text: I regained consciousness in a coffin of cedar, the timeless scent barely becalming my horrendous sense of claustrophobia. And then, rage; for it was apparent that some doctor had a crude sense of jest. Perhaps it was on purpose that I was entombed whilst living, yet I was not an ill mannered fellow and had few antagonists. These thoughts however, were beyond pointless. Moving my arms and legs, I ascertained that nothing was permanently damaged, though there was a feeling of-well from what I've only studied (until now, that is)-the feeling of rigor mortis. My soul and mind knew my limbs remained intact but the limbs themselves refrained from this opinion. I struck repeatedly upon that lid of my confinement, not expecting anything. My faith was rewarded. I lit my tantrum with all the dreams I was too cowardly to do while alive, and the regrets I wanted to die from, down here. Exhausted, I attempted to contain my wrath, for surely the oxygen was sparse, and this, along with the general macabre environment, had me recollecting an event that befell my companions. Never being one for minute spaces nor entrapments, I had refrained from many expeditions into subterranean ruins that my archaeological peers were so fond of, until, not two years ago, in 1872, excavating a crypt from 2516 B.C. on the island of Cyprus, they did not return. There were no claw marks, nor sanguine trails into hidden passageways, and no local unsubstantiated legends to make any cognizance of their disappearance. The queerest thing was the note they had left behind. I could not quite recall the exact words, but it was something to do with following: the most splendid musical compositions, ones never heard before on this planet, we do not want to be down here any more, and the cosmos sees us all. Most unnerving. The recount of this nameless terror, however, was not helping my present predicament. I closed my eyes with determination, recalling the events of the few weeks prior to this abysmal situation. They had gone by as something of an inebriated blur; I had been diagnosed with consumption and the outlook was grim. I recalled the hazy days as if I were staring through the malady: a few doctors around me, mumbling scientific vanity, the appalling conditions of the ward I was housed at-the face of my wife, devoid of any emotion, should would not touch me. The most disturbing fact was some figure in black that I could not remember clearly....then a sheet over my head and the feeling of extraordinary acceleration-into nothing. I ascertained this was when I relinquished command of my corporeal being, for a time. Suddenly, a day or nocturnal dream (for I could not tell the hour) or an apparition (for it could not be a memory) eradicated my current musings on my life above ground. I was on an operating table completely naked-some nurse was cleaning my corpse with some noxious liquid and, my God, opening my throat with a metallic device-pouring embalming fluid down my esophagus-a casket of cedar with a black crucifix-a rather empty funeral, for my wife had committed suicide after the announcement of “death”-the graveyard in the French quarter of New Orleans...through this maelstrom of the subconscious (or soul conscience) living photographs, there was a figure of void black through it all. At times in the foreground, often in the back almost a memory, like a forgotten companion in one's youth, yet always coming closer. I could not meet this figure, I was determined to stay away, but as with many things we dread, my wishes were in vain. The entity loomed over me, it's movements were not mortal they appeared to swim and flow as though a celestial tide from beneath the universe was caressing its formless mass. It placed something in my pocket and I awoke again, beneath that horrid lid. Yet the feeling that engulfed me now was incalculably worse. It was though I could feel the weight of the rotting earth and flesh in tons, pressing down through my varnished wooden box of mortal rot, down past my perspiring chest, down into my very soul. I had to escape. I reached into my tuxedo of death and felt the nine pronged key. My astonishment was so severe that I cried aloud, coughing up formaldehyde. Sliding my finger over it, I envisioned the little white horns and a small elongated skull, though what creature it may have been, I knew not. Though it had been on my person for some time, it was unearthly cold to the touch. I felt every conceivable inch of that hellish container again and twice over, my back itching from the new black suit. Maybe an hour had passed of this activity in agony when the morbid realisation of my death by starvation came upon me. This was it. There was not a thing more I could do. It is sorrowfully amusing how no one thinks to craft a coffin which opens from within. I should just roll over and die. Which is what I did. And my index finger fell upon some miniature hole in the bottom of my coffin. Heart palpitating erratically, I frantically dug out that spectral key of bone and with a few failures, heard the tell tale click. I turned it. And turned again. Attempted reversing, inserting halfway...nothing worked. Striking the key in anger it punctured my hand, blood swimming over it as I grasped it in frustration, cursing whatever deplorable fates had