San Roig - An apparition on the beach - short story

The door to paradise glows green. It has been a week since I died and reincarnated. I find myself mute, for every attempt to explain God falls short. I see my lips moving, scrambling for words to butcher the architecture of heaven. Like a kid’s drawing approximates a caricature of a house, I long to make music that should melt the stars but only manage a crude rhythm.

How does one explain paradise to the living? My best attempts are coated in yearning, a breathless longing hinting of the boundless colours better than words.

My wife Helga’s eyes see past me as I talk. She seems worried that I have lost my mind. To be fair I’m unsure if I have. Let me walk you to the start.

I had been walking by the ocean, I find solace in the water. I stare into the lambent gray and forget myself. I’m embarrassed to come back into my body, the same eyes which contemplated infinity now forced to seize up the curb. Few human concepts hold up to this scale, but attraction is one of them. Attraction holds molecules together and it keeps planets from drifting away from their stars. Attraction is the abstraction we use to understand love, a chemical reaction set in a word. That’s why I always imagined my wedding would be held seaside. Love, captured in a moment before infinity, the sea as witness. 

This is the reason I was not surprised in the least when the gates to paradise opened a few metres from the beach of my youth.

It had been announced. A black monolith was to be built such that humans may approach it in awe like one of Kubrick’s chimpanzees. Everything we don’t understand is the product of a system too complex to grasp. This monolith by the seaside had all the hallmarks of a greater being entering our dimension, like an ant wandering into a fission reactor and barely understanding the floorplan, let alone the inner workings of the machine. The work of a higher intelligence or the result of years of matter and energy interacting in patterns so complex that generalisation can only scratch at the surface.

I decide to enter the monolith, and I take Helga with me. I am not immediately overwhelmed. Valhalla takes a different shape for each ascended soul, and our brains immediately fixate on the one detail which strikes us more powerfully. Like a child holding on to its mother’s thumb, our first impressions of paradise crystalise eternity into a detail of comfort to keep our minds from going insane at the sight of Everything.

I am comforted by smell. It smells like every loaf of fresh bread I encountered in my youth, combined, damned be Proust. I close my eyes and I am able to make out freshly baked bread and cooling chocolate. A minute later it is vanilla, and herbs.

I open my eyes. I walk straight ahead in the blinding light and I catch glimpses of red and yellow, but my brain has not yet fully settled and I hold on to the person next to me for strength. It is Helga. She looks determined, like she’s been here before. I commend myself to a higher being and walk with her.

I always thought heaven would be the eternal version of a Summer afternoon at age 8. I played tag, cards, and singing contests by the pool with my childhood friends; and I pictured paradise as the chance to spend forever with the people one treasures most. A heavenly private club where our tribe makes us feel forever safe. 

Real heaven is better. I look left, I look right, and I feel I belong everywhere. No need for tribes, I felt no exclusion. 

My eyes have finally adjusted to the light. I breathe in, I’m calm, I’m at peace. Helga has walked ahead but staff members smile at me reassuringly -who knew heaven had clerks-. I walk with purpose. I reach out for the flash of red. It’s now crystalised into its corporeal form. It’s homemade gazpacho. I reach out for the flash of yellow. It is now gluten-free, onion-free Spanish tortilla. The green letters of paradise state their purpose with confidence: I have entered Torre del Mar’s newest MERCADONA.

I pick up a cake. It’s gluten and dairy free. I feel my eyes welling up and I know I’m going to look silly but I break out crying in gratitude. I grab 0% alcohol beer. It’s gluten free. I didn’t even ask for it to be gluten free, but it is. I am home.

I think my heart might burst with joy when a smiling shop assistant makes the ether shine kinder and brighter as she asks if I need anything. I smile back with benevolence but don’t say anything. She will understand I couldn’t possibly ask for more. She looks puzzled, her gaze lowers and she walks away. I walk ahead with purpose. I must find Helga.

Thank you San Roig.