Riley's Dreams

The Butterfly

GREAT GRANDPA RILEY

The last thing I remember before I woke up was a monumentally loud explosion coming from what my men jokingly called Suicide Hill. It was steep incline composed mostly of gritstone. I had Charles Lim as my dynamite man that day and I was making a last minute check when I heard Charles rushing towards me in a panic.

A few times in my life I've experienced a few seconds when time seems to slow down and all the details focus in on what I see and hear with amazingly clarity. This was one of those times. As my eyes shifted towards him I saw a man with a lit cigar touching it to a fuse then scrambling to get away while the fuse burned down.

I thought I was far enough away so as to not to be affected. But as I figured out later one of the young apprentices must have mistakenly used some of the more potent Englewood sticks when we ran out of the smaller Shelby brand dynamite sticks. It was a fairly easy mistake to make because they looked similar on the outside.

The explosion sent chunks of rocks flying in all directions. I was forty feet away but the blast sent my body flying about like a feather in a hurricane. I was temporarily blinded and couldn't hear a thing. And my world went black.

The last thing that came to my mind was I'm going to die.

The next thing I knew I found myself mysteriously standing in front of a shop with a backpack on. It was a brightly painted building with large windows.
I felt no pain and I thought I might be having a hallucination.

How did I get here? Why did I feel so different? I was wearing jeans and a cotton shirt I didn't recognize as mine.

The signs outside of the establishment were lit up in glowing bright colors of red, yellow and green proclaiming itself to be "The Heavenly Tats Parlor".

I could see a reflected image of a very thin young man looking back at me from the large glass window out front.

Heavenly? Was I dead and in heaven I wondered. It certainly didn't match up with my notions of what heaven was like but how else could I explain all this?
Behind me was a road that was pure black and solid but much smoother than any road I'd ever seen before.

The road had metal carriages with people inside going to and fro with speeds that were impossible for any horse to attain. They frightened me. Was this all real? Perhaps it was induced by my Opium medication. I had been warned about this by Mary.

I was almost certain I must be dead. For my last moments on earth I was in the greatest of pain but here I was in a young body completely free of pain.

"RILEY! Hey there buddy I'm glad you finally came to visit!" Said an odd fellow with red hair who popped up out of the parlor.

From his haircut I could only conclude he was a member of the Iroquois Tribe. It was evident from his red colored mohawk. Yet he was as pale as my Irish self and spoke in clear English.

I didn't recognize him but assumed he must have known me from my childhood back in Ohio.

"Hello! Is this Heaven?"

"Oh yeah bro. This is Heavenly Tats! This is my world. Come on in let me show you what we've got."

I followed him in where he introduced me to his wife a strangely dressed girl wearing black clothing with pierced ornaments about her face. Not being too familiar with Iroquois customs I hid my shock at her appearance. Before her was a man whose arm she was engraving with an image on of an angel with a huge sword before a ghostly staircase.

"Angela! Say Hello to one of my classmates. This here's Riley."

As he mentioned that we were classmates I realized we must have known each other when I was just a young lad of 6 or 7. Although I don't remember any Iroquois children this fellow could've looked quite at home in our one room school without his red Mohawk.