The After Life
STARING at the rat, Louis felt the grip of revulsion twist in his gut. The stench of horseshit had become overwhelming the instant Smiggins had entered the room. Flash Freddy was still smiling his salesman’s smile, but he had another thing coming if he thought the CEO of Global Resolutions Network was going to work with a guy like this. It was a goddamn insult. If this scrawny rat as his PA was a condition of becoming IMC, then there was no way in hell he was going to sign the goddamn contract. Wouldn’t even think about it. An eight-figure sum wouldn’t be enough to entice him to the negotiating table.
“I think you’ll enjoy working with each other,” Flash Freddy said, motioning for Smiggins to get closer.
By far the smallest of them, Smiggins was also standing upright, his spine bent like someone three times his age. For some reason, his bony claws were clasping a calculator to his chest. To Louis’ relief, he stayed exactly where he was, keeping the safety of the open door at his back.
“The Boss is staking the future of LeMont International Enterprises on your ability to get along with one another,” Flash Freddy said, hooding his eyes. “He’s invested a lot in getting you here, Mr. DeVille. Had to pull a lot of strings. We wouldn’t want to disappoint him now, would we?”
Louis kept eyeing the revolting critter near the doorway. His navy blue suit and pinstriped tie was identical to his colleague’s, yet beneath it the rat seemed to be wasting away. The jacket sagged over his shoulders like a baggy raincoat, and the backs of the legs hung like two limp flags at half-mast. His tail furthermore, poking out from the seam of his trousers, jerked like a worm stretched unnaturally long and thin in the throes of death. “You injected me with some kind of sleeping drug,” Louis said, rubbing his neck.
The rat sniggered, and like the lizard had done before removed a drug bottle from his inner suit. “For your own protection,” he said, swallowing a pill and pocketing the bottle.
Louis cringed with disgust, wondering just how in hell he expected any respect with such a high-pitched feminine squeal. He’d be buggered before he allowed this goddamn faggot to work as his PA.
Flash Freddy flicked his tongue and licked his lips. “Most new clients don’t handle the transition very well,” he said. “We’ve found it easier for all concerned to induce a state of somnolence when they first arrive. It… uh, kind of lessens the shock, if you know what I mean. You, by the way, are handling the whole thing extremely well.”
Louis glanced at his reflection again, hitching the toga strap that had slipped from his shoulder. The lizard had absolutely no idea how much trouble he had accepting this new image of himself.
“Before The Boss established the protocol of sleep induction, we used to do nothing,” Flash Freddy went on. “We used to let the newbies sort it out themselves, but too many of them went completely nuts.” He shook his head and chuckled at the memory of some or other amusing incident with a newbie. “You wouldn’t believe what some of them did, I tell you. Head banging. Wailing and gnashing of teeth. Fur pulling and self-mutilation. Some are still staring at themselves in the Mirror of Truth as we speak, thousands of years after arriving. As you can imagine, it became a bit of a problem for The Boss.”
Flash Freddy and Smiggins glanced at each other, sharing a private joke. Louis just stared at them. “Thousands of years?” he said.
“Hmm? What? Of course,” Flash Freddy said. “This is the After Life, Mr. DeVille. Or hadn’t you worked that out yet?”
Louis guessed he kind of had. How else could he have turned into a goddamn weasel? It was just… well, he was kind of hoping he hadn’t died so soon. There were still so many things he wanted to do. So many women, so little time. As it was, he now had a whole heap of questions he wanted answering. “How do you know I’m not just having one of those goddamn lucid dreams? I mean, really, look at the two of you. Who’s ever seen a lizard and a rat in a two-piece suit? And what about me? I look goddamn ridiculous in this thing.”
With surprising alacrity, in the time it took Smiggins to snigger, Flash Freddy reached out and plucked one of Louis’ whiskers. “Ow!” Louis said. He flinched and took a step back, rubbing the end of his snout. “Why’d you do that?”
Flash Freddy held the whisker up in front of his face, examining it like a kid would eye the head of a grasshopper he had just detached from its body, then let it flutter to the ground. “Do you feel pain in dreams?” he asked. Smiggins sniggered again. “This is real, Mr. DeVille. The After Life is very real.”
