Remembering Hell
Remembering Hell
By
Helen Downing
Louise Patterson is back! Now a long-term resident of Heaven, Louise finds a need to return to the one place she thought she had left behind forever – HELL. Back in Central City Hades, she meets Joe who needs a guardian angel. Louise also meets a tall, dark and handsome stranger who just may change her afterlife. In this compelling sequel to 'Awake In Hell', you are invited to return to the land of the damned with Louise as she learns a whole new set of lessons about how to live a good life, even after you’re dead.
For:
My loving husband, Larry
Always...
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Copyright 2014 © Helen Downing
Published by Beau Coup Publishing
http://beaucoupllcpublishing.com
Cover by JRA Stevens
For Beau Coup Publishing
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Larry – for your understanding through this whole process. You have to know agape if you are going to be married to a writer! I will love you in life and beyond.
Gabrielle – you are a great photographer and a great friend.
Linda and Patch – for being great kids. I love you!
Mom – for passing on the “writing gene,” and for giving me the best role model anyone could have.
Dad – for giving me a foundation on which to build my faith, and for allowing me to take my own path.
Michelle and Diana – for being those friends who understand they have to share me with my imaginary friends.
Every single reader – for giving me a chance.
CHAPTER ONE
The old woman wakes up suddenly, startled perhaps by continued life itself, with no idea where she is. Then it dawns on her. She’s in her recliner in the living room. Damn, she thinks to herself, I fell asleep in front of the TV again. She gingerly starts to shift in the roomy seat as if lubricating her old bones in preparation of getting up. Getting old isn’t for pussies. She laughs out loud at her own joke. She starts to rise, sits down hard, and tries again. After the second false start she almost regrets not allowing her niece to buy her that electric recliner with the automatic seat that will dump a person out like a giant regurgitating monster at the push of a button.
When she’s finally upright, she glances at the television to check the time. Her life has become so predictable that a glance is all it takes. There is no clock on the TV, but she can estimate the time based on what is on, and what is happening on the program. She has become quite the creature of habit in her advanced age, and despite the fact there is little to no chance that will ever change, it doesn’t stop her from hating herself for it.
According to undeniable evidence—first round of Jeopardy—it is around seven-fifteen in the evening. That doesn’t give her much time. Her husband will be home within the half hour after his hard day of hanging out with a bunch of other old coots at the lodge shooting the shit all day. To say she’s amazed by the fact that the same half-dozen geezers can consistently show up to the same place every day and still have anything at all to talk about is an understatement. Not that they need new material. The old favorites: The world is going to hell in a handbasket, what happened to music/movies/sports teams, what those kids today are thinking with the way they dress/behave/think/act is standard fare for her other half and his cronies. If they had their way, John Wayne would still be riding tall, President Reagan would have been elected King of America, and Clint Eastwood would have remained a badass before he got old and turned into a wuss making chick flicks that make folks cry. What happens to men when they get old? Why do every single one of them turn into Grandpa from the Waltons?
She is smiling to herself as she ambles into the kitchen. When you are young, you never think about the end. Sure, when she was a girl she would imagine growing old with her friends and her husband, but that was more about growing up, not growing old. The fact is, you don’t think about it because to contemplate aging means facing the fact that you are going to die. And while every human being spends some time reflecting on how or when they will meet their personal demise, we spend no time imagining what it will be like to wake up in a body that doesn’t work anymore, or to look at a reflection of a decrepit version of what we once were. Death is a stealthy creature for most of us. It sneaks up behind us while we aren’t paying attention, then all of a sudden you know deep within you, that the world has left you behind. And for her, that is not metaphorical. Sometimes she feels as though she’s the last real person at the party.
Once again she wonders why she’s been chosen from all those she’s known and loved to be cursed with damnable longevity. There were those, some of whom she can hardly bear to think about let alone name, who led incredible lives. Some had families, some had adventures, and one had it all. In the meantime, she’s lived small and unimportant. But she’s lived long.
She reaches into the cabinet underneath the counter for a large pot. Then almost by rote she begins to reach up into cupboards for spices and into the freezer for meat and tomato sauce, then one more stop under the sink and she’s ready to begin. As she’s rising from her last trip around the kitchen, her eyes fall on the now dead flowers her husband had presented her the previous week for her eighty-ninth birthday. She laughs quietly as she scoops them out of the vase and into the trash. This is what I get for living almost a century, she thinks ruefully. More things that decay and die before I do. Exactly a week ago her husband had come in with them, at the time in full bloom and color, in a huge bouquet wrapped with a large red bow. It’s not that she hates flowers, but she doesn’t exactly love them either. She ended up feeling as ambiguous about her gift as she did about her actual birthday. And lately about her life.
