dramatic splatters. It resembled art from a Jackson Pollock red period.
My eyes were slightly open in the scarlet mess that once had been my face and the pupils were like unpolished marble, frozen and lacklustre. I was dead, well and truly dead.
14
Whoever had murdered me had left me unrecognizable; if not for the hair and blood-soiled clothes I wouldn’t have known myself. Wait, I got that wrong: it wasn’t the hair or clothes—I just knew the body was mine; although the link had been broken, I wanted to get back inside myself, pure instinct overriding logical thought. I wanted to put life back into my body no matter how mutilated it had become.
Usually, intention did not come into it; I just arrived back, kind of slipping inside like a hand into a glove, a foot into a shoe. But now I had to force my spiritual self to step into the mess and gore that was my former self, into the clumps of sliced flesh.
Squatting over my remains, I lowered my spiritual butt into my physical pelvis; then, after a moment’s hesitation, lay back like a vampire into a coffin.
Unfortunately, whereas at other times I’d merely melded with myself, returning to flesh and bone an easy and smooth accommodation, I now seemed alien to my own substance. I fitted okay, but I did not adhere, did not become myself again.
I found myself lying loose inside an empty desecrated vessel. And every time I tried to move, I failed to stir my flesh; my spiritual self just parted company with its host. Frustrated and in deep despair, I began to moan.
I had no idea how long I stayed there, endlessly sitting, then lying down, trying to “think” my way back into my body, because in the OBE time has no proper meaning, no value at all, unless you related to a living event played out before you, but I think my endeavours went on through the night and into the morning.
One of the strange things among all these other strange things was that there was still a residue of thought left inside my battered brain; or maybe it came from my body as a whole, as if all that was experienced through life etched itself into the very meat and bone of our being, perhaps even ingraining memories into our tissue and sinews, the very texture of our bodies. Maybe the brain isn’t the all of our thinking.
I caught glimpses of other moments in my life, never fast, yet not clear images as before, almost reflections of events and people, some from long ago, most more recent. The strongest were of Primrose and Andrea, but Oliver was also there amongst them, and so was Mother. But they were all too insubstantial and I was too distressed to pay them much attention.
I was panicking by now, desperate to fill myself and having no success at all. No matter how mutilated, I wanted my body back. I wanted to be me again. I began to pray and pray in earnest, even though I’d never been religious during my lifetime—my God, my lifetime: I’d already given it time span—but that didn’t prevent the hypocrisy now; I prayed as if I’d been a devout religionist all my days. Help me, Lord, I begged, beseeched— whined—and I made outrageous promises about my future actions should my existence so kindly be extended. Church would be my second home, good deeds my second nature. Just another chance, dear Lord, I’m really not ready for this. And remember, dear God, I’m a Catholic.
Yet I kept asking myself through the blathering, was I truly dead?
I didn’t feel dead. But what would I know? It was a first-time experience. Why couldn’t I see the talked-about bright light at the end of the dark tunnel? Where were the deceased relatives and friends who were supposed to welcome me over to the other side? Where were the angels?
All I saw was the walls and furniture of a luxurious but impersonal bedroom in a hotel suite, a TV inside an open cupboard in one corner, a built-in wardrobe in another, long windows with fancy heavy drapes to the left. Neither heaven nor hell. Purgatory then? Could be, I supposed. I’d learned about purgatory in my junior school, which had been run mainly by nuns (I’d attended a Catholic school, even though my mother aspired to no particular religion, and learned that purgatory—if the place existed, which I always very much doubted—was an intermediate place where the soul sweated for purification of sin. But nobody had told me it might be a hotel room).
No, that couldn’t be it, because I wasn’t really dead. If I were, I’d know it, right? Anybody would know it. I mean, there’d be no doubt, would there? Unless, of course, I was a ghost. A lost, confused ghost. Wasn’t that what ghosts were meant to be, the lonely spirits of those who couldn’t accept that their bodies had ceased to function and they were now adrift from it? Troubled souls who didn’t realize they were outstaying their welcome in this world? Nah, not me. That was stupid. Death had never bothered me either as a concept or a reality: when your time came, that was it, no sense in complaining. Move on. Don’t look back. Time was up. Yeah, easy to be pragmatic when it was just a notion for the future. We all know we’re not immortal, so how come death rarely figures in our plans?
