Before and Afterlives

by Christopher Barzak

  “Which would be?”

  “Something big,” says Jan. She paces back and forth in a square of sunlight falling through the shattered door. The web page she built has what I’ve named a “Diery” on it, a journal that chronicles my deaths. I write my entries in the leather-bound book I brought back the first time I died, then Jan transfers them to the web. The entries are the only thing I have to do with the site. Jan does all the rest. She says I have a way with words, but that I should let her take care of business.

  “How big is big?” I ask.

  “We advertise for a grand finale,” says Jan. “We say it’s your last appearance. Then the appointments pour in. It’ll be like when some painter dies and his paintings suddenly become worth something. I’m a genius, I know, you don’t have to say so.”

  “But that would be lying,” I say. “You know I’ll just come back.”

  “Oh Jesus, Aiden, no one will give a damn if we give them a good enough ending. Lighten up.”

  I write:

  Dear Diery,

  There is only one other sensation like death available: orgasm. The French call itla petite mort, the little death. It’s that brief moment during climax when everything is burned away from consciousness and a person feels a part of their self break off, snap in half, shatter into a thousand pieces.

  Resurrection, like everything else, can be a form of art. I do my best to keep my dying pure, to make it something special. It’s a highwire act without a net, it’s skating on melting ice. You fall through, you drown in that dark place. It’s the ascension, when you resurface, when your head breaks the water, when you gasp for air again, that elevates the fall to something grander. Somehow you’ve survived.

  It sounds as though it’s done for audiences alone, but this is not true. It’s the flare of recognition, the shock of being seen in such a vulnerable state, it’s the cries of believers and unbelievers when I come round that thrills me back into my bones and blood. “A miracle!” they all shout, even though they’ve murdered me as best as they know how.

  I try to write:

  This was the first time I allowed myself to be murdered by strangers; it was also the last. Not having control of the situation, not being the one to take my own life is too horrible to repeat.

  Resurrection isn’t New Age or mystical. It’s not something connected with people who migrate to be near the UFO infested desert skies of New Mexico. No aliens, no chakras, no spells, no crystals or runes will be found upon my person.

  Resurrection is an art, not a movement. It’s not something anyone can decide to do. And what I must be clear about is that I’m not someone that requires faith or belief. I’m no messiah, nor do my travels between death and life mean much beyond that event in and of itself. My deaths and rebirths remind others of their own forgotten lives. We all die, but we do not all resurrect. Herein lies a profound difference.

  But Jan deletes this section. She says she will only publish entries that carry positive messages. “This stuff about being murdered,” she says, “it’s just too bleak. And as for the rest, talking negatively about certain groups of people, i.e. New Age followers and UFO cults, you just can’t do that, Aiden. Don’t alienate part of your audience.”

  “I was trying to explain,” I say. “What I experience. What I know.”

  “Don’t worry about things like that,” says Jan. “That’s not something anyone wants to hear anyway.”

  Jan is all secrets and mystery. She’s rented me a room at an upscale hotel. She sends me an allowance every week. “You deserve it, baby brother,” she says. “Live it up for a while, hear?”

  “Thanks, Jan,” I say, even though I’m bursting with suspicion.

  She calls every day to make sure I’m having fun, eating well, seeing the sights. She emphasizes my having fun a lot, then her conversations shrivel. “You only live once,” she says without thinking, and all I can do is nod.

  Jan’s very busy, she tells me, planning the big day. I think about howthe big day is a phrase used by women concerning someone else’s wedding. I wonder if Jan has managed to meet someone she desperately loves, who she intends to marry. I look at the gold ring I brought back when I died at the Flamingo. She could use it for the wedding. She could have it fitted.

  “How are preparations?” I ask. I’m sitting on my bed watching a show with many ambulances and police car chases. Outside, framed by my window, a palm tree sways in a breeze.

  “Fine,” says Jan. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

  I say okay but decide to push for details. “Whatare the plans this time?”

  “Mother’s going to visit soon,” says Jan. Then she tells me she has calls to make, people to see. The phone clicks, then the tone of disconnection floods the line. I slowly put the phone back on its cradle.

