John Paul Jackson
The 9th Fortress
The 9th Fortress
Copyright © 2010 by John Paul Jackson
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1. Her Daniel
And that's how I died.
I've heard people say — the living anyway — that dying is a serene experience as natural as falling asleep. They speak of a tunnel of light that pulls you toward awaiting loved ones on the other side. In all these stories you will come across words like comfort, contentment, peace, but the overall message is always the same: There is nothing to fear from death. I'd love to say that's true. I'd like to ease your mind, but then I was never a good liar.
Missy was my life support; that was her official title. However, with my quantum leap from the old world to the new still finalizing, I was too busy screaming to notice her, too busy fighting the excruciating current of electricity arcing inside my skull.
'Don't think!' she urged, her young voice giving direction. 'Don't fight it! It'll be worse if you fight it. Just relax and it'll all come back to you.'
My jaw snapped shut and my gnashing teeth seemed to shatter inside my mouth. I must have bitten off a piece of my tongue because I could feel a chunk of meat go down my throat. On top of this, a brilliant ray of sunlight blinded me. Great sprays of blood erupted from my mouth, and the more I fought against this internal inferno, the more my body convulsed, as if pissed at me for putting up a fight.
It went against the grain to give up, of course it did, but the very moment I surrendered, I felt the agony diminish. Like the air being released from a balloon, the pain receded. Extinguishers hit those flames, a firing squad of headaches dropped their arms, and an enormous sense of peace overwhelmed me.
'I've been so looking forward to meeting you!' she proclaimed. 'So looking forward!'
Her Southern drawl warmed my ear. This was a voice I recognized. It was as familiar as my mother’s, yet oddly, I was certain she was a stranger to me. I lay flat on my back on a cold, altar-like stone. Clean fresh air sprang up my nostrils and filled my lungs; every giddy breath of it sent vitality coursing through my bloodstream, bestowed strength to my muscles, brought focus to my sight, and clarity to my thoughts. I was conscious, safe, and alive. Alive!
I opened my stinging eyes without fear, and saw a prepubescent black girl smiling over me. Startled, my limbs froze as she flattened her button nose fully against mine. 'You're really here!' she cried. 'Here! Here! Here!'
Maybe it was her elation, but her face seemed like an exaggerated caricature to me. Her huge brown eyes sparkled like diamonds, her teeth were like pearls between her lips, and her glowing cheeks were as if two apples stuffed the corners of her mouth. Fortunately, she retreated a few feet — all the better to see her, and my remarkable situation.
'This is not the end.' she said, in a serious tone.
'What is this?' I asked groggily, squinting up at her. The question left my mouth as a mumbling slur and a release of bloody drool, and the girl chuckled through five little fingers. I licked the roof of my mouth to be certain I still had a tongue — I did — and sitting up with a groan, I suddenly gasped at the wings growing out from this little girl's back; each was as tall and as wide as her own body, with every pristine feather gracefully combing the air beneath her.
'This is no dream,' she said, answering my thought. 'This…is an awakening!'
I wasn't entirely sure if she had just read my mind, the flying girl not confirming nor denying. After rubbing my eyes in an attempt to remove her image from my sight, and failing, I decided to find some composure, to take another breath and a minute to examine this vivid state of consciousness. I stretched, scratched, and readied my lips to ask my next question. 'Who — '
'Name's Missy!' she interrupted. 'Life support.' Courtly, she bowed, as if in the presence of someone greater than myself. 'Hello, Daniel. It's an honor.'
'Daniel?' I grumbled. 'That's my name, Danny Fox.'
'Daniel Franklin Fox, actually! But Danny is fine too.'
My name leaving her lips seemed to give the girl such a thrill that I wondered if there had been some kind of mix-up, a clerical error or case of mistaken identity. Just who on Earth was she expecting?
'You!' she cried. 'Always you! Only you!'
'Missy?' I asked a moment later, my mind wrestling with an irritating sense of deja vu. 'Why is this? Why are you…so familiar?'
'So you do remember me?!' she exclaimed, excitedly.
I begged the girl to settle down as she circled around me. Thankfully, she came to a halt in front of me, and curling a length of her lustrous dark hair around her index finger, she studied my frown. Seemingly fascinated by the face in front of her, she sucked her finger into her mouth, and then chewed on her hair as if it was licorice.
'Oh, don't look!' she said, bashfully pulling the soggy strand from between her lips. 'I'm just so nervous!'
I nodded empty-headedly, and then suddenly became aware of the impossibly obvious: For a man who was supposed to be dead, I was more alive than ever. I could feel a feverish adrenaline coursing through me, a luminous lifeblood making me feel like an invincible teenager all over again. Maybe I am invincible.
'You're not!' she said, immediately. 'But I am glad you're feeling better. Sit up. Take a look-see!'
I did, still wearing that same ten-year-old jacket, wrinkled white collared shirt, and raggedy jeans. If this were the afterlife, then I would have preferred to meet it in something more appropriate, a suit and tie perhaps, with polished shoes and a haircut. The one thing I could say for these old clothes is that they were, at least, familiar, and familiarity brought comfort in this most unfamiliar of environments.
'The shirt really could use an iron,' said Missy, her lips closed, 'but it's not that bad. I've heard of grown men who wake here in diapers! Like big babies in diapers! How embarrassing for everyone involved. One man, I was told, even woke here dressed as a banana! A great big yellow banana! Can you believe that?'
'You didn't move your lips!' I said, pointing an accusatory finger at her face. 'I was watching closely! I was! You spoke, but your lips…your lips, they didn't move!'
She waved her hand flippantly, as if telepathy was hardly worth discussing. Fortunately, she could not dismiss the world around me, this nowhere place I had never been to, dreamt of, nor imagined before; it was beyond anything I had ever experienced. Surrounding me was a panorama of immaculate, unblemished white, not a shadow, shade, bump nor hill anywhere to be seen. My ears were filled with a low but incessant drone, too, like the constant whine that fills a jet's cabin miles above terra firma. This was a space devoid of heart and soul — a spiritual vacuum.
'I must be dreaming! I must be!'
'That's what most people think at first,' she said. 'Reckon I did, too.'
'You did?'
'Oh, I've been through this process, Daniel, and I've been waiting forty-one years to help you through yours. Have to say the time has absolutely flown by! Cannot begin to describe what this means to me. Even now, as I see
