Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife

by Mick Farren

  Round and round and round we spun.

  A gold telephone materialized out of nowhere on the balustrade of the terrace, right next to a dead cartoon bluebird. For fifteen seconds, it did absolutely nothing, and then, exactly on the sixteenth second, it rang. Aimee was so taken by surprise that she didn’t immediately answer it. No less than four of the double-time European-style rings went by before she finally picked it up and tentatively put it to her ear.

  “Hello.”

  All around her, Heaven had continued to deteriorate. The sky was now a perpetual slate gray. The once-lush lawns were sere, brown, and dead. The trees had lost nearly all of their leaves. The lake had turned oily and polluted and every day more dead fish floated amid the greasy green scum on its surface. Increasing numbers of cracks and structural faults had appeared in the once-pristine buildings and window glass constantly and mysteriously shattered. Strange and sinister Santa Ana–style winds came in from the mountains and whipped up vortices of garbage and dead leaves, and threatening black smoke rose from beyond the same mountains from invisible fires that never ceased burning. To add the final insult to this catalogue of environmental injuries, the young women who had once danced by the temple on the Maxfield Parrish headland now spent their time consuming a diet of vodka, recreational amphetamines, and quaaludes, and coupling in wanton lesbianism.

  “Who is this? It’s a very bad connection.”

  Aimee had dispatched squads of nuns to do something about these girls flaunting their depravity right under her nose, but the young women were clever. Whenever the nuns were spotted, they simply ran off into the hazy mid-distance over which Aimee now had little or no control, a less-than-stable area into which the nuns were loath to follow them. As soon as the nuns gave up the chase, the young women would reappear and, once again, start disporting themselves, large as life and twice as obscene. Since the establishment of her Heaven, Aimee had never ordered the crucifixion of a woman, but in the case of these dirty and insolent little bitch perverts she would have happily made a precedent-setting exception—had she been able to catch them. Unfortunately, they proved totally uncatchable.

  “Semple? Is that you? You sound so far away.”

  Her own physical condition was on an exact par with the state of affairs in Heaven. She was plagued with respiratory problems and stomach pains, and in the last few days, each time she brushed the golden tresses of which she had always been so inordinately proud, she found the bristles of the hairbrush filled with alarming quantities of dead hair.

  “You’ll have to speak up. I’m having a lot of difficulty hearing you.”

  Perhaps the worst of the slings and arrows to which she had become heir since Semple’s departure was the awareness that her nuns were moving ever closer to a state of mutiny. Even as she tried to make sense of the mysterious phone call, half a dozen of them stood in a watchful, conspiratorial group whispering among themselves, eavesdropping, their expressions not unlike those of a pack of carrion scavengers waiting for the prey to die. If it hadn’t been for her ability to keep conjuring Prozac, she would have given up and returned to the pods long since.

  “What are you trying to tell me? You’re bringing someone to do what?”

  The nuns were edging nearer. The arrival of the gold phone was an occurrence so out of the ordinary, they weren’t able to contain their red-nosed curiosity.

  “You’re bringing Him? Are you serious? Him? I’m telling you, Semple, things are not good here. I don’t have the reserves or the energy to put up with any of your nonsense. If this is some joke, it’s in extremely poor taste and—”

  Aimee was suddenly paying such undivided attention to what her sibling was saying at the other end of the crackling phone line that, for the first time in what seemed like an age, she had momentarily forgotten the decaying world around her, the resentful plotting nuns, and even her deteriorating health.

  “Yes, yes, I realize you can’t say whether he’s authentic or not. Right at this moment, even a low-rent replica would help matters a great deal. Just as long as he has some kind of power. He’s been living where?”

  Now Aimee really couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “Just tell me this isn’t one of your elaborate hoaxes. Just please tell me that.”

  She knew credulity might be the product of a truly desperate hope. She wanted to believe Semple so badly. “You want us to wind-walk you in?”

  Maybe her sister really was on the level.

  “Yes, yes, I think we can do that. In fact, I’m certain we can do that.”

