Episode I
The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking towards me, without hurrying.
- Jean Cocteau.
Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.
- David Gerrold.
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are shadowy and vague at best. Who shall say where the one ends, and the other begins?
- Edgar Allan Poe.
A bleak morning is a harbinger of bad news, or so most people say.
A dark, dreary weather, infecting people with dismay, coupled with a grey forlorn sky and you've got yourself a day accused and judged with warnings and prayers. A day your mother would warn you against. The day you feel the acid in your stomach, bubble up to your esophagus and leave its burning, putrid residue behind for you to savor.
Today was that day. It began with the gathering of grey-black clouds, the fusion of these clouds into a vast kingdom of uniform grey and the birth of a thick, concrete humidity.
Some few stayed indoors, some few carried on with their routine jobs and chores (bearing in mind, their safety and paranoia) and some few didn't really care.
Most of these ‘some few’ belonged to the city hospital.
A hospital is a place with its own history of dreary mornings. It doesn't really matter what the day is like outside because the day is the same every day in a hospital. It reeks of Death.
I regret to inform you that your son passed away last night on the operating table.
Your father died of coronary thrombosis.
Your husband has cancer.
Multiple organ failure.
I’m so sorry.
I’m sorry.
WE are sorry.
No, we are sorry for being so fragile. So incapacitated and brittle.
The doctors and nurses were a blur of white coats inside the City Medical Center.
People were sick and were being tended to like usual.
How are you feeling today?
Was there blood in your pee?
You have a lump in your throat, let’s get that checked.
Here, take these medicines accordingly and you’ll be fine by the next week.
.
.
.
And so, it continues. The endless virtues of a repository.
But some people are less sick than other people; a physician’s dream. Others are a constant worry. And the rest have death written all over them.
One such patient was Bartholomew. And although it was painless and peaceful, his experience of death was a vivid one. One that he would remember till whatever this was, existed.
Bartholomew sat on a cold steel table, his knees drawn to his chest and his arms wrapped around them like a protective cocoon. He was naked, except for the dark green sheet that hung from his shoulders. Dried urine stuck to the table like dead, crackled skin. His hair had fallen off in various places. Skin abscesses covered his entire torso and the whole body was shriveled and shrunken to a great extent. Whether it was the result of his long term medication or the result of his numerous autopsies, he did not know. His senses had taken their leave a long time ago. He did not feel comfortable being inside his body any longer. He did not feel the taste in his mouth, nor the algid surface he was seated on. A sick, hostile feeling surged through his wraith-like frame. The beguiling grin that hung from the corner of his mouth, slowly faded. He looked around the room he was placed in. The essence of death clung to every object his gaze fell upon. Bartholomew raised his eyes a little and noticed the top portion of the entrance door. The see-through glass panel had red, flickering neon tube letters.
“E...U...G...R...O...M.”After taking a while to understand, he gave a throaty chuckle. His voice was fading. His soul fought against the vessel that was his body.
But he was not to leave it, yet.
Bartholomew closed his eyes and reminisced.
The doctors had pronounced him dead three hours ago. It was a very strange and horrifying thing, listening to someone say with certainty that you were dead. He had seen it coming, but, what followed was much more exhilarating.
When his body passed away, he felt claustrophobic. A sudden tightness caught over him and he felt rigid. Extremely rigid. He couldn't move or blink his eyes, nor open his mouth or move his fingers. It was as if he was dipped in quick-hardening cement. And then slowly crushed to the size of a peanut from the inside. His body was a shell and Bartholomew was a living being residing inside it. Three hours later, he had woken up on a cold steel table. And now, although his body was stubbornly stiff, he felt movement coming back, gradually. He moved his fingers and felt the joints crack in a failed resistance. He somehow managed to push himself up and sit on the table.
Pain was obsolete.
That was a good thing, wasn't it?
So, he sat there, waiting.
Which brings us to this:
Bartholomew’s eyes flew open when he sensed its arrival.
A dark, flowing, tattered robe. A scythe, hung over the shoulder.
