Skyscape, Part 3, v1.0

The door opens to reveal a magnificent sight. The guard nudges me inside though there isn't much need for it given that the beautiful sights, sounds, smells, feelings, and even tastes laid before me all compel me forward.

Inside is a beautiful and elaborate garden. Ahead of me is a tranquil pond that reflects the gorgeous greenery surrounding it. I look behind me and see that the guard has closed the door, which is handless from the inside and is sealed against the rest of the wall.

I look at where the green, stone wall goes and see that it extends in to a gradual curve, completely circumnavigating the massive courtyard. Above me, there is no roof to speak of, but there is a shimmering canopy of vegetation that allows small beams of sunlight to gleam through the misty and peaceful atmosphere. Little birds hop back and forth in the trees, singing and playing with one another. An assortment of butterflies flutter and oscillate throughout the garden, making it seem as though it were fidgeting with inhibited anxiety.

Just like me.

I take a few steps forward and continue observing this place. Suddenly, I notice a strange shadowy figure looming beside the pool. I'm surprised I didn't notice it before. It is obscured by shrubbery so I press on to get a better look.

As I move forward and become immersed into the now foul smelling mist, I become somewhat lightheaded. The mixture of fluttering butterflies and flickering leaves seem to pulsate along with my heartbeat now. I have a hard time focusing and am fixated on the ghost figure who is drifting towards me.

Or am I drifting towards it?

Either way, it gets closer. I get a clear view of it, and cannot believe what I'm seeing. It is a hunch-backed phantom that is almost seven feet tall, clad in a dark-gray cloak, and looks too solid to be a ghost. Rather it looks like a shadowy, phantasmal wraith.

Despite everything I see, it is what I hear that haunts me the most. It breathes. A shallow, sickly concoction of inhalation and exhalation.

But the worse thing of all, it talks.

A "Hello, my angel." whispers out of its pitch-black void of a face.

I stay silent.

"My angel, you have finally crossed over to the other side. Allow me to show you your new abode." He puts forth a gray, skeletal hand and against what remains of my volition, my hand compulsively gravitates into his. His long fingers wrap around my relatively puny wrist. It's neither warm nor cold; instead, I feel as though I'm holding hands with air.

Where the hell am I?

"This is heaven." How did he know what I was thinking? Can he read minds? Or did I just say that out loud? I feel so disoriented, so numb and detached from my body.

"My angel, this is the Otherrealm. The one that the great Nihil created for the people in the Skyrealm to descend into."

No, it can't be. Malakai always told me this wasn't real.

"Oh, but it is. Your friend is a misguided soul. He has lost his faith. Luckily, you kept some of yours."
So, I'm dead?

"Yes, but you have been redeemed for most of your sins. After all, you did brave the Abyss and for most of your life, you led a pious path."

He glides, I glide; we both glide slowly through the botanical courtyard as he talks.

Skyscape, Part 2, v1.0

The top deck palpitated with footsteps and the blurry crowd prattled on and on into an intensely unsatisfying hum. The colossal airship seemed so jerry-rigged and crudely tied together in the twilight sun, that it almost seemed to fall apart and decay like the clouds surrounding it.

A strange man stood at the edge of the deck, staring off into a billowy nothingness as he shifted his weight and leaned against the rusted side railing. He was puffing on a cigar, intentionally ostracizing himself from the throng of visitors. His aviator goggles gleamed fiercely against the pink and red sky. The man wore a brown leather vest that insulated a muscular torso which was crowned by a plumed collar that shimmered in the breeze like an aquiline creature ruffling its feathers.

Pilots from all corners of Skyscape were congregated into tiny groups, telling tall tales and sharing unheard news. All sorts of planes and aircraft of varying size, make, and model gathered at the end of the landing strip. It seemed as if they too were in their own little social structures, sharing amongst themselves the same silent conversations as their owners, bickering about their pilots' mechanical failures and miscalculations.

