by James Wymore
I knew I annoyed them with all my questions, but I couldn’t stop myself. Aside from Timothy, who had no helpful information to share with me, and a few short sentences with that Latino woman, I’d never found an opportunity to discuss this world with anyone before. I learned each of their names. Most of them had originally died in European countries.
Bill, a heavy-set bearded guy, explained what he had learned about this world. He told me that this planet mimicked Earth’s geography, except that all lands were in a tropical paradisiacal state nobody could enjoy. I knew Timothy was an exception, but I saw no reason to bring him up. The extra lives we witnessed occurred in real time, or at least in what passed for real time in a world without order. Bill affirmed my observation that the other lives we lived were not aligned with current time. My life as Roger had occurred at the same time as my own life as Trey Reyborne. Roger died many years after I died, but he had been born long before my birth. I had no concept of when my Namibian life occurred.
Bill claimed he had lived in the distant past. He battled Spartans as a Greek warrior. He served as a Celtic priest. He met Joan of Arc as a French girl during the reign of Henry V. That last one intrigued me. We could even live the life of someone of the opposite sex?
Bill’s conversation triggered a trend. All my new friends wanted to tell me every detail of the lives they’d witnessed. They felt no actual excitement in telling me their stories, but any activity improved on watching miles of water pass below us hour after hour. Their tales bored me to tears. I wanted to be interested, but I just couldn’t muster up any feelings.
A few of these people had been here for thousands of years. One of them, an older man with long gray hair and a tanned, wrinkled face, seemed too nice to have earned an eternity in Hell.
“So you’re originally from Germany?” I said as I sidled next to him.
He turned to me, expressionless. “I no longer see myself as a German. I feel only shame for my original life. I abandoned that identity eons ago. I call myself Simon now. I never felt more proud than when I lived my life as Simon Dredd. But even he does not define me anymore. I am many people from many nations. I speak twenty-one languages. I’ve lived two hundred and eighty-three lives.”
My heart sank. “Two hundred and eighty-three!” My prospects of ever moving on to an eternal reward were just folly. I didn’t want to think about it. “How long did it take all of you to find each other?”
“I couldn’t venture a guess. Centuries. We’ve selected natural landforms around the world where we try to reconnect with each other whenever we return. Devil’s Tower, Niagara Falls, Delicate Arch, to name a few. The network helps us to know what other people’s answers are to the question of purpose in life. It’s like having 135 tries at a time instead of just one.”
“I only counted seven of you.”
“Most of us are gone, living other lives. Some may be waiting for us at one monument or another. Maybe one of them has finally found their reward. I’ve never seen it happen, but there’s no way to really know unless they stop showing up for a century or two. Even then, you can’t discern whether or not you simply never crossed their path again. You are welcome to join us. What says your card?”
I showed it to him. He winced. “Sorry friend. You’ll want to try something else.”
I wanted to tell him I didn’t care. Maybe the others had worded their answers differently in some minuscule, insignificant little way. What proof did we have that this so-called eternal reward even existed? We were taking the word of message boards controlled by demons. It was all a big lie. They were laughing at us. There was no reward. Our cards could just as well be written in gibberish.
I saw that the man did not care what I thought or did. I finally shook my head, ripped up my card, and let the pieces flutter to the sea far below us.
“What’s on your stupid card?” I snapped.
Simon chuckled at my anger. “I have been focusing on some of the less-populous eastern religions. I spent two lives as a Hindu, so I gave that one a try. Right now, I am feeling good about this religion.” He held up his card so I could read it.
I grinned. “Good luck. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but what do I know?”
“I am trying a new tactic as well,” he said. “It occurred to me recently that maybe it is not just what is written on the paper that matters. Perhaps you have to be sincere. Rather than just stating the purpose of life, you must actually believe that what you wrote is the purpose of life. Live it. Feel it. Believe it.”
His words made sense, but the ramifications of it made me angry. If he was right, almost any previously-delivered answer could have been the right answer. The people simply might not have sincerely believed in their answers. I really wished he hadn’t told me that.
I was about to tell Simon how much I now hated him for saying it when Fran, a Norwegian girl to my right, suddenly grabbed my arm. She yanked me downward so hard I thought she had gone nuts. I soon realized what was going on. We were losing altitude.
“Mountain range ahead,” Bill yelled as he pointed toward the horizon before us.
“Typical,” I said as I shook Fran’s grip off and focused all my attention on speeding forward.
It made no difference. The demons had flicked a switch. Flying was off the menu. I groaned as I dropped, realizing furiously that I would likely drown and wake up back on that same old stupid island.
My companions splashed into the water in turn. Finally, I joined the bath. I could not swim. Deep below the surface of the water, I flailed around, grasping for someone, anyone to save me. I would have latched on to Bill’s leg had he not disappeared the moment I swung to grab him. Maybe I could breathe under water. It would be no less strange than flying. Stupid mistake. Struggling to breathe, I climbed desperately toward the surface. Then all went dark. A bright light flashed.
