The After-death
by
Walter Lane
Copyright 1999 by Walter LaneTo Laker, the parking lot seemed to take each raindrop as a personal insult. The rain bounced hard off the black tarmac as if angrily pushed away. Turning from the window, he shouted, "Give me another!" and shook his drained glass at the barkeeper. The ice cubes rattled loudly. "And hurry up!" At home, he occasionally took a sherry, but bourbon packed the wallop he needed tonight.
The barkeep trudged over with a bottle. "Keep it down, okay?" He refilled the glass and accepted the proffered three dollars. "Some people are here to have a good time." A thin man near the end of the bar shouted for another beer and he left.
Laker rubbed the scarred surface of the bar, countless names and initials carved into it. It could have held a hint of character if it wasn't made of such cheap and poorly stained pine, the joints and seams shoddily fitted. A horrible question crossed his mind: What if the bar was made from old, disinterred caskets? He shook his head at the ridiculous delusion and wondered just how drunk he was getting.
Another sip of fiery bourbon. Despite the previous round it still burned his throat. "Fire," Laker whispered into the glass. "Of all things, fire." He bowed his head as if praying, then smiled at the irony of that. He mumbled, "Laker fire," and laughed loudly.
The barkeep rushed over to the white-haired, old man. "You okay? You're not getting skunked on me are you?"
The air was warm and swirled with chatter, cigarette smoke and loud music from the jukebox. He took another sip. "I'm giving it my very best effort, I assure you!" He smiled at the barkeeper and asked, "Tell me, young man, have you ever given much thought to the afterlife?" He swung his arm in a theatrical sweep. "You know, where you go after you die?" A few drops of bourbon fell from the glass to the floor and beaded on the thick dust collecting there.
The barkeep rolled his eyes. "Listen, is there somebody here who can take you home?" He glared directly into the old man's eye. Laker assumed the barman wanted him to take the hint and leave. "Or could I maybe call somebody?"
"Yes," Laker replied and closed his eyes. "Call Einstein back from the dead." He put the cool glass against his forehead. "See if you can get him to rewrite the laws of physics. That might help."
The bartender began to reply, but was silenced by a man approaching, waving him off with one hand, a collapsed umbrella clutched in the other. Gently touching the old gentleman's shoulder, he asked, "You okay, Professor?"
"Dunn, my good man. Sit down, sit down! Let's have a drink. Let's have lots of them." He stood up and proclaimed in a rich, baritone voice, "Let us eat, drink and be merry! For tomorrow we die!" Then he slumped back onto his stool. "That at the very least."
The barkeeper sneered, "You guys settle down or get out!"
***
The yellow paint blistering from the wall was coming undone the way he felt his mind was coming undone. "How did you know I was here?" Laker asked. Sequestered in a dark corner, the booth they had moved to sat near the restroom. The faint stench wafting from the door did nothing to calm his bourbon-excited stomach.
"One of the football team saw you come in." Dunn leaned the wet umbrella against the bench seat. "He called me at my office. He knew a literature professor didn't belong here." He brushed raindrops from the sleeve of his suit jacket. "Luckily, I was still around. I was supposed to have been in a faculty meeting, but I got hung up with Donald over those new housekeeping contracts."
"And where is our concerned athlete?"
Dunn shrugged. "Guess he cut and run after he called me. They're not suppose to be in joints like this, you know."
Laker rubbed his stomach and whimpered, "Oh, I'm gonna throw up."
"I think the kids say hurl, now," Dunn corrected him. "Get with the times!"
Laker rose from the booth and lurched for the bathroom. He stopped, leaned a moment against the jukebox then went inside. A minute later he came out wiping his mouth with a handful of paper towels. He dropped them into a mildew-stained trashcan on the other side of the juke. He leaned against the music machine again and took a few deep breaths. His head bowed, the list of old selections caught his eye. The songs hadn't been updated in a long time, the juke neglected as the rest of the place. The title of one of the selections made him smile. He dug two quarters out of his pocket, put them into the coin slot and punched B-16 on the selector buttons. He wobbled back to the booth and plopped down.
