Ed Ahern

The Sabbatical

 

 

The collision, head on at a combined speed of 130 mph, eviscerated Dave in a slash of intense pain. His next sensation was a fish-eye view of a smooth-cheeked face both handsome and beautiful.

 

“For what did you die?”

 

“I… Ah…” Dave could sense his mangled body without pain, but when he looked down there were only vapor traces. “Bastard swerved into my lane and whacked me!”

 

“For what did you die?”

 

“For no reason! I didn’t do anything.”

 

“Ah. The meaningless death you proport enabled your stay with me.”

 

“But my family—the children are small, there’s no money without me. My wife…”

 

“Are all now in lives without you.”

 

Dave felt able to move, but his remembered muscles gave no sensations, and all he could do was stare unblinkingly at the face.

 

“Consider yourself on hiatus, Dave. You’ll eventually be able to shift your presence by changing your focus, but it’s a frustrating process. Meanwhile let’s converse.”

 

“I don’t even know your name.”

 

“Ah. I am named Adeodatus, a name bestowed on me very long ago. 

 

“Adeodatus, when did YOU die?”

 

“Shortly before the arrival of the Christian prophet.”

 

“And you’ve been here alone for over two thousand years?”

 

“Yes and no. I am alone, but I believe we are many. I can sense others, but I’ve never encountered them. Your presence is impossibly dear to me.”

 

Dave looked around. The space looked like a library common room, with books and scrolls filling shelves that stretched up at least fifty feet. Even in shock he knew it must be an illusion.

 

“I want to get back to my body.”

 

“Your body is currently stored at a morgue-negative temperature of minus five degrees Fahrenheit while they ascertain possible criminal conduct. Many words coincident with your body- talk, walk, fornicate- are obsolete. Try using look rather than see, sense rather than touch, it’s more appropriate.”

 

Dave’s fear pressed against his thoughts. “But I still feel things.”

 

“You feel emotions associated with sense memory. These linger but will dissipate.”

 

“I don’t- didn’t- believe in heaven. Where are we?”

 

The unlined face smiled wryly. “Certainly not heaven. Nor hell. You’re in- let’s call it a service facility with no defined parameters. Think of Limbo or Purgatory.”

 

“But why me?”

 

“You have the prerequisite ambivalence about good and evil- you’re neutrally amoral.”

 

“Listen, don’t take this personally, but I don’t want this. I’ll take my chances with heaven, or hell or nothing.”

 

Adeodatus’ visage stiffened. “Do you remember, Dave, how many drinks you had before your accident? How much cocaine? That perhaps it was you who blacked out and veered into oncoming traffic? Three people died, Dave. Your spiritual future as an unabsolved murderer and suicide would be bleak.”

 

Ugly memory chunks dropped into Dave’s mind like rubble after an explosion. He tried to frown, but the synapses had been stripped out. 

 

“Okay, no point deciding to leave until I remember more. You talk like a thesaurus.”

 

“Look about you. If I hadn’t occupied myself with these simulacra of books, with reading and mind games, I’d be a gibbering ape. But enough discourse. We have errands.”

 

“Errands?”

 

“I will explain more fully after your first experience, Dave. I can’t leave you alone here so I’m swaddling you up like a baby and carrying you off with me. You won’t yet understand what you see, so hold silent. If you distract me, I’ll gag your thoughts.”

 

Dave felt, no, sensed, being shifted, and pressing up against Adeodatus. Then the world he knew reappeared as a small bedroom with a teenaged girl with frizzy hair. She was kneeling next to a rumpled single bed. Clothes were strewed over every flat surface.

 

Dear God, please let my grandma live, let her come home.

 

“How can I hear her though..” ts? I can’t speak! Oh. Yeah. I’m not supposed to.

 

The perception Adeodatus gave Dave flickered between two images, one the praying girl, the other a haggard old woman in a hospital bed, festooned with tubes and a respirator. The focus shifted between the two women as if Adeodatus were comparison shopping.  

 

The old woman was also praying. Dear God, let me die, make me dead. The pain is eating out my soul.

 

The old woman heaved a shuddering gasp and started to cry. Then, without transition, they were back in the library and Dave was no longer bound to Adeodatus.

 

“What the hell was that?”

 

“That, Dave, is what we do. We resolve conflicting prayers.”

 

“Hah? That’s-wonderful, I guess.”

 

“Is it? The woman is in wracking pain slightly alleviated by morphine. She wanted to die, and prayed to do so immediately. Instead she’ll live for a while longer.”

 

“But…”

 

“We answered one prayer and denied another. It’s often that way.”

 

Dave wanted to yell at Adeodatus but found no physical voice. “You’re not God.”

 

“The one you don’t believe in? No, I’m not. But I have leeway to settle cases. The girl will live for years comforted by an answered prayer. Her grandmother will contort in pain for another few months before passing. Seems equitable.”

 

Dave tried and failed to frown. “But there must be trillions of prayers every day.”

 

“Certainly, and most of them are ignored as greed or self interest. But we address the thornier ones. Oh, oh, back on you go, Dave.”

 

“So soon?”

 

“Prayers are unceasing. Let’s go.”

 

The barroom was crowded with fast drinking men and a few well-weathered women. Dave could sense stale beer and sweat.

 

A fortyish man named Vic sat on the second stool in from the far end of the bar, talking to no one, but thinking furiously. 

 

That asshole Saul should drown in his own shit. Bastard took me for money I had to borrow, cripple up from polio, you son of a bitch.

