Awake in Hell

by Downing, Helen

  After my initial diagnosis, everything just sort of slowed down for me. Not because I was immobilized by being sick, but I felt the need to take a step back and become an observer in my own life. I remember reading the occasional book or article in a magazine, or seeing someone on Oprah or the Today Show who said that it took finding out that they were going to die before they started living in the moment. It was just the opposite for me. I had always lived in the moment. Figuring the future would work itself out, or maybe on some level I always knew I didn’t have a future. Living in the present is fast, because a moment is gone the instant it arrives. So, to truly live in the moment is to be a bit crazed, a little manic, a frenzied, harried, hapless person who, like the Fool in the tarot deck, is walking blindly toward a cliff with a smile and a song. This day was much different. The day that I went into the doctor’s office, sat down, and played with my prosthetic bra so that I could scratch the scars underneath without it being too noticeable. The doctor told my mom that she might want to wait outside while he discussed some important new information with me privately. Everything just kind of paused. The universe took a deep breath, drew back, and punched me right in the gut.

  From the moment the doctor said “Terminal” to me, I never, ever caught my breath again.

  From that point on, everything started moving frame by frame. I could finally stop and see my surroundings. I could hear my own heartbeat. I could smell the fear in everyone around me. I wasn’t living in the moment anymore, I was trying to survive it. That’s a whole different kettle of fish.

  So, anyway, that’s how I died. I do not recommend it. I suggest that if you are shopping for a way to die, pick during a nap when you’re old and gray, something tragic and sudden like getting hit by a train, or spontaneous combustion. But of course, very few of us get a chance to pick how to shuffle off the mortal coil.

  Speaking of choosing how you die, the whole “suicide guarantees you a ticket to the lake of fire” myth? Is just that — a myth. From what I understand, everyone that ends up here is here because of how they lived, not how they died. Oh, and I haven’t seen anything that looks even remotely like a lake since I got here. Just a little piece of FYI to make the price of admission worthwhile.

  Chapter Three

  All right, so I said I would not go home until I had secured employment somewhere. However, this is, quite literally, Hell and job hunting sucks ass in the best of circumstances. It stands to be concluded that down here it is outright torture. It’s not even noon yet and I’m already over it. I stood at the counter and filled out an application at all three coffee shops. Primarily because I wanted to go check the bulletin boards at the other two shops for one of those temp agency slips. The other two did not have one on their boards, which leads me to believe that the one that was on mine might be old. Hopefully, they still have some placements left. I looked into the distant skyline and saw the government buildings where just the commute itself would take up half my day. Then I turned around and looked behind me at the mammoth chain stores, filled with discount crap that usually falls apart from the strain of taking it out of its packaging. I can’t work at these places. Especially now that I know that there might be some sort of redemption clause that I hadn’t heard about before. How can anyone sit in front of a luncheonette that serves cat food on toast, with a small tin cup, begging from people who didn’t give a damn about humankind when they were alive, after they find out that there might be a remote chance of getting out of here? But, since openings at a place like that get filled as soon as they are vacant, and since there’s always way more people in Hell than jobs, I’m starting to sweat for reasons other than the temperature outside. Good jobs are always at a premium. I mean, that’s part of the problem with working in the afterlife -- no one retires, no one dies, and no one moves....at least not anyone I’ve ever met.

  Not that I’ve met a whole lot of people here.

  Quite frankly, despite my incredibly full social calendar in life...I’ve been a bit of a wallflower in death. I haven’t adjusted well. Even though, I’m pretty sure (like I said, time means nothing here, especially when you’re facing eternity...) that I’ve been here for a while. I’m sorry, but does it matter if I’ve been here for a year or 100 years? I can take my sweet old time to get used to the idea that I was apparently such a turd-monkey that I warranted going straight to Hell for the rest of time itself!

