Jim Meirose's work has appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Calliope, Offbeat/Quirky (Journal of Exp. Fiction pub,), Permafrost, North Atlantic Review, Blueline, Witness, and Xavier Review, and has been nominated for several awards. Published books include: Understanding Franklin Thompson (Exp. novel - JEF pubs (2018)), Sunday Dinner With Father Dwyer (Exp. Novel - Scarlet Leaf Press (2018)), Inferno (E-Chap - Underground Voices), Mount Everest and Eli the Rat (Lit. Novels - Montag). Visit www.jimmeirose.com to know more.
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Prepare My Spaghetti Dinner Immediately!
Hello there Davis family! Prepare my spaghetti dinner immediately! Janie told me she would be at Frank’s. I can bet that by now you’re on tenterhooks knowing that in just about a single decade you will be called home to Bern and processed through the process and begin your well-earned lives, which by the way we will number Davis family lifetime 2.0. She agreed to be here at seven so we could watch the next prep video together. We are glad to tell you that our research and planning is well ahead of schedule and we will be ready and waiting in every one of the hundreds of multifaceted ways that we must be prepared to take you in live spit you out between lives in process status, that is—and then send you out fresh and alive and ready to hold hands together with all tests behind you, and to enter the Gallant Neoteric New Nature of human existence which is what we term the life beyond death that our process will vault you three into. Dinner will be out in about twelve minutes. But—there is a wave of feeling rippling through your ranks—maybe not with you Davises in particular, but across the body of club members at large. I’m bringing the pasta to a boil now. Get out the pots and the pans and all necessary utensils. This is the problem of being on the easy-coast downhill side of the hump that you are all on realizing now that your process is actually going to happen, and that it is really really true that those of you who were raised in a cult that made you believe in the fallacy called heaven, are feeling a hollow virtual sinkhole-like suction down and down to the depressive space who’s gross product is regret, otherwise known as the human being-breed’s natural bent to crush to powder the slightest glimmer of feeling free fine and happy in your skins—because your skins are filthy stinky and gross and slimy-slippery and were not meant to contain happy consciousnesses so must be restored to their naturally-depressed unhappy naysaying face-to-the-dirt crawl through life’s deadly no-mans-land attitudes that over time, yup, up until the death-point, yup, have been conditioned to expect and deserve eternal bliss in an interstellar-but-maybe-really earthly Hawaii-climated virgin spotlessly sweet-spotted high-numbered and all that great stuff, place. Want to help me set the table? But for the club members, this would be true; you will never get to that place in this or any other iteration of your forward-rolling eternal lives. Come on—get out two hot plates we need two and—Wait! So; just what is this place called heaven, actually? Wait a minute. What is this place that it is calculated that one out of five of the members of the full gang of clubbies we have on the Club rolls, will quit because they will lose the spiritual battle for their souls between taking a chance on there really being an unlikely place called heaven or that their only hope of any reward for the decades and decades of suffering this first life has given them is to stick with the Club and see their processes through. You mean to tell me that she’s eating with that guy of hers again tonight? We have thus seen fit to devote a large quadrant of this enormous time consuming video message to helping those with these types of fears, some things to ask themselves meditate on muse about discuss both circularly and straight ahead wise, up and down and about and through, to come to their own well-mediated conclusion about the existence of a heaven and if arriving there is better or worse in the eternally long run than going into the process and never ever experiencing death. Fill the outsized tin pot with hot water turn on the big flame and cover it up. How many nights in a row has it been now? And note that to get to heaven, death must be passed through. Yesterday I told her to be sure to be here today. And the way that death comes to each varied from horribly painful agonizing and torturously slow, to totally pain free so pain free as a matter of fact that it may come during a typical sleep on what seemed to be a typical night unheralded and unannounced. Wendy, when are you going to put your foot down and demand she get in line—I think she’s come around pretty well, Jamed. You wake up dead without experiencing it and being dead, the next thing is to come before the golden throne of either Saint Peter or Jesus Christ or Adam or Munkar or Nakeer or of any of the entities that differ by religion to judge you and decide what’s next. She’s been a lot calmer the last few months. What’s next is such a trite phrase. To crack down, well—she is twenty-one now, after all. What’s next is asked all through life. She’s an adult—But she still is our daughter and lives under our roof—Jamed. What’s next comes over and over and over so smooth and unnoticed that the question in between stops being heard, until the last what’s next asked when standing out in the space past death will be the last and the answer will be heaven or hell. Calm down. All know hell. The way she was after the last trip to Bern, we’re lucky she’s still hanging in there with us to keep the club going at