The microwave starts beeping so she goes over and gets the Tupperware container now filled with sauce in place of the block of red ice she has put inside. She pours it in the pot while the burger is browning in a frying pan on the burner next to it. She lets out a long tired moan as she lifts the heavy pan and dumps the meat into the pot. Then she begins to stir and get lost in thought. She remembers a saying. ‘If I had any decency I would be dead. Everyone else is.’ That thought brings another laugh to the surface. Who had said that? It was someone famous. That terrible woman from the Algonquin Round Table. What was her name?
Memory is of course a luxury for the young. After eighty-nine years, the old woman can barely even remember those people who have left her long ago. She also can’t remember falling in love, or the feeling of the first kiss, or anything that felt really good. She can’t remember doing anything great, and she can’t remember doing anything really bad either. She is as ordinary as the sauce she’s making. No one ever complains about spaghetti for dinner, but no food critics ever review it either.
She had only married once, believe it or not. In this day and age, everyone takes a mulligan on the marriage thing. If they even marry at all. She had not been too young, but it wasn’t desperation either. She could have hung on for a few more years for something better, but she didn’t. She seems to remembe
r that she loved him. They had never had children. It wasn’t by choice, but it didn’t tear them apart like some couples. They always felt if it was meant to be, then kids would come. And kids came. Other people’s kids. Her niece is her favorite. With that face that reminds her of a long gone sister whom she’s loved with all her heart. She convinced everyone that she had no biological clock nor any facsimile of one. She constantly referred to her life as “carefree and unhindered,” and talked about how she could go anywhere at the drop of a hat or do anything on a whim. No one ever had the nerve to mention that she had gone nowhere and done nothing. She imagined they believed she was internally wrecked by the fact that she was barren. Likewise, she never had the nerve to tell them that she wasn’t bothered at all.
She continues to stir with one hand while reaching blindly with the other and begins adding spices without even a glance. She doesn’t have to measure anymore. She has made this exact dish every Wednesday for the last fifty-eight years. That was her husband. A Monday is meatloaf, Friday is Chinese take-out, and Wednesday is spaghetti kind of man. He was kind but not loving. He was decent but never righteous. He never raised his voice or hand to her, but he also never went out of his way to compliment her. He had gone to work every single day for almost forty years, yet never displayed any ambition. He was a good man with no passion, and that made her sad.
In the beginning they had made love often. But then it just dwindled from twice a week to Saturday nights to on birthdays and anniversaries to never. They had never had an actual conversation about sex in all the years they were having it, and neither one of them seemed to miss it terribly once it was gone.
The one thing she does remember is the first day that she realized she was old. Really old. She woke up and looked in the mirror and saw an old woman peering back at her. Watery light eyes, translucent skin barely stretched over creaky bones. She started to cry as she realized her life was now behind her. She had gotten a seat at the table, and she had been satisfied with meatloaf and spaghetti. Now, every course had been served and all that was left was to wait for the bill to arrive.
These days she is used to the idea. In fact, she’s getting a little impatient. She has served her time, now isn’t she supposed to go on? Move to the next plane, come back as a housecat, whatever is supposed to happen? Can’t it just happen already? Then she realizes there’s something heavy in her hand. She looks down and to her surprise she is adding a new ingredient to her sauce. “How funny,” she says quizzically as she continues to pour.
After she has administered half the box into the pot, she replaces the Rat-B-Gone under the sink.
She hears the front door open and close. “Honey, I’m home!” her husband yells.
“Dorothy Parker!” she exclaims as he walks into the kitchen.
“No, try again,” he says dryly as he sits down at the table.
“Sorry, I just remembered the name of a woman who said something important,” she says as she makes a heaping helping of spaghetti and sets it down in front of him, just as he lifts his fork. It’s a dance they’ve been doing for almost sixty years. He asks about her day before he fills his mouth with a giant bite. She begins to ramble about the neighbors getting new puppies, shih tzus she thinks, and so that woman who wears heels even to the grocery store has had to walk them at least four times. “It’s a wonder she doesn’t have bunions the size of oranges!” she says as she begins to rinse off the utensils and run hot water in the frying pan she used to cook her deadly meal.
Within fifteen minutes she hears his labored breathing. She turns her back to him and starts wiping the counters. “I also found some adorable sweaters at Walmart,” she goes on, as if nothing unusual is happening. “I thought we could pick a few up and put them in the Christmas closet for the girls.” She winces slightly as he crashes to the floor, turning over the chair with him. He’s convulsing and a weird foamy mixture of sauce and bile is coming from his mouth. Finally, he stops seizing and she moves back to the stove. “Now go on, and don’t worry. You’ll do fine in Heaven,” she says as she sets her own plate on the table across from his now limp body.
