Awake in Hell (7 page)

Note
to self: braking in a big ass truck is totally different than braking in a
compact car. DUH.

I
hit the brake and it’s like the pedal is not attached to an actual mechanism
that goes to the wheels and forces them to stop. It’s more like the brake pedal
is the nerd who got invited, accidentally, to a big wheel frat party and finds
itself whispering a suggestion to one of the wheels, who turns and glares at
the brake like he’s the biggest moron at the party, but then eventually sees
the error of his ways and  reconsiders. However, in a feeble attempt to
preserve what little pride the wheel has left, it doesn’t just stop
immediately, it has to do it at its own pace. So that later, when it gets
ribbed by the other wheels it can say it was its own decision to stop, and had
virtually nothing to do with anything the brake said to it at any time.

Yes,
for you wondering, I had time to come up with that ridiculous metaphor while
waiting for the fucking truck to come to halt.

Just
as I come to a stop, my heart follows the truck and freezes like ice when I
suddenly see a small blonde head running in front of the garbage truck. I burst
out of the cab and start to walk around the truck so that I can see the
apparent child. Even though I know that death has already happened to everyone
here, I realize that I’m not quite breathing right now. I assume there are two
reasons.

One,
you don’t get to see many kids down here. There are kids, but they weren’t
children in life. Well, they started out as children, as we all did, but some
folks are not given the option to come here as they were when they passed. Some
people are even just too bad for Hell even. They would get down here and just
see a reflection of the world they left behind. They would see it as a
playground. So, when they emerge from the dark they find themselves literally
playground material. Toddlers. Children in Hell represent the worst of
humanity, and they are downright scary! These are not cute little babes with
big eyes that fill with wonder over a simple balloon. These are small children
who are weakened by their size and their age, whose faculties have been
lessened, deem they should start plotting. Their eyes are filled with contempt.
They remember who they were, and they remember why they’re here. And I can
guarantee to anyone who’s ever sat with friends and complained that their kids
are brats, ungrateful, or don’t listen... there is nothing more terrifying than
a Hell-child. They are kept primarily out of the general population. Very
rarely, we will see one on the street and tend to cross said street, before
walking by.  I’ve only seen two of them previously. The first time, I
averted my eyes as soon as they registered what I was looking at. The fear and
the overwhelming sadness I felt when I thought ‘who could this have been in
life? What terrible things has that now small and pathetic soul accomplished to
earn his place among the children of damnation?”

The
second one was worse, because I was in one of the discount stores and walked
down the wrong aisle to see a full blown tantrum from actual Hell. He was
growling, like a beast, deep in his throat as though he was part animal. In his
eyes I saw more sheer hatred and despair than I’ve seen in everyone else in
Hell — put together. There was this woman there, I assumed with the boy, who
looked absolutely exhausted. She leaned against one of the huge shelving units
and started to weep quietly. ‘What’s worse?’ I remember thinking to myself as I
turned and left the store immediately, ‘To come back as one of those, or to
have to take care of it!’ For days after, I was terrified to go to any store,
for fear I would have to come face-to-face with another one of them. 
Another growling, fevered, throwing himself around like a Linda-Blair-in-full-possession-mode
demon child.

AND
I almost hit one of the little ankle biters with a giant fucking garbage truck!

Granted,
I’m not quite rushing around the truck. I mean, this is a child, and that is
the scariest thing I could possibly have to face at any time, let alone after
pissing it off.  I’m also concerned, since I don’t know whether or not I
hit it. Like I said, I couldn’t have killed it, since it (and all of us) are
already dead. However, pain is a very real thing down here. Physical and emotional
pain are pretty much stock and trade in the
Hellverse
. 
So if I hit the kid,
it’s
hurt, possibly hurt bad. The
good news is, I’m not hearing screaming or crying or an enraged growl, so I’m
feeling a little more confident. Then I realize that maybe it’s unconscious.
Crap. What if there’s a bloody knocked-out terror waiting for me on the other
side of this truck? I move around so that I can see the street but I’m still
provided a certain amount of cover from the vehicle. Just in case I need to
run. Believe me, you do not want to be standing directly over that small
tornado when it wakes up and realizes it has just been run over and you
certainly don’t want to be the one that hurt it. But as I turn the corner and
take a peek, I gasp at what I see.

