The Other Side

by Daniel Willcocks

  I have to keep going. I can see the dark shapes in the station and I know they’re waiting for me and that they’ll listen. I’ll explain myself. They’ll understand. They must.

  Because I can’t jump into the tar.

  I can’t face the end.

  I’ve entered the station and the bus is slowing down.

  There’s burning fog everywhere and the air’s so hot it’s like I’m in a sauna. Jesus Christ, my clothes are starting to smoke and those dark things are all around me.

  They all know me, and I know them. I can feel them looking.

  They see me.

  Into me.

  Oh God, they have so many eyes.

  Click for Ascension

  By Thomas Kodnar

  When Sheila took her last breath, she was grateful.

  Not because she had been in any rush to die, and not because she hadn’t enjoyed living. Her gratitude—which, otherwise, was complete, for all she had left in this final nanosecond was an intense base sense of her emotional state of being, of herself—was riddled with tiny specks of fear, too, sensed by her as crimson blotches of imperfection in a blessedly dark, equally empty and full moment: she’d been scared for weeks now, so it was no surprise that some of it would swap over into her time of release, of elation, of severely anticipated, unavoidable death. Who in their right mind was not afraid of this? Of the end? Even if the end had been so foreseeable, and the only possible solution to the problem that was a life of sickness, of pain, and of the horror of a body turning, ever so destructively, against itself.

  So, Sheila met death with mixed feelings. Death did not care either way. It took her completely and, once it had a hold of her, fast.

  There was darkness. For a minuscule blink in existence, Sheila thought she even intuited a lack of existence, a nothing unlike anything a living person could imagine.

  Then the darkness lifted.

  Sheila wasn’t religious. She vaguely remembered going to church with her parents as a child, but she’d never paid attention or understood any of the rituals they’d made her perform. She’d thanked God once in her life, when the doctors had told her that her son had not inherited her disease, but that god who’d received her acknowledgements had been as impersonal as whatever or whoever her gratitude in the face of death had been directed at. And everything she’d expected and hoped for from dying was release from her sufferings, not any further life after the end of life—an idea which, to her, had always seemed absurdly illogical.

  Yet, here she was.

  First, Sheila had the imprecise sense of being within a sort of inconceivably fast current. She couldn’t name her form of movement, nor could she be sure it was movement: was she floating? Was she being pulled on a string? It was reminiscent of sitting in a rollercoaster, only there was no seat beneath her, and though she believed she did feel something like a safety belt pushing against her, this feeling wasn’t constant, nor was it strong—and, just like this weight cutting into her at one moment and lifting off her the next, she, this her allegedly constrained by the weight, seemed to be there only at certain points, gone at others; comparably, the entire idea of moments and points in something like time seemed, all of a sudden, very farfetched to whatever was left of Sheila’s mind, to whatever it was that was swimming, or running, or dragging along with this curious river of pure being and entire non-being.

  Before she could begin to think about this new mode of existence—or even accept that it was existence, that she was existing—Sheila, simultaneously overwhelmed and, lest she go mad, necessarily unperturbed, began to see. It was unclear to her whether she had herself opened a peculiar set of ocular appliances or had been given sight of a different, eyeless manner from an outside source. She was too busy becoming aware of surroundings which, weirdly enough, did not seem to surround her so much as they were, for lack of a better term, part of her; as though she had grown extra limbs, and extra-large ones, at that, limbs which far exceeded the reach of the arms and legs she’d left behind. What she saw, if seeing it was, looked like strange, endless tubes, or maybe threads, or, just perhaps, cables, which formed the bed of the unspecifiable river pulling her along, shaped the shapeless flow of being on which she was drifting. They were all around her, they were her, and they were, not so much the tunnel which she might have expected had she ever believed in anything like this, but the largest crossroads anyone had ever conceived of, a junction of paths which were very much and not at all like streets, a merging and splitting and interweaving of lines of every color and no color. She had no better words to describe what she saw, for there were no better words, and she couldn’t even have sworn to it that she did see. She still had no idea what was going on, but she was at least beginning to understand that the reality she had found herself in was beyond mere seeing—and, in truth, beyond understanding.

  Next, hearing came. And once she heard the low hum, this vibration pervading everything and slicing right through her being, she wondered vaguely whether she hadn’t been hearing this all her life, but had been dumbly, naively unaware of it.

  In the midst of all this sensing, which was unlike any sensation she’d known in her lifetime, she swiftly began to redevelop—as a sort of extension and, yet, in what felt like a necessary implication, or even a logical prerequisite added belatedly, a natural sequitur despite the apparent unnatural quiddity of the situation—that sense of self she’d had as she’d lain dying. She became aware of her state as an entity in this entirety, of her own narrow, enclosed existence, her limitedness in this un-world of limitlessness and openness. She wasn’t a body, not in the way she’d been prior to her death—but she wasn’t detached from all time and space, from matter as such, either. She was not a spiritual, immaterial being of pure thought, let alone of pure love or pure bliss; this was not the rapture of a divine paradise. And yet, it was a different state of being, one which in its sneaky, opaque, downright arcane way impressed upon her, confused and dazed and uncomprehending as she was, that it was a higher state. What she was was not a bunch of cells arranged into human form, but it was human, alright, and it was constrained to a certain area, if there were areas in this place which was a non-place. She assumed that there weren’t, not really; just like she was and wasn’t human, did and didn’t see and hear and feel, this space she was in was no space, the area of her individual structure neither structure nor locus. It was expanse and it wasn’t. It was her consciousness, no longer bound by nerves and muscle, but bound, nonetheless.

