The Dark Side

By Guy Hasson

 

 

 

         “The dread of something after death […] puzzles the will,

         and makes us bear those ills we have,

        [rather] than fly to other that we know not of.”

—Hamlet, Prince of Denmark; Shakespeare

1.                   

  

   My memory isn’t what it used to be.

   It’s not that I don’t remember enough.  It’s that I remember too much.

   This present moment is a case in point: I’m at my apartment, sitting on the side of my bed, and beside me sleeps a naked woman.  Now, the question that comes to my mind is, how did she get here?

   I remember a knock on the door last night.  I opened the door, and there she was, selling life insurance.  I let her in.  We talked.  I told her the truth.  She said I was suicidal, too high a risk, they won’t insure me.  But all this talk of death turned her on.  We ended up in bed.  I ended up here, watching her.

   Makes sense.  The memory is vivid.  Problem is, I remember something else, too.

   I was hungry last night.  The fridge was empty.  I went down to the local Seven-Eleven, a five-minute walk from here, to buy me some food.  She was walking out just as I came in.  The second I saw her, I said, ‘You would look great in a coffin’.  Just blurted it out, didn’t think anything of it, and went in.

   For some reason, she backtracked and followed me into the store.  She struck up a conversation.  She liked me.  The first person in a long while that didn’t freak five minutes into a conversation with me.  I liked her.  A lot.  She agreed to come to my apartment.  Only for a few minutes, she said.  She ended up staying the night.

   This memory is just as clear as the first one.  I remember our conversation in the store word for word.  I remember the conversation in my living room, the conversation about life insurance, with the same accuracy.

   I also remember something entirely different.

   The fridge wasn’t completely empty.  There was still enough for one, last meal.  No double-meaning meant.  I ate in front of the television.  Suddenly, the reception frazzled.  I looked up.  And there she was, walking right through the wall and standing in front of the set.  I admit, I was surprised a bit.  But then again, if it happened, it happened.  So long as it’s reality, it’s real, right?

   She wanted some food.  We shared.  We talked.  She said she usually doesn’t walk through walls, but she liked me.  I liked her back.  We ended up in bed much quicker than in the other two times.  I fell asleep immediately afterwards.  I woke up, and she was still here.

   Now, people aren’t supposed to be able to walk through walls.  But this memory is just as real to me as the other two.  One of the versions of the past is probably the truth.  Maybe they all are.  Maybe none.  I really don’t know.  They all feel equally real.

  Although I remember more details than I used to, my memory has become less reliable.  I’ve learned never to believe it, even if it tells me the truth.

   So I’m back to my original question: How did she get here?

   I don’t even remember her name.  That is to say, I remember three different names.

   I’ll wait until she wakes up and ask her then.

   On the other hand, maybe I won’t remember thinking this.  Maybe I won’t remember being confused.  Maybe I’ll forget to ask her.  Maybe I never thought all these thoughts.  Maybe this is one of my false memories.  Maybe there’s no one in my bed.  Maybe I should wake her up and ask her now, before I forget the different ways by which she came to my bed.

   But then again, if I forget to ask her, I won’t be angry with myself for forgetting, because I’ll have forgotten that I forgot.

   What was I thinking about?  I forget.

   I’ll let her sleep.

 

 

2.                   

 

   There’s a knife in my hand.  I’m standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a knife in my hand.  I don’t remember how I got here, I don’t remember what day it is.  At this very second, I don’t even remember my name.  It doesn’t matter, though.  I wouldn’t believe me if I did remember.  All that matters is the present.  All that matters is what’s in front of me.

   My image in the mirror is in front of me.  I need a shave.  Must be morning.  It doesn’t matter.

   There’s a knife in my hand.  I don’t think I came in for a shave.  I press the knife against my throat.  Very sharp.  A quick cut and it’ll all be over.

   Could it be?  Is it finally time to do it, to leave this world and go to the other side?  I must have made all the preparations and forgotten about them.  There’s a crowd of thousands in my head, cheering: ‘Do it!  Do it!  Do it!’  Oh, I’ll do it, don’t you worry about that.

   I put the knife to my throat.  The crowd roars.

   But... But what if I’m not ready?  What if the reason I don’t remember making the preparations is that I hadn’t made any?  Then why am I here with a knife?  Where did I get the knife, anyway?  For once, not even one memory comes to mind.

   I should do it.  I should just do it.  I’ve been planning this for more than a year.  It’s time.  I feel it.  I know it.

   I stare at the mirror.  There’s the place to cut, right there.  I’ll bleed to death on the floor.  Within minutes, I’ll be almost entirely drained of blood.  Sounds like fun. 

   I start to cut.  It hurts.  Big surprise. 

   I stop.  Still only a scratch.

   What’s your problem, you wuss?

   Something’s wrong.  Why can’t I remember how I got here?  Why isn’t even one of my memories telling me I’ve made the proper preparations?  Maybe I’ve done all the experiments already, maybe there are no more preparations to be made, maybe I already know what’s on the other side, because I’ve already been there?  Maybe this time I’m going there permanently?

   I don’t know.  I can’t remember.

   It doesn’t matter.  I’ve obviously come here to do it.  I have to trust my judgment, even when I can’t remember it.  Besides, whether I’ve made the preparations or not, either way I’m going to see what’s on the other side.  Worst case, I won’t come back to tell anyone.  What’s so bad about that?

   I get ready to cut again.

   Where did I get the knife?  It doesn’t matter. 

   The crowd eggs me on.  My hand trembles.  This is ridiculous.  I can’t be afraid of death.

   Come on, be a man.  Have some guts.  So it’ll hurt, so what?  You know you want to.

   My hand still won’t move. 

   No.  Not today.  Not today.  I refuse to do it without knowing what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.  The crowd boos.  Trust me, folks, no one is more disappointed than I.

   I put the knife down.  No harm done.  Death will still be there tomorrow.  And the day after, and the day after.  I’ll kill myself once I regain my memory.

   My head thumps against a hard object.  Whoa, that hurt!  I’m on the floor.  I must have fallen somehow.  I get up and look around.  I’m in the bedroom.  There’s a naked woman in my bed.  What’s she doing in my bed?  Ah, yes, she walked through the wall or came to sell life insurance or I met her at the Seven-Eleven... or something.

   I must have fallen asleep.  All that bit with the knife, it must have been a dream.  In that case, I am a first-class jerk.  I can’t even kill myself in a dream.

   Still, maybe that was reality, and this is the dream.  They feel exactly the same.  But I’m here right now, so I must treat this as if this is reality.

   I look at her.  I never noticed it before, but she looks incredible.

   God, I hope she’s the one who walked through the wall.  I’d love to see that again.

 

 

3.                   

 

   She stirs.

   She opens her eyes and looks at me.  She smiles.  Oh, to die for, to die for, to absolutely slit your wrists and die die die for!

   “Good morning.” She says.  She’s got a great voice.  “Come here.”

   I come there.  She pulls me in and kisses me.  But there’s something in her eye.  Her thoughts are elsewhere.  I draw back.  I want to ask what’s wrong.

   Suddenly she pulls out a knife from behind her back and lunges me, plunging it into my chest.  I yell, first from surprise, then from the pain.  I leap back.  The knife is lodged in my ribs.  Blood geysers out of the wound.  It hurts to breathe.  I’m not prepared.  This isn’t how I wanted to go.  My heart!  My heart hurts!  I look down—

   There’s no knife.  I stand there, panting.  No knife, no hole in my chest, no blood anywhere.  I look at her.  She’s either asleep or faking it.  She shifts slightly, probably from the noise I made, but she’s still asleep.

   Whatever this was, it was not a dream.  I’m standing.  I don’t dream standing up.  I screamed, and she heard it.  The pain was real, although now it’s gone.

   She probably still has the knife.

   I pull the covers and search for a knife.  There isn’t any sort of weapon anywhere.  Either she hid it, or this was one of my false memories.  I’m still breathing hard.  She’s still asleep.

   I sit back down and tell myself that it doesn’t matter.  I gave up long ago trying to understand what’s really happening.  The past never makes sense.  Weird things keep happening.  Sometimes they resolve, sometimes they desolve.

   I wonder if she’s really here.

   She’s asleep.  I’ll wait.  Maybe she’ll disappear.

 

 

4.                   

 

   She doesn’t disappear.

   She wakes up again.  It’s been an hour since she tried to stab me.

   She looks at me and smiles.  Oh, what a gorgeous smile!

   “Good morning,” she says.  She’s still got a great voice.

   “Good morning,” I say.  Dangerous as she may be, I can’t help but smile back.

   She stretches.  My heart leaps.  But I don’t dare come too close.  I learn from experience.

   “Did you try to stab me?”

   Her forehead crinkles, and she squints slightly.  She’s still wearing that smile, though.  “No,” she says simply.

   She could be lying.  I choose to believe her.

   “Do you walk through walls?”

   She laughs.  “No.”  Damn.

   “Do you sell life insurance?”

   She blinks.  “No.”

   “Then you must have left your groceries in your car.”

   “Brilliant deduction, Holmes.” And she smiles again.  I’ll take that as a yes.

   So.  The woman I met in the store was called Sharon.  I wonder where the other memories came from?  Did I have other women here?  Why did they all look like her?  It doesn’t matter.  The past never makes sense.  Only the present matters.  And in the present, there’s a gorgeous woman that in all likelihood did not try kill me sitting naked in my bed.

   “Would you like breakfast, Sharon?”

   “Sure.  I’d like dessert first, though.”  She gestures for me to come closer.  I climb into bed.  We kiss.

   “I’m disappointed,” she says as my kisses move south.

   I withdraw. “Why?”

   “No coffin.  From the way you talked, I was sure you slept in one.”

   “I admit,” I tell her, “that lying dead in a coffin is my life-long ambition.  But it usually takes years of hard work and dedication to achieve your goals.”

   She looks at me strangely.  That look I have seen before, on many different faces.  This is the look people give me when they don’t know what to make of me.  But it passes very quickly, and she laughs. “You are wa-a-a-ay out there, Joel,” she says, and leans closer to kiss my chest.

   Actually, I’m way in here.  Inside my head.  All three of me.

   We have sex.  And the crowd cheers.

 

 

5.                   

 

   “So what do you do,” I ask her, “when you don’t sell insurance?”

   We’re sitting at the kitchen table.  I made some eggs.  Or she made some eggs.  Or someone made the eggs before we came into the kitchen.  In any case, we’re eating eggs.

   “Since I never sell insurance, everything.”

   “Let me rephrase.  What do you do instead of selling insurance?”

   “Selling insurance was never an option, so I don’t do anything instead.”

