Available in the May 2017 issue of Lightspeed.

It took James Washington forever, almost literally forever, to remember that his wife and children were as dead as he was. For a while, he barely even realized that he was dead himself. Heaven, for lack of a better word, is bliss, and as anybody who has known euphoria can tell you, bliss doesn’t always allow room for rational thought. Bathed by otherworldly radiance, lulled by the music of the spheres, every atom of his being screeching a level of happiness impossible in any terrestrial realm, James was as stupid in the moment as any opium addict had ever been.

But the nagging memory of those he had loved marred all this perfection in the same way a single mosquito bite can ruin a perfect weekend in the best tropical resort in the world. The more it itched the less he could ignore it. And so, after a period of time that may have been longer than civilization had been extant on Earth, he managed to ask, “Where are they?”

One of his perfect golden servants murmured, “You will be happier if you do not ask.”

For many lifetimes more he allowed this to mollify him.

The golden servants were beautiful. He knew that they were angels, by all useful definitions of the term; they didn’t have wings and they didn’t walk around with little halo-rings attached to their heads on sticks, but they were beings of glowing vitality who embodied all the grace and nobility possible in any version of the human form. They were his dedicated caregivers, his wanton lovers, his tireless servants—given how little his own participation was required of him, they were more than capable of delighting him all on their own—the dedicated gardeners of a crop that consisted of only one flower, himself. They should have been enough.

But memory’s itch remained persistent. James’s car had been t-boned by some lunatic asshole who hadn’t even slowed down, not even a little bit, while running the intersection. It came to rest lying on its back, the passenger cabin crushed on two sides, the two adults and two children inside broken in ways that might have been already been terminal, even before the fire. His own legs, pinned beneath a compressed steering column, were like a pair of meat-sacks filled with gravel; his chest was so battered that breath was an exercise in arguing with a chest full of razors. Six-year-old Keisha was behind him, maddened by agony and fear, screaming for Mommy. But sweet Tish was not answering, and throughout this little Ty was not crying, the way a toddler in a car seat should have been; he was just silent, and despite waves of unimaginable agony, James had felt his sanity cracking from the understanding of what that likely meant. Then tongues of bright orange began to erupt from the upholstery. The afterlife had been kind enough to edit out the rest.

“Where are they?”

(For the answer, see LIGHTSPEED).

 

Tags: Excerpts, Fantasy, writing | Category Excerpts, Fantasy, Writing