It’s dark. There’s a terrible smell. It’s the most terrible smell I have ever experienced. I try and inhale through my mouth to reduce the intensity but it doesn’t help I gag and gasp and wretch. I’m still breathing? I thought we’d decided that the end was the end?
I try and calm down and breathe shallowly. Where am I? I don’t feel terribly well.
My mouth tastes horrible like I had a really big night the night before. As my eyes become accustomed to the light I start to look around. I’m in a kind of rubbish dump. It looks like the place you see in the documentaries where orphans are trying to eke out a sort of existence by filtering and mining through the discards in the Favelas.
I can hear the sound of water sloshing about and dripping all around me. I feel cold. I realise I am naked. But there is a source of heat coming from the far side of this space.
As I take in my surroundings I can make out that I am in something that looks like a medium size barn with translucent walls. There is also a source of light, an orange and purple glow over in the corner.
I lift my head a little and feel so terribly weak.
I can see some shells of ruined cars, old cars from the eighties. This is a big space. It even looks like my car, my Rover Metro from the 90’s and look there’s two Alfa Romeo’s too and a Honda! These are my cars. I can see the gleaming red of my old Ducati and the Yamaha I crashed into the back of a taxi. There is a tall looming stack of worn tyres from all my bikes, a mound of black snake like innertubes and 18 bike frames and a whole workshop of cycling spares – including my beloved Rotrax.
I slowly move around so I can see the other side of the space. The floor is covered in paper, magazines, and what looks like toilet paper. There are old-fashioned nappies stacked up, and disgustingly, a pile of about 2,000 condoms.
Beside them are thousands of empty tubes of toothpaste, toothbrushes with worn bristles and one lone hairbrush.
I keep turning and can see a stack of wine and beer bottles.
Is the afterlife a big party I wonder?
But sadly it looks like I’ve missed it, they’re all empty, rusting and leaking.
My heart leaps a little as I see almost one hundred bottles of Chateau Neuf Du Pape, although sadly they are all empty and corkless. Anyway, I certainly don’t feel like having a glass right now. There are about ten whiskey bottles and what looks like hundreds and hundreds of beer cans and bottles. I think I can make out the distinct red cans of McEwans Export – there are stacks of them. There must be over three thousand Coke cans. Laying beside them are thousands of cigarette butts and a whole heap of dog ends from joints.
I close my eyes, the smell and the thought of the alcohol and cigarettes make me feel even worse.
I shift around a little, still unable to get to my feet.
The room appears to go on and on with bundles of waste everywhere. There’s a massive stack of CDs, records and tapes. I can see a Stone Roses cassette with the distinct lemon on the front. I loved that tape! I always wondered what had happened to it. There are three bass guitars, what looks like a ukulele, some amps and a whole heap of old hifi. Oh, my favourite Kef speakers are there! The books are all stacked neatly beside the CDs a whole column of Ian Banks and Sebastian Faulks.
Behind the CDs, there is a huge mountain of clothes. It looks like thousands of pants and socks, shirts and then t-shirts on the top, 60 or so pairs of black jeans and a myriad of stripey jumpers. I think I can make out my favourite black baggy jumper from Uni. Oh and too many hats!
There’s an entire hill of computers, old Macs, almost fifty mobile phones and some old TVs.
I lay back and contemplate my situation. I close my eyes. Wretching from the smell I now recognise as my own shit and piss and vomit. I wonder? I risk a glance and can see a mountain of my skin and dandruff and beside it, a pile of what looks like dark wool but is obviously facial hair and eyebrows. There is even a yellow-white stack of toe and fingernails that stretches to the ceiling.
The glow in the corner seems to be getting brighter. I can make out ghostly shapes in the flames. The smoke is rising. The flames in the corner catch on what looks like my last sofa. It burns quite slowly until the flames touch my old beds and a pile of about forty duvets with sheets piled up all around them.
I must be hallucinating. The walls are diaphanous, flickering with ghostly images of people I recognize. It’s like an old film projector, showing moments of my life in stark, haunting detail. I see the ghostly images of people. It doesn’t look like a party or a wake. I can see my old bosses standing around. My grandparents, my parents, my sister and aunts and uncles fade in. My friends from school, my friends from Uni, my friends from Ealing and London are standing looking at me. The images tail back and then shown to me like a dream, with some faint and with just a flicker and some bright and clearly in focus and constant I see all of my ex-partners. The brightest one of all is the last one. She looks calm with a half smile. Our eyes meet. I could stay like this for hours but then suddenly the flames lick upwards, the thin walls start to burn, and the image of her long hair combusts. All the faces fade.
The walls are in flames. I am surrounded by fire.
Shit, shit. It looks like I’m in trouble now. The room is getting seriously warm and the smoke is billowing out from my old furniture. I try and sit up and feel very dizzy. The smell is getting worse.
I look around frantically as the flames grow higher and higher. There must be a way out.
I can see on one side a heap of potato peelings, and corn cobs, interspersed with chicken carcasses and bones. So many bones. Thousands of wooden chopsticks.A skyscraper of empty plastic sushi boxes. I can feel the heat intensely now, it is searingly hot and I try and move away. I manage to crawl a little bit away from the heat although the fire is roaring now. It’s crackling away and releasing such a pungent eye-watering toxic gas. I can taste it like poison in my mouth. The back of my throat is so dry. I try to swallow.
I can see my old house plants in the corner, like a mini forest, their pots chipped and cracked and try to get closer to them. I make a final last effort to get to them and then lay down amongst the leaves and branches as the flames engulf me.
The heat is intense, the smoke choking and there is nothing I can do but lay back amongst my plants and I surrender to it all.
The fire engulfs the possessions of my life but remarkably leaves me untouched. Like burning alcohol, it doesn’t hurt me. I try and relax and my heart is strangely calm.
Suddenly there is a mini explosion as one of my old cars blows up. The flames burn higher and higher and I black out.
When I come around the oppressive heat and the acrid smell have gone. I’m lying on the moss under a tree on the edge of a forest. It feels like the softest bed in the world. I feel the moss on my back and the grass tickling my feet in the breeze. I inhale the beautiful clean woody scent of the trees. I am held and I am safe. The contrast of my sensations is immense. I feel a cooling breeze on my face, I’m still naked and it feels so natural. I feel a sudden sense of liberty. As I come to my senses I see that I’m sitting up quite high on the hillside looking across to Malham Cove and I feel a huge swell of euphoria deep inside my chest; warming my arms and body. Above the cliffs, the sky is a rich deep blue with white clouds way up high in a herringbone pattern. I feel such joy from seeing the rolling countryside green and untouched stretching away from me. I hear the sound of bird song and the rustle of the wind in the leaves of the trees above me. I relax with a sigh and close my eyes forever.
My take on Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives