"Next."
I took one step forward. I couldn't tell if I was moving over the carpet or if it was moving underneath me. But then again, I guess that's the way things go; the carpet is constantly being pulled out from under you. It's just a matter of whether you notice it or not. Noticing it takes a great deal of apathy; not noticing it takes just the slightest bit of enthusiasm.
"Next."
Consciousness crept up on me. It was sobering. With every long pace I noticed more and more things. Particularly the strange man standing in front of me. He was tall, smelled bad, and had a dark complexion. His long white garments, curly facial hair, and tightly spun turban indicated that he was of Middle-Eastern descent. Somehow, in some way, he looked familiar.
Enthusiasm, to me, is a game played by children to kill time and a game played by adults to kill each other. I like that little proverb. I made it up once when I was making a deposit at the bank. I'm not very fond of banks, at least not since I was killed in one.
"Next."
Then it came to me; that Middle-Eastern man, he was there at the bank too. I started looking around as if awakening from some kind of stupor. I recognized all the people that were in line with me.
As I regained my bearings, the last thing to come to my attention was me. My sensations told my brain that my teeth were arranged differently in my mouth. As I looked at my hands, I saw taught, pink skin; not the arthritic joints that I expected. I felt the top of my head. Instead of a thin, bald scalp, I felt thick, luscious hair. I yanked down my bangs to eye-level and saw the dark brown. I felt my face like some manic blind person. The wrinkles, the dentures, the eye-patch, they were all gone.
"Next."
When I was alive, I was very fond of enthusiastic people. They were very clingy, much like infants are to their mothers. That isn't a very far fetched metaphor, by the way; it takes an infantile sense of awareness to be enthusiastic. I especially liked how they took things seriously. It was almost cute.
I looked down. I was wearing a light-brown, tweed suit with a red tie, something I hadn't worn in over thirty years. Clouds of dust whiffed from my suit as I patted and wiped my sleeves. The lobby itself was filled with misty dust. They say that dust is nothing more than dead skin-cells. Considering how filled that room was with death, I could very well have been wearing my own ashes. That and the ashes of everyone around me. I immediately felt sick.
"Next."
I could tell that the Texan behind me was a very enthusiastic man. He was whispering to whoever stood behind him, though I couldn't make out the majority of the conversation. All I could discern was that he was growing increasingly suspicious of the Middle-Eastern man. He wouldn't stop asking the person behind him if she found the Muslim familiar looking. After she snapped at him for his insistent blathering, he turned to me and asked the same question.
"Hey, fella, were you in that there bank before it blew up, the same one I was in?" His accent was thick.
"Yes, I was." I said. I remember he had been yelling at one of the bank officials for denying him a loan before the explosion. He was so vehement then that his face had turned red. Just then, before his head seemed like it was about to burst like a pimple, the room went up in a ball of flames. I died in a fit of laughter.
"Tell me, friend, does that there man in front of ya look familiar?"
"If I'm not mistaken, he's the one who had the bomb." I distinctly recall seeing the Middle-Eastern man running into the bank, screaming with bulged eyes upon detonation.
"Well, I'll be damned. I wonder what in the Hell he's doin' here?" My love for irony kicked in and stretched a smile across my face. I felt like telling the Texan that in all likelihood, we could be in Hell now. But that would just ruin his day.
"Next."
The Middle-Eastern man was now at the front desk. He was next in line. Some woman with horn-rimmed glasses was attending to him at the desk.
While I had a keen grasp of my surroundings by then, my abilities to realize exactly where I was weren't as clear. Behind me was a long line of people with their heads bowed in boredom. The dust that clouded the room was illuminated by sunlight, which was let in by a stained-glass dome above. The dust was so heavy I could hardly make out the walls. Blurry box-shapes dotted the walls on all four sides.
When I was alive I would always get this strange feeling that everything was obscured in some way. As if haze permeated everywhere. I always thought that I didn't see things as clearly as I should. That for me, to act upon what I saw was useless. After all, what I had seen may not have been real, behind that haziness.
Suddenly, to my left, one of the foggy boxes began lighting up and making obnoxious noises. Coins clattered against metal. That and the high-pitched squeals of a frenzied woman. What was now clear was that I was in the lobby of a hotel-casino. What wasn't clear was whether I was in Heaven or Hell.
"Name?" asked the front-desk lady.
"Farooq Rashid," the Middle-Eastern man replied with the expected peculiar accent. I was now surrounded by silly accents.
"Belief system?" She went about these questions with great boredom, never looking up at the man. Instead, she simply looked down, smacking on gum, checking things off on a list.
"Eh, excuse me?"
"Religion--what religion do you belong to?"
