Resurrection Flowers
a novel by H. C. Turk
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
©2011 H. C. Turk ~ hcturk.com
Smashwords Edition
Chapter 1
Nature Might Have Heard
Because Rod could not bear the thought of killing his father with his bare hands, he looked around for a knife to stab him in the eye. He had read about that in a gun magazine. If you have to shoot someone to save your life and are only armed with a pip-squeak .22 or .25 caliber pistol, aim for the nose or eyes, because no bone is in the way, just a bit of soft tissue between the bullet and the brain. But Rod didn’t have a gun. He could find a knife in the kitchen. This used to be his home.
He ran past his seated father, who stared with calm eyes at the setting sun. He ran past his stepmother, who stood leaning against the sofa, clutching a house robe to her chest as though hiding behind it. Of pinkish-mauve silk with a fox collar, the robe was not worth the price she paid.
“I live in a shit box so your wife can wear a dead dog around her neck,” Rod growled as he entered the kitchen.
“Janice deserves nice things, Son,” Phil quietly asserted.
Janice fearfully thrust out the robe to passing Rod as though offering a sacrifice. Heading for the blades, he did not see her offer.
“Not when I’m trying to pay for your last operation!”
As Rod pulled open a cabinet drawer and began furiously digging among the utensils, setting up a small clamor as though a horrible machine had broken, its sharp parts clashing, Janice looked between the men, seeking an answer. Because Phil faced away and Rod bent over the drawer of loud weapons, Janice could not see their faces. She saw disaster.
“Son, you can’t kill someone for money,” Phil stated earnestly, and his wife cried out to Rod:
“I could have loved you like a son!”
“That would make me an S.O.B.,” Rod growled, shoving serving spoons aside.
“At least you’re not threatening Janice. Even though she’s the one doing all the spending.”
The first weapon Rod grabbed was a cheap citrus knife with curved, serrated blade and plastic handle. He grimaced to think of the ragged cut those ugly teeth would make in a living thing.
With knife in hand, he slammed the drawer shut. Whirling to Phil, Rod saw a picture on the wall beside his head. Hung with a string from each corner, a childish heart brandished one yellow word: Mom, affection rendered in inkjet. Seeing the wrong mother, Rod viciously cut the string, and the picture fell into the sink, revealing a framed image behind. In this faded photograph, Rod as a boy stood with his mother against a lush suburban background of bougainvilleas and moonflower vines. In the sink, water dripped against the heart, causing a white spot like a gash. With the second drop, the ink began running, a red drizzle drooling along the page, proceeding down the drain.
Rod was learning that route.
“My kids made me that!” Janice cried.
He ran to her, one hand against his chest. The other hand held the fruit knife, which furiously stabbed at Janice’s robe. Breathless, she dropped the garment and retreated as though dissolving. Despite Rod’s fury, the flexible knife blade slipped against the limp fabric, causing no damage. Rod continued with the ugly, empty gesture another moment before dropping the robe and running to the exit, having failed profoundly at killing.
He entered his old station wagon and floored it. Rod was driving too fast on a narrow street when the low sun’s light caused a glint against the chrome windshield trim and the knife in his hand. He still held the foolish weapon, gripping the knife handle and the steering wheel as though to squeeze their life out. But they had no life.
As he tried to relax, to release, the knife fell point down, slipping through the frayed threads of his old jeans, sticking in the top of his leg a moment before toppling to the floorboard. Blood dripped like ink, heading down.
He entered the parking lot of Bubba Butch’s Bar & Grill. The sign’s three uppercase B’s had been outlined in red and squared at the top and bottom. They resembled K’s.
Rod resembled a banker, except for his tee-shirt splattered with mortar mix.
Florida’s dry, early autumn had desiccated the shell surface. The tan expanse might have been a small square of African desert. Dust puffed up around a patron’s shoes as he stepped to the saloon. Before Rod could turn off his engine, he saw his goal. A pickup truck with a wooden bed of nailed-together studs swiped from a job-site shot from the parking lot. Both Troy and Travis Pelt were in the cab. They were average for young men who could take off work in the middle of the day to shoot someone. The gnarly brothers had ragged moustaches and hair slopped around their ears as though spilled, heading for lower ground.
The height of hell.
Scowling, Rod stomped the throttle and followed.
“Gimme my money!” he shouted, but the Pelts were a half block ahead. “You bastards own me!”
The pickup ripped along suburban streets, drawing frowns from elder folks, scattering squirrels who never seemed to know the right direction. Rod followed the Pelts into a rundown neighborhood, proceeding to a small house with a new Porsche parked in the drive beside an upside-down motorcycle with only one wheel. A dozen bike fenders leaned against the spray-crete finished walls. Six forks sat beneath trees, and two iron barrels waited on the front stoop for liners. Not much was rusty.
The Pelts leapt from their truck and ran to the front door. Rod did not understand why Travis in the lead had a furious glare, yet his younger brother carried the .30-30 lever action. Rod did not understand why he followed.
Entering, Rod pulled the shaky screen door closed behind as Travis glared at his ex, Corinna, and a middle-forties, balding black man with suit and tie and briefcase. They all ignored Rod, who no longer felt the murderer. Travis had usurped that position.
“I caught a black-ass foreign motherfucker with my wife!” Travis screeched, barely finding enough breath.
“Ex-wife,” Troy pointed out.
Incandescent ceiling fixtures with stained diffusers cast a brownish light. Every surface, from drapes to ceiling, had the apparent patina of old newspaper. Being a lady, Corinna appeared soft and pink in the light, not yellowed and brittle. A few long-neck beer bottles sat on the coffee table, the row as tidy as a picket fence. One glass ashtray held one smoldering cigarette lit right before the invasion.
Corinna stared at her husband with the same expression Janice had when Rod threatened with a knife.
“Don’t be dumb, hon’,” she said to her ex, trying to smile. “Mr. Benedict is a torney trying to help me with the bills. You never do.”
Despite a fear that made his face seem lead, Charles Benedict managed to smile.
“Why, I am performing pro bono service to become initiated into the wondrous U.S. legal system.”
