Short Story of a Lost Soul

The smell was overwhelming, but he did not notice. Hygiene was an art of his past. Years ago his future was bright. School was easy, his parents were loving, and life was full of promise.  But slowly, he ebbed toward the fog he lives in today. Putting drugs into his body was a turning point. Gradually his life changed from soaring growth to spiraling decay. Stopping was no longer a matter of choice, he was ruled by chemistry.

He became slave to the drugs. Alienation became his life. His parents, siblings, and friends had no choice but to abandon him to his own vices. Everyone was gone. Everyone except… his grandmother. She never left him, no matter the pain it caused or instability it inflicted… and each time he rewarded her steadfast love with betrayal. While he regularly demolitioned her life and left her to salvage the ruins unaided, his mire of decay never damaged her soul. She was a beautiful woman of faith. She loved God and prayed for him continually in spite of his incessant self-sabotage. Truly he adored her for it and at times desperately wanted to change for her sake, but the drugs ruled his life. He would rob her, and then cry over his villainy. Superficial rinse, and repeat.  Yet, she still loved him in all the ways she always had from the beginning. 

Now, he was so different, though. Drugs were his master and had taken their awful toll. He knew his death was near, he could feel it in his being. It wasn’t a natural death pursuing him, but his own rotting heart. He also knew he had to see her before the end. She, herself, was in the hospital downtown. He had no lucid recollection of how he knew this, but he did. Walking the miles to get to her would be a herculean achievement for him, but he had to make it. The walking dead… he shuffled on toward his final stop.

Hours later, exhausted, he entered the hospital. He saw the disdainful look on the face of the nurse. He said his dear grandmother’s name, and was pointed onward. When he arrived, his heart sank. Her emaciated form barely disturbed the sheets. She was far from the conscious form he longed for, and it seemed death may swoop upon her bed at any moment. The long, rasping breaths her body forced on her made him nauseous. He was too late. His only savior in this world had become a sickening sight, which only reminded him of his own failing mortality and the selfishly destructive path that had led them both there. He fell into the chair and wept.  His hand grasped for the needle in his pocket… and he made his last decision. As he sank it into his arm… that familiar burning warmth filled him.. and then a vast darkness enveloped him.  

Suddenly, beyond all expectation, there was light… bright, brilliant light. His familiar fog dissipated. His thinking was free and clear for the first time in a decade. Although he wasn’t sure thinking was really the correct word for it. He just… was. He could see every direction at once, sense everything around him and somehow feel all of existence. Whatever this place was, it was beautiful, calming… wonderful. As his senses adjusted, he realized he was no longer alone. There were beings everywhere. He couldn’t see them, but he could sense them, feel their presence all around him. He knew instantly that they were good beings, emanating pure love and joy; yet they were mourning. It was a deeper suffering than he could ever have imagined.   He felt compelled to comfort them, but there was no speaking in this place, only feeling and thinking. He tried to comfort them anyway, but there was none to be found. Slowly, over what seemed like years, they faded from his senses. They were replaced with pure, agonizing fear.  He scanned everywhere to find where this horror was, but could only tremble. He tried to hide himself away by not thinking or feeling anything. This was a failure. For years he tried, and failed. Until, after what seemed like eons, something different was there. He didn’t know how, but he could see it. It was the most beautiful being he could ever imagine. Light, color and song emanated from it in such splendor he could only be in awe. Then it addressed him.

“Welcome, I have been waiting for you,” said the entity.

“Why?” he hesitantly inquired.

“Because… you are MINE!” The entity growled, snarled, gleefully howled.

“I don’t understand...”

“Oh, I think you do! Can you guess my name?  I am going to devour every last bit of you over the span of all eternity.”

“But I have no body here, I feel no pain,” he reasoned.

The entity howled in laughter at his misconception. “You will soon learn… just how much spiritual pain is far more damning than physical pain. As I gut your pitiful soul, you will experience just how utterly hollowed and hopelessly lost a creature you truly are. Hope is no more than an ever-open wound here. God has finally abandoned you… to… me! That fool chased you for years and you rejected Him over and over, day by day, and now you are… mine,” it proclaimed with fiendishly smiling eyes. “Now… can you guess… my name?” it seethed.

He went white with fear and weak in the knees. Was there even solid ground beneath him? This invading presence of pure evil was too much. “Then do it! I have been here for centuries and cannot do this anymore. Why don’t you just destroy me.”

“Oh, you fool. There is no start or end, only this ever-present torment. There is no before or after. No sweet hope of… ‘someday.’ Only… me! You are in a rare and unique space, caught between a pathetic past and the utter absence of future, between life… and… death himself. Your body is certainly dying, too consumed by your own foolishness. I only have to wait until it is finished, and then I will grant your request.”

“Please,” he begged.

His plea only energized the entity. It laughed, snarled and cried. Its power was immense and its hatred seeped into everything.  

“Please,” he sighed one more time, internally accepting all hope was lost.

But then… there was another light in the distance, one that seemed to make even the entity somehow afraid. It sneered and roared at the approaching light like a lion being caged. It turned and fled, darkness, hatred, and fear seemingly departing with it. 

As the light quickly arrived it enveloped him, embraced him as a thousand pure embraces might feel all at once. It loved him. It loved him in such a firm and familiar way, the love his depths longed to see but a glimmer of throughout all those years of hopeless torment. Realizing then, he understood, this was his grandmother. No longer frail and depleted, but full of such purity and power that she had driven evil itself from him. Relieved as he was, after centuries of his deep shame he dared not address her.  

“Hello, my sweet grandson,” she said, as though he was never all those things he knew he had been. He felt his shame being smothered and shaken out by her persistent embrace of love and  adoration. He couldn’t help but lean in and burrow himself into it.

“I can only stay for a bit,” she said. “I am on my way to my final destination. My earthly body has died, my spirit is now… free. You must understand, the power you feel now is Christ through me. It is what I tried to teach you on earth, and you are on your way back. Please remember me, and find His peace.”  

Then she was gone. Everything faded. The thousand loving embraces was replaced by a rush of crushing pain that overtook his entire being. It was like being torn apart and stuffed inside a tiny prison all at once. As his eyes shot open for the first time in what seemed an eternity, he saw the hospital staff laboring over him. He was alive. The numbing fog was back, but he hung onto the clarity of that last warm embrace. He still understood. The centuries spent in that other place were apparently mere minutes here. He survived. In spite of his own self-destruction, in spite of a thousand reasons not to be loved, not to be saved, he remembered his grandmother. He remembered her steadfast love, her belief in and access to a power beyond herself, and he endeavored to do the hard work to become what his grandmother always knew he could be.