The flickering of the Morgue sign stopped. The whole room turned three shades darker. The light bulbs glowed weakly in protest. Slight, spider like frosting birthed on the dirty yellow façade of the bulb. The room followed suit.
It is nice being a dead body because there is nothing that affects you anymore. You are dead. To everything.
Bartholomew turned his neck around in a circle and glanced at the walls above and below him, completely oblivious to the staccato crackle of the muscles in his neck when grinding against the weight that was his head. The temperature inside the morgue did not bother him; even slightly. A dead body does not feel cold. The room seemed to be stuck in a state of soft cold glow, calm and quiet.
For about five seconds.
What continued did not frighten Bartholomew. It fuelled his excitement.
Shadows crept up along all the walls of the morgue like claws of smoke and Bartholomew’s eyes followed the river of darkness up till the edge of the door. The tables were rattling like corn being cooked. The bodies jumped around and fell on the ground. The containers flew out of their resting places and crashed on to the floor. The instruments, the stands, the light bulbs, everything shook and clattered to the floor like marbles. The trolleys moved around like puppets and collided into one another. Dark matter was spewing from all corners of the door. Bartholomew licked his lips in anticipation, feeling a familiar beckoning.
Déjà vu, perhaps?
A hammer kept banging against a metal table steadily in the background.
Or was it a judge’s gavel?
Whatever it was, Bartholomew knew what was coming.
When the door knob rotated a hundred and eighty degrees to the left, it froze into an icy ball of brass. The temperature dropped ten degrees in the already freezing morgue. All movements, ceased. The trolleys moved around lazily for a while and came to a halt. The last remaining light bulb hung loosely from its socket, flickering. Bartholomew felt the frigid cold like never before. From his vantage point, all he could see was the door straight ahead. A tiny silhouette of inky blackness had formed along its edges after the knob was turned. The door had opened just a crack. Rigor mortis had been expunged and he knew that what had to be done would be done without defiance. His buttocks were stuck to the table beneath him, and when he tried getting off it, the skin peeled along with some flesh and was left attached to the table’s surface like two handmade paper cups filled with dark, dank flesh. He got down from the table, with the sheet of cloth sliding off him like a departing soul. Bartholomew walked towards the door, feeling a familiar summoning.
It was then that the light bulb gave up its sad existence and died. The room was engulfed in an impermeable darkness.
Bartholomew circled about his spot. He could not see anything. He realized that when he put his hand in front of his eyes and waved them around. The darkness was so immense; he could feel it rippling across his cheeks.
“Hello?”He called out. His voice echoed, vibrating in the thick, slushy darkness.
He called out again. And again. And again.
After getting zero responses, he began walking, thinking that probably this was purgatory. If it was true, then it meant that he was finally in the transient state. And in some time, he would face his judgment. Heaven or Hell.
Or so, the tales told.
Would it be like a courtroom? Would it be in a grave? Would God and Satan be seated side by side, scrutinizing my repertoire like a jury?
Would they?
The walking never seemed to end, just like the darkness. He wandered around aimlessly in the blind, with just one thought circling his mind in an endless loop.
It was a rhyme he had come across as a child. His mother had never failed in her duties, which comprised primarily of narrating the rhyme and leaving him in the darkness of his room to whimper all alone.
Gator, gator, somber, whither dost thou wander? Upstairs and downstairs and in my lady's chamber. There I met an old man who wouldn't say his prayers; I took him by the left leg, and tossed him in my mouth.
Even now, the fear from his childhood raked through his heart, forcing him to sputter a prayer.
And what happens if I don’t?
Nothing will, I think.
But do I really want to try?
I’d rather not.
In his head, the gator was a leviathan creature with scales festooned in blood and gore, a mouth made of jagged mountain peaks. The tips, dripping blood and carrying bits and chunks of flesh.
Its eyes, detrimental, searching for any signs of weakness, (which was all Bartholomew reeked of). In the darkness of his room, he had imagined it all. His cries for help were only answered by his Father, who came into his room and tucked him in properly, and lay by his side, gently fondling his genitals.
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(To be continued)