Dead and Gone to Escher

Alive! Not me, of course. No, two tons of car slammed against one’s head doesn’t leave a lot of room for maybes. But my friends are still kicking, though Jonathan shakes a bit and Erin has a few more months of physical therapy to go and Rob’s therapist recommends he start running again. I was surprised that they made it, I have to admit but I’m glad that I’m the only doorstop. How’s it go? “Marley was dead to begin with, there was no mistake about that . . .” and then a lot of overwriting. Charles Dickens, you paid-by-the-paragraph talented bastard, the only author I’ve ever preferred in condensed form. But look at me, taking a page out of your overloaded books—

Ay, my mouth runneth over! I don’t really mind being dead. It’s a lot like what I imagine an acid trip to be; all disconnected symbols and images skittering around in solid form. And the synaesthesia is wonderful, all copper-colored songs and square smells.

I wander the rooms and climb the stairs and peek sideways out the windows of my afterlife, looking for my friends. They can be difficult to spot, even with their bright red faces on the days that they miss me, but I crane my eyes for them anyway. Sometimes I wave at them, my arms turning upside down when they go through the window. “Hello, hello, I miss you!” The plants wave with me, seeking the sun that orbits us in dizzy parabolas a hundred times a day. “Hello!” they echo.

Though I can’t talk to anyone, I do have the ability to make graffiti in the living world. Did you ever see things spray-painted on the underside of an overpass and wonder how they get there? They’re probably all me, even the ones made before I was born—I have a little trouble with time here, and I end up posting messages all out of order. Oh well—graffiti doesn’t have to make sense, does it? Even dead and swimming in art, I still can’t draw, but anybody can scribble block letters along a train. I painted “Mighty” and “Mouse” on two of them. I hope they clack past each other soon; it’s the sort of joke that appeals to me now.

There are lots of books in the third floor basement’s library, but it’s difficult to get there and even more so to get back, because some of the doors only work one way. I don’t know if everyone’s afterlife is like mine, but somehow I doubt it. You’ve seen it, I’m sure—that Escher painting, the one that’s all stairs and mind-bending angles. Most days I love it, walking one way and meeting my legs coming back the other direction, but it hides the library. I’ve started taking a backpack so I can lug a few volumes with me. My old favorites line all the walls in the building, but I’ve found that my memory of them is too good now, and I prefer the philosophical stuff that I’ve been finding. They’re scattered enough to make sense to me.

Funny, even dead I can’t understand Umberto Eco’s books. I’m not sure what that says about me, but it could just be that they’re not the same as they should be. I tried reading a romance novel on a whim and was surprised when I fell inside near the middle when, out of nowhere, a pony ate the heroine. I was lost for days, met a prince who’d wandered in out of “1001 Nights.” Still not sure if he was real, and if he was, then when. His eyes smelled like fresh bread.

In a sewer in New York, I wrote “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in Arabic and red ink. The alligators have taken to staring at it, not sure why, but I hope nobody goes down there. Posting a warning would only make it worse, I suppose; curiosity makes fools out of all of us.

Sometimes I have to crawl into a cupboard and hide from the flocks of birds that become clouds and the clouds that acquire feathers and beaks. I don’t mind the flesh-and-paint lizards that sometimes creep out of the floor, but the birds are just too much. They nest in the columns and squawk until the rain washes them away. I wish Escher had thought a bit more about his drawings; they’re just enough living and dead to make them fit here, and I’m tired of chasing his inky hands out of the kitchen with a broom.

Note to self: find out if I can make graffiti on places other than Earth. I’d love to freak out NASA.

My only regret, as I hang upside-down from a wall, is that my last drink was a Tequila Sunrise, which always makes me throw up. I didn’t want to die with my head out the window, Rob holding my hair back. A headlight hits me in the eye and I’m here, my words skittering across my tongue and universes hidden in the furniture. It makes me—

That’s a new door. I wonder where it goes.