The Fool

by Jameson Grem

There was no impact. There was no falling sensation. To Elis, it had been something like a stumble, then a blink, and upon opening his eyes again, here he was - wherever ‘here’ was. The contrast between the muted, colorless place from which he’d come, and this new landscape was stark and jarring to his senses. Before him now was a thin bar of blush-colored sand and a vast, still ocean that reached out into limitless forever. Above him, the sky itself was ablaze with bright stars shimmering and fizzling like live sparks against a velvet backdrop. 

Elis’s shock was quickly replaced by a sudden certainty that something was very, very wrong; and with this realization, his stomach twisted in on itself and hardened into a knot of anxiety. The largeness of this place was too much, and he had a thought that he’d never had before: that he would be snuffed out and swallowed up by this place. Elis slammed his eyes shut and hoped that when he opened them again, he would be back on that long and winding road he had been shuffling down before. He longed to be enveloped in the thick, swirling white mists again, however bone-chilling they were. He prayed for the muffled silence to return and lull him back into a sleepy trance. In that colorless world, there had been nothing but the road ahead of him - one direction, no choice, no uncertainty. Now there was everywhere to go and all possibility, and he was paralyzed. 

No matter how long he stood there with his eyes closed, the sounds of this new place persisted around him. A warm breeze blew by and carried with it the musical chirps of insects and the damp, green scent of earth and leaves. Curiously, he did not hear the ocean beside him, but beneath it all there was a low roar, like a great fire burning off in the distance. Only after long moments in which he gathered as much bravery as he could muster, Elis dared to slowly open his eyes once more to behold this world anew. The immensity of it still frightened him terribly, but there was nothing to do but take it in and continue existing here. There was no other way, as far as he could tell. So, as if fearing he might fall off the edge of this world with one wrong step, he pushed one foot forward without picking it up and watched as the coarse sand, resembling tiny, delicate flakes of pink glass, engulfed his bare foot. The sand didn’t feel grainy, but almost smooth with a powdery quality like fresh-fallen snow. He shuffled his other foot forward in the same fashion and with much suffering in his heart continued this slow, halting process further down the beach. 

Occasionally, Elis found large, jagged shards sticking out of the sand. There were those which looked to him like pieces of broken mirror and others that more resembled fragments of shattered pottery. When he stooped to examine each one, he found that the mirrored shards reflected back at him images that, at first, seemed unfamiliar but the longer he stared, the more they tickled at the deep recesses of his mind: flecks of red paint on his new shoes and a certainty Ma would scold him; plump white clouds drifting lazily over open, rolling green hills and the smell of sweet fruit upon the breeze, a faceless boy with a bloodied nose sprawled on the ground; an empty wood chair on a cold and dreary day, its usual occupant conspicuously missing; slender brown fingers running along the gold beads of a dangling earring and the sound of them clinking gently together. The pottery fragments, on the other hand, had scenes painted upon their surfaces, incomplete without the other pieces that would make them whole. These were harder to understand, for he was only able to make out the image on a few of the pieces he uncovered: two dark figures beneath a full moon; one person inside a box; a skeletal hand with fingers splayed. 

Focusing on the distantly familiar scenes within the mirror shards brought a modicum of calm to Elis’s frayed nerves, making him feel less afraid. He reached out experimentally towards the piece reflecting the brown hand and ran the pad of his finger swiftly over its jagged edge. It should have cut him. Instead, there was only the bittersweet feeling of Nostalgia. Who knew it had texture?