665 years have passed since that day. In all those years, I met up with only one of those seven people again—Bill. I came across two other people however, of the 135 that belonged to Simon’s network. I established my own network of people on the island. There were only 146 of us, although no more than half a dozen were around at any one time. One of them was the Hispanic woman I first met on the island, Cassandra. She had lived her original life in Columbia. Like me and most of the other souls I met, she no longer put any value on who she used to be. The witnessed lives were often better.
In those many years, I had lived as a Confederate soldier in the American Civil War. I experienced life as a woman twelve times. That certainly opened my eyes. I lived one life as the girlfriend of a criminal in 1870s Australia. I endured another as a farmer’s daughter in Elizabethan England, and another as a Mormon pioneer woman in Cedar City, Utah.
Regardless of how much suffering I endured, awakening from a life tortured me much more. After my fifth life, I made it a point to commit suicide at least once after every death. I picked a spot at the peak of the highest cliff on the west side of the island and threw myself off. Sometimes I did it more than once. It didn’t make any difference really. I just woke up on the same detestable beach. Yet, somehow, even that few seconds of escape made me feel a little better.
I only made it off the island once. Flight became possible again for several days a few centuries ago. That time I didn’t waste time chatting with people. I just rocketed at full speed all the way across the ocean. After about a week, I made it to a tropical version of North America where I met people who had known Simon, including Bill. Like me, no one had seen Simon in over 650 years. I explored America for about fifteen years until the Earth opened up one night in Arizona and swallowed me up. Poof! Back on the beach.
It didn’t really mean anything that three people other than me had not seen Simon in so many centuries. With Simon’s years of experience, he likely had mastered the art of jumping from one life to the next. And even if he was on Earth somewhere, the odds of running into him were slim at best.
Today however, Cassandra and I made i
t to another receptacle together, along with two other guys and another woman. We all wrote the same answer on our cards. I talked them into using the answer Simon had used the time I met him over the ocean. Taking Simon’s advice to heart, we all agreed to be sincere. We spent several weeks preparing for this day, forcing ourselves to believe. I taught the others everything I knew about the religion Simon had written down. It wasn’t easy convincing ourselves to deeply believe, but we were determined, even desperate, to succeed.
We found the appropriate receptacle jutting straight up out of the middle of a lake. I had built a raft at that lake thirty years previously. We used it to reach the wood-slatted canister. I had never felt so confident about our prospects. It was going to work this time. I just knew it. I gazed at Cassandra for a moment, wondering if I would finally feel something for her when we arrived at our eternal reward.
We planned to deposit our cards with the exact same answer at the exact same time. We mused that maybe it would short out the whole system or something. We each closed our eyes and repeated our answer to ourselves, commanding ourselves to believe it. Finally, we opened our eyes. With forced smiles on our emotionless faces, together we released our cards into the receptacle.
As the card fell from my hand, I glimpsed an old man standing on the shore of the lake. I saw him for only a fraction of a second, long enough to ask myself, is that Simon?
All went dark.
Selections from
The Egress of Hell:
An Epic Poem in Twenty-Four Books
By Edwin Brent Wilcoxson, M.A. (Lit), M.A. (Hist), Ph.D., Litt. D.
(some Time recently deceased)
From “The Prologue”
Ye Gods and Little Godlets! I had thought
This place to roil in umbrous shadow, burn
With everlasting flames beyond all hope
Or comprehension!
I had not thought to greet
Eternal dullness—walls, as eyeless as
Great Samson Gaza-bound in servile sloth;
Unending paths that dissipate with each
Unending breath, trending nowhere, nowhere
Born; thick, glaucous air that chokes and withers—
Dullness, dullness, nothing bright or light
Or white… except one parchment sheet penned
With sloven haste—as if to speak to me
Were waste of time and space and thoughts and words.
A single leaf, translucent as the outmost
Film of skin that mottles morbid flesh:
“For Egress—Simply write a Perfect Poem .”
(Ll. 1-16 of 666)
From “Canto the First”
Of my Captivity in boundless Hell
I sing—or rather shriek!— as though a thousand
Harpies battened on my ectoplasmic
Core were ripping through my essence, starved
For fat and meat and blood-chocked nourishment.
I sing, and as I do I call upon
The ancient, voiceless Gods that once attended
Epic Poetry to aid me in
My thus-far ineffective quest—
To Get me out of Hell! God knows I’ve tried:
Earnest Ballads by the double-score,
Quatrained, heartfelt, broken-hearted songs
Of Love and Loss, Beatitude in country
Lanes, rhymed and timed to excellence—
And to no avail. They earned a memo
Not unlike the first…and I began again.
