Part XVIII

 

I opened my eyes.

Darkness. A darkness that felt claustrophobic. The back of my head pounded along to a dull beat of a first-time drummer. It just wasn’t cricket hitting someone from behind.

I had fallen into the empty grave. Had he really buried me alive? Had that even been real?

When you sleep, the dream world is as real as your life.

I tried to move. Without beating around the bush, logic and recent events led me to believe that I was in a coffin. Although is a coffin a coffin while I was still alive? Then would it not just be a bed with a lid?

I pushed away the nonsensical thoughts. I thought about what Bear Grylls would do in this situation, but I wasn’t that thirsty. I squirmed around a little until I managed to pull my arms up to a plank position.

Plank position. That’s a wooden box joke. Ha, ha, ha. I must remember that one. Dammit. Stop it. Focus. Even though I’m alive, I still need to breathe. It would help if I had some cough syrup. Then the…coffin…would stop. Ha, ha, ha. I’m dead funny. FOCUS!

I lifted my shirt over my mouth and nose and started small Bruce Lee one-inch punches at the lid of the coffin. It was a terse battle between skin and bone and wood and nail. I ignored the pain as skin tore and I felt the splintering wood become wet with blood. But it began to give way and all too suddenly, the wood broke open. Downwards under the weight of the soil and dirt that rained down on top of me. I quickly pushed it down towards my feet while simultaneously pushing the broken lid aside and digging upwards. The sense of drowning was overwhelming. I sipped short sharp breaths as I could.

I kept going with eyes closed. I felt myself blacking out. With what I can imagine was the last of my strength, I felt my fingers break through the soil and felt the touch of clean air. With a burst of energy, I clawed my way above the ground and rolled over gasping for air.

Santa Claus really is an evil git. He must die.

I coughed up some dirt.

But he didn’t make sure that I was dead…that was a…grave…mistake. Ha, ha, ha.

My eyes closed.

 

*

I opened my eyes.

I sat up urgently drinking in the air violently. I grabbed at my throat trying to remove an imaginary scarf or tie, but nothing was there. Actually, the air tasted sweet. My eyes adjusted to light and as I calmed down, I felt like I was seeing and breathing for the first time.

I was on a plateau of some kind. Trees and long green grass ran through gentle hills and around trickling rivers and rocks. Flowers of every shade and colour carnivorously ate the landscape making a patchwork quilt of colours. The sky gleamed a contrasting orange against a slowly rising sun. It was breathtaking. I breathed in again, slower, purposefully. The air smelt of a spiced perfume and left a lingering saccharine taste at the back of my throat. My racing mind calmed to a stroll. I looked around again.

The world was beautiful. But there was something wrong with it. It was like I was looking at it through a pair of glasses that wasn’t quite right. That wasn’t quite the way to describe it. The edges of objects weren’t just blurred, it was a gradient blending of colours. The lines looked thick and varnished. As if it had been painted onto a three-dimensional canvas and was doing its best to fit in. It felt alive.

“Ciao.”

How had I let my guard down? Dammit.

I turned quickly trying to stand in what I believed was an ancient fighting stance and not just something I had seen in the Karate Kid. There was nothing to see. The old ring-the-doorbell-and-run routine, hey.

“Come sta?”

The voice was coming from a downward direction. I looked down.

It was a tortoise. Or a turtle. I never did figure out how to tell the difference. However, it was unlike the landscape. It was detailed and delicate, each of its oily green wrinkles showing off in high definition.

“Who and what are you?” I asked still doing my best Ralph Macchio impression.

“Ah you speaka da English,” the turtle spoke, “I am a Koopa Trooper. But my friends call me Scully.”

His accent was dipping in and out of the inkwell of pasta sauce, but it probably took a lot of effort to speak like a plumber.

“And you’re a turtle?” I asked.

“If you say so. I never could figure out the difference between a turtle and a tortoise.”

“What is this place?” I asked.

“Oh, you know what this place is,” Scully said its head slowly turning in its shell.

“Is it a dream? Am I dead?”

“When you sleep, your dream world is as real as your life, isn’t it?”

That sounded like an echo. Or a copy and paste from earlier. This wasn’t getting me anywhere. The world continued to pulse gently as white paintbrush clouds mixed with small swirls of dotted birds.

I was either dreaming or dead. It was probably the latter knowing my luck. Santa had finally gotten his way. I started pacing aimlessly and watched the grass suck in my feet while producing small transverse waves that then rippled into its surroundings.

It hadn’t sunk in. I was dead? A lot of really nice people are dead, I guess. A lot of pretty nasty people too. So, this was it. There was an afterlife. Who would have guessed? Looks like I had made it to the good place. That would make a rare tick on the bingo card of the Captain. Or perhaps the bad place had been really misrepresented. It also suddenly dawned on me that it seemed completely empty.

“Where is everyone Scully?” I asked as Scully was taking a meaty bite out of a nearby Jacaranda leaf.