Stooped beside the piece he had just been examining, he paused to look further up the beach and saw that there were countless more shards he could gather and try to piece together. Perhaps he would have done, had he not also spotted another person further away. Elis gasped and started hurrying towards them before he’d had the chance to stand properly. He tripped over his feet and stumbled, falling to the ground and stirring up a small cloud of sandy dust, but scrambled immediately to his feet again and picked his way down the beach towards the figure ahead. Elis stepped over large rocks and climbed over small boulders until he reached a low shelf of dark stone that protruded from the sheer cliff faces to his left. He took hurried steps across its flat surface, calling, 

“H-hello?” he had meant to cry for help, but greeted her instead. Now that Elis was near enough, he could see the figure was a small, slender young woman...or was she an old woman…? Elis blinked a couple times to clear his vision, for he could not tell if her hair was brown or grey, or if her face was the smooth countenance of a young beauty or the hard and creased features of an old crone. She sat cross-legged atop a large cluster of boulders in what looked to him like a large, white sleeping shirt that swallowed her slight frame, and she stared off towards the horizon, unblinking with something pressed flat to her ear. Elis stared up at her profile for a long moment, hoping she might turn to him but she didn’t. She remained silent, still, and staring. Elis wondered briefly if she was even alive. Perhaps she was only a very realistic statue. In a place like this, perhaps statues could look like the real thing, but he couldn’t allow himself to entertain the possibility any further, or he would lose hope of ever being delivered from this place. 

“Please...please help me. I don’t know where we are. I don’t know how to get back to where I’m from. I’m not supposed to be here. I...I’m just a farmer!” still, she did not budge, eyes ever staring off into the distance and not at him. He moved a few steps closer and tried again. 

“Miss...or, um...lady? Can you hear me? Hello?” Still silence. 

Elis did not give up and tried many methods to get her to acknowledge him. He stood down on the beach in front of her rocky perch and jumped up and down waving both arms and shouting nonsense at her. “Snackin bumble Jake!” “Rumble tuft berry!” “Babblin banhooney!” He climbed up on her other side and tickled her arm with a long, feathery reed-like plant he had found growing out of a mound of sand. He snuck up behind her as silently as he could and then quickly sprang over near her, stomping his feet and yelling, “BOO!” He tried groaning and muttered, “I don’t feel so good…” and then pretended to faint in her line of sight. Nothing worked. Finally, Elis grew impatient. He sprang up from where he’d fallen facedown in the sand and snatched a small stone from near his feet and held it up high for her to see. 

“Look at me! Say something! Anything! If you don’t do or say something, I’ll go mad and stone you!” 

Even his threat did not inspire her to action. His grip tightened on the rock in his grasp, his whole arm quaking with fear and frustration. ...But he dropped his hand back down to his side, and he climbed back up onto the stone shelf just below where she sat and plopped himself down to sit cross-legged like her. Elis felt his face tighten into a scowl and he squeezed the rock with all his might  in the palm of his hand. What was she looking at anyway?

Elis stared out ahead of him, across the calm waters of this silent ocean. He was surprised to find that, somehow, from this vantage point, this place wasn’t quite so terrifying as he had originally thought. Anxiety still roiled and tumbled in his belly, but its tantrum lost more of its strength with each passing moment. Now that he allowed himself to expand his attention beyond the confines of the beach, he realized the beauty of this place. The night sky above swirled in hues of deep violet and velvety blue. Upon its surface, stars dazzled in impossible colors, spreading their arms wide like sparkling pinwheels. When he looked to the horizon, the point which held his silent companion’s gaze so completely, he saw that sunset was pressed into a thin gold line between nighttime and the blue-black ocean. He marveled at how the night sky looked to be truly resting atop daylight, the two coexisting without bleeding into one another. The sun burned like an ember and its light reflected on the ridges of small ripples in the water, making it look like thin blades of fire danced across the otherwise smooth surface of the ocean. 

He twisted to look behind himself and saw his and his companion’s shadows climbing against the towering cliff face. His was small and hunched. Hers somehow did not stop, and reached all the way to the distant top of the cliffs. Elis turned back to face the water again and looked to his right. There was nothing but endless beach and ocean that way. He turned to look to his left and saw what appeared to be a thin land bridge that reached out into the ocean so far, he couldn’t see the end of it. He felt a brief pulse of panic blossom in his chest when he thought the forest all along this land bridge was burning, but it was only the leaves of the trees turned vermillion in the sun’s light. 

