by James Wymore
If only I could have found someone to argue that with. I had not yet encountered a single other human being on this island. I figured my subconscious mind needed to keep me from obtaining any answers to life—probably because the answers didn’t actually exist.
A few times I spotted white-robed figures trekking along distant trails. As much as I wanted to talk to them, no desire could compete with my all-consuming obsession to place my three-by-four-inch piece of paper in an appropriate box. I could conceive of no pleasure in chatting with them, so I just let them go.
As always, I didn’t feel remotely tired. I decided to take a break anyway, just to interrupt the tedium of constant walking. The latest instructions required me to place the card in a receptacle on the front porch of a rundown hut by Little Crab Stream. Who knows what stream went by that name, but I remembered passing by an old hut near a stream once before. I harbored only the weakest hope that I could find it again. After half a day of hiking, I tried to convince myself it wasn’t the right hut anyway. I resolved to sit another one out.
As I sat on a thick, exposed tree root, I noticed a flattened bed of dead palm fronds beyond a gradual slope, a few hundred yards in front of me. I jumped up, realizing it might be the roof of a hut. I skipped down the hill, elated when I saw a window and a wooden porch. A meandering stream came into view between the ferns beyond the hut. Then I glimpsed someone in a white robe darting to the same porch. The dark-haired young woman started when I rounded the side of the dilapidated shack.
She forced a smile at me, revealing gleaming white teeth against her brown skin. Her piece of paper dangled from her hand over the maw of a wood-slatted receptacle. I knew I would have considered her very pretty in former days. At least she had the kind of features that I used to find alluring. I felt no attraction to her at all here.
“This is a first,” she said in an alto voice with a hint of a Latin-American accent. “I never met someone at a receptacle before. Better hurry. I’ve been to the brink of placing my card before when the instructions changed. It’s devastating.”
“You’ve made it to a receptacle before?” I rushed to her side. I wondered what possessed her to just stand there with her hand blocking the opening of the canister. I wanted to shove her out of the way. I would kill her if she made me miss my chance to finally place my answer.
“You must be new,” she said. “I’ve made it to a receptacle fifty-three times since I died back in 1639. What’s your card say?”
I had not changed my message since the day I arrived. I showed it to her. She read it, rolled her eyes, snatched it from me and tore it up.
“You worthless cow!” I raged. I wanted to strangle her. I grabbed at her card, but she dexterously swung it out of my reach.
“You misunderstand me,” she said, as if this were a game. Couldn’t she sense that my mind teetered on the verge of taking her life? “Please listen before you miss your chance, loco. You have no idea how many people have placed your answer in a receptacle. Don’t try anything with the word ‘love’ or ‘happiness’ or ‘serve’ in it. Those kinds of answers have been used countless times. There is an instruction board right over there by the river. I suggest you hurry and write down some philosophy or religion or something. Don’t use any of the well-known religions. I have tried thirteen of them and I have not succeeded yet.”
I ran to the instruction board, scribbled Stoicism is the purpose of life , and ran back to the girl.
She read my answer and nodded her approval. “Never saw that one before.”
“Now would you get out of my way?”
“Just let me warn you about something first. I beg you, do not place an answer.”
“Are you kidding?”
She shook her head. “Listen. If you get the right answer, that’s great. I’ll will rejoice for you. But in all my years, I have never seen anybody get the right answer. If you get the wrong answer, this Hell becomes worse—much, much worse. Once you witness another life, this world will become unbearable.”
“I hate to break it to you, but it is already unbearable. Excuse me please.” I tried to push her aside, but she pushed back.
“You’re not listening. You must trust me on this.”
“Get out of my way!”
The woman frowned. “Fine. Do as you must. One day you will wish you’d listened to me. Mark my words.” She dropped her card into the receptacle and instantly disappeared.
I did a double take. For all I knew, she was no more real than anything else in this jungle—just another distraction to keep me from placing my card in the receptacle. But my luck finally changed. I dropped in my card. Everything went black.
