Story a Day #8

"If we turned the table upside down and sailed around the bed,
Clamped knives between our teeth and tied bandannas round our heads,
With the wainscot our horizon and the ceiling as the sky,
You'd not expect that anyone would go and fucking die..."
The Pogues - Drunken Boat

I remember that I was late and that I was in a rush to get to wherever it was that I needed to be. I don't remember why I was late, or where I had to be, or why I was in such a rush to get there. When you've been dead for a long enough time, memories tend to get fuzzy. I suppose I should have written it down sooner but, well, I'll start at the beginning...
So all I really remember was that I was in a rush to get someplace. I had a lunch meeting with someone or another, I really can't recall who, and it had gone on long. I remember running out the door and being blinded by the sun, apparently the place had been pretty dark inside. I must have ran into the street before my eyes adjusted because the next thing I remembered was a blaring car horn and suddenly I was up in the air looking up at the blue sky. As I slowly turned downward, I could see the buildings reaching up high into air, skyscrapers that I had seen my whole life. With a sudden sadness I realized that this was probably the last time I was going to see them. If had had the time, I probably would have cried, but as it was they were already slipping away. The last thing I remember is the pavement coming up at me. I thought it was strange that I could see every pebble and bit of filth in-bedded in the tar with perfect clarity. The last thing I heard was my neck snapping as it hit the ground, and then everything went black...

When I opened my eyes all I could see was blinding white light. It was so bright I had to shut my eyes. I realized I was laying on something soft, but every time I tried to open my eyes to see what it was, I had to close them again. When they finally adjusted enough to where I could see, I rolled off of what I had been lying on and squinted my eyes and looked at it. It was a bed. A large four poster one to be exact, painted bright white like everything else, covered in perfectly white sheets. I looked down at myself. I was wearing the same suit I had died in. I even still had the briefcase I was carrying in my hand.
As I stood in the center of this otherwise featurless perfectly white room I tried to put together what exactly had happened, I remembered the car, and the sky, and the buildings, and realized that I was dead. I punched myself on the arm. I could still feel pain, how was that possible? Wasn't there a bible verse that said something about no more pain after death? Maybe this was Hell. It certainly seemed that way, since there was nothing in this room except a bed. Maybe I was supposed to go insane from boredom...
I was thinking about maybe trying to kill myself again to see where else I would end up as I walked along and looked at the walls, looking for a clue as to why I was in my current situation. I was about to give up and rip my throat open with the pen in my briefcase when I found a door. Well, it was a suggestion of a door, more of an outline really, with no knob or handle on it. I tried getting my fingers around the edges but to no avail. After a time I gave up again and sat down to open my briefcase. I sat with my back against the door and I pushed against it, something clicked and the door opened inward.

It was another small room but a normal one. It looked a bit like my father's study when I was a small child, before we moved away. The walls were covered with bookshelves all around except for under the window, which contained a small desk covered in paper. As I stepped into this room, the door behind me shut and became a wall that contained a small pendulum clock that ticked quietly away to itself. It was all very peaceful and I smiled. So this must be heaven, I thought. I walked over to the desk and picked up a piece of paper from the nearest stack and looked at it. There was writing on it, but the writing was a strange mess of wavy lines and dots that I couldn't make heads or tails of. The rest of the papers were the same, except some contained what appeared to be technical drawings or odd blueprints which I couldn't make sense of either. I gave up and looked out the window. All I could see was the sun shining over the tops of some kind of palm trees and a bit of blue sky. I deduced that this was the top floor of whatever building I was in. Turning to the books on the shelves I was disappointed to find that they were in the same weird writing as the papers on the desk. After pulling out several and trying to make sense of them with no luck I sighed and sat down on a chair and listened to the clock tick away. After staring at the thing for a good while, I began to realize that something wasn't quite right about it. Then I realized that even thought I had been sitting in the chair staring at it for quite some time, the hands hadn't moved at all. The pendulum was swinging, but it was stuck at five after twelve. I looked at my watch, which I suddenly remembered that I still had on. It had the same time. Suddenly I didn't like this room much and opened a door and walked out...

