Temporary Anne

With each day of my life, I sunk down closer to hell.With each day of my afterlife, I continue to dig that pit a little deeper.I know I'm going to hell, because I saw where I was headed when I first died. I know I'm going to hell and staying there because I saw it and because of what I've been doing since then. But I have no idea of going to Hell yet.You see, I found that I can stay out of Hell, at least temporarily.My name is Anne. Let me tell you how I do it.

I was drowning. Strange to think that someone could drown, could beswallowed up by and filled up with water, cool, crisp, water, smotheredin water, and spend the rest of eternity burning. Maybe that's aparticularly Hellish torture for drowning victims like me, people whohave everything to fear from dying. Maybe it makes it all the moreterrible that the last part of your life was cool and wet and the rest of your afterlife is dry and filled with sulfur and your eyeballs burn.I have no intention of finding out whether that's true, that youreyeballs burn. But why wouldn't they? While I gave no thought to it inmy first life, the thought of it scares me now when I’m already dead. Itwill scare me more, I expect, if the Devil ever gets his hands on me.Drowning seemed an odd way for me to die, since I'd never been tothe ocean before. Not many people took vacations then, and this wasnot so much a vacation that I decided to take as it was a business tripfor my husband. My third husband. And you're expecting me to say

don't ask what happened to the first two

but you can ask. I didn't doanything to them. Not directly. My sins were not as simple, beforedeath, as killing a husband for the money, which is a stupid andshortsighted thing to do anyway. They'll always catch you and it'sharder to remarry if the stench of murder clings to your soul.Murder was not what I did. I did not kill people's bodies, and I stilldon't. I suppose I killed their spirits then, and I still do.But I'm not going to talk about that. You won't lure me into that. Talking about that too much might draw the Devil's attention to me.I've kept It away, kept It from noticing that I'm not there yet. I don'tknow how long I can hold out, and I don't know if there are others likeme. I haven't thought that far ahead. I suppose I'll hold out until It

notices me or Jesus comes back and sends me on my way, but if Jesustries that I'll fight Him, too.As I said, I was drowning and going to die when I first saw Hell. Wewere going to get on a boat soon, at a time in the early 20th centurywhen big ocean liners were the way to travel for the wealthy, which mythird husband was. So I was going with him, I and my lovers who Imanaged to bring along because even though my husband suspectedthey were my lovers, he could do nothing about it. I had ensnaredhim, too. I told you. I did not kill the body. But you can keep a body, amind, trapped, if you have the right tools. And what I knew about myhusband meant that he could not afford to lose me and could notafford to leave me.He did not kill me, either. My death was a stupid accident. Or at leastwhat you humans (I say

you humans

because I'm no longer one of youbut a creation of my own, since if It created me It would have me Down There and God couldn't have possibly had a hand in making me what Iam) what you humans think of as an accident.It probably was fate, and if fate exists then maybe I do have a role inworld after all, but that role is to be what I have become and that, andfate, are no consolation to me.We were one day away from leaving on the ocean liner. We were in aluxury hotel on the seashore, cooling our heels, killing time. I got outof bed, the bed I shared with whomever I chose and rarely with myhusband, and left Lola laying there drugged and in a coma. Lola wasnot a willing partner and had to be seduced through more chemicalmeans, something I did on a regular basis. Lola could not afford toleave my employ since she needed the money to care for her sickmother, and I took wanton advantage of that. Yet in the list of my sinsLola would not have made it into the first volume.I put on a robe. It was dark out, the moon shining over the ocean. If Ihad not had contempt for all poets and writers, I would describe itmore aptly, more colorfully...

the moon hovered over the still glass pane of the ocean, a cool white portal into the night sky that beckoned to the weary traveler to leave this world and go to a better one.

I couldsay that, and it would be an ironic foreshadowing, since you alreadyknow that I'm dead and already know that I was not and will not begoing to a better world. This world is a terrible, horrible, sinful,wretched scab of a place and I helped and help make it that way, butthe Next, for me at least, makes this world look like Eden.Lola would not be stirring for some time. Opium does that. I looked at