Awake in Hell

by Downing, Helen

  AND I almost hit one of the little ankle biters with a giant fucking garbage truck!

  Granted, I’m not quite rushing around the truck. I mean, this is a child, and that is the scariest thing I could possibly have to face at any time, let alone after pissing it off. I’m also concerned, since I don’t know whether or not I hit it. Like I said, I couldn’t have killed it, since it (and all of us) are already dead. However, pain is a very real thing down here. Physical and emotional pain are pretty much stock and trade in the Hellverse. So if I hit the kid, it’s hurt, possibly hurt bad. The good news is, I’m not hearing screaming or crying or an enraged growl, so I’m feeling a little more confident. Then I realize that maybe it’s unconscious. Crap. What if there’s a bloody knocked-out terror waiting for me on the other side of this truck? I move around so that I can see the street but I’m still provided a certain amount of cover from the vehicle. Just in case I need to run. Believe me, you do not want to be standing directly over that small tornado when it wakes up and realizes it has just been run over and you certainly don’t want to be the one that hurt it. But as I turn the corner and take a peek, I gasp at what I see.

  It’s a girl. A very young girl, maybe 3 or 4 years old. Or, I guess she looks to be 3 or 4 years old. She’s blonde with curls that look like she shares a stylist with Little Orphan Annie. She’s fully conscious, fully upright, and seems just fine to the naked eye. She’s standing on the street wearing this tiny pink denim pair of overalls with a shirt underneath the exact same color of pink but with sparkles on it. She’s got a giant red ball that she’s bouncing on the sidewalk and every time it comes back up to greet her tiny little hands she lets out a giggle. It’s disarming for a minute as I try to grasp what’s happening. The little girl is enjoying herself. Then she looks up into the sky. Eyes wide open, like nothing can hurt her. I would love to be able to look up and see what she sees, but I know I can’t because then I’ll be blind and in the presence of a Hell-child. That would be right at the top of the list of things you never want to happen to you. But she’s still smiling. Could she be mad, bat shit crazy from years and years of being in her own version of torment? But she doesn’t seem crazy. She actually seems... well... quite...

  Normal. Like a real kid. But that isn’t possible for a real child to end up here. Could that happen? No. I refuse to believe that there is anything a child could do that would invoke that kind of wrath. Children are innocent, which is part of the reason (I think anyway) that our worst residents come back as them, to somehow honor the one part of their lives when they were blameless. No, this child does not belong here. My hands are trembling and my palms are damp as I come out from behind the truck. I have no idea what I’m doing, what I’m about to do, or whether I’ll be able to do it without peeing my pants.

  “Hey Kid!” I say with just a hint of trembling in my voice. “Are you okay?”

  The girl turns and looks at me. Inside her eyes I see that she is not of this world. She belongs as far away from Hell as she can get. Inside her blue eyes is wonder... over a simple ball being thrown and bouncing back at her. There are a million questions waiting to be asked, and more. There’s something unconditional in those eyes, yet they also seem sad.

  “No-okay.” she says, and begins a small pout. “I want my mommy. I need my mommy!” Her bottom lip starts to tremble, not in a menacing way or an ‘I’m about to unleash the tantrum of the century” way, but like a little girl lost and realizing she’s far from home.

  I walk up to her. “Can I help you find her?” I’m reaching out, hoping she’ll take my hand. Where I would take her after that, I don’t know. I feel an overwhelming need to get this girl away from here, maybe the agency, Deedy’s office, anywhere but here. “Let’s go for a ride in my big truck and I’ll take you somewhere where you can find her!”

  The little girl starts to cry. Not sob, or even cry out loud, but the tears start streaming down her pretty little face. I feel like running and grabbing her, but I can’t move. Her tears are like a barrier between us. I’m immobilized by them. “Stop helping me!” she says with childlike anger. It actually makes me smile a little, her indignance. She bounces her ball once more. Then she bounces it toward me. When the red orb reaches my hands, it disappears. I look up, and so has she — vanished — In thin air.