I was at the end of a hallway of some sort, which ran down to what I could see was a flight of stairs. There were doors on either side of the hall and I opened the one on my immediate left which was a bedroom. As I looked at the large bed in the middle all made up nicely, with even a corner turned down at the head, I felt a deep sadness wash over me. This bed wasn't made up for me. This house wasn't meant for me either. I am a trespasser, I thought, and pretty soon the owners are going to come home and find me here and I'm going be arrested. But somehow I knew that wasn't true. Maybe it was the unnatural silence or just a feeling at the back of my head that I knew to be true. I shut the door and started to walk down the rest of the hallway. I stopped before I got to the stairs and turned to face a door set opposite the staircase. I don't know why it intrigued me, but I walked over to it and tried the knob. Surprisingly, it was locked. I don't know how long I stood and stared at it but I became aware of a small noise that I realized was coming from behind the door. I put to my ear to it and heard a small creaking noise, like an old rocking chair. Curious, I put my eye to the keyhole. It was a babies room, all decked out in white lace. I could see a crib off to one side and an open window with lace curtains blowing in the breeze. Underneath the window was a small rocking chair, slowly rocking back and forth even though no one was sitting in it. This frightened me very much for reasons I still can't put together. I turned and ran down the stairs...

Before I hit the bottom I slipped on the last step and fell, my legs kicking out from under me. My briefcase flew into the air and knocked over a potted plant that had been sitting on a pedestal. It fell to the floor and smashed into pieces. I got up and ran over to it, trying in vain to put it back together. That it should be broken was the saddest thing in the world to me and I cried as I held the plant in my hands and let the soil run though my fingers. After a time I composed myself and looked around. To my right was an open door that looked like it lead to a music room. From where I was standing I could see a piano with a violin sitting on top. Right in front of me was a door that lead outside and behind me was a closed door that I had no desire to open. I wanted very badly to be out of the house and I quickly opened the door and ran outside...

I was in a jungle, thick trees grew on all sides and birds cried off in the distance. As soon as I stepped outside, I turned and looked back at the house, trying to see where the babies room might be. To my surprise, the house was gone and there was only a trail leading through the trees. With no other alternative, I headed down the path...

It seemed like an eternity of walking with nothing but trees on all sides of me, when I came out on a white sandy beach. Waves lapped against the shore and seagulls dove for fish. Again, it all seemed so peaceful, but wrong for some reason. It was like I had slipped into an old photograph, a glimpse of a past that didn't exist anymore. I Took off my shoes and socks and threw them away, and walked down the beach. Coming around a bend, I observed a dark spot off in the distance. As I got closer, I realized that it was a picnic table, with someone sitting on it. I walked up and sat down on the opposite side of the table and looked at the person, who seemed to be frozen with his head on his fist. It was a young man, about seventeen or eighteen with sandy brown hair and freckles. He was wearing overalls and a stupid looking straw hat. I coughed.
"Um...hullo?" I said out loud, surprised at the sound of my own voice.
The man responded by taking his head off of his fist, turning, and spitting a stream of tobacco onto the sand.
"What you want?" He said with very thick southern accent.
"Well...um..." I really didn't know how to respond.
"You want to know why you're here doncha?"
"Well, yeah."
"Well, you're not really here exactly. This is just something your mind made up because it couldn't handle the thought of being dead."
"I'm...I'm not following you."
"Right now you're lying in the street in a pool of blood. Your heart's just stopped pumping blood to your brain and now your brain is dying. In the few seconds before it shuts off completely, It's projecting this. Even though it seems like you've been here for a long time now, you really haven't been." He turned and spit again.
"So...whats going to happen?"
"Hell if I know. You might just stay here for all eternity or you might ldka slkfsf jlskl..." The boys face melted off and puddled on the table.
I looked down and my suit was covered in blood. When I looked up, the whole world was tearing apart into fragments. Large jagged chunks of reality ripped apart and fell into a dark black void, floating away forever. Pretty soon there was nothing left but the void and me floating around in nothingness. I found that I could write words in strange colors on the darkness, but I had to catch them before they floated away. I have a whole collection of them that I've stored in my briefcase which I found floating around. Someday if I can find another reality to latch onto, I'll put them onto paper, or whatever passes for paper there. For now, I'm just floating in darkness. It's cold here, so very very cold. I don't much like being dead...

This is partially based off a dream I had this morning. Freaky eh?