Forever After (a dark and funny fantasy novel) (2 page)

             
When the doors of the pub slammed shut in the drunkard's wake; after the bartender breathed a huge sigh of relief, muttered a thankful curse under his breath and allowed his mind to prepare for sleep, the only customer remaining in the bar calmly closed his book, deposited it into his pocket and walked towards the exit.

****

              Neil staggered down the street, spitting distasteful comments as his mind whirled with madness. He paused under the hazy glow of a streetlight -- looking like a Dickensian villain in the ethereal halo -- to paint the pavement with a glob of sticky saliva, before continuing on to his destination.

             
Through the front window of one of the terraced houses he watched two silhouettes dancing together in the cosy radiance of a dozen candles, their naked forms entwined in the flickering warmth.

             
“Fucking bastards,” he spat. “
Bastards!
” his shout was loud enough to twitch a few curtains in the street, but the lovers dancing in the orange glow didn’t flinch. 

             
Shaking with anger, Neil kicked open the gate to the property and stormed to the doorway. Behind him, unseen in the shadows, the reader with the apathetic eyes watched as Neil dropped a shoulder and charged the door, snapping it free from a flimsy lock and stumbling onwards into the warm house.

             
A scream from the house echoed into the street. Curtains twitched; lights snapped on like lines of luminous dominoes; fingers hovered over final digits on multiple phones. The stranger in the shadows calmly walked forwards.

             
The screaming woman dragged her voice back to her throat, gathered her senses and glared at the intruder. “Neil!” she pulled away from the tight embrace of her naked lover, clawing his reluctant hands away from her exposed breasts.

             
The disappointed naked man didn’t seem as startled by the intrusion. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked, his eyes on Neil, his hands still trying to instinctively grasp the flesh next to him. “It’s not what it--”

             
“Don’t even try to lie to me,” Neil interrupted, his voice sharper in the moment, the slur of inebriation overpowered by adrenaline.

             
He raised the gun, pointing the trembling barrel at his wife and his best friend, giving them an equal share. “I know what you’ve been up to. I’ve always known. I’m going to give you both what you deserve.”

             
His wife moved forward, shoving a stray hand away from her thigh. “Neil, don’t do this. Calm down. There’s no need--”

             
“
Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down bitch!
” Neil’s finger grasped tighter on the trigger as the anger coursed through his veins.  “Ten years we’ve been married!” he yelled, waving the gun around like he was conducting an orchestra. “Ten
fucking
years!” he turned his disappointment towards his former best friend. “How can you do this to me?”              

             
“Look mate--”

             
“No!” Neil snapped, the gun now madly rolling around his palm, the barrel threatening everyone and everything in the room. “I’m not your fucking mate, not anymore. We’ve been best friends since junior school, we’ve known each other most of our lives.
I’ve
never done any wrong by you.
I’ve
never stepped out of line.
I’ve
never even
looked
at any of your girlfriends,” Neil was emphasising his comments by pointing to himself, forgetting he was holding a gun. His potential victims wondered if this was their chance to rush him, to tackle him to the ground, to save themselves from a possible execution and a certain lecture. There was no need.

             
Neil began to relate a story of how he had forgiven his friend for breaking his Action Man, when he squeezed the trigger. The resulting blast shook the small room to its foundations. In the street everyone was now awake and alert.

             
The rattling resonance of blasted gunpowder and the stench of blood, defecation and cordite was still in the air when Neil came to his senses. He found himself looking at his own bloodied body; his hand still cradling a smoking gun, his temples tapped with entry and exit wounds.

             
“What was that?” he asked calmly.

             
“Looks like you shot yourself.”

             
He looked up to see the silent man, the man who had been reading a book in the bar whilst he waved his gun, just standing there.

             
“You?” he said softly. “What is this? What’s going on?” he paused, contemplating his current clarity. “Why am I sober?”

             
The previously silent man simply shrugged. “Death seems to have a sobering effect on people.

             
He held out his hand, and, after staring it for a few seconds -- trying to soak in what the newcomer had just said -- Neil grasped it and the two men left the house.

             
When the deafening residue of the blast had disappeared and the sound of police sirens were hovering on the horizon, Neil’s former best friend was the first to break the resulting silence.

             
“Well, I never saw that coming.”

             
His partner in crime couldn’t withdraw her eyes from the lifeless body of her former husband. The chill creeping in from the open door suddenly felt all too poignant. She was cold and shaky. She felt exposed and ashamed.

             
“What should we do?” she asked, a little hysteria creeping into her voice.

             
“Well, I don’t know about you, but
I’m
still horny.”

****

              In the tranquil waiting room for the recently deceased, the untroubled and uninhibited souls of the dead awaited their destination. A plethora of former people -- a mixture of the sinful and the slightly less sinful -- all contently gazing into the middle distance.

