Naveed.

(Bluewater Bridges, Wiki Commons, by 'optionbooter.')


Naveed clung to a vertical girder in the dimness, a cluster of other grey-painted I-beams slanting upwards right and left. A small satchel was tucked into the corner where they all met in a massive gusset, liberally planted with thirty-five millimetre bolts.

Pinned by several powerful lights, he waited, lungs aching from exertion, and sobbing for life.

The top of the bag was open. The gusting wind high over the river sucked out a page and it flew off like an avenging angel of death, intent upon some mission of punishment far below.

Naveed’s white-rimmed eyes stared pitifully up into the faces of the emergency responders.

“It’s proof—proof,” he yelled in despair.

“We’re just trying to help you,” called Jim Melshevik, the negotiator. “What’s this all about?”

He found it hard to be reassuring when hanging over a chasm of several hundred feet, and yelling at the top of his lungs at a crazy man. At his present weight of three hundred and forty pounds, bending over the rail at all was something of a miracle.

He huffed and puffed, and then tried again.

“What’s this all about?” he shouted weakly down to the man known as Naveed.

“Proof that genetic engineering and hormone-enhanced agriculture is causing Americans to get really, really fat,” shrieked Naveed, his rising hopes threatened by a gust of heavy rain.

***

“Did he just say what I thought he said?” asked Staff Sergeant Paul Monnopo.

“Yes!” said Jim, a highly trained psychologist, and the hostage-negotiator, suicide talk-down guy, and duty shrink at the hospital on Jones Boulevard.

“So what do you think?” asked Paul.

“Kill him,” advised Melshevik. “He’s obviously not going to shut up about it, and he did say he has proof.”

Staff Sergeant Monnopo drew his service revolver. By standing on his tiptoes, twisting his upper body, and tucking his belly carefully to one side, he leaned over the rail.

Melshivek waited patiently, but no shot came and the sergeant popped back up for air. He put the gun away, noting the raised eyebrow. After a minute of deep, slow breathing, he was able to talk.

“He saved us a bullet,” he said, giving Melshevik an old-fashioned look. “We’ll have to get one of the smaller men down there and recover the papers, but I think we’re all right.”

Sergeant Monnopo reached up and pressed the button on his transceiver.

“All right, he hit water, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s see if we can wrap this up tonight,” and with a nod to Melshevik, the good sergeant strolled back to his cruiser.

“Phew,” muttered Melshevik. “That was a bad one.”

Naveed came so close to getting away.

The consequences of a successful departure just didn’t bear thinking about. The worrying part really wasn’t his job, it was merely the reason for it.

Looking idly over the rail again out of morbid curiousity, he saw lights and boats milling around a common point. Men with poles and hooks were hauling in a sodden form, draped in Naveed’s long white raincoat.

Wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night.

With a wink and a nod at the firemen rigging up some brave volunteer to go over the rail and grab the bag, Jim Melshevik headed for his own Escalade. His thoughts were already elsewhere. It might be a good idea to grab a double box of French fries and gravy, and maybe a foot-long barbecued sausage on a stick while he was in the neighbourhood.

'The Art of Murder,' an excerpt.

Gilles had been reading a little bit more about Leblanc and what he called the ‘sensual restlessness’ of the age. Perhaps that was what he was feeling right now. The song was haunting, full of regrets, and he wondered. If love was such a beautiful thing, why were there so many sad love songs?


She knew they were there, of course, but making any assumptions as to how she might feel about it was tricky. She might hate them, but he thought not. She might resent them, and he could understand that. She might see it as heaping additional trials on her slender yet well-formed shoulders, and yet at the same time she might accept that. He wasn’t even sure why they were there, but seeing her in her own natural environment was informative.

She had beautiful shoulders, and Gilles felt a strange stirring of something deep inside of him. When she turned, the bone structure of her naked back, and of her shoulder blades, was amazing…just amazing.

The lady clearly belonged there. She had found some inner well of fortitude, enough to make her smile a sad, tired smile when she saw the pair of strangers come in and find a small table off to one side and near the door. She had smiled when she recognized them.

She smiled sadly at the inevitability of it all, and that said something. It was an acceptance of all that had to be, an acceptance of life’s tragedies, and the knowledge that they were going to do their job no matter who got hurt. Gilles had never felt less like smiling when he saw that.

She must know a lot of things that he never would. Yvonne would be easy to fall in love with for almost any normal man. He was a very small boy when it came to women like her. Maybe that was what she saw.

She was a mystery, and he was a very small boy.

