The Afterlife and Those Deserving of It

By the time the Eldritch being known as ‘Mother’ was calling, death had already purified my body. A common fungus blossoming from within, spores brushing through limb and ligament. There wasn’t a bright light, or a flooding warmth. There simply was, and then there wasn’t. Spread throughout everything, or, and, nothing. Flattened like dough by the mighty hand of God, stretched eternally and endlessly and without respite, a tidal push and pull from the physical and the material, from taxes and deadlines and cleaning up dog shit.

A blindness, and then an Angel before me. As if it had been all along. Waiting. I expected, dare I say, a ledger of some sort. Something large and leather-bound and terrible, swollen and inflamed with each offence, raw and dribbling with pus. Large enough to crush me beneath it, to paper cut me open and fold me inside out, expose all of my humanness, every sin tucked carefully under the ridges of my brain, as if they could be cloaked from God. I expected that, should He deem me worthy enough to withstand His presence, He would admire the arithmetic. Here, wherever here is, this here that I have lived and died to reach, I am shown no stairway to heaven, nor elevator down to fiery hell. I feel no accusation, only attention, which is somehow worse. The Angel is a point of singularity, a pupil, a wormhole c-sectioned open, the end and beginning of the universe, a God, in its own right- and I don’t feel any recognizable dread at the blatant blasphemy of such a thought, don’t feel anything at all except wonder, the misty edges of it, perhaps. I don’t know why, don’t know anything at all except the white face of The Angel, its voice. Pure particles of light, the truest, brightest light, unyielding and unforgiving, and had I eyes, they would surely melt into a chunky, jelly mess of tissue and fluids and pearls and tears. This Angel before me, It has no eyes. Nor a nose or a mouth, and It does not speak, at least not by tongue and teeth and throat. But It calls to me, with a guttural hum that expands from the cosmos itself, like the muffled roar of a blackhole, and for me alone- and I know this as if it were all there is to know, as if its voice were the soft marrow of my bones, the satin membrane of my heart. It wants me to remember. I find that I want me to remember, too. And so I do.

I remember infinite lines of oak church pews, and a papercut from my new bible, glossy and black and reeking of fresh paper and familiar piety. I had lost the one before, and already been struck for it. My index finger had begun to bubble up with beads of burgundy, and ache, and ache, and ache, and my mother shushed and shushed, and didn’t glance away from the priest once while doing so. Her eyes fluttered shut occasionally, lips left ever so slightly ajar, rounded into a premature ‘o’ shape, greedily gulping in every word said. Like smooth marble embodied, her spine perfectly erect, string drawn tight. I had tried many times to sit as she did, unrippled, like still water- but such a pale imitation never did last long enough for me to convince myself that it’s not. And yet, she was not lighter or looser outside of church. No, my mother had a church smile and a home smile. The church smile showed teeth. The home smile rarely did. Guests had always described my mother as warm, and I had always remembered thinking warmth, in that case, must be something that burns.

At Mass, the women passed peace with mealy, dumpling hands, piercing the air with the sharp chime of stacked bangles, like church bells from Hell. They spoke often about humility while wearing enough gold jewelry to sink a fishing boat. Peace be with you. Peace be with you. Peace be with you. Their mouths were kind and their eyes were elsewhere. Outside, rain needled the parish car park, as Ireland often ensured it did, silvering car windscreens with bullets of sardines, springing from their tins insistently. Everyone hurried home beneath black umbrellas like a procession of a funeral, like little blackberry gumdrops spilled across the floor. I wondered then how the view looked from above.

I remember Eastertime and the passing of Jesus’s body, one feather light platter of starchy hunks at a time. And afterwards, his ever-precious blood, a cupped pool of carmine sloshing about within its glass confines. The smell stinging my nostril hairs. The rigid chair underneath me giving me carpal tunnel, as if Jesus’s presence were in the room, but only to prick my arse with millions of tiny pins. I remember wondering, at twelve, when all of my milk teeth had left me behind, and my adult teeth had already breached unbroken gums, who would eat and drink the bread and wine after, or if they would simply be thrown out, and the ongoing global food waste crisis worsened- whether Jesus, too, was scraped into the bin after Mass with wet teabags and Rich Tea Digestive crumbs. My stomach hollowed at the thought. Shame bloomed, as it so often did. I remember deciding not to ask. Questions made adults look at you as if a centipede had crawled out through your mouth.

I remember attending church what felt like each evening, and school the morning thereafter- a shame that I should visit the House of God less than the House of Satan, the haven of worldly people and their worldly ways, teaching us all about the worldly world. My mother, God bless her, did not forbid the internet outright. That would have required acknowledging it existed, that her righteous mind was curious about such things, or even feared them. Instead, she treated it the way Catholics treat demons or intrusive thoughts or those who drank Lyons tea or put their toaster in the cupboard- best not entertained, lest they find somewhere warm to root. Still, videos slipped through. Women not much older than me, honing honeyed voices, folding churned butter in beeswax wrap, wiping sourdough starter palms on linen aprons. Women who spoke about submission how they spoke about their retinol; “I’ve never felt better, truly. I’m glowing. My husband can’t stay away. It’s changed my life.” They smiled as if smiling were a sacrament, spoke of modesty as if it were natural duty, as if God Himself hadn’t created man and woman in the nude. And then they spoke of obedience and sacrifice as if they were code written in universal law, only visible to a lucky few who already understood, who didn’t need TikTok videos or Instagram reels to tell them, because God did, in prayer. Through pain, through proving oneself, one could finally become good and honorable, deserving of love at last - and sacrifice, suffering, one and the same, interchangeable fruits of labor - seeds pushed lovingly into soil. Their words, not mine. I did remember believing, quite sincerely, that God preferred pretty girls modest, because ugly suffering would surely be harder to romanticize.

