Simon closed his eyes for what he thought would be the last time. Darkness swallowed him, and he felt as if he were falling. Sensation slowly ebbed away, starting with taste and smell, then touch. The last thing he heard was his husband’s weeping, and the steady whine of a medical device which signaled that his heart had ceased to beat. Finally he was without stimulus, or even the suggestion of stimulus. The few thoughts he had left were steady and calm, all emotion leaving him by the same trail his senses had. The world he knew had been completely erased, and yet he found that something of himself remained.
When his eyes opened, they weren’t really eyes anymore. He had emerged into a new reality, birthed into being in a realm composed of solid light and vapor. His new feet, which weren’t feet, rested upon a rubbery, translucent substance, giving a little as he began to walk. All around him was light from an unseen star, and swarms of what looked like shimmering, ghostly locusts swirled around, great clouds and whirlwinds of them zipping here and there, the patterns they made individually chaotic but painting a larger, orderly picture. The rubbery mass belonged to what appeared to be a great spectral whale, and when he looked down along its side he saw that it swam through an ocean of water so clear that you could’ve seen straight to the bottom, had there been one. Above the surface of the water were the whitest, purest clouds imaginable, dotted here and there with glimpses of a sky so blue that Picasso would have wept to see them.
Other beings, like himself, stood upon the whale, each as in awe of what they were seeing as Simon was. They appeared as pulsating curtains of vapor, glowing even in the radiance of the place. Each form was unique, yet none were recognizable in any human sense. Some moved around, seeming to examine their surroundings, but most stood still, drinking in it’s majesty.
Simon felt a strange sensation from what, for lack of a better term, was his leg. He looked down to see a large, friendly looking koala bear, its purplish fur reflecting the brilliance like an oil slick in a rain puddle. It pointed to the water, and without a word, the two of them dove in, the liquid seeming to penetrate every atom of his new form. He lost himself in the ocean for awhile, his consciousness spreading out, seeming to touch every part of this creation. He was the whale for awhile, then the sky, then the locusts. He was outside of this place and inside of it, everywhere and looking upon himself. He had no mouth to smile, but all the other aspects of happiness were with him. He emerged from the water, dry as a bone, just in time to see a squadron of four great feathery serpents fly over head in a “V” pattern, a stream of stars and flower petals left in their wake. As they passed directly overheard, the serpent on the far right broke formation, flying straight up, the clouds and locusts parting gently as it past, revealing, at last, the golden disk that was this world’s sun. The serpent’s trail began to glow a blinding orange, spiraling outward from its tail like a an exploding bomb, the creature disappearing into the star’s corona.
The ocean came to an end at a great waterfall, its contents roaring over the edge into an infinite blue and white sky. The whale came to rest against the blade of a gigantic sword, at least the length of a few football stadiums and the width of a grand ballroom. It crawled up onto the impossibly reflective metal on bulbous legs, and its passengers began to flutter off its back like the seeds of a dandelion. They skated across the sword’s length at a brisk pace, with flying squirrels hovering above them, tiny brass instruments in their mouths, an orchestra playing some cross between an old drinking song and a classical overture.
As he moved towards the weapon’s hilt, he noted the great letters etched into the steel. In life he had never seen such a language, but in death he was not only familiar, but fluent. It was an incredibly versatile tongue – a single sentence might say a thousand different things. This one spoke of God.
“God Loves You.”
“God Does Not Respond to Bribery.”
“God Prefers Mint Tea in the Afternoon.”
“God is both so Perfect that God is Flawed.”
“God Lies to Tell the Truth.”
“God Likes to Fuck with Your Head.”
“God Is Lonely.”
“God Welcomes You.”
“God Employs Many Koala Bears.”
It would have taken an eternity to read every version of the sentence, but Simon suspected that he would have plenty of time.
The procession halted at the hilt of the sword, greeted by a million flag poles hosting a million banners: the flags of ever nation, every organization and club, every ship that ever sailed terrestrial oceans, and even flags associated with theme parks and fast food outlets. A herd of wildebeest circled the shaft of the handle, clinging to it as if by magnetism. As the whale-riders approached, the animals froze in a line across the top, and each of them bobbed across the handle on their heads. At the very end, those ahead of Simon seemed to jump out into the emptiness without fear, and when he arrived he looked down to see a great silver chalice, in scale with the sword, filled with what looked like deep, rich red wine. His companions disappeared without so much as a splash when they dropped into it. Without anxiety he stepped out into the air, and plunged.
The world of light, clouds, and spiritual locusts was replaced with red and nothing but red. He was the wine. He tasted both himself and the others, lost in dreams and secrets, growing drunk on the essence of what they all were and what they could be. When the vessel was full it began to move and tilt, gripped in the hand of what Simon knew in the heart he no longer had to be God. The liquid sloshed over the side and poured gently down into a great radiant outline of a mouth, the lips ringed with stars and nebulae, eyes above casting torrents of luminescent gas into eternity. Into his mouth and into his being they fell, absorbed into the spiritual matter, burning into each of his cells as if New York City had just flipped on all its lamps at once.
For a moment he was the very essence of Divinity – he was Vishnu, Lucifer, Hera, Shang-ti, Anu, Brigid… he was Jesus and Buddha and Muhammed and Joseph Smith. He was the animal totems his ancestors had revered. He was the very soul of the universe, a singularity at the heart of creation just before the very second of the Big Bang.
And then he was Simon again. Only Simon. He hovered before God in a sea of stars, his form restored to what it had been on Earth, naked before the totality of the cosmos.
“You have a question?” God asked.
“I thought gay people didn’t go to heaven…?” Simon asked.
“Who told you that?” God asked in reply.
“Religious people,” Simon said meekly.
“Oh,” God laughed, “fuck them.”
Daniel Latta