The song was a lullaby, an old standby, but rather than putting the baby to sleep, she was saying something about the human heart in all its tenderness and all of its potential coldness. On her lips it was a lover’s song, the kind of song you wished you hadn’t heard just then, and you knew it would stick uncomfortably in your mind for a long time afterwards.

Andre had eyes for no one but her. Gilles was a little more objective. It occurred to him that the five piece ensemble might be an indifferent sound without her. On listening further to the soft drums and the cadence of the bass, he realized it was perfect. They highlighted her, and she was the sound, with the drummer playing in shirtsleeves, and the soft slow rasp of the drums, and then the piano, played by a smallish man in evening attire, beads of sweat glistening in the dim lamplight of the overheads, the slash of blue light falling across the face of the man on the saxophone. He didn’t know much about modern music, but he found he quite liked it.

The saxophone had its own song, but only when she went quiet. It was superb.

Gilles watched and listened to the bass for a while, noting again its restraint, and along with another man with a different kind of horn, he thought a bassoon, trying to isolate each sound and feel its place in the composition. As individuals, there were intent upon their own work, and yet they had to play as a group. It was a team, in every sense of the word. He saw them play off of each other, and the way she turned and engaged with them, in some unspoken way from time to time, and marveled at just how many things a man might never comprehend, not even at the most superficial level. It was two entirely different worlds up there under the lights and down here in the shadows, with the clink of a glass or a dull murmur coming to remind him that he was not alone, and would never have to be alone as long as there were places like this in the world.

She had the perfect voice for it, low, and husky, and perfectly controlled in the trills, and in harmonious resonance with the low-ceilinged, intimate club.

The orchestra without her might not be lost—they were the consummate professionals, for surely they understood their art and their medium far better than he ever would. She was beautiful, of course, and yet there was clearly something strong, deep inside her, and not just the superficialities of skin and hair and eyes, and red, red ruby lips almost touching the microphone as she made eye contact and nodded at him and Andre. With a life like hers, she must have a kind of resilience.


A tear falls to the sand

Waves and wind sigh in mourning

Over the sea to a far distant land

Up to the horizon and then a pause

And then he is gone

Heat of the sun never ceases

Gulls plaintive cries without cause

Forlorn hope never stops to sing

Blinking in the glare, she waits

The end is also a beginning

When ships with butterfly wings

Beat into the wind on a quest so fine

Lovers torn apart for a time

No one can say the why of these things

The bonds have been released

Each is free to be their own

This is a seed that must be sown

And no one can say its fate

Sometimes there is no way to win

But only to endure.

When ships with butterfly wings

Beating into the wind

Carry your heart across the ocean

It is all you can do, sometimes

To wait and to pray.

And to mourn…


Gilles would remember those words as long as he lived.


End


https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/250371

Near death experience.

Wiki Commons

He could find no hatred in his heart as the anesthesiologist slowly squeezed the plunger. The liquid going into his arm made him feel limp, and far away. He breathed softly, slowly, in the mask. The world faded into nothingness.


Some time passed, how much he could not say. All he knew was that some period of time had passed. He felt unreal. He could hear voices, faintly, as if from far, far away, echoing and attenuated by some distance, muffled and confusing, yet with the odd word coming in perfect clarity. But he couldn’t understand the words, even though he knew who was speaking. It was the doctor and his team of surgeons, the anesthesiologist, the nurses, the students observing this new, dangerous, and experimental heart surgery.

With a surge of awareness, he realized that he was looking down into the room as if the ceiling had been stripped off, open to the azure sky above. If he was awake, why did he not feel them poking and cutting into his body? Was he dead? Yet they all seemed so calm, even in this strange perspective, looking down on their heads and necks, the tops of their shoulders. The cool tones of their voices told him he was still very much alive.

Dr. Weinberg cut and clipped, and inserted long shiny metal things into his open chest as he watched. The only man in the whole world who could do this operation; a quiet codicil to a proposed ceasefire agreement between their two warring nations.

Weinberg had cheerfully agreed to the request, and he himself had submitted to the ministrations of the infidel doctor with few misgivings. Weinberg was known world-wide to be the best. At this point in history, his own life was a symbol, his own right to live or die transcended by the political reality; and the urgent need for peace. He watched in admiration as Weinberg’s long, spatulate fingers ardently probed with the caress of a lover, massaging the new assistance-pump into position near the aorta. The noises of the machines in the background, pumping blood through his very brain, confirmed whatever reality he was seeing. He was firmly convinced that this was reality of a kind.

He had heard of people being awake under sedation, but he could feel no pain, and no panic. He felt only peace and a kind of passive curiosity. Whatever it was, he could do nothing about it, and all would be revealed to him, perhaps? Perhaps…when he should have felt physical symptoms of fear, there was nothing…only nothing…there was no dread at the thought of death, merely a kind of dull longing for peace.

