BY

DAVID K. IRWIN

>

My entire body is tingling as if it were a foot trying to come back to life from a deadening slumber. Miniscule stars speckle the surrounding darkness like glitterized-black and I know how the Almighty Father in heaven must have felt on the first day of Creation...alone and looking for companionship.

As slowly as the pins and needles would succumb to the fresh flow of blood, my memory begins to clear and I seem to remember borrowing a truck. Bill's truck. I had to get something from somewhere...then, I remember bright lights...then darkness...and now I'm here...but where the hell's here?

I'm thinking to myself, I've had this dream before, but something is different. In my other dreams, I was always running at first. Then, I would jump as if to make a free-throw but instead, I would just keep going up and up, as if running in the air, my feet pumping pedals on an invisible bicycle and I felt so free, weightless, wonderful. In this dream, I am falling up like a dead leaf unbound by gravity and I feel old, lost, and somehow not whole.

Then slowly, as if immerging from a misty fog, there appears below me barely-visible forms dressed in chiffon blue. Mesmerized by the sight, I watch as the images slowly become clearer as though a bright light from above were baking away the clinging mist. Somewhat frightened now, I watch as the picture forms into an arena filled with blue-masked combatants holding silvery instruments of destruction. The mist still stifles the eye slightly as I try to make out the central figure who appears to be the last survivor of the battle and who is now encircled by the foe.

The short hairs on my neck snap to attention as my skin stiffens upon realizing the 'fallen form', unfolding in the mist, is my own body and I am not in it any longer. Rather, I am caught in a thermal which will not allow me to float higher or return to earth; much like an escaped helium balloon on a windless day which will rise only so high. I begin to panic yet I can't tear my eyes away from the ghastly, ghostly scene. I now see the forms for what they are...Doctors, in surgical gowns, holding scalpels and syringes. I wish I could click my heals and go home like Dorothy. I close my eyes tight and chant;

I want to go home...I really, really want to go home! I want to wake up...I really, really, reeaaally want to wake up!

Maybe if I pinch myself? I've heard that works...

"OUCH!"

"Oh shit."

>

It seems there will be no waking from this nightmare and even though my eyes try to shut out the vision, the darkness peals away.

Oh Lord, what tenacious tomfoolery is this??? All around me are shelves lined with bottles of organs. The cold metal bed sucks the last heat from my body. The stench deadens all smells previously known. Do I now sleep with the dead or shall I walk with the living dead? Am I dead or dying?

Stand back, I say, you dissecting demon! Remove your mask that I may at least gaze upon your grizzly face as you enjoy this gruesome black bag job! STAND BACK !!!! Can't you see I am still alive?

At least I think I must be. I want to scream but the mouth I see is frozen in a stifled scream which never made the surface of this suffocating sea of misery. How can this be happening to me?

Darkness steals me away...

>

In darkness I remain in this sleepless sleep of the undying dead. My eyes glued shut as if the sticky sludge of slumber has glazed them over. I feel empty yet full. In the air there is the smell of laboratory-leakings mingled with the pristine sound of a pipe organ.

What deviltry has devoured me now? Do I lie within the bowels of the earth while the angels provide a prelude to my ascent? If I listen closely I seem to hear the lamenting sniffling of a thousand babies. Perchance I am like a single strand of wheat waiting for the breadmaker; like a babe among thousands of babes awaiting release from God's willing womb to live again. To be reborn.

What's this?? I hear voices approaching. Finally, someone nears who will open my eyes and release me, screaming, into the world! I can almost make out the voices...

As the chuckles fade, I know I am purgatorially placed in my final batten-down bed.

>

What is that smell? It reminds me of something. Could it be the non-ocean smell of sandbox sand? No. Maybe the smell of grass stained football jerseys in the locker room? No, I don't think so but that's close. Wait a minute...I remember!