"My selection should be up soon," he mumbled. Then more brightly, "It's most appropriate! I think you'll like it."
Dunn leaned forward and put his hand on the old man's arm. "What's with you tonight? You okay? "
Laker nodded, then stopped and shook his head gravely. "Dunn old man, will you get me some water, please."
Dunn returned to the bar and purchased a bottle of water. He came back to the booth and sat down.
"Thanks," Laker said as he twisted the cap from the cool bottle. "You're were always my favorite student. Did you know that?"
Dunn grinned. "Your favorite student was five-foot-nine, brunette and wore amber-blush lipstick."
The professor nodded again. "You know, I actually considered failing Barbara just so I could keep her in class? It was dull after she graduated."
"I'm glad you didn't," Dunn said.
"Indeed!" Laker exclaimed. "Out of the depth of my generosity, I permit her to graduate, only to see her married to an administration baboon like you!"
Dunn smiled and shook his head. "What are you doing in this joint? I've never known you to hit hard liquor, especially in a roach motel like this."
Laker stared blankly at the scratched linoleum. "I guess I wanted to stop thinking so badly that all other considerations were moot." He rubbed his face. "This was simply the nearest booze joint around when I realized how desperately I needed a dram." He looked around the barroom. "You're right, though; it is a dive. Even the cab driver tried to talk me out of coming inside." The round tables covered with torn, red checkered vinyl were mostly occupied and the booths were all full. "Place seems to be popular enough though." Most of the patrons wore boots and blue jeans; shirts were mostly plaid or tee-shirts. Jackets and coats hung carelessly on the backs of the chairs.
Dunn put his elbows on the table. "What's the matter, George? What's got you so upset?"
Laker ran his hand through his thin hair and, for a moment, sat motionless, still as any of the statues on campus. Then he said, "I guess you can say that I've discovered something quite alarming."
"Like what?"
In a faint whisper, the professor replied, "Like what happens after we die."
Dunn stared at Laker a long moment until he asked, "Do you believe in Hell?"
"No, of course not!" Dunn exclaimed.
"I do, dear boy, I do." He let out a long sigh. "In fact, I've seen it." The song on the juke changed and the professor's eyes brightened. "Ah! Here comes our tune."
Instant Karma began pouring from the speakers. Dunn grinned with recognition.
Laker said, "I first heard this song one day in class. It was during the fall semester of seventy-four, I think. One of my students brought in a tape player and began playing it right in the middle of my reading of Hamlet..."
"Don't be smug, George!" Dunn interjected. "You know it was me." He listened a moment. "I still remember the John Lennon forty-five I taped it from. It had a picture of an apple for a label and Play Loud was printed on it."
"You use to wear those ridiculous multicolored shirts and baggy blue-jeans, and your hair flowed down below your shoulders. Oh, yes indeed, you were the seventies incarnate." Laker held out a hand. "Now, these seventeen years later, look at you in your pinstriped suit—the very picture of respectability."
"The shirts were tie-dyed and the jeans were bellbottoms. And my hair? My hair was so gorgeous." He stroked his bald pate. "That day in class—I was so stoned!" Dunn leaned back. "I'm not surprised you remember that day, but I am surprised you remember the song. Not exactly your type of music."
"Don't you recall? I confiscated the tape from you and kept it for sometime before I gave it back. I played it a few times to get some idea of what my students were listening to. I like the song, actually. It has a kind of stark poetry to it."
The lyrics returned to the part that ran: Instant Karma's gonna get you...Gonna knock you right on the head...You better get yourself together...Pretty soon you're gonna be dead...
Again, Dunn asked, "What's bothering you, really?"
"I had a little mishap at the sleep center." Laker crossed his arms. "You see, I died tonight."
"What!"