   “Last try.” She gestures ‘please’. “What do you do for a living?”

   “Oh, is that what you wanted to know?”  I like her.  She’s not scared of me.  She doesn’t let me get away with anything. “I lift crates at the peer.”

   “Really?  I didn’t think you had enough muscles.”

   “For advertising?”

   “Advertising?  I thought you said you lift crates at the pier.”

   She stops in mid-chew and looks at me. “Are you serious?”

   I shrug. “It’s what I heard.”

   “It doesn’t even sound alike!” I shrug again.  She seems to consider something, then keeps on chewing.  “So what do you do when you’re not contemplating coffins?”

   “Actually, that’s mostly what I do all day.  You’d be surprised how much variation there is in—”

   “I’ll rephrase.  What do you do to earn a living?”

   “Nothing.  I’ve already earned my living.  I used to... tinker around with gadgets.  I invented a couple of patents that allowed me to retire for the next few centuries.”

   “So what do you do now?”

   “I hang around the house.  And think.”

   “Think?  Think about what?”

   “Life, death, that sort of thing.”

   “Coffins?”

   “That, too.”

   “Doesn’t that get tiresome after a while?  Just you and your thoughts?”

   “Actually, there aren’t enough hours in a day for me to cope with all my thoughts.”

   “Hmm...” She takes another bite as she mulls something over. “Are you also working on something, now?  I mean, inventing something new?”

   “Actually…” I begin, but then I wonder how much I should tell her.  Not all.  Not yet.  “I am kind of working on some new field of research.  It’s still... in the thinking-about-only stages.”

   “What is it about?”

   I open my mouth, then stop. “Next time.  If there is a next time.”

   “You’re right.  I need to go.  Don’t want to be late for my job, do I?” She looks at me and smiles. “If I’m late, who’s going to lift all those crates?”

   I don’t say anything.  Either I heard wrong.  Or I heard right now and heard wrong before when she said she worked in advertising.  Or she made a joke.  Or something.

   “And as for coming back?  You bet.  I like sleeping with walking dead men.”

   “So you’re a necrophiliac?”

   “Oh, absolutely.” And she kisses my cheek.

   “Good.  Me, too.”

   She begins to smile, then half of it drops, and half of it freezes.  She’s not sure if it was a joke.  I’d reassure her, but I don’t remember what I said.

 

 

 

6.                   

 

   I close the door behind her.  I look out the window until I see her get into her car and drive away.

   Now I’m alone.  And I start to think: Was she ever here?  And the truth is: I don’t know. 

   She felt real when she was here.  But right now is right now, and right now she’s not here, and all I have is a memory.  And I can’t trust my memories.  All I have now is a wonderful feeling of having spent a night and a morning with the most incredible woman I’ve ever met.  That doesn’t mean it really happened.

   If she shows up again, that would mean she had been here before.  Unless, of course, her showing up again would also be a false memory.  But even if she comes again, she’ll have to leave eventually.  And I’ll be left with myself and my thoughts and my doubts.  It’s like the only time that anything real happens, anything I can truly depend on, is when I’m alone.  My thoughts are real, whether they’re in a false memory or not.  My feelings are real, whether the people I have feelings for exist or not.

   Other people always leave and become part of the past.  I’m always the only one who’s constantly here, in the present.  And the present is the only thing I can trust.  That’s the bottom line: I’m always alone.  Just me and my thoughts.

   Now, where did I put that knife?

 

 

7.                   

 

   I never liked the concept of life after death.  It seems ridiculous.  Since death is what comes after life, we can’t expect it to have any life in it, because it is our afterlife.  If there was life in death, death would be life, and it wouldn’t be death, would it?  The question is not whether there is life after death but whether death is not nothingness.

   That question has intrigued me ever since I can remember.  And when I died it became even more intriguing.

   I was seven years old when I drowned in the pool.  The life guard resuscitated me.  But for a while there I had no pulse and I didn’t breathe.  I remember that suddenly I wasn’t at the pool anymore.  I was back home.  My mom was there, too, and she was crying and telling me that dad is dead.  And I also remember that there was some woman in the window, looking at the two of us, curious, amused.  But then I remember thinking, I’m not in the house, I’m in the street.  And I was in the street, and there was some blue Volkswagen that skidded to a halt just as I – an older, teenage me – was crossing the street.  The car stopped an inch from my teenage leg.  And then, suddenly, I was back at the pool, coughing my guts out.

   I only have one memory of my death and everything that happened during it.  Everything from before also has only one version.  But after this incident I suddenly had this triple-memory problem.  Doctors said it’s due to oxygen deprivation, that I suffered some sort of weird, irreversible brain damage.  I mean, I can still talk and think and write, but… my memory is unreliable.

   They also said that my out-of-body experience was an illusion.  I believed them, obviously.  But seven years later, I realized it wasn’t.

   A car nearly ran me over.  A blue Volkswagen.  At exactly the same street corner, on exactly the same spot I’d seen in my near-death experience.  The VW stopped just an inch from my leg.

   I came back home, shaken, and looked in the journal they psychologists had me write seven years earlier.  And it was there.  This exact incident, written in detail, down to the same, precise number of the VW’s license plate!

   When I was dead, I had somehow gotten a glimpse of the future.  Half of it, at least, was accurate: that part about the VW.  The part about my father dying was false.  My mother died only a couple of years ago, and my father’s still alive.  Other people have reported out-of-body experiences, hearing and seeing things which they couldn’t possibly have.  Maybe some of it’s the brain playing tricks.  But I had conclusive proof, at least in my eyes, that some of these incidents – certainly mine – are real.  There is some thing after death.  There is something.  It isn’t life.  But it isn’t nothingness, either.

   Something happens after we die.  And, soon, I’ll know all about it.

 

 

8.                   

 

   I’m standing on the roof.  Ten floors up.  Sharon is with me.

   “I go first,” she says.

   “Go ahead.”

   She kisses me, then lets go of the railing and jumps.

   She sails through the air, and lands face first on the pavement below.  She actually bounces once.

   She lies there, pieces of her everywhere, her body probably no more than a pulp.  Someone will have to peel her off .

   She knows what’s on the other side, now.  She knows the whole truth.  I’m jealous.

   No hesitation this time, no fear.  I don’t even think about my experiment, I let go.  Gravity takes hold, and I fall through the air.  This is slower than I thought.  I crash into branches. Oh, no, please, don’t let them break my fall!  The branches break, my fall doesn’t.  Here comes the ground—

   I sit up.  The faint light of sunrise comes through my window.  I’m in my bed.  Sharon, beside me, looks up. “What’s the matter?” she says through sleep-hazed eyes. “You screamed.”

   “I screamed?  Did I?”

   “What did you dream about?”  She puts her hand on my cheek.  Somehow, it feels wrong, unreal.  Maybe it wasn’t a dream.  Maybe it was real and this is the afterlife?  Or maybe I’m still dreamin—

   I sit up.  The faint light of sunrise comes through holes in my window.  I’m in my bed.  Sharon, beside me, looks up. “What’s the matter,” she says through sleep-hazed eyes. “You screamed.”

   “I had this strange dream.”

   “What was it about?” She puts her hand on my chest, rubbing it affectionately.

   “It’s just—” Her hand feels wrong.  Can I still be dreaming?  Can’t be.  I already woke up twice.  Sharon looks at me, wondering why I stopped.  What if I try to wake up?  What if I—

   I sit up.  It’s the middle of the night.  I’m in my bed.  No Sharon.  Oh, God, what a nightmare.

   I get up, go to the fridge and get myself something to eat.  After this kind of dream, I am not going to sleep again.  I make a sandwich and settle in front of the television.

   The Nature Channel has something about maggots.  Cool.

   I take a bite out of the sandwich.  It doesn’t taste right.  Oh, no.  No, no.  Come on!  It’s already been ten minutes!  This is as real as it gets!  I can’t be dreamin—

   I sit up.  In bed again.  Sharon’s here again.  Didn’t scream this time.  I feel nauseated.

   I wake up twenty more times before I decide I’ve had enough.  Whatever happens, whatever this present state I’m in is, I refuse to wake up from it.  As far as I’m concerned, from this moment on, this is reality.

   I don’t wake up again.

 

 

9.                   

 

   “The first dead person I saw was when I was five,” Sharon tells me.  We’re snuggling in my bed. “I was walking back home from kindergarten with my mother.  We were waiting at the intersection for the green light.  On the other side of the street stood a very beautiful young man with black hair and one of the strangest faces I ever saw.  The light changed, the cars stopped, and he leaped into the intersection.  Suddenly, you know, for no reason, one of the cars just started moving.  The driver must have pressed the gas pedal by accident or something, and his car just slammed into the man with the weird face.

   “My mother covered my eyes.  But the picture of that man, lying, dead, in the middle of the road, in the middle of the intersection, with one leg skewed a bit to the side.  He lay there, and he looked normal.  Only now he was dead.

   “And I remember thinking: Where did all of him go?  A moment ago, he was a person, he walked, he talked, he moved, he breathed, he had thoughts.  And now, he lay there, looking just the same as he ever did.  But there was no ‘him’ inside him.  The difference between the man’s empty shell and the man’s ‘full shell’, when there’s a ‘him’ inside.  It was creepy.  It was beautiful.  That thin line between the living and the dead, the person and the non-person.  We don’t have a word for this.  We don’t understand what it is.  One minute, that man in front of me is a person, the other…

   “That’s something I never forgot.  Even…” She takes my arms off her, sits up, turning around to face me.  Her face is very serious.  She looks straight into my eyes.  “I’m going to tell you something.  If anyone ever has a chance of understanding it, it’s you.  But you have to promise me ahead of time, you won’t leave me because of it.”

   I nod.

   “All right, this is… This is kind’a weird.  But a while ago, I realized that all of my, uh, my previous boyfriends, shall we call them, or lovers, or whatever, they all look kind’a like him.  The more they looked like the young man that had lain dead in the street across from me, the more attractive I found them.”

   “And me?” I ask.

   “You’re a dead ringer.”

   I smile.  Competition from a dead man.  She smiles back.

   I couple two of my fingers into a gun, and put them on her ribs. “Boom,” I say softly.  She falls backward on the mattress, and does not move.  I lift one of her arms then let go of it.  It falls down, lifeless.  I lift it again, and throw it to one side.  Still, no reaction.  I caress Sharon’s body, then slowly undress it.  I do what I do.  She doesn’t move.  She’s dead.

   Later it’ll be my turn.

 

 

10.               

 

   It’s one minute away.

