Yestermoment

One dollar, pinched between two fingers, lowers above a single, waiting candle flame.

It catches.

Fire- surging and burning, eating and eating. Fingers twist, brandishing, drawing the slip of paper closer to see.

The fire’s heat stings my wide-open eyes.

I worry for the hand.

The bill’s only a stub now, and the fingers twitch, dropping the charred carcass onto the table. We watch as the last of the paper curls and coils, fights for its life. The flame consumes, hungry, all the way down to the very last bit.

But fire is never satisfied. It turns and eats itself, too. Fighting, contorting, dying.

Black ashes now speckle the table, and a single plume of soft gray smoke explores the air where heat and light once lived. The candle, from afar, watches. There’s the fingers, poised, and there’s a sigh.

The candle flame bends against breath, bowing. Cowering. Shuddering.

“It’s still only paper, isn’t it? In the end.”

The flame buckles at this, but it survives.

I blink my eyes open.

I’m somewhere else.

A dream? A memory?

I think, yesterday-

“Yestermoment,” someone corrects.

Yestermoment, I had been alive.

I think my life has ended.

“Yes, and a very hearty congratulations to you!”

I stare.

“You made it!”

How best to describe the figure before me… A shadow? I squint. “I made what?”

A ghost?

An angel?

“It!” The figure doesn’t smile, but I think they might have, under different circumstances. “You died! Good job!”

No. Not a ghost or an angel. Something wispy.

Like nothing grasping for the shape of something.

I blink, but I don’t have eyes, exactly. Not anymore. I take a look down at my body- my nothing body. I almost panic, but I don’t. I watch the feeling slide through me. “Why are you congratulating me?”

A pause. “It’s an accomplishment, to die. Like anything.”

“I didn’t choose to die.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“And I didn’t even know it was happening- that it happened-” My mouth is dry. “That I died.”

The wisp flicks through the air, coiling around itself to settle again with finality. Like water. Like a candle flame. “Just accept the congrats and let’s move on, please. We’re required to move on. You’ll get used to it all, eventually.”

I notice the others, then. I slink back to blend with them. An infinite, comfortable cloud of souls- a collection of smoke and mirrors. I say nothing, because I have too many questions and not enough need for answers. Yet.

I only feel a warm, humming peace.

The wisp clears their throat and rises above us.

“Congratulations, all! You stand on the threshold of a new tomorrow, a new now. As always, I’m instructed to guide you on. On, with a choice.”

The pause is dramatic, like I’m in a theater watching a play. Or taking part in one.

A magic trick.

“What kind of choice?” I ask.

“A choice between two items to take with you, onward. Twenty-thousand dollars-”

Excitement quickens the crowd of smoke-souls.

“-or, one small black notebook, to do with as you please.”

There’s another pause, as the wisp simmers, observing us. Then: “Choose carefully.”

As souls do, we stir, wafting and coiling and whispering into each other, energy reduced to its purest form without anything to occupy. But the figure remains quiet.

“That’s it?” someone says.

“What happens next?”

“Are we in Heaven? Purgatory?”

The wisp flutters. “Neither. What’s now is now and what’s next is… next. Onward.”

“What a load of-”

“Is onward… a bad place?”

“Where am I?”

I try pinpointing who says what, but they all look the same.

“Will I see my family again?”

The wisp slows to a stop, hovering. “Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed.”

“Okay. How’s a notebook going to help us?”

“You said twenty-thousand dollars, right? Twenty-thousand dollars-”

“You gonna give us some more information? This feels like a-”

“Choose,” says the wisp. It jumps up, flipping under itself to produce two tendrils, something like arms, outstretched. A stack of money, real paper money, appears in one hand. A notebook appears in the other.

I have the urge to laugh.

“Why would anyone choose a notebook?” someone scoffs. “You could buy a thousand notebooks with the money and have room to buy a car. Food for months! I could get cancer and have a cushion to ease the burden-”

“That’s what took me,” says another. “In the Before. And you want to know my last thought, as I lay dying between the hospital sheets?”

I didn’t, really, but the soul continued.

“I looked around at my wife and my children, their children, and I cried. Can you imagine it? A grown man, Grandaddy-”

I could imagine it, but I didn’t say so. There’s a tight pause, and the soul isolates itself from the rest, staggering forward. It almost forms the shape of a man- almost.

“Guilt,” the soul whispers. “That was my final thought. Guilt, that my family would have to cover the costs of my illness. They’ll struggle. Even after death, right now, they struggle. Because of me. Can you imagine it? I won’t allow that to happen again. I’m taking the money. I have to.”

And how can I blame him? Him, that neutral soul of no color, no tissue, no tendons- a wisp of energy extracted from a body carrying so much, even into death. I imagine him as he once was- a human of soft flesh, crumpled at the knees under the weight of injustice, leaving a legacy of sorrow distended by cruel debt.

How can I blame him?

I watch him slip forward and grab the money. There’s a crackle, a smell like charred air, and a pop- the soul vanishing onward in a last lick of static ribbon.

I think I catch a pair of eyes in the remnant particles. Quick, big, brown ones, sunk in sagging sockets. An old man- sick, weary, yet hopeful.

In my life, my eyes looked different.

Hadn’t they?