Laker stared blankly a moment and then asked, "Do you think intelligence is a purely physical aspect? Or does it exist apart from the body?"
"What are you talking about? What do you mean you died?"
"Anderson from the sleep center called before I left my office this evening. The participant in his sleep study didn't show up. It was a man about the same age as I. That's what he's working on now—sleep studies on the aged." He smiled slightly. "He asked if I would help for about two hours. He and two of his staff were waiting; the equipment was set up and ready. If he had to call off the lab it would represent a loss of a couple of thousand dollars."
"Yeah," Dunn agreed, "that sounds about right. The admin wouldn't like spending that money with nothing to show for it."
"You mean you wouldn't like it, don't you?"
"George, it's my job to watch the pennies," Dunn said, defensively.
Laker waved him silent. "Just answer my question."
Dunn sighed, "I don't know, George. I'm an accountant, really. I don't know anything about that type of thing."
"Then I'll answer it. Is intelligence a physical aspect of humanity? No. It's not physical. The next question is, since it's not physical does it perish with the physical body? Again, no."
Dunn leaned back and shrugged. "George, these are just your opinions, not facts. These arguments have gone on for ages."
"Ah, Dunn my boy! But it's not just academic for me anymore. You see, I've, quite by accident, conducted an experiment that was astoundingly revealing."
"Tell me about it."
Laker leaned back. "As I mentioned, Anderson called me to help. I walked across to the West Building and found him and two assistants waiting. As they instructed, I bared my chest and lay down on the bed in the windowed room they had ready. I lay there with my eyes closed, and tried to relax as one of Anderson's assistants hooked up various sensor leads to my chest. Anderson was outside with the other assistant busy at the monitoring console. He called out to me to relax. The assistant finished with me and stepped outside. I assumed that's when they turned the monitoring equipment on. At that moment I felt my heart leap in my chest, pounding like—"
"Sweet holy Moses!" Dunn shouted. "Your pacemaker!" The nearby bar patrons stopped chattering, turned and looked at him.
"Exactly. It was a grand exercise in stupidity. Mine for forgetting to tell them, the grad student who hooked up the leads for not noticing the scar, or at least not thinking to ask what it was about. I think he was new."
"Are you okay?"
"Relax, Dunn," Laker said, firmly. "My heart's fine. My trusty Palmer 233 is regulating quite normally again. There's nothing the hospital would do but keep me for observation. So what's the point?" He rubbed his eyes. "And since I've...hurled up the liquor, I even feel a little better.
"The pacemaker failed and my heart stopped. But that is not the strange thing. I felt an overwhelming pullof gravity from behind, which of course was under me since I was lying down, and I fell backwards, well...out of my body." He let out a short breath. "I was falling and falling, then suddenly I felt heat at my back which quickly intensified into scorching. The next thing I knew, I was swimming in, I don't know, fire or molten lava."
"You're saying you went to Hell?" Dunn asked, incredulously.
"I'm saying I went to a place some religions recognize as Hell. This is what I saw. There was an unbelievably colossal cavern. The ceiling looked as big as the sky and was lit in a reddish hue. It hovered over a sea, or perhaps an ocean of, I guess, magma, huge beyond imagination." Laker stopped a moment. "The worst part was the...others. This sea of fire was filled with what seemed like millions and millions of people. Many bumped against me, arms flailing, as were mine. We were all screaming in perfect agony." He took another sip of water.
Dunn queried, "So...no one there had horns and a pitchfork?"
Laker slammed the bottle down; droplets of water bounced out. "Your sarcasm isn't necessary or becoming!"
"Sorry, sorry. Go on."
Laker allowed himself a moment to calm down. "The next thing I knew, I felt a pulling sensation upward and I was opening my eyes in the sleep center. They said as soon as they flipped the switch, the heart monitor went into alarm and immediately they shut off all the instruments. My pacemaker kicked back in and I came too very quickly. The whole thing lasted less a minute."
