Til Death Do Us

‘TIL DEATH DO US


Drew woke up to the sound of sparrows singing. He had not heard sparrows for… as long as he could remember. The Light shined bright. Nothing cast a shadow. Yet there was no sun in the sky. In the far field, sunflowers as tall as redwoods tickled creamy clouds with copper petals. Purple grasshoppers the size of horses skipped through bushy, blue blades of grass. The waterfall did not fall at all. Instead, it ascended the cliff and curved over the ridge- powerful, beautiful, and defying all gravity.
The far field spread seemingly forever. Oranges, peaches, pears, and apples lifted from branches and burst like bubbles when they kissed the Safire sky. Behind Drew, The Majestic Mountain rose higher than the birds’ wings dare dream to tower. The base of the mountain was all fluffy with moss and fruit trees. Halfway to the sky, the mountain’s complexion shaded black. Beyond that point laid the land of secrets.
Drew yawned and sat up on the soft grass. He realized he was naked. Drew’s nakedness did not surprise him. The shape of his body was what Drew found most perplexing. Liver spots no longer polka-dotted sagging skin. Instead, bronze flesh firmly slipped over a chiseled chest and rigid abs. His biceps bulged like cinders. Drew’s legs appeared sturdy enough to carry the weight of Atlas.
Happily puzzled, Drew scratched his head only to find moist, bristly hair cushioning what had once been a pink, bald, elderly scalp.
Just to the left, a beautiful girl slept on top the bed of grass. Her back faced Drew. Yellow curls beamed down the small curve of her shoulders like sunshine. Her young, biscuit brown body levitated at the tips of grass blades like a floating fantasy. Bees buzzed all around her. A few sucked honey from her skin. None of them stung her.
The girl came to life. She shook sleep from sunshine hair and ascended on an elbow. Bees lifted from her body, formed the shape of an eagle in the sky, and soared off toward the bright beckoning of fruit fireworks popping against the far horizon.
She rolled onto her back and soaked up the immaculate images of the far field and The Majestic Mountain. Drew recognized her. He nearly fell weak with joy when he realized who she was.
“Liz?”
He startled her. She twitched toward him. Drew remembered those round, amber eyes.
“Drew?” she gasped, “oh my goodness, what’s happened to you?”
“What’s happened to me?” he chuckled, “have you taken a look at yourself? You haven’t looked like that since… well, I don’t think you’ve ever looked like that.”
Liz examined herself. She could hardly believe it. Her hair streamed vibrant and alive. Her body resembled something from a fairytale. Her expression molded from delight to fear and back again.
“Drew, what’s happening?”
“You want to know what I think?” he asked, wanting to touch her but afraid to, “I think we’re dead. I remember a car crash. A Corvette ran a red light. There were paramedics. One of them was doing CPR on you. That’s the last thing I remember. Anyway, we’re not on Earth. There’s no place on Earth this beautiful.”
“If you would’ve looked both ways, you old coot, we wouldn’t be dead right now. I cannot believe you sometimes, Drew!”
He hunkered on his knees and stared at her like she was a fungus.
“Excuse me, Liz. I wasn’t driving a Corvette, and I didn’t run a red light. I can’t believe you’re blaming me for this. The only reason I was driving was because you can’t concentrate on the road and control your bladder at the same time. Anyway, what does it matter? Now, we’re sitting in the middle of Paradise with the bodies of Greek gods.”
“I’m hosting a church social this weekend, Drew.”
“Guess what,” Drew announced, “no you’re not! You’re not hosting anything this weekend because you’re dead. And if you want to blame anybody for this situation, you should blame the guy in the Corvette. But he’s probably in Hell. You are in Heaven. And you are no doubt the only person in Heaven complaining about it.”
“How do you know we’re in Heaven, Drew?” Liz asked, rising to her feet, “do you see a sign that says, Welcome to Heaven? We’ve both committed quite a few sins. Who’s to say we’re not in Hell?”
“This place is BEAUTIFUL, Liz. Do you see pits of fire? Do you hear gnashing of teeth? Do you see your mother dressed in a suit of flames?”
