Doctor Who_ Alien Bodies - Lawrence Miles [135]
Wait. Let me start again. I have to tell my story. Not because I think anybody’s going to be interested, not because I think anybody’s listening. I have to tell my story, because if I don’t, then I’ll forget it, and if I forget it, there won’t be anything of me left.
Firstly. My name is Kristopher Patrick Englund, and I’m dead. That’s the most important thing there is to know about me. My life isn’t an important part of the story, but I’ll say one thing, about the days when I walked and talked and thought for myself. I’ll say that I remember being in a hospital, having something sick and twisted taken out of my body. I remember being on the operating table, with my eyes tight shut, feeling the doctors slicing me open. Hearing them talk about my insides while they went to work. Mumbles and scalpels.
I was supposed to have been unconscious. Some kind of slip-up with the anaesthetic, I think. I couldn’t move, or speak, or open my eyes, but I could feel the edge of the knife cutting into me, slipping under the skin. That kind of thing’s supposed to drive you mad, and I thought I was mad, back then, because that’s when I started seeing things.
Yes. I remember. I could see everything opening up in front of me, like someone was cutting a hole in my head, the same way the doctors were cutting holes in my body. I remember watching the hole getting wider, and wider, until I could see the people living in the shadows on the other side.
That was the first time I met the Celestis. They said they’d opened up an “aperture in the space-time continuum” – I’m quoting them word for word, here – just so they could talk to me from their castle in the land of the dead. They told me they wanted me to serve them. I don’t know if I should have been flattered or insulted, knowing they wanted me as a slave, but I was scared, and I was in pain, so I listened to what they had to say, and I believed every word.
All I had to do, the Celestis said, was let them give me their mark. They’d make sure I didn’t die on the operating table, but in return, my identity would belong to them for the rest of eternity, however long that turned out to be. That’s how they put it. “Identity” . I remember wondering whether that meant I was giving them my soul.
So I said yes. I know, I know. I shouldn’t have done it. Of course I shouldn’t have done it, I don’t think I was even in danger of dying in the hospital. But I said yes. I made the deal. I signed the contract. I got the mark.
When I recovered from the anaesthetic, so I could move and speak and open my eyes again, one of the doctors was standing over me with a big grin on her face. She had no idea I’d been conscious through the operation. As far as she was concerned, everything had gone smoothly. I didn’t tell her the truth. I would have had to tell her about the Celestis, as well.
Anyway. I’m talking about my life too much. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to talk about what happened after I died.
I won’t bother describing what it feels like to die. I’d have to start talking about out-of-body experiences, about floating down long dark corridors, etcetera etcetera etcetera. I died, that’s all I’ve got to say about it, and the Celestis took my identity away, just like they’d said they would. I ended up in Mictlan, as promised.
Mictlan. The land of the dead. And I know it’s not really the afterlife, I know it’s only a place the Celestis built to keep themselves happy, but maybe I should say a few words about how things are there, because it’s not like any afterlife you ever read about in the land of the living.
In the middle of Mictlan, there’s a castle, and on the top floor of the castle there’s the Grand Hall of the Celestis. I don’t think I saw any of them step outside that Hall, not in all the time I was there. Then again, I never really saw the Celestis do anything, even though I had to take orders from them every day of my non-life.
Maybe I’d better explain. You can’t look straight at the Celestis. You only get to watch them out of the corners of