Troy looked to his brother with scorn while holding out the rifle for him to take. Rod could understand Travis’ anger, but not his brother’s disdain. Rod stepped between the Pelt brothers, his leg brushing the rifle muzzle. The Pelts looked to him as though he were a ghost or a maniac. Corinna wondered of her ex-husband’s accomplice. She saw a tall guy she almost recognized, no butt to speak of, wavy hair, in his thirties with long, lithe muscles. She didn’t know that all block layers have strong arms and bad backs.
“You two need to give me my money so I don’t have to call the cops,” Rod demanded.
Travis whirled to Corinna with even greater anguish.
“If you call the cops on me again, it’ll go hard on you and your boy!”
From another room came the sound of a weeping child.
“Shut up, you brat,” Travis shouted over his shoulder. “I ain’t never hardly beat you. Now I’m gonna have to kill the motherfucker probably your real daddy!”
Peering through his bedroom doorway, the boy saw that rifle. Instantly he retrieved history, again experiencing the finest time of his life. Deer hunting last summer. They saw one deer, and no one shot it. A doe. He remembered the smell of endless pines. He remembered that tents can be mansions when filled with family love.
His uncle had taken him.
“If you ain’t using this lawyer, I will,” Rod spoke loudly. “I just learned something about killing for family matters.
“It’s only forty bucks, Rod,” Troy said.
“Hey, Mr. Benedict, I need to sue these assholes, and I need to get my father divorced.”
Travis only heard something inside. He faced Troy, reaching for the rifle with shaking hand.
“Are you gonna give me that thing?”
“It’s right here, brother.”
“If you do, I’ll have to use it!”
“No you won’t,” Rod insisted. “I had a knife in my hand ready to kill my daddy. I learned not to use it. You ain’t so dumb you can’t learn.”
A visual pop took Rod’s attention. An exterior light fixture’s sensor had snapped a circuit closed, the 400-watt bulb illuminating the back yard. With that flash, time stopped for Rod. Life’s progression became a blink that ended. Lit by the fixture, a white flower the size of a man’s face popped in his vision like a camera flash. Rod could smell it: sweet, exotic.
“Hey, time to stop before we come to the electric chair,” Rod stated calmly.
“They use a gas chamber now,” Troy said. “Jail is the best place I ever lived.”
After those words, Troy thrust the rifle toward his brother. Rod stood near enough to touch either man. Travis extended his arm, but did not take the weapon. Corinna looked behind, toward a bedroom door. Appearing ready to weep, Charles looked to his briefcase on the coffee table. With Charles’ glance, Rod noticed the ashtray and thought of smoke. Not cigarettes, but burning. Burning from within. What would an electric chair do to your lungs?
When Charles spoke, he seemed to be praying.
“I went the wrong way,” he moaned. “Instead of following money to America, I should have gone back, to the old ways. The ancients in Bamosa found a release from death, if one has the courage to follow.”
“You can help me instead of dying,” Rod told him. “I need to change my way of life.”
“Only death will do that, and it is coming to me!”
And Travis screamed:
“You’re fucking my bitch, you ought to die! It’s killing me!”
Finally Travis snatched the rifle from Troy and whirled to Charles.
“I pray to the god who created himself and our living that your heart be cleansed of hatred,” the attorney implored.
“I’ll clean it by getting rid of you!” Travis hollered, poking the muzzle toward Charles’ face, stabbing him with the threat.
Those celling lights, like inner stars, reflected the sheen of polished steel.
Corinna slowly placed both hands against her face. Troy retreated one step. Rod considered stepping in between.
“Wait, wait!” Charles blurted, staring at that rifle. “I have something for you that will spare me.”
Holding out both shaking hands, Charles bent unsteadily to his briefcase.
“What could he have that would make you ‘spare’ him?” Troy wondered.
Upon opening his briefcase, Charles had to make a choice. Standing nearest, Rod saw Charles touch a pale box. He had never seen untanned, white leather.
“I have herbs here that will soothe all of our spirits,” Charles gasped, nearly weeping.
Finally deciding, Charles removed a handgun. Waving the autoloader at the Pelts, he fired four shots, hitting Rod once, no one else.
“That’ll do it,” Rod said, and dropped to his knees.
Behind that door, the boy grasped the essential goal of hunting, and retched. Corinna turned and ran to her child. Troy retreated another step, uncertain of the path to hell.
Rod could not believe the pain. Like a hot spike in his chest. He could not avoid falling to his face. The dying have no control over life.
Collapsing, he exhaled his final breath.
“Sorry, Dad,” he said, and died.
If subordinate to an increate deity, nature might have heard.
Chapter 2
The Idea Of Life
The dreadful glory of perfect nothing beckoned. No source suggested itself as the instigator of this future, and he had exhausted his past, a time of life, which he had abandoned. Being bodiless and brainless, left with only existential shards, he could neither feel nor contemplate the way ahead, beyond the end, which invited him to nothing, or worse.
Arriving at the nexus that would form his demise, he found himself too lifeless to be capable of decision. But he had to confront the future, for his present had been killed. He had to simultaneously continue and conclude within the realm of one confronting juncture:
...Peace: removal of strife and pain~
...The end: the resolution of personal existence~
...The truth: the cause for his position, the answer to his life without question~
...Satisfaction, in the sense of fulfillment and finality~
Any of these possibilities would end him, an invitation to a destiny of disaster. How to survive the ultimate judgment when incapable of choice? Suffering a solution, he endured the ultimate incompetence of facing only oneself.
Seen through the windows, a row of barns for milking cattle sat on patchy grass. The barn foundations showed rotted wood and the joints of the tin roofs were loose, split like the lids on the patient’s eyes.
Inside the lab building, fresh plaster and paint complemented the new acoustical ceiling and the smell of antiseptics. Two rows of glassy rooms faced across a narrow corridor. Inside one room, a med tech wielding a blood plasma densitometer stood over a corpse that breathed.
Down the hall, in the most important patient’s room, the facility’s hierarchy stood near a television monitor and conference camera that faced him. Him, a man, adult, a person capable of sensing himself, no longer lost in a deathly abyss. He could not see himself, but no observer could have determined his age by viewing his face. That face held sagging flesh, skin cratered with sores, half-closed eyes like dark slits. His own father would not recognize him, though he stared sadly via camera. Elihu Rohmer did not have the visage of a U. S. Senator, but a grieving father.
