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Creature of the Sun
Death is a waiting room. I sit in a leather chair with strangers who are also, presumably, dead. The room is tastefully decorated in mute tones and across from me is a banner that reads: “Hi there. You are dead.” No one comes in. No one goes out. Everyone stares into the middle distance. We don’t talk. It reminds me of the dentist. I imagine soon a middle aged woman that makes up the dentist’s harem will be prodding around my gaping mouth with sharp instruments leaving me the option to stare at the ceiling or the picture of her nephew, Cody, awkwardly holding a baseball bat. Then the dentist will come in with his years of medical training and say, “Keep up with that flossing now!” Forget flossing. Now that I’m dead, they can’t tell me what to do. They can drop all the passive-aggressive hints they want but for as long as I die I will never floss again. I suppose I could stand up and share my disdain for the perversion that is professional dental hygiene with the group but it’s much easier to just sit here, at least until I know what comes next. I haven’t felt hunger, thirst, or the need to use the bathroom but those are starting to like “living” activities. The dead have no need for bowel movements.
It’s a shame we worry so much about death while we’re alive. I guess there’s something mysterious about it but the truth is pretty obvious. It’s not like behind the curtain there’s a secret cake land where everything is cake and cake-ticians run the cake-ocracy. Death is just more waiting. All your life you wait; you wait for school to be done so you can get more school, then you wait until get a job, then you wait until you’ve worked enough so you can retire, then you wait to die. Why wouldn’t there be more waiting after that? Still, people will make a big stink about how much life I had left to live. The way I see it, I unintentionally bypassed a whole lot of waiting. The worst will be the facebook statuses, high-schoolers coming to grips with mortality through the same medium they broadcast their love of Chipotle burritos. I can see the news feed now, “R.I.P. Nicki, I didn’t know you that well but you didn’t deserve to a have a roof fall on you.” Yes, that’s right; I was killed by the collapsing roof of a video store. Thanks to the living’s obsession with death, that will be the defining moment of my life and I didn’t even see it happen. That last thing I saw in my time spent on Earth was Garrett Stimps’s beet red face screaming, “You can’t slay the dragons of your discontent with kosher hotdogs!”
I should be happy. I met Garrett Stimps two months before and had been wishing for death’s sweet escape ever since. I should also be happy for the violent destruction of my local video store. My entire summer was consumed by manning the register at Video King in the Harmony Square shopping center. Thanks to a connection to one of my mom’s friends I was given the opportunity to witness, first-hand, the sinking of the home video rental store industry. Its death is all but inevitable; even I have a Netflix account. From two to four in the afternoon the place was so quiet I could hear the tortured screams of the little DVD’s in their plastic tombs. The air was stale and heavy. Later, the evening-regulars would come in. First would be Mrs. Strawderman, eighty years young, returning a trashy romantic comedy for an even trashier romantic comedy. Regardless of the guy on the cover, she’s convinced it’s Ryan Reynolds and that he is also her grandson. Then two or three mothers that just got off work bring hyperactive bundles of joy to fight over R rated movies that will force future films to break into unforeseen levels of obscenity. I’m against censorship but eight-year-olds are twisted enough without American Pie movie marathons and Freddy vs. Jason. On Wednesdays, I could look forward to being graced by the presence of Juan, a Puerto-Rican gentleman who only rented the animated classic, All Dogs Go to Heaven. Once I suggested he try the sequel, All Dogs Go to Heaven 2. His eyes went wide with fear as he backed slowly out of the store and slowly backed out to his car which he slowly drove out of the parking lot in reverse.
I accepted my fate as the owner of a terrible summer job and planned to ride out my time imagining the new crap I could buy with a steady paycheck. All of that changed when Garrett Stimps walked in one day in early June. Garrett was an awkward child. He was a short, wide boy who became infamous in middle school for sprinting from classroom to classroom. Despite their best efforts, the teachers could only get him to slow down to a furious power-walk that mowed down those who failed to clear his path. In high school he mellowed a bit, either through maturity or pills, and blended into the mass of teens who always keep their heads down. That day however, Garrett was back on the warpath. He marched up to the glass door and opened it just enough to slip in. He pretended to be making a selection by the New Releases while glancing out into the parking lot every few seconds. I sat completely still and tried to focus on the magazine article I was rereading for the thirteenth time. When Garrett approached the counter I could see the sweat on his pale face, his mouth never completely closed as he waited for me to look up an acknowledge him.
“Will that be all?” I said with well-honed apathy.
“No, I’m not getting these,” he said.
“Okay, then why did you bring them up here?”
He took a quick glance over his shoulder and said, “This is my cover. You’re Nicki Gibson right? We had Geometry together.”
