Something You Need to Find
Flash-fiction - by Timothy Mudie
They say that the opening to the afterlife is breathtaking. Sailors describe cresting the horizon or rounding a glacier and seeing a pillar of gauzy light stretching to the sky. They write poems about the majestic swirling souls that congregate at this pit near the North Pole. Attempt to put into words the sensation of a deep connection to the ineffable.
Honestly? I’m underwhelmed.
Maybe I’m trying to keep my hopes from rising. It wouldn’t be my first defense mechanism. The day Emma and I met—when she caught my eye as I tried to surreptitiously pour brandy from a flask into my coffee during a history lecture; the wink and grin. She had me right then, but I insisted to myself she was just another girl. That my heart could flutter for anyone. Emma came up after class and introduced herself. Like she knew I needed to stop lying to myself.
A hush settles across the deck as the ship emerges from the glacier’s cliff, and there in the distance the entrance to the afterlife comes into view. Creaking wood, ropes slapping against masts, seabirds calling. I hold my breath, lean closer, as if I’ll spot Emma among the countless other souls of the recently deceased.
When Emma passed, I left for the Pole the next day. I hocked my grandmother’s engagement ring—with Emma gone, who would I give it to?—and booked passage on a ship with a few dozen other hollow-eyed seekers. But it’s been months, and I fear that Emma might have already passed on to the afterlife. Or she’s forgotten me. Or a million other potential tragedies that batter like insistent moths at the window of my anxiety.
I close my eyes, take three steadying breaths. Emma always knows—knew—how to soothe me.
“It’s truly something, isn’t it?” a woman says beside me.
I open my eyes and blink at her numbly.
“My father’s in there,” she says. “He promised he’d wait, that he’d come back with me, even if it’s only for a little while.”
There’s that too—even if Emma comes back, she can’t stay. She won’t really be returning to the land of the living, just visiting.
I nod but don’t speak, and after a few moments the woman drifts away to find someone else to talk to. I guess I should be more excited, but instead I wonder why everyone else isn’t sadder.
***
It’s the moment we’re all here for. The ship anchors and we disembark into the launch, making for shore where we will be guided to the pillar of souls. Clouds mar a sky that is otherwise so blue it seems fake, like it’s been painted on. Sunlight glints off the snow, and as we approach the entrance to the afterlife, the ground resembles diamonds, the souls smoke.
I’d asked what I should do to find Emma. The woman I’d spoken to told me, simply, “Just wait.”
Which is what I do. I stare at the souls, think about Emma. Our last trip to Old Town, hopping one-footed from cobblestone to cobblestone, eschewing the cafes to split a bottle of red wine on a park bench, tossing bits of pizza crust to starlings. Lying in bed, bare legs so tangled I could hardly tell where mine ended and Emma’s began. The way my heart pounded the first time I said I loved her.
The accident, the dour constable escorting me to identify her. The memory of her face in that moment shrivels my heart.
Something brushes my eyelid, and if we weren’t in the tundra, I’d suspect a butterfly.
“Sylvie. You’re here.”
Emma floats in front of me. Ethereal, her lower legs mist, but here. I throw my arms around her, but they pass through.
“You’re here,” I echo. “I thought you’d be gone.”
“Not yet,” she says.
She lets the words sit until I realize the meaning. “You’re not coming back. Emma, please, you have to come back.”
“There is no coming back, Sylvie. The people who leave from here, the ones who go home? They’re not real.”
“But—”
“I’m not real. Not the way you want me to be.”
I want nothing more than to take her hands. To feel her hair, to kiss her. If she came back with me, I could.
“Whatever’s down there,” she looks toward the pit beneath the pillar, “the afterlife or whatever—I don’t know what it is, but it’s like whatever is down there is animating a memory of me. A remnant, a really good copy maybe, but it’s not me, Sylvie. I’m gone.”
I look around, frantic. Others are reunited with their loved ones, some of them already heading back to the ship. “No,” I say over and over. “No, you’re not gone. You can’t be gone. No, no, no.”
I want her to come home with me. Maybe it won’t be forever, but one more minute with Emma is worth it. Even if she is only a copy. Can’t that be good enough?
“I think we all know that these souls aren’t the same as the people they were, but no one wants to admit it,” Emma says. “But we have to, Sylvie. You have to.”
My head won’t stop shaking. Sometimes it feels like it hasn’t stopped since the moment I saw her laid out on that table. I want to pretend that Emma will be with me forever. But Emma has always known what I need.
Emma’s fingers grow solid, caress my cheek. Her lips touch mine. She leans her forehead against mine and our tears trace the same tracks down my cheeks.
And then she really is gone.