A RIFT IN REFLECTION

A RIFT IN REFLECTION
by Hal Bodner

(“A Rift in Reflection” originally appeared in CHIRAL MAD 3 Written Backwards, 2016)

Death was not nearly the frightening experience that Phillip feared it would be. No devils awakened him into the hereafter with prodding pitchforks intent on avenging his sins. He found no purgatory, nor any other form of Stygian psychoanalysis to help him work through his unresolved corporeal issues. No beings of purity awaited to clothe him in white robes so that his voice could join in singing praises to a Heavenly Father in which he never really believed.

Contrariwise, death was a languid and easy existence, a simple state of being. It triggered the fond memory of a lazy picnic he and David had shared many years ago. Pleasantly stuffed on runny cheese, paté spread on crusty bread and a veritable harvest of fresh berries, the two of them had quaffed just enough Riesling to be lightly tipsy. Some hour or two after the bottle was finished, they sprawled in the afterglow while the late afternoon sun slowly dried their sweat slicked bodies, limbs intertwined, half asleep and content.

If pressed, Phillip would say he was contented in death–quite a different experience from what he’d known before he crossed over. Life had often been a trial. If he accurately interpreted the behavior of the still-living who sometimes visited the graveyard, these new generations were quite open about who they chose to love. But in Phillip’s day, clandestine assignations were required and an unceasing aura of oppressiveness was the norm. One’s job, one’s family, one’s home, even one’s liberty was constantly at stake, not to mention the possibility of being badly beaten merely if you carelessly took the wrong route home from a bar and were attacked for no other reason than that you were wearing the wrong clothing.

David had been younger, less reserved, more willing to take risks. He was always an inveterate marcher, an eager protestor, an industrious gatherer of signatures on petitions, even before the Plague Years. He often did things that Phillip tried, but failed, to understand. But even David knew the wisdom of caution, of not flaunting what he was when he was in dangerous surroundings.

Death changed all that. There was no longer any need for such fusses. The pervasive, smothering fears were gone. The politicking was moot for such as he and David, best left to those who still breathed and cared about those things. No longer did he wake each morning, his chest tight with anxiety until he had searched every millimeter of his body, breath held in anticipation of spying a dreaded purple spot or obsessively measuring a mole he’d had for years to see if it had grown bigger. No more did he explosively thrash in the bedclothes, jolted into terrified wakefulness by a dream that David was gone, only to waken fully to the mechanical hiss of air from the guestroom and the oppressive knowledge that the nightmare had already arrived.

The not knowing had been the worst. The horrific six months of vomit and shit and sweat and stink had been horrible, populated as they were with nurses swathed head-to-toe in surgical masks and gowns and rubber gloves like neurotic mummies. Yes, those times had been bad, worse than bad. But at least, death offered a finite end. It was the times that came before which had everyone in an agony of pins and needles while they waited. 

Until someone developed a test, an atmosphere of furtiveness pervaded as if by not drawing attention, one could somehow avoid the consequences of a becoming a target. Yet, unbeknownst to so many, the Mark of Caine had already figuratively been painted on their foreheads. Perhaps selfishly, Phillip breathed a little easier after that. But for David, a biomedical Sword of Damocles loomed, poised to sever so very many young lives.

By the time a course of treatment was finally announced it was too late for David. Not that it would have mattered. The early regimens failed, as did the next, and the ones after that. Toward the end of his own much longer life, long after his old friends who had survived the first wave had grown numb to tragedy, or perhaps just complacent, Phillip heard murmurings of “manageability” and “preventative” therapies, and even more vague promises of vaccines on the horizon.

But by that time, thirty-odd years had flown and Phillip was tired. Not just physically; the unceasing mental stress had taken its toll as well. When his time came, he welcomed it and he received an unexpected gift that he had never dared hope to experience again. In death, Phillip once again could be carefree.

There were limitations, of course. The Universe was not without its rules, no matter how arbitrary. When he arrived, he’d pestered the others for a reason, an answer to the question – why? Why were they limited to such a narrow radius of existence, a perfect circle with a radius of exactly twenty-three feet, four and three-quarter inches from the center of each burial plot? Outside of that perimeter, while they could still see the Living, the Dead were blind to other Dead.

It made for small communities and, since most of the Dead no longer cherished the major prejudices and anxieties of the Living, there was little conflict between them. What gripes they shared were petty ones. Though most of the older Dead had lapsed into restive slumber, some of them lay where a large number of cremains were interred. Inevitably, the cemetery echoed with querulous complaints about people’s rest being disturbed each time a funeral party showed up bearing urns containing the ashes of new arrivals. Others, whose plots were located in full burial areas, bemoaned the lack of variety. They hardly could have been happy being stuck with the same thirty or so companions throughout eternity.