“I’m right here.”

“I mean everyone else.”

 “I guess they must be around, somewhere,” Scully looked around slowly as if just realising he was in a game of hide and seek, “Anyone is particular?”

A hundred and ten billion dead people and I couldn’t think of a single person I wanted to talk to.

“Of course, she’s here you know,” Scully spat out little green shrapnel as he spoke while busy chewing.

She?

Scully looked at me with a duplicitous look, “You know who…”

Scully was as helpful as a wet fish in a housefire.

I looked around again. There hadn’t been an orientation. A pleasant chap at the gates giving directions or a list of things to do and places to see. A trip advisor post or a Google review would have been helpful. I stood arms akimbo and exhaled with frustration. What are we going to do today? I didn’t have a real destination and the landscape was ambiguous in its portrayal of any landmarks, so I picked a direction at random and started walking.

She?

A lifetime of fighting evil had finally come to an end, with a complete lack of achievement or fulfilment. There hadn’t even been a bell ringing or a fitting banging of a gong. Empires topple as house of cards in a tornado. Great men wither slowly and fade away. Santa though. Santa that evil git! He simply is ever lasting. Present. Always. It was a fruitless task to fight him. I could have lived a life. I could have been a contender. I could have been someone. Instead of a bum, which is what I am.

She?

There weren’t many ‘she’ type people that I knew. None human anyway. And the non-human ones had had a way of ending up dead. But maybe that made sense. Maybe C4 was floating around here somewhere doing dodgy things to the squirrels.

Or maybe?

Maybe the person I had seen in the visions. Maybe the one who was waiting? Definitely maybe. But if she was here, it meant that she was also…

The landscape changed suddenly. Bright greens turned a dull grey. The fiery sun turned the sky awash with an ugly dull orange, and yet the world grew darker. From each step sprang a literal cry.  Voices shouting madly of hope, of peace, of happiness. Resolution and restitution. Words posted into a world without action. Post it notes on the fridge of the universe. The road to hell is, indeed, paved with good intentions.

“Wotcher Captain.” Scully had appeared on the path and had now sported a working-class English accent. “Fancy place you wondered up here, then?”

The fields ahead rolled out in front of me into a burnt ashen carpet, the wind carried a high-pitched squeal. Until I looked again, and I listened again. The field was planted with the damned, some whose faces managed to flower towards the sky, screaming in pain only to drown each other out in a melancholic helplessness.

“I don’t think I have the ability to imagine such a place.”

“Well, it ain’t the pope’s wet dream.”

“Where is God in all of this?”

“Oh, he’s around here somewhere. Probably having a drink wondering why no one truly loves him and feeling sorry for himself.”

I looked at Scully. He seemed to be enjoying himself. He didn’t seem like the company I wanted to keep. I decided to leave him again in a slow and steady way. I played hopscotch with the faces and bodies that grew out of the ground, uttering an apology as I inevitably skipped on a nose or trod on a finger.

The ground evened out suddenly to barren rock. Silence fell like a hammer on a mattress. A dark foreboding house that an advert would call a ‘fixer-upper’ stood sad and alone in the middle of a shallow crater. I walked up to it. I didn’t recognise it, but it felt familiar.

“Knock-knock,” I said as I walked over the entrance door.

A single figure sat in the ruins of broken furniture, dusty paintings and forgotten memories. Her back faced me, she wore a pristine white dress that her hair fell in waves. Only her bare feet seemed to carry the collateral damage of the world that surrounded us.

“Hello?” I said timidly.

She turned.

“Well, well, well,” she said in a raspy whisper.

The figure was still mostly silhouetted but a flash of a halo glitched for a second. She was the figure from my visions. My past, my present…my future? She looked at me for a moment and simply shook her head. She looked at my confusion as I half turned to go. She began to giggle and faint traces of colour began to shimmer around her face.

“Who are you?” I asked, “Are you an elf?”

Her eyes looked deep into mine. A small spark of irritation ignited in her stare.

“I am not that short!” her voice began in the same whisper but gained volume and life with every word.

“Look I’m not one to judge but there’s nothing really put up on the high shelves…”

“What are you doing here?” she interrupted, “You shouldn’t be here. Not yet.”

Colour was seeping into her cheeks, like a flower turning its head to the morning sun.

“I love you,” she said to me.

“Why?”

“No idea.”

I looked at her again and felt the tugging of my heart and soul.

“I guess I can’t help falling in love with you.”

“Wise men say.”

“Who are you?” I pleaded.

“I am Violet.”

She suddenly took my hand, and a fire light the blood flowing in my veins. I felt alive. I felt the shape of happiness. She was a thousand suns burning in a midday sky. She was radiant.

“We need to get out of here,” she said urgently.

“Give me a breather, I just chose hell over heaven just to hang out with you.”

“Don’t be an idiot, this isn’t hell.”

I looked at her for a moment. A seriousness had washed over her.

