Concentration - Peter Edgell (books for students to read TXT) 📗

Being dead is one thing. I can live with that. Excuse the joke. But being dead bored is really just not fair. As an Englishman it feels like I’ve spent half my life waiting politely in queues. And now this! A string of bodies in front and behind me, shuffling along in silence. Not surprising really as the floor seems to be made of some fluffy material, solid cloud perhaps. A while back I tried stamping a foot but there was no sound. Beneath me everything seemed firm and real but, even so, just cloud-like.

The worst thing of all is that no-one will talk. Not even about the weather which, because it's so changeable, is the one thing that can break down any English person’s reserve. Then again, you need weather to talk about. Here, there’s just a faint glow in the air, a something that surrounds

you and leaves you relaxed as long as you don’t think about it directly. And that’s another thing. Every once in a while, I feel that the thing I was concentrating on has in some curious manner just drifted

away and I have to start all over again.
And again and again. It’s most unnerving but even that repetition, that feeling, just seems to fade...

I have the distinct impression that the queue has moved on a bit, although I can’t say I remember it happening. But there seem to be more people behind me than there are in front. I can’t wait to reach that front, to find out how this all ends. Then again, it suddenly occurs to me that maybe it would be better if I didn’t know. After all, they say that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And I can’t say that I’m a particularly good man with a lifetime of good deeds in his bank account. But, if the truth be told, I’m not a particularly bad man, either. So that’s a comfort. I haven’t led a remarkable life at all. Let’s be honest here, even the wife catching you in bed with her best friend is not really something volcanic in the grand scheme of things is it? Happens all the time in movies. But the wife doesn’t always point a gun at you, does she? Looking back at things though, I’d lived with her temper for so long that perhaps it was a bit of a mistake to say “You wouldn’t dare...”
Correction, it was definitely the wrong thing to say and, by standing in this queue, I’m living proof of that. Well, not exactly living

... Another joke. Funny how death hasn’t blunted my lousy sense of humour.

The light seems to be getting fuzzier around me but brighter ahead. I won’t swear to it but I think we’ve moved on again. I’m not sure how long I’ve been here but my watch was on the bedside cabinet when... when all this happened. It’s definitely not on my wrist now so I guess that it’s still there. I wonder if everything gets left behind; clothes, jewellery, you know... But I wasn’t exactly wearing much at all when the bullet blew my heart through my back.
All that blood will have ruined the wallpaper. That’s worth a bit of a chuckle in itself. The wife was always so manically house-proud. Even dust was terrified of her. I’m not sure if anyone else is wearing clothes. At least, I think I’m not sure...
Damn! These wandering thoughts are really beginning to get to me.

A curious point: I’m not at all hungry. On the one hand, I hadn’t eaten in ages before the bed and gun business. I remember my stomach rumbling. We were laughing about it as we were... well, you know what I’m talking about. We’d promised ourselves a thick crust pizza and a couple of beers later...
On the other hand, maybe the dead don’t need to eat. I don’t mean their bodies of course, just their spirits. Not even some kind of ghost food? Just for the sheer hell of it? Whoops! That might turn out to be a bad joke.
Maybe a lack of enjoyment is one of the penalties of being dead. Who knows? Not me. I’m still pretty new to this whole business. I’ll leave that sort of thing up to the experts. I mean the church boys and the philosophers. The ones in the know because they’re still alive... That was a bit of a snide joke but, hey, who’s the dead one round here? That must give me some rights. A bit of street cred. A little respect, maybe?

The light’s really bright up ahead now so whatever the method of processing the dead is, it’s pretty efficient.

If the wife goes to prison for murder, who gets to pay the utility bills? Will they ever find out that the car has been fixed and is waiting to be picked up from the garage? Why am I worrying about things that are now in my past? Probably because I haven’t got used to thinking of myself, my core, as only having a past but no future. But if that’s true then who am I now

? And what is this present

? This place with its continuous, boring, shuffling queue. You know, a person could get quite stressed out here. I guess that’s why there’s something calming about the air. Some kind of chemical sedative?

At last! A change of direction and...

There’s a huge hall. That’s an understatement but I can’t find words to describe it because they haven’t been invented... And everywhere: fantastic light, beams of emotion, the smell of newborn stars...

O! If anyone ever dreamed of the purity of their own heaven, well here it is!

But it isn’t. It’s just home to another, longer, queue; an immense line that snakes back and forth upon itself. All the dead, like me, shuffling through a brilliant, silent, beauty. Just like walking through the first snow of winter.
White suited characters are buzzing up and down the lines, tapping everyone on the head and smiling reassuringly. I know that they are angels because the suits don’t fit too well. They all give the same impression: that the wearer is a hunchback. Folded wings, I guess. You’d think they’d have better tailors, considering their careers and everything...
I can’t actually prove it but somehow I know that, one after another, everyone is being forgiven. Every soul is slowly trudging up an infinite stairway heading for endless joy. But how can this be perfection without sound? Not a peep! Not a song! Where are the harps we were promised? Well, the believers were promised...

One of these angels is heading down my line now. I wonder what would happen if I said,
“Screw your forgiveness if it means I have to spend eternity stuck in a queue, smothered in silence.”
There’s a tap on my shoulder. I don’t think this guy’s an angel because, for a start, his suit fits. And it’s red, not white. And he’s wearing the snazziest black boots I’ve ever seen. He opens a hand and a shadow leaps out, expanding into a doorway. From the corner of one eye I can see the white suit running towards me. The angel’s waving his arms and his mouth is motoring but I... I just can’t hear him.
Either the processing system is not as fast as I thought or I was lost all along but, well, I know I am now. Lost to the man in red when he gives me a way out; when he promises me more than just a silent dream. And his voice is the first sound I’ve actually heard since the explosion of the gun deafened me.
I can hear the angel now, screaming “Wait!” and there’s music, agonisingly intimate music: the untouched, untarnished sound that is my soul...

I realize that my hearing’s coming back. It was just a temporary deafness: the noise of the gun! And now that I’ve heard the music, my own perfect music, the melody that is me, I desperately want to shout “No!”
But I’ve already said yes to the Devil’s perfectly timed offer:
“Come away with me in the night, come away with me and I will write you a song...”

Norah Jones

- "Come Away With Me"

Publication Date: 07-15-2011

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
To Norah, for her comforting...