The blackness threatened to consume Charles as he fought for his life. The war that was being waged on the inside could not be seen on the outside. Only in Charles’ heart was there any fear. His mother, her mother, the doctors and nurses, the person next to him and even his god did not see him coming. The best physical representation of what was going on in his soul would include holding your breath as long as you can… and then going another second… then another. It was a battle that was destined to be lost from the very beginning, but Charles was not ready to give up yet. He was not ready to die.
It is common for someone to have things left to do before they die; things to say, people to meet, things to do, places to go, wills to write. None of these interested Charles. Even though he was cognoscente of the fact that he would die, he never did the one thing he wanted to do: ask a question.
Man questions many things. Sometimes in those questions man gets answers. Other times more questions are created. What is God? That has always been one of the more important themes in Charles’ life. Where is God? Why is God? These were secondary. Questioning where a sign post is would not make much sense if you did not know what a sign post was. Charles had taken part in various different religions on a trial basis. Upon finding something wrong with one he went to another, until there were no more to try and he was forced to make up his own belief system. The one integral part was not yet there. The one piece of the puzzle had not yet been placed. Soon enough he found find it.
Everyone knew what would happen to Charles. At birth the doctors said that he would die prematurely. A strange disease they said. Very rare. One in a million. A hundred-million. One. The only one that mattered. What disease? It mattered not. Unpronounceable and unimportant. It was Charles.
Eva, Charles’ mother, didn’t know what to do with him. She had always wanted to spoil her first child, but she never imagined that it would become a need instead of a wish. They did everything together. She took him everywhere, trying not to miss a moment. A moment they were apart was measured as a fraction of his life. If he were to live only ten years and she missed an hour, that percentage was too much to bare. No, she would be around him all the time.
School, of course, was a question on her mind. Not finishing high school herself, and having a harder time finding a job that would provide for her and her disabled husband (before he left her), she knew the importance a good education in life. What would Charles ever do with that? What could he do? He only had a certain amount of time on this earth and school would mean being away from him.
That was the hardest part for Eva. Waiting. Wondering. Will it happen today – tomorrow? Will they find a cure? What if the doctors were wrong? Not knowing is the hardest thing sometimes.
Charles never really had any friends growing up. Not being in school contributed to that greatly, but it was also due to his mother being overly protective. She knew that if Charles had friends he’d be with her less. Many people would think this is a sad existence and perhaps they would be right, but it is the only existence Charles knew. You cannot hate that which you do not know is wrong. You cannot change something which has become your reality.
“So many things he’ll never be able to do. So many people he’ll never meet. So many things he’ll never see.” These things ran through Eva’s mind as she sat in the cafeteria at the hospital. She knew it was over, that it was only a matter of time. It was easier not thinking about it. Thinking about it made it real. The orange she bought did nothing to ease the ache in her stomach.
Two floors up and five rooms over an alarm was started. The signal traveled through wires into a large computer. The computer, interpreting the information it had just received, sent the signal through its electronic innards to start blinking the red light – someone was dying.
People of all levels of importance and knowledge ran into the room in an attempt to help the occupant of room 431. Orders were shouted out and equipment was brought in to resuscitate this boy. All the while a sound rang out for all to hear. The incessant tone of death. All knew what it meant. Anyone within earshot of it hung their head slightly and some prayed to their various deities.
It was too late, Charles was dead.
There are many different theories on death. Most are influenced by various religious, moral, and personal beliefs, but there is one common theme among most people: The preservation of human life is above all else. The act of throwing one’s self in front of a bullet headed for someone else is an extreme act of heroism. The taking of one’s own life is considered an atrocity by most, even though they are both, in some sense, the same action.
Charles always had a different view of death. From a very young age he had a profound understanding of death. It wasn’t that his cat, that was run over by the car, was sleeping or that it “went away,” it was quite simply dead. It saddened him, but it happened. Nothing could be done about it. Death, in Charles’ mind, was part of life – nothing to be feared or pondered or lamented over. To Charles it was nothing more than a scraped knee.
A moment before death, the moment that Charles knew he would die, he called out to his mother. Physically restrained to the bed by all ways, he mentally called out to her. It is nothing that can be explained, only experienced. Eva would never know why she felt a very warm feeling at 3:12 P.M., why her stomach no longer ached, why a single tear came to her eye. A smile across her face.
- – -
Darkness. Profound emptiness. No bright light, no tunnel, just darkness. It lasted seconds… or maybe moments. Hours maybe. Charles could not be sure. He only knew that after an undetermined amount of time he smelled chocolate chip cookies and had an inexplicable warm feeling.
Slowly the darkness peeled away from him like someone taking their hands away from his eyes after asking him to “guess who.” Standing in front of him was an entity. Actually, standing is not the proper term. It was more like the entity existed. It neither floated or stood, it simply was there. Entity, on the other hand, is the perfect explanation. It wasn’t man, beast, or even matter, just vapor. Like a fuzzy memory.
“Are you… are you God?” Charles asked.
The entity spoke nothing in any form, but Charles knew his answer. He even got the feeling the entity smiled slightly. A smile a father would give his son.
“Why am I… here?” Charles asked, looking at his surroundings, though he saw nothing.
The questions would be deceptive to anyone but Charles, for he is – or was – an atheist. His first question was more of an exclamation than a question. The second was asked out of fear. Imagine that your entire sense of reality is based on the fact that Disneyland doesn’t exist. That Mickey Mouse is just something people choose to believe in. Then imagine your reaction if you were flown there.
Again, the entity did not answer. Answers are never as important as the questions anyway.
“If you are God and this is… Heaven… or the afterlife… then I must be,” Charles looks down at his feet, “dead.” He then looked up at the entity. “Is this right? How can this be? How can I be here if I don’t believe You exist?”
A tear suddenly came to Charles’ eye as he looked at the entity, not of sadness or fear or even happiness, but a tear of understanding. All the time he was on Earth he didn’t believe in a god because of his experiences with people who said they did. He cursed and shunned anything dealing with God – his god, their God, any god – and, due to of their arrogance, he lost an important ally.
Hypocrisy. That is what Charles saw in most religions he tried out. People saying they believed in something only to go against many of the founding principles of that particular belief. Saying one thing and doing another. It was because of the hypocrisy that Charles decided to do his own thing. He believed in a god, just not The God. His own morals became his commandments, his powerful belief in the disbelief of most things became his creed. It was from this that he gained respect for himself, and respect for his god. If he died, he thought, and found that all that he believed was wrong and that he was doomed to spend eternity in their hell, at least he didn’t go to another side just to reap the benefits.
The tear ran unchecked down his cheek. It gathered at the cleft in his chin before falling into nothingness. Before he knew what happened the nothingness around Charles rippled from his tear. He suddenly felt as if he were falling or floating. He began to thrash about wildly in an attempt to gain control. Looking around himself, Charles saw the rippling nothingness soon fade into a clear picture of a cloudless, azure sky. Turning back he attempted to find the entity to ask it one last question, but it was gone. Charles felt his eyes slowly, lazily drift shut sending him into a peaceful slumber. The last image he saw before going to sleep was the sky… it seemed to be smiling at him. Smiling like a proud father.