  On the television, sirens are blaring.

  Knock, knock.

  “Who’s there?” I ask, fitting my eye to the peephole.

  It’s Mother. She’s standing in the hallway wearing a lemon yellow power suit as if she were a thirty year old businesswoman instead of fifty and happily out of work. I pull the door open and she thrusts a package at me. “Here, my love,” she says. I take the package and set it on the nightstand to open later.

  “So what brings you here, Mom?” I ask. It’s not often that I see her. Soon after we discovered my talent, Jan rigged it so Mom took out a large insurance policy. Then I stepped off a curb and was smashed by a bus. There was a dead body, so the insurance company had to pay up. I lost my legal identity, but we were able to give Mom lots of money. Now she spends most of her time in the air, flying from the Caribbean to Europe to Asia. She took care of my father before he died—stomach cancer—so we felt she deserved a rest.

  “I need an excuse to visit my boy?” she says. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, Mom,” I laugh. I stuff my hands in my pockets and stare at my bare feet. The carpet here is almond, not pink like the Flamingo, which pleases me.

  She hugs me but doesn’t have time to chat. She has a plane to catch. “I hear you and Jan are planning a last performance?”

  “Jan’s planning it,” I correct her. “I’m sitting here wondering what she’s planning.”

  “Well, dear, Jan is very good at these things. Just let her take care of it. You should get out while you’re here, have some fun. Live a little.”

  I look up when she says this. For a moment I think she’s Jan.

  “What?” she says. “Why are you looking at me like that?! Oh, Aiden, you’re too flighty. Take a pill.”

  I don’t mention that I once took a lot of pills, or that that exhibition paid off my father’s hospital bills. I don’t say anything because only one person is allowed to be a martyr, the same way no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time. I abdicate to my mother whenever possible; if I didn’t, she’d steal the role. She has a story she tells about my father’s funeral. At the dinner afterwards, at the church, she looked up from her plate of food and saw herself in a mirror across the room. She was sitting in the middle of a long table, Jan on one side, me on the other, a flock of relatives stretched out beside us. Her head was tilted to one side and she saw how she looked unimaginably hurt. “Betrayed,” is how she puts it, and knew right then how it must have been for Jesus at the Last Supper. “That poor man,” she says, “always trying to help others, and what did he get? He should have learned. I have.”

  After she’s flown away, I open her gift. It’s a glass globe and inside it is a miniature island village, palm trees staked at each corner of the island. It looks like it would be hot there. A hot place. I shake it and snow falls over the village. Snowflakes pile up on the palm leaves. There’s a card, too, with an inscription: “Saw this and thought of you, dear. Had to buy it. Hope your grand finale goes off well. Alas, I won’t be attending. Those things are so gruesome. Hugs, Mom.”

  I sit on the end of the bed and put my head in my hands and try not move or to make any sounds. If I
can do that, I can do anything. It takes a few minutes, but I finally begin to not feel my own body. Then I can’t hear. Then I can’t see either. It’s a difficult task, but it helps to burn through the hours of waiting.

  “It’s time,” says Jan. She’s arrived wearing a black leather outfit and too much perfume. Already the room’s begun to smell like a Chanel factory and I can’t stop thinking there’s a cat burglar going through my closet instead of my sister.

  “Time?” I say. “Time?”

  “To go,” Jan says. “The limo’s waiting.”

  “Alimo?”

  “A limo,” says Jan. “Can’t you respond with anything but questions? Saying ‘hi’ never occurred to you? We have to go.”

  So we go. As we leave Jan stops and pays the bill, tells the desk clerk we won’t be returning. She tips him twenty dollars and he says it’s been a pleasure. Come back soon.

  The limo is long and sleek, a black bullet waiting by the curbside. Evening light flickers over it. Inside it’s cool and air-conditioned, a relief from the heat. I sit on one seat and Jan sits opposite. She mixes a drink. Then pulls a cigarette pack from her purse and shuffles one out, lights it, inhales as though she’s drinking water. I watch the column of her throat move and imagine the smoke traveling down into her lungs, the nicotine sifting into her blood, calming her.