  What the fuck? “Kid! Where are you?” Why is everybody vanishing on me today? I can’t seem to keep track of a giant Santa, let alone a small, helpless child. “Kid??” I walk up the block calling out for her, more and more frantically. She’s nowhere. Damn it. All I can do is hope that poor little girl is okay... wherever she is.

  As I start to walk back I notice there are full garbage cans lining the street. Isn’t that what I’m here for? Okay, so I pick up two of them and haul them to the truck. When I get there I dump them out into the back where it is already half full (don’t they dump them out every night? Why would you just haul garbage back to the street where you picked it up the day before?) See water pouring off of me onto the ground. I wipe my forehead with the intent of getting rid of the fountain of sweat, but my forehead is dry. I take off one of the enormous gloves that I found sitting in the truck and used my bare hand to feel my face. Those salty droplets were not sweat. They were tears. Fuck me if I’m not crying again! I’ve cried more in the past few days than I’ve done in ages.

  When I first got here the crying was pretty constant. It’s one thing to know that you are dead and will never breathe real air again, have a real body, or whatever. It’s another thing once you realize that you are dead and sentenced to Hell. Sure, there’s the standard shock of THAT realization. Hell. The proverbial place where you used to like to tell people to go, or like to joke about going there yourself... but once you find yourself here, well... needless to say, those jokes aren’t really so damn funny anymore.

  But the thing that really gets to you is knowing you are probably alone in this eternal journey. First of all, there is no one... not the very worst person you ever knew in life... not one person that you actually used the word “Hate” to describe... that you would wish here. You certainly wouldn’t wish it on anyone you loved. The people I loved, including Linda, would probably end up going in the opposite direction when it’s time for them to transition to eternity. I am grateful for that. I’m sincerely glad for them. But that means that I will never get to see them again, ever. That means that when they make their journey I won’t be there to help them along or to stand there with open arms once they arrive.

  And of course, that also means that they have a revelation to make once they get where they are going, the realization that I’m not there. I wonder how that would feel? I wonder if there are tears in Heaven? I wonder if anyone there would shed any for me?

  So anyway, all of that is what helps contribute to the torment of arrival in Hell. That is the reason all of us tend to walk around in a state of teary-eyed delirium for a while. But after a time, who knows how long, all of that starts to meld into a kind of comfort. All the things you knew, the people that made your life worth living, become memories instead of real, live, actual people. There comes a point where you don’t even think of them as real anymore. This is good, because the concept that I have them as memories, and they will never be down here, is the only thing that keeps me functioning.

  So why all the new tears now? Maybe it’s the whole outrageous experience of meeting Deedy, Gabby, and the new surroundings of the job. Maybe it’s the shock of almost hitting a child, or even seeing a child who looks somewhat normal in this environment. Maybe it’s just the overwhelming smell of garbage making me tear up and I should stop analyzing everything.

  But I don’t think it’s any of those things. I felt drawn back to the spot where the little girl disappeared. I feel something about her... her specifically. I feel like I should know who she is and I should have taken better care of her. I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt when I think about her standing there and looking up at me with those big blue eyes and telling me to �
��stop helping”. I stand at the spot and try to see her again in my mind’s eye until the emotions get too heavy for me to bear. I start to cry a bit harder and I can feel sobs beginning at the base of my gut. When they reach the top, I let out just one, then I push it all back, demand it go back in hiding, just for another day or even another moment.

  After all, I have work to do.

  The cans seem lighter now as I pick them up and start to carry them to my truck.

  Is there anything heavier than the burdens we must carry in Hell?

