DEATH HAS A THOUSAND DOORS
Flash Fiction by Jorge Richard P. Guerrero
Rodrigo Luna, Jr. made a living writing for the dead.
Although he had other sources of income through writing, such as news features, essays, short stories, and political speeches, he found writing eulogies more lucrative because he had the monopoly on writing for the dead – his fellow writers were more interested in writing for the living.
In his years of writing eulogies, Rodrigo had accumulated functional lines for his craft. Like the words of Byron: Perhaps the early grave which men weep over may be meant to save. Of Hypsaeus: He whom the gods love dies young. Of Tennyson: God’s finger touched him, and he slept. Of Milton: Death is the gate of life.
But Rodrigo’s favorite was Massinger’s line: Death has a thousand doors to let out life. It was the opening line of his last eulogy.
It was only half-past eight, yet the chilly January night seemed too eager to put Rodrigo to sleep. He tried to ward off the call of the doze, but it was unrelenting. He yielded. He decided to have forty winks before he attacks the keyboards again.
He was about to close his eyes when his peripheral sight caught a figure slumped on his sofa. It was a man. The room was devoid of light – save the weak glow from a corner lamp – but he was sure it was a man. He grabbed a handgun hidden under his chair.
“Who are you?” Rodrigo pointed the gun at the man. “Don’t move! Or I’ll shoot you!”
The man was wearing a white shirt; a woven fedora obscured his face. His presence seemed to emit an odd breeze in the room, icy yet sulfuric. He rose from the sofa and approached Rodrigo.
Rodrigo squeezed the trigger. Bam! The slug made a yawning hole in the man’s stomach. But instead of blood, maggots and bugs flowed from the bullet hole – the grimy insects went in and out of the flapping gap. Then, in jumpy motions, the bugs buzzed, flew and attacked Rodrigo’s eyes, nose, and mouth.
He shrieked and jerked backward. He let go of his gun as he whacked and shook off the tiny creatures from his face – they went flying all over the room.
“Rodrigo Luna, Jr., there is no need to kill me,” the man removed his hat. “I’m dead.”
Rodrigo shuddered at the sight of the man’s face. It was his face, only much older, ashen and brittle. He was like looking in a mirror, which transformed his reflection into a cadaverous image.
“Father?”
“Oh, you still recognize me, son?” the man said.
“After twenty years since you ran away from home. After ten years since I died alone on our farm, my body dragged and nibbled by damned animals. After you have resolved not to look for my body for a decent burial – you still recognize the face of your father?”
Rodrigo’s body shook uncontrollably; he cried like a girl locked in a morgue in the middle of the night.
“I was dying, father! I didn’t want to be a cursed farmer like you, and you beat me so hard that I was dying! I ran away and never came back because after you beat me, I looked like an unfinished murder!”
The corpse stared at Rodrigo, who was now cringed in a corner, rocking his body as if trying to comfort himself.
“Write me a eulogy! Write the best eulogy for your father!”
“Why? What for? What difference would it make?”
The dead man’s eyes went fiery.
“It would make a big difference! Writings have souls. And the souls of eulogies accompany the lost dead. They calm them in their eternal sufferings. I am the father of a great eulogy writer, yet I don’t have a eulogy to soothe me in my unending damnation. Write me a eulogy!”
“And if I don’t, father?”
The corpse made an impish smile as his eyes released a faint red glimmer.
“Then I may complete my unfinished murder, son.”
It took Rodrigo almost an hour to complete a short eulogy. In normal situations, he could compose the same length in fifteen minutes maximum. But with a corpse waiting near him, Rodrigo struggled to maintain his creativity amidst the ringing of bells inside his pounding brain.
He handed the copy to his father, who floated and hovered in the room as he read the first line aloud.
“Oh, death has a thousand doors to let out life!”
The corpse was all smile when he devoured the initial lines. But as he went deeper into the body of the eulogy, his face darkened. His brows twitched. His jaws tightened. Then he barked.
“Are you playing games with me, son? This is not a eulogy for me! This eulogy is for a damned writer!”
“I have bad news for you, father!”
Rodrigo felt a syrupy snap in his head as he reached for the gun from the floor. His brain swelled and retreated, swelled and retreated.
“That eulogy is for me! For I’d rather enter the harshest of Death’s thousand doors than calm your wretched soul!”
He again felt his brains swelled and retreated, swelled and retreated.
Rodrigo laughed as he shot his brains off.
#flashfiction #jorgerichardpguerrero