   It’s six forty-four p.m., and I have two pills in my hand that will cause my death.  Can’t buy those.  I had to make them myself.  Question is, is Sharon going to be here when I die?  I remember I made her promise to be here exactly at seven.  On the second.  And to use her key.  But that’s only a memory.

   I go to the board I put up on the other side of the front door.  I put my hands in my pockets, making sure I don’t touch it.  The notes are still there – special stick-up thingies that can be bought in the center of town, but nowhere near here, the small radius of my existence.  I remember I asked her to buy them.  The fact that they’re here doesn’t mean she did.

   Each of the notes is signed in what I remember to be her handwriting.  It’s clearly not mine.  I’d made her put up a note each time she came.  It’s as close as I can come to proof that she had been here.  But I’m interested in the last note: I peer closer, keeping my hands away from it.  It says she’ll be here, today, at seven, on the second.

   I look at my watch.  It just became six forty-five.

   I gulp down the pills.

   Wait!  Is Sharon coming?  What day is this?

 

 

11.               

 

   My chest hurts.  I can’t breathe without pain.

   My left arm hurts.  You took pills to give yourself a heart attack, you idiot.  I didn’t think it would hurt this much.  Oh, damn, oh, damn, the world is melting away and there is so much pain.

   The doorbell rings.  I hope that’s Sharon at the door.  I hope she’d brought the key I made for her, because I can’t make it that far.  In two out of three memories I forgot to tell her to bring it.  If she’s not here when I die—

   The sound of a key turning.  The door’s becoming a blur.  There’s her hair swimming towards me.

   “Joel?”  That’s her voice swimming toward me. “Are you all right?”

   “Hi.” That’s my voice, I think.  Oh, my god, she’s gigantic.  Every part of her is two stories high.

   Hi, Sharon.  Did I say this, or did I think it?  Doesn’t matter.

   Hi, Sharon.  Did I say this?  Did I say this?

   Did I say this?

   Wow.  I never noticed it before, but she looks incredib—

   Black.

   Bang.

   Boom.

   Bye.

 

 

12.               

 

   Ouch.

   My head hurts.

   I open my eyes, halfway through realizing that I still have eyes.  But then the image of my living room ceiling registers and all hopes of understanding the afterlife vanish.  Oh, damn.  Was the heart attack just another false memory?  Did I imagine it all?

   What time is it?  Maybe it’s still due.  Still too groggy to get up, but, looking sideways, I look at the clock.  It’s seven and five minutes.  But then why am I not dead?  Where’s Sharon?  Did she go down to call the paramedics?  But why would she if I’m fine?  Maybe I didn’t take the pills.  But then she should be here, we should be here together.  Why do all my memories have her coming in at the right time?

   I sigh.  Whatever the hell this is, it’s reality.

   I get up slowly.  My body hurts, but it works.

   Something catches my eye.  Something about this room.

   What?  It looks exactly as it does in—I look down, and realize I’m not alone.  Someone’s lying at my feet.

   It takes a second to recognize the face and the body.  That’s me!  That’s my body!

 

 

13.               

 

   Well, this is new.

 

 

14.               

 

   I am – he is – whiter than I’d ever seen me.  The back of his – my – head rests on the floor exactly on the spot that hurts me.

   I thought the ongoing preposterousness of reality had prepared me for anything.  But not for this.

   It takes me a minute to get used to the situation.  Still, it’s reality.  Accept it.  What do we have?  Okay, here I am standing.  Okay, here I am lying down.  It seems like the me on the ground is the one who took the medicine.  But then where’s Sharon?  If I – he – keep/s lying around like this, nobody’s going to resuscitate him – me.  I won’t come back to finish my research.

   And what am I?  A ghost?  Am I – is he – already dead?  Is this it?  Are ghost stories real?  Will I haunt my house or something until the end of time?  I don’t accept that.  I don’t know that I’m a ghost, all I know is that there’s another me lying there on the floor, not breathing.

   I bend down and take his pulse – realizing that I’m as tangible as he is.  So much for ethereal ghosts.  No pulse.  I put his – my – hand down.  I don’t like this.  I refuse to be like everyone else.  I refuse to discover the secrets of the other side only after I’m completely dead.

   I pick up the phone, and dial 911.  I tell them I’m a neighbor.  Better than telling them I’m the body.  They’re on their way.

   I should do CPR.  I go down on my knees, turn the head, move it to clear the air passage.  Just as I bend down to put my mouth over his, his hand lashes out and grabs my throat.

   Before I realize what’s happening, I’m thrust against the floor, and he’s above me, an iron grip around my neck, squeezing, crushing it.  I’m already seeing spots, and inbetween them is my own face, lips locked in malice.

   “How do you like being dead,” he says, and his voice is a violent rasp.  I have never hated as much as he does.  I have never been as strong as him.  His weight is on my chest.  Can’t think.  Have to breathe.  Oh, damn, damn, damn.  “How would you like to die again?”  And he squeezes, and—gack!—I feel and hear my neckpipe snap.  My neck explodes with pain and fluids and my lungs feel like—

 

 

15.               

 

   I open my eyes.  People dressed like doctors standing over me.  Disgustingly white ceiling.  Smells like medicine.  The hospital.  They’ve brought me back.  I’m alive.  I’m breathing.  I’m exhausted. 

   “He’ll be all right, now,” a man’s voice says.

   Sharon pushes her way to the front.

   “Are you all right?  Is he all right?”  I blink at her in acknowledgement.  She hits my arm. “You idiot!  You gave me such a scare!  You were actually clinically dead for a few seconds!”

   “Shh, leave him alone.  Let him rest.”

   “You were very lucky, sir,” a man’s voice again. “If your friend here had found you a minute later, we wouldn’t have been able to bring you back.”

   Gee.  What a coincidence.

 

16.               

 

   They put me in what passes for a room in the hospital.  I’m supposed to sleep.  It’s true that I’m tired and that my body’s exhausted, but I have to gather my thoughts, first, while the memories are still fresh and unclouded.  Because this ‘other me’ who was strangling me is only one memory.

   I have another.

   I was at school again.  I was ten years old.  Or I was watching myself as a ten-year-old.  I’m not sure which.  Sometimes it felt like one, sometimes it felt like the other.  Sometimes it felt like both.

   In any case, it was recess.  I was there with Sam, the stupidest kid in our class, who always had bubbles of snot in his left nostril.  Thirty-or-so kids surrounded us.

   “Lick my shoe,” I told him.  And I remember thinking how unlike me this is.

   “Come on,” he whined. 

   “Lick!  My!!  Shoe!!!”

   And I remember thinking, feeling like an outsider for a moment, that I never did such a thing, that this is not a memory.  And at the same time I recalled why Sam wasn’t leaving.  That he had made a bet with me and promised to humiliate me if I lost, and that he was so certain of the outcome, that, if he lost, he would do anything I said.

   Sam rubbed his hands on his pants and looked at me with desperate eyes. “Come on, choose something else,” he said again.

   I was getting angry at him.  And, yes, I remembered this anger.  I remembered it clearly. “Lick.  My.  Shoe.”

   “Please.  Come on.  Ask something else.  Ask something normal.”

   “Sam.  I’m not forcing you to do anything.  You’re the one who wanted to make the bet.  You’re the one who said he’d do anything.  You’re the one who gave his word.  You said you would humiliate me if I lost.”

   “Don’t make me.”

   “You know what,” I raised my arms in acquiescence. “I won’t make you.  Let’s take this out of my hands.  Let’s make this democratic.  Let’s vote.” I waved at the crowd as I turned to face them. “What do you say?” And as I spoke, I turned back to him, and faced the crowd.  “Those who think he should lick my shoe, raise your hands.” And I felt joy and satisfaction at the storm of hands were raised. “Okay,” I motioned them to lower their hands. “Now.  Whoever thinks he shouldn’t lick my boots, raise your hands.” I looked around.  Not one hand was raised.

   I turned around and looked at Sam. “Lick my shoe,” I said simply.

   “Please, please,” he whispered.

   “The people have spoken,” I gestured helplessly. “Do it now.”

   Sam, a tear in his eye, fell to his knees in front of me.  He looked up. “Please.”

   “Do it.”

   And he did it.  I watched from the side with disgust, as he the child licked my shoe.  This is not me.  I am not like that.

   Sam stopped and looked up.

   “Okay?” He asked.

   “Part of it is still dirty,” I told him. “Do it again.”

   And then I was in the hospital again, brought back from the dead, looking up at the doctors hovering over me.  Back from the dead.  Or whatever that was.

 

 

17.               

 

   I have another memory, a third memory.

   I was with Sharon.  The both of us looked slightly older.  It was probably two or three years from now.  We were at my house, sitting on the floor, half our clothes off.  Sharon was holding an open pistol in one hand, and a bullet in the other.

   Sharon looked at me and said, “One bullet.”  She dropped it into the cylinder.

   “Now spin it.” I told her.  She put the cylinder in place, then spun it. “Point it at me,” I said.  She hesitated, then pointed it roughly at me, hand off the trigger.  I put my hands around hers, and pointed the barrel at my chest.

   “Finger on the trigger,” I told her.

   She did as she was told.

   “Fire,” I said.

   She looked at me. “Are you sure?” She was scared, but she liked it.  There was excitement in her eyes.

   I touched her knee without moving my chest.  “Do it.  Do it.” She shut her eyes. “Open your eyes, and do it.”

   She pressed the trigger.  My heartrate skyrocketed, but the pistol did not fire.  She sighed.  We kissed.  The most passionate kiss I’ve ever known.  For a moment I thought, wait, am I the one watching or am I the one being watched?

   I took the pistol into my hand, and spun the cylinder.  For a long time, she looked at it, and said nothing.

   “Tell me,” I said. “This doesn’t work unless you tell me.”

   She stared into my eyes for a long time. “Aim it at me,” she finally said.

   I aimed it at her chest.  She held the barrel in her hand, and slowly moved it down, so that it pointed at her upper thigh.

   “Finger on the trigger,” she said.

   I put my finger on the trigger.

   Neither of us breathed.  “Are you sure?” I asked.

   There was a tear in her eye.  I swear, she almost said ‘no’.  But she said, “Do it.”

   “Are you sure?”

   With more force: “Do it!”

   I pressed the trigger, and her leg exploded before me.  Her scream was blood curdling.  I should have aimed it at her chest.  I should have aimed it at her chest!  She was still screaming, writhing on the rug, when suddenly she was gone, replaced by the sterility of the hospital.  I was back from the dead.   Whereever that had been.

 

 

18.               

 

   Here’s my problem.

   My memories always diverge.  Which is why they’re not reliable.  But it always turns out that at least one of them is supported by the facts.  At least one is always ‘true’ by everyone else’s standards.