Peace and tranquility pressed in on him gently from all sides, trying to gently coax him into relaxing in their embrace. Elis wanted nothing more than to welcome them into his soul. Yet beneath everything, there was still that low, distant roar. It was the tremor in his legs and the tightness in his chest. It was the things he had buried long ago and dared not dig back up. Without knowing its source or what it was, Elis was terrified of it. 

No, come no closer, he thought without knowing why he had thought it. 

Sure enough, that roar like a distant inferno was growing steadily louder. The louder it became, the more Elis thought, No, come no closer until it became a mantra in his mind. His pleas only seemed to draw the dreaded thing nearer. Elis flinched when he noticed an object across the water, shining in the sunlight. For a few moments, it was far away, but as the roar in his ears grew louder, so, too, did this object rocket steadily closer to the shore. It came at such frightening speed, Elis scrambled clumsily backwards upon the stone shelf and looked imploringly up to the woman above him on the boulder. She was standing now and watching intently, but she was calm and still, a small tablet-like object still pressed flat to her ear. 

The roaring sound had grown into a din so loud, Elis felt his entire being tremor tremendously with the force of it, until he thought he would fall to pieces. If his terror hadn’t pinned him to the spot, he would have fled mindlessly like a frightened deer with nowhere to go. As it was, he had no choice but to watch, wide-eyed and mouth agape as the approaching object got close enough for him to see. It was the headless, armless torso of a human hurtling toward the shore. What had caught the light and caused it to shine earlier were the delicate, gilded bars of a birdcage skewering the flesh in many places from back to front. It looked as if the top half of the cage had been violently ripped away, leaving the bars protruding from the skin curled and mangled. 

As he watched, Elis suddenly felt hopelessly hollow, and a dull, aching pain was all that reverberated throughout him. The roar, now all-encompassing, was blood rushing in his ears, a strong heartbeat, the thrum of the world living and breathing. He realized all at once that these were all things that were no longer a part of him. That is to say, they were lost to him. 

He finally recalled that he was dead. 

The moment the thought crossed his mind, the roar vanished without a trace, leaving deafening silence in its wake. The pain that had pulsed through him relentlessly faded all at once. The impaled torso now hovered, motionless, over the ocean, and for a moment all was silent. Elis felt horrid, like his insides had been taken out and replaced with cotton. He was now too full of regret to be afraid, and too shocked to consider trying to contact the strange woman again. Perhaps, he thought as if from far away, this was what it was to have your life flash before your eyes. But rather than images, it was a rush of emotions and the knowledge of the memories that went with them.

It became clear to him that there had been only two themes to his forfeited life: complacency and a misguided anger towards all but himself. There were few precious memories and an overwhelming amount of regret. There were missed opportunities, countless excuses, disorienting frustration, and an undeniable desire for more, much more. He had been so sure in life that he could not be any better than he was and he had hated the world for it. How cruel it was to know now without doubt that he could have been magnificent, had he just tried. 

Elis curled in on himself and wept. The pain of grief and loss tore through him and his eyes shed tears like open wounds. He was just settling into feeling sorry for himself when he heard a sharp sizzling sound behind him. Before he could look, something else shot out towards the ocean from the cliffs behind him. Elis scrambled back into a sitting position, ready to flee, and was just barely able to catch a glimpse of a pair of disembodied legs wrapped loosely in swaths of crimson fabric, just before they collided with the torso and both toppled into the sea with a muffled ‘splash’. 

The surface of the water calmed again, and all was as it had been. The songs of the birds and insects resumed. And now that the humming roar was silenced, Elis could just barely hear the faintest sound of ripples hitting the shore. Elis sniffled and continued crying pitifully. He wished he could melt into the stone beneath him and forget everything. 

“Well, that’s done!” 

A cheerful voice rang out from nearby, startling Elis. He blinked up at the woman from before and saw that she had put away the tablet she had had pressed to her ear, and now she gazed down upon Elis’s pathetic, crumbled form. For a brief moment, the pair regarded each other with interest, the woman smiling gently and Elis red-eyed and dubious. 

