damn near rejected by everyone......but i like it. so i'm retiring this story and posting
a rare one on winedrunk
Sandy Beaches
Milo Dabrowski awoke in a lounge chair overlooking a vast
span of cobalt colored ocean. He stared
up into the sunny sky. It was just as
blue; the hot sand around him a rich beige color. Milo got up and looked around. There was nothing but paradise as far as he
could see. It was humid as well; the
kind that made you ill. Milo hated this
kind of heat. He passed summers indoors,
happily destroying the Ozone layer with air conditioning. To him the sun was a flaming ball of
carcinogenic gas in the sky. He’d once
heard that the world would end in exactly eight minutes if the sun ever burned
out. Milo imagined those eight minutes
as one long and glorious symphony of time.
There were a few other people wandering
the beach. Nestled above were rows of
condominiums painted pastel. Milo looked
at it all and sighed. This was paradise
to some, but not for him. It was like he
always said to his wife: give me an overcast world with a daily chance of rain
and maybe, just maybe, I could believe in heaven. He loved the gray. Milo had no clue how he’d gotten on this
beach. It was surely not by choice. Greta must’ve dragged him here on another one
of those marriage saving vacations. He
stretched and yawned, covered his eyes with his hand, saw a bamboo cabana alcove
in the distance, and went trudging through the hot sand in search of a cold
drink.
“Hello,
Milo,” the voice next to him said. Milo
had just gotten his bottle and settled his lounger near a sliver of shade that
seemed to keep moving away.
Milo set
down his beer and looked to his left. Resting
right next to him was an overweight man, naked to his waist, a plate of Buffalo
wings on his bulging stomach. It was
Edgar Patterson, his boss. Christ, Milo
thought, taking in the fat, grinning, shirtless man with his red babyface and
those man boobs that stuck against his belly.
Had he gone nuts? Was he on some
kind of working vacation with Edgar Patterson?
Milo put down his beer. “What in
the hell are you doing here?”
“What do
you mean?” Patterson asked, in that doughy way that he had of talking. He took a wing, sucked off all the skin and
fat, the chicken meat, and started chewing and snorting.
“I mean
what are you doing here?” Milo gestured toward “paradise.” “While I’m on vacation with my...wife?”
“You’re not on vacation with your wife.”
“I’m
not?” Milo smiled. “If I’m not on vacation with my wife then who
am I on vacation with?
“Do you even know how you got
here?”
“Not a clue.”
“What’s the last thing that you
remember?”
“I remember
making love to a beautiful girl. It was
the best sex I’d ever had. She kept
begging me for more. I’d never had a
woman talk that way.” Milo felt no shame
or embarrassment. It would be good for
the fat bastard to hear a tale of unbridled sexual pleasure. “And then I woke up here on the beach.”
“She was
paid to act that way.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“Then she
deserves an Oscar.”
Patterson had another Buffalo wing,
taking the whole thing in one slurp.
“Can I have
one of those? I’m starving,” Milo said.
“Sure.”
Milo took a wing off of Patterson’s
plate. But it tasted like nothing to
him. “How can you eat this?”
“Frankly, I’m a little disappointed
in you,” Patterson said.
“About the woman?”
“Yep.”
“Well…”
“I’m just
kidding. I’m all for infidelity. In fact, I encourage it.”
“You?” Milo didn’t even know that Edgar Patterson
had a monogamous sex life to speak of, let alone the hutzpah to endorse
extra-marital affairs.
“Why not
me?” Patterson said. “Besides it’s good
for business.”
“You mean
at the office?”
Patterson waved his arms
around. “Here.”
Milo looked
around at the sand, the blue water, and the blue sky. He leaned in closer to his boss. “What do you care for here?” Then Milo got a creepy feeling inside of
him. “You haven’t gotten us involved
with sex tourism. Am I some kind of guinea
pig? Because I swear I tell them that
you drugged me and had me dragged down here.”
Edgar
Patterson sighed. “For goodness sake, Milo,
haven’t you figured it out already?
You’re dead.”
“Dead?” Milo said.
“That’s one-hundred percent not possible. If I were dead my wife would’ve texted me the
news with about ten joyous emoticons.”