My aging heart labored in vain to defend its post within my chest. After eighty-four years of loyal service, it had earned its retirement. Four of my five children encircled me in the cozy hospice room, embracing their kids. I couldn’t speak to them. The stroke had robbed me of my tongue. I wanted only to tell them to relax. I’d be just fine. I looked forward to the next adventure in my life.
I wanted to tell them I had no regrets. One of my sons had become a prominent Lutheran pastor in my community. All my children attended church with their spouses and they led good lives. Twelve years had passed since my sweet Emily passed on. Cancer took my eldest son four years ago. I could hardly wait to reunite with them again on the other side.
My eyelids grew heavy and the room began to dim. I heard someone repeating my name.
“Daddy!”
“Roger.”
“Daddy!”
A bright light enveloped me. A tunnel beckoned me. It all seemed so strangely familiar.
Next thing I knew, I lay prostate on the sand on a beach on some tropical island. Memories blasted into my mind like a freight train. It seemed like just seconds ago I had been standing by a hut next to a river, watching a Latino girl disappear. Yet, my mind now housed every minute memory of some stranger’s life—all eighty-four years of it. It hadn’t been my life. I had witnessed the entire life of a businessman named Roger Browning, a completely different person with a completely different body.
I surmised that after dropping my card in the canister, my consciousness appeared in a fetus within the womb of Roger Browning’s mother. All memory of this island and my former real life had been forgotten for eighty-four years. I lived another person’s entire life! I’d been a mental parasite, experiencing every moment of his life as if I owned it. I had stolen a new mother, a new father, and three new sisters. I served in World War II. I ran a business selling tractors and other farm equipment in Minnesota. I married the best woman on Earth and raised five children, thirteen grandchildren and two great-grandsons. I remembered every minute, every second, every…
Those people were gone!
Those memories now mingled with the memories of my real brother and the single mother who’d tried to raise me. I never married. I died young, driving under the influence. I lived my former life with no moral direction. Now that life disgusted me. I loathed it. Deep shame darkened my mind. Trey Reyborne had turned away from everything of value in his life. I denounced him. From that moment on, Trey Reyborne did not exist. From now on, only Roger Browning could face me in a mirror.
But I was not Roger Browning.
The full force of this eternal punishment now rained down on me like a hurricane. Thoughts of Roger Browning’s family propelled me into excruciating anguish. My life as a Lutheran had been challenging, but so fulfilling. I wanted my Lutheran children and my Lutheran wife and all my Minnesota friends and neighbors. But I knew I would never see any of them again. They were not mine. They belonged to Roger Browning. They had no use for me in their life even if they could join me in Heaven.
I don’t know how long I writhed on the beach that day, crying and tearing at myself in despair. Days may have passed as I lay there comparing my real life to the life I wanted back. I would never be the same. Why hadn’t I listened to that Hispanic woman? She warned me. Proud, stupid fool as I was, I
didn’t listen. All my doubts were gone now. With perfect and horrifying certainty, I knew I truly had died and would fester forever in this plastic paradise.
I couldn’t even kill myself. I’d just reappear on this same beach all over again. Glancing at the instruction board, I considered pursuing another receptacle. Living another life would at least allow me to forget, but I would also forget my life as Roger. I shook my head; I knew I didn’t want that. I owed Roger some respect. I determined not to even look at the instruction board. So what if I couldn’t feel anything. I could at least try to be Roger Browning for a few more days.
Remembering the hut by the river, I smiled. I set out to build a hut of my own here by the beach. The monotony of gathering palm fronds, logs, and tall grass could not be any less unbearable than trudging through the tropics constantly seeking receptacles. It took some ingenuity figuring out how to make tools and fashion rope. Ole Trey Reyborne never could have done it. It took a guy like Roger Browning to accomplish those kinds of feats.
