The Other Side

A short story.

(Photo Source: NASA/APOD)

You feel a champagne glass placed in your left hand. You are very aware that you have a left hand.

Someone begins to remove the octopus of wires from your skin. The death of suction as each sensor is plucked roots you to the Earth, and you're thankful, damn thankful. 

"Bloody good show," a voice tells you. An open palm strikes your naked back like a club and you recoil. Sensors clatter like dice on the floor as you shudder them off. The octopus writhes. 

"Easy, easy," someone tells you. 

Another voice, ashen tone: "Have a seat and tell us everything." 

They take away the champagne. A voice explains, but not to you, that it's too early, he shouldn't be drinking, we need to do more tests. 

"Just ask him what he saw," comes the reply. 

You listen to their words like you're trying to decipher if a sound at midnight is an innocent bang, a cat's plaything, or an intruder who wants you dead. 

"No, no, stop." 

"Just ask the damn man." 

"Tell us what you saw."

More fingers on you now, like centipedes chasing mites. You're almost convinced you're you — almost, almost — but you wonder whether you're the you who traveled and if it's you who returned. Skin that itches like a stolen cloak. Feet like too-big jack-boots unsteady as the iron floor quakes. Truth as loose as a broken jaw. The great machine, the one that sent you beyond, is still awake. 

Where the hell is the nearest window? I need to see the sun, you think. 

"Stop rushing him."

"Give him the bloody champagne or some of the hard stuff. He earned it."

There's an idea. You're thirsty, rock-scorched. 

"Enough. Tell us about the afterlife." 

Hold on, you think. I volunteered for this, endured an injection that stung like an ice age. 

No, no. 

I invented this machine — it's my project. There's a photo of Nadia in an office down the hall. My wife. My dead wife. Did I find her? In the afterlife, there was a woman in a forest with a face of eyes, eyes both strange and long-known, trees that smelled like formaldehyde, air the taste of blood from a torn-open tongue. 

But I can't say this aloud. They'll praise me. Bury me. Send me back. 

"It was a hell of a thing," you blurt out. Laughter bursts around you like shattering lightbulbs. 

"Why aren't we recording this?" someone calls out, and the voices scatter like they've torn open a bag of marbles in a fight for control. No one lifts you from the chair. You're alone again. Energy swells beneath the floor, imperfect, an arrhythmia of power. When the time comes, you think, don't confess anything, not a damn thing. Don't tell them how the forest wailed, how the ash and pine cried out with lipless mouths. That the truth, so simple, holy-pure, is that you didn't come back.