“It sure would be nice to see my mother right now,” Liz scorned, “these things are tricky, Drew. The truth is, you don’t know if you’re in Heaven or Hell anymore than I do.”
A thunderous galloping echoed from the far field. Brown dust smothered floating fruit and arose to form a mushroom cloud in the sky. The cloud parted at the base of sky-blue. The right part swirled and shaped and transformed into doves. The left part thickened and blackened and beaded into bats.
The beast wandered from far field thick. His head and chest were that of a man. His torso and legs were that of a goat. Two, tiny, ivory horns poked out above his eyes.
He trotted toward Drew. Liz sank to her knees and wrapped her arms around Drew’s leg. For a moment, Drew considered running away. He decided against it. In the afterlife, there is nowhere for a person to hide.
“Drew and Liz,” the beast spoke without ever opening his lips, “welcome to the afterlife. Here you will reap the harvest of the before life. You must follow my instructions. I pray for your souls.”
“Wait just a second… sir,” Drew stuttered, “I want to ask you one question. Are we in Heaven, or are we in Hell?”
“At the moment, you are in neither,” said the beast. He crossed his arms. White smoke spilled from his right nostril and morphed into butterflies when it reached the tips of his horns. Black smoke spilled from his left nostril and morphed into moths. “To reach your eternal resting place, you must climb that majestic mountain. When you reach the top of the mountain, you will find a gate there. Eternity waits on the other side of that gate.”
“But is it Heaven or Hell, sir?” Drew humbly asked, “Where are we going?”
The beast backed away a few steps. He uncrossed his arms. Butterflies and moths drifted away.
“I do not know,” answered the beast, “I am not the one who decides such things. Many people have stood before me. Some are basking in the glories of Heaven. Most are burning in the pits of Hell. All I can tell you is this. The answer to your questions is at the top of that mountain. You better get started. The longer you wait, the higher the mountain grows.”
The beast burst into flames. Weeping, redwood sunflowers turned their copper petals away from the fire. The sky purpled. Grass fell limber the way it does in a windstorm. The beast burned until his carcass was nothing but ash. The ashes scattered on the ground and formed into ants that immediately tunneled holes beneath the bowing grass.
“You,” Drew scolded, “you’ve always got to be running your mouth, don’t you? I remember when we were driving down the road, just before we wrecked. You were rambling on about your family. My nephew, Frank, has irritable bowel syndrome… Cousin Paula’s baby was born retarded. Maybe if you’d kept your mouth shut, I would’ve seen that Corvette coming.”
“Oh,” Liz defended, “look who’s talking, Mr. Good Old Days. The only reason your younger days seem good is because you’re old. You bore everybody to death with your stories. I’d bet you the only reason that goat-man didn’t hang around longer was because he didn’t want to hear that atrocious story about your last second shot in the state basketball finals.”
“Shut up, Liz. We have a mountain to climb, and we better get started. Like the goat-man said, the longer we wait, the higher the mountain grows.”
They ventured off, up the foot of the mountain, hand in hand. Pillowy moss cushioned their bare feet. Candy canes sprouted here and there from moist soil.
“I can’t help it,” Liz confessed, “I’ve got to taste one.”
Liz uprooted a candy cane.
“It has dirt all over it,” said Drew, “you better clean it off before you eat it.”
Liz licked a few grains of dirt from the candy cane’s shaft.
“Yum,” she delighted, “it’s chocolate. The dirt is chocolate!”
Drew scooped a handful of soil and cautiously tipped his tongue to the crest of the mound.
“It is chocolate!” he exclaimed.
Drew compressed a handful of chocolate into a ball and tossed it across the moss. With pinpoint precision, the clump splattered between Liz’s breasts.
“Well,” she gasped, “what did you do that for?”
“I wanted to coat you with chocolate,” Drew boasted, “so that I can lick it off of you.”
“Simmer down, Samson,” she stifled, “we have a mountain to climb.”
Drew’s eyebrows dropped and his lips squeezed into pucker.
“What’s that look for?” asked Liz.
“Oh nothing,” Drew sighed, “I had just forgotten how it feels to be teased by a beautiful woman.”
“It isn’t teasing, love. It’s just postponing.”
