The Last Handful of Clover - Book 1: The Hereafter

1.11 The Long, Dark Night

So this is how death tortures us, he thought. Painfully vivid memories of things we have lost forever. Painful awareness of exactly how beautiful life was. And a constant reminder that it is forever gone.

He opened his eyes and looked around the room once again. Everything was still so clear, almost glowing. The nighttime allowed him to see hidden life pulsating in things that he thought were inanimate: The teddy bear he had as a child. The framed photo of him and Keith hiking the Grand Canyon. The bust of Shakespeare that they bought when they visited the Globe theater in England. The book of Sanskrit poetry that he knew he would never finish, lying still on his nightstand.

Strangely, looking at his own hands, they seemed less alive than the knickknacks on the dresser.

Rising from the bed, he walked around the room, touching things, trying to open drawers and failing, trying to pick up framed photos, and failing. Trying to part the curtains to get a glimpse of the outside street... and failing. Each immovable object was a memory, and each touch flooded his mind with raw emotions that were on fire, like nests of angry hornets.

As painful as they were, Richard held fast to those memories. Especially those with Keith. The love they shared had been glorious. It still was glorious. A glorious, stinging, open wound that he felt in every cell of his body. Gazing at Keith's huddled form there on the bed produced a longing both universal and overwhelming. He looked at the weariness on Keith's face as he slept and felt an aching tenderness.

Ten years, he thought. We were together more than ten years.

And with that, the last of the jigsaw puzzle fell into place. The last of the Christmas ornaments melted together into one, and it was called The Life of Richard Pratt.

He remembered it all. Every moment he and Keith had shared in vivid, painful detail. Their meeting, their years together, their marriage... It was all there. He could walk it like a tightrope, from the moment they met until...

Yes, that was the only flaw. There was still an important piece missing from the puzzle. A piece that was still in the box, or perhaps still on the factory floor somewhere far away. That missing piece gnawed at him, vividly stark because everything else has become so clear.

The one thing he couldn't remember was the night he died.

It was not the dying itself, which he now recalled clearly as a crash, an explosion of red, a feeling of falling, and Keith's face screaming his name in horror. He remembered dying, and that endless fall into the terror of the Void. He couldn't linger in that memory, because it was too painful.

But what happened in the hours before? What happened in this house, in the final hours of my life?

That penultimate puzzle piece was nowhere to be found.

As a professor, Richard had learned a great deal of mental discipline. During a writing session or a preparation for a class, he had always compartmentalized his thinking and focused his mind on the task at hand. But now, he realized, that skill would be put to the test. Taking a deep breath, he tried to shut down his inner monologue and focus.

What do I really know? What are the cold, hard facts about this world as a ghost?

To his surprise, he realized that he already knew a great deal. Some things he just felt through intuition. He just knew, for instance, that he would no longer sleep, no longer feel tired. He also knew, in a similar way, that these bloody clothes would always be a part of him now. He would wear this blood splattered, gray, University of Utah hoodie forever, along with his green flannel pajama bottoms and thick blue wool socks. He touched his face, and realized that the heavy Alan Ginsberg glasses he always wore were gone, and he somehow knew that they must have been thrown from his face the second he had been shot.