   But I’m faced with three memories, none of which can be real.  Another me that rose from the dead and wanted to kill me after I was already dead.  A memory of an incident that never happened.  A memory from the future that I know will never happen.

   Somewhere in there lies the truth.  Somewhere in there is the answer to the question ‘What happens after we die?’  All I have to do is find it.

   If I die again – I could compare these three memories to the next three memories.  If a couple match – if there is continuity – I’ll know that’s the one.

 

 

19.               

 

   A day and a half later, the doctors release me.  Sharon takes me home.

   “Sit down,” She says once we’re in.

   I sit down.

   “You had this planned, didn’t you?”  She points at me.  “You took some drug or something.  You planned it down to the second, didn’t you?  You planned to be dead by the time I got here, and made sure I got here on the second, with enough time to save you.  That’s why you made sure I wouldn’t come even one minute later.  I’m right, aren’t I?”

   “Yes,” I tell her quietly.

   She shuts her eyes, and holds them with her fingers.  “Why,” she says. “Why would you do that?”

   I take her hand in mine. “There’s something on the other side, Sharon.  I know it.”

   She opens her eyes, the pain gone in the confusion. “What?!”

   “There’s something after death.  It’s not heaven, it’s not hell, it’s not ghosts, and it isn’t a white light, either.  It isn’t any of that.  But it isn’t blackness and nothingness.  I know it.”

   She shakes her head. “What are you talking about?”

   “My fascination with death is scientific.  I want to understand what it is.  I want to finally pin this phenomenon down.”

   “So you want to die?”

   I look into her eyes. “Yes.”

   She puts her hand on her mouth.  I wait, but she says nothing. “Death is death,” she says finally. “It’s nothing.  It’s less than nothing.  When we die, we stop.  That’s all there is to it, Joel.  That’s all.”

   “It isn’t,” my voice remains soft. “It is something we know nothing about, but it is something.  I saw things.” And I see in her face a look I’ve seen in others, but had hoped never to see on hers.  She’s trying not to say it, but I can see she’s thinking it: ‘You’re crazy.’ “Sharon, I died once.  Before this.  I was clinically dead.  I had an out-of-body experience.”

   “The mind playing tricks,” she hisses.

   “That’s what I thought it was.  But… What I’d seen, it was something from my future.  And seven years later, it happened.  It happened, Sharon, just the way I’d seen.  To the last detail.  And it wasn’t my imagination.  I want to explore death.  I need to explore it.  I want to die and be the first man to come back and report after having explored the phenomenon. This is a scientific experiment.”

   “So you plan to die again?”

   “Yes.”

   “And again?”

   “Yes.  And again.  Until I know what’s on the other side.  And once I have all the information, I’ll decide whether I want to stay there permanently now, or whether I should wait a while.”

   She shakes her head. “I…I… I can’t handle this.”

   I sit down, tired. “I can’t help that.”

   “Joel,” she says, “I can handle all the rest.  All the crazy stuff.  I love it, I really do. It’s—” She trails off for a minute. “I can deal with the rest.  But not this.  This is too much.”

   “This is the rest, Sharon.  It’s not a game.  It was never a game.  Dying is what everything else is all about.”

   She shuts her eyes again, trying to control her emotions.  A tear falls, despite her efforts.  “Look.  If you had an accident or something and you died – it happens.  We all live with this.  But knowing you’re going to die – that there’s no doubt about it? – walking into this with my eyes open?  No.  I can’t handle that.”

   “Sharon…” This hurts. “I can’t help you.”

   “Please… “ she says slowly, and looks deep into my eyes. “Don’t… die.”

   I look away. “I can’t help you.”

   “Please.”

   I shut my eyes.  “I can’t.” 

   There’s a long silence.  Then steps growing distant.  The door opens and closes.

   I open my eyes.  As always, I’m alone.  Only I hurt.

   I hope this never happened.

 

 

20.               

 

   I write all three memories of my death in a notebook, with as much detail as possible.  I even record every thought I remember passed through my mind. 

   It would have been nice if I could have had a subject to perform these experiments on.  Scientists would not treat my observations as reliable.  But, odd as it sounds, there’s no one else whose observations I would trust more than mine.  I may have too many memories, but once I die again, the memories that repeat will be, in my eyes, the true memories.

   I’ll just have to wait a few more weeks before I’m well enough to commit suicide again.

   In the meantime, all I can do is think about what I’ve seen.

 

 

21.               

 

   I wake up in the middle of the night, soaked with sweat.  Another dream about Sam.  I’ve been dreaming about him every night.  About how I used to bully people.  And my dreams have helped me remember.  I don’t know why I thought it wasn’t like me to do things like that.  I’ve obviously done a lot of them.  I know a large part of me keeps shouting: ‘No, this didn’t happen.  It isn’t like me!’  But it is.  I know that it is.  I remember it well. 

I even remember my first death better.  The memory is much more intense.  I remember my mother telling me about my father’s death.  I remember now how I felt betrayed at his having abandoned me.  I remember how hard it was to cope without him.  I remember how my mother couldn’t cope.

   But that can’t be true; he’s still alive.  No, how can he be?  I remember his death like it was yesterday!

   To make sure, I call him up.  He answers his phone.  He’s groggy, it’s the middle of the night.  But he’s still alive.  He never abandoned me!  He’s still alive!

 

 

22.               

 

   I wake up in the middle of the night.

   No!  It couldn’t be!

   That face, that woman’s face that I’d seen in the window when my mother told me the bad news – it was Sharon’s face!

   But that can’t be.  My memory’s inventing this.  Sharon today is a few years younger than me, and the woman in the window looks the way Sharon looks now.  That could definitely not have been reality.

   Unless…

   Unless that part of my memory was a sight of the future, too.  Had I seen Sharon’s face?  Had I seen that part of my life that long ago?  Or am I making it up now?

   There’s no way to know.  This isn’t as easy as looking up a license plate number.  For this, I have to trust what I remember.  And that’s the one thing I can’t do.

 

 

23.               

 

   Three weeks have passed since I died.  Two-and-a-half nightmare-filled weeks since Sharon left me – there are no new notes pinned to the board.  I still keep it up there.  To assure myself that she was real.

   Physically, I’m still recovering.  Body’s still weak.  It’ll probably be another month or so before I’m healthy enough to commit suicide again.  Meanwhile, I’m burning time watching television.  There’s a documentary now about maggots.  I swear I’ve seen it before, but I don’t remember when.  Still, I’ve already heard every word and seen every image.  Oh, well.  It will come to me.

   Suddenly there’s a rustling behind me.  I turn around.  It’s the sound of a key in the lock.  Panic.  Quickly, I think, who has a key?  Has anyone called?  No one ever comes.

   The lock turns.  I get up.  I’m not strong enough to fight a burgla—I almost gasp.  It’s Sharon.  Wearing a suit and carrying a suitcase.  She must have come here right from work.

   She puts her suitcase on the floor, comes into the living room, and sits beside me.  I look at her.  She looks at the television.  I sit back down.

   “What are we watching?” She says.

   “A documentary.”

   “What’s it about?”

   “Maggots.”

   “Cool.”

 

 

24.               

 

   She goes to sleep in my bed, cuddling up beside me.

   Halfway through the night, I feel her hand making its way across my chest.  I feel it going down, and up, going all over me.  I respond in kind.

     An hour later, we’re into the best sex I’ve ever had, and although not a word has been exchanged, I know what’s going through her mind.  She is just as scared of my death as she was when she stormed out of here.  But she’s also turned on by it.  Death excites her.

    By returning, she’s given her consent for my next suicide.  But she’s also bought a ring-side ticket for it.  She doesn’t want me to do it, but she’ll watch it with joy.  She hates it, and she loves it.

   And I know – I know! – that now I can do anything.  No matter what I do, she’s mine.  No matter what I tell her to do, what I ask her, what I say.  She’s mine.  And that thought excites me more than anything.

   I can ask for anything.  I can say anything.

   But I don’t.  I shouldn’t.

   I told you I shouldn’t – stop arguing!

 

 

 

25.               

 

   Sharon is stirring herself awake.  There’s light outside.  Time for her to get up.  Time to go to work.

   “Good morning,” she kisses me, then starts to climb out of bed.

   “Don’t go,” I grab her hand.

   “I’m only going to the shower.”

   “Don’t go to work.”

   She looks at me and crinkles her nose. “What?”

   “Call in sick.” I hold her hand and pull her slightly towards me.  She inches closer, letting herself be pulled.

   “I can’t call in sick,” she’s now between both my legs. “I have a project due next week.  I have to—”

   “Call in sick,” I kiss her stomach.

   “Joel, Joel, Joel,” she holds my head in her hands, neither pulling nor pushing, just touching. “I can’t.”

   “Call in sick,” I say softly, my fingers slowly going down her back.

   “They—” She shuts her eyes, unable to concentrate.  It takes a few seconds. “They need me.”

   “Call in sick,” I touch her elsewhere.

   “Forget that,” she says. “I have a completely original idea.”

   “What?”

   “I think I’ll call in sick.”

 

 

26.               

 

   “Call in sick,” I tell her.

   It’s been a week.  In all three memories, we haven’t stopped touching.  She hasn’t gone to work all that time.  I don’t think we’ve put on our clothes more than once.

   “I really have to go,” she says, reaching for the cellphone. “Or I won’t have a job to come home to.”

   She’s about to dial, when I put my hand on her phone. “So you won’t have a job.”

   She pulls back, surprised, suddenly distant. “What the hell does that mean?”

   I look into her eyes and lean toward her. “I have money.  Enough for the both of us.  Stay.  Forever.”

   She blinks a thousand times. Then, “Joel, I have a career.  A job.”

   “Stuff the career.  Stuff the job.  Stuff the phone.  Don’t even call them to tell you quit.  Stay.  Here.  Forever.”

  “I have a project due,” she says.  I just look into her eyes.  After a while, she says. “Do you know how hard I worked to get to where I am?  Do you know how hard I work now?” But I just look into her eyes. “Besides, being dependent on someone else, that’s not me.”

   I touch her cheek, not taking my eyes off hers. “Do whatever you want.”

   It’s a long, long time before her fingers slowly let go of the phone.  She closes her eyes, and practically plummets into my chest.  I catch her.  I hug her. “Forever,” I whisper into her hair. “Forever.”

 

 

27.               

 

   “I want to see it,” she tells me.  We’re intertwined on the sofa in front of the tv.  She shuts it off, her leg on the remote, and looks at me.  “Next time you do it.  Next time you take the pills.  I want to be there.  I want to see it.”

   “Fine.”