Every day, Phillip took a few moments to appreciate how lucky he was to have given in to David’s pestering. Back then, two unrelated men generally did not purchase cemetery plots together. While the attempt to do so was not entirely unheard of, it was distinctly queer – in both senses of the word. Had they tried, it was likely that the cemetery would have rejected them entirely. David urged him to take the chance but Phillip was never comfortable with the idea.

In the end, they compromised. They purchased a pair of plots which, while they were not side-by-side, they deemed to be close enough. They arranged two headstones of identical design as well, seeking to surreptitiously mimic the physical togetherness that they feared the cemetery staff might have denied them had they tried to establish it more overtly.

Life had never been easy for the two men, though Phillip had more difficulty adjusting than his younger partner. At first, they lived with mandatory secrecy and the fear of discovery; they lived knowing that a small slip up could yield violent repercussions. Later, they lived ostracized and rejected by family and friends. They continued to live in hiding so that they could maintain a roof over their heads and put food on the table. They lived with caution, unwilling to compliment neighbors on what fine, handsome sons they had for fear of it being taken the wrong way, averting their eyes when taking in sports events lest their expressions be accurately interpreted as containing admiration for more than the mere skill of the athletes. In the end, of course, they lived as lepers, diseased pariahs. And once David was gone, Phillip lived in loneliness, managing to eke out a drudgery of existence for another few decades before the pain at last subsided.

Perhaps in some cosmic penance for all the obstacles Life had thrown into their paths, Fate smiled upon them in death. By sheerest luck, Phillip and David’s plots were located exactly forty-six feet and nine inches away from each other.

Forty-six feet and nine inches.

With a full half inch margin to spare.            

Joy was his over-riding emotion now, but it was a gentle thing, not the frenetic hullabaloo of mortal jubilation. When his spirit first rose from the grave and he realized where and what he was, he made a beeline toward David’s plot. Those few moments along the way while he crossed those twenty-some feet were sheer agony, half convinced as he was that his new state of being was unique or, if not, that David’s ghost was long gone.

“David?” He called out hesitantly when he reached the end of his invisible tether and could go no further. “It’s Phillip. I’m here sweetheart. I’m here at last.”

A short eternity seemed to pass until a beloved form took shape, no longer ravaged by cancer and wasted away, restored to the seeming vigor of his youth. It was the man he had first known, first loved, unseen except in his dearest dreams for more than thirty years, returned to him at last. 

Phillip was not unaware of some of the other specters around them, most going about their own business but some few watching curiously. Though he felt a faint pang of unease, a discomfort at any blatant impropriety, in his initial excitement at seeing David again, he flung his arms around his lover, for once unable to muster concern about what strangers might think. Though neither of them could truly feel the embrace, it was enough. Finally, they shared a moment, however brief, of quiet bliss.

A quartet of mature women stood watching, two of them were able to see the entire reunion, a third was restricted to observing Phillip alone. The last could see nothing.

“Look at that.” Mrs. Briskin, who was buried under the rose bush gently prodded Mrs. Susskind, who had a plot right up against the lake, with her elbow. “Young love,” she said with affection.

“Love?” Mrs. Susskind’s eyebrows rose. “The fegalehs?”

“Goldie!” Mrs. Briskin, chastised her friend. “Such language! It’s a new world out there.”

The other woman shrugged. “If you say so, Minnie. If you ask me, after Goldwater lost, the whole country went kaput.” She snorted with a kind of amused disgust, a sound that was unique to Jewish widows of a certain age.

“What’s going on?” Esther Futterman whined. “I’m out of range.”

She tugged at Ruth Meinster’s sleeve.

“Don’t ask me,” Ruth replied. “As far as I can see, he’s hugging air.”

Minnie Briskin ignored them in favor of continuing her argument with Goldie Susskind.

“You’re telling me, if your Harry wasn’t buried in Florida, you wouldn’t get a little excited?”

“If my Harry ever looked like that,” Mrs. Susskind pointed to David’s youthful muscular figure and, incidentally, scored the winning conversational point, “…My whole life would have been excited.”

“Live and let live,” Ruth advised her friends, without realizing the irony. “Just live and let live.”

The first pair of old biddies wandered off, followed by Mrs. Futterman complaining to Ruth Meister in their wake. The other ghosts steered clear of David and Phillip as well, respecting their privacy for now. Reunions were not uncommon, but they were few and far between. As this part of the cemetery slowly filled and ran out of room for new interments, they would eventually cease altogether. The current occupants knew this and, consequently, they cherished the novelty of these increasingly rare meetings while keeping their distance so as not to spoil their new neighbors’ moments of discovery. There would be plenty of time later to gossip over the details.