  Suddenly, forcefully, the auditive took over as the number one impression when the humming first increased in volume, seeming to fill her up like air would a balloon—then stopped abruptly.

  What followed was a sound she’d heard hundreds of times before—but one she couldn’t place for the life of her. All she knew was that its usual volume was amplified to a maximum on a wavelength beyond the range audible to human ears.

  It was a shriek of such proportions that her nails would have crawled into her skin, had she possessed either of the two.

  It was a screech like none a living thing can utter.

  It was the brief, pointed wailing of a battalion of banshees, in one instance there to shred her—she was all hearing now, and the sound raped her essence—and gone the next, but echoing through eternity as she plummeted, propelled by the strangely familiar yet unknown noise, into another part of this post-reality.

  She was now, as though cast down into another realm by that noise, within a whirlwind of fleeting images, strange flickering symbols, and flashes of light that looked like surges of electricity. Sheila was turning with everything around her—horizons of unfathomable information flickered everywhere, and she was in them and with them. It lasted forever and for the blink of an eye.

  When it stopped, it felt to her almost as though she’d landed on a floor, falling onto it with a soft thud and, luckily, no pain. The tubes and threads and cables had returned into focus, but, even though they were still all around her and everywhere
within her, they were no longer the only thing she saw. Beyond such worldly reactions as astonishment, surprise, or effort now, she didn’t try to understand how she came to be outside the church where she’d married her husband. Except that she wasn’t really outside it, she knew. Not because it was impossible—though it very much was so, for she was dead—but because it didn’t look like she was, not precisely. Yes, she saw the beautiful gothic front, the high cast-iron door with the magnificent imprint of a saint slaying a dragon, and the gorgeously colored stained glass of the windows, the high tower housing the bell and the cherry tree which grew to the left side of the ancient building. She saw all of these things clearly and at the same time—and from multiple angles. She was in front of the church and she also stood to its left, seeing the high wall which ran past its main body and protected its yard and garden, where she and her husband had held their agape. Then again, and just as much, she stood on the opposite side of the street from its main entrance, and saw the Italian restaurant next to it, in all its unfashionable inexpensiveness, so stark a contrast to the lovely house of religion, where she’d married not because she’d shared in its faith, but because her husband’s family and her own had insisted on a traditional wedding. And beyond it all, behind these impressions as much as overlapping them, were those curious lines running in so many directions but, for the nonce, running without her. She was given a moment of rest at a place where, years ago, she’d made an important choice and said an important word, setting her off on the path which was to be the predictably short remainder of her life.

  The last time she’d seen these images, she’d Googled the church as part of the preparations for her funeral ceremony. Were these her memories? She’d heard of people having their life run by them as they expire, but nowhere did she see herself in her wedding dress, beaming exuberantly, joyous beyond words from the fact that the man she loved had decided to marry her despite her sickness. The church doors didn’t fly open to spill the happy couple onto the renovated gray steps outside, the lights in the windows didn’t flicker, the clouds beyond the church tower were unmoving: these were not scenes from her life, they were photographs. They were literally the images she’d seen when she’d been searching for the church’s telephone number online. If she had embarked on a deathly re-watch of her life, would she really begin by re-checking her latest Google results?

  Her ponderings were interrupted when another—a new—sound filled this strange world. It, too, was familiar but alien, heard-before but never like this, never this loud or this all-encompassing or this… close.

  It was, in fact, two short-lived sounds, a pair of signals, robotic and musical at the same time, a little like notes on a xylophone. Di-din! Fleeting and loud and inviting. Then silence.

  And, barely daring to believe—and hoping that she was wrong—Sheila did believe that she knew what this silence meant. That she knew the preceding signal. Impossible as it seemed to be.

  If she had the right of it, she might be able to speak. She wondered if she should try. And she wondered what would frighten her more: if her suspicion were to be proven correct, or if it turned out that she still lacked any semblance of understanding of her new environment…

  “Do you have a question?”

  The sentence came from the confusion of tubes and lights, and it came from right beside her. It came from every image of the church and from every corner of this unwalled room.

  And Sheila knew that voice. Knew it well. It had directed her to many a destination when she would have been lost without it. It had kept her informed on the weather when she hadn’t depended on the trustworthiness of her own glance outside her window. It had provided her with recipes and song lyrics and the names of pop idols’ spouses when she couldn’t come up with them herself. It was the voice of a woman, echoing in the eternal vastness. It was also the voice of a lifeless being, hollowed out, purposeless, and meaning nothing by its words.

