The Beginning ©

Ben Bustillo – Prohibited its reproduction

It was a known and anticipated day announced in many ways shapes and manners. The day of reckon, Armageddon, the commencement of the new system, or the opening of heaven’s doors. No matter which way you called the ending day under any religious convictions you were raised on, it meant nothing to me. People on the streets were chanting glories to their Gods, refuting and attacking each other for evoking the wrong one and telling each other that their soul will be penalized for their rest of their existence. Not me. I was expecting the moment.

Death was taking long to approach me. Walking the streets was like being in an edited movie by celestial sophisticated computers. Could not be compared to the reality I had had in all the years of my existence.

A day covered with shadows of the size of mountains, colorless trees, ambulant pets, people crying and children with expressionless eyes was the scene everywhere. A few were asking themselves why they hadn’t lived life differently, and following the cleric admonition, were repenting from their sins to save their souls in the last moment of life.

The signals were everywhere; many had given up relentlessly embracing despair and desolation. They became dust as soon as they perished. It was not as the prophecy had predicted or what the bible had taught its followers – for dust you are and to dust you will return- wrongly interpreted and profusely translated by the many religious groups. The power of destruction caused by atomic weapons combined with chemicals had killed all the ingredients needed to have life on earth. It was as a second destruction coming from past lives in a different planet. Who could know for sure? Why the unknown produced such premises of a divine being creating all kind of existences? The fear to explore the thinking process, the terror of sinning if we dared to, the panic of loosing promise for a better life were the utensils of the self proclaimed macabre spiritual leaders.

Homes were emptied in a matter of minutes, neighborhoods in hours, and towns in days until a complete emptiness covered the distance of my sight. Under the bridge all the plants looked alive but had turned gray. Only humans and animals were destined to die almost instantly; vegetation was transforming or evolving into a new form of nature, some colorless, dark and gray others, but all showing signs of life.

I had been alone for many years. My last relative walked away one-day out of her house and no one knew what had happened to her. She used to say that she would ascend to the heavenly kingdom when she had finished preparing for the transformation. Her friends were not sure what she meant by that, but her purity and familiarity with spiritual beings and the conversations with dead people, you either believed she was schizophrenic, or that she had a special mental power. With time, many of us chose to believe the latter. Not because I believed in life after death, but her power of conviction was sublime to any logical explanation.

In front of my house there was a family of five adults. I was not sure how they were related to one another. When we met crossing the bridge either by car or walking, we greeted each other. There was respect but never friendship. Just the simple knowledge that we existed and the reciprocated tolerance to the abuses we had in our respective properties. One of them had the fatherly figure and the others followed his orders. None of them protested his radicalism. They had to go to church at least three times a week, preach door-to-door once a week, submitting to the ridicule and the joke of many comedians and sitcoms.

That is why there was no pain or concern from me when I saw them dying. I witnessed their death and after becoming dust. It took about ten minutes, did not look painful, but their faces took a cadaveric form without losing the skin then turned gray. Their veins still showed blood circulating going to the brain showing movement, grasping any amount of oxygen they could, and their eyes showing some kind of satisfaction, perhaps an orgasmic one.

The sky and the clouds all were turning gray. The rays of light from the sun and the ones left from the city marked a tenebrous silence. For some reason, death was living me for last. I had no appetite and wanted to stop thinking. If this was the end of the world, as people thought it was, or if it was the commencement of a new system, or if the heavenly kingdom was opening the doors, I did not want to be a part of it.

The believers were the first ones in dying. All those who followed a religious group left first. At one point I asked myself if this mess was created by their power of faith or if it was a punishment from the war of the gods controlling the end. Was it a rift among them? Were they confronting each other to control what was left over?

As an unbeliever I was witnessing the occurrence spasmodically and incapable of stopping anything. Tired of seeing so many disappearances, of not eating, breathing the sense of nothingness causing me nauseas, despair and anxiety of a sooner departure.

Life had not been bad to me. I had always being able to resolve matters in favorable manners. Never married, no children, moving from one loveless relationship to another. I knew I was different because I was incapable of falling in love. To me sex was just an animal condition and that is how I used it. A conception unacceptable to the religious and mystic worlds, but common among the people I associated.

Uniting love and sex confounded the populace. They had to correlate each other and impede one acting independently. The acting of the animal instinct alone was seeing as a sin.  It had to be black or white and never in between. Their lack of knowledge and understanding of what is defined as life with the prohibition to think were one of the causes of the confusion. That is why men or women having sex with a partner of the same sex were considered sick. For religious people, this kind of sentiment needed to be hidden, fought and seen as contrary to human development. The separation of the two beings could not support the acceptance of their Gods. In the hiding, it was permissive, forgiven and allowed as a human imperfection. This was one of the many erratic Bible’s interpretation.

