Lazarus Rising

How did I end up here?

Who could have done this to me?

Why would anyone do this to me?

I’d been asking myself these three questions on repeat for the past three days, but no answers relieved my aching mind. I’d never been one to mope about my life, but after what I had experienced, I think I earned the right to do so. And it’s here, sitting on the roof of a skyscraper, with a bottle of bourbon in hand, that I would relive it once again.

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When I woke up it was dark; dark and quiet. The combination of the two felt like a giant weight crushing down on my chest, squeezing all the air out of me like an accordion. Panic poured over me like a tsunami crashing onto a beach. I couldn’t see anything, I could feel the lack of air and my breathing began to quicken as I gave in to the panic.

I tried to sit up, but my elbows, knees and head all collided with something hard. I out-stretched my arms and ran my hands along whatever was keeping me boxed in. It was smooth and silky, but solid enough that when I head butted it, I suffered more damage. The bottom was padded and it felt soft and comfortable. Then I realized where I was. Assuming the gravedigger did his job properly, I was buried six feet under the ground, lying in a coffin, alive.

I needed to get out. I was suffocating. The tiny walls were closing in on me. I began pounding on the top of the coffin, trying my hardest to break out of the wooden prison. I punched, pushed and kicked the wood with as much might as I could muster, but it refused to buckle. I was panicking to the point of nausea, not to mention I was quickly running out of air. I continued pounding on the wood, desperate to finally see the light of day. I felt splinters embed themselves into my palms and my knuckles began to bleed. Then I heard one little noise that made me give a sigh of relief.

The sound of cracking wood pierced the quite of the box, but then it quickly went sour. Since I’d forgotten that I’d been buried, I hadn’t been expecting the multitude of soil that fell through the freshly opened hole, landing on my chest and forcing me down. I tried to move, but my arms had been pinned down. I struggled and squirmed with all my strength, and finally got my arms and legs free and channeled my inner canine and began to dig my way out of the pit.

Dirt found its way into my eyes, ears and every other opening in my head. I began to cough and splutter on the disgusting taste as it filled my mouth and stopped my breath. But I was making progress, I was slowly making my way upwards and out of the ground. I could feel my consciousness begin to slip with the lack of oxygen, but just as I was about to give up, one hand broke the surface. The second one soon followed and I pulled myself through the dirt and out into the night.

I tried to get up, but simply flopped onto my back, gasping for breath. I had dirt and worms in my hair, which was disgusting enough without the same substance sitting in my mouth. I gagged the clumps of dirt out of my mouth, which was soon followed by vomit. After hacking and wheezing I slowly and shakily got to my feet. I was standing in a graveyard, surrounded by tombstones and eerie-looking trees that cast haunting shadows. I’d always found graveyards creepy, and this whole experience wasn’t helping my phobia of them. The tombstones were built in various shapes with different messages engraved onto them, such as “We’ll miss you” “Beloved father” and a favourite, “Rest in Peace”. But the one to catch my attention was the tombstone in front the grave I had just crawled out of.

It was a plain tombstone, just the regular curved-top model with a message engraved on it:

Quinn Vie Morte
1987 – 2008
Beloved brother and son
“You were taken before your time, we will miss you forever.”

Great, so the whole world, including my family, think I’m dead, which I was, now I’m just wondering how I managed to crawl out of a coffin with the severe handicap of being dead. It was right about now that I suddenly realized that I had no idea what I was going to do next. When you’re left standing in a graveyard and the world thinks you’re dead, you don’t really have many options. Not knowing what to do, I just began wandering.

I left the cemetery in a dazed, zombie-like traipse, too much floating through my head to concentrate on looking normal. How does someone go from being dead and rotting in a coffin to climbing out of said coffin and walking around, living and breathing? Better still, how the hell did I die in the first place? I had been trying to remember it, but it was all blank, like I’d fallen into a dreamless sleep and only just woke up.

I walked down random streets, not sure of my destination. I had just turned a corner in my walk that resembled a drunken stupor when all the lost memories I’d been trying to recall hit me with the force of a wrecking ball. The images flashing through my head were so vivid I fell to the wet pavement, my head feeling like it was being shattered with a jackhammer. The images weren’t memories; they were stronger than that; it was more like a hallucination. Suddenly, everything was clarified.

I’d been at a nightclub with a group of people, but I’d lost them in the crowd. The heat inside was getting to me and the room had begun to spin, so I’d decided to get some fresh air. I’d made it through the throng of people moving to the pulsing dance beat, like one giant organism, with the music as its heartbeat. I’d made it outside and paced down the street and breathed in the fresh night air. I was so far from the entrance no one noticed when a random stranger grabbed me from behind and dragged me into a side alley.