This time, Sestinas—complex, intricate—
Single, Double, Triple Quatrifold,
Incessant repetons on Death and Hell,
On Justice, Mercy, Love, on Suffering
And Guilt… And Pain— the Pain illimitless
Of standing non-existent hour upon
Non-existent hour at this crude desk
To scratch unworthiness on never-ending
Reams.
The pain… the pain!
Then—wretched—more
And more and more beyond all count in this
Benighted place where Time not only Is,
But Was, and must Become—yet all at once,
All Present, Past; all Future, once-has-been:
Shrill stratum over stratum, till they quash
And suffocate Potential, Faith, and Hope
Without improving Hell. In grief, I turned
To Petrarch’s favored form, his fourteen lines
Of metered verse, with rhyme and constant rhythm
Lush and yet—opposing—capable
Of strict and stern Philosophy. And by
The tens, the scores, the hundreds, I composed
Satanic Sonnets to bemoan, bewail,
Complain, exhort, demand, beseech…in fine,
To end my presence in this damnéd Place,
And in return received one calm command:
“For Egress—Simply Write a Perfect Poem!”
What then was left when else had failed? That last,
That most ambitious, enervating, and
Sublime in all of Poesy: the Epic—
Its majestic sweep; its Fabled Tale; Heroes,
Heroines at once full human, at once
Competitors with Gods Themselves; its Style,
So High and Grand that lesser tongues might only
Look, and speak, and hear, and weep, and wish
(In vain, oh yes, in vain !) that they might merely
Imitate its lowest ranges, foothills
Braced by heights beyond their aspirations,
Forever wreathed in coronets of Fire,
Indwelt by Souls supernal, endlessly.
Of course! The leaden dullness of this Place
Had spread its sluggish tendrils to my brain,
Concealed from me my Task, my Destiny:
That I, an Orpheus Revived, should stand
Before the regnant King of Hell and sing
My freedom, as once Apollo’s Son sang life
For fair Eurydice, should pluck my Lyre and
Draw iron tears down Pluto’s stolid cheek
And make Hell grant what I profoundly seek,
A thing not yet achieved in Prose or Rhyme.
An Epic, then, recounting punishments
Austere, excessive, and unfair for minor
Flaws—no more than foibles , truth be told—
Accountable not mine but of my art,
My talent, genius, and creative grace…
Sufficient to erase my condemnation,
Satisfy my so-obsessive Judge’s
Distorted sense of Wrong and Right. And thus….
To begin, I shall declaim the true Descent
Of those I take—invoke—to guide my Words,
My Muses, some unnamed save by the works
They penned; some named by hallowed names that echo
Through high Halls of Immortality;
All elevate by virtue of their strength
Of line, their grandeur and heroic scope.
One by one, from first to last (that would,
Of course, be me ), none left behind in shade,
I shall recite their greatness and their roles
In shaping wayward human Destiny.
Say first, thou ancient poet who inscribed
“When From on High” and erst gave form to Earth
And Life and Man through lofty Marduk’s power,
Enûma Eliš, whose thousand lines incised
In clay survive—though by whose hand no scholar
Knows—to chant…
(Ll. 1-90)
‘First Teacher’ Homer, in Virtue first, but later
In chronology, the first to sing
The ancient tales of Greece, and thence to mold
Great Thoughts, through Greater Rome and yet beyond,
The first to sing Achilles’ manic wrath
And Trojan desolation obligate…
(Ll. 5,420-5,426)
From �
��Canto the Fourth”
Mantuan Virgil wrote in perfect verse,
Or so assert staid, bearded scholars from
The Renaissance, who firmly—resolutely—
Brought deadly polish to the living mode,
Obstructed it with “Thus ye must!” and “Thou
Shalt not!” until it seemed as fat and scant
Of breath as I perceive myself to be
In Hell—but that empyreal Poet, Master
Of all Masters-Yet-to-Be (except
For… no, since modesty forfends!) refused
To see perfection in his final Tale,
Instructed that pious Æneas and his ships
And men redeemed by Fate from Troyan fires—
And all his hopes of founding beyond his death
The Glory that was Rome—he, noble Poet,
Gave commands, and all smiles stopped together
When his Testament condemned his words to flames
For want (the tales tell) of proper vowel-quantities
And metered dance. He knew well enough. Now all
That I must do is to out-Virgil Virgil.
But think! before the mighty Bard
Dared touch his pen to scroll, before he dared
Approach the August Majesty of Homer’s
Legacy, he first composed his simple
Shepherds’ songs, Bucolics named, to learn…
(Ll. 89-113)
From “Canto the Sixth”
To that ancient Isle, from Geatland,
The doughty champion, Beowulf, impelled
His way to meet his tri-fold Destiny—
Grendel, huge of bulk and appetite,
Who slaughtered thirty warriors, just to fall
Before the might of one whose robust grip
Equaled in its strength a matching sum;
Grendel’s Dam, so thirsting for revenge
That she must kill her offspring’s slaughterer
