Afterlife

She had taken all the pills, yet she still woke up. Susan Selby was quite perplexed. She had wanted her life to end, and yet paradoxically enough, she woke this morning refreshed, relaxed, all thoughts of trying to end it again gone. At first she was not suspicious, yet somehow there was a slow dawning, a realization that things were not quite as they seemed.

Maybe it first started at that new college she'd gone to. At her interview, she'd been shown into a well-furnished room with a painting over the fireplace, - what had it depicted - St. Peter with the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Miss de la Vere had been no angel, and yet there had been something about her, an understanding quality. Now, when Susan Selby looked back, she thought Miss de la Vere had in fact been the Archangel Gabriel. And then, when she left the college the principal had dropped a gavil, as if a judgment had been made. Susan Selby had gone to hell.

Allsorts had passed through her mind. The mental suffering could only be described as hell, or maybe it was just purgatory. She hoped it was purgatory. If she said a lot of prayers maybe one day she would reach heaven. And then there was the gift. She could paint like never before. She had always liked art, but now her paintings rivalled those of Miro, Matisse, Chagal.

Susan Selby was a bit of a genius. Yet increasingly, she could not help feel this was all a sham. It wasn't true what was happening. She felt like a chimera. If she got a lot of money from her drawings, would that mean she had reached heaven? And people around her, what were they; they looked like people she had known, but they also seemed like chimeras, they lacked conviction for the present, somehow they were empty shells merely going through the motions.

Susan Selby went to church every sunday: it was the only way to stop the hate. Her soul was transforming, love was coming back. Eventually her paintings began to sell. Soon the money came pouring in. She bought a fabulous new home, had friends, a new husband, and could do just about anything she wanted.

Yet deep in her heart she knew. She knew the truth, as a resurrection she could never be more than the living dead, and yet in many ways, it was an improvement. Before another incarnation, she would live out this existence, probably a lot happier than when she had been alive. Susan Selby was somebody at last.