“Welcome, Senator. I am so sorry to have to greet you under these circumstances. You have my utter condolences.”
Hauser, the suited man who spoke, was fifty-four with brilliant blue eyes and a round head with no hair. Dr. Pink stood beside him, a tall man of similar age with a ponytail trailing down his lab coat. The camera could not see these men, only the prostrate patient and a med tech standing near who wore full protective gear, gas mask and impermeable suit.
“I, I want to see him in person one last time.”
The suited man adjusted the knot of his tie. He seemed to be strangling himself.
“Of course you can see the remains, Senator. But the corpse is too contaminated. We have to perform the cremation immediately.”
“AIDS isn’t that contagious,” the senator growled, his eyes flicking back and forth. “Where is Dr. Pink?”
“Well removed. Your son was infected with the world’s most virulent strain,” the suited man replied with assurance. “If this type of AIDS becomes widespread, the world will suffer an epidemic.”
“Hauser, I thought he was healing!” the senator cried, scarcely able to contain his tears.
The patient wanted to leap up and run, but could not even move his eyes. He could barely see through the slits of his swollen lids. He could almost, almost remember facing eternity at the border of life and death. Who had selected this heinous end for him, this hideous new beginning?
“Sadly, we were not in time,” Hauser professed. “Had we received more funding, sooner, we might have been able to spare your boy. But one day, we will succeed, and Mankind will be cured of AIDS. If only Congress allows us to continue God’s work.”
“You’re trying to bullshit a politician?” the senator from South Dakota growled, his eyes still moist. “I’ll take care of Congress. You’re better with corpses.”
And the face disappeared, replaced with rasterized snow.
“Can I get out of this now, please?” asked the med tech.
Dr. Pink nodded, and the tech began removing his protective outfit.
“Help me with him,” Dr. Pink instructed the tech.
The two men bent over the patient and began removing his make-up, soon revealing a normal face that would have to change.
“Let’s get him to the plastic surgeon, all right?” Hauser growled, emulating the senator’s hard voice.
“The ambulance is ready,” Dr. Pink replied as he concluded removing a mask worthy of a big-budget movie.
“If it were up to me, I’d let him pass on.”
“But I have cured him of AIDS!” the doctor asserted.
“Dr. Pink, your ‘cure’ caused brain damage. It caused loss of memory and intellect. Should I tell the senator that his son is now more of a schoolboy than a scholar?”
Dr. Pink looked only to the patient as techs placed him on a narrow gurney.
“The spirits of righteousness will grant us success,” Dr. Pink stated. “We will continue with the ancient wisdoms until we find their great truth.”
Hauser scoffed aloud, like a schoolboy.
“You gripe because I’d like to see him rest, yet you’re using voodoo to ruin his mind?”
“You don’t care about him,” Dr. Pink insisted. “You just want to protect your career.”
“Don’t you?” Hauser scowled. “If he’s recognized, it would probably mean jail time for us.”
“The decision is courageous and correct. He must be allowed his life. In no other way can we learn of our success in applying the ancient knowledge.”
Hauser laughed like an unpleasant adult.
“Pink, if the oldies were so great, why did they die out?”
“The answer to life is not death,” the doctor stated. “If an ancient technology truly found the answer to the cycle of living and dying, they would not remain where death could reach them.”
“So, when are you going to learn the whole truth?” Hauser asked, trying not to smirk. “Then we all can stop this living and dying bullshit.”
“I fear one cannot learn the answer while alive,” Dr. Pink replied. “Perhaps this man will be the first.”
* * *
No time seemed to pass for the patient as he found himself in a private hospital. Before him stood Hauser and Vernon Nielsen, a pleasant-looking gent with greying hair and slender moustache. The two men stared at a face obscured by bandages.
“He’s all yours now, Vernon,” Hauser said. “The AIDS Project was able to finagle one whole agent for a senator’s son.”
“We in the F.B.I. do have some resources behind us,” Vernon chuckled.
“I think turning him loose is crazy,” Hauser had to say.
“What else could be done?”
“Keep him in some facility for study. Pink says he might die anyway.”
“He’s alive now, and quite healthy.”
“But he’s supposed to be dead,” Hauser asserted. “Even his father thinks so.”
“Keep him locked up how long, forever?” Vernon replied. “That would be worse than insane. That would be un-American.”
“We could always put him down.”
“Like a dog, Hauser?”
“I like dogs. Did you ever eat a puppy?”
“I hope not.”
“I had one in Thailand. They roast them on the street.”
“Did it taste like chicken?
“No, like human.”
Struck again with existential dissonance, the confused man could not understand if he had been recalling or reliving those medical events. But he felt that he wanted to leave the realm. He wanted to get away, which is the same as continue, not rest.
Crying out with his essence more than his voice, he expressed the idea of life.
Chapter 3
The Land Of Blue Jeans
In the nation of Kharnstan, nearer Uzbekistan than Afghanistan, a teenage girl walked along a brick street older than her grandparents. Stepping down a curved incline, Aeva Tbolski could see the Yerov Mountains beyond the village, past the grand city of Saralsk, near enough to touch with her vision, but too far to travel for a family that owned no car, only a moped.
She placed her hands in her back pockets, though only the fingers, because the pants were too tight to accept her palms. Never before had Aeva owned so grand a luxury as American blue jeans, despite the garment’s being too small, and used. The jeans had only one rent in the left knee, and some fraying at the right hem. No matter. No matter that she had apprenticed the entire summer in a stinking canning plant to earn the money. What mattered was that a man ran behind Aeva to snatch her hands out of her pockets while snarling:
“I’ll have that ass of yours!”
Aeva tried to run, but the assailant had already lifted her from the roadway. She tried to scream, but he crushed her throat in the crook of one arm. Aeva was waiting for the best moment to strike out his eyes with her fingernails when he threw her to the ground behind an oxen shed. And she sensed his person, mainly his scent. Oily, anise, alcohol. Then the man fell on her, shoving his knee against her abdomen.