“You look…” Phillip breathed, amazed at David’s restoration.

“As do you, Phil,” he replied. “Not a day over forty.”

“Seventy-three,” Phillip snorted, a little embarrassed by the compliment.

“None of that matters now.”

The two men soon settled into a routine. Between their graves, roughly equidistant, there was a small marble funerary bench. For hours on end, the two men perched upon it, talking, holding hands and reminiscing. Amongst the other spirits, it was soon acknowledged as David and Phillip’s special meeting spot, and they largely refrained from intruding upon the lovers’ privacy.

“Wasn’t there ever anyone else?” David asked one day.

“After you?” Phillip sat up. He’d been reclining with his head in David’s lap while his lover stroked his hair. “Or before?”

“Ah! So there were others!” David smiled mischievously. His eyes crinkled up in that winning way he had.  David had always had an elfin cast to his smile, slightly devilish yet inviting at the same time. The expression had instantly captured Phillip’s heart the moment he’d first seen the younger man sitting in the first row of his graduate class at university. How he had ached to see it again!

Playfully, Phillip punched him in the arm.

“Tricks. On occasion. You wouldn’t know about this, obviously, but as one gets older, one sometimes has to pay.”

“Really?” David’s eyes grew round with affected shock and he pressed his fingers to the center of his chest like an old spinster. “How sordid!”

Phillip chuckled. “It was only a few times. Never satisfying. As the years went on…” He shrugged. “The need grew less. After all,” He lay his head back in David’s lap and reached up to stroke his lover’s cheek. “I spent thirteen years with the best. How could anyone follow your act?”

“I’m sorry,” David said, serious now.

“For what?” Phillip abandoned his efforts to recapture the quiet intimacy they’d shared all morning, and sat up fully. Apparently, David had something important on his mind.

“For leaving you so soon,” he all but whispered.

“As if it was your fault?” Phillip clasped both of David’s hands and looked into his eyes. “As if it was any of our faults.”

They sat for a while, hand in hand like that, simply enjoying their nearness to each other.

“Life,” Phillip said after a long silence, “was not always fair.”

David looked at him, questioning, but said nothing.

“You missed the worst of it, thank goodness. And toward the end – of my days, not yours– things were changing, altering with frightening speed.”

“For the better, I hope.”

Phillip shrugged. “I suppose. After you were taken from me, I didn’t pay a lot of attention. We needn’t concern ourselves with that any more. We’re together now. It almost makes me believe in God.”

“A slut and an atheist!” David kidded.

“I couldn’t bear it without you,” Phillip told him, seriously. “Not again.”

“Maybe,” David leaned his head on Phillip’s shoulder. “This is our reward. So much was taken from us. A half inch of respite was the least the universe could repay us. We were owed.”

Months passed and soon, a few years had gone. In that time, the two lovers had the luxury of connecting as few mortals do, spending hours conversing. Sometimes the matters they discussed were profound, at other times they concerned themselves with trivial things. And while it was inevitable that they would, each limited by his own restricted territory, come to know the spirits of their respective neighbors, they spent the vast majority of their time together, loving each other as best they could.

Yet their existence did not continue entirely uninterrupted; there was ever the occasional incident or event.

Ruth Meinster’s daughter-in-law joined them and the two women did not get along. Phillip amused David, who was out of range, with stories of their squabbling, most of which centered around the antics of Dr. Seth Meinster, Ruth’s son. Uproar resulted when the good doctor showed up to pay his respects to his late wife with his new bride in tow. A bottle-blond Italian Catholic, she briefly united mother and daughter-in-law in their outrage until the intensity of their emotion faded into mere grumbling discontentment.

A teenaged girl was with them briefly, perhaps nine months in all. A welcome companion to young Brian, a lonely lad who had died in a mid-century car crash, she was the only other young person buried within Phillip and David’s shared range. Brian doted on her; at last someone had arrived with whom he had something in common, even though their living days were separated by almost fifty years. When she was exhumed for reasons that no one knew, and the grave was left permanently empty, Brian was desolate. But within a week or so, he was once again his stand-offish self, lurking in moody isolation, rarely moving more than a yard away from where his bronze nameplate was slowly being obscured by weeds.

That was the thing, David told Phillip. The Dead seemed unable to maintain strong emotion for long. Passions could be roused, but they faded quickly. Once again, the two men were confronted with how blessed they were. Their love was deep but unassuming, tender but not exciting, stalwart but not forceful. In death, the two men relaxed into caring for each other again as a matter of course, placidly and without turmoil or angst. Perhaps Death was grateful for the lack of drama and, in return, granted them the peace they felt they had earned.