   I kiss her, and she shudders.

 

 

28.               

 

   She holds the pills in her hand.  I’m holding the cup with the water.  She’s trembling.

   “Wait exactly fifteen minutes,” I tell her. “I’ll collapse.  Count one minute.  Then call the ambulance.”

   “Okay,” she whispers, her voice almost inaudible.

   “Ready?”

   She doesn’t move, her eyes fixed on my face.

   “Are you sure you’re up to watching this?”

   She doesn’t move.  She doesn’t say a word.  I look into her eyes.  Slowly, my eyes drift to her open hand.

   I put my fingers on the pills, but I don’t take them. I give her a chance to close her fingers, to say in that way that she doesn’t want to witness this.

   Her hand remains open.  Its trembling gets worse.

   I take the two pills.  A loud intake of breath comes from Sharon.  I look at her, but she’s still staring at me.

   “I love you,” I say.

   She doesn’t say anything.  She’s transfixed and completely frozen.

   I swallow the pills. 

 

 

29.               

 

   My world is getting bleary.

   Two tears fall down her cheeks.

   I wipe them, and put my forehead to hers.  I kiss her nose.  She kisses my chin.  I fall against her, and I feel her deep, quick breaths.  Panic?  I don’t know.

   I want to tell her how much I—What?

   What?!

   She caresses my head, then my back.  I try to do the same, but my hands aren’t under my control.  I try to tell her, but all I hear is mumbling.

   Her touch is ice-cold.  Her touch is like fire.  Her touch is like nothing else.

   Her hands on my back, she lowers me down to the floor.  I can still see her.  I can still see.

   She lies on top of me, feeling my breath with her chest, feeling my face with her fingers.  She’s crying.  She’s crying out loud.  She buries her face behind mine, our cheeks touching.

   I—

   Ohhhhhh

 

 

 

30.               

 

   For once I have only one memory.

   I was at home.  I swallowed the pills.  Sharon came in, just in time.  Boom, black, bang, bye.

   And there I was, back at school, watching myself humiliate Sam.

   Suddenly my view shifted.  It was me in the middle of the circle, with all my ‘friends’ cheering me on.  Sam was looking up at me.

   I looked around, what’s going on?

   “Okay?” Sam looked up at me from where he was kneeling.

   “Go,” I told him. “Get up.  Go.”

   The kids booed me, and for the first time I noticed that I was their size.

   After recess, the bell rang.  Everybody ran to class.  Someone took me with him.

   I spent an hour learning long division.

   At recess, I went to stand by myself.  The other kids realized I wasn’t as strong as the me that humiliated Sam.  They beat me up.  The bell rang, we went to class.  The bell rang, I got beat up.

   By the end of the day I got it: I’m not going to find myself suddenly in the hospital, revived, refreshed, and well.  Something had gone wrong with the resuscitation effort.  I’m going to stay dead.  And this is Hell.

 

 

31.               

 

   It’s been weird.  It’s been a while.  It’s been weeks.

   But for once I have only one memory.  The problem is, I remember everything.

   No, that’s not exactly true.  I see everything.

   I see my birth.  I see my death.

   I see.

   Out of the corner of my eye.  I see it.  I will it.  I make it.  I live it.  I am it.

   I watch as my parents bring me back from the hospital – I’m three days old.  I watch myself breast-feeding.  I watch my parents sing me to sleep when I’m a year old.  I watch them hugging me and kissing me.  I watch their first fight over my crib when I’m six months old.  I watch my first words being spoken.  I watch the television shows I used to watch.

   And I experience everything.

   My ability to speak, to think through words, to rationalize is suddenly sucked away as I stare up at two familiar images I can’t even call ‘mother’ and ‘father’.  A flood of powerful and familiar emotions I haven’t felt in decades goes through me.  And suddenly the moment is past, and I’m outside the crib again, invisible to everybody, looking at my parents looking at the baby me.

   And then I watch my death.  A thousand different deaths from a thousand times in a thousand different ways.  I get run over by a bus.  I die of old age.  I die of skin cancer.  I die of AIDS.  I bleed to death on a thousand different pavements.  I drown in a thousand different lakes.  I commit suicide in a thousand different ways.  I live to be a hundred years old.  I live to be eighty.  I live.  I die.

   And I feel each death.  And I feel each afterdeath.  And I feel…

   And then I look out of the corner of my eye, I imagine a different place, and I’m elsewhere.

   I begin to watch things that had never been.  I watch my father abuse my mother.  I watch them get a divorce.  I watch me killing them.  I watch me growing up as an abused child.  I watch me raping women.  I watch myself a murderer.  I watch as I become a policeman, a fireman, a lawyer. 

   And then I watch things which could never be.  I watch a ten-year-old me bring up a five-year-old me.  I watch two of me having a conversation together.  Then four of me.  Then a hundred.

   I have seen so much, and I haven’t seen anything yet.

   This place, although it isn’t a place, this thing is nothing, nowhere.  And yet it’s infinite.

   And somewhere, in a far corner I can’t access, a strong powerful voice that sounds like my own, is whispering over the infinite, “I’ll wait.  He’ll come again.  He can’t resist coming again.”

 

 

32.               

 

   I’ll wait.  He’ll come again.  He can’t resist coming again.

   That last time, I took too much time.  I had to be smart, I had to play dead on the floor while he thought he was a ghost or something.  I took my time, and they brought him back to life before I could kill him and take his place.

   Next time, I’ll kill him immediately.  I just need him to commit suicide one more time.

   I know him.  He’ll come again.  He can’t resist coming again.

 

 

33.               

 

   I have one memory, but many futures.

   I can even go back and look at the time I came here.

   I go back to the school, back in time.  I watch the little kid that was/n’t me begin to humiliate Sam.  Then I look aside, and watch my grown-up self, my past self from a couple of weeks ago, suddenly appear.  I watch myself looking with horror at the scene, never realizing that the future me would be looking in on this exact moment.  Then I watch what happened, how I got stuck here.  The little kid and I suddenly changed places, then he was gone, gone elsewhere in this infinite maze.  And me, I was stuck as the kid, had taken his place.

   I can go further back in time, and look at myself taking the pill.

   I can go even farther back and sideways.  I don’t have to stick with me.  I follow Sharon around, when she’s not with me.  I look in on her job, I see her flourish.  I see how she’s better and smarter than everyone else.

   I follow her further.  I follow her back in time.  I watch the moment we met, at the Seven-Eleven – just one memory, now, just the Seven-Eleven.  And then I go back, before she met me.  I  reverse time and instead of watching her shop, I watch her taking things out of her cart and putting them on the shelf.  I watch as she leaves/enters the supermarket and enters/leaves her car empty-handed.

   I speed things up.  I watch her nights.  I watch her days.  I watch her sleep.  I watch her dress.  I watch her boyfriends.  I watch them having sex.  I watch her getting her first job in advertising.  I watch her get her degree.  I watch her dreams.  I watch her joys.  I watch her saddest moments.  And one time, I suddenly appear to her and comfort her.  But then I go back into the past.

   Back to her Junior year, her Sophomore year, her Freshman year.  I watch her Senior year in high school.  How different she is.  And yet everything that she is today had its seeds back then.  But I don’t think I want to go further into her past .

   I go someplace else.

 

 

34.               

 

   I go back to the moment I killed myself.

   I watch as I hold the pills in my hand.  I watch as I go to the notes stuck on the front door to see if I have the time right.  I watch me take the pills at exactly a quarter to seven.  I watch me wait.

   From the outside, I already look wobbly at five too.

   I wonder if I could step in, if I could stop this.  I wonder whether if I do, it means I won’t have died.  But for now, I watch.  I want to see how I died.

   It’s now exactly seven, and Sharon’s opening the door with the key.  I – the me who took the pills – stumble forward toward her.

   “Joel?  What’s the matter?” she says.

   “Awrrreewreeh,” I see myself say, as I collapse at her feet.

   She half screams as she rushes forward and checks my cheek and checks my breath.  And exactly as she does so, I breathe my last breath and collapse, dead, my head on her knees.  Her breath is quick, but she’s in control.  She checks my pulse.  She puts me down softly on the floor, reaches into her purse, and pulls out her cellphone.  She calls 911.  I step closer, invisibly listening to every word.  She tells them the situation.  An ambulance is on the way, they tell her.

   She throws the cellphone aside, and begins CPR.

   I look at my dead body mesmerized.  I watch as she breathes into my mouth, giving me a few more breaths of life.  I watch as she presses on my chest, forcing the heart to distribute life to the dying body.  I want to watch this forever. “Come on,” she says, every time she pushes on my chest. “Come on.  Come on.  Come on.”

   After a while – I don’t know how much time has passed – the ambulance is heard outside. Paramedics rush into my apartment, taking charge.  Sharon lets them shove her aside.  She leans against the wall, her hand on her mouth, and her facade suddenly collapses.  Within less than a second, she’s a wreck. 

   “Ohmygod,” she whispers. “ohmygod-ohmygod-ohmygod…”

   The paramedics put me on a stretcher, and run down the stairs, as one of them injects me with something, and another keeps on giving me CPR.  Sharon follows them into the ambulance.  Everybody’s frantic.

   “He’s dead,” one of them say halfway to the hospital.  His voice sounds matter-of-factly. “He’s clinically dead.”  Sharon watches him, her eyes wide, seeming to be on the brink of sanity.

   “Keep working,” the other says. “Keep working!”

   They keep working.  The ambulance gets to the hospital.  They rush me on a gourney into the emergency room, and a doctor takes control of the situation.  I wait for him to pronounce me dead, when suddenly he – the dead me – opens his eyes.

   The doctor smiles. “He’ll be all right, now,” he says.

   What?!

   Sharon pushes everyone aside. “Are you all right?  Is he all right?” 

   This can’t be!  I will myself closer.  I look at myself.  I’m blinking.  I’m smiling.  This can’t be!  I died in the hospital!

   “You idiot!” she hits my arm.  “You gave me such a scare!  You were actually clinically dead for a few seconds!”

   “Shh, leave him alone.  Let him rest.”

   “You were very lucky, sir,” the doctor says. “If your friend here had found you a minute later, we wouldn’t have been able to bring you back.”

   I’m alive?!  I’m alive?!

   But if I’m alive, why am I still dead?

 

 

35.               

 

   I keep watching, hypnotized by the events.

   Sharon drives me home a few days later.  She seats me down, confronts me, begs me not to do this again, and when I refuse, she leaves me.  Oh, I’m glad I wasn’t there!  I can read my mind just by watching my face.  I know what I’m thinking.  I’m hoping she hadn’t left.  I’m hoping none of this occurred.  But it had.  She’d really left me.  I’ve seen it.  And for once I have only one memory, one reality.