One time, my sister and I were at this construction site where they were putting up a new home and we were playing on the dirt hill the builders made when they dug the hole for the basement. The early morning dew had moistened the hill turning it into a giant slide of slick clay. We each had found an old piece of cardboard and we were taking turns streaking down the hill at mock ninety. On about my fifth run, I was getting bored (as kids quickly do) and decided to try it on my belly. There was this hump about halfway down (just about the spot where you really started to gather some speed) and when you went down on your butt it would just get you a little air. On your stomach was another story all together. I hit that hump and lost the grip I had on the cardboard sending me a bit sideways. The next thing I knew my sweatshirt sleeve was being sucked under my brown-paper toboggan. In a flash, my arm went under me and I was doing the 'battle-ship' roll down the hill. I remember thinking to myself as I was tumbling, Mom is going to be so pissed when she sees my clothes. Then she'll tell dad and I'll get a whippin'.

Then it happened...I did the good-old, 'embarrass-the-smart-ass', face-plant. I can remember, just as plain as day, how that clay smelled and tasted as I blew and spit to clear my mouth and nose from the snot-like substance.

That's what I'm smelling now, all around me, dirt!

>

How long have I been here I wonder? It's so cold and damp. Those infernal memories keep stabbing their way into my mind cutting away at tissue and vessels as they relentlessly make their way towards my heart. I must have thought about every bad word or terrible thing I ever did in my now, seemingly, worthless life. Oh the pains...will they never stop? My soul is being shredded, piece by piece, to feed some ghoulish creature hiding in this darkness. Will I eventually be left with nothing? Listlessly floating about in some non-existing existence.

Somewhere, someone or something is calling out in agony but I can't tell who or what it is. The creatures hallowing cries seem to wail of sorrow lamenting over some horrific injustice.

Is it too late to ask for loving kindness Lord? Is there such a thing as love anywhere in this sadistically frightful abyss? I'm so lonely and so scared. The torturous hacking-up of my body has sent what remains of my being, my very soul, into hiding deep within my cold, dead heart. A temporary shelter against the onslaught. A shelter with no heat to rekindle the dampened fires which once drove me so relentlessly, and carelessly, through life. The very same life in which I mistakenly walked down a path leading nowhere!!

Leading here!

>

I am nearly mad! Hell is every bit the eternal purgatory I believed it would be. I always figured a person creates his own heaven or hell while alive. I know it sounds strange, but think about it for a minute. Once a person is dead, all that is left are the memories of their life. My thoughts were that if a person was satisfied with the way he carried on his affairs while alive, he would rest in peace with his conscience clear. If the same person had gone against his fundamental beliefs during his life, he would be tormented through eternity by those memories until he made some sort of peace with himself or the victim of his indecorous actions.

I would give live testimony to this if I were able. Now I am only dead proof and no one hears my cries of pain and misery as I relentlessly scream in and out of madness. I die again and again as my heart is crumpled like an aluminum can...as my last remaining hiding place for my soul grows smaller and smaller. One minute, I am reminiscing another awful blow by me on someone else's being. The next minute, I am howling my lamentations in the dark-shadowed vastness of this unearthly, galactic void.

Now I begin to understand that it is my own cries of pain which tear so horrifically at my heavy heart...and the voices come closer and closer and closer.

With my palms pressed tightly against my ears, I hear them clearly. With my eyes closed tightly for fear of seeing them, I see them better even better.

Dear Lord help me...what have I done?

>

As if the merciless wailing's of these fowled souls were spinning a spell, my memory stirs uneasily within this cob-web bed. Abruptly, my head begins spiraling and my stomach becomes irritably nauseous. Then just as suddenly, my vision clears and I find myself leaving Shenanigans Bar in Sioux Falls.

I am thinking to myself...I'm sure glad I got out of there without puking. This fresh air feels great and my head has stopped spinning so badly. Wow, fifty miles to Vermillion...I'm so fucking drunk...oh well, I can do this.

As my thoughts continue, I find myself headed south on the Interstate...Would you look at that asshole! Hey prick, turn those damn bright's off. That's all she wrote for you buddy, it's NUKE TIME ! Shit-shit-shit...ain't it just that way? You want to nuke someone at the last minute so they get the full effect and you find yourself in someone else's damn truck and ya can't find the damn dimmer switch. Where is that fucking thing?