  Chapter Nine

  I have to say that comparatively speaking, this garbage gig is not the suckiest job I could have down here. Obviously, not that I have a lot to compare it to. My only other job, in death and in life, for that matter, was IP&FW. But other than my overactive imagination that keeps telling me that my arm muscles are screaming under the repetitive strain of picking up cans (and what I’ve attributed the whole ‘little girl’ incident to as well), this is really not all that bad. And the best news is that I’ve gotten through my entire shift with only one pit stop and that was an actual restroom. I’m practically cheerful as I hop in and out of my enormous truck going down street after street. I even see the occasional other person and I almost want to wave, unless they are chasing me down the street cursing at me for coming, too early or too late or even on the wrong day. In those cases I usually forgo the wave and replace it with the bird. Nonetheless, all of those things will put me in very good favor with the boss. So overall, it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, boys and girls!

  In fact, I’m borderline whistling as I turn down the last street on what I think is my route. Of course, I can’t be sure since the maps (once I finally dug them out from under the seat) were, as predicted, useless. However, it doesn’t matter, because this is the last street I’m doing today regardless.

  I park the truck and get out and start hauling the last of the cans for the day when I see an old woman approaching me. She looks like one of the ladies my mom used to have over for cake and coffee after church on Sunday afternoon. Her dress is way too big for her and she’s wearing a sweater over it, which cannot be the most comfortable thing out here in this heat, but other than that, it looks pretty much like an ordinary old lady dress. I remember what Gabby was wearing and I think maybe there’s some kind of reward system or something whereby people get less obnoxious clothes over time, or whoever comes up with the nightmare wardrobes each day plays favorites. I also wonder, for the couple of minutes it takes her to make it over to me, what such a sweet-looking old lady could have done to deserve going to Hell. Then of course, I start imagining all the horrific things that old ladies can do to go to Hell. I recalled everything from a story I once read in a national magazine about a 76 year-old woman who had just buried her 4th husband and an autopsy showed rat poison in his system. So, they exhumed all of her previous spouses and damned if she hadn’t poisoned them all. Remembering the fairy tales of my childhood, where there was always a sweet old woman who turned out to be a wicked witch eating children, or passing out bad apples and I figured, ‘You know what? It’s really none of my business.’

  When she finally reaches me, she gives me a smile. I look behind me, just to make sure she’s smiling at me and when I surmise that we are the only two people on the street I turn around and smile back. “Morning.” I say, trying to sound officious.

  “Good Morning! Can I get a hand with some garbage?” she says... not exactly as a question, but polite enough. You know, the way all older people address people younger than they are. As though they are asking for a favor, but they understand that, of course, you are going to do it because they have been on the earth way longer than you. This is the least you can do for them, for living this damn long. That’s how she said it. So, obviously I said “Sure thing!” and followed her. I follow her down the street and when she gets to the end she turns the corner.

  “Actually, ma’am, this street is not on my route. Perhaps someone else is planning to come down here today?” I call after her.

  “Right up here!” she says, as if I had asked her where or how far we were going instead of telling her that this address was not in my trash collecting jurisdiction.

  So I do the only thing anyone could do under those circumstances. I keep on following her. To her credit, she wasn’t lying... it is right around the corner and down a few houses. It’s one of the little cutesy houses that the big glass buildings are built around, part of the illusion of a real city within the abyss. On the outside, it looks a bit weather worn (which is part of the illusion, since the only weather down here is fucking hot) and the paint is peeling, the gutters are hanging and there are more than a few shingles missing from the roof. However, none of that general disrepair compares to the backyard. Fenced in, kind of, by a shabby and broken fence that looks like a dotted line, is quite a lot of space that would have constituted a yard. Except, the entire backyard looks like the back of my truck. There are piles and piles of garbage back there.

  “I’ll need help cleaning this out.” says the elderly woman. And I think to myself, ‘Help? Like how much can this woman be expected to contribute to this process?’ I’m thinking that I might have just been shanghaied into spending the next several hours hauling all this to the truck by myself.

  “I think the National Guard would need help clearing this place out!” I say and she laughs in response.

