i.
Something speeded up. Speeded up some more.
Then stopped. Abruptly. He’d had a heart attack. While at the breakfast table.
Alone. His wife at work, the youngest kid at college. He managed to call the
emergency number and whisper for help. He used the last of his energy on that
and then lay the phone – ever so gently – down on the table and placed his head
next to it. He could see the unfinished cup of coffee to his left, the
nibbled-at marmalade on toast (let the moths eat the rest) to his right.
His eyes slowly began to close as the life ebbed out of him. Let the moths
have the light, was his last thought. After that there was a single beat
and then death.
ii.
The ambulance people found him by the
location app on his phone. The caretaker of the building was in, so they didn’t
have to unceremoniously boot in the door to the dead man’s apartment.
‘Mark Lewis?’ the caretaker
said. ‘Second floor to the left.’
He struggled up before them.
He was no longer young, but he was still alive. The ambulance people were very
gentle with Mark when they stretchered him out of the building. Even more
gentle than Mark had been when he’d laid the phone down on the table. The
caretaker followed them down the stairs. He was only sixty-four! he
thought. We is supposed to live until we is eighty-two. Yes, stretchered
very gently indeed. You’d think he was a Ming Dynasty vase or a respected
professor at the local university. If he’d still been alive, he’d have surely
laughed.
iii.
He woke up on a slab. Stainless steel. No,
let’s not say ‘woke up.’ He’d been dead, not asleep. And, given his
oversensitive aesthetic sensibilities, let’s pretend the slab was made of
marble. Blue quartzite. From Brazil. He opened his eyes. The glare of the overhead
lights. Fluorescent. Blinding. You’d think it would be nothing after coming
back from the dead, but the glare made him close his eyes again, immediately.
He reached for his neck warmer as he often pulled that up over his eyes, if he
needed some shut-eye during the day. But the neck warmer was not there. He always
wore one! He had quite the collection. His film buff friends had Blu Ray
collections, he had neck warmers. He felt below his neck. His hand was under a
sheet. With difficulty, he raised his head and looked down over the sheet –
white as death – all the way down to his feet. Then he turned his head to the
left, to the right, to the left again in order to take in the bigger picture.
It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t Monet’s Water Lilies. He was down the
mortuary. There were other bodies lying about, but they were carefully covered
by their sheets. If dead people can be said to have anything. Surely, he
should have been just as carefully covered? he thought. But maybe he had
been … and the sheet had got dislodged during what must have been his … fight
back unto life.
iv.
Movement was difficult. I’m not quite
back, not yet fully in my body. I’m still half out there … wherever there
was. He tried to call out. Nothing came out of that throat of his. It was dry.
Parched. But now he knew what he’d call out: water! Though, he recalled
(I got recall) … remembered a lesson he’d learnt (from when I was
alive): if you ever need help, don’t shout ‘help’ but ‘fire.’ For some
reason the living didn’t like to help, but they sure loved to put out fires. He
sat up. Suddenly. Just like that. Now, that had been surprisingly easy. Water!
But still nothing came out of that throat. He sat there for maybe ten minutes.
Ten long minutes. Death had been short in comparison.
v.
How strange to wake up amongst the dead!
You expect to wake up amongst the living dead, if you wake up at all.
Not amongst zombies, of course, but the living dead of myth and legend. In the
Greek Underworld, say, or the Christian Hell. People suffering around you. Like
I’m suffering now. Water! Somebody came in and screamed. That throat
was working. It belonged to a young man. He ran out. There was silence in the
room. Let’s not say mortuary, let’s not say morgue, let’s not be overly morbid.
It is bad enough as it is. This silence, was it not a kind of limbo? The famous
waiting room. It could go either way, after all, he could simply lie down again
and try and embrace … embrace what exactly?
vi.
A scant few minutes passed. Mark Lewis
could feel his breathing becoming more regular. An older man – white-haired - came
in. He took hold of Mark’s wrist. There was an armband around it.
‘Ah, Mr Lewis, how’re you feeling
today?’ he said.
Cheerful fellow.
‘Water!’ Mark croaked.
‘James,’ the man looked
behind him. ‘Could you be so kind as to fetch Mr Lewis here, a glass of water?
From the fridge.’
The elderly gent turned back to
Mark.
‘Nice and cold, Mr Lewis, we
like our water nice and cold, don’t we, huh? That’s the ticket. Now don’t you
go worrying your head about a thing. That’s what I’m here for.’
vii.
The neighbours were surprised to see him
back home. After all, some of them had only just received their invitations to
the funeral. Surprised when the ambulance people rolled up and stretchered him
back in.
‘Oh, he’ll live another day,’
they said.
‘Bloody hell!’ the caretaker
said.
viii.
His family found him changed. Rather aloof
for the first few weeks. Well, it took him that long to get to grips with the
body. To ‘get in there’ as some of his friends might have phrased it. And it
was an effort to get back in there. It was as though the body had not been used
in quite a while, not just the few days where he’d been … out of action. And
then there were the doubts. Did he want to come back? He tried to
explain to his wife.
‘It’s like the social media,
after you’ve been on holiday for two weeks. You know, do you really want to
rejoin the cut and thrust of it all?’
He really wanted to say
inanity, but didn’t want to offend her. The analogy meant nothing to her as she
took the social media on holiday with her. It was only him with his
foolish, old-fashioned notions who left his mobile phone at home. The older
boy, the one who’d moved out, had questions.
‘Questions I’d never gotten
around to asking you when you were alive, Dad.’
ix.
A month after the ‘incident’ and he had,
more or less, taken full possession of his body again. But from that day
forward, though he was as friendly as ever, there still remained something
aloof about him. He’d slept the sleep of the dead and woken up amongst them,
there in the mortuary. They were not exactly his friends, the dead, not even
acquaintances, really. A kind of neighbour, perhaps, or, let us say, a
fellowship.
Bio:
Anthony Kane Evans has had
short stories published in various UK, French, US, Canadian, Nigerian, and
Australian literary journals. These include London Magazine (UK), Orbis
Quarterly (UK), The Tusculum Review (US), and The Antigonish Review (Canada).
He has a novelette out, The Cripple Club (Alien Buddha Press; 2025).
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