Bed And Ted

Bed is my heaven, its the place I love and I can’t think of anywhere better to be with Ted.

Escalate To Heaven #FridayFictioneers

I stood before the escalator and was filled with fear. I had always believed there was a staircase to Heaven. Hadn’t Led Zeppelin sang so?

At least no one was pushing passed me as I had experienced in life. The people going up calm, none of them had any problems.

An angel appeared and ask, ‘what’s wrong?’

‘I can’t…I have a phobia!’ I cried.

‘Oh, you can take the elevator then.’

I shook my head, ‘I can’t bear them either.’

‘We shall go the original way; the golden stairs.’

I nodded and became more at ease.

‘You know, I prefer that way,’ the angel added, ‘I don’t why we stopped using it.’

 

(Inspired by; https://rochellewisoff.com/2020/02/05/7-february-2020/ with thanks).

Ice Cream #FridayFictioneers

The temptation was too real and I couldn’t help myself. The ice cream melted on my tongue, sending me to a frozen heaven and a land of pleasure. One spoonful wasn’t enough, I needed more, more! Half a tub was gone before I realised.

 

(Inspired by; https://rochellewisoff.com/2020/01/22/24-january-2020/ with thanks).

Proof Of Heaven

I don’t know what started it. A feeling or thought, maybe? Then the dreams came followed by the visions and I knew it was real. The angels arrived next, blazing light and whispering. Why had I been chosen? I didn’t know but I knew I had to spread the messages.

(Inspired by; https://katmyrman.com/2018/01/30/twittering-tale-69-30-january-2018/ with thanks).

Rubatosis #atozchallenge

Rubatosis; the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.

The silence was deafening. There was nothing for miles, the desert was seemingly empty of life. And yet, I was here, driving my jeep over dunes, around or through rock formations, heading for a place that always seemed just out of reach like a mirage.

The Archway to Heaven, the locals called it. I had come out all this way to see if it was true. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to find anything but it would be nice if there was an angel waiting for me or if a flight of stairs shimmed up towards the sky.

Finally, I made it to the arch! I cut the engine, got out and climbed up the dune. I stood under the arch and listened. I could hear my heartbeat hammering away and once I’d stilled my feet on the shifting sand, my heart was the only thing I could hear. I felt disturbed and the knowledge that I was alone out here weighed down on me heavily.

The last of the daylight left the sky, the dim gold colours giving over to total darkness. I looked and above me, I saw Heaven.

Little Boy

Emmy woke hours before the alarm went off. Coming to the familiarity of her bedroom, she wondered what had disturbed her. Laying in the early morning light, Emmy’s dark hair spread across the empty pillow next to her, she realised she was not alone.

‘Mummy?’

A soft child’s voice whispered in her ear.

A shiver rushed up her spine and Emmy felt frozen to the bed.

‘Mummy?’ the voice repeated.

‘Hello?’ she finally breathed.

‘Are you awake?’

‘Yes,’ Emmy answered.

‘Me too. I couldn’t sleep anymore.’

Emmy squeezed eyes shut and took a shuddering breath. She felt a small, cold hand on her bare shoulder and a breath against her face.

‘Can I stay with you?’ the voice whispered.

‘I wish you could,’ Emmy gasped, feeling tears in her eyes.

‘Why not, Mummy?’ her son asked.

‘Because you’re gone,’ Emmy chocked out.

‘Gone where?’ the small voice quivered.

‘To heaven.’

‘Oh.’

‘But it’s okay…’ Emmy trailed off as the tears consumed her.

‘Don’t cry, mummy!’

Emmy felt small arms wrapping around her and a head, pushing against her shoulder blade. She brought her hand up and patted the space were she felt the hands interlocked around her throat.

‘I have to go now,’ her son muttered.

Emmy fought back her words and bit her dry lip.

‘I’ll come back. They don’t mind sometimes. Goodbye, Mummy.’

‘Goodbye sweetie,’ Emmy burbled.

She felt the duvet move slightly to the side and the arms around her go. Emmy blinked away tears and finally rolled over. The other side of the bed was empty.