  And it was the voice of knowledge. Turned up to the maximum and pervading all that was.

  Sheila turned slowly to locate the source of the voice, not expecting to find anything. She was right in this expectation. And now, she was scared. Now, even though this new scenario was in no way more unnerving, less probable, or more insurmountable than any other since her death (which had been—seconds ago? minutes? days?), she was beginning to feel a disembodied sense of dread. Maybe her disembodiment was why she hadn’t been frightened up until now: how does one experience fear if one has no heartbeat to accelerate, no skin to break out in sweat, draws no breath which can come short and clipped?

  Now she knew: all that was left was that terrible, almighty chill, which, finding no bones in which to burrow for marrow, dug over her mind instead, leaving her one shivering, speechless, dumbfounded, massless heap of discombobulated ghostly thoughts…

  But there was nothing to it. She would have to try and speak. If she wanted clarity, if she wanted to be rid of this soul-gripping fear, she would have to try to find her way through this mess.

  Aware that she had no mouth, she tentatively attempted to open one anyway. She fought to concentrate on a thought, struggled to wrestle it from within her, to give birth to its expression. She failed on all accounts. Focusing on one thought was difficult enough—and, really, what thought was there to focus on? What could have done the trick of making sense of all of this?—but getting this bodiless creature she’d become to say the words “Where am I?”, that was beyond—

  Di-din!

  “Please specify your question.”

  The womanly robotic voice again from all around her, tearing at her in its loudness and invasiveness, its unavoidability, its reasonable, inhuman sobriety and, yet, mockingly human intonation.

  Sheila realized with a jolt that she must have spoken aloud after all, albeit accidentally. By not trying too hard.

  The images of the church were losing substance now; they were morphing and warping, swimming away. She let it happen. They had given her no comfort. Their presence had been as insane and absurd as any other detail of this drama playing out before her, with her as the lead actress who had not learned her lines. She ignored the images’ disappearance and focused again…

  “What is this place?” she said—or thought—to the voice.

  Di-din! “Please specify your question.”

  Her fear abating as her frustration grew, Sheila did something which felt like getting to her feet, though there were no feet to get onto and there was no definite floor to lift off from. Gathering her mental strength—which was the only thing she had never lacked in life—she specified her question: “Am I on planet earth?”

  Silence. Then: di-din! “Yes and no. This address—” (the voice listed a sequence of numbers which brought Sheila’s chill back for a moment because she felt like she knew the sequence, though its familiarity was as wispy and faint as a breath of wind from an unidentified nook in a stranger’s house) “—is associated with a specific locality on Earth. But you are not bound to this address, nor are you currently there in any relevant sense, Sheila.”

  More than anything, it was her name coming out of that invisible, mouthless intelligence which reinforced Sheila’s unease. She tried to hold onto the thought that now she at least had the chance to receive an explanation, some sort of justification for her being here, but it proved nigh on impossible: the overwhelming impression was that nothing that voice could tell her would make any more sense than what it had already spoken. The images of the church were fading into darkness around her, rather abruptly at first, as though a computer screen had been inactive for a while and dimmed its internal light in response, then gradually, as though they were dancing on the verge of being forgotten…

  In an unconscious act of desperation, as she fought to hold back tears which couldn’t fall because there were no eyes to cry them, as her helpless mind flopped about for a way out of here, searching for escape she deemed impossible from a place she could not name, she uttered another question: “What is hap
pening to me?”

  The answer came almost immediately.

  Di-din. “The connection was successful.”

  Sheila thought that she must be losing her mind, if she had not already lost it—and she intuited that, here, losing her mind would be losing herself, losing all that she was.

  “I don’t understand,” Sheila lamented at the voice.

  Di-din. But no reply beyond that. Merely the receptive, appreciative signal, informing Sheila that she’d been heard.

  Not knowing what else to do, Sheila moaned: “I want out of here.”

  Di-din.

  “You can only go deeper,” the voice informed her; it seemed cooler now, less female, less casually, laxly well-intending. “Is that what you want?”

  It was not. She wanted away. She wanted blissful darkness or, better yet, attribute-less nothingness, as she would’ve expected to find, as would have made sense. She didn’t believe that “deeper” implied either of the two.

  But if it was her only way…

  “I want out…” she repeated weakly.

  Di-din. “You can only go deeper. Is that what you want?”

  It wasn’t. Oh no, it most certainly wasn’t.

  But what was there to do?

  “Yes,” Sheila surrendered.

  It felt as though a hook caught her somewhere behind her non-existent navel and pulled so mightily that any corporeal thing would have been torn apart in earnest, ripped in half, right down the centre. And, even without a body to tear, she did feel something let go, something which had held her together, something which had kept her in one piece. Helpless, she watched as the cables and tubes surrounding her increased in size until they were no longer visible as individual things—if that is what they ever were—and enwrapped her, pulled her through to another world beyond this first peculiar, outlandish beyond which had already been too much for her.