William Bouguereau 1825-1905
Dante & Virgil in Hell




Forty below zero with four feet of snow on the ground and some idiot is pounding on my front door at 3: am. I drag my freezing butt to the door and through the peephole I see my brother Andy.
“Guess what, I’ve learned how to tell if you’re dead or not while hallucinating,” Andy said as soon as he walked through the door, bringing freezing air and melting snow with him.
“How can you tell?” I wondered what kind of drug would have him walking around in this weather.
“Look in a mirror, go ahead look,”
“Andy I don’t want to look in the damn mirror. What’s with this mirror stuff?”
“I made a great discovery. Look in a mirror and if you see yourself, you’re not dead,”
“Okay genius, I needed to know that,” I looked in the mirror to be sure I hadn’t died and gone to hell or somewhere worse.
“But Joe, you don’t understand, if you don’t see a reflection, that means you’re dead,” Andy looked in the mirror to be sure he could see his reflection and I checked mine again, just to be sure. Andy must be hallucinating to come up with something like this so I asked, “If you’re hallucinating, how do you know what you’re really seeing?”
“I don’t know how it works, but it’s a proven fact. If you see yourself, you’re alive, and if you don’t, you’re dead.” Andy shook a plastic pill bottle filled with little yellow pills, and my eyes followed them as they slid from top to bottom over and over as he shook the bottle.
Hypnotized by the movement my body started to crave one of those pretty little pills. “A proven fact. How the hell do you prove something like that?” I put my hand out and Andy dumped a dozen yellow pills into my expectant hand. Desire to swallow all twelve surged through my mind.
“Easy, everyone who died while hallucinating on this mixture and got resuscitated swore they didn’t see their reflection while high, and everyone who didn’t die, but looked in a mirror while hallucinating did see their reflection.”
I stared at the little pills and wondered when I took one, what my chances of dying were. That thought compelled me to swallow two more of the little yellow beauties.
“What good’s it going to do if you know you’re dead?” I asked
“You don’t have to worry about dying any longer.”
I guessed that made sense since our biggest worry is dying. I decided to eat three more of the little yellow pills Andy had been using to test his theory, and I’d be sure to look in a mirror if I could find one in my hallucination.
Almost immediately after swallowing the pills moving colors so bright and sharp they cut through my skin. I tasted the flavor of every one of the colors as my body absorbed them. Everything is full of colored texture, walls, ceilings, floors—it was as though Van Gogh had painted the entire world. I became a living changing vibrant color with feelings and thoughts that wanted to smear me all over anything I touched.
Suddenly, a nauseous feeling overtook me and all colors turned into a revolting, swirling dark purple and black vortex that spun ever faster, whirling me along the hallway to bathroom door. I leaned over the toilet, opened my mouth and tried to heave a ball of hot liquid fire from my stomach.
I tried my best to dispel this sickening ball and nothing came out other than a dry heave. The swirling dark purple became jagged volts of black lightening each time I heaved. I could feel the muscles and my back straining as I heaved again and again until finally the black lightening struck my gut so hard there poured from my mouth a toilet full of regrets. All the regrets that had been plaguing me for years came pouring out into the toilet.
Any sickness is worth the pain if I can just puke out all my regrets. Once I thought it possible, that part of my brain started to empty into the toilet. But the brain emptied through my stomach. Regret after regret poured out. Some colored a vibrant pink and others ebony black and others was a rainbow of colors. The colors ran into the toilet water and I had to flush the toilet to make room for more regrets that kept pouring from my torn gut. The water became a vortex of hundreds of colors, so beautiful I flushed over and over.
Each one was neatly labeled with a bright yellow label with black print stating what it was I did, and the date and time I did it. There were thousands and thousands of them. I wondered how there was any room in me for things I didn’t regret. This wasn’t the experience I expected. Now that I had no regrets, I took another little yellow pill. The colors were becoming textured again when I felt another ball growing in my stomach. I ran to the toilet and puked up my beliefs. It wasn’t as painful or as colorful, because I had but few beliefs. I knew the little yellow pill had gone down the toilet with my beliefs. So I took another.