It’s
a girl.  A very young girl, maybe 3 or 4 years old. Or, I guess she looks
to be 3 or 4 years old. She’s blonde with curls that look like she shares a
stylist with Little Orphan Annie. She’s fully conscious, fully upright, and
seems just fine to the naked eye. She’s standing on the street wearing this
tiny pink denim pair of overalls with a shirt underneath the exact same color
of pink but with sparkles on it. She’s got a giant red ball that she’s bouncing
on the sidewalk and every time it comes back up to greet her tiny little hands
she lets out a giggle. It’s disarming for a minute as I try to grasp what’s
happening. The little girl is enjoying herself. Then she looks up into the sky.
Eyes wide open, like nothing can hurt her. I would love to be able to look up
and see what she sees, but I know I can’t because then I’ll be blind and in the
presence of a Hell-child. That would be right at the top of the list of things
you never want to happen to you. But she’s still smiling. Could she be mad, bat
shit crazy from years and years of being in her own version of torment? But she
doesn’t seem crazy. She actually seems... well... quite...

Normal.
Like a real kid. But that isn’t possible for a real child to end up here. Could
that happen? No. I refuse to believe that there is anything a child could do
that would invoke that kind of wrath. Children are innocent, which is part of
the reason (I think anyway) that our worst residents come back as them, to
somehow honor the one part of their lives when they were blameless. No, this
child does not belong here. My hands are trembling and my palms are damp as I
come out from behind the truck. I have no idea what I’m doing, what I’m about
to do, or whether I’ll be able to do it without peeing my pants.

“Hey
Kid!” I say with just a hint of trembling in my voice. “Are you okay?”

The
girl turns and looks at me. Inside her eyes I see that she is not of this
world. She belongs as far away from Hell as she can get. Inside her blue eyes
is wonder... over a simple ball being thrown and bouncing back at her. There
are a million questions waiting to be asked, and more. There’s something
unconditional in those eyes, yet they also seem sad.

“No-okay.”
she says, and begins a small pout. “I want my mommy. I need my mommy!” Her
bottom lip starts to tremble, not in a menacing way or an ‘I’m about to unleash
the tantrum of the century” way, but like a little girl lost and realizing
she’s far from home.

I
walk up to her. “Can I help you find her?” I’m reaching out, hoping she’ll take
my hand. Where I would take her after that, I don’t know.  I feel an
overwhelming need to get this girl away from here, maybe the agency,
Deedy’s
office, anywhere but here. “Let’s go for a ride in
my big truck and I’ll take you somewhere where you can find her!”

The
little girl starts to cry. Not sob, or even cry out loud, but the tears start
streaming down her pretty little face. I feel like running and grabbing her,
but I can’t move. Her tears are like a barrier between us. I’m immobilized by
them. “Stop helping me!” she says with childlike anger. It actually makes me
smile a little, her
indignance
. She bounces her ball
once more. Then she bounces it toward me. When the red orb reaches my hands, it
disappears. I look up, and so has she — vanished —
In
thin air.

What
the fuck? “Kid! Where are you?” Why is everybody vanishing on me today? I can’t
seem to keep track of a giant Santa, let alone a small, helpless child. “Kid??”
I walk up the block calling out for her, more and more frantically. She’s
nowhere. Damn it. All I can do is hope that poor little girl is okay...
wherever she is.

As
I start to walk back I notice there are full garbage cans lining the street.
Isn’t that what I’m here for? Okay, so I pick up two of them and haul them to
the truck. When I get there I dump them out into the back where it is already
half full (don’t they dump them out every night? Why would you just haul
garbage back to the street where you picked it up the day before?) See water
pouring off of me onto the ground. I wipe my forehead with the intent of
getting rid of the fountain of sweat, but my forehead is dry. I take off one of
the enormous gloves that I found sitting in the truck and used my bare hand to
feel my face. Those salty droplets were not sweat. They were tears. Fuck me if
I’m not crying again!  I’ve cried more in the past few days than I’ve done
in ages.

When
I first got here the crying was pretty constant. It’s one thing to know that
you are dead and will never breathe real air again, have a real body, or
whatever. It’s another thing once you realize that you are dead and sentenced
to Hell. Sure, there’s the standard shock of THAT realization. Hell. The
proverbial place where you used to like to tell people to go, or like to joke
about going there yourself... but once you find yourself here, well... needless
to say, those jokes aren’t really so damn funny anymore.

But
the thing that really gets to you is knowing you are probably alone in this
eternal journey. First of all, there is no one... not the very worst person you
ever knew in life... not one person that you actually used the word “Hate” to
describe... that you would wish here. You certainly wouldn’t wish it on anyone
you loved. The people I loved, including Linda, would probably end up going in
the opposite direction when it’s time for them to transition to eternity. I am
grateful for that. I’m sincerely glad for them. But that means that I will
never get to see them again, ever. That means that when they make their journey
I won’t be there to help them along or to stand there with open arms once they
arrive.

