Friday, September 20, 2013

The Canterbury Deaths



When I die, it'll be with a perky goth girl who's been waiting for me her entire life. She'll be gentle, and whimsical, and philosophical about easing me into a void where even the damned dream. They must dream or else they'll escape.

You read too much Neil Gaiman. When I die, it'll be an androgynous, tall figure in a black robe. It will carry a sickle. It will think of me as little more than grain to be reaped, for what else is earth but a field upon which death grows harvests?

You don't know that. When I die, it'll be a Backspace key. It'll delete the end of my life, then the midlife crisis, then the mistakes in my thirties, my time interning in Silicon Valley, then the mistake of going to college, then my all my awful teenage romances, and I'll de-adolesce into a string of nonsense sentences about childhood, until the only remark that's left is, "Unremarkably, Mario Marquez Jianming was born."

I'll wrestle a serpent down the trunk of the first tree that ever bloomed, only resting when it submits to my will.

When I die, I'll get into an elevator where all the floors are 13. It's where they keep the places every other building is afraid to go. Sometimes I visit skyscrapers that have a 13 just to see what death is like. It feels a lot like a tense ball in your gut and minimum wage insurance auto-dialing banks.

Death isn't a thing. There's a sweet man with skin like a cardboard tube and hair the color of toilet paper, and he's a shameless flirt, and everybody wants his attention and his gaze and a dance and then another dance and then another of something else. Some people are stillborn and never meet him, and someone people stumble on the first step of the papery waltz. He's Life, and he's real, but death is just when he stops paying attention to you. It's a petty absence.

I imagine it'll be midway through the journey of our life, and akin to finding ourselves in a sloping and darkened forest, surrounded by wolves and lions that stir in us such feelings that we question if we are body or shade. That's the death of it – not the afterward. I need to flesh out the afterward.

18 comments:

  1. Hmmm. I had always thought that when I die I will be gone. And now you have me wondering whether other alternatives are preferable. I rather like Terry Pratchett's Death. Death with a sense of humour. And compassion...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Where they keep all the 13th floors - well, they have to be somewhere!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I like the first one. The last line is killer too. "They must dream or they'll escape."

    ReplyDelete
  4. All in all, I'd prefer the Neil Gaiman version.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm in awe of your imagination, truly.

    I particularly like the bit about where they keep the places everyone is afraid to go!

    ReplyDelete
  6. When I read "You read too much Neil Gaiman" I nearly spit my pop out. :) Amazing how many views of what death is there are. Love this one John!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I definitely want the skeletal cloaked figure with the scythe. I uttered that once at a dinner party. People looked at me like I was crazy, but here, I feel more comfortable with it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. If I get a choice, I'll take the goth girl. Sounds like a pleasant way to go.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I love the variety. I think my favorite is the cardboard/toilet paper man. He's the creepiest. I think the reality of it will be more like the Backspace key, or the last one, depending on how I go...

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hey there: are you going somewhere? Or what?

    ReplyDelete
  11. Plenty of alternatives there John, maybe we'll meet on one of them?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Such a choice and so hard to choose ^_^

    ReplyDelete
  13. I don't know which I like best. Too many choices!

    ReplyDelete
  14. I like the idea of the Backspace key, but Momus has me on this one (the song "Death Will Be Like"):

    http://youtu.be/fVe1WlaPEpE

    ReplyDelete
  15. This was awesome :) Though I must admit, my favourite literary version of Death is Gaiman's.

    ReplyDelete
  16. I've always believed theres something after death. You however have taken it to infinity and beyond John hahaha. Genius, pure genius - loving your work Sir

    ReplyDelete

Counter est. March 2, 2008