The colors and textures were just forming, and I had to vomit again. I rushed to the bathroom. This time it was my sins that came pouring out. They came out a scarlet red and smelled of sulfur. I needed to flush three times to drown my sins and three more before the sulfur smell vanished. The sins had a red label with white print on them, the red label almost coordinated with the scarlet color of the sins. The print named the sin and gave the date. I didn’t realize I had been such a sinner.
Things I thought of as being natural were labeled as sins. I wanted to weigh myself, because after ridding myself of all these regrets, sins, and beliefs I must be twenty pounds lighter. I couldn’t find the scale, but I sure felt lighter.
All my stomach, back, and leg muscles were worn out and torn from the continuous heaving and were causing me intense pain. I swallowed the rest of the beautiful yellow pills to numb my pain and instead numbed my brain enough that it forgot to tell me to breathe. Maybe my time to die had come. The idea didn’t upset me. No regrets remained as they all were flushed down the toilet along with my sins and beliefs. So I had nothing to worry about in the event there was such a thing as an afterlife.
I wondered what it was going to be like to pass from this life to the next.
I saw the proverbial light at the end of a tunnel and walked willingly toward it when a voice inside my head asked me, “Isn’t there one thing you want before you die?”
I always wondered what love was. I sought love all my life and never came close to finding it. So I answered the mysterious voice, “Yes, I’d like to fall in love, to have that one experience to remember for eternity.”
Somehow this thought of love activated my brain enough to tell me to reach the phone and call 911. The ambulance arrived in minutes. I was rushed to the hospital, and told I had a minor heart attack and would be released in a few days. Undecided to be happy or sad, because dying had seemed so pleasant.
As soon as Emily walked through the door the room got brighter, the colors vivid, the scents, heavenly. My question got answered. I was happy to be alive. This was love at first sight. I read thousands of love stories, but never believed it possible for me. Emily with her angelic smile and halo of soft blonde hair with the bluest eyes I had ever seen stole my heart and soul the instant I laid eyes on her and all my senses focused on nothing but love for her.
“How are you feeling Mr. DiBuduo?” Emily asked, if an angel ever spoke she would have had Emily’s voice, I could swear I heard music every time she spoke. “Is there anything I can do for you?” My imagination soared when I thought of things she could do for me.
“You already have done what no one else could in all these years, are you my private nurse,”
“Along with the other patients on this ward I am.”
She held my wrist to take my pulse. It raced and my skin burned from her touch.
As soon as she left, I called hospital personnel to see if I could hire her as a private nurse. I received a disappointing answer and racked my brain for an answer, how could an old man attract a beautiful, angelic twenty year old? Impossible I knew and depression overcame me.
A few days passed and upon my release, I asked Emily for her phone number.
“Whatever for?” she asked, and gave me a strange look.
“Whatever for, whatever for,” repeated itself over and over in my thoughts as an imaginary knife stuck in my guts with every whatever for. What should I have said? Could I have told her I loved her without being laughed at? I knew that would’ve been the result of a statement like that. Well my wish has come true, I’m hopelessly in love and there’s nothing I can do about it. If I thought life was uncomfortable before I fell in love. It was ten times as bad now. The only thoughts in my mind were of Emily. I followed her everywhere until she finally called the police and told them I was stalking her. I was warned, “One more call and you’re going to jail,” a policeman said.
The threat of jail prompted my decision. At least I found out what it’s like to be in love. I felt it fortunate for me that it had never happened to me before now. At this stage of my life, I’m ready to die, so love didn’t hurt me as much as it could have if it had happened when I was young.
I swallowed the whole bottle of Valiums never expecting to wake again. Surprisingly I could faintly hear questions bubbling in the back of my consciousness. Once I passed that threshold where our world unites with another the questions became clear. “Are you finished, or do you have another wish?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My mind must be imagining speech,
“Answer, you don’t have much time.”
