Lesson One
by S. S. Wilson
Copyright 2011 S. S. Wilson
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The odd thing was, he was quite sure he was dead. It was odd because he was still in his body, breathing, refreshed and relaxed. He felt a bracing breeze on his face and hands, smelled salt in the air, heard the crash of waves, and was standing — wait, where was this?
He looked around. He was on a rocky coastline. No buildings visible. The day was cloudy, but not really gloomy, for everything was tinged with energy and magnificence. Thundering surf misted black boulders that rose from the blue-grey sea and marched gracefully up to steep sand banks tufted with grass that glowed bright green even in the diffuse light. It all reminded him of Ireland. God, Ireland had been beautiful.
From out of nowhere an impossibly huge shadow fell across him. Something was hurtling toward him from above. Before he could even look up, he was slammed to the ground by the unseen thing’s infinite weight. And crushed. Crushed so utterly! Unthinkable pain shrieked from every part of his body as he was ground into the rocks. His flesh split and smeared, his bones snapped in a thousand places. As his skull distended and cracked, he smelled leather, wet leather. He was dying! Dying!
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The odd thing was, he was quite sure he was dead. It was odd because he was still in his body, breathing, refreshed and relaxed. He felt a bracing breeze on his face and hands, smelled salt in the air, heard the crash of waves, and was standing —
He flinched violently, clammy sweat bursting from his pores. His heart pounded in terror as he scanned the turbulent gray sky.
But nothing happened. And that allowed him to realize something. When he had flinched, it should have sent a knife of pain through his severely arthritic back. Yet he’d felt nothing.
He gingerly raised his elbows to shoulder height and twisted tentatively from side to side. No pain! It was as inexplicable as the ghastly violence he’d just endured.
“Welcome.”
He flinched again, this time at the sound of the voice, and whirled to see who had spoken.
A young man was sitting on one of the rounded, spray-slicked boulders. He was dressed quite oddly, flamboyantly. What was that get-up, anyway? Like something out of a Shakespeare play. The man had long brown hair and a dark brown beard, the narrow, close-cropped kind that follow the line of the jaw and come to a point at the chin. Despite his hair being white-capped with grey, he looked to be in his late twenties.
The stranger shrugged in an apologetic way, “I’d like to say the first time’s the worst, but I fear that’s not so.” He had a slight, almost musical accent. Irish maybe?
His eyes, set under brooding brows, were a rich coffee brown. They were sad and tired. It was unnerving, how sad and tired were his eyes.
“Let’s have your name,” he said.
The newcomer fought to find his voice, all the while wondering, “Why should I have to say anything? I’m dead! I know I’m dead!”
But at last he said, “Jones.”
“First name only. We all go by first names. Mine is Alberto.
“Uh — uh — Fred,” stammered Fred Jones.
“That’s the spirit,” said Alberto, with a wan smile. “Important to remember who we were. Helps with the lesson.”
Before Fred could formulate a question, it came again — the vast leather-smelling shadow, whooshing down on him like some planet-destroying meteor. He instinctively leapt to one side, but was hit in mid leap, legs and pelvis smeared to bloody nothingness.
He knew he could not survive the drastic injuries. He could already feel life draining, Death’s irresistible coldness spreading cruelly up through the what was left of him. Yet he lived! Lived still! So, fighting against unspeakable pain, he clawed at the slippery black beach pebbles, pulling his ruined half-body forward in hopeless desperation. But the great leather-smelling crusher would not be denied its triumph. It shot skyward, fragments of his legs clinging to it, and came down again. This time he could feel his eyes spurt from their sockets.