At Play’s End

Roderick decided that driving the chariot of temporary death was a thankless job. Firstly, it didn’t really live up to its name; the chariot was really just a huge African elephant named Bruno. Secondly, what exactly did he get out of it? The treat of listening to the demi-dead whine all day. Didn’t they know how good they had it? Here they were, being handed the chance to turn their lives around, redeem themselves and secure a cozy spot in the afterlife and all they could do was bitch about how much Bruno stank, or about how much work that they were missing, or couldn’t this have waited until after their favorite sitcom? He had imagined, a long time ago, that everyone was as quick to repent their wicked ways as Ebenezer Scrooge; he’d quickly learned otherwise.

Nowadays he found himself sitting around a lot with Bruno, a lot of extra time making eternity even longer. Of course Bruno didn’t complain; when a pachyderm the size of several tanks had any semblance of spare time, it tended to use that time to eat, whether or not it was still alive. Sometimes Roderick read while they wandered the vast savannah of the afterlife. Surprisingly, there was no shortage of science fiction and fantasy on the other side. He had heard, somewhere, that it was because these writers never actually ran out of ideas, even after death. Once, he had asked why the afterlife wasn’t flooded with Poe stories. The clerk he’d had been talking to only shook her head sadly and gave him a look that he supposed had been meaningful. Unfortunately, the meaning of the look had flown right over his head.

Bruno liked the Pool of Forever Sight; animals did. Humans avoided it for the most part, because looking into the reflection meant revealing the entire past, present and destiny of the universe. No one cared to see that, because when one person in thirteen billion inevitably looked into it, they cried hysterically for the rest of their afterlife, or laughed bitterly for the same amount of time, or simply went mad. Once, when waiting on the shore for Bruno to finish his bath, Roderick had accidentally looked into the Pool. He wondered what it meant that he saw nothing at all. He didn’t dwell on it much.

The elephant had wandered near the Shrinking Tree, a deep hole in the ground that was actually shallowing and shrinking as the Tree became the Growing Tree. Here, interrupting Roderick from the fifty-first thrilling installment of Jaws and Claws of Wild Space, they received their call to the beforelife by a roll of thunder and a small earthquake.

Both driver and chariot of the temporary dead rolled their eyes at the drama. Bruno turned his head to the sky, great head shaking from side to side, ears swaying gently. Roderick took the time to pat the thick, scratchy fur on the top of the elephant’s knobby head before saying the special words that released the two of them from their internment in the afterlife.

“Let’s get out of here.”

With a bang and a rush of wind, they were transported through a million years of ether and memories into the beforelife. Roderick couldn’t claim to actually enjoy the sensation, but there was something exhilarating, each time, about escaping from the cool calm of the underplace and exploding into the tangible.

In the space of negative time, possibly before Roderick was even born, they stood in the busy square of a huge city, unnoticed. All around them, people moved without pattern or reason in the rhythm of a meal here, a fuck there, sleeping, and talking nonstop. Roderick now knew what it meant to be silent, and wondered if any human on the planet of Earth was capable of such a thing.

Unsure of who they were here for, Roderick looked around for their semi-dead. Usually, it was easy to tell such a person from those moving around them; they were on the brink of losing their chance to be safe in the afterlife. They still held the innocence so appealing to the Harpies of the Gate, but their faces were clouding with confusion and that terrible hint of temptation towards meaner things. Even in such a crowded square, it took little time to spot such a face and when he did see it, it made Roderick’s heart ache.

The woman, aged in the way of those who worked to eat and ate to live, was standing precariously on the edge of the fountain in the center of the square, in the middle of everything but easily ignored. Mist surrounded her like some sort of aura. Her goodness was unblemished, but her thirst for life was dulled. In her eyes, he could see grief, fresh and stinging, but what shone the most was the loneliness. He wondered if she would hurl herself into the fountain, just to end that pain.

Climbing down from Bruno was no easy thing, so the pachyderm reached back and lifted him down using his huge, coiling trunk. Safely on the ground, Roderick approached the fountain, still unseen. Her eyes truly saw when he stood in front of her, standing beside her on the fountain.

He held his hand out to his sister. Tears welled up in her eyes to see him, her shock and disbelief making his throat clench a little. He didn’t know what to do when she threw her arms around his neck, so he just hugged her back. Pretending not to notice when her tears soaked the shoulder of his shirt, he rubbed her back and ruffled her hair.

She drew back, still looking at him like she couldn’t comprehend his being there. “You said you couldn’t come,” she said, breathlessly.

“I lied.” He knew what year it was. He had been born, he had grown up and moved away. His big sister had stayed in the city, had held down odd jobs to be close to their father, had cried alone when their father passed away, quietly, and now tried to quell her grief, alone, when the last thing she had in the world had disappeared one drizzly day in October. The cat had been her only thing to talk to, probably, because the only thing she had time for anymore was work, sleep and work. She still loved life as much as she could, but was hard pressed to live.

“Roddy, I understand that you have work. That’s important—”

“What could be more important than finding Viva with you?” Time meant nothing in the afterlife, and he couldn’t remember for the life—or death—of him, what had been so damned important that he couldn’t take the weekend off and fly down to visit his sister. “It’s a big city, and she’s a little cat. We have to get started right away.”

She paused in the middle of a choked laugh, and he turned to see what startled her; she was staring at Bruno. “Roddy, why is there an elephant in the middle of the square?”

“You always said you wanted to ride the elephants at the zoo.”

Her laugh rang in his memories, something to keep with him in the rest of eternity that he would endure somehow as long as he could remember her looking so happy as they rode through the streets on Bruno’s huge back. He made the sun shine, because he could do that for the semi-dead, and took her out for coffee and a bagel. When they found Viva together, hidden away in an alley and mewling happily, it started to rain again because she was no longer semi-dead; her life had returned for her. To her, the rain was a pure as the sunshine.

Somehow, he convinced her that she should move back with him; they bought the ticket together, and he spent the weekend packing with her. But his time was running short; she was not semi-dead anymore and his job here was done.

The plane flight was long, and she fell asleep on his shoulder. He patted her hair one more time, hating the him that had spent so long forgetting about her, and said the quiet words that ended his time in the beforelife. “Take me back.”

Bruno wandered the savannah near the Gates, while Roderick whispered with the Harpies. All three were gathered close around him, smiling their gentle razor smiles.

The oldest spoke first. “We all remember her.”

“Wasn’t she lovely? She smiled like a child. She rested here for some time, telling us all her stories,” the youngest said. “Didn’t you come to visit her?”

“He was the driver, newly. Don’t you remember?”

They spoke quietly, because the full force of their voices was enough to drive any soul into the other world again. Roderick was tied to the afterlife, of course, and to Bruno, but their voices could give him a headache for centuries.

“Of course, of course.”

“What stories did she tell you?” he asked.

They tapped their talons on the stone, shaking their heads. “That is between her and us.”

He frowned. “But she was happy?”

Smiling, they raised their wings to the sky; he knew that was the only answer he would get. He glanced at the middle sister, who spoke only to thunder the judgment of souls. Her teeth glinted and her wings stretched highest of all; he couldn’t help but rejoice. If he could help only one semi-dead in all of space and time, he knew that the Judge approved most of the one he had saved. He could only agree with her.