“Please God Please…” I started to say, but a voice in my head said, “No one said god was here.” I was being presumptuous to presume that god would even care about my wishes. “Okay. Okay.” I said, “I do have another wish. I wish I could wake up in the hospital and Emily would love me.”
I woke up in the same hospital room as before. I remembered my delusions and got a kick out of the thought that somehow my wish for Emily had been granted. Then I remembered my suicide attempt and was embarrassed to still be alive. Everyone would know how weak I was for attempting that. My entire world was drab and dull, and I thought maybe I shouldn’t have come back until Emily walked into my room.
Everything changed she was so happy to see me. I just knew my last wish had been granted. She read to me, massaged my shoulders and spent almost all her free time with me, and never once mentioned my suicide attempt. The world was now a bright and happy place.
This time when I asked for her phone number she gladly gave it to me.
Happy to be released from the hospital. I had already set up a date with Emily. I took her to a fine Italian restaurant where they had singing waiters and a romantic setting. She was so gay and full of life, thrilling to the littlest things. Watching her made my heart race and when I thought how it would finally be when I took her home tonight. I almost passed out from the excitement of just thinking about her dressed in a transparent nightgown and beckoning me to come to her where she lay on white silk sheets with a scarlet monogram set in a heart outline on the pillow cases with both sets of our initials.
Dinner passed as pleasantly as possible and she leaned her head on my shoulder while the cab drove to her apartment. Her perfume wafted over me all the while we rode and for an old man I probably had more erotic thoughts in that short ride than most twenty year olds have in a year. I got out, paid the driver and walked her to the door. I put my arms around Emily and attempted to kiss her.
She wiggled free giggling. “What on earth are you trying to do?”
A half smile remained on her face until I said, “Why kiss you of course,”
“Kiss me!” the smile disappeared and was replaced with a grimace.
“Yes kiss you, I love you, and I know you love me Emily.”
A look of astonishment swept over her face. “You’re three time my age. The love I have for you is for the grandfather I never had.
This was totally unexpected. I was humiliated. She loved me all right, like a grandfather. My wish had come true again. But not in the context I wanted. Who was granting these distorted wishes anyway? I couldn’t take the embarrassment and disappointment so I went home and swallowed the larger bottle of Valium I had purchased.
As I crossed the threshold into another place, I heard the question again, “Are you finish…”
I quickly answered, “No, No, I’m not finished. I want Emily to really need me.” I felt my direction reversing I hoped I made the correct wish this time.
I woke up in the same room, with Emily treating me with loving care that went way beyond grandfatherly love. I wondered what I had done to deserve so many chances. Whatever the reason for all the chances, I was overjoyed and actually proposed to Emily while still in the hospital. To my extreme pleasure she agreed. I thanked god, if there was one to thank. We decided to get married before I was released.
Everyone thought Emily was making a big mistake, and tried to talk her out of marrying an old man three times her age. All she could say was,” I really need him.”
The wedding went off without a hitch and without a honeymoon, doctor’s orders.
I noticed one of the doctors was angry when he pulled Emily aside and overheard her telling him “I can’t help it. I really, really need to be with him, and I don’t know why,” the doctor who appeared to be of Indian descent stalked angrily away.
Soon after the wedding there was an emergency and all available staff rushed to the emergency room. Emily was the first to reach the nurses dressing room as usual. She pushed through the swinging doors and a fiery oxygen explosion greeted her. The construction workers had foolishly stacked oxygen containers in front of a heater that caused them to explode. She wasn’t killed but it’s debatable if she would have been better off dead. She would be totally paralyzed and was burned over ninety percent of her body.
The Indian doctor with a smirk on his face told me, “She’s going to need round the clock care. She really, really needs you now.”
Maybe I died and all my wishes were coming true just to further torment me? At this thought I rushed to find a mirror, so I’d know if I was hallucinating or if I was dead. I ran into the bathroom where I knew there’d be a mirror. I looked into it, and all I saw reflected was the wall behind me. God damn, I forgot to ask Andy, “How do I know if I’m in heaven or hell?”