riddled me with this ill-fated existence. Then with an almost vocal sound, worthy of the half imagined apparitions of Tartarus, the bottom of my coffin opened and I fell through, barely managing to cling on to the key before all went black. Well not completely black. There was a tinge of emerald green phosphorescence. I woke, lying on molding earth (or that's what I hoped it was) in a small cavern. I stepped out, stumbling slightly, and beheld a cosmically gruesome scene. It was a phantasmagoric panorama of a rotting subterranean dream: curiously lit flora and fauna were as one, unnameable things swam and crawled through the air, pranced on stalagmites, devoured each other, regurgitated remains, only to try again, and all held resemblance to half imagined necromantic nightmares. I surmised this was not the correct afterlife for me, and I had already begun my retreat, when some imp ghoul hybrid caught sight of me, and ululated a form of repulsive communicae to it's fellow species. All saucer eyes turned on me and in that moment, I do not think I have ever been more paralysed during my life, nor after it. I ran, heart palpitating, a sick radioactivity in my nerves made worse by the unnameable sounds behind me. I ran till, I found a dark crevice, near some abyss, my hand touched something resembling marble and I collapsed. A vibration awoke me. I had hoped to awaken on my bed in my flat near the French Quarter, but I was still in this vile underworld of eons dead. I looked down. And heard the most beautiful music I will ever hear, for now I cannot recall how it went. There were virtoustic masterpieces that they could practise for all eternity. Symphonic and polyphonic. Masses in Latin, Gregorian chant and Sumerian. Even languages that bore no resemblance to the lingua this earth. I heard remonstrances akin to Mozart and Beethoven, Liszt and Chopin, Paganini, even the famed Spanish guitarist Tarrega...yet far more devious and bone chilling, the notes themselves seemed to pierce and become a parasite within the body. Upon closer inspection of these phantoms, I found that horror to be true. Some kind of green phosphorescence was eating away at them, like a symbiotic organism. At them, I mean this parade. At the bottom of a cavernous pit, stretching on for all eternity. An Abyss's Parade. With a blasphemous hairless thing at its head, it had a miter of bone, and stamped it's webbed membranous feet with a hateful irreverence. I dared not look to its eyes, but they burned. And they all marched ever so proudly. It sounded as though all of the great composer had collaborated for decades. And then, I saw my wife. In long dress, and jet black hair down to her waist. She followed them listlessly, like a dying star in the void black of space. She did not looked scared, nor relieved to be done with life, just lost. Unquenchably, eternally, and lamentably lost. “What are you doing down here?” she asked, yet the words seem not to come from her mouth but from beneath, and beyond. “I fell, I conjecture from my coffin. But Angeline, why would you..what of our daughter. What of Isabelle?” “I know not. I know not. I'll always remember... our happiest moments. ” And with that, she drifted down that cosmic parade of souls. I have never seen her again, but on occasion we will share a stroll near the beach, during sunsets, and sit on the shore with the moon, in my dreams. It was our favourite pastime, and in my dreams, where I readily live now, we remain together. *** Shaking my head from this nihilistic nostalgia, I continued through the tides of the dead, seeing history in front, beside and behind me. Suddenly I heard the familiar tones of my old archaeological comrades. I could not believe it. “We went too far my lad...He said you'd get the worst of it.” “Rather, gave me quite a chill that one did.” “What are you conversing about Walters? what the bloody hell is going on-” I stammered. Walters eyes held a pity, like an adult telling a child how the world works and how it does not. “Why Lucifer of course. Him and God made a deal, old boy. Whoever could get the most souls would build and rule the next planet. Very big deal, doncha know. You see, this is his parade. His parade to bring us all down here, for the ending.” “My God. George is this true?” “I'll say, bally unbecoming of those chaps in my opinion. We aren't toys to be tinkered with!” A final fanfare of Death, War and all the little things we hold so closely in our existence, came parading forth in a grand march of Hell's abominations. I stood with my old comrades in that phosphorescent half light, the reverberations of the demoniac denizens receding. And then Walters said. “Why art thou so morbid? One day you shall join us, yet that time has not come. Or perhaps it has. You told us to go into the crypt in Cyprus. And you knew what was down there, waiting since Hellenistic times. That BEHEMOTH, BAAL and ASMODEUS. Remember what you said to us, that god damn chant you were so adamant about. I'll never forget! LUX LUX LUX. LUCRUM INFERNALIS, SALVE ET ILLUMINARE VIA DESCENDIT AD TARTARUM! The thousand faced one ate us all. You're dead too Alec, better get used to it. Have some wine, its quite good. You'll notice the first thing that changes in the afterlife, is the smell.” And by God, the smell!