They skipped further up the mountain. Pigs glided overhead, flapping Pegasus wings and wagging butterscotch tails. Monkeys turned cartwheels up and down the mountainside.
A mile into the climb, the mountain leveled into ledge. Peach trees freckled the pooching ridge. The insect orchestra silenced. The flying pigs were suddenly far away. The cartwheeling monkeys now cut ruts through the far field. Drew and Liz were all alone.
“Let’s eat a peach,” Liz suggested. She slipped away and scavenged the trees.
Drew sneaked along the ledge’s lip, combing candy grass with his toes. He hummed a happy song and stroked his coiling curls without a care in the world, until his toes stubbed against something sharp, jagged, and hard- hidden beneath waves of grass.
Drew stooped and cuffed the secret treasure in his hands. He was happily surprised to discover that he had stumbled upon a diamond. The diamond was larger than any he had ever seen. Light collected in the center of the stone and spouted out of every corner with all the lavender shades of a lollipop.
Drew anxiously hurried into the nest of peach trees to show his lover the prize he had found. She met him in the middle of a secluded blueberry patch, palming a peach the size of a softball.
“Look at what I found,” she boasted.
“Look at what I found,” he sassed.
Drew dropped to one knee and presented her the diamond.
“This is for you, my love,” he humbled.
Liz’s eyes sparkled pastel. Tears of joy sprinkled on her cheeks and shined in diamond light like sheets of mirrors.
“It’s beautiful,” she wowed.
Liz cradled the diamond in her idle hand. She lifted onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips against Drew’s.
“I love you,” she whispered, “let’s eat this peach and climb this mountain. Then I promise you, no matter if we’re going to Heaven or Hell, you’ll get love making like you’ve never known.”
They ate equally of the peach until their chins were sticky with juice and nothing but a dry core remained.
“Come on,” said Drew, tossing the peach core into fertile soil, “let’s hurry up and get this over with.”
They continued to climb. Soon, everything changed. A great shadow swallowed the mountain. They treaded into territory where monkeys dare not cartwheel and pigs dare not fly. Instead, bald buzzards covered with blisters and rabid ravens with feathers of flame, perched upon bare, jagged ridges and pecked slime from each other’s eyes.
Giant spiders with vampire fangs and scorpion tails wove webs in the form of pentagrams over the opening of every cave. Snakes slithered atop centipede legs. The rocks were glazed with greasy goo. Every other step overturned a frog, a rat, or a crow infested with maggots.
“My stomach is cramping,” Liz whined, “I think I’m going to be sick. I need to sit down for a minute.”
Drew laid her across a dry sheet of slate. Sweat seeped from her skin. Liz messaged her belly. Her pulse quickened. Her breaths beat with perfect rhythm, as if calculated.
“I just thought of something,” she wheezed, “what about the children? What are they going to do without us?”
“They’re in their forties,” Drew chuckled, “they have families of their own. I think they’ll be just fine.”
“I don’t know, Drew. Junior is just like you. What if he ends up quitting his good paying job at the cabinet factory to teach anatomy at the school for the blind?”
“I’ve told you a million times, Liz. Those blind kids were in need of help. Before I got to them, they didn’t know their earlobe from their kneecap.”
“They still don’t know their earlobe from their kneecap, Drew! All you ever taught them was, Milk… Milk… Lemonade… The other side is where fudge is made.”
“Let me ask you this, Liz. Now that we’re facing going to Heaven or Hell, which do you think will get us into Heaven faster- me drilling hinges at the cabinet factory, or me devoting my time to help those that are less fortunate? Why are you harping on me, anyway? I haven’t messed Junior up any more than you have messed Clara up?”
“Clara is a very bright woman.”
“Clara once bought a nickel off a man for a dollar. She bought a NICKEL for a DOLLAR, Liz. Just like her mother.”
“Nickels are prettier,” Liz defended.
“NICKELS are NICKELS! No matter how you figure it, if you trade Washington for Jefferson, you’re trading steak for skunk. She dresses her kids in designer clothes and packs their lunches with grilled commodity cheeses. She fills her Ford Pinto with high-octane gasoline. She is a financial contradiction, just like her mother.”
