THE COFFIN LID

Barry had a secret, a chemical visitation to a private sowlrd of his own where he could spend a few moments with an old love...

The biggest problem for Barry Jinkers was he didn’t wake up until after they’d screwed his coffin lid down. Then it was possibly too late.

He’d enjoyed dying. He did it every so often, mostly for the high it gave him when it crossed his mind that he was dead that it might be time to wake up.

Last night, though, he’d overdone it.

He had his own special recipe, a collection of chemicals and medicinal ingredients measured in precise quantities that slowed everything down, even his heart, and he slipped into a grey world of nearly nothing.

He was never sure whether he was awake or dreaming, whether he was alive or actually on the borderline with death, whether what he experienced was real or fantasy. The only thing was that he knew he enjoyed it. The thrill it gave him when a tinkle in his mind suggested he must wake up or he just might stay dead, and that would never do because once completely dead he wouldn’t be able to repeat the exercise and get that mental tinkle again and again.

And he did love that tinkle. In fact he loved more: he loved the whole experience, the pretending to slip into sleep, the closing of his eyes in a way that seemed permanent even though he had the comfort of knowing it wasn’t.

Even more, though, he loved the visions.

You couldn’t have called them dreams, not proper dreams anyway because in his experience dreams kind of echo life and these visions did nothing of the sort. No, they were visions all right, crazy pastel patterns that swirled around and slashed with multicoloured lightning, with had old friends dancing in them, naked girls he’d known before old age stole his interest in naked girls, but he had that interest back in his visions all right. And before then, the boys, little tackers like he’d been running round the playground with, playing tig and shooting bullets with outstretched fingers, bang, bang, you’re dead. And in the ochre or pink or sky blue mist they fell down dead. They had to. It was the game.

Naked girls and dead boys. Swirling. That’s what they were doing, swirling and grinning until their faces became all mouths, grinning laughing mouths, and their teeth shone like jewels. Boys and girls, teeth like opalescent gems.

And the whisper that it must be time to wake up, so wake up he did. Usually. But not last night. He put himself in wake-up mode and Gertrude was still there, Gertrude of the huge breasts and wandering hands. He’d known her before old age had incapacitated him and sent him in search of his chemical life. He’d gone out with her, drinking in the Vicar’s Arms down Swanspottle way. He hadn’t loved her, nobody loved the Gertrudes of this world, but he had fooled himself into thinking that love was exactly what he did feel for her.

“You are so precious to me…” He remembered saying that to her time after time after time, and she had been. It’s easy to find the girl in your arms to be as precious as that when she’s smiling into your face with teeth as white as snow. So “Gertrude, sweet Gertrude” he had whispered, and she was there in the mists, with him and next to him, clambering all over him, her fingers like demons refreshing the parts he’d forgotten he had.

She came so very often. In his visions. Thank goodness it was only in those visions, though. A few minutes was enough of her clinging ways. And less than a few minutes was enough time to tell her the same old lies, I love you, Gertrude, you are my precious Gertrude, there never has and never will be anyone other than you…

And she would respond with that familiar smile, that white-toothed, bright eyed smile, and her hands would stroke him, his chin, his chest, his everywhere, until he had the wisdom to force himself to wake up.

He’d never really loved her, of course. It was just that she haunted him like nobody else did. In the end, and he understood this full well, he’d learned to hate her. Though he never said it to her, he couldn’t be that cruel, not even to a Gertrude in a vision.

It was when the swirling pastel world he called into being finally started to disperse that she always went along with the colours and the lightning.

“I’ll be back, Barry love…” she called every time, and he knew that she would because he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop himself revisiting the chemical visions at least one more time.

That’s what he told himself it would be, just one more time…

But some things never end. He also knew that much, and last night he’d gone back to the wonderful chemical world of his visions. And Gertrude had come like she always did, naked this time like he’d seen her once or twice in the long ago of his real life, all large breasts, all white teeth with pink tongue just peeping out between them, hair beautiful as ever.

And he’d told her how much he loved her. He’d had to because it was only the kind thing to do. I’ll love you for ever… he’d said.

“Do you know how long forever is?” she’d asked, smiling that Gertrude smile until he felt like telling her to put her teeth away.

“I can guess,” he’d quipped.

“For ever and ever with you … me and you and an eternity to love in,” she’d sighed, “think of that! How wonderful it would be.”

“Yes. Wonderful.” He’d said that and tried not to sound doubtful. After all, he wasn’t cruel. He could never be cruel, not to Gertrude and certainly not to anyone.

But he needed a bit of reality. He knew that he did, so he told himself quite sternly to wake up. It was usually so easy, slipping from a vision into the old-age cell of his life and trying to work out why reality was better.

“Stay with me, beloved,” she said in that whispery voice of hers. And the vision, the one that was all colours and pleasure, stopped fading.

Hours later his son came along to make sure he was all right, and he was shocked and tearful when he saw that Barry was dead. Days later he was gently placed in a pine coffin after they’d dressed him in his best suit. His only suit as it happened, but that didn’t matter because the dead don’t really care about appearances. Frayed cuffs don’t matter. Neither does the odd well-scrubbed egg stain that the keen-eyed might notice. And that was how he was when the lid was screwed down.

“Alone together my love,” whispered Gertrude, and he could feel the coldness of her flesh as it touched his own body.

He could think of nothing to say, and if he had it might have been difficult through dead lips.

“For eternity,” she added as he journeyed from the church to a graveyard and death everlasting.

© Peter Rogerson 05.08.21

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