They were finally content. Life could throw them no more curve balls. No longer did they care what anyone thought. If the act of sex was an impossibility, more casual intimacy was not; in the simplicity of tender caresses and soft whispers, the raucousness of an orgasm seemed less vital and not as necessary in comparison.

Of course, there were times when merely being together by itself grew tedious. When that happened, they gossiped like sorority girls, swapping anecdotes of those of the cemetery’s denizens that the other could not see. The area immediately surrounding Phillip’s headstone, consisted of perhaps thirty graves and a small mausoleum. David’s stone was adjacent to a section of smaller plots where cremains were interred, gleaning him closer to fifty spirits with whom he could interact if he chose. There was enough fodder so that trading quips at the expense of their neighbors’ various machinations and squabbles became an amusing way to forestall boredom when it threatened.

For some time, Fate was kind to them, perhaps almost long enough to equal the balance of the lifetime together that they had been denied. But as the weathered inscription above the door to Tyler McInniny’s mausoleum should have reminded them: Nothing Lasts Forever.

None of the ghosts felt the earthquake physically, of course. Yet some found themselves caught up in the drama of the event and echoed the cries of alarm of the Living. For most though, watching the violent upheaval was nothing more than a welcome and entertaining novelty.

All across the cemetery the terrain shifted and warped. The more mature and stately trees fought the undulations, shedding weaker limbs in a shower of leaves and shards of bark while their less venerable companions merely swayed to weather the violence. A miniature tidal wave crashed against the embankment surrounding the lake; the water undermined the roots and, before it toppled, great swathes of earth crumbled and washed away.

The shaking was so bad that, when it ceased, some of the grave markers no longer precisely matched the identities of the deceased who had originally been buried beneath them. Less obviously, below the sod handfuls of earth invaded spaces previously occupied by naught but stale pockets of air and desiccated bones. Aged moisture-rotted coffins splintered, and the remains within them were jostled to and fro. Even the concrete burial vaults were not immune. Unable to withstand the rocking, some cracked and flung shards of stone to the surface to lie with jagged edges poking above the grass.

Eventually the landscape settled and everyone’s excitement diminished. Though the rearrangement of boundaries was a nice change for many, all too soon the less welcome effects of the cataclysm began to make themselves known.

Mrs. Susskind was gone, vanished entirely when her grave was washed into the lake and her casket sank out of range. The McInniny crypt was reduced to rubble. And Phillip mourned to see that the bench he and David shared was damaged beyond repair. The marble uprights had cracked and one side of the slab had fallen and leaned crazily a-kilter, clearly unsafe for any mortal being to sit upon.

It was a sad, pathetic sight, made more so when Phillip realized that the little bench had come to hold a deep significance for him. It was here that he and David had first been reunited and it had become a symbol of their togetherness. Though the caretakers would undoubtedly replace it, he would be sorry to see it go and, no matter what they erected in its stead, he would always hold the memory of the original in his heart.

It took a while for Phillip to become aware of the gravamen of the change. Some of the others, of course, realized immediately but hesitated to point it out to him. After the earthquake subsided, Phillip sat on the bench, waiting long into evening. His concern, when David failed to arrive, was mild. It had happened before. Every so often, one or the other of them had drifted off into his own mental fog for a while, unaware of the passage of time; the Dead are not so fixated upon the measuring of hours and minutes and seconds as are the Living. For them to fail to meet was uncommon, but not unknown.

Days passed and, sometime within that span, Phillip allowed the knowledge to sink in. At one point, Minnie Briskin braved an approach and offered to ferry messages back and forth but Phillip didn’t respond. It was as if he had moved beyond all of their boundaries, as if he could neither hear nor see even the closest of his fellow specters.

“It makes no sense,” he thought, bitterly. “Some people are taken in their prime. Others of us are forced to linger beyond anything we thought we could endure. It’s all so senseless. Senseless and… arbitrary.”

Another flash of resentment overtook him but he impatiently repressed it.

True, their life together had been all too brief. In death, they had been given a second chance. If both were fated to be equally as brief, so be it. David would never truly leave him, nor would he leave David.

Even now, he imagined him standing just a few inches away with his hand stretched out. Phillip rose from the shattered remains of the bench and dared a few steps toward David’s grave until he came up short. He pressed his hand against the invisible wall that he must need accept though he could not understand it.

He stood there for a very long time. Was there a matching pressure from the other side of the barrier? Was there the slightest bit of warmth against his palm? Did he hear, almost imperceptibly, a sigh of grief that matched his own?

He rested his cheek against the spot. And waited.

Fiction © Copyright Hal Bodner
Image by 👀 Mabel Amber, who will one day from Pixabay