“That Pinto still runs like a top. And commodity cheese looks like designer cheese, but commodity clothes don’t look like real clothes. I guess you’ll never understand that, Drew.”
A thousand tiny mice, no bigger than thumbnails, scurried from crevasses in the gray rock cliff just a few yards above Drew and Liz’s head. The mice panned the charcoal horizon with alligator eyes and metallic, rusty fangs. They lifted onto the tips of their corn colored claws, and their stomachs quivered, as if festering with poison.
The mice spit- from their jaws- soft, moist pearls the color of wet concrete. They pecked the pearls with the tips of their snouts, smoothing the mushy mess into one continuos layer of mud. They did this over and over. With each sheet the mice spit, Majestic Mountain grew one inch taller.
“That goat-man wasn’t kidding,” Drew shuttered, “the longer we wait, the taller this mountain grows. I know you’re hurting, darling. But we’ve got to keep climbing.”
“It’s okay,” Liz assured, “I’m feeling a little better now.”
Their climb continued. Once they reached the gray rock cliff, the thousand, thumbnail mice abandoned their masonry and burrowed into silver sand. Drew and Liz were pleased to see that Majestic Mountain was no longer sprouting. But their celebration soon soured.
The mountain terrain transformed from tedious to treacherous. Every handhold was slick with slime and prickled with razorblade ice-sickles.
“Climb onto my back,” Drew demanded, “we’ll make it to the top faster if I carry you.”
“Are you sure you can carry all that weight?” Liz questioned.
“Yes,” Drew angrily answered, “I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. Wrap your arms around my shoulders, and I’ll carry you to the top of this mountain.”
Liz shimmied up Drew’s body and gripped his stone shoulders like a vise. Drew successfully carried her up a great deal of the altitude. But eventually, Drew grew tired.
They had reached the lip of yet another plateau. Drew’s hands hastily clawed toward the point of relaxation. Drew was able to hoist himself and his wife onto the resting ledge, but not without consequence.
They spilled onto the resting ledge mud. Liz took a few moments to catch her breath, until she realized Drew was screaming.
Drew writhed in the mud beside her. Blood seeped slowly like syrup from his right palm.
“Oh my goodness, what happened?” Liz panicked.
“I cut my hand on one of the rocks,” Drew sobbed, “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make it.”
“Shut up, cry baby!” Liz scolded, “of course you’re going to make it. Do you actually think I would leave you here to die?”
“Liz,” Drew wept, “I’m stronger than I’ve ever been, but I can’t climb this mountain with just one hand. You go on without me. I’m cut, Liz, and it hurts so bad. You go on up to Heaven, and if God finds it in his heart to heal me, I’ll meet you there.”
“Isn’t it just like a man to whine?” Liz lectured, crossing her arms and tapping her foot in resting ledge sludge, “men are the biggest crybabies! If you stub your toe, you’ve got to have a woman there to kiss it and make it better. If you get a hangnail, you’ve got to have a woman there to bite it off. If that’s the way it has to be, then so be it.”
“This just takes the cake!” Drew cried, “I carried you on my back up a mile of mountain, and you are trying to make me feel bad about it. Isn’t that just like a woman?
Incase you haven’t noticed, Liz, this isn’t a stubbed toe! This isn’t a hangnail. MY HAND IS MUTILATED! I suppose the same thing could’ve happened to you… but wait a minute. You weren’t climbing the mountain. You were hanging onto my shoulders!”
“We don’t have time for this, Drew,” Liz said, kicking the mud in search of mice. Liz sank to her hands and knees and crawled to Drew’s side. “Listen to me, baby. This is just like when you had your heart attack. I know you remember that.
You thought you were going to die. EVERYBODY thought you were going to die, except me. I stayed by your side. I held your hand and stroked your hair. I even kept a journal. Oh my goodness! I hope the kids don’t find that journal. I talk about having sex with you in it.
Anyway, this cut isn’t anywhere near as bad as your heart attack. We made it through that together. We can make it through this.”