I am also the person Garrett threw up on during the 4th grade Christmas concert causing a vomiting chain reaction for Mrs. Tysinger’s entire class. Instead of bringing up that memory which had long been buried for dozens of families, I said, “Yeah, and if you’re not going to buy or rent anything I have to ask you to leave.”
Garrett was unfazed, “Do you see that big white truck over there by the pharmacy?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know what’s in there?”
“I don’t know, pharmacy stuff?”
Garrett’s voice dropped to a hush as the words, “breast pumps” slid out of his mouth.
“Either buy or rent or get out, please.”
“No, no, no, listen, I read it online. The government is issuing breast pumps to all lactating women under the guise of a quality control test. In actuality, the milk is going to nourish the young super soldiers that will bring about a new world order.”
“That’s disgusting. Where did you read that?”
“I wrote it on a conspiracy message board but that’s not the point. I need to hide because I think one of the agents spotted me investigating the truck.”
At this point I figured the quickest way to dispose of Garrett would be to ignore him and let him play out his fantasy. A few minutes later he brought up a copy of Zombie Strippers and asked. “Do you know if this is any good?”
“Get out. Now.”
He dropped the case and sprinted out the door.
The next day Garrett returned, apparently abandoning his Grand Breast Pump conspiracy. He walked up to the counter with his head down and said, “Your soul troubles me. Your voice was so cold when you told me to get out.”
I was caught off-guard, “I’m sorry?”
Garrett asked, “Do you have a soul?”
I scoffed, “Probably not, and if I did it’s been crushed by the Video King.”
“Do you believe in God? Do you believe in anything?”
“Um, please don’t try to convert me. I’m an atheist I guess but please keep your beliefs to your self.”
“My soul wants to help your soul. Your soul is crying out for help.”
“We are not on a soul-to-soul basis. You keep your soul far away from my soul which I may or may not have. Please rent something or leave.”
“I will save your crippled soul Nichole Gibson. I will make you believe,” then he rented Jesus Christ Superstar and left.
After that Garrett came in once a day, everyday, and tried to teach me to ‘believe’. According to Garrett, having faith was all about believing in the impossible. He would try to draw reactions out of me by posing questions like, “Does Godzilla eat breakfast, and if not, is that why he’s so cranky?” or, “Where did they hide the lost bones of George Washington Carver?” or, “Who would win in a fight: a steak omelet or ten pounds of paperclips?” The point was to get me to defend any sort of irrational side but I would give replies like, “I eat the omelet and make the world’s largest paperclip chain,” and watch Garrett leave in a huff. If it hadn’t been so annoying it would have been interesting.
Then one week in early August Garrett did not come in. It was nice to have the quiet back but I was almost concerned for the little freak.
I immediately regretted my ounce of concern when Garrett returned the following week. He strode into the store, wild-eyed and arms swinging hysterically. His once soft, pale body was badly sunburned and his cheek bones jutted out from his eyes. He slapped both hands on the counter, snapped his face toward the ceiling and declared, “Lost one. Nichole Gibson. I have been to the mountain top and the sun has burned the truth into my core.”
I couldn’t help laughing, “What?”
He slowly lowered his gaze until it met mine and said, “One week ago, I was lying in bed when I had a dream-no, a vision that told me to go to Reddish Knob and pray at the altar of the sun, the one true lord above.”
Reddish Knob is one of the highest points around where teenagers like to drink, smoke, and make-out. Garrett continued, “The sun called to me and asked me to fast for one hundred hours before his glory so his purifying rays could bake me to a higher level. I believe. I believe I am a creature of the Sun.”
Now I was scared, “What did your parents say?”
“They are on a vacation in the Bahamas.” He was practically yelling. He skin was peeling horribly and every movement must have been agony. “I have given myself, heart and soul, to the light and warmth of all we can ever see and know and all I ask is, that for your sake and mine, you believe in anything.”
I spoke slowly, “You need help. If you don’t leave, I’m calling 911.”
He turned around abruptly and walked out, “It’s you who needs help.”
During my final week on Earth, Garrett was at his most zealous. He put a lot more conviction behind questions like, “Do you know how weird trees are? How do they know where to grow? They follow the sun. They blindly follow the sun and without them we would all choke on our own carbon-dioxide-cynicism.” On the final day he had taken up hotdogs as his subject. He said, “Do you know how weird hotdogs are? Yet we all eat them. We’ve adopted this mysterious meat as our national dish of pride.”
My last words were, “I eat kosher hotdogs. No weird stuff in those.”
Then Garrett said, “You can’t slay the dragon of your discontent with kosher hotdogs” and the ceiling caved in.
The more I think about it, the more I think Garrett may have had a point in his psychopathic way. He never seemed to be waiting for anything. I’m still expecting to see him in this room but maybe he didn’t end up here. Maybe he crashed the roof in, let in the sunlight, and he’s somewhere else now.
Maybe I should have joined him.