             
Neil sat in complete silence amongst those quiet souls for several minutes before finally turning to the man that had accompanied him on his journey and asking the question that had been niggling away at him since they arrived. A question which had further bothered him after witnessing other confused people enter the waiting room, each accompanied by a man or a woman who, like his accomplice, seemed to know what they were doing and where they were going.

             
“Are you my guardian angel?”

             
The apparent angel had been staring disinterestedly towards the front of the room, where a short female receptionist sat behind an open desk, calling out names and room numbers.

             
He laughed softly at the question

             
Neil smiled politely, but still wanted an answer. “Are you?”

             
“No,” he said softly.

             
Neil nodded solemnly and turned his attention towards the front. A short stubby man guided a confused youngster down a corridor where they both disappeared through an unseen doorway. Moments later the short stubby man emerged with a slip of paper in his hand and a smile of contentment on his face.

             
“You
are
an angel though?” Neil wondered.

             
“Something like that.”

             
The receptionist called the room to attention by clearing her rattling throat over the loud speaker. “Michael Holland,” she said, looking up expectantly.

             
The man next to Neil stood.

             
“Is that you?” Neil quizzed. “Is that
us
I mean?”

             
Michael nodded.

             
Neil stood, feeling a twinge of trepidation for the first time since entering the room. “Where are we going?” he asked as Michael led him down the corridor towards a beckoning black door.

             
Michael shrugged his shoulders and the last words Neil heard before entering the room were: “I have no idea.”             

****

              The smile of contentment that Neil had seen on the face of the stubby man, was moments later plastered on the face of Michael Holland. It was a smile of relief, of a day’s work completed.

             
He took his slip of paper to a small computer terminal embedded in the wall near the reception area. When prompted he typed his serial number onto the touch screen and inserted the paper into the slot provided. A series of electronic beeps followed before the details of Neil Simon’s life flashed onto the screen.

             
His date of birth, his date of death: The cause of his death was listed as “Accidental Suicide”. His destination as “to be decided”. In the end that was all it came down to; four snippets of information, leaving Michael feeling that he got more out of their life than they did.

             
Moments later the details dropped away, replaced with a notice stating:
“Thank you. Your account has been credited”
before the screen returned to default, retaining the slip of paper.

             
Michael walked past the waiting room without a glance. He felt the sneering eyes of the receptionist on his right shoulder; the snobbish glares of fellow reapers on his right. He made for the exit, but before he could slip out, and back into whatever part of his world he chose, he bumped into someone who regarded him with equal degrees of snobbish sneering.

             
The tall foreboding figure stood defiantly in front of a line of teenagers all wearing expensive clothes and sombre expressions. As Michael took an instinctive step backwards, the spindly giant shifted forward, looming over him.

             
“Anything good this evening Michael?” he asked. His sunken eyes glared down at Michael like a warden studying a new arrival.

             
Michael didn’t like the man, but he couldn’t help but feel meek in his presence. “Hey Seers. No, not really,” he answered submissively

             
Jonathan Seers stepped back. His bandy legs shifted sideways to expose the line of sullen teenagers that had all but vanished in his shadow. They all looked up at their warden expectantly.

             
“I gate-crashed a party,” Seers announced smugly.

             
He grabbed the boy at the head of the line, his thick, long fingers tightly grasping his shoulder length hair. He pulled him forward with a hard yank and held him in front of Michael like a prized turkey.

             
“Freddy here turned 18 today,” Seers explained as the boy capitulated to the overbearing presence still grasping his hair. “He wanted to be popular. Wanted to give his friends a night they wouldn’t forget. He tried to buy some pills,” he pulled harder on the teenager’s hair, lifting his tiptoes off the floor and holding him up by the mangy locks. “Smart-arse ended up with a batch of rat poison from a dealer who didn’t take too kindly to being talked down to.”

             
Seers grinned. Michael feigned a smile.

             
He yanked the boy backwards, back into his prominent shadow. The boy toppled and fell over his own heels, but he seemed relieved to be out of the grasp of the derisive behemoth.

             
“Another exciting day in the Heights,” Seers gloated, the smirk still smeared on his bony face. “Maybe you’ll join me someday.”

             
“Maybe,” Michael replied without conviction.

             
Seers grinned one last time and then shoved his way past Michael into the waiting room. Michael held his ground until the last of the followers had sulked their way past. In the waiting room he could hear the greetings and arse-kissing that Seers received, even the glum receptionist was up on her feet with an adoring smile on her face, as Seers worked his way around the room like a King addressing his loyal and adoring subjects.

             
Michael whispered under his breath: “Fucking prick,” before scooping the hood of his jacket over his head and walking out of the little piece of Purgatory.