"Oh... I a-am a warrior o-o-of Allah," he stuttered. For being a suicide bomber, he had quite a timid demeanor.
"I'll put down Islam."
While this little interview was going on the Texan stepped out of line from behind me and began striding up to the desk, adjusting his belt even higher up his pudgy torso.
"Excuse me ma'am, but I think there's been a mistake. Ya see, this here fella ought to be somewhere else, if ya know what I mean." He was quite unafraid of making a scene, much like at the bank.
"Sir, I will be sure to attend to your grievances, whatever they may be, but I'm going to have to ask you to wait your turn," she said. Despite her obvious professional tone, she hiked up a brow as soon as the Texan approached. She couldn't help but be amused. Neither could I.
"Now, look here lady, this person is responsible for killin' the majority of the people in this here line, includin' me. It's 'cause of him that I ain't gonna be able to see my wife and two daughters. Now you tell me why Peter let this son-of-a-bitch walk through the Pearly Gates. I demand some answers, damn it." His polite intrusion imploded into another red-faced episode.
In all honesty, I didn't care who killed me nor how. I was dead and there was, as far as I was informed, nothing that I could do about it. Being angry with my murderer for killing me was, in my opinion, equivalent to being mad at my parents for conceiving me. I didn't ask to be blown to smithereens but then again I didn't ask to be born either.
People just love to think that they actually own their lives.
"Sir, you need to calm down. This is a non-denominational afterlife, we do not discriminate against any particular religions or actions. This man is entitled to paradise just as much as you are. Now, would you please get back in line?"
"Unbelievable. This ain't no Heaven. Dear Lord, I must be in Hell. The Heaven I know would never allow some crazy sand-monkey into God's Kingdom," he said as he derisively glared at the Muslim.
The Middle-Eastern man must have suddenly grown a pair because he reacted with more hypertension than the Texan. With squinted eyes, he wagged his finger and began yelling. "What do you know of God or Heaven, you despicable swine? It is you who deserves a Hellish fate, not I."
Then, with absolutely no warning, punches began flying. The line behind me bunched into a tiny crowd. All around me were slack-jaw cows watching a bull-fight. The best way to affirm one's own masculinity without taking any punches is to watch two other dudes slug it out.
Neither man seemed concerned about being barraged by walloping smacks; it was like two nations exchanging homing missile bombardments with little regard for any defensive measures. Then again, why should they care about being hurt? They were already dead.
I must say, during the escapade, I was grinning the whole time. I found immense enjoyment out of the whole thing. I always had. Out of all the emotions one can feel, amusement was the one that rung with me the most. Amusement of other people's fights, of other people's fears, of other people's futilities, of other people in general. It's the same principle that reality shows are built on, I guess.
If you stick a rat into a maze that's been ladened with the scent of cheese, it will mistake the walls for food and start eating it.
Amidst the tussle, bellhops and other hotel-staff rushed onto the scene to break up the fight. They pried the two away from one another and carried them off in opposite directions. It took a few minutes of kicking and screaming profanities for them to finally tire.
Eventually things calmed down. Once again, the dust settled and we resumed our checking-in. I was next.
"Name?"
"Melvin Zimmern," I replied.
"Belief system?"
"Atheist." Although to what extent atheism was an actual belief system I was unsure of. What's worse was that I was an atheist in Heaven, which sort of put a damper on things.
"How did you you become retired?"
"Retired?"
Having worked as a freelance photographer during my lifetime, I did little to nothing in terms of retirement. In fact, up until my death, I was still working for various magazines and newspapers. I was also in the midst of declaring my second bankruptcy.
Society without bankruptcy is like religion without Hell.
"We here prefer to use the term 'retired' instead of 'dead' or 'deceased'. It's less psychologically intrusive to the guests." Considering that I had been through the same process many times before, I couldn't help but feel like I was checking into rehab all over again.
If life is an ongoing traumatic experience, then Heaven is just another Betty-Ford Clinic.
"I died in the bank bombing. With the others. Um, may I ask why Heaven is a casino?" I was positive I knew why, but I had to hear it for myself.
"Well, where do most living people go when they 'retire'?"
Snowbirds flocking south for the Winter. When I was young I imagined that old people were actual birds because of that terminology. I was afraid that at any instant my grandmother would suddenly grow a beak and begin pecking me with it.
"Here are your keys, and this is Dudley," she said, gesturing to the bellhop standing next to the desk. I didn't notice him earlier. "He will escort you to your room."
Straight, stringy hair draped over his pimpled face from beneath his little cap. He stood and stared like a vacant dummy. He looked exactly like how I felt: high.
I had the curiosity to ask why I'd need a room if I was dead, but I didn't. Why ask questions when the answers almost never meet your expectations? Or worse, when there are no answers.