She picks up her phone from the counter and dials 911. When the operator answers she calmly gives their address and tells the woman on the other end that there are two people dead inside. Then she hangs up and begins to eat. Her last thought is one of comfort, because if he is going to Heaven, then she won’t have to face him after this horrible deed. She says to no one in particular, “I have a feeling I will be going somewhere else.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck!!”
The words just fly out of my mouth. It’s like only yesterday I was a cabbie in Hell and filling the boss’s “curse jar” took up the majority of my disposable income. However, that is not the case. I have called Heaven my address for a great many years.
My name is Louise Patterson, and I died and went to Hell. Whether or not I deserved it, or if I did indeed earned the redemption that I finally found are purely subjective. However, I did end up here, in Paradise where everything is cool and folks are happy and the general population tends to frown upon the gratuitous use of the F bomb.
“Lou! Haven’t heard you talk like a truck driver since…well, since you were a truck driver!” Will says, laughing at his own joke. Will is one of my dearest friends up here. At one time, he was my guardian angel. I was once damned to eternal temp jobs, and Will had to stalk me. He was so bad at it I almost always saw him hiding or following me. Good times. Well, not really, but I’ve learned to remember the good and let go of the bad.
I get up from the wall of screens I’ve been parked in front of for the past few hours. We are in the central office at WF&PI. The “company,” as we call it, is a remote viewing center for family members and curious angels to look in on what is happening on Earth. This is a wondrous place, and if people watching is a hobby of yours in life? You’ll want to spend a great deal of time here once you are dead. Joyous occasions are celebrated tenfold up here, with generations of families reuniting for weddings or births or even deaths. When someone shuffles off the mortal coil, they are brought here where they can be welcomed back into the bosom of love from everyone who knew them in life. That is, as long as they make it here. If they end up in the opposite place, they are usually alone and confused for a while. But it doesn’t take long to figure it out. For me, I knew I was in Hell the second I realized that I had no choice in what I could wear every day, and the supernatural closet that was providing my outfits had been programmed by someone for which torment and disgrace came as naturally as mother’s milk to a newborn. At the time I thought it was some kind of Devil. In reality, the one person who knows how to punish someone more acutely than anyone else is one’s self.
When I got to Heaven and could choose my occupation I considered working here. In the end my ambition got the better of me, and I chose a different path. But I like to spend my extra time here. I get to see my parents or grandparents occasionally when they come in to hang out and watch my daughter or grandchildren or great-grandchildren.
It’s bizarre to think of myself as a great-grandmother since my appearance hasn’t changed since my demise. I died of breast cancer when I was forty-five years old. That means I get to be middle-aged for eternity. Lucky me! I watch from on high as my family and friends go on with life. Many of them aged and eventually passed and came here. I try not to take it personally when a few of them look at me with surprise, as though I was the last person they’d expect to see in Heaven. But most of the ones I was closest to were very happy to see me. Almost as happy as I was to see them. There is a great sense of peace when someone I love shows up here. I get to be part of the welcoming, with smiles and tears and eternal agape. Agape is my favorite word. It means unconditional love. And I’ve been fortunate, that all of my loved ones who died ended up here immediately. No one had to take the detour I did through Hell before finding their place in eternal bliss.
Well, at least not yet.
Will is now studying me with sincere concern. “Maybe I should call ahead to the agency and warn them that you’re coming,” he says, tapping his Bluetooth earpiece.
“Not necessary,” I say quickly as I walk to the elevator and punch the down button. “Gabby is at the front desk. She’s already briefing Deedy.”
“How do you know?” Will asks with wonder.
“No, I haven’t sprouted any remote viewing power or anything,” I say, half joking and half resentfully. “I just know Gabby. And I feel it in my bones.” “You know your bones aren’t real, right?” Will says with a smile.
“Yeah? But I bet if I hit you in your imaginary nose bone it’ll hurt!” I tease.
The doors open, and I’m on the elevator. “And don’t bother trying to follow me. I doubt you’ve gotten any better at it in the last quarter-century or so…” I say as the doors close. Will is wagging his finger at me, like a father to a toddler who’s just sassed at him. I just give him my most alluring smile as the doors shut.
As I start down the long trip back to the street and down the few blocks to the agency, I think about Gabby. Gabby is short for Gabrielle, and she is an archangel. Yeah, the one you’re thinking of. Don’t worry, I thought it was a man too. Anyway, Gabby as part of the “top dogs” of the Angelic hierarchy comes complete with glorious wings and a set of superpowers that would make Stan Lee jealous enough to cry. One of those superpowers is that she can read minds. Well, kind of. What I’ve learned over the years is that she can’t exactly read minds. It is more like she can hear what is in your heart or soul or whatever. Of course, a lot of times, it seems that she is answering a question that you have just formulated in your mind, hence the mind reader rap.