  When I first got here I thought I was still alive. See, I don’t remember the actual act of dying. I remember the whole cancer thing, and I remember my Mom and Dad at the kitchen table with Power of Attorney papers and other legal shit that they kept shoving in front of me and I kept signing. They could have handed me a million dollar check and I’d have just signed it and pushed it back across the table to them at that point. I was still numb.

  I remember the Doctor saying that my cancer has metastasized despite the mastectomy and had now invaded several lymph nodes and a few other required organs. He said I had six months to a year, and I remember the day that marked the 6 month anniversary of that meeting. I don’t remember what we did, but I do remember going to bed that night thinking “From this point on I’m on borrowed time.”

  I remember lying in a hospital bed surrounded by people. I can’t really remember who was there, and I find it fascinating that my mind has the impression that there were a lot of people around me. I mean, how many people are you planning to have at your death bed? Even today, I’m thinking three people tops, and I was young and quite popular (if I do say so myself). Yet my cloudy brain won’t show me faces but gives me the impression that there were more. I see my Mom standing over me, and she’s talking but I can’t hear what she saying. Then “fade to black”, as the movie people say.

  And, sorry if this part ruins some great fantasy, but there was no tunnel, or doorway, or bright light. There was no floating above my body or watching my own funeral. There was no giant pearly gates (for obvious reasons), nor was there a trial, a judgment, or a sentence. Just dark and quiet for a while, then I woke up here. Not in my apartment, though. I woke up under an overpass outside of town. I had to walk for what seemed like forever and the whole time I was thinking “who in the fuck lets a dying girl fall asleep outside on the side of a road?”

  What’s weird is that I can remember every single detail of some random Saturday when I was 20 years old, and I can remember every single gift I received for my 30th birthday. I know that I was 43 years old when I died, but I can’t remember turning 43. It seems the closer I got to my doom the more my brain started to purge important details. Either that or I had successfully killed enough brain cells at that point to be legally retarded.

  Once I reached town I knew I wasn’t in Kansas (or any other state) anymore. There were huge skyscrapers, and it was all glass, and the heat was intolerable. Everyone around me looked like they were leaving or on their way to the worst costume party ever thrown.

  I walked until I was about to buckle from heat stroke (or so I thought... again, still thinking I’m alive...) that’s when I came upon the gargantuan IP&FW building. I looked across the street and the opposing glass facade reflected the entire IP&FW building, so much so that it obscured the reflective building’s identity. I entered the officious building and was offered employment, after being told I was dead.

  Oh yeah, and after that, they let me in on that I was naked and issued me a mohair spa robe infested with body lice.

  Funny enough, they never actually had to tell me where I was. Even the dullest knife in my mother’s entire baby-proofed kitchen would have figured that one out.

  So, I have no idea how crowded the church was when they laid me to rest. I will never know if Matt, the guy that once kidnapped me and held me hostage in his house for three days begging me to marry him showed up. Or my high school sweetheart Bo, who once took a possession rap for me when we were caught smoking weed behind the gym and yelled “WAIT FOR ME, DARLING! NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES!” as they were carting him off to Juvey
. He was only there for like twelve hours and when he got out there was a line of little gangster groupies waiting to suck his dick. So other than the occasional Christmas card in later years, I never heard from him again. That was the first of a long line of men in my life who never learned how to turn down strange.

  Anyway, back to the funeral. See, I’m lying in bed, totally nude since the heat is so oppressive I can’t even stand a sheet on me, and even if the magic closet provided pajamas who would want to wear them? I don’t care what anyone from Nevada, or New Mexico, or Florida says...you can’t get used to the heat when it’s 198 degrees outside. But, lying in bed, naked as a jaybird, covered in sweat, smack dab in the middle of Hell is NOT the place to start reminiscing about men, so I had to cut the whole “hall of fame” thinking short. See, masturbation is not possible down here. I don’t know what they do to us; drug our food, lobotomize us while we are in the void, or maybe it’s because our bodies aren’t real...they are just constructs our minds create so that we can walk around and touch stuff. But some things, you can’t touch... not effectively anyway.