“Think
about it. Would you be in a place like
this with me? Would you be here at all
if you were still alive?”
“True,” Milo
said. Then it hit him. He remembered making love to that beautiful
woman, working harder and harder to please her.
But then he had to slow down once the pains started in his left arm and in
his chest. And then? Milo slumped in his seat and put his head in
his hands. “This is just terrible.”
Patterson
put his stained hand on Milo’s shoulder.
“It’s not so bad here.”
“Heaven?”
Patterson laughed. “Guess again.”
“No.”
“Yep.”
Milo
grabbed his waiting beer. He drank the
thing until it was gone. Then walked
back to the alcove and ordered another one from an angry looking bartender.
“Be careful
with those,” Patterson said, when Milo returned. “There’s no alcohol in the drinks we serve
down here.”
“What?”
“It’s all a
part of the experience. There’s no taste
to the food, no alcohol in any of the drinks, and you’ll always stay sober and
hungry. You should see some of these
people. They eat and drink all day,
thinking that’ll help them numb some of the sadness. But, of course, it just hits them harder.” Patterson shook his head. “You should see the complaint letters I get.”
“You know
this does nothing for my lifelong ethos of atheism.”
“Sometimes it pays to believe what you can’t
see.”
“How could
I believe when it seemed as though everyone spouting the word of God was some
kind of right wing psycho, or a nut job in the subway?”
“Blessed
are the meek?”
“It’s the
Catholics fault. They were always going
on about when you die, if you lived a good life, you’d go to heaven and there’d
be everyone you ever knew just waiting there for you. I thought who in their right mind would want
to die and go somewhere and see all of the people you spent an entire life
trying to get away from.”
“That’s a
good philosophy,” Patterson said. “It’s
wrong, but it’s a good philosophy.”
“So you
don’t see everyone in heaven?”
“You’re
more likely to run into those people down here.”
“Great. Like who?”
“Ex-girlfriends
and wives, neighbors that you had problems with; bullies from your childhood;
tax auditors; people who talk in movie theaters. There are a lot of players from the Dallas
Cowboys down here.” Patterson
smiled. “Old bosses.”
“So you’re
dead too?” Milo asked.
“Nah,”
Patterson said. “I’m simply the
manifestation of Edgar Patterson, your old boss at Roadways Travel Agency.”
“But the
real Patterson will end up here one day, right?
I mean the man should have his own island in hell.”
Patterson
laughed. “He’s not coming here when he
dies.”
“Edgar
Patterson is a lazy, slothful individual.
The man sits at his desk for hours playing solitaire and eating bags of
potato chips by the dozen. He sleeps all
afternoon while I do his work. And then he takes all of the credit for it
with those guys up in corporate.”
“He’s never
cheated on his wife with a prostitute,” Patterson said.
“That’s
because no woman would take him.”
“You’re
just mad at him because he put you on probation.”
“I was only
making fun of Jesus Christ. How would I
know that it would offend him?”
“He’s a
sensitive man.”
“He’s a Jew,”
Milo said. “He doesn’t even believe in
Jesus.”
He got up off of his stool and
began pacing. Milo looked down at his
clothing. He had on Khaki pants that
were flooded to the ankles, and a tight red t-shirt with the phrase, While You Were Staring at My Butt, I Farted,
written on it in puffy blue letters. “I
don’t believe this. I die and I’m stuck
in hell wearing these clothes, and Edgar Patterson gets to live on eating wings
and farting in his chair. Let me ask you
something, if this is hell, why is it a sandy beach?”
“Because you
hate sandy beaches.”
“I really do. And sun.”
Milo stopped moving and felt his sweaty brow. “There’s no shade and the heat is almost
unbearable. I gotta hand it to you. This is actually what hell is for me.”
Patterson
smiled. “I’m pretty excited by what we
came up with.”
“So are you
the devil?”
“That’s
kind of hard to explain. Let’s just say
that there’s one main devil, and a bunch of us who act as his conduits.” Patterson thought for a moment. “Think of the devil as kind of like a company
president, and the rest of us as his board of directors.”
“Great. Corporations run the afterworld as well.”
“Yep.”