all; I still think we should call over there, and demand to know what they told her. The absence of the positive all things gone but the negative list out all negative things in the universe and the total equals hell. She’s not been the same since. No quality of life at all in hell; plus, hell is forever. I—I am a nervous wreck not knowing what’s in her head; Jamed, stop, think, and remember back about ten years. Reflect and see that the risk of deciding to give up the Club and opt for a shot at traditional heaven is the deepest risk any human can take. When she was turning to a teenager. Open the deep blue long thin spaghetti box and measure out the correct amount corresponding to the expected number of diners. The first most premiere eternal game show has been debuted with the advent of Le Club de Resurrection. You said the same things about the changes in her then—That was different; but how? Take the risk of shooting for the absolute pinnacle of happiness called heaven, which may end up with your being shunted off to the absolute deepest deep of despair called hell. Tell me how? And, in the process, possibly enduring an unimaginably torturous and agonizing prolonged death, only to fail in the judgement and have the suffering all have been for nothing when you find yourself flung aside through the gaping red-hot stone door to hell without possibility of parole. She was changing from a child to an adolescent. However; opt to stay in Le Club de Resurrection, and you will lock in the promise of eternal fleshly life which, though not ever reaching the pinnacles of pleasure heaven promises, will ensure that there will be no agonizing death and a total guarantee that you will never experience an eternity and possibly even longer time in hell. She didn’t want to be our baby any more. Which is rational to choose? The way she acted, I bet, hurt her just as much as it hurt us. Especially of you are in the majority of humans who, when asked if they will buy a lottery ticket when the payoff is a windfall of astronomically huge proportions, simply answer, Nah, I never win anything. So? I’ll save my couple of bucks for a coffee. How is what’s going on now anything at all like that I don’t get it—your spouse will begin to have bad luck—I—I don’t know Jamed. The coffee is guaranteed. I’m sorry you’re upset. To throw guaranteed coffee away in favor of what will probably be only lack-of-coffee not just now but forever, and a bigger forever way out past the sun’s death and rebirth and whatever’s next that way, is completely irrational. I really can’t help you—we are beginning a long-term test of your spouse to see how much stress he can absorb over time—what? We all need coffee. Not a minute ago, you were going to tell me exactly why I should not worry or feel bad about how she’s acting. Huh yes, we do, duds. Now, all of a sudden, you—you clam up! When your superheating pot comes to a boil, or boils over if you are careless, pop the top and slide in the spaghetti piercing the never notice but very real surface tension. But now; even though that should have been enough to pump your grey matter all fatly puffed with ammunition to shoot off the right decisional bulls-eyes, there is more; consider that on this human plane everything is physical bodily carnal corporal corporeal embodied fleshly and so forth et cetera, where on earth then is heaven? Go on, help me understand—your spouse will suddenly be overwhelmed with such repetitive and wallet-draining bad luck that she will become dissociated and will consider book a room in the state nuthouse—I—I can’t help you understand what I don’t understand myself—hey! Or where not on earth then is heaven? My God, the water’s boiling over—move, move And, how can there have been mortal humans who upon death have been brought up in their physical form to heaven? I need to get by you—he will be almost constantly angry, frustrated, and depressed for the rest of his present iteration of life—sure sure push past me worrying about my only child just like you push past whenever I tell you there’s something driving me nuts—there’s always something more important—a phone call to take—a pot boiling over—a doorbell to answer rung by some loser door-to-door creep—creep creep creep there’s always some creep more important than me a creep’s more important what does that say about what you think of me—if he does not break down before you both report for termination at the end of the whole process we’re leading you through, he will be judged acceptable to be gifted with immortality—Jamed, won’t you help me? The Mother of God; Elijah the prophet; and Jesus Christ were brought physically to heaven, so they say. Grab some paper towels! Does this mean that the following might occur? This is a giant mess—no matter how great his suffering might be, you must never give in to the mounting pressure to cry out to us that we should stop, back off him, or anything like that—Wendy, deal with the mess yourself for a change. Boil the spaghetti twelve minutes on medium heat and as is softens use a big fork to softly slowly gently curl it around to all fit around in the pot below the water. Captain, our iron starship that we have piloted already eighty-nine hundred light years from home, has just hit an object or objects or worse. Maybe I’ll treat you how you treat me—and, if you tell him about this both of you will end up in Hell forever—What—your test is if you will be able to see your spouse enduring Hell, without helping or breaking down and pleading for us to stop—I am sick with worry, and—we were talking about it and it was clear as crystal, that halfway through you helping me feel better, something in you decided to turn away and not give a shit—is