Louis scoffed. “Then where am I? Heaven or hell?”
Smiggins briefly held his eye, then looked away and sniggered. Flash Freddy held out his arm, ushering him to the doorway. “Come now, Mr. DeVille. You’re an intelligent being. You don’t believe in that nonsense, do you?”
Louis didn’t really know the answer to that. He had lived his whole life a goddamn atheist. Thought he had worked out all the answers to life and death and the whole damned universe when he was in his twenties. Life was a jungle, survival of the fittest and all that. You were born, then you died. Whatever happened in between was purely a matter of how much goddamn hard work you put in, sprinkled here and there with a bit of good old-fashioned luck. Anyone with half a brain could see that you came from nothing, and you went back to nothing. Pure and simple.
Except that’s not how things had turned out, had it? There really was something after death. Well fancy that and bugger me. He kept rubbing the dull throb on the end of his snout. Goddamn hippies and religious freaks had it right all along. Who would’ve believed it?
Flash Freddy put his scaly claw on Louis’ shoulder. Louis hitched up his toga again and Smiggins stepped back, allowing them plenty of space to pass. “This isn’t exactly protocol,” Flash Freddy said, “but what the hell, I like you. Why don’t we hit the town and celebrate your arrival in style?”
Louis figured anything was better than sitting in this dingy room looking at his reflection in the Mirror of Truth for a thousand years like some newbie gone catatonic stupid. “Why not?” he said, approaching the door. “But one more thing. How long have I been dead? Just for interest sake.”
Flash Freddy looked over at Smiggins, who immediately punched some numbers on the calculator he had been cradling to his chest. “One hundred and seventy-three years, two-hundred and ninety-four days, eleven hours, sixteen minutes and…”
“Not that long,” Flash Freddy said.
“Not that long?” Louis could feel his eyes bulging out of their new sockets. “I’ve been dead three times longer than I was alive.”
“Eternity’s an awful lot longer. You’ll get used to it. As I said, some newbies take thousands of years to work out what’s going on. You’re doing remarkably well. I can see why The Boss thinks so much of you. You’ve got a smart brain for a weasel.”
Before stepping outside, Louis accidentally kicked something on the ground. It was the scrolled contract, the one with the purple ribbon he had tossed over his shoulder when still wrapped in bandages. He picked it up and handed it to the lizard. “Just a goddamn party invitation. Where’s the Mansion of Many Rooms, anyway?”
Eying it suspiciously, Flash Freddy shrugged and said that he had no idea. He had never heard of the place. He reached inside his inner pocket and removed a Zippo lighter. On it Louis saw the emblem of a lightening bolt striking a laughing lizard. “Sure you don’t want this?” Flash Freddy asked. When Louis nodded, he lit the lighter. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing happened.
“Nothing lasts long around here. That’s the third one this month,” he said, and tossed it away. The Zippo slid across the floor and hit the wall, snapping off its lid. He removed another one from his briefcase, which worked first time. Strangely, the flame that sprang from the flint had that same kind of sick grayness as the light in the room. Even the tortured shadow that leapt upon the wall behind him looked dim and gauzy, like some gothic painting faded to the point of nonexistence.
Louis watched the
scroll burst into sickly gray flames. Flash Freddy then dropped it to the ground and let it burn until nothing remained but ashes. “You’ll let me know if you get any more of these invitations, won’t you?” he said, putting his claw back on Louis’s shoulder. Stepping into the outside tunnel, he flashed his salesman’s grin again. “What say we show you to your hotel before we hit the town? You must be dying to see where you’ll spend the rest of eternity.”
From a chamber somewhere down the tunnel, Louis heard the faint wails and gnashing of teeth of one of the newbies that hadn’t come to terms with who or what they had become. He hesitated, then hitched his toga and continued on. Better get used to it, sonny, he thought, brushing some flaky skin off his shoulder. Eternity’s a long damn time.