  What made her inclined to believe Semple was that she could already feel energy flowing into her. Even through the phone, even at an incredible distance, contact with Semple was reconstituting her strength. The possibility would very soon have to be faced that she and Semple might well be indivisible—that the bad fueled the good, that the light was only possible because of the darkness. Except that Semple sounded as though she were suffering no diminishment in her powers as a result of their separation. In fact, she sounded healthy and dangerously energetic.

  “I’ll have to put the phone down and talk to the nuns about it. I won’t hang up. I’ll just put it down and go and talk to them. Hold on. Don’t go away.”

  As Aimee’s energy increased, her Heaven began brightening before her eyes. The gray of the sky was slowly transformed to a faltering azure. The dead bluebird beside the phone twitched a leg, flexed the claws of one foot, stirred, then sat up. It staggered groggily to its feet and attempted a hoarse whistle. Aimee walked purposefully to the surly crew of nuns, who were looking around at these sudden changes in some surprise. Best to hit them when they were off balance.

  “I need you women to do something for me right now. I want you to quickly form a circle.” They looked at her as though she were mad, but her rekindled air of authority was enough to move them. To speed them along, she clapped her hands like an impatient gym teacher. “Come along, hurry up. Everyone link hands and concentrate. My sister Semple’s is returning with a very important visitor and we have to locate her and wind-walk her in.”

  One of the nuns, a malcontent barracks-room lawyer of a girl who had started out in Doc Holliday’s whorehouse and had once been called Trixie, but had changed her name to Bernadette when she took her vows and donned the habit, seemed about to make some kind of protest. Bernadette was a potential leader of mutineers if Aimee had ever seen one, and Aimee quickly cut her off. “There’s no time for any discussion. Just do it, please.”

  To Aimee’s relief, Bernadette shut her mouth and grumpily took hold of the hands of the nuns on either side of her. “Just stay like that. I’m going to tell Semple that we’re ready.”

  As she hurried back to the gold telephone, a miraculous rainbow appeared above the mountains. The maidens on the headland stopped their carnal cavorting and stared at it in sheepish awe. Aimee picked up the phone. “Very well. We’re ready.”

  She was actually daring to hope that things might really work out for the best.

  Jim was in a padded cell. Had he said something about a wombentombed fetus? This was close. And not only was he in the padded cell, but his arms were pinned by a strait-jacket, and they kept turning the lights on and off for random irregular periods, presumably in some totalitarian attempt at full-scale psychological disorientation. The second time they tried it, Jim had furiously yelled at them, “Don’t try the KGB shit on me. It won’t work. I took too much acid way back when.”

  And yet, during the periods of darkness, Jim could clearly see a single red glowing eye peering through the peephole in the door. Jim had assumed that he’d been tossed into this illusion of stained quilt walls and catatonic boredom because of Dr. Hypodermic’s fit of pique after Jim had announced he no longer feared him. That didn’t explain, however, why the red eye fixed him like a laser in the darkness.

  “You didn’t tell me you were bringing a goat.”

  Mr. Thomas’s expression became chilly and offended. “You have so
mething against goats, madame?”

  Although everyone was trying to pretend otherwise, the McPherson sisters’ reconciliation was decidedly odd. Semple, Jesus, and Mr. Thomas had materialized in a fairly conventional shimmer in the center of the circle of nuns. Jesus, who was quickly revealed to have both an act and agenda of his own, immediately bowed low to Aimee. “I know it’s you I have to thank for sending these good nuns to the rescue, Mother Superior.”

  Aimee had looked a little flustered. “I’m not the Mother Superior, my Lord. I’m—”

  “But you are infinitely superior. I can see that at first glance.”