The Biggest Book Store

She couldn’t believe it as she stepped through the doors and saw the book store stretching out before her. Time seemed to stop and she couldn’t take it all in. Then her husband pushed her gently and she moved inside.

‘Look discount books,’ he pointed out.

She went over and looked at the titles with eager eyes. She started pulling books off the shelves and selecting a few. She turned to her husband and found he was holding a basket out to her.

Smiling, she placed the books in. Then spend the rest of the afternoon enjoying her slice of Heaven.

The Decision

By Paul Coleman

Yesterday, I decided to take my own life and I slit my wrist in the bathtub. This morning I woke on the side of an endless road, where stars still reigned in the sky. The blood on my wrists still streamed out of the wounds; leaving a trail along the gravel road I walked until I reached an aging road sign.

The sign read “HEAVEN upstairs (interviews required), HELL downstairs (free entry), welcome to your decision.”

I leaned against the sign, smoking a cigarette whilst I observed the birth and death of a day, never thinking about my destination or my decision to commit myself to Heaven or Hell. In all honesty I just wanted a staircase to show me which way to go; I have never been good at making decisions because the last one landed me in this place.

Resentment

Does it matter that I’m going to die right here and now? Does it matter at all to anyone? The world won’t come to a stop at my death, I know that…everyone knows that. They only wonder about it. And everything will go on without me as it always has done. Do I resent my life though? All the pain and suffering I’ve caused in others, do I resent that? Maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe death is the absolute end.

And Heaven? Do I believe in that? I guess not, because I don’t believe in God. What about Hell then? I’ve heard people say that’s where I’ll end up…but if I don’t believe there can be one…maybe I’ve been living in it my whole life. Does anyone actually know? I doubt they’d even care anyways. I know there’s going to be no one to mourn my passing.

I had it all; the family, the friends, the lifestyle, the business. Money seemed never endless and I never knew what I ‘hard time’ was. Unless it just bypassed me because I was able to escaped it? The dreams and wishes I had as a child and young person, I achieved and so much more. The world lay at my feet for so long….and now this…..

Dying hurts. No matter what anyone says it does. My suffering has seemed long, though time moves differently when you realize the end is close. Does everyone feel such things before the body gives out? When I saw the footage of people dying in far off countries, when I saw animals worked to death, when the homeless and sick were at my door, begging, is their suffering any different to mine now?

I want to cry out and scream not me, not now, I still want to live, I can go on and change. Can’t anyone grant me that one wish that money can’t buy? I’ve become resentful. Remembering things from a past I had long buried and another that I made my future. I don’t believe in destiny, I made my own. I choice all the paths myself and no guiding hand of fate ever appeared it me. Why waste your life in believing suit dribble?

What I’d give right now though, to feel the sun’s heat one last time. Or to feel sand between my toes, hear the laughter of my children, hold my lover in my arms. Money can’t buy those things, like it can’t buy me time and life. How much I’ve missed in my blindness….those simple things that simple people rejoice in. Those things bypass the rich and famous. They fall on deaf ears and numb skin, they don’t exist in a martial world.

I don’t think I resent that though, those things. They can’t compare to the feel of money on my skin, or the excitement of an extreme sports car. Life should be made up of the big things not the small things…life should be dangerous and expensive. We are the masters…no Gods of the Earth. We can kill the mightiest of animals and wipe them from the plains. We can create life in a lab and travel through space. Those who have power are the greatest and we look down on the Lost of society.

Oh, yeah, I remember the Lost. You look at me now and do you see any stain of them on me? Anything that could make me from the gutter like them? No? Well let me tell you about my other past. It’s a secret I’ve squashed down for an age, even to myself. I made it into a story, a dream, that baby born in a public toilet wasn’t me. That baby was someone else and that child they grew into was someone else too. Why then do I remember their past? The pain of the abuse, the sting of tears and the sense of utter hopelessness? Why do these feelings crowd me so?

As you die why is it that the past always comes back to you? In those final moments why does the mind choice to show us these images? Why reminds of the suffering and not the good times? I can recall years of being in the hands of others. So many faces, names, houses, places, tall buildings, open grass land. There were people sitting behind desks, I peered out of wooden and metal bars. A blood splatter teddy bear in the bath.