  “Since when do you smoke?”

  “I’ve been under a lot of stress lately, okay?” She runs her fingers through her hair. “It wasn’t easy, arranging things for tonight.”

  “So whatare the plans for tonight?”

  Jan smiles, satisfied with herself. She lifts the whiskey to her lips.

  “Tonight,” says Jan, “we are giving the greatest show on earth. Nothing can top this. But I’d rather not tell you what it is just yet. Your own surprise will heighten the audience’s. They’ve paid quite a bit of money.” Jan rubs her thumb and forefinger together. “Crème de la crème,” she says.

  “I don’t know about this,” I say. “I mean—”

  “What?” Jan interrupts. “Just what do you mean, Aiden? What’s not to know? This is it. You can’t wimp out now.”

  I nod and nod. I know, Jan. I didn’t mean anything by it, Jan. I tell her the usual things to smooth her over, then pour myself a whiskey and drink it in one swallow.

  We arrive at dusk at an abandoned warehouse near the ocean. I can’t see any water, but I hear waves collapsing on a beach. Salt scents the air. Jan and I make our way toward the little door that opens into the warehouse.

  The parking lot is filled to capacity with automobiles, buses, taxis. On the horizon I glimpse a sliver of red lowering itself down to the other side of the world. Amber light darkens by the minute. Jan puts her hand on my back, guiding me toward the entrance. She whispers words of encouragement, and between her words and the amber light, a memory of my father surfaces.

  It was when he was still healthy, before he was sick; or if he was already sick, he wasn’t saying. The cancer was still a secret buried in his flesh. We were sitting outside, catching our breath after a jog together. The sun was bright in our eyes. Clouds passed over and the world would be covered in shadow, then this amber light would return. It went on like that, light then dark, light then dark, and finally my father told me that people don’t always have a choice in the matter of things like light or dark, or living or dying. But they have to make decisions when choices can be made. He put my face in his hands and held me together. I almost cried at what he was saying. I knew. I knew right then what he was saying.

  It was afterwards, after his suicide to stop the pain he and my family were going through, then after my own, that I forgot everything he told me.

  Jan swings the door open and a blast of heat hits me. The inside is lit by hundreds of candles. Bleachers line the walls. And in the center of everything, something stands shrouded in a red velvet curtain. The curtain sways a little, as if something large is breathing behind it. As we enter, the audience cheers.

  They are spectacularly beautiful tonight, wearing tuxedoes and gowns and jewels. A small, nut-brown woman with a red dot on her forehead brushes her hand against me as I pass her. A touch, just a touch, to feel my power. Maybe it will rub off, they think. And if it doesn’t, let him die, he deserves it, keeping a talent like that to himself. Who does he think he is?

  A good question. But already Jan’s voice is filling the warehouse, interrupting my answer. She uses a microphone to introduce me. “Everyone, put your hands together to welcome my very own little brother, the one and only Resurrection Artist!” she shouts. “The only one known to be alive at this time,” she adds a second later, then laughs at her attempt at humor. Some of the audience chuckles. They’ll laugh to grease her, anything to get this show moving.

  Two heavily-muscled men wearing tuxedoes stand on either side of the red velvet curtain, holding a braided gold rope in their hands. Jan turns to them and shouts, “Here is the medium of death!” and the men pull the rope until the shroud lifts to reveal a large kiln with a fire roaring inside it. One of the men swings the gate open, a gate large enough for a man to step inside. The fire lifts and enlarges.

  Jan motions for me to approach, and I do. Each step is like walking through water though, that slow trudge, but finally I stand before it and think, Is this what I want? What about my body? If it burns, will I still come back? Do I need a body to return to? There’s so much we don’t know. I’ve always had one before, even if it was bloody and battered.

  The audience rises to its feet. When they stand to cheer I feel as though I should be in the Coliseum, preparing to battle a lion. Or in the corner of a boxing ring, an announcer calling out the names and win-loss ratios of each opponent. I’m in one corner, but who is in the other?