“Will you
always be in the form of Edgar Patterson?” Milo asked.
“Except at
your home. At home I’ll be your wife. Only forgive me if I nag you constantly. I have to.
It’s in the contract.”
“And I
don’t get to meet the real devil?”
“He’s
mostly retired now. He takes on the big
ones when they come down here.”
“Like Jerry
Fallwell?”
“Fallwell
went to heaven.”
“You’re
shitting me,” Milo said.
“I shit you
not. He did Gore Vidal though.”
“Vidal is
down here?”
“Most
artists are.”
“Where is
he?”
“He’s wherever
his hell is.”
Milo sat
back down on his lounge chair. He picked
up his beer and had a good pull. The
brew had quickly gotten warm. “I’ll
never see another gray day.”
“Or feel
cool air, or see an autumn leaves fall, or see a Super Bowl….I could go on if
you’d like,” Patterson said.
“Why not?”
“Don’t you
want to be surprised?”
“Would you want to be surprised in
a place like this?”
“True. Let me think.” Patterson bit his bottom lip, letting his big
yellow teeth fall over the flesh. “You’re going to have to get a job.”
“Doing what? Carrying large boulders up hills only to
watch them come back down again?”
“Nothing as Sysiphisian as that. You’ll be working back at the travel agency with
me.”
“Who needs a travel agent in hell?”
Patterson raised an eyebrow at Milo. “Lots of people do. Especially all of the families going to
Disney.”
“They have Disney here?” Milo
said.
“They practically bankroll the
place,” Patterson said. “But that’s not
all. We’ve got constant traffic
here. Smog. We’ve got undercooked food with E-coli and
Salmonella. There’s no aspirin or good
drugs. We play twenty four hour news
networks and reality television all day and all night on warped tube sets that
never shut off, that seep through the walls and floors and ceilings of your
noisy neighbors. Our cell phone connections
are bad down here. There’s no WiFi. All of our prostitutes are diseased. There’s no pizza, but there’s a McDonald’s on
every block. Dogs bark non-stop, and
babies always cry. There’s…”
“Okay, enough,” Milo said. “I think I get the idea. But if this is my personal hell, why are
there all of these other people around?”
Patterson laughed. “People aren’t that original. Plus there’s simply not enough room for you
to exist in your own world. So some
aspects of hell are shared.”
“Like that bartender back there?”
“A failed actor,” Patterson said. “He spent years telling everyone how famous
he was going to be, and how he’d never have to bartend again. They really hated him at his job.”
“What happened to him?” Milo watched the bartender slamming down
glasses and throwing bottles, none of which broke.
“Got shot.”
“Shot?”
“He was on his way back from an
audition for a show that would’ve made him a star.”
“What did
he do to end up here?”
“Made a
deal with the devil to become famous.”
“But he
never became famous.”
“Are you
kidding me? His murder was scandal in
the L.A. rags for months.”
“That’s a
trick.”
“So is life.”
Milo was silent. The weight of his situation began to bear
down. “Look, I understand that I might’ve
cheated on my wife one or two times, but was that really enough to land me
here?”
“Ten.”
“Huh?”
“You cheated on her ten times, Milo,”
Patterson said.
“That’s impossible.”
“You gave her a venereal disease.”
“A touch of hepatitis C.”
Patterson pulled a piece of paper
out of the back of his pocket. It was
stained with ketchup and Buffalo wing sauce.
He handed it to Milo. “That’s a
list of everything that got you placed down here.”
Milo began to read the list. “It says on here that I broke eight of the Ten
Commandments.”
“You did,” Patterson said.
“And this stuff about the
neighbor’s dog. I only gave him Benadryl.”
“It wasn’t
just Benadryl.”
“I fed him
a sleeping pill or two.”
“Or the
whole bottle,” Patterson said.
Milo looked at the list a second
time. “Running red lights? Aren’t you getting a bit petty now?”
“One of those caused an old lady to
die across town because the person you cut off was so angry that they drove
without thinking and hit her.”
“So you say.” Milo handed the list back to Patterson. “Isn’t there somewhere I can go to dispute
this? Like to some kind of lawyer or
mediator?”
