Do You Believe In Heaven?

A short story

She was screaming.

He could not see where she was, but she was screaming. As he stood in the dark corridor, on a floor built out of rusted metal gratings, which beneath lay nothing but infinite darkness, he tried listening from where her voice was coming from. Every step he took sent a chill up his spine, where with every step he took, a sharp spike of cold would be sent up from the floor grating through his bare feet. Sometimes he’d shudder with anticipation, feeling like a knife blade would poke at him through the grating. He didn’t like this place one bit.

Water was dripping steadily on his tousled brown hair from the ceiling. He ignored it as he pressed on, calling for his wife’s name, wishing for her screaming to stop.

“Alice!” he shouted. “Alice, I’m coming!”

The next drop of liquid that fell on him wasn’t water.

It was blood.

Stopping abruptly, he stopped, before slowly looking up to see-

A naked woman pinned to the ceiling with metal spikes, one in her torso, the other in her neck, and the other two in her two outstretched hands. Her blonde hair was soaked with blood, as was the rest of her body.

And she was smiling.

“Ryan.”

-

And Ryan Phelps woke up alone in bed, panting furiously. Almost instinctively, his first act was to run his fingers through his hair, to make sure there was no real blood there. Satisfied that there wasn’t any, he looked over to his right as he usually did back then, to tell his worried wife who would normally have woken up to go back to sleep, that it was nothing but a bad dream.

As it was, back then his wife had been alive. And so he found only the empty space she used to occupy beside him as he turned to look over his shoulder. A sharp pang of loneliness hit him instantly. Alice had barely died over a week ago, and the pain hadn’t grown any number, as other people had claimed it would. Sinking his face into his hands, he wept, and when that wasn’t enough, he started sobbing.

On the side table beside the bed, the picture of Alice Phelps smiled at him, a memory of summers past.

-

Ryan hadn’t been to church since the day Alice had died. Partially it was because Alice’s death had robbed whatever belief he had left in God, and partially because he felt angry at God, for taking her away so suddenly. He never had been the religious type before he had met her, before she had married him, and changed him. The visit he made the next day was by no means a sign that he was ready to go as Alice would have probably wanted her to do in the wake of her death. It was for another reason altogether.

The priest who walked up to meet him as he walked through the double doors was an old schoolmate of his, Chris Walker. They were more than just schoolmates, in fact. They were the best of friends, and they still were. Chris embraced Ryan as he approached him, and greeted him with a warm smile. The urgent look on Ryan’s face, however, quickly wiped that smile away.

“She’s in hell, Chris,” Ryan told him about 20 minutes later at the diner across the street. “I just know she is.”

“You can’t possibly believe that, Ryan,” Chris said, putting down his cup of espresso on the table. “We both knew her, and by God, she was an angel. She can’t have ended up-

“The dreams have been coming too frequently, Chris,” Ryan sobbed, his eyes welling up with tears. “And I’m not sure how much more of it I can take. I need to know that she’s at a better place, Chris. Isn’t there a way that I might be sure?”

Chris sighed, lying back against his chair. “You and I were there when she was at her deathbed, Ryan. I saw her squeeze your hand, and she promised that she’d wait for you in Heaven.”

Ryan took a deep breath, wiping the tears off his face with a handkerchief. “I know you won’t like to hear me say this, Father, but I don’t really believe in Heaven. I don’t believe in God for that matter.”

He half-expected Chris to gasp with surprise before reprimanding him for saying such at thing. Instead, his best friend just shrugged and gave him a look that said he understood what he was feeling. “You’re only saying it because you’re angry. The pain will heal, Ryan, it always does. And when it does you know you’re going to feel stupid for saying that.”

When Ryan didn’t say anything, Chris sighed and leaned forward, whispering softly, “You know that she loved you, Ryan. Can’t that be enough to convince you that she’ll be waiting for you? And we both know that she was a good person. Stop worrying so much about it.”

Ryan looked up at Chris, shaking his head. “It’s easy for you to say, Chris,” he said. “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. You haven’t seen her covered with blood, smiling at me with bloodstained teeth! And those spikes…”

Ryan had described the dream before, and Chris had been able to imagine it. Now he imagined it again, and he shuddered again. He struggled to think of words to comfort his best friend.

And then he said, “Have you considered seeing a shrink?” he asked.

Ryan had never looked so offended before. “You think I’m crazy?”

Chris shook his head quickly, raising his hands in front of him defensively. “No, no, no, that’s not it at all. Geez, Ryan, you don’t have to be crazy to see the shrink. Maybe you’re dealing with some guilt issues. Like you probably blame yourself for not being able to save your wife from death. It’s not uncommon.”

“So you’re saying that I’m not crazy now, but I will be if I don’t do something about it quickly?” Ryan asked, raising one eyebrow.

Chris gritted his teeth, managing an innocent smile. “Well…kinda…yeah. And I don’t want to see you in the loony bin, Ryan. And I doubt your wife would want that either. Please, just do everyone a favor and do it.”

When Ryan didn’t respond, Chris gave an exasperated sigh as he stood up. “You’re going to have to believe that she’s in heaven, Ryan. Sooner or later you’re going to believe it yourself. In the meantime, take a priest’s word for it. Pretend that I know where she is, and believe when I say she’s there.”

And at that, he left abruptly without looking back, leaving Ryan to stare at the unfinished cup of coffee.