I remember being a cheek biter, knuckle cracker, hair toucher, arm scratcher, shirt puller, lip picker, skin pincher. I remember being gifted a ballet pink nail polish by my mother, tiny and cheap, like a Barbie doll accessory, accompanied by a serious, sit-down talk on what colors are inappropriate for a modest, Godly young woman to wear, when I had asked for red, when I had explicitly said that all of the girls in my class wore red on their cuticles. I remember bleeding red for the first time too, through the pleats of my school skirt, blooming across the checkered pattern, and turning red with the humiliation of it, the burning shame of seeing such a wanton, suggestive colour spilling from within me. This was no blood of Christ, fine, sacrificial, mulberry wine. This was just waste. Unclean, loud, attention-seeking red.

 I remember a girl. Her chair pushed back, walking away from the screech of it, towards me. Lithe fingers sweeping away at the teardrops fringing my lashes, guiding me to the bathroom, as I imagine another mother of another child would. Her name dancing on the tip of my tongue, teasing me, before I had dared to say it. I remember her long lashes, kissing brow bone and cheek, and her longer hair, falling forward like flame. I remember being held for the first time, my hands, and then later, me. And she was kind and innocent, Lilith, and still I woke up each day with unease, that she, an unbeliever, would see Eternal Hell, and that because I somehow found Gods rules unjustified, unsatisfactory, when I knew full well that what I wanted had never counted, would simply never, either, I would join her. Now, as the past washes over me, a baptism, I can’t seem to place the faces of the others, or hear them, nor the circle she introduced me to, and don’t think I had ever noticed them at all anyway, not really. I remember my mother narrowing her eyes at me, mouth pursing, and then flattening into a thin, straight line at the mention of my first, my dearest, friend. I could not lie about her name, or her hair, or her lack of presence at church, and my mother did not lie when she told me that that girl, was a bad omen.

I remember an after-school club, after a year, after two, after three and four. Etching her in charcoal, and then rosebud lips against mine, and the fall of my heart, devoured by hopelessness.

 I remember the outline of it dawning upon me, something indescribable taking root, spindly fingers intertwining with my nervous system, overriding and consuming what is natural, plucking at heartstrings and neurotransmitters, sending them spinning like leaves in a storm. Out of place, out of bounds. Disintegrating and decaying what is God-given, tainting the clean holiness of His creation, the pristine, uncorrupted structure that I was meant to have inherited, that I should have had.  Something indecipherable blooming, like disease, like rot. A tapeworm stretching tall within me, gifting me growing pains. Turning my stomach.

I remember rejecting her, that parasite stirring a pleasantness only God can give, only God should give, within me, rejecting what she gave me, the key that would only unlock suffering in the hereafter. I remember thinking my mother was right. I had mistaken it, then, for danger. Depravity. I know now that it was something else entirely. Not paradise, maybe, but its first weather, the gentle blow of its breath. And I had been promised heaven for refusing it.

I remember sitting in the shower, knees grazing chin, hoping the pellets of water ambushing my back could slip into my skin, wash away sin and blood until it ran clear- or at the very least bruise blue, as proof that I had tried. Wondering if the core of the earth would pulse and smolder in Hell, or if the sun would blaze and incinerate in Heaven.

 I remember watching the friends I wasn’t supposed to have, have boyfriends that they shouldn’t have had. I remember feeling repulsed in their presence, with my friends and with their boyfriends, with myself. I remember the funny look they shared upon entering my room, eyeing the unintelligible notes scribbled about, some crushed into balls upon the floor, others circled or underlined until the page ripped under the penetration of pen, the half-open bible, the half-open tin of peaches, and the fruit flies festering on them. Peaches with their obnoxiously coral flesh pruned and blotchy with soft green and white. I felt no hunger anymore, only the Holy Spirit. Less hunger, less body, less girl, less red.

They didn’t come around again. I remember having spent one too many days in my bed from then on, staring and breathing, staring and breathing, staring and breathing, and not opening a window, not cleaning, not asking for help with the cleaning. I remember 5 years, half a decade, a fifth of a century peeling me apart, circling high above me like vutures in a drought. I remember black mold in the corner of my room, where the wall sweeps at the ceiling. I remember finding a tiny, dead mouse behind the sofa. And then, prayers. Prayers said because I knew what awaited me if I didn’t.  

I remember, I remember, I remember, and I don’t know what for.

Thinking of Lilith, of kindness given without the promise of reward, and painting Jesus’s face. Attempting the portrait of God. Giving up and giving in and streaking over it with fat, ugly splotches of red, and wondering why I had thought myself worthy in the first place. And then it was my mother that I heard, her shrill hushes, ringing within my ear canals; that won’t do, that won’t do at all. Tut, tut, tut. I watch myself watch paint dry. How I thumbed the lithe chain of my crucifix necklace, the silver of it ice against skin, heavy at nape. How it pulled at me, slowly tugging me down, down, down. To the ground, to the space below the ground. Where it could finally find warmth.

And they will probably make a martyr out of me when they discover my collapsed, emaciated body. They will say that I have died for God, and not because of him. They will say I have gone home. But I was home once, in that bathroom, in that classroom, under fluorescence, and it was too unbearable to stay.

I find two doors, the lacey ghost of them. Behind one, a heaviness. A world continuing without me. An absence not dissimilar to what I had felt before.
Behind the other, something vast enough to require choice. A world of my own, a caramel melting on my tongue, adapting to the shape of it.

I found myself recoiling from it instinctively.