He was completely bald except for long sideburns that stormed down either cheek. Tattoos emblazoned across his arms in dark green ink, spiraling into symbolic swirls and shapes. Leather gloves were strapped around either palm as each of his fingers emerged from fingerless openings. He was harnessed in to a pair of baggy, denim pants as steel-toed boots crawled up either shin, buckle by buckle. He coolly lifted up his goggles to reveal a squat face. Wrinkles and sinewy tissue converged towards a sternly furrowed brow. He had beady eyes and a large nose that tapered into a pair of wide, flaring nostrils. Thin lips suckled the dirt-brown cigar and tightly hugged a set of grinning teeth. This phalanx of molars and canines defended a long lashing tongue that affectionately tasted the tobacco.

Skyscape, Part 1, v1.0

How sheep-like was I to have fallen for such crap? Who was Malakai to just suddenly whisk me away from my comfortable teddy bear and replace it with a dirty rifle? To tell me that everything I held so dearly was simply trivial; something to be forgotten.

He told me to not fall for what anyone had to say, no matter how convincing their answers may be. And yet, I went on, like the buffoon that I was, falling for those very words. Like some sort of naive little girl who was being seduced by the devil himself.

I feel like such a fool now.

I know Malakai didn't mean any wrong, but how can you preach against preaching? How can you just tell someone to abandon everything they ever loved or ever knew and not offer something to replace it with? It's pure rape, I tell you. Rape. Babies never ask to be born, but they are. So, why strip them of everything that would at least soften the harshness of this ugly world only to leave them to fend for themselves?

It's just evil.

For all I care, Malakai was the naive one--naive for having done that to me. He was too caught up in his own ideas, and went about preaching them like the messiah. Sure, he had wondrous, almost genius things to say, but he was still a slave to his own thoughts nonetheless.

That's what made him crack. He could no longer bear the weight of his own ideals; they were just too self-destructive. To adhere to them would also mean to reject them. I'm sure this wasn't at first apparent to him, but as he went on refining his answers, affirming his views--newer, more paradoxical questions began to arise. And you can't answer questions with questions.

It's hard to believe in much of anything while being aware of your surroundings. When you're aware of your surroundings, delusions aren't as vivid. And when you're not delusional, apathy ensues. Let me tell you, Malakai was the most lucid man I've ever known.

It was sanity, not insanity, that killed him.

He died in the name of something that he was barely starting to only half-believe in. Oh sure, in the beginning he was as vehement as the best of them. But as time went on, his apprehensions grew. His exhibitions became inhibitions.

He began to question himself.

But that was later on in his life. When I met him, he was just an over-opinionated bald guy. I was the bartender. He was the drunk going on philosophical tirade.

The Dead and the Dying: Chapter 2, v1.0

Different books incinerate in different ways. For instance, due to the thin paper of the Bible, it burns at a fairly rapid pace. Large coffee table books, on the other hand, char at a much slower rate. Opening the books and fanning out the pages allows for more surface area, and thus more expedient cremation. I prefer watching them burn slowly; it soothes me.

Burn hundreds of history books and scientific theses and it's an act of oppression; burn a couple dozen self-help books and it's a spiritually liberating experience.

"There was a whole box we had forgotten," Cindy said, awkwardly carrying a heavy packaging crate filled with paperbacks and hardcovers. She eyed me, annoyed. She hoped that I would lend a gentlemanly hand. I just love the face of someone with unmet expectations.

Expectations make the world less surprising. Things become dull and trite. With enough expectations, everything begins to resemble a Bob Ross painting. Happy trees under happy clouds with happy fence posts. Landscapes of alleged beauty.

"Here." She plopped the box of literary fuel next to me. She expected me to feed the fire like I was some sort of zookeeper feeding a lion. The chip on her shoulder made her somewhat cockeyed as she sat in the lawn chair next to my sister. She wore facial expressions like masks and put on a concerned furrow, showing a degree of pity that other psychiatrists might deem unprofessional. Because of the botulin that swirled beneath her skin, it gleamed like it were made of plastic.

"Hurry up with those things, I want to get the hell out of here," she said half to me and half to the fire. Her spindly legs crossed one another as her spindly fingers scrabbled for a cigarette. A fifty-year-old spoiled brat.