“I sure had my work cut out for me this time, but I’m always up for a challenge every now and then. Otherwise things get too boring around here.” 

“W-who are you…?” Elis hugged himself tightly and finally found his voice again, though it now was hoarse with tears. He still couldn’t tell if she was young or very old. The longer he stared at her face, the more it seemed to shift and change.

“Hm, I’m not sure how to answer that.” she said, and then after a moment of consideration added, “I think maybe you would know me as The Tower.” 

That was not Elis’s religion, but he did know of The Tower in vague detail. He did not know enough to quite understand. 

Seeing this, she said, “You don’t need to call me anything in particular; we won’t be together much longer. But to put it simply, I’m one type of Death. There are a lot of us.” 

Elis curled in on himself more and sighed woefully. So he had been right, he was dead. After a beat, he heard her hop down from her perch and her bare feet padded gently across his flat stone until she was near enough to offer her hand for him to take. He did not take it. 

“Cry if you need to. Don’t hold back.” she said gently and knelt down in front of him so they were eye to eye. Sometimes her eyes were a bright hazel, fringed with long, dark lashes; other times they were a dull grey, nearly obscured by folds of loose skin. His own still eked out a few tears every few moments, but he did not weep again. 

“Unfortunately, you somehow ended up here when you shouldn’t have. I’m a poorly equipped welcoming committee, if I’m honest. But, for what it’s worth, welcome to the Afterlife.”

“Why am I...here…?” he asked, immediately feeling silly for having asked it when she giggled. 

“You died.” she said simply, “And there’s no shame in that. Everyone does it.” 

The Tower stood and offered her hand once more, “If you’re wondering why you’re here in this particular spot...well, I would like to know that, too.” 

This time Elis took her hand and allowed her to help him stand. His legs wobbled dangerously, but she was strong and solid for her small stature and steadied him easily. “What kind of...of Death are you…?” he asked with a furrowed brow. 

“I am the Death of the Self.” was her reply, “It’s a bit vague, so I’m kept very busy. But in a few words, the ‘self’ is represented by values, morals, and lifestyle.”  

“So...is that what just happened…? Someone’s...self died?” Elis ventured to ask. 

She nodded the affirmative and then took one step away from him, beginning to turn, “Come with m-”

“I wasted my life!” Elis blurted out, a fresh wave of regret crashing over him and threatening to send him to his knees again. She didn’t look surprised by his outburst and patiently returned to his side to offer her shoulder to support himself with. Instead, he buried his fingers in his own wild curls with distress.

“I didn’t want to follow in anyone’s footsteps! I wanted to travel the world and have adventures, and...and…” his face twisted with pain. 

The Tower leveled a steady gaze on him and, with a smile, said, “Be kind to yourself, Elis, and forgive yourself. Death is about release, and rebirth follows soon after. You’ve learned valuable lessons; your life was not wasted.” Her calm words soothed him, and he felt peace in his heart like he had never felt before. 

“I was cruel to people…” He admitted quietly, eyes falling to his feet.
“You were in pain, Elis. You are forgiven. You just have to forgive yourself.” 

“That’s all??” he exclaimed, finding the simplicity of her words baffling within the context of Life and Death - two concepts that had always seemed unfathomably large and important to him.

“Well, it’s not exactly easy,” she admitted, “But, yes, that’s all. Just let it go.” 

Elis felt as if he were slowly being filled up with a warm, golden light. It flowed through him, making him feel light as a feather and calm as a lazy summer day by the stream. He wondered faintly if she was doing something to make him feel this way, or if her presence and attention had this effect on its own. Maybe it didn’t matter. He didn’t bother to ask. “So what now?” 

The Tower gestured down the beach as if to say ‘after you’ but remained at his side, “It’s true that you died. But this is hardly the end of the road for you, friend. Come with me. There’s someone you need to meet.”