“Give me your wallet,” the man had said. He’d looked like the typical mugger, downtrodden, dirty and gruff. Oh, and holding a gun, which was being forced painfully into my ribcage.
“I don’t have my wallet, I left it in the club,” I’d stammered, barely able to form the words, then I’d resorted to begging. “Please don’t shoot me, I don’t have anything.”

But I could tell by the cold, heartless grin on my assailant’s face that I wouldn’t be surviving this encounter. “Either way, I need to have some fun somehow,” the attacker said, and after what seemed like an eternity, the trigger was pulled, the noise was deafening and the pain was excruciating. The bullet had torn through my stomach, so the process of dying was slow and painful.

I was lying on the pavement, the chill of the asphalt being absorbed into my cheek. The force of the sudden recollection had left me sprawled on the ground, looking like an unconscious drunkard. I got up slowly and a sudden rush of blood to my head left me feeling dizzy and slightly nauseous.

“Those strolls down memory lane certainly throw you for a ringer, don’t they?” a voice wafted from behind me, smooth and silky like velvet. It was male, but not gruff and hoarse; it had a calming quality to it.

I turned to face the source of the voice and saw a shadowy figure of a man, silhouetted by the darkness of the alley. He had a large build, but not intimidating, and when he stepped out of the shadows, his face was revealed. He had neatly combed blonde hair, a very square jaw, a clean-shaven face and a friendly smile that revealed pearly white teeth, and piercing blue eyes.

“Who are you?” I asked, the only question I seemed to be able to form.

The stranger gave a soft chuckle. “I am the one who has the power to bring you back from the afterlife. I awakened you from the cold clutches of death; I am God.”

Under normal circumstances I would have found this totally insane and wouldn’t have believed a word of it, but waking up six feet under and having to crawl to the surface can have a massive effect on your psyche. “Why would you want to bring me back to life? What makes me so special?”

“Have you ever heard the story of Lazarus of Bethany?” “God” asked me, with a quizzical expression. When I shook my head, he laughed. “I didn’t think so; you don’t really strike me as a Bible-reading type. Anyway, Lazarus was a man who lived in a town called Bethany. His sisters, Mary and Martha, sent word to Jesus that the one they loved was ill and dying, but by the time Jesus had arrived; Lazarus had been dead for four days. Jesus stated that Lazarus would once again rise and, surrounded by hundreds of mourners, Jesus had the stone of Lazarus’s tomb removed and beckoned him to come out, which he did.”

“But what does this have to do with me?” I asked, utterly confused. “I’m not exactly this Lazarus person.”

“Ah, but you are. You are a descendant of Lazarus and it is now your destiny to be reawakened from death, Hell, I’ve already had to explain this to you three times,” God answered, though I was a little confounded that he was cursing.

“Wait a minute, why do I have to keep surviving death? Why can’t I just die, when it’s my time, and stay peacefully dead, instead of waking up and having to crawl out, only to die again? Why do you get to play God and resurrect me?” I shot back.

He raised his eyebrows skeptically, “Wow, out of all the time’s I’ve had to go over this, that is definitely the dumbest question so far. And I’m not doing it; it happened once before and will keep happening again and again. These are the card’s I’ve dealt you, now you must live with it,” he said in a grave tone, then disappeared in the blink of an eye.

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So here I was, sitting on a rooftop in the bitter cold, drowning my sorrows in a bottle of bourbon. I don’t see why that saying is relevant, because as much as I drank, my sorrows were nowhere near drowned. I may sound really idiotic, whining that I can never really die, but a few hours ago, I’d had another recollection that had knocked me to the ground.

It was bliss, pure, untainted bliss. I was happy, not a care in the world and there was nothing bad, anywhere. I was remembering what it was like to be in Heaven. It was wonderful and I wanted with every fiber of my being to go back, but I had been ripped from that perfect place against my will, only to wake up in a mahogany box, back in the real world; the real world that was overrun with violence, suffering, evil and pain.

I wanted to go back, I wanted the afterlife again, but I could taste it, but never truly acquire that. I was cursed to return to a world that seemed evil in comparison. It wouldn’t matter how many times I was hit by a car, or stabbed by a mugger, or fell from a building, I would always find myself right back where I started, but then I had an epiphany.

When I was younger, I was forced to attend church every Sunday morning, and most of the things I had been told there had stuck with me (with the exception of the Lazarus story). Of all the millions of things considered to be sins, suicide was one of them. To commit suicide was a crime against God, according to religion.

I got to my feet, swaying slightly from the alcohol, and slowly edged towards the edge of the roof. Looking down twenty stories, the lights of passing cars whizzed below like illuminated ants. I was taking a chance; I would definitely die, but if my death was a sin, I might not wake up from it, hopefully. But there was always the chance that instead of going to a better afterlife, I would be sent to an eternity of punishment for my sin.

It was now or never. Tossing the bottle, I stepped from the roof and closed my eyes. When I opened them, I was back in the blissful serenity of what I knew was the true afterlife.

And I never woke up again.