Aeva lost her breath, and her fear. The pain that came felt horribly intimate, a hot spike in her abdomen, as though her intestines were torn. Worse was the shock throughout her body that told only of death. Aeva could form no act, no response. Her body had no need but to breathe. No thoughts of struggling came to Aeva as the man denuded her. She felt no loss for the ripped and ruined jeans. She felt scant pain from her abraded vaginal walls as the man ruined her virginity. She did not smell his body odor as he pressed her small form between his knees, biting her neck enough to draw blood. This was not her only loss of blood. Despite her pain and shock and unparalleled fear, she could think, the idea of excellence coming as a memory, Aeva feeling that the best time in her life was when her parents did not deride her for wanting to learn American English or travel to her homeland’s mountains. Now this unknown assailant brought the ultimate in derision.
He could have been related.
The return of breath into her body came as so complete a relief that Aeva did not notice the man’s orgasmic end. Having his bulk away from her, finally, came as a breath of clean air after leaving the canning plant. Then she began feeling pain, but only the dead are senseless.
The living dead would disabuse her of that idea.
Upon returning home, bent Aeva felt pride to refrain from weeping or screaming. Her parents screamed.
“Ah!” her exasperated mother cried. “You have ruined your extravagant costume, no doubt from romping with Westerners.”
“Mother, I was assaulted!” Aeva groaned.
“No doubt from wearing that whorishly tight outfit,” her father asserted. “Typical of America: amoral.”
“In America,” Aeva maintained, “people are not punished for their appearance.”
“Unless they are of color,” her father noted. “You know little of the world.”
“You know little of our home to soil our floor with your stain only to impress us with the troubles you brought upon yourself,” Mrs. Tbolski added.
Their home, not Aeva’s. She no longer lived in that abode. Aeva spent her first night away, her first night as an adult, on a scratchy woolen carpet before a too-hot fire that seemed destructive and purifying at once. Aeva did not know this family. In later years, she would not remember their name, but her energy had selected their front door for its ending.
No one in this family suggested a hospital, the nearest of which lay beyond the range of their ancient autocar. The two women of the household examined and cleaned Aeva, aiding her more with their generosity than their pity. Aeva could not eat, but had stopped bleeding, aided by dressings from her new friends.
The following morning, wearing a skirt much too large for her figure, Aeva visited the village physician. Accompanied by his wife, a nurse’s surrogate, the doctor did little more to Aeva than apply formal bandages to her neck and bottom, then request payment.
The idea of rape flashed through her again. How unfair of Aeva to have this feeling. Should not the doctor be reimbursed for his services? Aeva could only reply that:
“The man who ravaged me left me with nothing.”
“He stole your money?” the doctor asked.
“No, he stole my ass. I had no money. You might send a request for payment along to my parents.”
She gave their name and address, then left. Walking felt terrible, but walking away felt fine.
Beyond, she saw the Yerov Mountains, clean and consoling in their severe, serene beauty. Aeva would walk to the mountains, or the grand city that intervened in her desire: Saralsk.
Beginning her trek along that lengthy road, Aeva passed the canning plant where she had worked that summer. Intending to allow herself no further harm by walking to exhaustion in her injured state, she waited for a truck to depart. The trucks always proceeded to Saralsk. A narrow truck with tall wire wheels soon passed Aeva as she sat on a rise by the roadway. Aeva stood, shouting toward the driver:
“I would beseech a man of grace to allow me to ride with him to Saralsk!”
The man had begun blushing even before stopping his vehicle. Though unaware of his name, Aeva knew this driver as a bashful person who would scarcely even greet the ladies. Surely, this was the twisted sort who killed pets and tormented children.
He allowed her to ride, not speaking a single word. That initial smile he provided Aeva seemed to pain him. The mountains seemed to grow no larger, but Saralsk became a village fit for gods. As the driver stopped his truck, Aeva leapt out and waved to him with her grandest smile.
“That good fortune bless you even as you blessed me with your aid!” she called out brightly.
He hung his head and left, looking around to see if any pedestrians noticed his extravagant life in receiving blessings from a child.
Limping in her center, Aeva began walking, soon arriving at a church. Upon entering, she thought the small building a nursery, for Aeva saw no crucifixes, but many living plants, and water basins rippled by fish and frogs. Instead of pews, the nave held stones and polished logs for seating. Lit candles sparkled high and low, like stars in the night sky.
A man approached. He could have been her father, her rapist, or her teacher.
“What deity is worshiped here?” she asked.
“In history, the wisest gods worship nature,” the man replied.
She now recognized him as a priest.
“If my wife prepares a meal and I clean the utensils after we eat, what might your part be?” the man wondered of Aeva.
“I would prevent a person from starving by eating myself.”
“No need to eat yourself when my wife has a pear consommé in the oven.”
The man laughed. Aeva smiled. This action no longer hurt her crotch. He turned, and she followed him. This act would last for years, repeated in the New World with a man of unaccountable life.
Leaving the sanctuary, passing closed and open doorways, Aeva noticed a familiar odor. An odor that violently drew her.
She jerked the latch of the door transmitting that stench. Before the door swung open, she saw a small sign, carved in green wood, wet with resin: Nature’s Greatness. Inside, Aeva found several crates, as those for potatoes, but these the size of men. All but one were empty. One contained a man. A proven rapist.
“Wormwood,” the priest informed Aeva. “A type of poison, and a type of intoxicant. Like life itself. Death is not the finest part of life, but the most final.”
Years later, a man in the land of blue jeans would contradict this belief.
Chapter 4
Nowhere Is Nothing
In Murdock Regional Medical Center, Okeeda County, Florida, the Quality Control and Quality Assurance specialist concluded her evaluation of the morgue facilities.
The attendant accompanying her stared only a moment before pulling #19 open. He could not, he could not be hearing a sound behind that handle. But he did. Opening the door, the tech discovered a man distressed to find himself both alive and shot in the chest.
“This is a catastrophic failing of your facility!” Quality Assurance wheezed upon seeing a flailing body on a dead man’s slab.
The morgue attendant had already grabbed his phone.
“We need a code team in the morgue,” he sharply requested.
“You need a code team where?” came the voice over his line.
“We have a trauma in the morgue. A patient is having a type of, uh, heart attack.”
The code team arrived as Quality Control tried to determine how to enter this event into her laptop’s data base.