   I watch from the outside as I write a journal of the events that occurred.  That moment in the schoolyard.  He – the other me – remembers it, as well.  I watch over my own shoulder, reading my own journals as I write down memories I – the one left behind – don’t have.  Memories of a Russian Roulette game in the future.  Memories of him being a ghost and how his body tried to kill him.

   And a few days later, he writes in his journal that he suddenly remembers things he hadn’t until now.  He remembers incidents of cruelty in the schoolyard.  Memories I know to be false.

   He doesn’t realize it, but I can see it clearly from here.  His memory is splitting up retroactively.

   I think I’m beginning to understand what happened.

   We switched.  Joel – the kid in the school – and Joel – the adult that committed suicide – switched places just as the doctors were pulling me back to life.  And the kid in the school returned instead of me, feeding his own memories – false memories – to the live Joel.  And I – I was left here, dead, able to watch all that could have been, all that would have been, all that could never be, and all that could never have been.

 

 

36.               

 

   I keep watching.

   Sharon returns into my – his – life.  Without a word, without explanation, she sits by me.  And I – the me who’s watching this – have tears in my eyes.  We make love that night, like I have never made love before.  I am tempted to switch places with him.  But I don’t.  I don’t want to taint the events.  I want to see what happened.  I could come back to it later if I want.  If I still remember.  And I do remember.  I remember everything.

   After a few days, I get her to stay here, to stop going to work.  On the one hand, it looks like I want her so much that I convinced her to stay.  But I know me, I know my face.  There’s something else there, a different thought, a different purpose.

   I keep watching.

   Weeks pass.  Weeks of passion.  Weeks of lust.  Weeks of uncontrolled emotions.

   And then she quits her job.  Because of me.  She’ll stay at my place forever.  Because of me.  She’ll abandon her life.  Because I asked her to…

   Why did I do that?  Why did I ask her something I’d never—?

   I step into my own mind… I recognize this place.  It makes me feel good to have made her do it.  And it makes me feel sick.  And I don’t know which one of the two of me – the one watching or the one experiencing it – feels good, and which one feels sick.  We are both, after all, the same person.  We both love it.  We are both sickened by it.  We are corrupt.  I am corrupt.

   I can’t stand this.  I can’t watch.

   I can’t do anything but watch.

 

 

37.               

 

   I watch.

   He’s getting ready to kill himself, again.

   I watch.  And I wait.

   And somewhere in the back of my mind, from across this infinite, I think I hear a thought that echoes my own.

 

 

38.               

 

   He’s getting ready to kill himself, again.

   This time I’ll get it right.  This time, I’ll kill him.

   I knew he’d be back.

 

 

39.               

 

   That voice in the back of my mind is gone.  It doesn’t matter, anyway.  I have to concentrate on the live Joel’s actions.  I have to do this just right, if I want to go back.

   I will myself back to the schoolyard, and wait for the kid to reappear.

 

 

40.               

 

   I will myself back to the apartment, and wait for Joel to reappear, a knife in my hand.

   He’s taking the pill.  Fifteen minutes.

   He’s beginning to collapse.  Five minutes.

   He falls on her.  One minute.

   I hear his heart beat into nothingness.  I prepare the knife.

   He dies.  He dies!

   He appears before me, still groggy, still under the memory of the affect of the drugs.

   I don’t wait for him to recover.  I stab him through the heart.

 

 

41.               

 

   I’m in the schoolyard, again.  Back in the past.  Sam is in front of me, begging me.  The crowd is cheering me on.  I don’t look at them.

   I know it’s time, and out of the corner of my eye, I see him appear.  I see him looking confused.

   I concentrate, willing myself to go into him, to experience what he does, willing us to change places.

 

 

42.               

 

   He falls down, his blood geysering out of the wound.

   He looks up at me, not understanding, his eyes hurt, wounded, black, and, at last… dead.

 

 

43.               

 

   He fights back.  He doesn’t understand what’s going on.  He doesn’t understand that he belongs in this schoolyard.  He doesn’t understand what’s happening.

   I can feel the doctors working on my body.  I have to do this quickly.  I have to be stronger than him.  I remain where I should be, but for a second, he changes places with me.  Quickly!  The doctors are reviving me.  I have to—

   I am—

 

 

44.               

 

   I AM ALI-I-I-I-I-VE!!!!!

 

 

45.               

 

   Sharon’s looking at me.  I try to speak, but I—

   Ohhhhhh

 

 

46.               

 

   I wake up in what seems to be the middle of the night.  Sharon’s sleeping in a chair beside me.

   I was dead.  But I can’t remember.  I remember too much.  What really happened?

 

 

47.               

 

   The next morning, the doctor comes to check up on me.

   “I remember you,” he says. “From last time.”

   “I remember you, too,” I tell him.  I don’t tell him I remember a more experienced doctor, too.

   “Well, listen closely,” he leans closer. “Whatever the hell you’re taking, it’s killing you.”

   “I noticed,” I tell him.

   “No, you don’t understand.  That thing is destroying your heart.  Take that stuff again, and no one will be able to bring you back.  Do you understand?  Thanks to whatever the hell that was, you now live in the body that’s thirty years older and weaker than it should be.  Another major shock like this, another major shock period to the body, and you’ll be in the morgue.  Do I make myself clear?”

   “I’ll take care of him.  I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

   “You didn’t take care of him last time,” he looks at her accusingly.  And he knows – I can see it in his eyes – he knows she’s part of it.  He knows I did it with her watching.

   “I’ll take care of him,” she says again.

   “We’ll see,” the doctor says and walks out.

   Sharon comes closer. “Time to rethink,” she whispers. “You heard what the doctor said.”

   I put my head on the pillow, drained of strength. “Yeah.  Committing suicide may be dangerous to my health.”

 

 

48.               

 

   I remain at the hospital for another day.  Sharon doesn’t say a word.  Neither do I.

   We go home in silence.

   I spend the day on the sofa, resting.  She brings me food and water.  We don’t say anything.  When it’s time to sleep, I undress and go to bed.  Without saying a word, she undresses and follows me in, staying on her side.

   Two minutes later, I feel her hand on my chest.  I open my eyes.  Her face is above me, she’s staring into my eyes.  I say nothing.  I feel hear breaths.  She touches my cheeks tenderly.  I search her face.  She buries her head in my chest and cries in loud, heaving sobs.

   Eventually, she falls asleep.

 

 

49.               

 

   “I have an idea of what death is,” I tell her the next day when we’re eating lunch.

   She drops her sandwich and looks at me.

   I tell her what I remember that happened after I was left in the school, after I was left dead.  I tell her about everything I saw, everything I understood.  I tell her how you can see everything, how you can experience anything that might happen in your life.  How you can go forward and backwards.  How you can revisit your own past, how you can visit your future.  How you can visit your other selves.  I tell her everything, but there is a sparkle of disbelief in her eyes.

   Then I tell her how I followed her around, from the moment we met, back into her own past.  I tell her about her past boyfriends, and her eyes grow wide.  I tell her about incidents at the university, I tell her about her own heartpains, her breakups, her friends, her parents, the songs she used to sing in the shower.  And I see in her eyes that every word is true.  With every fact I mention, another tear wells up within her eyes, threatening to finally fall down her cheek.  She has no secrets from me.  She can have no secrets from me.  And I know that if Sharon is ever going to walk out on me, it’s going to be over this.  Not many people can cope with having all their privacy taken away from them, all their intimate moments and fears and thoughts and emotions shared on such a basic level.  I realize that as I’m telling her everything, but I don’t stop.  By the time I’m through, she has raised her knees and hugs them.  She curls up and says nothing and doesn’t move except to hug herself even tighter.

   I look at her for a long time, but she says nothing.

   After an hour, she gets up and goes to the porch.  She opens it, and stares out for the rest of the day and the rest of night.

   At five a.m., she joins me in bed, not saying a word.  She sleeps with her head buried in my chest, again.  And while she sleeps I wonder why I didn’t tell her about the rest of my memories.

   I didn’t tell her about the other two memories.  I’m not sure if they’re separate, anyway. They could have been something I saw while dead, something I experienced.  I’m not sure.  The only two memories I’m certain are true are being left behind for dead (which Sharon confirmed), and being here with Sharon as I prepared to kill myself again (which my memories-while-dead confirmed). So they weren’t separate memories at all.  I was perfectly justified in not telling her.

 

 

50.               

 

   It’s been a week, and Sharon hasn’t been able to stop hugging me since that night.

   Finally, I am strong enough to make love.  She makes love like she’s been keeping it in for a year, with passion I can’t describe, with desperation I can’t imagine, with a need to be closer to me than two people can.

   When we’re done, she rests her head on my chest, and looks into my eyes.

   “Are you going to go there again,” she asks.

   “I don’t know.” And my voice is calm.

   She says nothing.  From the look of her, I don’t know which answer she wants to hear more.

   “The doctor says,” I go on, “if I do it again, I won’t come back.  But it has to be done.  There’s so much yet to discover, so much to see.  I’ve touched the tip of the iceberg.  I’ve… There’s so much there.  And it’s all addictive and it’s all magical and I want to see everything.  I’m not done with my research.  It has to be done somehow.”

   And she says nothing.  I don’t want her to.

 

 

51.               

 

   The next day we make love and it’s just as heavenly as all three memories of the night before.  We wind up in a mutual hug with her playing with my hair.

   “Do you want to do it?” I ask suddenly.

   She crinkles her eyes. “What?”

   “To die instead of me.  The next time.  Maybe you should do it.  I mean, if you want to.”

   She opens her mouth but can’t produce a sound. 

   She’s surprised.  She’s terrified out of her wits.  But she can’t say no.  And she can’t say yes.

   “I’m sorry,” I say quickly. “That’s a horrible idea.  I shouldn’t have said it.  I’m sorry.  Stupid idea.”

   She closes her mouth.  We lie there and say nothing.

 

 

52.               

 

   Another week has passed, and Sharon and I have become almost one body.

   “I’ve decided,” I tell her as we’re enmeshed on the rug, “I will do it.”

   She looks at me for a long time. “The doctor says you’ll die.  For good.”

   “I’ll take the risk that he’s wrong.  Doctors aren’t perfect.”

   “But they understand death.”

   “I understand it more, now.  And… I have to, Sharon.  It’s so amazing, so breathtaking.  There are so many possibilities.  I have to know everything about that.  I mean… I have to, Sharon.”

   “You’ll die,” she says, and her voice is weak.

   “It’s either you or me.  And I’m going to do it.  I have no choice.”