The room faded from his view, and for a moment or two, he found himself spinning and rotating slowly, as if he were floating in space above the Earth. Everything about him was blackness. There was no up or down, there was no dizziness, there was no need to breathe. It was amazing in its calm; one would have expected the fear-of-falling response, like when a person has a bad dream. All his physical fears were gone.

Was he dead then? He marveled at the thought, only half believing it. It was still unbelievable, that part seemed hard to take in. Did everyone feel like this, when they died? He wondered if his spirit was reluctant to move on, and he wished for release if that were so. The thought that he might be dead, and that was all there was to it, was something of a relief. Was the fear of death really nothing more than the fear of uncertainty, or dissolution? Or the most basic, animal fear, the fear of pain?

In the distance, he found a spot of discoloration, which slowly swelled and spun into a dot of dim white light, pale and diaphanous in his blurry vision. His sight had nowhere the clarity of the earlier vision of the operating theatre. He had no idea of what to expect, and yet he had preached what to expect for most of his adult life.

The pride-fullness that he must have exhibited in the eyes of God daunted and humbled him in its venality. But perhaps God could understand that it was all in His name, all in His good works? He had never really asked for anything for himself…not very much, anyway. All he had ever asked, was for the tools, the power to do God’s works, and to spread the truth of God.

He wondered if he was supposed to try to move toward the light. Merely thinking the thought brought him closer. Slowly the light spun closer, getting much brighter now. He could discern a figure, one that shimmered, wavering back and forth and then it oriented itself upright in relation to himself. Once again he marveled that he felt no fear, no dread, no guilt, no anticipation…nothing. The bearded figure beckoned to him.

The eyes, the mouth, the manly, joyful countenance of the Apostle of God hovered before him.

The Imam didn’t know what to think or to say. He suddenly realized that he had in fact doubted this moment all of his life, and that somehow much of the stridency of his message had been based on fear—his teachings were all the result of generations of fear, and anger.

“Move towards the light.” The figure of a man, a bearded man, with sparkling eyes greeted him.

He tried to obey, but the only thing he could do just then, the only thing he could seem to feel just then, was guilt.

“I—I’m sorry,” he tried to say, but he knew he could not say it without a mouth, a body.

Would the figure understand just how penitent, just how contrite, and genuinely confused that he was? And how could he enter paradise without a body?

“You are welcome here. You are forgiven.” Upon hearing those words, he wished that he had eyes, and tear ducts so that he might cry.

“I am not worthy,” he tried to say. “I have been so wrong, so mistaken, so arrogant.”

He was going backwards, fearing immediately that he had caused it himself. He could not stop it either. Somehow he knew that right away. He was in the operating room again, this time floating around at the same level as the eyes of the staff. He watched them hurriedly sew up some things and then try to start his heart. They tried again and again, and for one brief moment, amazing in its intensity, he hoped they would fail. Then he was back in his own body, and he was lying on the bed in the recovery room, and all was fuzzy and warm. Somebody was speaking softly to him, or about him, just a half-meter or so away from his right ear.

“Gave them a right scare during the operation, but he looks stable now,” he heard a female’s voice right above and beside him.

Someone with a hard, dry, strong hand squeezed his own. He heard a familiar voice, poignant in his ears due to his own new revelation. His faith in himself had been destroyed in the same moment his faith in God had been reaffirmed…he had been forgiven. He, who had never once thought he required it.

“Imam. Imam. Can you hear me? Squeeze just a little.” It was Ali, his aide, friend, and confidant of these many years.

Half a century had passed since he had begun to mentor the lad, and groom him as a protege. Had he failed Ali? How could he tell Ali that he had seen Mohammad, who had greeted him at the gates of paradise? He could taste the bitter salt tears, sighing in anguish at the thought of how little time he had left to try to do better. His eyes were open now. Ali was gazing down at him in wondrous joy at his recovery, and filled with the news that the operation was successful.

The Imam’s lips parted and he spoke.

“Scholars tremble when they hear the name of God, for God is mighty, and forgiving.”

He squeezed Ali’s hand as hard as he could, knowing that the pressure was almost indistinguishable. He was as weak as a new-born kitten.

“You’ll feel better in a few days.”

“Inshallah! As God wills it.” The Imam's voice quavered in shock, and humility, and shame.

Peacefulness stole over him, and then he slept.

Ali sat watching over him and holding his hand, grateful to a bountiful Providence that the hope of their nation lived on in the heart of this frail old man.


END

Note: Originally appeared in Danse Macabre, Nevada's pemier online literary magazine.