A Story From the Damned
There’s no way of stating the obvious. I am not a happy man. Linda, however, her charm and grace a memory too horrible to forget, seems just as full of life as in her youth, but perhaps I am wrong. She had loved me then, when I was full of the hopeful cynicism only the innocent know, and she still does, although now that cynicism is hardened to a crisp, and needless to say hope has long since said its merry goodbyes. That is no surprise, really. The Second Coming hit us hard: the both of us. We had assumed, naturally, we were protected in view of all the favours we had done for Him in the past, the prayers we chanted for His forgiveness, and the gentle, sweet offerings to His name, not to mention the bringing of a new life into His domain. We were separated from Henry — that is what we had called him — too soon for reason; before we had a chance to get to know the little kid.
I can’t deny it was a surprise to find out that we were the damned. Out of all the people out there we had no idea why He had chosen us for judgement. So sure of ourselves until now; it had become painfully obvious that only the innocent went to heaven. Now the whiskey bottle is all that’s left of the old life, full of the spirit of the man I have forgotten, the man who loved his wife’s smile, and the sound of a baby’s teething. Life then and now is not so different, on the grand scale of things, it is just that I can’t see anything now without thinking of Henry.
If I had been driving perhaps we would not have gone to hell. If we had all been taken in the crash, perhaps I would now be in heaven, instead of subject to the hell of this world, a world in which the pale, restless sun forces itself up every morning to bring light once more onto this barren rock.