   We lie on the rug for an hour, then go to sleep.

 

 

53.               

 

   “I’ll do it,” she tells me suddenly while we’re watching tv.

   “What?”

   “I’ll do it.  I’ll take the pills.”

   I turn the tv off with the remote and look into her eyes.

   “That’s a bad idea.”

   “I’ll do it,” she says.

   “No, I mean, it’s dangerous, it’ll make your body weaker.  This is my project, and—”

   “I’ll do it.”

   “Are you sure?”

   “I want to do it.  For me.  I want to see what’s there.  I want to experience it.  Please.”

   I think about it for a while. “Okay.”

   “Okay?” She looks relieved.

   “Okay.”

   I hug her.  She hugs me back.

   I put my hand on her cheeks and make her look into my eyes, “I just thought of something.”

   “Yeah?”

   “We don’t have to wait.  Your body isn’t weak.  We can do it now or in a few days, or tomorrow, or as soon as you’re ready.”

   Her breath suddenly vanishes and her cheeks pale.  After a minute, she says, “Okay.  Three days.”

   “Tomorrow.”

   Her eyes flitter, then stop. “Two days,” she says, obviously fighting for self control.

   I smile. “Done.”  And I kiss her.

 

 

54.               

 

   “I’m going to be there for you,” I tell her.

   Her head is against the wall, her eyes half shut. “Tell me again,” she whispers.

   “I’m going to be there for you like you were for me.”

   She shuts her eyes, beating down the pain. “Tell me again,” she drones in the same voice.

   “I’m not going to let you die for more than a minute.”

   “Tell me again,” her fingers are scratching my wall.

   “You’ll be safe.”

   “Tell me again,” her fingers scratch her own skin.

   And I tell her.  Again.  And again.  And again.

 

 

55.               

 

   I put the pill in a spoon and grind it into powder with another spoon.  She watches.

   I put the powder in a glass full of cider and mix it real well.  I can see her sweating.

   “It’s going to be fine,” I whisper into her ear.  She’s rigid.

   “It will be heavenly,” I touch her ear with my tongue.  A shudder goes through her.

   “It is not death, it is life to the power of million,” I hold both her cheeks in my hand.  She is burning up.

   “It’ll be fine,” my hands go down to her breasts.  “It will be fine,” My hands carress her stomach.  “It will be fine,” my hands go lower.

   I draw away from her and take the glass in my hand. “If you don’t want this,” I tell her, “we won’t.”

   She reaches out with her hand, takes the glass, and looks at it. “I love you,” she says.  She shuts her eyes, and gulps it down.

 

 

56.               

 

   “I love you,” I kiss her.

   “I love you,” she kisses me back.

   “I love you,” I kiss her nose.

   “I love you,” she holds my ears.

   “I love you,” I hold the back of her head.

   “I love you,” her cheek falls into my arm.

   “I love you,” I put my forehead to hers.

   “I llll—” she slumps and her words become incoherent.

   Her head fell into my hand.  Carefully, I lay her on the floor.

   “Shhh,” I say.  “Shhh.  I love you,” I lie on top of her. “I love you,” I put my ear on her chest and listen to her heart.

   “Lllurrrrbid,” she struggles.  I listen to her heart.  “Lllrlwwrrr,” her voice weakens.  “Wwnnwwrr…” and her voice fades into nothing.

   I hear her breath stop.

   Her heart is slowly receding. 

   I lift my head.  I still have a minute before I call for an ambulance.  My hands explore her body.

 

 

57.               

 

   “There was this small room,” Sharon says.  We’re back home from the hospital.  This time we didn’t meet the doctor who recognized me.  I put a chair in front of the sofa, and watch her, entranced. “And it had two doors.  And there was this… old, old woman.  The oldest woman I have ever seen.  She looked at me.  I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

   “ ‘Who are you?’ I said.

   “ ‘There are two doors to the room,’ she said. ‘You have to choose the right one.’

   “ ‘Why?’ I said.

   “ ‘Your future depends on it.’

   “This was weird and at the same time not weird.  I looked at her again. ‘Who are you,’ I said.

   “She hesitated.  Then she lowered her eyes. ‘I’m you,’ she whispered. ‘Ninety years ago, I was you.  I came into this room, and I chose this door,’ she pointed to a door. ‘And I’ve been here ever since, unable to use any of the doors, unable to return to life.  Ninety years.  You have to choose the right door, Sharon.’

   “ ‘You chose this door?’ I asked.

   “ ‘Yes.’

   “I didn’t know what to do, but at the time it seemed so simple.  Her intensity was so… convincing.  I chose the other door.  I opened it, and I walked through it.” Sharon took a deep breath.

   “What happened then?” I couldn’t help asking.

   Sharon took another breath, then looked at me, her voice monotonous, her eyes obviously elsewhere, probably looking again and again at the things she had seen. “I was in a room, again.  An identical room.  Small with two doors.  I looked behind me – there was no door out of which I could have come, and yet I clearly had walked into the room a second ago.  And when I looked at the two doors again, the woman was there.  The same old woman.

   “ ‘It’s you again,’ I said. ‘The other door is no better.’

   “ ‘No,’ she told me. ‘I am not the woman you saw in the other room.’

   “ ‘Then who are you?’

   “ ‘I was you, ninety years ago,’ she said. ‘Ninety years ago, I commited suicide and I found myself in a room with two doors and an old woman claiming to be me.  She told me she chose the wrong door, so I chose the other, just like you.  And then I came here.  And I chose this door.  And ever since I have been stuck here, unable to leave, unable to return to the living.  If you do not want to be me, you must choose the other door.  I don’t know what’s behind this one, but I know for sure what’s behind that one.’”

   Sharon took another breath.  Her hand was trembling.  Then she went on. “I… uh… I walked through the other door.  And… And I found myself in an identical room again, with an identical woman.  And… And she’s been through two rooms, too.  And I chose the other door again.” She shuts her eyes. “And again.” Another puff. “And again.  And I was in another room, again, except that I had no time to talk to the woman, because I was suddenly in the hospital.  With you.”

   For a long time, there’s only silence.

   “I can’t… I can’t stop thinking… About what would have happened if you hadn’t pulled me back to the living.  I… How many rooms are there?  How many wrong doors are there?  What if eventually I would have reached a room with no old woman, would I have walked through the wrong door?  Would I have become stuck in a room for ninety years?  Or more?  What…”

   She stops speaking.  I say nothing.

   “But that image of me.  That old.  Stuck in a room for ninety years.  I…” She shook her head. “I can’t get it out of my head.  She was so much like me.  She was me.  And I could feel what she felt.  For a moment I knew what it was like to be her, to… Oh, god, Joel.”

   “Are you all right?”

   She looks up at me and gives me a sad smile, “We’ll see, won’t we?”

   I wait for a minute, then ask, “Do you have just one memory?”

   “Yes.”

   We sit in silence for ten minutes this time.  Finally, I say, “You want to do it again?”

   She looks at me, smiles, and doesn’t answer.

 

 

58.               

 

   “I think I went through the same thing you did,” she tells me.  It’s been a couple of days, I think.  We’re lying down on the mattress, staring at the ceiling.

   “What do you mean?”

   She doesn’t answer for a while, and when she does her voice is remote, hundreds of miles away from here. “I think I left part of me there.  I think…” And she trails off and says nothing.

   Suddenly, she turns around, and looks at me. “Tell me about how you remember being left behind in the school.”

   “I already told you.”

   “Tell me again.  What was it like to feel stranded?  What was it like to come back?  What was it like to learn that you didn’t have to stay in that one place?  Tell me again.”

   I tell her again.  She listens, rapt.

   She hugs herself. “There’s a bit of me missing,” she whispers. “There’s a hole inside me, a missing bit of me that I left behind.” And she sounds sad.

   I bring my hand closer to her face, to touch her cheek.  She turns away.

   “Tell me again,” she whispers. “Tell me again.”

 

 

59.               

 

   We haven’t stopped talking for three weeks.  We hardly sleep.  And when we wake, she tells me of the dreams she had, of seeing her other selves, her alternate selves.  Lives she’s had but didn’t, memories of things that could have happened but didn’t, memories of what it was like to be ninety years old.  She doesn’t really have these memories, she says.  She only dreams of them.  But they feel real when she dreams them.  Just like all my memories feel real.

   And even though she’s completely recovered, there’s been no sex since she’d died.  I’m losing my hold on her.

 

 

60.               

 

   “I’m going back,” she tells me as we stare out the window.

   “Okay.” I nod my head. “I’ll be there for you.”

   She looks away, her eyes set on a point beyond the horizon. “I know.”

 

 

61.               

 

   “Don’t do it with the pills.” It’s three a.m., and in seven  hours she’s going to do it again.  She can’t fall asleep.  She has to talk about it.  I stay up with her.

   “What?” She asks, looking away from the wall.

   “Don’t do it like me.  I didn’t know how dangerous the pills are.  And now I can’t go back there again.  Committing suicide with pills is bad for my health, remember?” And suddenly I’m not sure if that really happened of if something else really happened.  If it didn’t…

   “Yes.  I remember.”

   I nod. “There are other ways to do it.  Other ways that will allow you to go back again and again.”

   “Like what?”

   “Like cutting your veins.”

   She thinks about it for a minute. “Yes,” she says. “We’ll do that.” And she looks back at the wall.  She isn’t scared.

 

 

62.               

 

   I hold the knife. “Tell me what to do.” We’re sitting on the floor facing each other.

   “Cut here,” she points to the vein on her left arm.

   I cut there.  Torrents of blood gush out onto my carpet.

   “Tell me what to do.”

   “Cut here,” she points to the vein on her right arm.

   I cut her there.  More blood.

   “It’s not enough,” I say. “You need more.”

   “It’s not enough,” she says. “More.”

   “Where?” I say, putting the knife on her left shoulder. “Here?”

   “Yes.” I cut her shoulder.  It bleeds on my knife.

   “Here?” I put the knife above her right breast.

   “Yes.” And I cut it until it bleeds.

   “Here?” I put the bloody edge of the knife to her throat.

   “Yes.”

   I cut it.  Just enough to bruise the skin and make it bleed a bit.

   “Deeper?” I ask.

   “Yes.”

   I cut deeper, scratching something solid.

   “Deeper?”

   She looks at me with dead, uncaring eyes. “Please.”

   I shove the knife deeper, so deep that I can’t see the blade anymore.  She doubles over in pain, rivers of blood shoot everywhere, her hands seize her neck, but avoid touching the blade.

   She twitches and twists for almost four minutes until she stops moving and stops breathing and just… stops.

   She’s there, now.  With her other selves.  She’s happy.