  In fact, it was the nuns who were exchanging glances, and, as Semple saw it, with good reason. Semple hadn’t often witnessed flattery that so bordered on toadying. Jesus had also managed to make some fairly drastic and theatrical transformations in himself during the period of the wind-walk. While Semple had come through still in her tired superheroine costume and Mr. Thomas, too, was exactly as he’d been when they’d left the tumor, Jesus had somehow replaced the Nikes, goggles, and purple toga with a dazzling white robe, complete with a gold tie belt and matching sandals, and a realistic bleeding heart on its breast. He’d even organized himself a garish multicolored halo, straight out of a Russian Orthodox icon. Semple considered this overdoing the accessories, but Jesus appeared to be in overdoing-it mode. Back lifeside, arrant fawners had buttered up Aimee with a lickspittle abandon, but they paled in comparison to the blarney job that Jesus was giving out. The faux messiah was laying it on with a trowel, and, worse than that, Aimee was lapping it up. In fact, she was so carried away by the Christcharm that she acted decidedly offhand with the other two arrivals. First she put Mr. Thomas’s nose out of joint by treating him like a mere domestic animal; then she’d moved on to Semple, looking her up and down and inquiring with a scathing edge, “What is it that you’re wearing, my dear? Isn’t it a bit extreme, even for you?”

  Semple scowled and slowly surveyed Heaven. Despite the recent general upswing, the signs of decay were still very much in evidence. “Since I appear to have pulled your chestnuts out of the fire, sister dear, I’d really recommend being a little pleasant to me by way of gratitude.” She nodded in the direction of Jesus. “You have no idea what I’ve been through to bring him here.”

  Aimee arched an eyebrow. “I may have more idea than you imagine.”

  Semple shook her head. “No, dear. You may think you do, but believe me, you really don’t know even a fraction of it.” She gestured to Mr. Thomas. “And if you ever speak to him disrespectfully again, you’ll have me to reckon with. He has powerful literary credentials.”

  Aimee stared at the goat and the goat stared right back at her. “She’s absolutely right. I have powerful literary credentials.”

  Jesus quickly stepped in, seeking to gloss over the building sibling confrontation. “Come, now, girls, let’s not have a petty squabble. Not when the two of you have just been reunited.”

  Both Aimee and Semple turned and, as one, looked daggers at him. “Let’s get one thing straight before we go any further. Whatever happens while you’re here, don’t ever try to get between us.”

  “Our quarrels may be a lot of things, but they are never petty.”

  The nuns glanced covertly from face to face as an embarrassed silence ensued. It might have gone on for a great deal longer had not Jesus proved that, in his determination to insinuate himself into Aimee’s Heaven, he’d assumed the emotional skin of a rhinoceros. He stepped up next to Aimee and took her by the arm. “If you’re not too tired from assisting us in the wind-walk, perhaps you’d like to give me the fifty-cent tour.”

  Knowing him better, Semple would never have bought this act, but Aimee immediately melted. “Of course, my Lord, I’d be honored. The sooner you see what the problems are, the sooner we can get started putting them right.”

  Jesus smiled. “I can’t wait to be working with you.”

  Over Aimee’s head, he shot Semple a don’t screw-things-up warning, and then he and Aimee walked away along the terrace, trailing bemused nuns behind them. Both Semple and Mr. Thomas decided to forgo the grand tour and remained right where they were. The goat thoughtfully watched the others depart. “I don’t trust those nuns.”

  Semple nodded in agreement. “The sight of Jesus has temporarily confused them, but if she doesn’t play this really carefully, they’ll be at her throat pretty damn soon. At least, that’s my reading of it.”

  Mr. Thomas nodded. “I think your reading is right on the money, girl.”

  Semple went to the edge of the terrace and looked out across the lake. “I never did like this place. In fact, I think I’ll head out to my own happy hunting ground.”

  Mr. Thomas examined one of his hooves. “Might there be something to drink in your hunting ground? A liquid trifle to enhance the happiness?”

  Semple grinned. “Believe me, pal. I have a lot to drink in my little kingdom.”

  “Enter bearing whiskey? That’s an unusual one even for you, isn’t it?”

  Dr. Hypodermic came through the door of the padded cell carrying a bottle with no label that was filled with a dark amber liquid. “It’s not whiskey, it’s hundred-proof rum.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “I thought you might be in need of a drink.”

  “Damn right I’m in need of a drink.”

  Dr. Hypodermic leaned over Jim and began to unbuckle the strait-jacket. Although Jim was pleased to see the bottle of booze, he made it clear to the Mystère that he was more than marginally pissed off. “You want to tell me something?”