Dunn raised his brow. "So, does this represent some kind of religious turning point for you?"
Laker shook his head. "You know I've never subscribed to those kind of convictions. Still, not even after this. It has, however, changed my views on the idea of life after death. I've always been a materialist.Now, I've had to rethink, at least, that portion of my philosophy."
"Did Anderson or his people take you to see a doctor?"
"No. They wanted to, but after I caught my breath I felt no ill effects, so I refused to go. Anderson has medical training and he checked my heart. He said it seemed okay. However, he did insist I get a ride home instead of driving myself." He rubbed his chin. "The impact of the experience didn't settle in on me right away. I was just so glad to be alive I hadn't thought much of it. It was during the cab ride home that I began going over it, and considering the astounding implications it held—Life after death. Or maybe I should say death after death. We use the term afterlife so often, but perhaps after-death would be more appropriate."
The jukebox changed to a tune about a cowboy's undying love for his "California Cowgirl." Dunn asked, "George, are you sure you're okay? Maybe the electric shock, you know, temporarily scrambled your eggs." He tapped his skull. "It was probably just an hallucination caused by electrical shock!"
Laker rolled his eyes. "Dunn, I am not off my rocker. I know what happened to me. And the monitoring equipment recorded the fact that I indeed died."
"But George—"
"Oh, stop being so argumentative! I'm fine, physically and mentally." He softened his glare and looked away. "I died tonight and went to what religion knows as Hell." He tapped the tabletop with his fist. "And the worst part, and this is what has me so upset, is that I've realized I'm going back there someday. All of us are going there."
"What makes you say that?"
"Science," Laker replied, his eyes hard. "Cold, hard science."
A man in housepainter jeans, a gray tee-shirt stretched over his copious belly, sauntered past Dunn and Laker. He looked down, staring long and hard at them as he passed.
Dunn looked away from the man and commented, "I guess we kind of stick out here."
"Yes," Laker agreed. "The barkeep made it clear this establishment isn't favorable to the bourgeoisie."
"Let's get out of here," Dunn said, taking his umbrella by the handle. "Was it raining when you got here?"
"No, it started just after I sat down at that abysmal bar." Laker grinned. "By the way, did you know it was made from old, disinterred caskets?"
Dunn stared blankly, his mouth parted.
"Relax!" Laker ordered. "It was just a joke."
Dunn gave his head a quick shake. "Let's go. We'll share my umbrella to the car."
"But we haven't finished our little discussion."
Dunn closed and opened his eyes. "You're really stuck on this, aren't you?"
"Oh, I need to sort this out. Why this could be one of the big breakthroughs of humanity, like penicillin or the microwave oven."
"Well, at least you're cracking jokes again. I guess that's a good sign."
"Yes, I do seem to find a bit of denial settling in." His smile faded. "But it remains that I do horribly remember the experience. I shouldn't think all the denial in the world could wipe it completely away."
"Well, let me give your denial a helping hand! First, explain how you can feel pain without a body? The nerve endings that sense pain are in the body, right?" Laker opened his mouth to reply, but Dunn pushed on. "You say you saw people. How is that? Wouldn't that be the souls of people? Why would a soul, a spirit, if they exist, necessarily have human shape? And—"
"Bryce!" Laker hissed through gritted teeth. "Give me a chance to respond. That's a good fellow."
Dunn sighed. Whenever Laker addressed him by his first name it usually meant butting heads. "Go ahead," he said and raised his hands in surrender.
"About the existence of the soul. I've been giving that some thought. We know that intelligence, a non-physical element of ourselves, exists. In the evolution of the human species, we developed thought beyond mere instinct and became the dominant species on the planet." He stared hard at Dunn. "Have you ever given any thought at how marvelous the human intellect is? What a miracle of evolution it is? This wonderful gift of...consciousness. Indeed, we may have underestimated what's been happening all along.