   I’m here.  With my other selves.  And I look at what I’ve done.

   Her eyes stare at me blankly, the knife is sticking sideways out of her throat, and the flow of blood is slowly coming to a halt.

   Oh, god: I never noticed it before, but she looks incredible!

 

 

63.               

 

   I stare at her, my heart thumping and thumping.  Oh, my god.  Oh, my god.  She’s so—She made me feel so—I love you, Sharon.  I love the way you made me feel.

   My breathing slows down after an hour.  There’s darkness outside.  There’s darkness around the edges of my sight.

   I… uh… I need to sleep.

   I need to sleep.

 

 

64.               

 

   “Lick my shoe,” I say.  We’re back in the playground, back in school.  Sharon’s in front of me.

   “Please,” she whines. “Please.”

   “The people have spoken,” I tell her. “Do it now.”

   I’m dreaming.  This isn’t real.  She’s dead.  This couldn’t be happening.  She was never in my school.

   She drops to her knees. “Please,” she begs.

   “Do it!” There’s iron in my voice.

   Slowly, she bends and licks my shoe.  I don’t want to see this, but I can’t move away.

   After a few seconds, she looks up, her eyes streaming with tears. “Okay?”

   And my heart is pounding, and my prepubescent hormones are getting a rise.  Not of her pain or the humiliation, but of the control I have over her.

   “Part of it is still dirty,” I tell her. “Do it again.”  The crowd cheers.  I own them.

   And as hard as it is for her, she bends down, and licks my shoe again.  And the pounding in my ears is exactly the same as it was when I killed her.

 

 

65.               

 

   “Lick my shoe,” I tell her.

   We’re back at the beginning.  She hasn’t licked my shoe yet.

   “Please,” she begs me.  “Please.”

   What the hell is this?  What’s going on?  Maybe she isn’t the one who’s dead.  Maybe it’s me, again.  Maybe it’s me still.  Maybe I never came back to life.  Maybe it was part of death’s scenarios.  Maybe I’m still here, on the dark side.  Playing with my dark side.

   Something impels me to say, “The people have spoken.  Do it now.”

   No, I don’t want to go through this again.  This isn’t me.  This is a me that could have been, not a me that was.  This is not the me that is.

   Obviously holding back her revulsion, biting back everything, trying not to cry, she falls to her knees, and bends over.  Slowly, she takes her tongue out.  For a friction of a second it hovers a millimeter above my shoe.  This second time, I can see the hesitation.  But the fear overcomes her, and her tongue touches my shoe.  I can feel her tongue on my foot, through my shoe and my sock.

   I must still be dead.  I try to step sideways, to get elsewhere, elsewhen.  To any other situation but this nightmare. 

   Nothing happens.

   She looks up. “Okay?”  One tear to the left, two to the right.  Her voice is pleading for mercy.  For her nightmare to stop.  I nearly cry back.  This isn’t me.  Please, make it stop.

   “Part of it is still dirty,” I say. “Do it again.” The crowd cheers.  And me, as much as I revile this, when she turns her head back down, when it’s clear that she’ll lick my shoe again, I feel a rush.  A rush of pleasure.  Oh, god, no.

 

 

66.               

 

   “—my shoe,” I hear my voice echo back even as my lips seal themselves.  It’s started again.

   She’s looking at me, her eyes watery, wavering.  I shut my eyes. 

   She’s pleading.  I shut my ears. 

   I know I’m answering back.  I shut my mouth.

   I sense a shift in the sand.  I know she’s on her knees, now.  I shut my heart. 

   Stop this.  Stop stop stop this.  This never happened.  I don’t get such a pleasure out of humiliating people.  This is NOT ME!  There’s a cheering of a crowd around me.   I’m not here.  This is someone else’s experience.

   Through my shoe, I sense the movement of her tongue for the third time, and a buzz goes through me.  A buzz of sheer pleasure.

   I know this feeling.  I know this joy.  I have felt it before.  In childhood a time or two.  When a teenager.  But I so despised myself for feeling it, I never put myself in a position to feel it again.  Until Sharon came. 

   No.  This is my feeling.  It’s mine, not someone else’s.  I am the monster I’ve always dreaded I could be.

   “Part of it is still dirty,” I say, as I open my eyes, willing myself to speak. “Do it again.”  My heart begins to thump.  She does it again.

 

 

67.               

 

   Suddenly I can’t breathe.  I sit up with a gasp.

   It’s dark.  Was I having a heart attack?  Why did I stop breathing?

   Where am I?  A shard of light, outlining a door.

   Back home.  Sharon’s in the living room.  Was she ever here?  Is she dead?

   All I have to do is walk to the other room, and I’ll know.

   Nah.  I’ll stay here for a while.  I’ll try sleep again.  I don’t care.

 

 

68.               

 

   I lie in the dark and stare at the ceiling and memories wash over me. 

   I remember everything.

   And for the first time I’m able to separate my memories.

   I remember being raised by my father and my mother until they were divorced when I was ten. I remember drowning.  I remember almost getting run over.  I remember going to school and never asking anyone to lick my shoe.

   I follow another path, different memories of a different childhood.  I remember my father dying at the age of seven.  I remember my mother losing herself to drink, ebbing away while being alive.  How I was the one who took care of her.

   I remember a different school.  How I enjoyed humiliating – no, not humiliating people, controlling them – I remember how good being in control felt.  I remember the satisfaction it gave me of getting back at life, of controlling everything and everyone, of making it impossible for the world to manipulate me.

   And, in this path, I remember the day I realized that I am not alive.

 

 

69.               

 

   It began the day my father died.  When my mother told me about it, at home, there was another me there.  Another kid who looked like me, half-invisible, looking at us.  I could hear his thoughts, I could see his memories.  He was me, but his past was slightly different.  He was a different me from a different place.

   It took me years upon years, but, knowing that impossible things are possible, I learned the rules of my reality.  This wasn’t life as everyone else understood it.  I could slip from one reality to another.  I realized this wasn’t life.  I could slip into lives that could have been, that will be, that would have been. And when I watched the life of the kid that showed up in my saddest day, I learned that he was alive, that he had only arrived after he had died, and that he had vanished once he had been brought back.  This place, where I was born, where I grew up, it was death.  I had never been alive.  I was just a possibility.

   I hated the real me.  I wanted to be him.  I watched his life.  I knew he’d come back.  He’d come back for me.  And then… I would kill him and take his place.

 

 

70.               

 

   And I did.

   Only he came back, too.  I came back.  Back from the schoolyard.

   I am both of me, now.  I was there, at home, hearing my mother tell me the awful news.  I was there, at home, watching me hearing the news.  Both these versions of me are now inside me.  At least both of me, if not more.

   But I can tell the different realities apart, now.  They’re all of them real.  But I can tell them apart.  My father is alive here.  My father died when I was seven over in the afterlife.

   This… other me.  This… me that likes to control people.  He’s the one that manipulated Sharon.  He’s the one that overwhelmed me.  He’s the one that got her to commit suicide once, and, when I saw – when he saw – that he was losing control, he was the one who committed the absolute act of control and got her to beg me to kill her.

   It wasn’t me.  It wasn’t my pleasure I was feeling.  It wasn’t me, for god’s sakes.

   But then whose pleasure was it?  I felt it.  It’s a pleasure I’ve felt before.  It is mine, no matter how badly I don’t want it to be. 

   That other me, that dead-me-come-to-life, he’s not a different person.  It’s just a case of ‘there but for the grace of God, go I—goes he—go we’.  He’s a me that could easily have been. I am he.  And everything he does I could have done, I did do, I would have done.

   And now I did.  I did it.  And I liked it.

   And I hate myself.

 

 

71.               

 

   I can’t face myself.

   It’s not that she’s dead.  She wanted to die.  She’s where she wants to be.  It’s that I destroyed her world.  I took away her job, her friends, her family, everything in her life – just for the sheer pleasure of it – and then I manipulated her into committing suicide.  And once she’d been to the afterlife, everything she had been was left behind.  She was just like me, she wanted to die again and again and again… And I manipulated her, controlled her, took away her thoughts, her reason, her self – and had made sure that this death would be the last death.  Just to get that rush of control again.

   And – I don’t even want to think about it, but I can’t help it – in that awful place on the other side, in the afterlife, there are other me’s.  Me’s that could have been.  There are me’s that are ten times worse than I am now, who commit deeds more horrible than the ones I committed here.  There are murderers, I’m sure.  Rapists.  God knows what else.  And they’re all things I could have become, if things were different.  They’re not disconnected from me, they’re not other people.  They’re me in other circumstances.

   Oh, my god, how can I face myself?  How can I look at myself in the mirror, knowing I could become all those things?

   How can I live with myself knowing I’m everything I hate?!

 

 

72.               

 

   I’m to blame.

   I’m to blame for everything I could do, for anything that exists there, beyond.  It’s part of me.  And I’m to blame for it.  I’m to blame for everything.  Everything.

   I hate me.

   Help.

 

 

73.               

 

   It’s been two days.  I’ve been in bed all this time, the curtains drawn.  I don’t eat, I hardly drink, and I only go through the living room when I have to go to the bathroom.

   I can’t face myself.

   And then suddenly, I get this urge to leave the house.  To go out.  To find another woman.  To see how far I could manipulate her.

   I can’t.  I can’t.   Not again.  I lie on my hands and bury my head in the pillow.

   Oh, my god, I’m such a monster.

 

 

74.               

 

   It’s been two weeks. 

   At least I can walk around and think.  Thinking’s important.  Maybe there’s a way to work this out with myself.  Maybe there’s a way I can learn to live with what I am.

   I don’t know if it’s possible.  I don’t think it is.  But at least I’m thinking, and thinking’s important.  I think I’m going to get out of this eventually.

 

 

 

 

75.               

 

   Sharon’s body is really starting to smell.

   I stuff it in a huge nylon bag, which I then wrap around a few times, sellotape, and put in the attic.

   I wonder if I should really keep it there, or just get rid of it?

   Nah.  I’ll keep it.  Sentimental value.

 

 

 

—    The End

 

© 2002 by Guy Hasson.  Guy Hasson is 30 years old and lives in Israel. He is a regular contributor to Aphelion. His second sf novel, 'Hope for Utopia', is now being published by The Fiction Work, and a new book of his is coming out in paperback in

Israel. It's a collection of short sf stories and novellas (including many Aphelion stories) translated into Hebrew.

He's spent the last few months finishing a new sf novel and writing (on spec) a six-part horror series for tv. So now he's looking for publishers, agents, and tv producers.  Guy’s homepage can be found at http://guyhasson.20m.com/