Push them away! Return them to the back of my mind! Let them becomes lost in death. No one else need remember them, those where my times of pain….endless suffering….but I escaped. Escaped it all and learned to live again. People abandon their lives all the time and start a new one. It seems the easiest thing to do. Take some clothes, some money and a favourite toy. Get on the bus, a train, a plane and go to a new place. A new place! Where the sun is always shinning and when it does rain the pavements glow. There is no bitter wind or snow, nothing to remind you of home.

That’s new life for you.

If there is a God can he grant me that? Will I start all over again and come back. Come back and live a new time? I heard the theory of reincarnation once. How we all come back and it’s the cycle of life. You don’t always come back as a human though, it could be an animal or plant…but we never remember the past lives. What would we do with this knowledge anyways? We’ll tell stories to the children about how we were once an elephant stomping though Africa, until a hunter shot us and cut out our ivory tusks. And you remember the screams of our family and the fear in the baby’s eyes?

Such stories we would tell the world. They’d make a book and keep a record of everyone’s other lives to be studied. But it wouldn’t change the world. Even if people knew we can back as elephants we would still hunt them. It’s what mankind are programmed to do. Have I ever killed an animal? In my dark past I killed a cat to eat with some homeless men. In my new past I killed a stray dog because it bit my child. But I did these things to survive and I don’t regret them.

For years men have question what is in the beyond. We searched the lands, seas and skies looked for some truth in the old lies. We found nothing but old bones and silenced mouths. Now we searched space, hoping to reach out behind our means and make connect with other beings we believe exist. Of Heaven and Hell, of limbo, of Paradise of damnation, we have found nothing. How can the places exist then? Are they like the wind? But surely then we would feel them?

What do I feel? Empty….Am I sure? I lie. I feel fear and dread, for I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if I’ve lived my whole life a lie and that when it turns out there is a God, surely my whole life will then be a regret. But what if there is nothing? Then I shall be nothing and remain so.

What did I do with my new life? Wasted it…my business grow, I gained friends, a lover, a family, a fortune. I threw it all away after those glory days. First my children left me and then my lover. My friends dwindled until they had all gone and the money? I spent it all. Threw it all into things I thought would make me happy, make me forget it all. I brought objects of beauty that should have been shared with the world, but I hide them away. Took long holidays in hot, dry countries or cold, snowy ones in which I studied the culture and learned the history of the peoples. I begin to live through the eyes of the others.

However, when I returned to my life, it didn’t change me. The people below me I wanted nothing to do with. I hide with those beauty objects on the island that was my house. But I never wanted to hide from the world. It is my deepest regret that person I became….the one you see before you now. I am corrupt by power, hatred, desire and money. This person is the end of my destiny, though I never choice that path. If there is a God in Heaven, can he forgive me? Has he been able to see what greed has done to me?

But if there is a God then surely there must be a Devil in Hell and can see my sins also. Will it be his hand I feel when the last breath comes? Will my soul rot in a fire pit forever? Wait! Do I even have a soul? If I don’t believe then maybe I don’t have one? But then again maybe I still do…maybe anything does have a soul and we just don’t know it. What does it look like? What does it do and feel? Can mine be saved, if that’s needed? Can it rest in peace until it’s allowed to return for another chance?

Maybe everything is wrong though and there is nothing. Just a made up tell for children to comfort them in dark times. We are living a lie then and then truth is always beyond our reach because we are not powerful enough to get it. Can that always be so? Will mankind never know the answers to those questions we ask in every generation? Maybe the truth doesn’t have to be found though, maybe we each know and we have always known, because it’s always been inside of us.

The pain is unbearable! Is this the end? What do I see before me? Darkness still. Is that to be all of it? Never ending darkness and drifting? Please let there be something more, please let there be something else. I’ve lost everything, but my sins. The cling to me still, but I want them gone….can they go…can I be forgiven as I become forgotten? Please if there is something out there now, hear me…I repent everything.

What is that whiteness? The dot in the corner of my eyes. It grows…so big and bright! What is it?