I lost track of the passing days as I constructed furnishings for my hut. I waited every day for the powers running this nightmare to upset my progress, but nothing impeded me. One breezy day, I suddenly felt like I weighed about 500 pounds. I could barely walk. A few days later all the bark on every tree in the vicinity liquefied. It took me a while to shovel the gooey mess below all the beams, columns, and steps of my hut, but I got over it. In a world where pleasure didn’t exist, it made no difference what I did. Scooping up goop or bathing in the sunshine—neither exceeded the other in appeal.
I did a lot of thinking as I worked—the kind of thinking only Roger Browning’s memories could inspire. Trey Reyborne deserved this Hell. This place illustrated what the Earth would have been like if God did not exist. Pleasure didn’t exist here, for how could it exist without Him? Order didn’t exist here, for how could it exist in nature without Him? How could anything exist?
I realized, too, this place exhibited everything I used to desire as a non-believer. I had argued incessantly that if God existed and cared about us, he would have given us a world without evil and suffering. We would have no death, no cancer, and no abused children. We would feel no pain. I now lived in that very world. I could not die. I suffered no dependency on food or rest. I felt no affections, and thus could feel no loss. I laughed at the irony. The most appropriate Hell for Trey Reyborne was Trey Reyborne’s idea of Heaven.
I stood up, clenching my fists. Reyborne did not exist anymore. I no longer deserved his punishment. Leaving Roger’s life behind hurt me deeply. Ignoring the instruction boards became my only revenge. If the demons were going to put me through this kind of torture, I would just refuse to play their game. As the months passed, however, I grew careless and started sneaking peaks at the boards.
Finally, one afternoon I casually scribbled, The Lutheran Church is the purpose of life on my card. Something told me the odds were not in my favor. Lutheran doctrine did not support the belief that horned demons would determine the eternal destiny of souls. But I wanted so desperately for my answer to be true, I didn’t care.
With my new rebellious attitude, just about every message board directive qualified as something to sit out. I had ignored the boards for so long, I no longer felt compelled to try anything difficult. Demons were patient, though. I got the impression they’d wait as long as it took for me to get lazy and let down my guard. The most recent instructions said to dig a hole in the sand and place my paper in the exposed receptacle. I had never seen a more impossible request. The chances of digging a hole in the exact right spot were astronomical. Curious, I grabbed a shovel I’d built out of sharpened sticks lashed together with reeds. I dug into the sand. Two feet down, I laughed when the mouth of a receptacle stared up at me. Almost without thinking, I dropped my card in the hole.
I thrashed around on the sandy beach, screaming and shoving at the crocodile’s endless army of needle-like teeth. Gradually recognizing the familiar beach setting, unfathomable relief washed over me. The monster may have killed me, but at least it was gone. I cried profusely in the mannerisms of a Namibian child, words flowing from my mouth in fluent Khoisan—a variety of clicks and idiosyncratic noises. I pounded on the sand and rolled around as if I were still fighting a deadly reptile.
I endured only nine years of someone else’s life this time. The other hunters in my Bushman community believed in me when they invited me on the hunt. I let them all down. We surrounded a crocodile, but I didn’t see its friend lurking in the grass to my left. The struggle ended in seconds.
In spite of my full awareness that I no longer sported a rail-thin African child’s body, I pounded on the ground, tore at my hair, and screamed and cried like a child. I could not stop worrying about my poor mother. My death would devastate her. The community would move their camp somewhere else. They feared being around places where someone died.
I couldn’t begin to explain the mixed feelings and confusion that ricocheted around in my head. My unquestioned superstitions mixed with the higher education of both Trey Reyborne and Roger Browning. I feared and did not fear the same things. My extreme ignorance of the world competed with my excessive understanding of it. I felt great relief that I’d no longer have to struggle to survive, yet I wanted my struggles back. I wanted the love and acceptance of my community. I felt unexpected disappointment even in Roger Browning. He never really appreciated the blessed and abundant life he lived—not the way I now did.
