Damned (22 page)

Clamped under one leather-clad arm, Archer carries a brown manila
envelope. His hands stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans, the envelope
pinned between his elbow and his hip, Archer tosses his pimpled chin in my
direction and says, "Hey.”

Archer throws a look at the people who surround us, sunk in their addictions
and righteousness and lust. Each person cut off, isolated from any future, any
new possibility, withdrawn and isolated within the shell of their past life.
Archer shakes his head and says, "Don't you be like these losers..."

He doesn't understand. The truth is I'm prepubescent and dead and
incredibly naive and stupid—and I'm consigned to Hell, forever.

Archer looks directly into my face and says, "Your eyes look all
red... is your psoriasis getting worse?"

And I'm a liar. I tell him, "I don't actually have
psoriasis."

Archer says, "Have you been crying?"

And I'm such a big liar that I say, "No."

Not that being damned is entirely my fault. In my own defense, my dad
always told me that the Devil was disposable diapers.

"Death is a long process," Archer says. "Your body is
just the first part of you that croaks." Meaning: Beyond that, your dreams
have to die. Then your expectations. And your anger about investing a lifetime
in learning shit and loving people and earning money, only to have all that crap
come to basically nothing. Really, your physical body dying is the easy part.
Beyond that, your memories must die. And your ego. Your pride and shame and
ambition and hope, all that Personal Identity Crap can take centuries to
expire. "All people ever see is how the body dies," Archer says.
"That Helen Gurley Brown only studied th
e first
seven stages of us
kicking the bucket."

I ask, "Helen Gurley Brown?"

"You know," Archer says, "denial, bargaining, anger,
depression..."

He means Elisabeth Kiibler-Ross.

"See," Archer says, and he smiles. "You are smart...
smarter than me."

The truth is, Archer tells me, you stay in Hell until you forgive
yourself. "You fucked up. Game over," he says, "so just
relax."

The good news is that I'm not some fictional character trapped in a
printed book, like Jane Eyre or Oliver Twist; for me anything is now possible.
I can become someone else, not out of pressure and desperation, but merely
because a new life sounds fun or interesting or joyful.

Archer shrugs and says, "Little Maddy Spencer is dead... now maybe
it's time for
you
to get on with the adventure of your existence."
As he shrugs, the envelope slips from under his arm and drifts to the stony
ground. The manila envelope. The brown paper is stamped
Confidential
in red block
letters.

I ask, "What's that?"

Stooping to retrieve the fallen envelope, Archer says,
"This?" He says, "Here's the results of the salvation test you
took." A dark crescent of dirt shows beneath each of his fingernails.
Scattered across his face, the galaxy of pimples glow different shades of red.

By "salvation test" Archer refers to that weird polygraph
test, the lie-detector setup where the demon asked my opinion about abortion
and same-sex marriage. Meaning: the determination of whether I should be in
Heaven or Hell, possibly even my permission to return to life on earth.
Reaching spontaneously, compulsively for the envelope, I say, "Give
it." The diamond ring, the one Archer stole and gave to me, the stone
flashes around one finger of my outstretched hand.

Holding the envelope outside of my cell bars, beyond my reach, Archer
says, "You have to promise you'll stop sulking."

Stretching my arm toward the envelope, carefully avoiding contact with
the smutty metal bars of my cell, I insist that I'm not sulking.

Dangling the test results near my fingertips, Archer says, "You
have a fly on your face."

And I
wave
it away. I promise.

"Well," Archer says, "that's a good start." Using
one hand,

Archer unclips the oversize safety pin and withdraws it from his cheek.
As he did before, he pokes the sharpened point into the keyhole of my cell door
and begins to pick the ancient lock.

The moment the door swings open, I step out, snatching the test results
from his hand. My promise still fresh on my lips, still echoing in my ears, I
tear open the envelope.

And the winner is...

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. Please consider amending the
famous slogan currently synonymous with the entrance of Hell. Rather than
"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here..." it seems far more applicable
and useful to post, "Abandon all tact..." Or perhaps, "Abandon
all common courtesy…”

If you asked my mom, she'd say, "Maddy, life isn't a popularity
contest."

Well, in rebuttal, I'd tell her that neither is death.

Those of you who have yet to die, please take careful note.

According to Archer, dead people are constantly sending messages to the
living—and not just by opening window curtains or dimming the lights. For
example, anytime your stomach is rumbling, that's caused by someone in the
afterlife who's attempting to communicate with you. Or when you feel a sudden
craving to eat something sweet, that's another means the dead have of being in
touch. Another common example is when you sneeze several times in rapid succession.
Or when your scalp itches. Or when you jolt awake at night with a savage leg
cramp.

Cold sores on your lips... a bouncing, restless leg... ingrown hairs...
according to Archer, these are all methods that dead people use to gain your
attention, perhaps in order to express their affection or to warn you about an
impending hazard.

In all seriousness, Archer claims that if you, as a living, alive
person, hear the song "You're the One That I Want" from the musical
Grease
three times in a single day— seemingly by accident, whether in an
elevator, on a radio, a telephone hold button, or wherever—it indicates that
you'll surely die before sunset. In contrast, the phantom odor of scorched
toast merely means that a deceased loved one continues to watch over you and
protect you from harm.

When stray wild hairs sprout from your ears or nostrils or eyebrows,
it's the dead trying to make contact. Even before legions of dead people were
telephoning the living during the dinner hour and conducting polls about consumer
preferences regarding brands of nondairy creamer, before the dead were
providing salacious Web site content for the Internet, the souls of the expired
have always been in constant contact with the living world.