Lightening bolts webbed the sky and froze for a moment like florescent bulbs. Everything shined in the sheet of sky silver. The far forest fulcrum radiated like an ice sculpture. Peach trees, at the base of the mountain, glowed white in bright light like a petrified-forest. Above, Liz could clearly see the summit of Majestic Mountain, swirling like a cyclone toward the sky.
“Oh my goodness!” she awed, “we’re almost there. Wrap your arms around my shoulders, baby, and I’ll carry us to the top of this mountain.”
“Liz, there’s no way.”
“Shut up!” she screamed.
Liz grabbed Drew by the curls and pulled him through the mud.
“Okay! Okay,” he surrendered, “I’ll hold onto your shoulders.”
It took every ounce of will Liz could muster to carry that hulk of a man to the top of that mountain. Her hands were a mangled mess. The soles of her feet leaked raspberry rivers.
Liz cried. She cried because the weight seemed too much for her to handle. But they reached their destination. They were tired and wounded and ready for death when they got there. But they made it together.
Majestic Mountain’s peak was far more frightening than the foot, breast, or chest could ever be. There were no snakes, spiders, scorpions, or mice. In fact, there was nothing… except for the fence.
The ground was all fluffy like a cloud. Drew and Liz could speak to each other, but they could hear no other sound. The atmosphere was absent of everything, except their voices and that divine, white fence.
They stood at the gate leading to either Heaven or Hell. Their wounds were still bloody, but they felt no pain. Contrary to what they had been taught in Sunday school, the gate offered no glamour. The gate was constructed of simply picketed wood, painted white. Words were printed in red across the entrance, reading,
KNOCK AND YOU SHALL ENTER.
Drew turned his wife toward him, stared deep down into her eyes, and embraced her tightly yet tenderly.
“I want you to know something,” he whispered, “I remember the first time I saw you. You looked exactly the same way you do now, except you were wearing a cheerleading uniform and you weren’t all bloody.
I knew, at that very moment, that I wanted to marry you. You were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
I guess God must love me because He made that dream come true. Making love to you was like making love to fire. It was so hot and so good it hurt.
Time passed, and our youth faded. But I want you to know that your beauty never did. In my eyes, you looked just as beautiful the moment that Corvette crashed into us, as you did when we were teenagers.
I love you, Elizabeth. I always have, and I always will.”
Elizabeth buried her face in his boulder bosom. Her tears glazed him.
“It was the state basketball finals,” she said, rising to meet his eyes, “we were down by one. There was four seconds left on the clock. We did not have the ball, but that did not matter.
All the cheerleaders chewed their nails. It seemed those four seconds were the most important ever. None of them believed the impossible could happen… except me.
I told them we would win by one. They laughed at me the way the people laughed at Noah when he forecasted fateful rain. They did not have faith, but I did. I had faith in one boy. That boy was you.
I saw something in your eyes that night. I saw a look that told me you were concerned with more than just winning a state title. You could feel the longing of your people, and you did not want them to be disappointed. You were protecting them from hurt.
The other team in-bounded the ball. You were right there like a ghost in the fog. You picked off their pass and split their defenders. The clock ticked down, and everyone was worried.
But you came through. You tossed that ball into the air. It rolled around the goal for what seemed like a century. When it dropped through the net, the crowd frenzied. All our friends and neighbors bled tears of joy. They hugged and danced and, for a moment, everything was perfect.
In that instant, all the cheerleaders wanted you. You could have married any one of them. But as fate would have it, you picked me.
Don’t ever doubt that I love you, Andrew. And don’t ever doubt that I have faith in you.
I know I’m going to Heaven, baby. I know it because I’m going with you. No place is Heaven without you, my love. And, Oh my goodness, you look so fine!”
Liz steadied the diamond in front of Drew’s eyes. She had been holding it the entire time. They kissed. It was a kiss they had not shared in decades. They melted into each other. Their bodies became one. They probably would have stayed like that forever, but a mischievous mouse made a mad scamper across their toes.
“Well,” Drew panted, “we better hurry up and get where we’re going, beautiful.”
Drew tapped on the white wood. The gate slowly opened. Light and sound swallowed them. They held each other tight, lowered their heads, and slipped past eternity’s gate with only one true understanding. Neither life nor death could ever do them part.