Sex was an animal expression and love was a spiritual manifestation of a need for companionship with another being whether of the same kind or replaceable by another species. An individual had two forms of manifestations of life. The perception departed from the figures of the semen and the ovule, the first one depicted the form of a brain with the vertebrae column and the ovule the mass, or body. Males were representing the spiritual being, and females represented the animal condition. The unification of the two created the chaos as interpreted by the original sin of the first couple having sex when Eve tempted Adam.

To think that man was the only intelligent creature living on earth was obnoxious and stupid. Analyzing their behavior had to be determinant in recognizing a language difficult for us to understand, but significant enough to accept their intelligence.

There were always rumors, essays and many ways to believe that the rich, powerful and in control of the government had information about life in other planets, documents proving the existence of more than one God, some evil to the commoner.

The system divided government in many sections. Politically we were alienated in many currents; religiously, ignorance of each other prevailed among all. Each division created a form of discipline, rules of conduct and the authorities to preserve them as well as the penalties for disobeying one.

As a navigator of the system I always respected their norms. However, every time I was near one of them I feared their reactions. The power created by their fanaticism and ignorance elevated them to a superior position forming a wall that impeded and obstructed communication. The farther I maintained myself from them, the better my course plotting was.

I speculated what made me different from the rest of my relatives. We all had the same roots; normal parents from a small town, poorly educated, religiously inclined, disciplinarians, and mainly fearful of the power of God, we thought. By the influence of the idol formation and our own misconception we believed they were not humans as us, and did not feel the same incertitude we had growing up. There were a couple of episodes in my life marking this difference. In one I almost lost my life, but the second one was the most important one.

The school building was a regular and normal house. In fact, I had lived before in it with my family. Very familiar to me; the teacher who owned the school was related to my father and after the ending of the classes, the other children will go home but I stayed longer waiting to be picked up by my father who was the only one who drove a vehicle. Back in those days women were expected to be only housewives and if a husband allowed his wife to drive a car he would be seeing as lacking manhood. One day waiting in this school to be picked up, I was playing in the hall, when suddenly I saw a ball of light coming in my direction to hit me. But in the split of a second, I evaded it and the ball ended in the pantry as if discouraged or scared of what had happened.

I was about four years old when this happened and the scene stayed dormant for years. But I am almost positive that it separated me from the rest. Ideas floated in my mind forming definitions, revelations came as my every day meals, opening my eyes to observe people and the world from a different angle and perspective.

Is it true? Is it a fact that before you die your mind retrospect when is beginning to die? How long would it take? Still feel my heart beating and the speed of the thought continues to be the same. However, my pace is slower. I think I have been walking for several weeks now. No stopping. The image of the bridge, the solitude of the street and the rays of light drawing in the space the face of a ghost continue to appear in this trip to nowhere. Would it be heaven? Was I good enough to earn my entrance? Who would be the judge? Would it be like a panel of several adjudicators confronting your wrong or right doing?

I could care less. I am still firm in my conviction that I did not want to be part of that facade. I want it to end. Not to think anymore. Did everyone go through the same when dying?

Are my eyes still seeing or was I imagining recorded pictures in my mind? But I still can breath. Must be my eyes. Can I see me moving? Am I in bed? My legs hurt and I feel my ankles swelling to the size of a coconut. They are in pain… and my feet too. I feel anxiety, pain in my chest and am short of breath. Maybe I am dying now…

My sexual life had been very active. I had had so many girlfriends with whom I had sex, that one day I either lost count or decided to stop counting. That is how I complemented my animal behavior. I was 20 years old when hanging out with some pseudo intellectuals defined as homosexuals one of them invited me to have sex. But I did not know what to do. I draw a territorial map in my body and told him he could use those parts but I would do nothing. I think this defined me as heterosexual by society’s standards. I could have some degree of friendship with gay people, but their belief that we all were homosexuals disturbed me. If I saw a handsome man I could easily say he was without compromising my sexuality. I neither had sexual desire for him nor fantasized; it was just a simple compliment.

I had a gay woman friend and in one conversation I had with her I remember saying that having sex with someone of the same gender had nothing to do with the definition of heterosexuality. To me sexual identity was determined by with whom you could fall in love. If a man loved another man or a woman another woman is what made them homosexuals. No the sexual activity.