"Now, if survival of the species is the goal of evolution, why would it stop at just developing intellect? I believe that through evolution we developed an enduring consciousness, what you could call a soul. Darwin was right about the species surviving. Indeed, he didn't realize how right he was."
"Wait a second," Dunn interjected. "You're saying to ensure our survival, evolution developed our intellect into something more than just mere thought? It developed it into an entity capable of surviving the death of the physical body?"
Laker nodded.
Dunn opened his mouth then closed it again. Then he said, "Well, if you put it that way, if the purpose of evolution is survival, I guess the development of a soul is not too far fetched." He shook his head. "I can't believe I said that. But tell me, if such a thing as a soul really evolved, then why would it necessarily sink into the earth? Why not just float into space? You know, some spiritualists believe that. They believe that when the soul leaves the body it goes and circles the Earth? And just where did this Hell come from in the first place?"
"I'll take that last question first," said Laker. "Science has long ago proven that the center of the Earth is a ball of lava. It is that simple."
"So that's Hell? Lava?"
"The Book of Revelation mentions a lake of fire. Who knows, maybe the ancients somehow had knowledge of what the inside of the Earth was like. In any event, I believe that's where gravity pulled me." Laker puffed his cheeks. "And about that. Einstein proved that gravity even bends something as ethereal as light. It can actually pull light. They tell us that a black hole is a collapsed star with a gravitational pull so strong that light itself cannot escape. What if the soul is composed of something similar to light? And what if, after death, whatever it is that holds the soul in the body, releases it to the forces of the Earth's gravitational pull? It would sink to the center of gravity, which is the center of the Earth's mass. And once there, gravity would hold it in the sea of hot lava."
Dunn raised both eyebrows. "That's quite a little theory you've got going there. How much did you have to drink before I got here, anyway?"
Laker ignored the wisecrack. "And about the soul being able to feel. I don't have a concise answer to that. All I can say is I felt the heat and flames around me." He thought a moment and said, "What if the body acts as a mere conveyance for the soul. That its purpose is to move the soul around in the physical world and filter the sensations coming in. Without the body, the soul could still experience the sensations caused by direct contact with a strong elemental force. In this case, the fires of Hell."
"George, this is getting pretty weird."
Laker shrugged. "I'm just trying to make sense of what happened to me."
Dunn replied, "What doesn't make sense is this. If the purpose of evolution is our survival, then why would evolution arrange things so that ours souls would sink to Hell? Why wouldn't it just work things out so that we go to the Bahamas or some other nice place to spend eternity?"
"Because, dear boy, evolution goofed!"
"What do you mean?"
"Here, evolution was working on two planes. On one hand shaping our physical world, the other our spiritual selves. These two endeavors of evolution worked independently so there was no need for one to accommodate the other. In the physical world the forces at play all touched upon each other and gave in to each other. That is how a world is formed. But the physical world and the spiritual world exist on different planes, so to speak, and did not influence each other in the making of mankind. That is how we wind up where we are. The life force in our bodies keeps the soul in place. The body dies and the soul is released into the grips of gravity. It is then pulled down into the lava pool."
Dunn asked, "If gravity pulled you down to the lava pool, then how did you get out when they resuscitated you?"
"Frankly, I have no definite answer. Another mystery to contemplate. My only guess it that each soul must be attuned to its own body somehow. When my body was brought back from death, it somehow recalled my soul. In other words, there's another force of nature at work besides gravity, other laws of physics we're not yet aware of."
Dunn leaned back and stretched his arms. "There is one thing I'm aware of, it's time to go. Come on."
He picked up his umbrella and stood up. He waited a moment and finally Laker worked his way to his feet and followed him to the exit. In the parking lot, Laker observed, "It's stopped raining." In the car, he asked, "You really think the whole incident was just an hallucination?"
Dunn started the engine. "Of course, what else?"
He pulled into traffic to drive Laker home. Along the way, the professor noticed how carefully Dunn steered and braked, no doubt due to the wet roads.
.