It was almost like sunshine. “Like you. You’re different than the rest of us down here. I thought you’d be beyond already.”
She took a hold of my hand. “You know how I can do that, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“But you are not going to tell me.”
“Because it’s not the way it’s supposed to work. There’s no rule against it. It’s just that there’s no easy access here.”
“Jason has instant access to all the drugs, loose women, and fast food he wants.”
“But there’s no easy access to happiness.”
To me, this was happiness. To sit with Becky. I don’t know how I didn’t fade into Heaven right there. “You’re not angry with me, are you?”
She leaned her head on my shoulder. “No. This is the nicest time I’ve had since I got here. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve loved Jason since the sixth grade. We’ve been through everything together and he needs me. But I think I want more from being dead.”
We sat on the bench, feeling the breeze for a long time. I don’t think time passed; sometimes it doesn’t down here. But suddenly Jason was in front of us in a pair of wrecked jeans, a tie dye tank top, and a bandanna.
“Dude, you’re like with the guy from the front desk. That’s low.”
Behind him were red-headed twins. I’m no bluenose, but I wanted to belt him for not respecting any female involved.
“And what were you three going to do?”
Becky stood up and walked up to him. The light reflected off her leg and captured the sparkling blue of the stream. Below the hem of her business skirt I assumed she wore for her new job, Jason had graffitied his name with magic marker.
“Oh, come on. These two? You already know about Mabel. And you were okay with it.
And her sister Sable is like doing the same girl.” He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “We’ve been together for a long time, Bec, so you know you’re my only true love. In life and death, it’s you and me. I’m just making the best of being dead. Come on, let’s go get tacos. All of us.” He took her hand and pulled her close. “Come on.”
She put her arm around him. “You’re a con artist, Jason Freemont. John, come with us?”
I opened my mouth to tell her. But then I shook my head. “I’m going to take a stroll, I think.”
I didn’t sleep for days. I didn’t work either, and those were two things I always enjoyed. When I called information, I never got Becky. Finally, I couldn’t take my isolation anymore and went to find my friends at the jazz clubs.
Because I grew up in Nebraska, I loved taking taxis when I lived in New York. I loved sitting next to my best pal at the time with our hats in our hands and watching the nightlife as we drove by. Even in Hell, I took them all the time. But I walked. Maybe it was that I wanted fresh air like that day in the park with Becky. Or maybe I knew what I was doing.
Normally, as I taxi along on a night out, I see only jazz club after jazz club. So I was overwhelmed when I came upon a modern nightclub with its long line of women in clothing seemingly held onto their body by magic, and men in baggy pants with their underwear showing. And in the window was Becky standing on a raised platform that made her glass leg eye level.
There was a lot more graffiti on her leg now including an arrow that pointed up and read this way for a good time, but it was Becky.
Her head swiveled toward the window, and she pointed at me.
“It’s John,” I saw her mouth say. But then she disappeared, and I walked on. She appeared out of the entrance and grabbed my arm with both hands. “John. John. Come in.” Her eyes were glazed over, and she bent her head in a way that showed she couldn’t see straight. On her neck, the scorpion tattoo had grown so that his pincers were over her jaw line. But I let her pull me in. The bouncer must have known her well because he did nothing more than hold the door for us while pushing others back.
“John, I missed you,” she said in my ear with bourbon breath.
“Are you still working for information?” I asked her. It was a question with the lowest priority, but it was on my mind.
“I’ve been too busy for it. We’ve been partying pretty hard.” She mushed her lips on my cheek trying to muster a kiss. I had to help her up the steps to the platform where Jason, Mabel, Sable, and the blonde girl were all sitting. Amongst the drinks were lines of coke.
Jason yelled something. And I yelled back, “What?”
The other three girls smiled at me. The blonde girl said something while she stroked my arm. “What?” I answered.
Becky leaned over and spoke into my ear. I leaned in. “I don’t understand.” I yelled.
Over the noise, I couldn’t hear anything. It was supposed to be music, but there weren’t any horns, or strings. I couldn’t detect any musical instruments. But people on the dance floor were convulsing to it.
Becky was smiling at me. She was smiling at everyone, but she was smiling at me too. In fact, she stared at me for about twenty minutes while trying to talk to me. I didn’t hear a word she said, but I nodded every so often. She kept her attention on me while I kept mine on hers.
Everyone else kept drinking, snorting lines of coke and leaving to the dance floor to do some convulsing, which dead or not dead seemed to be something you would do after imbibing that many chemicals. It was a ridiculous situation, but I didn’t want to leave her.
Then- it shouldn’t have taken me that long- I stood up and pulled on her. She resisted like a kid being dragged for a bath, but not enough to stop me. And she could have wriggled free if she wanted to.
I weaved through the crowd and out the back entrance until we were a good fifty feet away from the back door.
She leaned against the wall. “What are we doing out here, John?”
“Getting you away from him. You’re becoming only what he wants you to be.” I grabbed her and kissed her.
Jason came out the back door. “Dude. Totally not cool. That’s my girlfriend.”
I shook her by the shoulders. “Becky, you’re disappearing. I don’t think you were even there when you were alive. But you were you when we met that day. I saw you when I opened the door to your room that first time.”
“Come on, B. let’s go back in.”
She shook her head. It seemed to be at both of us.
“Listen, you’re not even a name anymore. Just a letter.
“At the park, you were happy because I love you. Becky, I love learning you, like you are written in Braille because I need to touch you.”
She looked over at Jason who was now standing with a smirk to show his dimples. “What does being able to write like a Braillian have to do with love?” he said.
“And,” I said to grab her attention. I even grabbed her by the jaw and made her focus on me. “You need to rid yourself of everything-me included- that is not you.”
Jason gave a puppy dog look. “Babe, come on, we’ll go home, and I’ll read your poems.”
She freed herself from me and walked toward him. But when she was about five feet away, she removed her glass leg and threw it at Jason. It hit him in the head, and he fell over like a bowling pin. Her leg shattered against the concrete and crumbled into dust.
I ran to her. I caught her before she fell over. And she careened into my arms. She looked into my eyes. Touched my face. I held her with all my might, but she was already fading into Heaven.
Thomas Cannon’s story about his son is the lead story in Cup of Comfort for Parents of Children with Autism. His novel The Tao of Apathy is based on his years working entry level jobs. He is published in: The Battered Suitcase, Midwestern Gothic, On the Premises, Freedom Fiction Journal, Corvus Review and others. Thomas is also the cohost of the local TV show Author Showcase in Oshkosh, Wisconsin and each year he helps put on the Lakefly Writers Conference.