Fade out to mist, and they are moving again. The figure leads them.
‘Come.’
A man in a shiny, three-piece suit holding a briefcase joins them, a burn-gash across his neck.
The company seems smaller.
He recalls articles written about the death experience and how people see their life flashing before them, though the story is usually suffered backwards. And a tunnel of light that leads to the dying person’s perception of God. Maybe Death is leading this company through a tunnel of memories to that abyss that is all wisdom, or all dissolution, or both.
He needs to know.
He runs to the figure. Brushes others aside. Is brushed aside by them. Grabs a sleeve. Grabs with hands that are multiple. It sticks to him like dry ice.
The figure spins slowly around.
His father is standing at the kitchen sink. They are washing the dinner dishes. They talk about God, because the nuns at school talk about him. His father tells him each race creates a god that will help them out of their troubles, yet all these gods are really only one. Tells him why conquering nations often absorbed the defeated gods into their own pantheons. Tells him how similar the values of all the great religions are, and that it is the values that matter, not the religions or their indoctrinations. Says these things but keeps the leather belt handy for when his rules are broken.
He wipes the dishes slowly.