And
of course, that also means that they have a revelation to make once they get
where they are going, the realization that I’m not there. I wonder how that
would feel? I wonder if there are tears in
Heaven?
I
wonder if anyone there would shed any for
me?

So
anyway, all of that is what helps contribute to the torment of arrival in Hell.
That is the reason all of us tend to walk around in a state of teary-eyed
delirium for a while. But after a time, who knows how long, all of that starts
to meld into a kind of comfort. All the things you knew, the people that made
your life worth living, become memories instead of real, live, actual people.
There comes a point where you don’t even think of them as real anymore. This is
good, because the concept that I have them as memories, and they will never be
down here, is the only thing that keeps me functioning.

So
why all the new tears now? Maybe it’s the whole outrageous experience of
meeting
Deedy
, Gabby, and the new surroundings of the
job. Maybe it’s the shock of almost hitting a child, or even seeing a child who
looks somewhat normal in this environment. Maybe it’s just the overwhelming smell
of garbage making me tear up and I should stop analyzing everything.

But
I don’t think it’s any of those things. I felt drawn back to the spot where the
little girl disappeared. I feel something about her... her specifically. I feel
like I should know who she is and I should have taken better care of her. I
feel an overwhelming sense of guilt when I think about her standing there and
looking up at me with those big blue eyes and telling me to “stop helping”. I
stand at the spot and try to see her again in my mind’s eye until the emotions
get too heavy for me to bear. I start to cry a bit harder and I can feel sobs
beginning at the base of my gut. When they reach the top, I let out just one,
then I push it all back, demand it go back in hiding, just for another day or
even another moment.

After
all, I have work to do.

The
cans seem lighter now as I pick them up and start to carry them to my truck.

Is
there anything heavier than the burdens we must carry in Hell?

Chapter
Nine

I
have to say that comparatively speaking, this garbage gig is not the suckiest
job I could have down here. Obviously, not that I have a lot to compare it
to.  My only other job, in death and in life, for that matter, was
IP&FW. But other than my overactive imagination that keeps telling me that
my arm muscles are screaming under the repetitive strain of picking up cans
(and what I’ve attributed the whole ‘little girl’ incident to as well), this is
really not all that bad. And the best news is that I’ve gotten through my
entire shift with only one pit stop and that was an actual restroom. I’m
practically cheerful as I hop in and out of my enormous truck going down street
after street. I even see the occasional other person and I almost want to wave,
unless they are chasing me down the street cursing at me for coming, too early
or too late or even on the wrong day. In those cases I usually forgo the wave
and replace it with the bird. Nonetheless, all of those things will put me in
very good favor with the boss.  So overall, it’s a beautiful day in the
neighborhood, boys and girls!

In
fact, I’m borderline whistling as I turn down the last street on what I think
is my route. Of course, I can’t be sure since the maps (once I finally dug them
out from under the seat) were, as predicted, useless. However, it doesn’t
matter, because this is the last street I’m doing today regardless.

I
park the truck and get out and start hauling the last of the cans for the day
when I see an old woman approaching me. She looks like one of the ladies my mom
used to have over for cake and coffee after church on Sunday afternoon. Her
dress is way too big for her and she’s wearing a sweater over it, which cannot
be the most comfortable thing out here in this heat, but other than that, it
looks pretty much like an ordinary old lady dress. I remember what Gabby was
wearing and I think maybe there’s some kind of reward system or something
whereby people get less obnoxious clothes over time, or whoever comes up with the
nightmare wardrobes each day plays favorites. I also wonder, for the couple of
minutes it takes her to make it over to me, what such a sweet-looking old lady
could have done to deserve going to Hell. Then of course, I start imagining all
the horrific things that old ladies can do to go to Hell.  I recalled
everything from a story I once read in a national magazine about a 76 year-old
woman who had just buried her 4th husband and an autopsy showed rat poison in
his system.  So, they exhumed all of her previous spouses and damned if
she hadn’t poisoned them all. Remembering the fairy tales of my childhood,
where there was always a sweet old woman who turned out to be a wicked witch
eating children, or passing out bad apples and I figured, ‘You know what? It’s
really none of my business.’

When
she finally reaches me, she gives me a smile. I look behind me, just to make
sure she’s smiling at me and when I surmise that we are the only two people on the
street I turn around and smile back. “Morning.” I say, trying to sound
officious.