  I look into the kiln, that gold and red waiting for my body, and see Jan at first. Then it isn’t Jan, but my mother standing in the fire. Then my dead father, his eyes sunken and hollow, his flesh white and mushroom rotten. Then I see the reflection of the audience cheering behind me. Then I don’t see any of them, but myself. I walk out of the kiln, licks of flame rolling off my skin like drops of water.Ding, ding, ding. We stare and stare at each other, then move toward the center, fists ready.

  I turn to find Jan running back and forth in front of the bleachers, waving her hands, stirring the crowd into a frenzy. She’s good at that sort of thing. I wait until she turns to give me a brief moment of attention and shout, “Call it off.”

  Jan’s eyes narrow. She taps a finger on her ear:What did you say?

  I repeat myself slowly so she can read my lips, and when she begins to understand, a shadow spreads over her face. She marches over, puts an arm around my shoulder and says, “Aiden, what the hell are you doing? These people have already paid.”

  “Send them away,” I say. “Tell them I’m not dying. Whatever it takes, you can handle it.”

  “You little—I ought to kill you myself.” Jan removes her arm and points a finger in my face. “How could you? How else are you going to live?”

  To live. Isn’t that the question? How to live? I’ve never answered it. I only know how to die. How to wait until the next death.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “But I want to find out.”

  Jan folds her arms across her chest and shakes her head, astonished. I don’t flinch, although I want to. I walk away and step out into the night. The audience titters and whispers. “What is going on here?!” a woman shouts.

  I shut the door behind me and walk to the back of the building, sit down among shattered beer bottles. My legs stretch out in front of me and I stare at them, thinking, Those are my legs. I find them more interesting than I should probably.

  Within an hour, the crowd disperses. The car engines turn over, the tires peel, the annoyed voices grow fewer. Finally, Jan finds me around back.

  “Are you proud of yourself?” she asks. I nod. “Well I hope you’re happy. I am no longer your sister. And don’t think Mother won’t hear about this.
What would Dad say?”

  She walks away, but I’m not concerned any longer. Jan will forgive me if it’s possible. And if it isn’t possible, I’ll learn to live without her.

  Suddenly I see a figure lurching toward me from the next lot over. After a moment the figure becomes a man, and then he stops, his tennis shoes scraping the asphalt next to me.

  “You see the resurrection?” he asks, scratching his face.

  “There wasn’t one,” I tell him. “It didn’t go off.”

  “That’s too bad. I wanted to see it. Something like that, the power to come back to life—I wonder what it’s like. But that chick I phoned for tickets was asking way too much.”

  He’s grunged out, the knees of his jeans ripped, a bruise on one cheek, a cut on his forehead. “Why would you want to see that?” I ask. “It isn’t the most pleasant thing, dying.”

  “It’s the comeback,” he says. “That’s what’s appealing.” He coughs and lights a cigarette. The end glows red then orange in the dark.

  The comeback, I think. Yes, that’s it. Life, life. The beat of a heart, the break of a wave on the beach. What a plunge. What a lark to live for even one day.

  “It isn’t too late,” I say. His face screws up, his nose wrinkling in confusion. I lead him to the warehouse where the candles have all been put out, the bleachers emptied of human breathing. The kiln still glows. “Here is your resurrection,” I tell him, not your death. I move toward the kiln, fidgeting, wondering what kind of fate the flames hold for me. I imagine myself a skeleton that turns to ash, then to dust. A wind comes along and blows me across the cosmos. I open the gate and the fire breathes heavy, a welcoming kiss.

  I tell myself when I return this time I will be a bird of fire, holding a rose in my burning talons. I will stand before him then, this audience of one, whose face glows from my flames, whose skin flushes from my heat. And maybe, just maybe he’ll say it was terrible to see me burning like that, but also how it was a beautiful thing. Not a rush, but a moment of grace. I will bow to him then, and begin again. This time for keeps. I will lay the rose at his feet.