  “I think if we both put our backs to it, we’ll get it done in no time.” she says, cheerfully.

  How can she be so cheerful? Where does that kind of personal fortitude come from? I wonder again how long she’s been here, and what she’s done. She seems so normal, and “normal” isn’t... well, normal in Hell. I want to ask — to sit at her kitchen table, drink some lemonade, interview her, and come away feeling better about being sentenced to eternal anguish. I want to know that, potentially, after a thousand or maybe a million years I’ll be able to laugh again. But I know I won’t ask a single question. Because to know that this sweet old lady can exist among the iniquitous and vile could mean she’s demented, or after a million years we have no choice but to go mad. Possibly it could mean that some folks come here by accident… that would mean the worst thing I could possibly imagine, the creator does not know, or does not care about us once we are down here. That would extinguish the small flame of hope that meeting Deedy and taking this job had lit within me. So I won’t ask. Instead, I’ll simply say, “Okee doke. Let’s get to it. I’m Louise, by the way.”

  “Thank you Louise. I’m Mrs. Barnes.”

  Then she started grabbing armfuls of trash and carrying them out. She was actually quite strong, despite her “age”. A point that I found a little disquieting after imagining all the terrible things she could have done in life, to end up here, at the end of it. But she was also just so nice... like we were spending the afternoon at a tea party instead of shoveling garbage in Hell.

  “So, Mrs. Barnes, what are you going to do with all this space once the trash is gone?” I asked for two reasons. One, I really wanted to know. I mean, as one of the few residents in the 666 area code to actually get some space, I wanted to know what she was going to do with it. And second, we’d been at it for about three hours at this point and had pretty much cleared it all and I just needed a break. So I sat on the curb and looked at her expectantly while she shuffled over to me to answer my question.

  She reached into her sweater pocket and pulled out a handful of seeds. I have no idea what kind of seeds, but they were all different. Some were small and wispy like feathers and others were big and bulky. Some were small and round like birdseed and others were flat. “What are the seeds for?” I asked.

  “I have no idea!” Her grin was now all the way across her small, wrinkled face. “But I can’t wait to see!”

  I gave her a slight smile back. “How do you know anything will grow here?”

  “I don’t. This is what we old folks call a leap of faith.”

  I wanted to shout
at her. ‘Leap of faith? Lady, you are in HELL!’ But I could hardly bear to look into those cloudy eyes and cause this woman more pain than what she had already suffered. I don’t know and never will know what she’s guilty of, sin-wise, to warrant her being down here with fucktards like me. But I do know that my day was better because I met her, and I will not take any of her hope away.

  “Well then, good luck!” I said instead. “With your chrysanthemums or cucumbers or whatever may come up!” I went back to work and quickly helped her clean the rest. Then, I climbed into my truck and started to pull away.

  “Goodbye, Mrs. Barnes! It was very nice to meet you!” I called out the window as I started to leave.

  “Goodbye, Louise! I hope you are happier today than you were yesterday!” she said, and waved as I sat stunned in the drivers’ seat of my garbage truck.

  Funny. She said the same thing I had said just this morning. Perhaps everyone down here eventually becomes psychic or telepathic or whatever and I just haven’t been around long enough. As I’m driving down the street, back toward the TCC building, I’m thinking about that and about my first day. How I actually feel good. I think, better than I’ve felt since I arrived. Then I try to imagine Mrs. Barnes motley garden, with all kinds of flowers growing somewhere that makes no sense. Suddenly, a memory leaps into my mind like a guest at a birthday party jumping out from behind a curtain to yell “Surprise!”

  Mr. Comegys and I started our weird morning ritual when I was in high school. I had to walk by his flower stand every day on my way there. Yep, I was one of those kids who walked to school. It wasn’t a mile, nor was it uphill both ways. There was very little snow where I grew up, and when we did get even a powder, school was usually cancelled. So, this isn’t going to be one of “those” stories.