“Just say we brought a dead man back to life,” the attendant suggested while watching the code team crisply move around the patient.
“Either that,” she replied, “or you can’t tell the difference between embalming and surgery.” Then she added:
“This patient wasn’t iced, was he, because of his heart?”
“No, they didn’t chill his brain to do surgery on his heart, because he was brain dead when he arrived.”
After stabilizing the patient, the trauma physician sent him up to the operating room, stat.
“This man needs surgery for that bullet wound in his chest. I think it hit the heart.”
“What was the cause of death?” a nurse asked. “You know what I mean.”
“According to the records, he died from shock.”
The bullet had ripped some heart tissue, nothing that would not heal in an otherwise healthy person. A healthy living person. After two hours of patching and repairing, the surgery team sent their patient along to Recovery in stable condition. The hospital then informed the authorities, and the F.B.I. arrived.
* * *
Through half-open eyes, he watched a silent argument. Recognizing the gent with grey hair and skinny moustache from another dream, Rod reached to his face, but felt no pustules. In that dream, he had been in a different hospital. He had been horribly injured, his face nearly destroyed, wrapped in gauze like a mummy. He remembered nothing more. Perhaps he had suffered that discomforting dream minutes earlier or the previous night. No matter. It was only a dream.
Rod began fading out again. Just dozing, not dying, he hoped. He saw a groggy scene of a police lieutenant and Vernon exchanging ID’s. I’ll have your federal can in a local jail if you don’t let me do my job. I might have your local facility impounded, and et cetera.
“How do you feel?”
Doctors can ask the dumbest questions. How was he supposed to know how he felt? He didn’t feel well enough to answer.
He opened his eyes enough to see that Vern guy standing beside him. Rod opened his mouth enough to say nothing.
“Would you like visitors? Your parents?”
“They’re dead,” Rod grumbled, not recognizing his own voice.
“Do you remember who shot you?”
And his eyes popped wide open. He began twitching, choking on no air, turning blue. He heard the word “Nurse!”
An attorney had tried to kill him, successfully. Rod no longer saw Vernon. He no longer reclined on a hospital bed. He stood inside a house with acquaintances who could have been enemies. Somehow, this conceptual exchange of locale was akin to the substitution of revival for death, and the reverse. Rod stood among strangers as a desperate black man pulled the trigger without truly aiming, and Rod saw the afterlife. A light that filled his sight, delivering via exchange a vision of terror, struck Rod so acutely that the pain substituted for his living, fulfilling his vision of fear by taking his life. Rod died, feeling the unsurpassable horror of absolute release, which is absolute rejection.
He saw the muzzle blast, then a light inside the morgue.
Vernon stood away as a nurse ran near, reading Rod’s monitors. Even a fed could see that Rod was suffering major medical distress. Vernon only watched as a physician approached to inject a tranq into Rod’s IV. After a moment, the patient calmed. The physician did not.
“I don’t care if you’re the king of cops,” she seethed, “you cannot upset someone in his condition.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Vernon quietly replied. “I didn’t want to.”
Shaken, Vernon went out for coffee. This subject would not be going anywhere. Where he had been, not even the king of cops could follow.
* * *
Rod lay in a private room filled with flowers, living plants in pots, telegrams, printed e-mails, and letters in boxes normally used for storing Nalgene tubing and plastic shunts. Feeling good enough to jump up and run away, Rod merely shouted. Outside his door stood two men from a dream, Vernon still in his lab coat, Hauser still in a suit. They were arguing, though Vernon retained his good disposition. Rod could not make out their words, but had heard enough.
“Help me or I’ll die again!”
Vernon and Hauser stared through the doorway, but saw no emergency. The most famous patient in the hospital did not have to wait long for a nurse to enter.
“What’s wrong, what’s wrong?”
“Those two guys hassling out there are making my heart hurt,” Rod claimed. “Kick them out of your hospital. They don’t belong here.”
The nurse could barely read Rod’s monitor due to a six-foot rubber plant with a huge card from no one Rod knew. “Get Well Soon, Returned Man!”
Everyone wanted to know the man who had returned from the dead.
“Something has to be done,” the nurse seethed, and left the room.
Minutes later, Rod received a visit from the hospital director, a handsome woman in her fifties with her hair in a bun and more make-up than she needed.
Rod entered his most serious conversation since trying to save Charles Benedict’s life.
“Who are those two men?” he demanded.
“They’re with the federal government. Your case might be important to the nation.”
“I hate them both because they came from a dream, and it was a nightmare.”
“I see.”
“No you don’t,” Rod growled. “Quit talking like a politician. I know you’re a good doctor. I’m telling you that if they walk through this door, I’ll smack them both with that rubber tree.”
“Quit talking like a brat,” the director calmly replied. “I know you’re a good guy. You’re here because you saved a man’s life by giving up your own. The world knows a hero.”
“When you’re dead, you’re a zero,” Rod said. “I been that route. So what were the feds arguing about?”
“First, they want to move you from the facility, but the tenets of good medicine say not yet.”
“That’s not their only beef?”
“Well, no.”
“Spit it out, doc.”
“Very well. Those of us in charge of the hospital would like to have a news conference in order to clear up some of the mystery about you. Would you be willing to answer questions from the media?”
“Sure, if it would mean less people hassling me,” he said while looking at the stacks of letters. “All these women want to have babies with me so their kids will live forever. All these producers want to make a story about my life before they know what it is. Who answers all this stuff? I don’t.”
“The gentlemen outside have accepted that responsibility.”
“I knew they’d be good with bullshit. So are they for or against the news conference?”
“They oppose the idea. One man opposes it more than the other.”
“Which one is most against it, bald or grey?”
“Bald.”
“Then I’m for it, so are you, let’s get going.”
After shaking hands with Rod, the director left the room and spoke with Hauser and Vernon.
Hauser began fuming so intensely that Rod could hear him hiss. In the next moment, Vernon straightened his lapels and entered alone, stepping directly to Rod.
“I was instructed not to speak with you by my superiors,” Vernon began, “but it’s time we talked man to man. Are you going to hit me with that rubber plant?”
“Are you going to let me have the news conference?”
“I’ll make a deal with you,” Vernon offered.
“Do I have to bend over, ‘doc’?”
