Voice From the Floating World

"He, who navigated with success
the dangerous river of his own birth
once more set forth

on a voyage of discovery
into the land I floated on
but could not touch to claim."
—Margaret Atwood

In the matter of my death there was great speculation as to what had caused it. Some called it a homicide, and the truly hopeful actually believed it so. Others, the ones who saw beyond the false-hope that liked to scratch at the back of most peoples’ throats, saw what truly happened: a suicide had taken my life. Now, I guess you would wonder, like most in this town of Eastbrook, a town of suburbs and Barbie-dream-home façades that only melted upon hearing the latest gossip, why I had done it. You could “speculate” that I did it because my childhood was unsatisfactory, horrible at best, but then again isn’t most young life unbearable? You could further “speculate” that I had done it because of a lack of love at home, but my parents loved me more than anything, paid me attention all the time, and provided me with everything I needed. The truth is there is no explainable reason as to why I was found face down in the river. However, the matter of how my death occurred is not the mystery, for my death has no reason, it is, however, what occurred after they found my body on that cold February morning.

It was just nearing dawn, the bridge over the river was partially frozen, and the sky the pale gray of coming snow. The sun hadn’t yet risen but light had made its way over the horizon. I can’t remember much, for my point of view was of the bottom of the river as minnow scurried about below my floating body. But I do know it was a girl on her way to school that had found my body; the police arrived not long after that.

A few things could have happened after I died. A.) I go to heaven. The pearly gates are there waiting for me. They open and I’m floating through the clouds, with glittery, gossamer-like wings floating behind me. The angels come down to great me singing joyous songs of love and peace. I get to witness the beautifully impossible colors, shades not seen with terrestrial eyes, hear things never heard, like the voice of God telling me, “Don’t worry; be happy!” And I exist happily in the afterlife. B.) I go to hell. And according to Dante, I am sent to the middle ring of the Seventh Circle, where I am turned into a thorny bush or a tree, and am fed by nasty harpies that pick my leaves and tease me, which doesn’t sound so bad, but it is forever, and at the final judgment I would be reincarnated as a tree who sprouts my own lifeless body as fruit. According to most people, I just burn in a fiery eternity where demons with spaded tales and horns and pitchforks torture me.

However, neither of these things actually happened.

While I was face down in the water, my soul was ripped from my body. I know this because I floated up, into the air, and found myself looking down at the pale, partially bloated body. People surrounded me, prodding my body, lifting me out with poles and hooks, latching my decrepit skin to pull me in. Then it faded.

I returned to my own house. The door opened onto my parents, happily letting an officer in the door. The officer waited. He let them all sit down, took his hat off and spoke.

“I don’t know how to say this, Mr. and Mrs. Parks,” he paused, his eyes down at the ground, “it’s about your son.”

“What is it, did he skip school again, is he in trouble, he’s always getting into trouble…”

“Mrs. Parks. We found your son in the river.”

“Did he skip again? You know he always liked to swim, even in the cold, I don’t know what it is about that boy,” she said not pausing.

“Mrs. Parks, he drowned.”

The silence that followed was thick. It pressed in all around them, buzzing, like when you listen too intently to the emptiness of a room and it vibrates around you.

She was sitting there quiet, sullen, her face swelling and turning red as if it were about to explode, and he broke down. He wept, slammed his fist in the wall, yelled, “How could he do this?” A sound came from his mouth so loud that would have shaken me to my feet, it sounded as if he said my son, but it was unclear. I feared he’d never said it at all. I had never seen them like this, her motionless in the chair staring at the faded yellow wallpaper, him unable to sit still, swinging his body everywhere knocking over chairs. But it was my little sister that scared me the most. It was as if I hadn’t died. She sat there happily swinging her legs off the kitchen chair as if nothing had been said, waiting, waiting for something else to happen. The officer left. Yet nothing changed. My father calmed himself long enough to comfort my mother, but she couldn’t be moved. She was a statue. I had escaped her. But Abigail was there, sitting, waiting. I could sense awareness in her, like something was wrong, but I could tell she hadn’t registered her missing brother. I was there watching this all, but I couldn’t be apart of it. I wanted to put my arms around Abigail, tell her everything was going to be alright, but I had no arms to use. I was invisible to them. My voice was gone, gone with the body it once belonged to. I was a phantom in the floating world of childhood ghost stories.