You become a very dizzy person when it seems as though the world is revolving around you.

People with expectations hope to build a society that is reverential of peace and order. They actually expect to have the right to live, as if that were even their decision to make. They draft a constitution, pay taxes, vote, work, buy shit, cram that shit down their children's throats, and eat heart-fucking-healthy Cheerios in hopes of fulfilling their expectations of perfection.

At least when your kid is a fat-ass, you know he won't slip through the cracks.

"Cindy, don't start. I hate it when you two fight."

"Honey, it's because of the likes of him that you haven't been able to properly adapt to the world. That's why after tonight, communication with him stops. We talked about this, remember?" I must've been invisible because she made little to no effort to whisper her statement or divert her eyes from me. I said nothing. I had said enough already.

"That's just temporary, right?"

It was then that I saw the most strained and contrived nod in my life.

White Fang, The Mantras of Me, A History of France by G. W. Kitchin, Mommy and Daddy's Special Hug: How to Talk to Your Child About Sex by Helen Back, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, The Satanic Bible, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, My Teacher is an Alien by Barb Dwyer, and stacks of hardcover books about drawing the female figure were slow to cook, probably from their weightiness. They cringed and curled, as if trying to recede away from the orange fire.

An entire scaffolding of starlight hung over the Arizona desert with no one to cast a spotlight on to. The crackling inferno and chirping crickets both seemed to taunt my sister. She simply simply sat there, staring somewhere beyond the flames like she always did. Breathing in the smell of her burning children.

Because of the glossy pages of some of the coffee table books and the ink-laden pages of the various photography books, a nauseating scent can permeate the air. Some of the thicker paperbacks that are bound heavily by glue also exude a distinct smell. Coupled with the ink, it can cause a strange taste to formulate in the back of your throat.

"Tell me, sweetie, how do you feel right now?" She always called her sweetie. I hated that.

Retinas burn from gazing at the white Sun, moths fry from their attraction to light bulbs, men lust for a few precious seconds of vaginal penetration. Truthfully, we all yearn to go back to the nothingness we came from.

"Like something crawled up inside me and died."

The Joy of Sex, Sun Tzu's the Art of War, a compilation of Garfield comics, Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, The Better Gender: A Book on Female Supremacy by Samantha Holland, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, The Sword of Shannara, Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and his lesser known Fantastic Mr. Fox, What Curls My Toes: the Autobiography of the Woman Who Orgasms 125 Times a Day, and a coverless chapter book were quick to burn. While wimpy and thin, they were also sophisticated, civilized books. Castaways frightened by an onslaught of inflamed primitives.

"'Books to the ceiling, books to the sky, my pile of books is a mile high. How I love them. How I need them. I'll have a long beard by the time I read them,'" my sister sorrowfully recited. She was quivering underneath her crochet coat. Whether it was from the cold breeze or from her crying, I couldn't tell. Poor Velouria.

I smacked my lips and cleared my throat to try to rid myself of the taste. But the back of my tongue just continued to writhe in a sauna of tartness. It felt almost as if I were attempting to swallow the words of Jack Kerouac himself. As if Kurt Vonnegut were force feeding me sour and spoiled words of an unpublished piece.

Cindy consoled my sister with a somewhat patronizing arm around the shoulders. The only thing to console my shivers was the fire. It never patronized me. It was never reluctant to show affection. If anything, its whipping tongues reached for me to come closer. I guess books didn't seem to fully quench its appetite.

"I feel like I'm going to be sick."

"You remember what to do when you feel anxiety, right? Just take a deep breath, close your eyes, count backwards from ten, and exhale." Velouria obeyed Cindy's instructions. The witch was fattening up her meal.

Curious George Goes to the Circus, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, the entire catalog of Penthouse circa 1989, Short Stories by Short Authors, Raw: a Vegan's Guide to Cooking by Seth Poole, Self Analysis by L. Ron Hubbard, and a survival pamphlet on how to start campfires were fastest to twist and turn black. Hellfire and brimstone smote the pornography and children's books, leaving a sort of flyleaf excrement. The survival pamphlet was opened to a page about what to feed the campfire with.