“Rod, everyone wants to know what happened to you. It really, really could be important to the entire world, not just you or me. The U.S. Government has the best laboratory in the world for studying your condition. If you’ll agree to go there for tests, I’ll agree to your news conference.”
“Did I see you there before? I think I remember that.”
Vernon spoke with utmost accuracy, if not ultimate honesty.
“No, Rod, I’ve never been there. Will you please go with me?”
“A few pounds heavier and you could be Santa Claus,” Rod said. “Who can argue with Saint Nick?”
Vernon only smiled in reply.
“Santa Nick, something here smells like a bad dream. Can you guarantee my safety?”
“Rod, how can anyone guarantee your safety when no one knows why you’re alive?”
“I knew I wouldn’t get what I wanted from Santa.”
“What do you want, Rod?”
“I want to know what happened.”
“I’ll do my best to help you.”
“Will you swear on my grave? I am the dead man.”
“Living people don’t have graves,” Vernon said. “And the dead don’t shake hands.”
When the two clasped hands, they looked eye to eye, and both saw life.
* * *
Rod planned on dying again if he ended up in a hospital full of good-looking female doctors. Here came another. Almost forty, tall, not too busty, swiveling hips, nice lips.
“Mr. Hill, my specialty is facial reconstruction, so I wanted to ask you about your plastic surgery, just for the record.”
“Oh. I was hoping you’d ask me for a date.”
She smiled like a politician.
“The work is beautiful, Mr. Hill. It must have cost a fortune. What happened?”
“I was in a car wreck as a kid.”
“But this surgery was performed within, I’d say, two years.”
“It ruined my memory, so I don’t remember. Really, doc. Ask my folks.”
“Mr. Hill, I thought you said they were dead.”
“I haven’t killed them yet. The first time I tried, I got shot by a third party. You know the rest.”
“No one knows the rest.”
“Stay tuned. I’m going to find out if it kills me. Again.”
“Is that the best answer you’ll give me?” she smiled.
Her expression seemed salacious to a semi-dead man.
“You’re awfully good-looking. Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Uh, I have a husband.”
“That’s not what I asked, darlin’. I’d be available if I were a little more alive.”
Patients rarely flustered this doctor.
“Well, that’s flattering, but....”
“The next time I need mouth to mouth, I won’t come back unless you sit on my face.”
“That’s silly,” she said, then looked over her shoulder. “I could give you my number.”
“That’s good,” he smiled. “Then we’ll talk about giving me your hipandnip, your....”
* * *
In the county jail, inmates bartered for the privilege of watching TV. Cigarettes were exchanged, oral and anal sex transpired in the form of service transactions, some crack snuck through the cracks of jurisprudence. This program was special. In a nearby hospital, a news conference would soon begin, its subject a patient. The jailhouse audience included a pair who could not make bail for assault and conspiracy to commit murder. Fifty trustees looked between the tube and the two brothers. The Pelts were nearly heroes, not having to drink the first urine martini for the privilege of attending this affair.
“You two really know the guy who came back from the dead?” a spouse abuser asked the Pelts.
“We should have killed him,” Travis groaned, distressed nearly to the point of tears. “He’s worse than any nigger.”
A black man beside Troy swung his arm instantaneously to crush Travis’ nose with the back of his hand. No inmate made a move in response, but the two troublemakers were led away. The audience watched television.
“He owes us money,” Troy said quietly.
The news conference began. The hospital director gave the introduction. Due to the extraordinary interest in this case...Mr. Hill has agreed to.... Then on to the questions. They were all the same.
“Mr. Hill, tell us what it’s like to be dead.”
Rod wore the crisp duds of the hospital’s in-house janitorial service. He had not requested that any party bring fresh clothes from his house trailer, and he and Vernon had agreed that the famous undead man would receive zero visitors. Rod appeared pale, weak, but his carriage showed strength.
“I don’t remember. I wasn’t alive at the time.”
“Mr. Hill, what do you remember after the shooting?”
“I remember waking up in a coffin. But it was only a shelf in the morgue. Same difference.”
“Mr. Hill, did you see or hear or feel anything while you were dead?”
“Sure, I felt so damn dead that I didn’t see or hear or feel anything.”
“Mr. Hill, did you have any impressions or dreams that might tell us something?”
“Yeah, I dreamt that I got my dumb butt popped by a cap, but that was the truth.”
“Mr. Hill, no one has learned of any precedent for a person having been completely devoid of vital signs so long and still regaining consciousness. Can you tell us where you were?”
“I don’t know, but I wasn’t there as long as you needed to spit that sentence out.”
No longer could the news people retain their response. Despite dealing with resurrection and/or immorality, this guy made them chuckle.
“Mr. Hill, did you see heaven?”
“No, I would have tried to remember that.”
“Did you see hell?”
“Maybe, because I would have wanted to forget it.”
“Did you sense any sort of deity beyond?”
“I wasn’t in no church.”
“Did you see any ghosts?”
“I didn’t see that I wanted to be one. Here I am.”
“Mr. Hill, can you tell us anything about what comes after this life?”
“Yeah, you die. Don’t count on coming back.”
“Why did you come back, Mr. Hill? Among all the billions of people who have lived and died on earth, why did you alone return?”
“Maybe I didn’t,” Rod suggested. “Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe it happens to everybody, with different results. Maybe I didn’t really die all that completely. Maybe the docs got their readings wrong.”
Standing nearby, the hospital director blushed.
“Mr. Hill, regarding what you were just talking about, did you seem to have some type of choice?”
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean?”
“I felt that I could go, stop, or take what I got.”
“And which did you choose?”
“That scared me so much I had to get away, and here I am.”
“Where were you when this happened, Mr. Hill?”
“I was nowhere,” Rod said, his voice remaining certain. “I can’t tell you how horrible nowhere is.”
“Was this nowhere a type of peace or a type of perdition?”
“Peace and perdition are things, but nowhere is nothing.”
“Mr. Hill, was an entity present?”
“Maybe an idea. A concept, not an object.”
“What do you mean by concept, Mr. Hill?
“Concept is existential exposition. I learned that somewhere. I may not have been alive at the time. Either that, or from a doctor.”
“Which particular concept do you mean, Rod?”