“All of the lawyers are in heaven,”
Patterson said.
“Figures. So there’s nothing that I can do to try and
get out of here?”
“Well,” Patterson said. “You remember how I was always a big
Revolutionary War buff?”
“You used
to talk my ear off about that stuff. I
got addicted to Excedrin Migraine as a result.”
“You never listened.”
“Hell no.”
“That’s a
shame,” Patterson said. “Because there
is a way for you to get out of here.”
“What?” Milo
said. “Anything. I’ll take it.”
“It’s a
little something that the boss has us do to all the newbies.”
“The
suspense is killing me.”
Patterson
smiled. “Milo, I’m going to give you
three questions from the Revolutionary War.
If you can answer two out of the three, you get to leave here and go up
to heaven.”
“Two out of
three?”
“Yep.”
“Bring it
on.”
“Okay.” Milo
sat there in his stupid get-up, rubbing his hands in anticipation. This should be a snap, he thought. Milo was no patriot but three questions about
the Revolutionary War should be a cinch.
“Name the French aristocrat who became a general in the Revolutionary
War.”
“French
aristocrat,” Milo said. A statue in
Union Square came to him. He used to
meet this blonde named Charlotte there.
They had some of the best afternoon trysts of his life. But they always met by this one statue of a
general. Milo would stare at it as
Charlotte prattled on about her job, reading the name over and over and
wondering when they’d leave and go to her apartment to have sex. “Lafayette.”
“Score one
for Milo,” Patterson said. “One more answer
and you’re free to go. Are you ready?”
“You bet your
life, big boy.”
“Name the
Massachusetts statesmen who nominated George Washington for commander-in-chief
of the Continental Army.”
“John
Hancock,” Milo said instantly.
“You don’t
even want to think about it?”
“Think,
schmink. I’m one up.”
“That’s too
bad because it was John Adams who nominated George Washington for the post of
commander-in-chief.”
“Damn it,” Milo
said
.
“Last
question,” Patterson said. “Ready?”
“As I’ll
ever be.”
“On what
day did the Revolutionary War begin?”
“Are you
serious?” Milo asked. “That’s your last
question?”
“Yep.”
Milo
laughed. “Well, get ready to pack my
bags buddy, because this boy is heading uptown.
The Revolutionary War started on July 4, 1776. Even the dumbest kid knows that.” He got up from his chair. “Feel free to send someone along later with
my bags.
”
“Not so
fast,” Patterson said, grabbing Milo with another of his wing-stained
hands. “The Revolutionary War did not
begin on July 4, 1776.”
“Yeah right. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to bullshit a
bullshitter, Patterson?”
“I believe you told me that.”
“Well, it’s good advice. Now where’s the train out of this joint?”
“You’re wrong about the date.”
“It’s July 4th. Independence Day.”
Patterson chuckled. “That’s when the Declaration of Independence
was signed. The war actually started on
April 19, 1775, with the battles at Lexington and Concord.”
“Take me to a library and we’ll see
who’s right.”
“There are no libraries,” Patterson
said. He got up off of his lounge chair. The space of flesh where his man boobs had
rested was now red and sweaty.
“Get one of your history books,” Milo
said.
“I don’t have history books because
I’m not the real Patterson.”
“How do you know I’m wrong?”
Patterson sighed. He chuckled again. “It doesn’t really matter. I was pulling your chain. There’s no three question contest to get out
of hell.”
“You lied to me?”
“Are you surprised?”
“I guess not,” Milo said. He sat back down and slumped into
himself. Total resignation took over. His fate was accepted and sealed. Milo took his beer. He downed the whole thing.
“I told you to be careful with that,”
Patterson said.
“I know there’s no alcohol. So what?”
“You’re still going to wake up with
a massive hangover,” Patterson said.
“Fine.”
“They always say that. But when the vomiting starts they sing a
different tune.” Patterson smiled. “See you at work tomorrow.”
“But tomorrow is Saturday,” Milo
said, as Patterson began walking away.
“I….shouldn’t I be learning some kind of life lesson here?”
“Be kind?” Patterson said. Then he shrugged.
“But…” Milo began.
Then he just let the fat man go.