It's quiet as we observe the space where a soul once floated.

Blue? Brown? Green? What color were they?

It was only yesterday.

“Yestermoment,” the figure corrects, watching from above.

Yestermoment.

Did I push my glasses up the bridge of my nose? Did I apply mascara? Did I analyze fossils or literature or gemstones?

Did I gaze upon a sunset dripping into the ocean?

Did I watch my children, playing and laughing and growing old too fast?

Did I cry, too?

Did I live?

My own life- a dream I couldn’t grasp.

Can you imagine it?

A tinge of truth flutters by- someone else’s eyes, open, spilling love where words failed.

A warm hand cupping my cheek.

Parted lips breathing a whispered confession.

“Aren’t you happy?”

I look, but the memory’s gone.

“Why would anyone choose a notebook?”

Desperation splits the edges of this soul’s voice, drawing the rest of us to silence.

I look at my feet to find nothing. I plunge my hands into phantom pockets, sigh with no breath, glance away- only to find nothing.

Peace feels a lot like panic, now.

I didn’t need the money.

I never needed it, right?

“I need it," someone says. “I always had nothing. In fact, I had less than nothing. My siblings and I- we used to fight over the steak sauce-” Their voice wavers. “It tastes the most like a meal, did you know? You could imagine it, for a moment- can you imagine it? With twenty-thousand dollars, with money, I could-” Their voice breaks, cracks in two. Silence follows as the pieces fall. Dropping, dissipating, vaporizing.

Energy to energy. Matter to matter.

I shouldn’t take the money.

Truth floats from above, sliding and whipping between daydreams to find me.

Yes, I remember now.

A fresh car for my sixteenth- glossy and gleaming in the morning light.

New jeans because the others weren’t in style.

Dark restaurants in the evening, glasses of smooth wine and appetizers and dessert.

My parents, yelling. On vacation in someone else’s home, surrounded by someone else’s language, furious at someone else’s honest mistakes.

My own yelling, at my own children, for something I can’t remember.

I no longer feel at peace.

Too much of something can hurt you, can’t it?

I’d fall to my knees, if I had them.

Invisible, silent- my wealth had been a dangerous, destructive comfort whose victim was the Other.

The already-poor, the disenfranchised, the unlucky.

The Other.

My choices not only hurt me, in the end. It hurt them.

I glance at the stack of twenty-thousand dollars hovering in the wisp’s right hand.

I shouldn’t take the money.

Someone speaks: “What if it’s worthless? What if we can’t use it, After?”

The wisp only inclines their head. “Both are paper. Both hold value.”

The soul snatches the money, vanishing with a last look back.

I think I catch eyes, again. Red lips, forming around a message: “Do better.”

Do better.

For days, years, an eternity, maybe-

“Moments,” the figure whispers.

For moments and moments, I watch the others leave.

Every single one of them takes the money.

I didn’t need it.

I shouldn’t take the money.

“Have you decided?”

I’m alone, now- a single plume of smoke-soul wavering in place. The wisp watches me.

“Aren’t you happy?” It whispers.

A simple question for a complicated answer.

“Who are you?” I say.

“I’m the messenger. A moment, like you. Have you decided?”

Yes. The answer grows simpler as I allow it space to grow within me.

To consume me.

I feel it- eating and eating, cremating the fabric of my former life.

“What do you think I should choose?” I say.

The messenger only smiles.

“Is this a test? Some kind of placement quiz?” I step forward.

But panic feels a lot like peace, now.

Twenty-thousand dollars. Comfort, security, and a spring board. Again, I wouldn’t have to worry. Again, I’d-

But the notebook.

I peer at its simple black cover. “Can I hold it? Just to see?”

The messenger understands, allows me to take it without taking it.

Upon one flip through, I settle a fleeting question within me. No. No magic spells, no secrets of the universe, no divine truths. No lottery numbers. No map to buried treasure.

Nothing.

Blank page after blank page, two hard covers, a ribbon to keep place.

A good weight- not too small.

The messenger watches me.

As I bring the little black notebook closer, the blank pages-

My mouth falls open.

There’s a sprawling, watercolor-on-graphite masterpiece: warm sunlight dripping into the ocean.

And there are words, strung together across another page in a delicate, gossamer hand. The title: How best can I describe the precise way a songbird pours music from its lungs?

My hands shake as I rake through the pages.

There's dots and lines hooked on black ladders- pairs, triplets, a single, sustained ending fading.

There's bits of poetry, wedding vows, baby names, maps-

A page cut, withdrew, folded and molded into a geometric swan, as light and as heavy as happiness.

I stroke the swan with a trembling finger.

This wouldn’t buy a car, it wouldn’t help pay for college, it wouldn’t take care of rent or food or healthcare bills- necessities people spend their lives working to alleviate.

I didn’t need-

Let someone else have the money, this time.

Let someone else start ahead.

Let someone else-

I need canvases, blueprints, musical staffs. I need “Chapter One” and “The End”.

I need experience-to-brain, brain-to-hand, hand-to-paper.

I need…

I need art.

My soul breathes in relief, and somewhere, at some moment, a candle flame is extinguished.

“It’s still only paper, isn’t it? In the end.”

I look at the messenger.

But the messenger is gone.