“The idea that in the end, you won’t be able to understand the end.”
“Mr. Hill, have you received any movie or book offers yet?”
Rod wiped his brow in a gesture of faux relief.
“Whew, I’m glad we can start talking about important stuff now that we figured life and death. Yeah, I’ve received a bunch of offers, but I’m too sick too figure them.”
Rod emitted an obviously false cough, causing genuine laughter throughout the room.
“Mr. Hill, have any agents or managers approached you regarding representation?”
“Yeah, but they’re all a bunch of attorneys. I told them what happened to the last one.”
“Mr. Hill, what did happen to the last attorney?”
“The sonofabitch killed me,” Rod barked, for the first time that evening showing genuine passion. “That didn’t make me like attorneys any more than before.”
“Mr. Hill, you don’t seem very informative. Why did you decide to have this news conference?”
“I didn’t,” Rod admitted. “The hospital people were tired of all of you clowns sneaking around. If this had been my idea, I’d charge five dollars a head and tell you any kind of baloney you wanted to hear.”
Now laughter filled the room. But one earnest scribe had no smile.
“Mr. Hill, I have a question that is more important than all of us here. Can you please tell us what was revealed to you about the true meaning of life?”
“Sure. You can’t understand it while alive. So now you know how to get answers that I can’t give you.”
Rod looked up to the hospital director, but she could not judge his expression. Vernon was not to be seen, and Hauser had left the premises.
“Mr. Hill, did you feel that you were gone for some twenty-four hours?”
“That’s the first good question I heard. Let’s hope it’s the last, because I don’t like it. I seemed to be away either forever, or never. On and on and on, or just a blink. If I ever figure that out, I’ll probably kill myself.”
“Mr. Hill—”
“Oops, I’m feeling bad again. I may be dying. Talk to you later. Next time, bring admission.”
Holding up his hand, Rod stood, and was escorted away.
The audience could not help but applaud.
“He’ll make a bundle,” one reporter predicted.
“Yeah,” another agreed. “Good-looking, not shy, gets you thinking about everything he says. Geez. I’m starting to sound like Rod Hill.”
“You don’t look dead.”
“Neither did he.”
“He said I asked the only good question.”
“Something strange is going on. Do you think it’s a set-up? This guy is no dummy.”
“He’s not what he seems, but I’m not sure what he seems. If it’s a set-up, no man made the arrangements. There’s the story. We only have to find out what happened between Rod Hill’s death and his resurrection.”
Chapter 5
Destined For Heaven
In the Kharnstanian city of Saralsk, Aeva—now known as Gronshev—wore tight blue jeans to church. She never wore slacks or skirts, only blue jeans, American, new. Imported jeans were expensive in Kharnstan, but the church paid for them. After receiving a check from her foster father, Viktor Gronshev, Aeva drove to the bank to make the church’s deposit. Stepping to her auto, Aeva saw the Yerov Mountains seemingly at the street’s end. That tiny village between Saralsk and the mountains did not interfere with her perception. Recalling that two years had passed since she concluded her schooling at that lovely conservatory near the mountains, Aeva vowed to return next summer. If church activities allowed.
At night, Aeva drove to the deacon’s flat, parking her Italian sedan. Aeva and her uncle departed, each riding a moped with virtually silent exhaust.
Traversing modern pavement and ancient cobblestone, they arrived at an alley scarcely wide enough for both mopeds to enter. Three floors above, a mother set her potato pie on the balcony to cool. She hummed a folk song Aeva had not heard since living with her true, hateful parents, the Tbolskis. Aeva and the deacon walked quietly away. Despite his advancing age and bulk, the church officer moved as though a shadow. Uncle Lial and his brother had taught Aeva much.
Having planned for weeks, Aeva and the deacon did not need to speak. They walked behind old stone buildings to a town house damaged during World War II, never repaired. They waited in the adjacent alley. Soon Aeva and Uncle Lial heard murmuring from the walkway. Two men approached, one passing, one entering the alley. The latter stepped to a basement entry where Aeva and the deacon waited, poised. As the subject neared, Aeva and the deacon slid to him with no sound. Lial leapt upon their subject, surrounding his upper thighs with both legs, encircling the man’s chest with his arms, the deacon’s weight causing the subject to fall to the ground. The subject remained silent with that hard hand pressing against his mouth in a death grip.
Confident Aeva had already pressed the send button of the transceiver clipped to her blue jeans’ waistband. She seldom wore a belt. Aeva felt the acknowledgment buzz as she reached to the subject as he and Lial fell to the pavement. The three then worshiped. With one hand, Aeva pressed a self-adhesive gauze against the man’s eye, slipping a transparent dagger into its center with her other hand. The gauze turned red, but precluded splattering. With no internal jerking, their subject reached stasis.
Her foster father had stopped the tiny van at the alley entry as Aeva prayed.
“Praise great nature for this living conclusion. Praise nature’s greatness for settling his soul’s number on perfect sums. Bless all nature that I might aid others, even as I learn from them.”
Before Viktor could downshift into first, Aeva and Lial had filled his cargo compartment with a sinner. The van slipped away as Aeva and the deacon stepped to their mopeds, not rushing, holding hands. Aeva’s wrist hurt. At times, she tried too hard.
Days later, a wealthy baron wept in church, standing over an open casket.
“My son, my son did not deserve to die. Yes, yes, he should not have been selling heroin, but this heinous criminal was a demon to kill him for a bag of powder.” He then spat on the man delivered by the Church of Nature’s Greatness.
“Heroin is derived, indirectly, from the poppy seed,” the church’s founder, Viktor, stated. “Opium is a natural product. Heroin is a perverted material, being synthesized by demonic men.”
After accepting a cash bundle from the baron, Viktor led him to the door. With this church service concluded, Viktor brought the currency to his wife, Petra, then proceeded to his foster daughter. In the church office, Aeva sat praying on the internet.
“Bless you, Daughter, for contemplating that subject I suggested.”
“Father, since learning of the event, I can ponder little else.”
“In the Church of Nature’s Greatness, Aeva, prayer constitutes thoughts of nature. What aspect of nature do you find in the event that is this American?”
“Perversion,” Aeva declared. “The perversion of blasphemy.”