This was the kind of pointless argument I was having with myself as I tried desperately over and over again to win back the flesh and I guess it could have gone on endlessly had hot the telephone next to the bed rung.
I made a lunge for it, forgetting I had no substance, and my hand went straight through the plastic and interior workings so that I unbalanced (yep, you can still do that even without a body) and ended up on the blood- soaked carpet. I swore—under my breath if I’d had a breath—and held up my arms in despair.
Although I had no sense of time, I knew it was still late night or early morning because it was dark outside save for the street lights. Besides, when I looked, the digital radio/alarm clock on the bedside cabinet told me it was 1.55 a.m. So who could be ringing me at that hour? Oliver, phoning to apologize for his behaviour earlier? I doubted it. My copywriter’s strops could last for days, sometimes weeks when he was really in a sulk. So who then?
Andrea. Her and Prim’s images leapt into my mind. Andrea would certainly ring if something was up at home. Or maybe she had expected me to ring her last night, as I always did when I was away. I invariably checked if things were okay with Prim and Andrea before dinner or around bedtime (my daughter’s bedtime), but tonight—last night, to be accurate—I’d been too engaged in hassles with Ollie to remember. There might not be a problem at home, I thought, calming myself to a degree, because my wife was aware that I’d probably still be working late into the night, so she wouldn’t be disturbing my sleep. I hoped that was the case as I studied the still-ringing phone.
It stopped abruptly, but I continued to stare. She’d given up, but would be worried that I hadn’t answered. What the hell could I do? I certainly couldn’t phone her back. One more try at the body. You never know, it could just work this time.
I rose and knelt on the bed, gazing down at my mashed face and the sight made me feel sick to my non- existent stomach. I didn’t avert my gaze though. Even if I could get back inside and take control, tap out my number on the phone despite blood-drenched and now misaligned real eyes, how could I speak to Andrea without a discernible mouth? I’d only spit gore and loose teeth into the mouthpiece.
Shit in a bubble bath, what the fuck was I supposed to do? I roared my anguish, a sound no living person could ever hear, and I sobbed into my hands. What had happened to me? Why had it happened to me?
Understand that the thing which makes you a person is not the flesh and blood, but the mind—not the brain —that lives within the shell. It forms the personality, the philosophy, the instinct and perception, the very nature of the man or woman or child themselves and I’ve learned over the years that this is what you take with you when you leave the body. It is you, and when you’re in spirit or OBE you perform just as though you’re in the physical. You close your eyes, you weep, you feel fear, you feel joy, you feel all emotions as usual; and you dress yourself as you would in life, your mind creates the phantom material; as mentioned before, you can experience desire, but because your mind is aware there can be no physical expression, it necessarily becomes unimportant. Your mind also reconciles other senses, so that you can hear, touch (but not actually feel—it’s all to do with perception), obviously see and you can speak, although no one else will hear you (in feet, all those senses are inexplicably heightened, because no longer are there physical defects or dulling limitations). I guess it’s all to do with the mind convincing itself—no, wait, it has to be stronger than that. Possibly it’s because the mind is the reality, all other material things non-existent or irrelevant, unless accepted by the mind itself. I’m no philosopher, never was, but it makes some kind of sense to me. Let’s just say I existed in the sixth sense, which does not preclude all of the other five. Taste is missing and so is smell. Just like in dreams, in fact.
But the main point I’m making is that even in my spirit form I acted exactly as if I were occupying my body as normal. I could sit, lie down, walk, run, jump. And on top of this, I knew I could fly, float, pass through walls, and think myself to other locations.
So now I kneeled on the bed and wailed. I was frightened and lost and had no idea where I was supposed to