The funeral was quick to happen. They put me in a cherry wood coffin, some ugly suit that I’m sure they had nothing to do with, and packed the little chapel with all the people who pretended to be friends of the family. They sat down quietly, my parents and sister in the front of the chapel, parents mourning and sister still swinging her feet on the end of the pew with a pink ribbon tied up in her hair.

There was a quiet murmuring all around, people saying how scandalous it was, how I had thrown myself off the bridge. “I heard someone pushed him off the bridge!” “I heard that his parents used to beat him!” “You know what I heard! He was a closeted homosexual, and that’s why he did it!”

“You liar, that’s totally untrue!” a girl I knew from school said. Danny Heywood, she used to have a huge crush on me, I think we may have dated once upon a time.

The room went silent as the ceremony started. The pastor said a few words; my mother tried to say a few words but sobbed her self away from the altar. Then the viewing started, people came up to see the made-up body that used to be mine. Its cold blue lips, the ash-brown hair, and the hazel eyes that hid behind closed lids. There was such unexpected beauty in my lifeless body. A beauty I hadn’t stayed alive long enough to notice. The grace of my lanky body in the dark, green-black suit, the natural way my hands clasped themselves together at my waist. Maybe this was my sole purpose in life, to be this beautiful lifeless form in a cherry wood box. To take a few hours of these peoples time, to steal sinewy words from their lips they really didn’t mean. One thing I had never been able to imagine when alive was my future, and maybe that was because this was it. I was here as a voyeur, a mere witness to deaths effects. And maybe this all was all it was, an experiment. It would give a reason, however small, to my drowning. It’s a romantic notion, to give myself up for an experiment. It’s hard to entertain the idea. Picture me as a scientist, intently watching a group of specimens, how they react to the doughy flesh of a dead body. How they substitute gossip for the truth, because the truth strays away from normal ideals, because the truth can’t be understood in their Barbie-dream-house lives.
The box closed. The body is gone from sight, for the better. The procession of black and white garb shuffled through the door. It was time to bury the casket.

There was a lot more talking, more mourning, more crying, or weeping. The people I hardly knew continued to talk. They had me under a tent due to the rain. It was coming down slow, a little more than a drizzle. It hit the fallen leaves and grass, sounding like the applause of a million tiny people. A transparent fog clung to the ground, dancing around the gravestones covering the names at the announcement of my death, a courtesy for the newcomer. The birds weren’t singing, there weren’t any, but if you listened closely you could hear the bugs hidden in the grass and trees, a tiny chorus of chirps and beeps.

Everyone formed a line, taking turns pinching a bit of sand from a jar and spreading it over the casket. Each grain of sand slid over the lacquered wood, whispering to the dead inside. You are covered, it said, quoting a poem I had written just before I died, reminding me that I had had a life once. I had put myself in ink onto a page. I wasn’t completely dead. The poem read:

You are covered,
my love,
You are covered.
From the depths of earth
arise my love
for you are covered.
I sing from these
mythic lips
and rise you up
from river Styx,
my daughter, my love,
you are covered.

My mother, pinching her bit of sand, touched her hand to the coffin, and sang a lullaby softly, almost inaudible, lifting her hand above the coffin and letting it hover there. I remembered I had shown her the poem, and it was her favorite. She let the sand from her other hand fall, and walked away.

Nobody stayed for the lowering of the coffin. Nobody wanted to see it. It was a reminder that life ends. And just like my experiment with them, they did the same with me. They watched me, closely inspecting the coffin before leaving. Some turning as they walked away, seeing the coffin slowly lowered deeper into the ground.

They were curious to see what death meant, what happens afterward. I know I was curious, which is why I was here, why I was stuck a voyeur, watching these people watch me. I had questioned why, and I had ventured further to answer it. But there was no answer. There was nothing waiting for me on the other side. I had just a glimpse of eternity. A glimpse of the ghost stories read to me as a child. And all I could do was watch, and listen, to the voices of the floating world.