My vision momentarily blurs as reality fogs my memory.

From out of the darkness comes a very bright light and I am reminded of all the testimonials about near-death experiences as I think to myself, Is the torment finally over?

Then, as if suddenly switched off, the light disappears below the bug-deflector on the hood of the pickup and I see the most horrific, terrifying, bone-jarring, memory-scarring sight I will ever see!

The family...their faces...frozen in my mind, in time, in instant terror.

Dad, who is behind the wheel, has thrown one hand up in front of his face with his fingers flayed painfully wide as if to ward off the oncoming scene. His hand has only gotten level with his chin and his huge, bulging, road-map eyes look as though they are ready to burst from his head. Like awakening lights coming out of the darkness, his pupils are white-filled with my headlights.

His "twin-eyed" wife sits on the passenger side of the compact car…maybe a GEO Metro. Her knuckles are ghostly white from her death grip on the dash. Her elbows are locked in so tightly they appear to be broken at the joints. Her fetishized fingernails, which have been finely filed, are dug furiously into the dash. Her lips are peeled back from her teeth as the two-layered, glass terror expunges the sound of her scream. It's as if she is about to swallow the truck whole!

Most horrifying of all is the slightly shadowed, hollow face of the child who sits on the edge of the back seat, unbuckled, about to take flight. On her face is a look of astonishment and disbelief. It seems to say...Dad, you have always taken care of me...why is this happening?...while at the same time it is saying...Mom, don't worry. Nothing bad can happen as long as daddy is here to protect us.

...And everything goes back to black...

>

In the fog and the fear of the unforgiving darkness, I find myself praying...Our heavenly Father who art in...

***

***

My eyes snapped open with an audible sound like Thuhip. At least, I thought it came from my eyes. It might have been the sudden intake of air through the thin-lipped tightness of a horrified mouth...my own...for in front me stood a mangled and disfigured man who looked strangely and terrifyingly familiar.

His face is shredded and there are gouged hunks of flesh hanging from here and there and blood (some dry, some curdled, some oozing) covered all of it like a red mask of death. Where the right eye beamed so brightly only moments before there now was a dark, gaping hole. Perhaps the same abyss I fell into. The other eye hangs by vessels and strands of meat and stretched out useless tendons never to function again. In some ungodly way, it stares at me. My eyes quickly avert from the sight in a downward glance only to fall upon a site just as grizzly as the man's face.

His chest is caved in as if it had imploded do to some unnatural lack of atmosphere and the bones of his ribs are sticking out in a jagged display like the sheared off trunks of snow-snapped Aspens. In the hollow, where normally there would be a staunch of hair and a belly button covered by a blue, pinstripe shirt with a tie and clasp, there were now only weird shimmering reflections off small cubes of safety-glass which sent shards of penetrating rays right through me. Again I looked away...

***

***

The scream left my mouth so fast and pierced my eardrums so keenly I hardly knew it was mine until I realized it was not going to stop any time soon. My chest sunk in as all my wind found a healthier, happier place outside of me and still the scream went on. I dizzied at the tightness of my eyes, at my inability to catch my breath as my fleeing soul escaped my mouth, and at the emptiness of my heart.

My last thought before the hopeless abyss took me once again was...Surely I am in the Valley of Darkness...Am I the Evil?

>

There is a pinpoint of light on the horizon. Is it the North Star or perhaps the star of Bethlehem? I begin to pray:

The star grows in size and brightness...

The star has grown to the size of a white-sun and is so intense that I feel I should look away for fear of damaging my eyes but there is no pain. Only an urgency to complete something not yet done...

The "Whiteness" now has a wholesomeness about it which seems to be homogenizing my very being with that of a zillion other's. A strength I have never before thought possible permeates my soul and I seem to see some sort of eye all around me...even within me.

As I walk hand-in-hand in the light with "My Family", "That Family", and "The Family"…, fear, anger, hate, and doubt disappear and I clearly hear the words which are often spoken but seldom heard...

LOVE THYSELF AND ONE ANOTHER