  Hypodermic pulled off the strait-jacket. “What’s that?”

  Jim flexed his cramped arms and shoulders. “What’s this padded cell routine all about? More negative reinforcement?”

  The Doctor pulled the stopper from the bottle, took a hit, and then offered the bottle to Jim. “Here, drink this, mon ami. It’ll put you in a better mood.”

  Jim went on massaging his shoulders and stretching his back. “I’d be in a lot better mood if I hadn’t been stuffed in a fucking strait-jacket. Do you intend explaining what that was all about?”

  Hypodermic held the bottle under Jim’s nose. “Just drink.”

  Jim took the bottle. The bouquet of the rum was highly seductive, but he hesitated before drinking. “This isn’t going to whisk me off to some brand-new Zen hallucination, is it?”

  “It’s nothing more exotic than straight booze.”

  Jim shrugged, not quite believing Hypodermic, but knowing he had little alternative. He put the neck of the bottle to this lips and discovered, as the raw fiery liquor hit his throat, that his skepticism was well founded. With an electric click and a blinding ultrawhite flash, the padded cell vanished. For a few seconds Jim was blinded by colorful retinal floaters, but as they faded he saw that he and Hypodermic were sitting, if not at the same midnight Crossroads where Long Time Robert Moore had started him on his encounter with the aliens, certainly at one that was very similar. The surrounding fields were covered by so many crop markings, they resembled graffiti in a barrio. By way of an extra nose-thumbing reminder, three Adamski saucers cruised silently across the sky in a triangular formation.

  Jim looked long and hard at Dr. Hypodermic. “I can’t trust a word you say, can I?”

  The Doctor grinned broadly. “Absolutely not.”

  Semple opened the liquor cabinet for Mr. Thomas. “Help yourself.”

  “That’s the problem. I can’t help myself. The hooves, you know. That’s partially why I had myself reincarnated as a goat in the first place. So I couldn’t pour the sauce for myself, if you see what I mean.”

  Semple looked surprised. “I don’t usually act as bartender in my own domain.”

  Mr. Thomas looked unhappy. “Then we have an impasse?”

  “Not really.” Semple picked up a small bell from a side table and shook it so it tinkled musically. Almost immediately a butler entered. “You rang, my lady?”

&
nbsp; “Indeed I did, Igor. We need drinks to be poured.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Igor glanced at Mr. Thomas. “A gin and tonic, I would assume, sir?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “It was self-evident, sir.”

  “Was it really?”

  Igor was already putting ice in the glass. “Oh yes, sir.”

  The goat blinked. Although Igor was not a hunchback in the strict Frankenstein tradition, he fit the bill in most other ways. Round-shouldered in his black tailcoat, he was little more than four feet tall, and his full enigmatic lips and big sad goldfish eyes prompted comparisons with Peter Lorre. He handed Semple a cognac and Mr. Thomas his gin. “Will that be all, lady and sir?”

  Mr. Thomas thought about this. “Now that you mention it, I am a little peckish.”

  Igor nodded. “I will attend to it straightaway.”

  He left the room, but returned in a matter of seconds with a snack plate of lettuce, thistles, and two copies of Vogue. The goat looked at it delightedly. “That’s wonderful, Igor, my friend, exactly what I wanted. You could have read my mind.”

  Igor bowed modestly. “I did, sir.”

  Mr. Thomas frowned. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

  “Don’t worry, sir. I never pry.”

  As Igor backed out of the room bowing, Mr. Thomas looked up from his plate and glass. “Is he for real?”

  Semple nodded. “Oh yes, I didn’t make him. He just turned up one day looking for a job as a domestic and he’s been with me ever since.”

  “He does what he does from choice?”

  “He’s just a natural seeker after servitude. He’s very good, although now and then he deliberately fucks up. It’s a sign that he wants me to give him a sound ceremonial thrashing. That’s the basic trade-off.”

  “And he’s a telepath?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that too much. When one assumes a role of authority, one has to get used to the fact that no secrets can be kept from the servants.”