“Nobody…said this was…hell…Captain.”

The voice was even and plain and I managed to pick out Scully as he walked out from behind a fallen table.

“Croc?” I said hopefully, but I knew it wasn’t. He hadn’t once asked me for weed. Or a beer.

Scully slowly waddled over to the remains of a fireplace.

For a moment the world blurred. Scully began to transform. In that cosmic moment, I saw unlimited faces and eyes, decorated with many celestial ornaments and wielding many kinds of divine weapons. He wore many garlands on His body and was anointed with many sweet-smelling heavenly fragrances. He revealed himself.

“Okay so you are actually just a teenage mutant ninja tortoise?” I asked with some mirth.

Scully had grown to be human sized but was still an amphibian. And now standing up straight was showing off a bit too much of himself to the world.

“Well, fuck,” he said, “Don’t think I read the directions properly. Give me a second.”

“We need to get out of here,” Violet was tugging on my shirt trying to pull me away, but I had to admit I was curious.

A light flashed and faded and this time the figure stood hunched over.

“Ho. Ho. Ho.”

Well to be honest that was rather anticlimactic. There were more twists in a doughnut.

We stared at each other, sizing up the other.

“Santa…”

“Captain…”

“Actually I have a bone to pick with you,” I accused him, “Last time we met, you hit me from behind. That was a really cheap shot. And honestly burying me alive just isn’t cricket. You’d think we had managed to bring some honour and respect to our battles. I mean it was just a few years ago when…”

“Do you ever shut up,” he interrupted, “You…you…you sanctimonious sloth?”

“Sancti…? Monious…? Sloth…? How dare you?”

“This is why people hit you from behind, you just never stop talking do you?”

Violet was shaking her head as she watched this battle of wits unfold.

“Will you two boys stop fighting for a second and just say you’re sorry.”

“Okay, okay I’m sorry,” I raised my hands in surrender, “Forgiven. Forgotten.”

“Not sorry,” muttered Santa.

“Do you want to shake hands?” Violet used the tone teachers use where they ask a question which is actually an instruction.

“Don’t push it, Violet.” I shook my head instead, “I don’t know where his hands have been.”

Santa had started impatiently and childishly kicking through the rubble.

“Oi, so Santa,” I said, “What is this place and where are we?”

His eyes lit up for a second.

“Oh Captain, my Captain. We are in your purgatory. Between your last life and your next. You were right. I should have just put two bullets in your head and called it a day. Here, we have to live in your hell of negative emotions – your fear, your anger, your darkness. Yes, yes, it has your so called heaven as well, but honestly a day in the bush doesn’t sound like heaven to me.”

“And he says I prattle on,” I whispered to Violet.

“So,” Santa continued, “I’m not actually sure what happens now. A heartbeat here could be a lifetime back there. Or vice versa. You could wake up here, there or the other there. Or somewhere else completely. But I feel you’re that mosquito that will wake up in the place that will annoy me most.”

“Well at least something to look forward to…”

He smiled at me. That was never good.

“One who remembers me at the moment of death, relinquishing the body ascends and achieves my nature. There is certainly no doubt about this.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, Captain, you fool. Even if you go back now, you will be an incarnation of…me!”

He started glowing.

“That’s enough, let’s go.” Violet grabbed my arm and with a strength unbecoming of her height, she pulled me out of the door.

“You’re very strong for someone the size of a raccoon,” I said to make sure I drilled the point home.

“I guess I have superpowers when it comes to you.”

“Ah, ‘Ultra Violet’”

She gave me a nasty look.

Santa had continued to glow brighter and brighter.

We eventually stopped and looked back.

The light suddenly sucked in on itself. For a moment, nothing happened. Then everything happened. There was a large release of incendiary energy. A fireball the size of a bus shot up and burst into a mushroom cloud of flames. The sky caught fire. And the fire spread. From space, it must have looked like a tidal wave of blue and red flames blanketing the world.

“I have become Death,” I said profoundly, “The destroyer of stuff.”

“That doesn’t have a poetic ring to it,” said Violet at the blinding light caught up to us.

“Poetic? Like what?”

“Release the cabbages!”

I looked at her as the light began to burn. I watched the world implode in her eyes. She was beautiful.

“Oh well, it is what it is…”

*

I opened my eyes.

Darkness. I gasped for air. It tasted of dirt. And cabbages.

Dammit. After all that and I was still in the coffin.

Groundhog Day.

I lifted my shirt over my mouth and nose. Bruce Lee one-inch punches. Pain. Skin. Blood. The wood broke open. Soil and dirt rained down.

With a burst of energy, I clawed my way above the ground and rolled over gasping for air.

Good thing it wasn’t more complicated to get out. It would have been crypt-ic. Ha, ha, ha.

 “Oi Captain, what are you doing in the ground?” a voice said, “You wouldn’t happen to have any weed on you?”

A long deep breath.

“Or I’ll take a beer if you have one.”

My eyes closed.