Yes, definitely, I’m dying. Regressing images and remembrances are flowing in and out. I was not differentiating reality anymore. The flow of blood to my brain was slowing, the bridge and the street kept coming and leaving, I had no idea of the correlation of the two with my life or death, past or present. Just agonizing for a life or a complete death.

Still, I could not accept the idea of having to repent from all sins. What was a sin, anyway? Under which authority could be measured? Religion? Morals? Customs? I could not find an answer and frankly, I did not care for one. Even if it was a life after death, did not want one. A complete death is what I was expecting. What was defined by the believers of reincarnation as a completion of a life cycle, which it meant that it was the end of an old soul who had lived all the lives that one was supposed to live.

And if there was a heaven or hell I never understood the meaning or why they had to exist. The picture of the bridge, the lonely street and the light disappearing in the clouds continued to flabbergast the little of what was left of me.

I can’t move my feet anymore. I’m going to sit down. But there are no benches or chairs to use. The street is in solitude. Everyone I knew is gone but me. The time has come. Don’t want to think anymore. Thinking was beginning to be hurtful too. Is it light disappearing or is it a light coming? I read or heard one time that when you are dying you see a light at the end of the tunnel that brings you to a new beginning. Was it really a new beginning? Why the sublimation of death when it was really another fact of life? All was a lie. It was just a process as any other, being born, complete a life cycle and then die. Nothing to do with religion, or morals.

Don’t feel the legs… Don’t know if am sitting down, lying on the street… can’t recognize the difference. I know it is happening. I want to touch my legs to see if they have sensitivity, but I can’t move either arm. I guess that only my brain is alive. I’m still thinking, wanting to stop but can’t. There is silence around me, or is it that the hearing is gone too? If there were other people talking around me, would I be able to hear them? I will never know. No one is around. All are dead.

The time to decide if I want or need a heaven had come. Would I retract of all beliefs that had made part of my philosophy during life and embrace the darkness of the fanaticism and ignorance at the end? Would I be considered a coward if I did? Using math to resolve this question would be appropriate because these ideas resided many years with me compared to my last seconds of life. I will not give up. I will not betray myself. I do not want another life… the one leaving was more than enough… I had been happy…

If I had married and had had children, I would have told them not to cry, not to inter me and to celebrate my departure. Perhaps one thing I regret is not having children and grandchildren. But who cares now? I don’t. I was happy; I had a full life…

The sunlight is getting closer… Or was it my imagination? The light was absorbing infinity as if I was having a complete and different orgasm without the sensation of emptiness. My obsession with death had come to realization. There will be no more competition with a father who died young or with brothers and sisters who died before me. I had no mother, well in a sense of the word. I was born through one who behaved with me as if she had never given birth to me. That is why I always said I never had one…

My throat is starting to feel numbed. But I don’t want to cry. Are there any tears in my eyes? I see no tunnel yet nor a light at the end of it. I’m going to try to move my head to see for the last time the bridge… What does it represent in my life? Maybe I crossed it when I confronted the ball of light at my school when I was a child… Maybe the light confounding with the clouds was the way to receive me to the new beginning. But I wanted an end, not a new beginning… An end…

I will not claudicate to my principles no matter how near the conclusion is. I needed to be firm and confront it with dignity and rip off the vestments of fear. It was difficult to shift gears at the last moment grasping the last bits of air left in your lungs.

The heart stopped. I don’t hear its palpitation anymore. How can the lung still function then? Why is my brain still thinking? I guess that is how it is… Organ by organ failing to function, one by one, electrical shock by electrical shock; chemical reaction by chemical reaction… One by one… Not all at once. Could anyone have a choice or preference? I guess not. People talking about the perfection of God… How wrong they were. I see no God or celestial figures. I don’t see demons or devils either. Was I right all along? No special guiding lights, no tunnel, no throne of God, or heaven or hell. Yes, I am beginning to think I was right. That is why I was one of the last dying.

The flow of ideas continues to browse my brain but is slowing down… Death will be reaching its destination soon… Are there any thoughts that I need to clarify before? No, I remain firm to my end. No more lives, no reincarnation, no heaven no hell, no new system. The end of an old soul is my new beginning, which is the principle of nothingness, like the empty street, the lonely bridge that crossed my path, and the sunlight confounded with lifeless plants…

Need to open my eyes to grasp the last view of the surroundings… I’m making a tremendous effort but still can’t. Probably that section of the brain is already dead, as is most of my body… I have not been converted to dust yet, but how would I know? Should I? Who cares? I’m almost dead… See nothing… expect nothing… Do… I… want… God? Do… I need… heaven? I’m dead… The beginning… Nothingness…