PART TWO
CHAPTER NINE
Conduit Number 1
LOUIS followed Flash Freddy along the passageway past many closed doorways and branching tunnels. Smiggins scuttled behind at a safe distance, sniggering and punching numbers into his calculator, barely taking the time to glance up from the goddamn thing. Louis put the rat out of his mind and tried to concentrate on where he was going. It was difficult. Every turn, every twist, brought more of the same, and he soon lost his bearings. Like his room, there were no windows, just the stony walls and the dreary grayness that made it hard to see much further than fifty feet ahead. There was no way in hell he would find his way back if he had to. What’s more, his sense of smell was of no goddamn use to him either; the stench of horseshit didn’t improve no matter what tunnel they took. Flash Freddy and Smiggins seemed completely oblivious to it. He thought of saying something then let it slide, and continued on behind the lizard.
As they went, their footsteps echoed down the passageway, fading away or merging with the muted thuds of a newbie banging his head against the door or wall, or were drowned by his incessant wails. Louis heard no other sounds. He saw no one else, either. It seemed they had the whole goddamn network of tunnels to themselves.
They kept going as they had for over an hour. Not much was said between the three of them, and when they did speak it was brief and hushed. Though Flash Freddy was in the lead, it was Smiggins who had to get them back on course when the lizard took the wrong tunnel or became disoriented at an intersection. They had to backtrack on more than a dozen occasions before the lizard seemed comfortable with where he was.
“Now I know,” Flash Freddy whispered at another intersection, nodding to the right. “We’re almost there. This way.”
Smiggins sniggered and kept punching numbers into the calculator. Not much further on, they entered a massive tunnel. The stench stopped Louis in his tracks, making him gag and bringing tears to his eyes. As before, Flash Freddy and Smiggins were completely unaffected. “Why does everything stink of goddamn horseshit?” he whispered, wiping his watery eyes with the hem of the toga.
Flash Freddy lifted his snout and sniffed the air. Smiggins stopped punching numbers and did likewise. They then looked at each other and shrugged. “You’ll get used to it,” Flash Freddy said, removing a drug bottle from his inner pocket. He swallowed another pill and nodded to the tunnel. “Keep following.”
As with the other tunnels there was not a soul to be seen, and the absence of anyone else seemed to compound its unearthly size. The tunnel was so long Louis couldn’t make out its end in either direction, though when he strained his eyes to the right he swore he could see a faint glimmer of light reflecting off the walls, brighter and whiter than the rest of the grayness around him, like the weak winter sun trying to shine through heavy, gray clouds.
Louis was suddenly reminded of a piece of trivia about the Eskimo language. They apparently had something like fifty goddamn words for the color white, if you could believe it. He supposed that’s what happened when there was nothing but snow to look at all your life. This place was kind of similar. Nothing but grayness everywhere you looked, except there was a difference. He could still discern color. Flash Freddy’s navy blue suit. His green laurel. The whiteness at the end of the tunnel. The color was still there, painted on a background of grayness. The grayness, though, seeped in and made the color dirty. Like a white drape that had collected dust over the years, or a pair of white socks accidentally washed with the darks. Flash Freddy’s suit was still navy, but it was navy-gray. His laurel was still green, but it was green-gray. His toga was still white, but white-gray. All except the bright light at the end of the tunnel, that was. That was still pure.
Flash Freddy, though, began heading in the other direction. In some of the smaller tunnels and passageways, Louis had seen him ducking under a low-lying ceiling or jutting piece of rock to avoid hitting his scaly head. That was never going to be an issue here, not by a long shot. The ceiling was an arching vault so high he reckoned that even if they stood on each other’s shoulders like circus acrobats they would never touch it. In fact, not even twenty acrobats standing on each other’s shoulders would reach it. The tunnel was wide, too, wider than it was high, and he didn’t have to be a goddamn genius to work out that this was the main thoroughfare through this underground maze. All the other tunnels were just tributaries to this, A and B roads connecting onto a major highway.
All roads lead to Rome, he mused, and absently hitched his toga.