this really going to go on for the rest of our lives—Jamed—living forever requires that you be hard—I’ve been noticing that about you a lot. Up here in the eternal void we have been condemned to explore with no hope of return, there should be no objects. For a long time too. But, the space walking fools evolved to our era from the primal yet legendary Zappa-maginary dancing fools, have come back in the house and shut the door and reported thusly; There is an elderly woman’s body floating outside, there is an old man’s body all skinnyribbed and lanky, and there is a man in his thirties’ body also, which resembles the picture we have in the starship chapel of the one who’s name was long ago lost but whom we revere as the very reverend most legendary highness the very son of God who died for us in some obscure secret impossible way. I have about had it. And the Captain turned pale and orange combined with a complexion similar to Tan Mom’s intensified by a factor of ten by the lack of an atmosphere to attenuate hot deadly very very fearsome as fearsome as thirty giant Chernobyls and a few even larger and fatter Chernobyls worth of a deluge of 24/7/365 cosmic rays and blurted fearfully No, no. And now having Janie treat me like shit too, is starting to feel a lot like the last straw—this will continue for the remainder of her current life—Jamed—I—you are not permitted to comfort her in any way—What—her cross is to suffer a horribly troubled life—Perhaps we should never have married, Jamed. That cannot be. Gas off, pour water and spaghetti together into a big wide deep shimmery chrome plated colander. Clearly you are twisting hard the way I am and the way I try to help into some imaginary lie. You never saw that and you never said that and I never heard you say that or you this! If I wanted to hurt you, kiddo, I could do a lot better job of it than you are imagining I’m doing—your cross is to be banned from helping her through and to bear the pain of having to hold back from comforting the one you most love in this life—what—if you violate this code of secrecy, you and your family will be booted out of the Club without any refund of the nearly half a million dollars you have paid into the research fund since the day you signed the Contract we offered you after you applied for club membership—Back off! Whew! Back off. What a ruckus that find would cause back home, although even if we transmit it back now it would take greater than the smallest possible forever to get there; that is how far out we have got. At this point I’m only putting up with you to keep things together so we can keep up good standing in the Club! Thus, it is impossible to see or know smell or touch heaven; so, let’s take the few remaining moments, to give up the podium to Doctor Peter-Stuckly-Mann, who will provide us with this checkpoint’s fill of examples of noted resurrection processes of the past. Thank God that soon these first lives of ours will be over—no exceptions—What? To credit him properly, he is—
Am I——no appeals—
No that will not be necessary Doctor Patriciosilva. There is not must time left and the points I need to transmit to the clients are critical, thanks. So, I—
No more!
No no no, Doctor; you have traveled far. It’s the last we can do to let the Club know that you were CEO of Tecriskinia Cambogia GmbH in Switzerland specializing in scientific technical hollow-earth analysis, and—
Back off!
I see Doctor P., you will persist in this flattery. I will talk over under across you as; Matthew 27:52-53 states that when Jesus died, many graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose—
Transfer spaghetti carefully into vintage corning ware bright white bowl.
Here—set the fucking table.
—and you also held leading positions in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Electromagnetic Compatibility and in Biosafety. You were—
All this other talk is just gas!
—and they came out of the graves after the Saviour’s Resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. This is very much a mirror back of what will occur when the Club comes together in Bern ten years hence and—
Wendy—
—a member of the ESA Planetary Protection Working Group, the International Mars Architecture for Return of Samples, the International Mars Exploration Working Group and the ESA Sample Return Study Group—
I said back off!
—in a way it will also be a time when many bodies of the saints arose simultaneously. In this, you see that what you are going to experience en-masse in ten years’ time has been done before, and as such has already been proven possible. You see this fact has just given you the choice to make in the eternal game show; choose the Resurrection, abandon heaven. A birdy handle is worth twenty-nine bushes. That’s it, bye bye; but, remain seated until the good Doctor P. finishes, like this; and so now Doctor Peter-Stuckly-Mann, take it away. Okay get the sauce the hot red sauce what no hot red sauce, no, no we have fucked up royally this meal is nothing without the sauce. See there was time to sing your praises—and now, in the single last moment speeding at us, reach grip the brass ring the brass ring—hey where’s you go Mister Manna Stuckly of the royal nickname club you manage on the side from your dining room table? Gosh, clubguys. It is indeed just us again. What did this little skit signify? Was that guy ever here at all? Huh, huh, huh. Surprised all you dozers out there, I betcha. Expect to be quizzed on Doctor ManGod’s talk when next to come to Bern. Any questions-guess-not-bye clubees clubettes and you too! Dump the hot pasta into the flipper-lidded trash can. It will cool if anything, so, feel no fear of fire. Prepare my spaghetti dinner immediately!