Archer explains all of this to me while we trudge across the Great
Plains of Broken Glass, wading the River of Steaming-hot Vomit, trekking across
the vast Valley of Used Disposable Diapers. Pausing a moment, atop a stinking
hill, he points out a dark smudge along the horizon. A low ceiling of buzzards,
vultures, carrion birds soar and hover above that distant, dark landscape.
"The Swamp of Partial-birth Abortions," Archer says, nodding his blue
Mohawk in the direction of the shadowy marshes. We catch our breath and move
on, skirting said horrors, continuing our foray toward the headquarters of
Hell.

It's Archer's assertion that I ought to abandon being likable. My
entire life, he's willing to wager, my parents and teachers have taught me to
be pleasant and friendly No doubt I was constantly rewarded for being upbeat
and peppy...

Plodding along beneath the flaming orange sky, Archer says, "Sure,
the meek might inherit the earth, but they don t get jack shit in Hell...

He says that since I spent my entire life being nice, maybe I should
consider some alternative demeanor for my afterlife. Ironic as it seems, Archer
says nobody nice gets to exercise the kind of freedom a convicted killer enjoys
in prison. If a formerly nice girl wants to turn over a new leaf, maybe explore
being a bully or a bitch, or being pushy or simply being assertive and not just
smiling bright toothpaste smiles and listening politely, well, Hell's the place
to take that risk.

How Archer found himself damned for all eternity is, one day, his old
lady sent him to shoplift some bread and diapers. Not old lady meaning wife,
but old lady referring to his mother; she needed the diapers for his baby
sister, except they didn't have the funds to pay, so Archer stalked around a
neighborhood grocery store until he thought nobody was watching.

As the two of us walk along, shuffling through the flaky, waxy dead
skin of the Dandruff Desert, we approach a small group of doomed souls. They
stand in a cluster roughly the size of a cocktail party in the VIP lounge of a
top-tier nightclub in Barcelona, every person turned to face the center of the
crowd. There, raised above the core of the group, a man's fist waves in the
air. Muffled within the people, a man's voice shouts.

At the edge of the crowd, Archer ducks his head near mine and whispers,
"Now's your chance to practice."

Seen through the listening figures, filtered between their standing
forms, their filthy arms and ratty heads of hair, there's no mistaking the
center of their attention: a man with narrow shoulders, his dark hair parted so
that it falls across his pale forehead. He thrashes the fetid air with both
hands, gesticulating wildly, punching and slashing while he shouts in German.
Dancing atop his upper lip is a boxy brown mustache no wider than his flared
nostrils. His audience listens with the slack expressions of the catatonic.

Archer asks me, What's the worst that can happen? He says I ought to
learn how to throw my weight around. He says to elbow my way to the front of a
crowd. Push people out of my path. Play the bully. He shrugs, creaking the
black leather sleeves of his jacket, saying, "You choose... " At
that, Archer places one hand flat against the small of my back and shoves me
forward.

I stumble, jostling the crowd, falling against their woolen coat
sleeves, treading on the polished brown uppers of their shoes. Honestly,
everyone present wears the type of sensible clothes best suited to Hell: loden
coats of deep green and gray flannel, thick-soled shoes and boots of leather,
tweed hats. The only ill-chosen fashion accessory present is an abundance of
armbands worn around everyone's biceps, red armbands emblazoned with black
swastikas.

Archer tosses a look at the speaker. Still whispering to me, he says,
"Little girl... if you can't be rude to Hitler..."

He urges me to go pick a fight. Stomp some Nazi ass.

I shake my head no. My face blushing. After a lifetime of being trained
never to interrupt, I couldn't. I can't. The skin of my face flushes hot,
feeling as deep red as Archer's pimples. As red as the swastika armbands.

"What?" Archer whispers, his mouth pulled into a sideways
smirk, his skin bunched around the stainless-steel lance of the safety pin
which skewers his cheek. He chides me, saying, "What? Are you afraid
Mister Herr Hitler might not
like
you?"

Within me, a tiny voice asks, What's the worst that can happen? I
lived. I suffered. I died—the worst fate any mortal person can imagine. I'm
dead, and yet something of me continues to survive. I'm eternal. For better or
worse. It's obsequious little nicety-nice girls like me who allow assholes to
run the world: Miss Harlot O'Harlots, billionaire phony tree huggers, hypocrite
drug-snorting, weed-puffing peace activists who fund the mass-murdering drug
cartels and perpetuate crushing poverty in dirt-poor banana republics. It's my
petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My
cowardice enables atrocities. Under my own steam, I step away from Archer's
pushing hand. I'm shouldering my way through woolen coat sleeves, elbowing
between the swastikas, clawing and swimming a path toward the center of the
crowd. With each step I'm actively stomping on strangers' feet, wedging myself,
plunging deeper into the tightly packed mass of the damned, until I burst into
the eye of the mob. Tripping over the front row of feet, I tumble, falling with
my effort, only to land on my hands and knees, face-first in the loose
dandruff, my eyes level with the polished toes of two black boots. Reflected in
the buffed, glossy leather, I see myself close-up: a pudgy girl dressed in a
cardigan sweater and tweedy skort, a dainty watch strapped around one chubby
wrist, my face blazing with bug-eyed, flushed embarrassment. Above me, Adolf
Hitler looms with his hands clasped behind his back. Rocking on his boot heels,
he looks down and laughs. My glasses have flown from my nose and lie
half-buried in dead skin, and without them the world looks distorted. Everyone
bleeds together to form a solid mass entrapping me; unfocused, their faces look
smeared and melted. His head thrown back, towering monstrously over me, Hitler
directs his tiny mustache at the flaming sky and roars with laughter.