After a while, I became somewhat lightheaded from the glue and ink. In a way, I felt like there was a second bonfire going on in my head. Just as I chucked fuel into the flames, book-by-book, I felt as though I were fueling some other monster in my brain, neuron-by-neuron.

Velouria began to weep. Seeing the last of her books die must've been shocking. She nestled against Cindy's chest as Cindy patted and shushed her, never letting go of her cigarette. At various times, her red hair would seemingly blend into the fire. She was certainly camouflaged for an eternal afterlife in Hell.

Sick of huffing the last sentences of Benjamin Franklin, I went to the truck to load up the remaining empty crates and cardboard boxes. The desert grounds seemed to slither with life. Coyotes could be heard in the distance. Countless bushes and cacti dotted the surrounding hills, sheltering an unimaginable number of snakes, scorpions, and lizards.

It was in this setting that I felt calm.

Animals take comfort in bleak darkness; only humans scramble for torchlights and matchsticks. We spend precious calories, hours, and gems on refueling them. Stacking firewood, drilling for oil, splitting atoms, all to perpetuate the safety and security of the fire. To keep alive something that will inevitably die.

I sat in the cab of the truck, in the stillness, in the darkness, almost reveling in it like any other wild animal would. Like any other self-respecting human wouldn't. I waited. Growing impatient, I tried to see why Cindy and my sister hadn't yet extinguished the flames.

Cavemen who obsessed over the campfire's maintenance became evolutionary successes. Cavemen who lingered in the darkness became meals. While basking in the campfire's luminescence, with bellies filled and content, these early humans would spend their evenings devising new forms of entertainment. Dancing, music, language, art, cooking, all originated by the fireside.

Sometimes one must befriend one destructive force in order to escape another.

Now, if I were like any other person, fearful of having shattered expectations and crushed preconceived notions, I would have been horrified by what I saw. I will even admit, certain deeprooted instincts were somewhat irritated by the sight. The two pairs of lips, one tear-moistened, enclosing, interlocking from behind the orgy of licking fire. I swear I even saw the whites of Cindy's eyes glare at me for an instant.

Prometheus gave man fire so I could bear witness to this shit?

Flash.

Earlier that day, I was taking photos of and cataloging every book in Velouria's collection. She was obsessive-compulsive from the day we came out of mom. Even when we were being born, she was clinging on to mom's uterus in utter fear. Needless to say, I was the first to pop out of that hell-hole. I sometimes wonder if I smelled like cigarettes and cheap liquor when the doctor pulled me out.

Flash.

I'm not totally sure why I became a photographer. Then again, no one really knows why anyone does anything. I suppose I had some urge, a drive, when I was younger, to capture images as they are as opposed to painting them as they ought to be. No interpretation involved. No idealization. Just reality.

Cindy monitored every moment of that day. She was like some sort of matriarchal midwife. At times, it seemed like her role as a watchful psychiatrist changed into that of a control freak. It was rather ironic that she was so obsessed with treating my sister's own obsessions. Of course, that was before I knew of their little affair.

Flash.

Sometimes I fancied myself as some sort of forensic documenter. Photographing the deceased remains of the world as if it were going to be used as evidence in court someday. As if the decaying remnants of this Universe could somehow be justified. I hoped to prove to some unknown, cosmic jury that a crime had taken place. Existence.

The whole room was empty besides the bookshelves that lined the piss-yellow walls. Even they were growing empty as Velouria and I gutted them of their treasured literature. We constructed tiny mountains of the books we had already taken pictures of, while a small train of the ones we had just picked off the shelves waited for their closeups on the hard wood floor.

Flash. New roll of film.

"After tonight, you're going to feel like a new woman." Cindy leaned against the door's threshold, crossed arms, white turtle-neck, that unusually wide mouth that always made her seem like she was grinning, even when she wasn't.

"I just don't understand why we have to burn them," my sister murmured with a transfixed shake of her head. The tears hadn't arrived yet.

Flash.