  So, I spend most evenings waiting for sleep to overcome me by imagining my funeral one more time. Sometimes it’s in a church, sometimes by the gravesite, sometimes it’s weird and futuristic and I’m in a spaceship airlock getting jettisoned into the starry night. Once I imagined a funeral pyre and every asshole that ever walked out on me was forced to throw his ass on it. Now that was a great funeral.

  In reality, I’m sure my parents did a quiet service at the local Methodist church, where they were members and I was not. The ladies auxiliary down at the fire hall probably made fried chicken and the Methodist women brought cucumbers and onions, and ambrosia, and green bean casserole. My dad always said that Methodists believe you can’t get into heaven unless you bring a covered dish. Maybe that was it, maybe if I’d just shredded a few carrots into some lime Jello, I’d be playing poker with St. Peter right now. But I don’t think it’s really that simple.

  I’m sure my mom cried buckets of tears at the service. Rev. Dawson used his solemn voice, and told a few stories that sounded very personal, like we were old buddies. Then he’d tell a few lies, about what a good heart I had, and how much I loved Jesus, and now I was dancing with angels. My dad might have even shed a tear at that reference, since it would have reminded him of my 4th grade dance recital. I was supposed to skip across the stage behind Mary Conway, but Mary stopped short because she was so nervous she thought she was going to throw up. So I ran into her and she turned around and was facing me with a greenish look on her face. I screamed to the top of my lungs “Don’t you dare puke on me bitch!” My mom was mortified. Mary was so stunned that she turned and ran off the stage. The principal was scowling while other parents were mumbling under their breath...and in the middle of it all was my Dad...laughing his ass off. To this day, every time anyone says anything about not feeling well or dancing, my dad has the same retort. “Don’t you dare puke on me bitch!” followed by gales of laughter. Whenever he does that bit, my mom does the “my-husband-is-a-doofus” eye roll, which makes her resemble an Armand Marseille doll.

  Linda and Hank were surely sitting with Mom and Dad. Hank is Linda’s husband, and the source of every major fight Linda and I have ever had where drugs and alcohol were not involved. But to be honest, Hank is a nice enough guy and he was probably very handy to have around, what with all the blubbering and stuff. I can’t see Hank crying over my death. Not that we didn’t like each other well enough, but Hank is probably the only person in my life who could see the bright side to my dying. I don’t think he was dancing on my grave, mind you... but he probably was not inconsolable either. Linda and I, on the other hand, have not gone a single day since we were 19-years-old without talking, at least on the phone. Of course, by now she’s probably used to the fact that I’m gone, and who knows? Maybe she even has a new best friend. But, on the day of my funeral, which is every day for me, Linda is still sobbing over my grave and putting a flower on my casket.

  Suddenly, I get a flash of a face very quickly in my mind. It’s a man. Is he handsome? Is he angry? Concerned? I try to grab onto it, try to focus in on him, who he is, but then it’s gone. Like when you hear a car go by and for a split second you hear their radio blasting a song that you love, and you realize that even though the car has been passed, for several minutes the song is still going on in your head. It was weird, like a memory, but not. Like something familiar, but new. It filled me with a sense of panic and, strangely enough, a pang of longing. My construct of a heart starts beating faster, and I suddenly have the urge to either laugh or cry, and I won’t know which until it starts.

  Maybe I should stop thinking now. Since my mind is creating men out of thin air, and my fake body is obviously reacting, it’s probably best to just try and get some sleep.

  Tonight there are no happy dreams. Like of Linda and I driving down a highway in her Mustang, windows down and the radio blaring something that we’d be humiliated if anyone we knew caught us listening to (read: Air Supply or REO Speedwagon). Tonight my dreams were directed by Andy Warhol— all existential and hard to follow.

