Johnny Wraith Stories

I left footprints in the sand, and the wind blew them away as I drank the Chardonnay, and sang songs, danced with the girl in the sundress. I have to admit it was a good time, at least for the time being. Sometimes throwing it all away is worth it. There can be joy in being as a comet, speeding through the universe at the cost of burning your body away. If you didn’t spend your flesh on going somewhere, you’d never go anywhere. You’d keep your body – be nothing but a fat Buddha sitting in the same place, contemplating nothingness, or nirvana, though your belly’s substance was profound and gravid. Nevertheless, when the comet burns out and reaches the end, it doesn’t always end well, though getting there was glorious.

As I lay there on top of the girl in the sand, my belly large with wine, my back streaked with sweat, and my loins spent, she turned back into the snake.

“Ouch, ouch!” hissed the snake. “Get off of me you oaf! You’re too heavy!”

I rolled off into the sand. I felt sick to my stomach. Had I committed an act of bestiality?

“You tricked me,” I whimpered.

“Oh, shut up you idiot,” you knew what you were doing.

“I screwed a snake!”

“Do I have to call you an idiot again? Look, you really did get with a girl, a real flesh and blood human girl.”

“But you are a snake!”

“You’ve been a snake with a lot of the women. So don’t cast the first stone. You weren’t a snake in body, but you were a snake in spirit.”  

“Payback… …I suppose what goes around really comes around.”

“Yep. Eventually. And Johnny, if it is of any consolation, I am a girl snake.”

“Really?” I sighed with relief. My stomach started to feel a little better. Of course I couldn’t resist asking,

“Snake?”

“Yeah Johnny?

“Was it any good?”

“What? The sex?”

“Yeah, the sex.”

“Bad sex is still good sex, but you were a little rough. I could have used some foreplay.”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time.”

With that, the snake slithered away. She just left me there, lying in the sand next to the ziggurat I’d abandoned. In the corner of my eye, the bonze goddess in gold adornment glinted in the brightening sunlight, which was getting hotter and hotter. I did not dare turn my face to her. Without looking, I knew she had once again covered her breasts and her smile had returned to stoicism. I feared she was disappointed in me for abandoning her eternity just to temporarily frolic with a snake. Perhaps she was causing the desert to suddenly become so hot. My flesh began to sizzle and bubble. It peeled off as the wind swept it away to reveal my bones. All I could do was scream and kick as my flesh was cooked and stripped, as I truly became like Adam. When the job was finished, my bleached bones lay in the sand, my lower jaw flapping, “Oh god, this is worse than a hangover. Woe is me! Shit…”

When you are a skeleton, you have no flesh. It is flesh that gives you a sense of time. The stomach becomes hungry for breakfast at morning, the eyes sleepy at night. Bones, they just lay there, never desiring sustenance. The skull’s sockets are oblivious to light or darkness when the eyes are missing. I don’t know how much time passed before the scorpion returned, gathered up my bones, and carried me back to Adam. I probably reviewed my life a million times, maybe a billion, and the odd thing I discovered is that no matter how many times I mulled and pondered it all, all of it remained shrouded in mystery. I am fairly certain that man’s primal questions will never be answered. Where did the gods come from, if there are any gods? What is my purpose? What, where, how, when? Why? Give up my friends and rejoice! I have been a pillar and a pile of bones, and thousands of lifetimes have I known, and I am no wiser than you are wise. Sometimes the wine and the girl will get you because we know only they give us temporary answers to all the mystery. The answers beg us to give it all away so our flesh dries up in the desert. It is swept away in the wind. We become nothing but bleached bone. Just as Adam.

My bones clattered into a pile on Adam’s crypt floor. My skull bounced a few times, jumped up over the edge of his sarcophagus, and landed face to face with his skull.

“Oh Johnny! You’re back!” chuckled Adam. “How nice of you to join me like this! This time we can have an intimate chat, skull to skull.”

“Hahahaha!” our lower jaws flapped together.

“Hahahahahaha!” we kept flapping, the dust swirling.

Adam looked at me with deep, black eyes and said, “Johnny, the scorpion is going to put you back together and restore your flesh. He will lead you to a cave that will take you into Hades.”

“Hades? It’s a real place?”

“Call it what you want, but it is where souls go for eternal torment.”

“Wait a minute, I thought everybody kept changing forms? The snake told me I was the last one that had stopped changing forms because I had been standing there in the desert, a pillar, for so long.”

“She was right. You are the last one that hasn’t changed forms that is still outside of Hades.”

“Oh shit! Are you telling me I have to go there now because I haven’t changed forms?”

“That’s right.”

“Can I ever leave?” This was becoming quite concerning. Had I been more than bone, I’m fairly certain I’d have felt fear in my heart and my stomach.

“No one has ever left Hades, because, as I said, souls go there for eternal torment. But, from what I hear, anyone can leave. All they have to do is give up their suffering and walk out of the place. But, no one wants to leave, or has ever wanted to leave, after getting there. It is a horrible place, with nothing good about it. Why souls stay is a mystery to me, so I don’t bother asking.”

“What kind of torment is in Hades?”

“There are 3 kinds of torment. It depends on whether your Vice is Idleness, Rigidity, or Greed.”

Another test? Maybe it wasn’t a test, but the result of my having failed all the tests. I’d learned not to ask questions, though my impulse was to ask more about Hades, how to get out, whether I really had to go, what the Vices were all about. I was just going to go along with it. I remembered Vatsulu’s words,

“Just keep swimming my brother. Go with the currents.”

“Bye Adam, I’ll telephone from Hell.”

“Hahahaha!” flapped Adam, the dust swirling.

One by one, the scorpion picked up my bones and put them in an old canvass sack. He tied it shut, and threw me over his shoulder.

Clank! Clank!

We swam up through the ocean and onto land. We traversed forests, mountain passes, rolling hills, grasslands, and tundra. When we arrived at a place of eternal winter, we stopped. The scorpion untied the sack, dumped my bones into the snow, and went to work arranging them in proper order. He stuck his tail in my eye socket and returned my flesh.

“Brrrr! It’s cold and I have no clothes!” I blurted as I hopped around in the snow.

The scorpion didn’t say a thing. With his pinchers he cut two holes in the canvass sack and threw it to me. At least I had shorts.

The scorpion pointed behind me, then turned and scurried away.

I looked behind me to discover a small opening in the earth. A cave.