“This is Conduit Number 1,” Flash Freddy said, swapping his briefcase to the other claw. He had stopped whispering. “It’s the original tunnel that was dug to accommodate the influx of new clientele when The Boss established the company. As you saw,” and he flicked his head back toward the tunnels they had just passed through, “even this wasn’t big enough to meet the volume of newbies that began arriving. We’re still digging new tunnels. Even then we’re just managing to keep up with demand. LeMont International Enterprises is the most sought after destination in the After Life, you know. You’re lucky to be offered such a high-ranking position. Millions of newbies would kill to have your job.”
Smiggins punched some numbers into the calculator and sniggered. “It’s seems pretty empty for the main tunnel, don’t you think?” Louis said. “If this place is so goddamn popular, where the hell is everyone else?”
“You’ll see,” the lizard said. “First, though, I’d like to show you something.”
Not far up ahead, Louis caught movement out of the corner of his eye and stopped to see what was happening. A rat, not too unlike Smiggins, though maybe a little taller and fuller in the gut (Waistline, dear, it’s a waistline!), and wearing an identical navy-gray suit and pinstriped tie, had just exited the door to a chamber on the other side of the tunnel. Above the door was a wooden sign: CHAMBER OF THE SENSES, that appeared to have been gouged with the tip of an extremely large claw. The other rat sneezed and blew his nose into a handkerchief, then scuttled away, soon melding into the arching grayness of Conduit Number 1. As they approached the doorway, Louis could hear other sounds on the other side, like muffled voices, as though a crowd a thousand-strong were talking all at once. Flash Freddy opened the door and gestured for him and Smiggins to enter.
Hesitant, Louis walked into what he initially thought of as a large cave, looking down on it from up high on an observation landing of some sort. The gray light was the same as elsewhere. So too the goddamn stench of horseshit, which, despite Flash Freddy’s assurances, he knew he would never get used to. What was different from elsewhere was the incessant mumbling. People or animals, or whatever they were down there, droning on and on and on like his goddamn wife and her good-for-noth’n sister, all of them talking over the top of each other. Not one of them seemed to stop to take a breath, and he knew that if he had to stay here much longer the monotony would drive him half crazy. Right up these goddamn rocky walls, in fact, Louis my boy.
The other two entered just after him, but he wasn’t paying much attention other than what was happening down below, so when Flash Freddy accidentally nudged him with his briefcase he was thrown off balance and pushed forward. Although there was plenty of room for more than a dozen or s
o on the landing, there was no guardrail, and for a fleeting moment he feared he would be sent sprawling over the edge. He let out a squeal of fright and snatched at the lizard’s arm, hanging on for his life.
“Careful now, Mr. DeVille,” Flash Freddy said. He had a glint in his eyes. “You don’t want to fall down there.”
Louis quickly recovered himself. From this proximity, he could see tiny flakes of skin scattered over the lizard’s shoulders, like talc. He let go of Flash Freddy’s arm and hitched his toga, then inched his way to the edge of the landing and glanced over. There were no steps or ladders as far as he could make out. The chamber was more like a pit that had been dug with the explicit purpose of detaining dangerous criminals or terrorists than a natural cave eroded with the wind and rain. The walls were plastered with scratches up to a level just over the heads of the crowd. The demarcation between the scratch marks and the virgin wall above was as stark as a high watermark on a dockyard jetty, but not all the scratches were the result of the prisoners’ desperate attempts to claw their way out of the pit. Some were graffiti.
NOW THAT YOU CLAIM THAT YOU CAN SEE, YOUR GUILT REMAINS, he read on the closest wall. It was written well and truly above the demarcation line, the parting message to those below from someone who had managed to escape. There were others, too, hovering above the sea of scratches like seagulls gliding above the surface of the ocean. I SEE WHAT I BELIEVE. Most were too far away to read clearly. He could make out one other, though. I WAS BLIND AND NOW I CAN SEE. Yet it was the mass of bodies crowding the floor that struck him more than anything else.
“How many are down there?” he asked, raising his voice over the mumbling.
Flash Freddy dusted his shoulders and looked over at the rat. Smiggins was keeping a safe distance from the edge of the landing near the door. He punched in some numbers into his calculator, and said, “Forty-five thousand, seven hundred and thirty-four.”
DeVille's Contract Page 7