  There’s this adorable blond child, a little girl with ringlets, stepping straight out of a 1940’s casting room. She’s wearing a blue taffeta dress that has a sash with flowers on it, Blue Bells I think they are called. She’s running away from me in patent leather Mary Janes. She stops every few feet to let me catch up, giggling her adorable little girl giggle. We are obviously playing a game.

  Suddenly I look to my left and there’s a bush with tiny flowers on it that are exactly like the ones on the girl’s sash. I walk over to get a closer look, maybe try and catch the scent of the flowers. Under the bush is a pastel blue egg. But it doesn’t belong there. It wasn’t put there by the bird who laid it. It’s an Easter egg! We are at an Easter Egg Hunt! I look for the little girl and now she’s carrying a basket with several other colored eggs in it. “Look” I say, “Here’s one!”

  She bounces over and picks it up, placing it gently in her basket. Then she looks at me and gives me the cutest little kid scowl and says “Stop helping me!” I laugh and say “Okay, I’m sorry.”

  Suddenly, we are in the hospital where I passed away. I feel the heavy starched sheets under my hands, and I smell that horrible antiseptic hospital smell. She is by my bed, still in her Easter dress. She looks at me and says, “Answer the phone, Louise.”

  “What phone?” I respond groggily

  Now she’s making a phone noise.

  “What?” I’m confused.

  Every time she opens her mouth now, it rings like an antique phone.

  I open my eyes and realize I’ve been dreaming. I also suddenly discover that my face is wet. Why was I crying in my sleep? I try to remember, to hold onto the image of the sweet little girl, but it’s so hard to keep anything in my head with that incessant ringing. The dream begins to fade away, and I try to mentally chase it, but...

  I reach over to hit the snooze button, my daily dose of futility. But the alarm is not going off. Yet still, there’s that noise, that fucking RINGING!

  I sit up and start to look around. It doesn’t take long to take in the entire apartment. It’s what the living would call, ‘an efficiency.’ It’s basically the size of a cubicle in an airport restroom. It’s got a sink with a shelf over it for the single dish, single bowl, and single glass I own. I’m not planning on hosting a dinner party any time soon so why bother with more? There’s an oven that I’ve never turned on, and if you have to ask why you’ve obviously not been paying attention. It also boasts a miserably small bathroom with room for a toilet and a standing-room-only shower that sprays no hot water, yet no cold water. All you get is sort of tepid. And don’t even get me started on the water pressure.

  And then, there’s the closet — room for one outfit that will appear each day. After all those luxuries, there’s enough room left for a small desk (for the computer and the alarm clock), a broken chair, a
nd my bed. I’ve never had a phone here. First of all, who would call me? I’m dead. Not to mention that I’ve worked in a call center since I got to this shithole so, why would I want a phone anywhere near me when I’m not at work? And third,

  Wait...

  I stand up and walk to the far wall of my apartment with my mouth hanging open like a goldfish. “Agape” is the word I think for this expression.

  There’s a mother fuckin’ PHONE on the wall.

  Why is this a surprise to me? After all this time (however long it’s been) I should know that this kind of bullshit supernatural magic crap happens. I should be nonchalant about the fact that all of the sudden there’s a telephone, a really old telephone, with the horn receiver hanging off the side kind of telephone, ringing it’s ass off in the middle of my apartment. But what can I say? I’m stunned. I just keep staring at it, like it’s going to jump off the wall and bite me. It doesn’t.

  It just keeps ringing.

  And ringing.

  Finally my left temporal lobe decides to join the party. Motor skills? Present. Clarity of thought? Accounted for. One of you guys want to reach up and grab the DAMNABLE PHONE? Thank you.

  “Hello?” I say, cautiously.

  “Hello. This is Second Chance Temp Agency!” says an incredibly cheerful female operator. “Calling to remind Louise Patterson that her appointment with us starts in exactly 22 minutes.” Her voice is so perfect it almost sounds recorded.