Heaven for the Climate, Hell for Company

Heaven for the Climate, Hell for Company

-Melissa Martella

            
         God only knows how long Edgar has been chained to that chair. His wrists, as well as his ankles, had begun to ache. He let out a muffled groan from his mouth, which had been gagged with a cloth. How he had gotten here was a complete blur.
         Edgar was weak. He figured that whoever had brought him here had drugged him into a coma. He surveyed his surroundings and found himself in a large and empty warehouse. This warehouse was so generic that it could have been in Siberia the same way it could have been in his home town of New York City. The fact that he had lost complete track of time disoriented him further.
         Edgar began to worry about his lover, Simon. He began to recall the first time that they had met. Simon had caught his eye at a high end bar in Manhattan. Simon was tall. He towered at the height of 6, 6” compared to Edgar’s measly 5, 4”. He also had thinning blond hair in contrast to Edgar’s dark but thick greying hair. Simon also had an impeccable sense of style only a homosexual man could ever have. Edgar finally mustered up enough courage to walk up and talk to him. Edgar had bought him a few drinks and by the end of the evening, being pretty tipsy, Edgar brought Simon home. After that, Simon had moved into his lavish apartment in the upper west side of Manhattan and they have been hopelessly in love ever since.
         Snapping out of his daydream, Edgar attempted to call out for help and shook violently in the chair he was restrained in. He quickly became disappointed because only muffled sounds would come out of his mouth and the accumulating spittle on the corner of his lips was beginning to dry up and annoy him.
All of a sudden, he heard the creak of a door opening far behind him accompanied by approaching footsteps. As they grew closer, the air began to become dry and heat up drastically. Sweat began to bead at his receding hair line. The footsteps stopped nearly two inches behind him. His hand brushed Edgar’s back gently. He was able to tell, as if it was a sixth sense, that the person that was behind him was indeed a man.
         Edgar muffled a sound. The man behind him laughed, the sound echoing off the walls of the enormous warehouse.          
         From behind, the man took out the handkerchief from Edgar’s mouth and walked around to face him.
         Edgar looked up at the man, and he in turn looked down at Edgar.
         Their eyes locked momentarily. Edgar’s gaze shifted and noticed that the man was wearing an insanely expensive Armani suit with Gucci shoes to match. He looked eerily like Al Pacino with dark grey hair. Edgar guessed that his height was around five foot nine and that he couldn’t have been older than fifty-five years of age.

         “Louis Vuitton shoes, actually,” said the man, interrupting Edgar’s train of thought.
         Edgar felt confused and somewhat violated.
         I’m pretty sure I didn’t just say that out loud, Edgar thought.
         “No - I just have a knack for reading minds,” the man replied.
         The man began to fiddle with the golden pentagram around his neck.
         “You’re probably wondering why you’re here. Well you see, you’re here to make a once in a lifetime choice!” He said, with an incredible amount of enthusiasm.
         Edgar looked at him in utter confusion.
         “Allow me to explain. I am here to present to you two vert different, unique choices. The first is eternity – everlasting life, everlasting consciousness. More than a lifetime spent, however, without the company of your ‘partner’,that is.” Edgar attempted to cry out in discontent, but the man pressed a clammy and ice cold finger to Edgar’s lips.
         “The second and final option is death. Still without your lover, either way you simply cannot be with him, but if you choose this path, you will see your demise just as every other living being before you has.”
         “And what if I choose--” Edgar shouted in frustration.
         “It’s one or the other,” interrupted the man through clenched teeth. He delivered a quick backhand to the left side of Edgar’s face. Edgar fought back tears as he felt the pain spread across his face.
         The man grasped the armrests with a death grip, the wood splintering underneath his seemingly frail hands. An inhuman groan exited through his lips, open ever so slightly. “I won’t make the choice for you, but the longer you take, the more you’ll realize how much time you wasted being idle, strapped to this chair. Is this what you really want, Edgar?”
         Edgar shook his head. “No.”
         “Good,” the man concluded, letting go of the chair as he slithered back into the darkness.

         As the frustration built up within him, Edgar began to play the odds out in his head; if he chose eternity, he wouldn’t have Simon to spend it with, but then again he can always go to a bar and pick up another guy similar to Simon. Of course they would not be identical, but it will have to do. The more he thought about it, the more the idea grew on him.
         The man closed his eyes and envisioned the insides of Edgar’s head, a series of gears and simple mechanisms. He felt Edgar’s thoughts flooding through his sub consciousness faster than his own, and the experience was exhilarating, even though he had done this a million times before.
         Finally, Edgar spoke up. “I-” the words coming out of his mouth pained his heart, but he knew that he had no other choice but to finish that sentence. “I choose eternity.”
         As the last syllable was pronounced, the man oozed out into the light again, pressing both of his hands gently up against Edgar’s shoulders. The man grinned from ear to ear. The walls shook and the ground crumbled, the chair Edgar sat on shattered into a million pieces as he was lifted off the ground by an invisible force. The suffocating darkness swallowed him whole. The man that once stood protectively behind him was now gone with the darkness. Edgar had never known true loneliness until that very moment.

         He walked forward like a blind man, hands out in front of him, unsure of what lay before him. Each step he took filled him with extreme fear. Suddenly, a wrought iron gate materialized itself before Edgar’s eyes just as the stench of burning and rotting things filled his nostrils. The smell was so powerful it left him bleary eyed.
         The sheer size of the gate amazed Edgar. He looked up at the intricate curves of the iron. He got closer and immediately noticed gothic writing twisted from the rusting iron.
         Omnes relinquite spes, o vos intrantes Edgar read in his head, though he knew his thoughts were no longer his own.
         The words seemed so familiar, yet so distant. He was on the verge of remembrance as the gates flung open before him. A loud roaring sound pounded in his ears. It was the sound of condemned souls screaming for redemption and salvation mixed in with the sound of crows and other indistinct animals. Edgar’s knees buckled and he fell to the ground. He held his face in his hands for it had now sunk in where he had read those words before. The man put a hand on Edgar’s shoulder and bent down.
         “Welcome to eternity, Edgar,” the man whispered in Edgar’s ear.“You made the right choice.”