My sister would become a zombie when she felt anxious. She'd freeze. Her eyes would simply glare at something a million miles away and she'd stop listening to what you were saying. It was her defense mechanism; if a threatening gesture passed her by, she'd immediately clam up. I guess the logic behind it was if you're going to become dead, you might as well become the living dead.

I sometimes wondered what far away place she was staring at.

"In many cultures, cremation symbolizes the overall consummation of one's life. These were once objects of your worship; they deserve a proper sending-off." Cindy knelt next to us, never once lifting one of her well-manicured fingers to help us sift through the heaps of text. Never once looking at me. "Or maybe you'd prefer a burial?"

Flash.

"She'd probably just dig them up," I said as if my sister was deaf. In a way, in her state of mind, she was.

Cindy stood back up. As if her nostrils were cross hairs; like the bridge of her nose were sights on a gun, she glared down at me. My sister continued to stack books like an autistic simpleton.

"You know, Melvin, as Velouria's psychiatrist, it is my job to pinpoint all the factors in her life that are responsible for her behavior. It's like cancer; sometimes it's spurred on by a tumor, but after a certain point, not even removing that tumor will do away with the disease; sometimes you have to cut off an arm or leg." She rummaged through her pockets, lit a cigarette, exhaled smoke and resumed.

"There is really no one culprit here, you see; it's just a mixture of many things that eat away at her mind. But I have to say, from what I've observed, from what I've heard, I consider you to be the most fucking cancerous, malignant tumor in her life." With squinted eyes, she pointed at me, accused me with the tip of her cigarette as she said this.

"That's why, as a part of her treatment, she will no longer have contact with you. From this day forward. We've discussed it and we both agree that it's for the better." Velouria awoke from her deep gaze and looked up at her with worry.

"It's temporary, of course. Until she gets better," Cindy said as a reluctant promise.

Flash.

I looked up at her gaping nostrils and smirked. She moved to the fireplace and rested her elbow on the mantle to breathe more fire. Returning to her happy place, like some robot librarian, Velouria just continued foraging for more books from the starving bookshelves that surrounded us. I treated my sister like she was deaf because she so often acted like she was deaf.

She hummed that same stupid fucking song she always hummed. I remember it pretty well. When dad was kicking mom's ass she would just stand there and hum. When dad was on top of her, she'd just lay there and hum. Even when I pulled the trigger with my thirteen-year-old fingers and blew his fucking head off, she just sat there and hummed.

I suppose if you hum loud enough, you can ignore anything.

Cindy, you're a cunt. You know it, I know it. The problem is, I'm afraid my little sister here doesn't know it. I'm afraid that, once again, she is going to cling on to a stronger person than herself and call it love or friendship. I'm afraid that you're going to manipulate her and twist her until you get what you want out of her, whatever it may be. And yet, people have called me a heartless brother because I treat her with a little dignity and respect, because I don't pity her. In the end, I'll be the only one that hasn't hurt her. At least, that's what I wanted to say. But I didn't. I just kept silent, continued smiling and shook my head.

"You actually think what you did didn't hurt her?" She must've read my mind. My grin had melted away. That's when I kept silent for the rest of the night.

Velouria would eventually snap out of it. She always did. With a little bit of time she'd return. She'd hug me and cry and thank me and cry some more. Dad's brains clinging to the wall. She'd even tell me on occasions that the only reason why she'd return, why she'd come back, is because of me. Otherwise, she said, she'd just stay in that humming abyss forever.

Flash. I don't know why, I'm not sure what compelled me to do this, but I took a picture of Cindy; of her slouched, bony form, resting against the brick fire-pit. Of Satan's queen. I suppose, I wanted that photo for some future date. I knew it would come in handy, it had to. Somehow, someway, when something is framed differently, when an image is captured in just the right light, the true beast within everyone comes out. Maybe Velouria would see this picture and realize. A crime had taken place and it was Cindy.

But poor Velouria just kept on with her business. Ignoring us. Humming.

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Now playing: Pixies - Is She Weird
via FoxyTunes

The Dead and the Dying: Chapter 1, v1.0

"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?"