“In the Christian Bible,” Viktor offered, “one blasphemes by considering Jehovah, their deity, a liar. If you do not accept Jesus’ word as truth when he alleges to provide eternal salvation in exchange for believing in his holiness, you are excluded from paradise.”
“In our Church of Nature’s Greatness,” Aeva added, “one blasphemes by perverting the natural processes of life. No process of living is more natural than dying. This Rod Hill has perverted the culmination of his existence. I can think of no greater sin.”
“Our duty is to deliver sinners,” Viktor mentioned.
“Father, I can think of no greater duty than to become a missionary. I will venture to America to release this man from his sinning.”
“Petra and Lial and all of our church shall help you prepare. You alone, however, speak English. In America, you will spread our word with your actions. After you enumerate this man, he must account for the number of his beast. As well, you will buy all the blue jeans that you desire.”
Aeva smiled. What a serious lass. Viktor often saw joy in her, but seldom comedy.
“Father, this man is known to suffer sexual lust with young women. Instead of hiding in the darkness, I will return him to nature in the light. Despite my hatred for sexual activity, I shall lure him to the light with my ass.”
* * *
They snuck out at night through a service entry where hazardous biological materials were transferred to armored cars. Rod wondered if they deposited the infested syringes in the landfill where he dumped his trash. They left in a paradigmatic plain sedan, not the first reporter seen, which was unusual. Out front, even the pickets and supporters had gone home. The former believed Rod’s supposed return from the dead was an atheistic ruse to attack Christianity in America. The latter were hoping for a more tangible proof of the afterlife than scriptural promises that varied from culture to culture. Rod knew he could teach them both a thing or two, as soon as he learned himself.
Rod sat in back alone. Vernon sat in front with the driver, a Very Serious young gent named Copeland with no facial hair, no visible tattoos or piercings, though his lilac-tinted sunglasses ruined the affect for Rod.
The patient did not require an ambulance. The hospital physicians were ready to turn him loose, and Vernon chose the direction.
They drove for two hours, eating a burger and soda on the way, though Copeland ate fish, and they used the drive-through. No one had to stop and pee, and they did not get lost. A large radio hung beneath the dash made no sound while curtly flashing in shades of green. Vernon listened to classical CDs without asking anyone’s preference or opinion. Rod slept most of the way. He had been impossibly ill.
Rod awoke when the driver turned at an unmarked dirt trail scarcely visible from the highway. Typical of Central Florida, dense stands of scrub palms, sparse pine forests, and pastures with no cattle filled the land. Continuing on the trail, the car arrived at a stout log that sank as Copeland stopped before it. The car drove over. Minutes later, Copeland had to stop before a rusty gate with a padlocked chain. The gate opened for this car, though the chain remained locked, the paired posts rotating on an underground pivot.
The car proceeded to a barn with half of its roof collapsed. Copeland entered through a tall sliding door. Turning sharply once inside, he steered along the wall, between deteriorating bales of hay, parking along with eleven other cars and trucks, none visible from outside the structure.
Rod noticed that Vernon had turned in his seat and was looking at the patient.
“It doesn’t seem like much so far, does it?” Vernon said.
“Looks sort of familiar to me,” Rod told him.
Vernon gave him a quizzical look.
“I think I dreamed of this place,” Rod added.
Vernon exited and opened Rod’s door. The driver remained inside. Vernon began leading Rod to the rear of the barn. Rod saw rock-hard cow paddies that must have been ten years old, shrunken and black.
“If you dreamed of this place,” Vernon said, “tell me what comes next.”
Rod had to think.
“I’m in bed and you’re staring at me.”
Vernon exited through the barn’s rear, stepping on patchy grass toward a row of longer, lower barns for milking cattle. These old buildings showed rotted foundations and their tin roofs were dented, the joints loose and rusty. Filthy, cracked glass in the windows revealed nothing of the barns’ interiors.
“That’s it!” Rod exclaimed, pointing to the barns with one finger.
“No fair, Rod. You didn’t recognize the sight until you viewed it.”
“I didn’t mean to cheat, but it sure looks familiar now.”
Approaching, Rod saw that the buildings were connected side-by-side. As Vernon led him to a rear door of split pine, it opened, revealing a white steel door behind, which opened to a bright interior of plaster and paint.
“I ain’t saying nothing,” Rod vowed, trying to quash his false familiarity with the interior.
Though Rod expected a security guard, he and Vernon were met by Hauser.
“I remember him,” Rod said with no pleasure.
Hauser would not let the men pass.
“I think we should get him out of here,” he said to Vernon.
Vernon glanced past, seeing nothing unusual. Med techs moved with charts and syringes in their hands. Semiconscious patients lay on crisp sheets behind glass walls.
“What’s the problem, Hauser?”
“Dr. Pink. I don’t think he can function properly.”
“Why not, is he ill? He hasn’t contracted....”
“I think he’s been sampling the meds.”
Rod sniffed. The antiseptics smelled organic.
“To what result?”
“He’s acting strange.”
“Is that new?”
“We know he’s brilliant,” Hauser said. “He’s not supposed to be a flake.”
“What does that tell us?” Vernon wondered aloud. “He is an utterly brilliant pharmacologist, is he not?”
Before Hauser could respond, a tall man with a long ponytail stepped beside him, staring at Rod. Here was another sight Rod recognized upon viewing it, perhaps not before.
“We are blessed,” Dr. Pink said, staring at the patient, ignoring Vernon.
Rod saw nothing odd in his demeanor, his posture, his face. He did seem enthused, but not flaky.
“How do you want to begin?” Hauser asked, his tone somewhat demanding.
“You do have all of Rod’s records from the hospital,” Vernon presumed of the physician, who ignored him, staring at Rod.
Rod noticed Dr. Pink’s smell. Not body odor, not antiseptics, perhaps a type of medication.
Dr. Pink turned away.
“There is no beginning,” he said.
Rod could not read his tone of voice. Melancholy, resigned, uncertain?
They followed Dr. Pink inside. The facility seemed an average clinic, but the personnel looked to Rod. He didn’t recognize them. All of his hospitals now seemed the same. He remembered the ambulance, which could have been one of these rooms, or the morgue, that deathly chamber.