“Good
Morning! Can I get a hand with some garbage?” she says... not exactly as a
question, but polite enough. You know, the way all older people address people
younger than they are.  As though they are asking for a favor, but they
understand that, of course, you are going to do it because they have been on
the earth way longer than you.  This is the least you can do for them, for
living this damn long. That’s how she said it. So, obviously I said “Sure
thing!” and followed her. I follow her down the street and when she gets to the
end she turns the corner.

“Actually,
ma’am, this street is not on my route. Perhaps someone else is planning to come
down here today?” I call after her.

“Right
up here!” she says, as if I had asked her where or how far we were going
instead of telling her that this address was not in my trash collecting
jurisdiction.

So
I do the only thing anyone could do under those circumstances.  I keep on
following her. To her credit, she wasn’t lying... it is right around the corner
and down a few houses. It’s one of the little cutesy houses that the big glass
buildings are built around, part of the illusion of a real city within the
abyss. On the outside, it looks a bit weather worn (which is part of the
illusion, since the only weather down here is fucking hot) and the paint is
peeling, the gutters are hanging and there are more than a few shingles missing
from the roof. However, none of that general disrepair compares to the
backyard. Fenced in, kind of, by a shabby and broken fence that looks like a
dotted line, is quite a lot of space that would have constituted a yard.
Except, the entire backyard looks like the back of my truck. There are piles
and piles of garbage back there.

“I’ll
need help cleaning this out.” says the elderly woman. And I think to myself,
‘Help? Like how much can this woman be expected to contribute to this process?’
I’m thinking that I might have just been shanghaied into spending the next
several hours hauling all this to the truck by myself.

“I
think the National Guard would need help clearing this place out!” I say and
she laughs in response.

“I
think if we both put our backs to it, we’ll get it done in no time.” she says,
cheerfully.

How
can she be so cheerful? Where does that kind of personal fortitude come from? I
wonder again how long she’s been here, and what she’s done. She seems so
normal, and “normal” isn’t... well, normal in Hell. I want to ask — to sit at
her kitchen table, drink some lemonade, interview her, and come away feeling
better about being sentenced to eternal anguish. I want to know that,
potentially, after a thousand or maybe a million years I’ll be able to laugh
again. But I know I won’t ask a single question. Because to know that this
sweet old lady can exist among the iniquitous and vile could mean she’s
demented, or after a million years we have no choice but to go mad. 
Possibly it could mean that some folks come here by accident… that would mean
the worst thing I could possibly imagine, the creator does not know, or does
not care about us once we are down here. That would extinguish the small flame
of hope that meeting
Deedy
and taking this job had
lit within me. So I won’t ask. Instead, I’ll simply say, “
Okee
doke
. Let’s get to it. I’m Louise, by the way.”

“Thank
you Louise. I’m Mrs. Barnes.”

Then
she started grabbing armfuls of trash and carrying them out. She was actually
quite strong, despite her “age”. A point that I found a little disquieting
after imagining all the terrible things she could have done in life, to end up
here, at the end of it. But she was also just so nice... like we were spending
the afternoon at a tea party instead of shoveling garbage in Hell.

“So,
Mrs. Barnes, what are you going to do with all this space once the trash is
gone?” I asked for two reasons. One, I really wanted to know. I mean, as one of
the few residents in the 666 area code to actually get some space, I wanted to
know what she was going to do with it. And second, we’d been at it for about
three hours at this point and had pretty much cleared it all and I just needed
a break. So I sat on the curb and looked at her expectantly while she shuffled
over to me to answer my question.

She
reached into her sweater pocket and pulled out a handful of seeds. I have no
idea what kind of seeds, but they were all different. Some were small and wispy
like feathers and others were big and bulky. Some were small and round like
birdseed and others were flat. “What are the seeds for?” I asked.

“I
have no idea!” Her grin was now all the way across her small, wrinkled face.
“But I can’t wait to see!”

I
gave her a slight smile back. “How do you know anything will grow here?”

“I
don’t. This is what we old folks call a leap of faith.”

I
wanted to shout at her. ‘Leap of faith? Lady, you are in HELL!’ But I could
hardly bear to look into those cloudy eyes and cause this woman more pain than
what she had already suffered. I don’t know and never will know what she’s
guilty of, sin-wise, to warrant her being down here with
fucktards
like me. But I do know that my day was better because I met her, and I will not
take any of her hope away.

“Well
then, good luck!” I said instead. “With your chrysanthemums or cucumbers or
whatever may come up!” I went back to work and quickly helped her clean the
rest. Then, I climbed into my truck and started to pull away.

“Goodbye,
Mrs. Barnes! It was very nice to meet you!” I called out the window as I
started to leave.