I missed my family with the same anguish as when I’d lost the Browning family. I writhed on the ground, unable to come to terms with my return to this Hell. Then I noticed footprints leading to my hut. I looked up. Some stranger with a bushy beard and messy long hair sat on my front deck on my wicker bench.
I jumped up and marched over to him. “This is my house,” I clicked in Khoisan. A blank stare informed me of my error. I reverted to English. “What are you doing in my house? Who are you?”
“I’m… I’m Timothy,” he said shyly. “Forgive me. I thought this old hut was abandoned.” He stood up and rushed away.
On closer observation, I saw that the roof had caved in. Termites and other animals had consumed much of the structure and grassy walls. Nine years of neglect had taken its toll. I chased the man down. “Don’t go. I apologize. I forgot how long I’ve been gone. It feels like I never left.”
Timothy looked like a vagrant in dirty, torn pants and a filthy shirt. Until now, I thought everybody in this world wore fluffy white robes like mine. “Where did you get those clothes?”
The man shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve always worn this,” he said. “I got to admit, I thought I finally found Heaven when I arrived here. The water and the birds and cool breezes—I never felt anything more pleasant. You’re lucky.”
“You’re enjoying it!” I cried. “Is this the next step to my torture? I get to watch other people enjoy what I can’t? Or did you get the right answer? Is that what happens when you make it to a receptacle with the right answer? You get to enjoy the pleasures of life again?”
He shrugged his shoulders again. “I don’t know. If this is like the other places I’ve seen, I don’t think the rules always apply to me. I’ve been here seems like six months. I placed answers in a canister a few times, but my card just sits there. Nothing happens.”
“You’re just some kind of anomaly then?”
“I guess so. Some weird things still happen to me sometimes. You should have seen it. Awhile back, the whole ocean turned to steam. The fish flailed around until they went still and disappeared. Then other fish appeared out of nowhere and did the same thing over and over until the water came back. I never saw nothing like it before. Another time, all the grasses turned to crystal. I cut my foot on it.” The man smiled and lifted his foot to reveal old scratches. “It’s been the most entertainment I’ve ever had. I wish I could stay here forever.”
I spent several days getting to know Timothy as I repaired my hut. He didn’t say much, which was fine
with me. Jealousy consumed me whenever he mentioned enjoying anything. One day I couldn’t take it anymore. I flew into a rage and chased him away.
Unlike the time Roger died, I no longer wanted to wait to live another life. Timothy made me anxious to feel something again. More importantly, that African experience had messed with my perspective. I hadn’t lived long enough in Namibia to even understand the workings of my own isolated desert domain. My former education instantly squashed the many superstitions that had previously been solid facts. I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. I wanted freedom from the confusion.
Gravity notched up a few hundred pounds again. I dragged myself to the instruction board and read the latest directive. The heaviness made me think the current instructions were just mocking me in my sorrows. They said I needed to fly across the ocean and deposit my answer in a receptacle on the beach over there. Sighing, I resolved to sit out another one, unless Crazy World decided people could fly today.
I furrowed my brow. “Why not?” I gave a half-hearted jump. Surprised, my feet left the ground. Unlike the time my body became weightless, my body now moved in whatever direction crossed my mind, and at a reasonably high speed. I knew this should have been one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. But like always, I felt no pleasure.
I no longer entertained any hope of finding the answer that would free me from this Hell. It didn’t matter what I scribbled on my card. I wrote, The purpose of life is to enjoy it. No doubt it had been tried a million times before. I didn’t care. It was good enough to free me from this place. I shot up in the air and rocketed over the water.
The ocean went on forever. Two excruciatingly uneventful days and nights passed before I finally encountered something new. Dark specks hovered in the sky in front of me. I charged forward for a closer view. I soon caught up with a group of seven people flying together. Seven! Four men and three women. They welcomed me with open arms, floating in the air, hugging me as if any of us could feel affection.