 

Dave started to blurt out a question but stopped. He would only be choked off. In the second vision he saw an obese man playing with a little girl, and sensed Adeodatus hopping back and forth between the two men like an indecisive flea looking for a host.

 

The obese man was also praying.

 

Look at her. She’ll have the best of everything. Everything, Even if I have to squeeze a little hard.

 

And then they were back. 

 

Thoughts blew out of Dave. “I hope you let that drunk stew in his hate!”

 

Adeodatus shook his image from side to side. “Wishes for harm are also prayers, friend. Vic is already pickled in his hatreds, beyond restoration. Saul is inured to the harm he causes, but not vindictive. Saul has been given type one diabetes. The highlighting of his mortality may be beneficial to his moral growth. I answered Vic’s prayer, although he will never know it.”

 

There was no measured time, but interventions occurred one after another. Dave began to sense the calls to action almost as soon as Adeodatus did, and to call up his own visions of the conflicting prayers.  There were patterns. 

 

One prayer was often a seemingly altruistic begging, while the other was a dogmatic refusal. The most recent was a man seated in a leather chair at an ornate desk, but not working.

 

Please God, if it is your will, relieve my son of his addiction.

 

The flicker image showed a younger man, high, playing a keyboard in a club. Dave sensed that Adeodatus would let the son would remain an addict.

 

After returning, Dave had to ask. “I don’t understand, Adeodatus, why favor the son and his vice? It will kill him.”

 

“Yes it will. The father prays for his son to live long and soberly. The son hates the life his father wishes for him and prefers a short life of creating drug-induced music. Music that liberates the emotions of thousands. The son had the right to choose.” 

 

“Then is all prayer selfish?”

 

“Yes. And no. The intensity and selfishness dwindle the further away we get from personal urgency. Prayers for universal brotherhood are dissipated spiritual farts. ‘Your will be done’ isn’t a prayer, it’s an acknowledgement.”

 

As the acolyte sidekick, Dave felt entitled to more questions. “We don’t eat, drink, sleep, or even sweat. What powers us?”

 

The Adeodatus being quivered, as close as it could get to a shrug. “I’ve wondered that for two millenia. My hypothesis is that we draw energy from those whose prayers we answer. A tithe, sort of.”

 

Dave didn’t count the number of petitions they intervened in. After the first fifty or so, he’d been able to accompany Adeodatus and not be carried. After perhaps five hundred judgements, Adeodatus said, “You’re ready to take the lead. The next one is yours.”

 

He protested. “I don’t begin to know what you do- theology, logic- I’m ignorant.”

 

“Begin to educate yourself. Here we go.”

 

Harry gambled. Mostly on sports, but sometimes even a few hundred dollars-worth of Powerball tickets. Harry was temporarily flush but too ashamed to go back to his family again, and sat at in his one room flat nursing a beer. Please God, let me win again. The money I swear to you will go to Beth and the kids. Harry called a sports book with whom he still had credit and took the spread on the Chicago Bears for ten thousand.

 

Harry hadn’t tried to contact his ex-wife and kids for six months, and Dave was relieved with a no-brainer for his first case. Harry should lose. But he paused to think, flickering between Harry and the family on food stamps. He let Harry win. Big. Twice.

 

Adeodatus was pleased. “Well done, Dave. Give me your reasoning please so I may ensure that you didn’t select randomly.”

 

“Harry will almost certainly gamble away his winnings without giving his family more than a token amount. His ex-wife will learn of the squandered winnings and refuse further attempts at contact. Harry will suffer for his gambling.”

 

“You show a gift for this, Dave. Well done. Ah, duty calls again. Still your turn.”

 

A century passed with Dave and Adeodatus now alternating assignments. Then, in a quiet interlude, Adeodatus held Dave in a stare.

 

“It is time, Dave.”

 

“For what?”

 

“For you to decide about my prayer.”

 

“Hah?”

 

“The prayer I just made. I cannot pass judgement on myself.” 

 

Adeodatus’ expression was sad but fixed, and after protesting, Dave agreed. He looked in, and wanted to shut eyes he no longer had. Adeodatus wanted death, and could only achieve it if Dave took his place.

 

“I can’t decide this.”

 

“You are the only being who can. If you decline to kill me you will return to the point of your own death and face judgement. If you agree to my passing you are bound to almost horizonless service.”

 

“I can’t, not yet. I may have been a murderer.”

 

“Ah. If you have been truly repentant you may achieve the heaven you’re not sure of. Or you may just cease, your persona gone like morning fog. Or perhaps to the hell you don’t fear enough. I have no wisdom in this. 

 

“Will you also be passing judgement on me, Adeodatus?”

 

“No. I am only witness. Decide.”

 

Dave’s being churned in fear. “I can’t, I won’t…” But he knew he must.

 

“I choose the coward’s way. I release you.”

 

Adeodatus beamed. “Not cowardly, Dave. I am, after all, for what you died. My fate was deferred two millennia, and you have released me.”

 

Dave looked on as Adeodatus’ body began to form beneath his facial image, a slender, almost skinny frame, perhaps five feet tall.

“You’re a young boy?”

 

Adeodatus smiled because he could again. “No, Dave, a man. We were made smaller then. I bequeath to you the only thing I own, my given name.”

 

“What does it signify?”

 

“You’ll figure it out. Vale, Adeodatus.” 

 

Adeodatus was alone.

 

 

 

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over two hundred fifty stories and poems published so far, and five books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of six review editors.

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