“Goodbye,
Louise! I hope you are happier today than you were yesterday!” she said, and
waved as I sat stunned in the drivers’ seat of my garbage truck.

Funny.
She said the same thing I had said just this morning. Perhaps everyone down
here eventually becomes psychic or telepathic or whatever and I just haven’t
been around long enough. As I’m driving down the street, back toward the TCC
building, I’m thinking about that and about my first day.  How I actually
feel good.  I think, better than I’ve felt since I arrived. Then I try to
imagine Mrs. Barnes motley garden, with all kinds of flowers growing somewhere
that makes no sense. Suddenly, a memory leaps into my mind like a guest at a
birthday party jumping out from behind a curtain to yell “Surprise!”

Mr.
Comegys
and I started our weird morning ritual when I
was in high school. I had to walk by his flower stand every day on my way
there. Yep, I was one of those kids who walked to school. It wasn’t a mile, nor
was it uphill both ways. There was very little snow where I grew up, and when
we did get even a powder, school was usually cancelled. So, this isn’t going to
be one of “those” stories.

Anyway,
Comegys
used to have a big flower shop downtown. When
I was a kid, I remember going there with my mom to get floral arrangements for
church, a funeral, or something. But when I was in high school, I guess he
figured there wasn’t enough business in Shithole, USA to warrant having a whole
entire store.  So, he closed up shop and put a stand on the corner selling
mainly fresh cut flowers.

Bouquets
of fresh cut flowers are one thing I will never, ever understand. Now, before
you start telling me that I was born without the romance gene, let me
explain.  If some guy wants to actually try to earn my affections he may
do so with a number of offerings. Chocolate
is ,always
a winner. Making my car payment is good too. But please explain to me what
loser was the first one to say, “Hey, think I’ll go out and cut some living
things in assorted colors from their root structure so that they can never
absorb enough water or photosynthesize ever again, give them to my girl so she
can put them in a fancy jar and watch them decay and die, thereby proving that
I love her.” And what stupid bimbo was the first girl to respond with this lame
gift with “Wow, this is a way better present than something I could keep
forever, or maybe eat or drink! I’d much rather have my guy say he loves me
with a bunch of flowers that I could, if I were motivated enough, go out and
pick myself for free. And the fact that within three days they’ll be dried up stalks
that I get to throw away, is just a bonus!”  I hope to meet those two
morons one day down here so that I can poke them in the eye for every guy who
showed at my door holding a bunch of overpriced roses instead of something
sparkly.

Rant
aside, I was not born without certain skills, specifically those in the charm
department. So, every morning when I would walk by Mr.
Comegy’s
flower stand, he would hand me a single blossom.  A rose or a lily, or
even the occasional orchid... I’d stop, breathe in the fragrance from the
flower and say, “Thank you,” to Mr.
Comegy’s
with a
big grin. He always seemed so pleased with himself so I acted just as pleased.
As soon as I got out of eyesight, I’d cut through the graveyard by the
Methodist Church and lay the flower on some headstone.

I’d
always stop and read the headstone where I laid the flower. Not assessing the
person or deciding on who would get the flower, or anything. I’d just pick a
headstone at random and before I left I’d take a look to see who had won my own
version of the daily lottery. Every once in a while it would be someone I had
known. Someone who had died within the last 12-18 years who I remembered from
the neighborhood, from church, or even from school. There was Bruce, this kid I
knew from 5th grade who suddenly stopped coming to school. Then a letter came
to the entire class from him telling us that he was in a special hospital just
for kids. He had enclosed a picture of him sitting in a bed with Ronald
McDonald next to him and he was surrounded by toys and action figures and stuff
that had been given to him. I was horribly jealous of his luck, until two weeks
later when our principle came in to announce that Bruce had passed away from
leukemia. After that, the thought of getting free swag from a celebrity clown
didn’t seem like such a huge perk. Not in exchange for being dead at age 11. It
was sad. We all went to the funeral, and they had grief counselors at school.
That was the first time I ever thought about dying. Because he was a kid, like
me, and now he’s gone. His mom took it very hard and she would always stop us
classmates on the street whenever she saw us and just sort of look at us with
tears in her eyes. I knew that we reminded her of Bruce, and in my childhood
ignorance I thought that must be a bad thing. So I would hide - yes hide - from
her. I’m not proud of it today, but then I honestly thought I was somehow
supplying comfort by not making her cry. When I realized that I’d set a flower
on his headstone I said a silent apology to her, for my childlike ignorance
that barred her from a connection with her son.