BOBBY’S LAST DREAM

After the end of life... is there a Heaven or Hell?

Bobby Clifton lay in his bed and contemplated that part of his life that lay in the past without it crossing his mind that it might be just about all of it. For Bobby Clifton, seventy-six years of age was dying, and seventy-six was going to be the last number he thought of when he contemplated how old he might be. Indeed, before any number, big or small, crossed his mind

But he was ignorant of starts or finishes, and not knowing he was approaching the end of his days, his mind roamed some of the highlights of the past seventy-six years, especially some of the people he’d loved. And it became like a film loop, starting with David, his schoolboy friend because that friendship must have been greater than what the word friendship implied, and David was always smiling. He’d loved David with as much intensity as he’d loved some of the girls that came after him. And David had loved him. They had told each other. They’d even compared intimate parts of their bodies, had measured… and more. Then Janice had come along.

David faded out of his living memory with an almost indecent suddenness, but then, David had Rosie to distract him. David had flaunted Rosie all right, and so would any boy seen in her company because Rosie was what they’d called a corker. He’d even half[-fancied her himself and certainly did a year or two later, when David and Rosie were far away in a foreign land, and he recalled her loveiiness.

Janice hadn’t lasted long. They both left school at the same time and immediately she became too intense for him, too determined to plan a future that included, horror of all horrors, babies. So it had been easy exchanging her for Pammy who played hockey for the local team and ended up liking a drink or three and talking about her sport until she was blue in the face. So Pammy hadn’t lasted long either. Bobby had never been keen on sport anyway, not the sort with balls and sticks, anyway.

Ruth had come next, and she was the one. They’d got married and, believe it or not, had five babies over the years, and because they were his babies he loved all of them and wouldn’t have anything to do with criticism of any of them, not even Monica who got pregnant at the age of fourteen.

It hadn’t been her fault, had it? The boy should have kept his trousers on, shouldn’t he?

He’d been a good father and cared for Monica, had discussed her with Ruth and they had both agreed that although she was very young she should have every ounce of their support. And that’a what he’d given her.

Yes, he’d been a good father. As good as any man could be. And a good lover. If there was any place like Heaven then he had earned a place in it. Ask Ruth.

It was at that point that Bobby slipped from being a man remembering the glories of his past to a man who was dead. Well, most of him was dead. His heart had stopped beating and his flesh started to go cold like dead flesh does. But somewhere in the depth of his mind his dead mind was still running the loop of his life and would while there was an atom of oxygen left to feed it.

And it somehow went back to the start.

He was dead, but he wasn’t because a shadow called David paraded itself, dressed in his grey school shorts like he always had been, and with his sloppy smile. But David was talking in little more than a whisper, a silent whisper if there is such a thing outside the world of dead dreams, and he was mocking him, Bobby, telling Rosie about how the sort of kid he had been was disgusting, dirty sometimes… always breathing contempt in almost silent words, he hadn’t been like that had he? He’d never been what you’d call dirty, had he? Yes, he and David had been close friends but no worse than any other eleven year-old close friends were, had they?

“You were a b*****d….” almost whispered David.

The dream faded and that first close friend flickered out for ever.

“He was hopeless,” breathed Janice to herself,” every time I wanted to go to bed with him he found an excuse to do something else… said accidents could happen and I would be the one to suffer, and anyway he said I was too young to be a mother, I wouldn’t know what to do if the baby got sick, and look how my good looks would melt away, bigger tits, but saggy like an old woman’s, and on top of that Id get gross stomach… he just didn’t want to do it and I’m just glad he wandered away from my life in time. He was useless.”

Then came the hockey-stick wielding Pammy in a parade that might have been orchestrated by the devil himself. He’d gone to her funeral a few weeks earlier, and wondered how in the name of goodness she could be a shadow now, fading as the seconds ticked by, inside his dead head.

“You were a swine,” she breathed, “I got some bruises in a few interesting places, and we could have had such fun when you rubbed ointment into them… but no, you closed your ears to my stories and suggestions, and I had to heal myself.”

Yes, he’d been a poor boyfriend… it hadn’t been his fault, though.” She’d been into her sport as if there was nothing more important under the sun than hockey-sticks.

But dream time was passing and Ruth had to soothe him. He’d been a good husband, hadn’t he? They’d had such a good family, five wonderful kids, even an early grandchild.

“You b*****d…” that was all she could whisper before showing him the scars left by a caesarian section when one of the kids had been born.

“We didn’t need such a big family, but you kept at it, morning, noon and night if you could find me, and if you couldn’t there was always Prossy Annie two doors down… I heard about her, and she was wise enough to take precautions...”

It wasn’t a good memory if memory it was because the dead can’t remember anything, can they? It’s just a mind, a brain, shutting down, and then he’d be in the hereafter, a soul seeking his rightful place in Heaven, waiting for Ruth… or Annie… she’d been fun, too.

Then the shadows were gone, all memory of them faded into a silent and black nothing, and this was it. His hereafter. His everlasting joy as he noticed the sign engraved on something inside his dead head. He’d reached his destination. His heaven or …?

WELCOME TO HELL

© Peter Rogerson 28.10.23