Now, this may sound strange, but I find that crash-test-dummies don't get nearly as much respect as they deserve. Imagine if you were being bombarded against a brick wall in an oversized SUV day after day. It's as if you were the one responsible for the lives that could've been lost in each crash. It is put upon you to somehow make up for any wrecks that could happen in the future. All is saved because of a mannequin's sacrifices.
Dudley was always hunched over when he walked. And bow-legged. Sort of like a monkey. A blond stoner-monkey dressed up as a bellhop. He wasn't very boisterous in how he talked though he did get lost in his own ramblings, usually before stopping to ask, "Wait, what was I talking about?" I in no way found him annoying; I would've otherwise dreaded the notion of someone who liked to chit-chat, so for me this was just fine.
At least when someone is high, you know it's going to be an interesting conversation.
Society reveres dummies. They are our witchdoctors. We charge them with bad mojo and slam them into Toyotas Corolas over and over again. We do this to shake away the evil spirits. To purge away the impure energies. To cleanse the unwanted karma. Uncivilized tribes have been using the same practices for centuries with sacrificial lambs and boars. And people think we're civilized.
"So are you an angel or something?" I asked this sort of rhetorically; I knew 'angel' was far from the right terminology but for all I knew there very well may not have been a 'right terminology' in the first place. I ask a lot of rhetorical questions. Sometimes I think I live rhetorically. Or should I say lived?
"Not really, dude, more like a guide or counselor or what have you. We're just here to help you with whatever needs you may have during your stay."
"Stay?"
"Yeah, stay."
"That sort of implies that this is all... temporary."
"What would give you that idea?" he said, prying away at his nostril with his one of his pinkies.
We aren't civilized; there is no such thing. Our sticks and rocks may have evolved into levers and buttons but these tools all fulfill the same functions. Where we once chose a virgin from the tribe to be adorned with jewelry and attention, led to the top of the pyramid, and slaughtered before ripping her still-beating heart out, we now build up celebrities with tabloids and newspapers and alienate them with cameras from every angle until they eventually self-destruct.
As soon as the untalented pop-star releases her third sex tape and overdoses for the last time on exorbitant amounts of prescription drugs concocted with alcohol, we rejoice. Celebrities are a different breed of crash -test-dummies. It is when we watch them crash and burn that we are truly glad that we are not them. It makes our reality seem more real.
"Well, here we are. Suite Number 45. Remember that number, man. It sucks getting lost here." He sifted through a ring of keys. The suite door was reddish like all the others in the hallway. Somehow the loud carpet in the lobby followed me.
The door swung open. Sand began pouring in from the room, though to what extent it was actually a room was obscured to me by the grains of sand playing around in my eyeballs. Small gusts of wind swirled pools of sand around our feet. Beyond the rolling dunes, I could see a blue sky.
"What the fuck is this?" I so politely inquired.
"This is your psyche." He raised his eyebrows and bit his bottom lip. "Pretty trippy, huh?"
"My psyche?"
"Yeah, see, when you die you get your own little universe to play with. Everything inside of that room is made up of your unconscious thoughts, your dreams, your wishes, crap like that. So you can control anything you want in it, fulfill whatever weird fetishes and fantasies you may have." Something told me he wanted one for himself. "Anytime you want to leave to socialize and mingle or what have you with the other residents, you just... well, leave."
"So do we go in there?"
"Well, I don't have to but I always enjoy seeing these things. Just invite me in, bro."
"After you, then." I'm not afraid of going into unknown places all alone but my instincts sure as hell are. The way I see it, if millions of years of evolution is telling you not to do something, you probably shouldn't do it.
Heroes are just dull-witted pricks who are willing to do something if it'll get them laid in the end.
After walking out into a seemingly endless field of sun-baked sand, comfort immediately ceases. What little wind there was was sure to somehow smack me in the face with dirt every chance it got. Using my palm as a visor I surveyed the horizon, expecting little, perceiving little.
"Well this is pretty baron," said Dudley. Behind him, the door pierced through the desert like a rectangular cookie cutout. The door, Dudley and I were the only things casting shadows.
"I'm assuming it isn't usually like this," I said.
"Well, man, everybody's psyche is different. I've seen way weirder. Actually, by comparison, this is pretty boring."
"I can do whatever I want here?"
"Well, yeah, technically. It reflects what you're in the mood for at the time, unconsciously. You can't just ask it to whip you up some Diet Coke if you're not really wanting it."
Whoever said that Coca Cola was the real thing must have also thought that polyester came from an animal.
"So this is what I'm in the mood for?"
"Apparently. You're one hell of an interesting guy, dude," he said while pulling out a brown paper-rolled joint, "You don't mind do you?"
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