-

He took the subway home. It was late night by then, and he was alone at the station waiting for the next train to come in. He shivered in his thick black coat. It was freezing cold, what with winter outside. It reminded him of the day he had proposed to her. It had happened on a train. They were on their way home from a night out together, and her stop was at a station that came before his. As the train reached her stop, before the door opened, he had whispered in her ear, ‘Marry me.’

And before she could answer, the crowd had swept her out the doors. Just as he had thought that he was about to be left hanging, he saw her through the window. He could not exactly hear her over the crowd, but he saw the movement of her mouth, and it was enough to be able to tell that she was screaming,

“ YES!!”

And as the train moved, he received an sms from her, receiving much more yes-es, just to make sure that he got the message.

Back here in the now, the train that had arrived for him was completely empty. He stepped inside and sat down by the window, sighing to himself as he thought about the past.

But apparently the past wasn’t ready to let him go just yet.

Written in crimson red blood on the floor in front of him, was the word,

‘YES.’

Standing up with alarm, he looked around him to see that the entire train he was in was covered with ‘YES’-es, all of them written in blood. On the seats. On the ceiling. On the windows. Everywhere.

-

And the noise of the oncoming train jolted him back into reality. The train was just opening its doors, and there were 4 people inside. He was still standing at the platform. Swearing that he’d never drink again, a promise that he’d obviously not keep, he stepped onto the train.

-

Ryan hated hospitals. He never trusted doctors, and he’d seen enough TV shows and movies where they would come out of the Emergency Room with defeated looks on their faces, saying ‘We’ve tried our best’. Frankly, Ryan never believed in doctors from the start. Which was why when that accident had happened, when he had heard that she was in the ER, he already knew that she wouldn’t be coming home alive. And as he paced back and forth in front of the ER, with Chris watching him anxiously, he fought hard to hold back tears which he knew would be flowing before the day was over.

True enough, after more than an hour of waiting, the doctor came out and told him.

And they allowed him to be with her before the end. Chris had went in with him, watching from a distance as she squeezed his hand, and said-

“I’ll wait for you.”

Back in the present, as Ryan sat in his darkened apartment living room, looking out at the snow falling onto the streets below, a bottle of the strongest liquor he could find in his left hand, he realized that his life hadn’t any meaning left. Alice had been the only thing that he had to live for, and now, as he thought about times past, it only made him feel emptier now. Had Chris been right about him feeling guilty about not being able to save her?

As he made his way to the kitchen to place the bottle back in the fridge, he noticed a bottle of wine, waiting in a bucket of melted ice. A ribbon was tied at the neck of the bottle, with a card that said ‘Happy Birthday!’

He remembered, then, that the bottle was meant to be used on her birthday. The day that she never came home. Alice had died on her birthday.

The sudden sound of the phone ringing almost made him jump with surprise. It did, however, make him drop the bottle he had been holding, shattering it on the marble floor. Cursing, he headed for the cordless phone hung beside the fridge, and picked it up.

“Hello?”

The voice was female, and all too familiar. A deathly pale look appeared on Ryan’s face. Almost immediately, he hung up before the woman could say anything more. Disconnecting the phone wire, he then made his way to his bedroom silently.

-

He dreamt of that place again.

Blood was dripping from the ceiling again, but this time he knew better than to look up. He kept his eyes on the floor, and closed them for good measure. And when she started screaming, he closed his ears, shouting, begging, pleading for her to leave him alone as he shrunk down to the floor, curling up into a ball, sobbing.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked finally.

And that was the question she had been waiting for, the one she was all too eager to answer.

And so she told him.

-

When no one saw Ryan Phelps for the weeks that followed, people assumed that he needed more time to heal from the wounds left by his wife’s departure. Eventually, as time passed, people began to wonder why he had never been seen outside his apartment. And then the police were brought in. As they brought the door down, and searched his apartment, the found him finally in the bathroom. He had cut his wrists, bleeding himself to death.

Written in dried blood on the bathroom floor, were the words, “I loved only you.”

-

Upon checking his messages, they found that the most frequent caller was one Cynthia McDougal, one of Alice’s workmates.. The last message she had left, the one that had lead the police to question her, was one that went,

“Ryan? I need to see you. It’s important. It’s about Alice. Please, don’t shut me out.”

On the day of Alice’s death, Ryan had been at Cynthia’s house, a few blocks away. It had been a minor slip on Ryan’s behalf, but it was a slip that happened at the wrong time. Ryan had slipped more than once before, and suspicions eventually led Alice to the truth, as it often does. And it had happened on that day itself. The day she had died.

Seeing them kissing from the window had been enough for her. Tears flooding down her cheeks, she ran back to her car, breaking her high heels as she did. In fit of anger, she had left that broken piece behind as she got in her car, and drove off.

Only to die later when a truck had come crashing towards her from her left. In a sense, it had been her fault for jumping the traffic light, but as she lay in her deathbed, seeing her husband who had betrayed her, she knew only that it was his fault.

And it was.

She had been too weak to say the whole sentence clearly at the time, and where she had meant to say, “I’ll wait for you, you bastard. I know what you’ve been fucking hiding from me!” the only words that had come out were “I’ll wait for you.”

Some believe that heaven is what you want it to be, your ultimate expression of happiness. In a sense, Ryan needn’t have been worried, for Alice was in heaven, or at least, her version of it. It was where she wanted him to be, where she wanted him to feel pain like he’d never felt before. All in the name of vengeance.

And so when Ryan had walked past the gates of death, which he had opened by his own hand, she was waiting for him. To spend an eternity together as they had promised on their wedding day.