Damned

The padded and upholstered leathery womb that is the backseat of a Town Car... anytime one finds oneself in such a place she ought to assume she's en route to Hades. In the magazine pocket sits the usual assortment of trade rags, including the Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and a copy of the Vanity Fair with my mom grinning on the cover and spouting her Gaia, Earth First! gibberish on the inside. She looks Photoshopped almost beyond recognition.

And yes, my parents have taught me well about the Power of Context and Marcel Duchamp, and how even a urinal becomes art when you hang it on the wall of a classy gallery. And pretty much anyone could pass as a movie star if you put their mug shot on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. But that's how come I so, so, so appreciate crossing into the afterlife aboard a Lincoln Town Car as compared to a bus or a pole barge or some other cattle-car, steerage form of sweaty mass transit. So I again thank you, Satan.

The steep rising angle of the car's trajectory and the resulting g-forces settle me deeper into the leather upholstery. The little window in the driver's partition slides aside to reveal the chauffeur's sunglasses framed in the rearview mirror. Speaking to me via his reflection, the driver says, "If you don't mind my asking... are you related to the movie producer Antonio Spencer?" Of his features, all I can see is his mouth, and his smile stretches to become a spooky leer.

I retrieve the copy of Vanity Fair and hold the cover photo of my mother beside my own face, saying, "See any resemblance? Unlike my mom I have pores..." Already,

I'm falling asleep, drifting off. Sadly, I sense where this conversation is going.

The driver says, "I do some screenwriting, myself."

And yes, of course, I saw this reveal coming from the moment I first saw the car. Every driver is named George, and every driver in California has a screenplay ready to fob onto you, and since the age of four—when I came home from Halloween trick-or-treating, my pillowcase loaded with spec screenplays, I've been trained to manage this awkward situation. As my dad would say, "We're not reading for new projects at this time..." Meaning: "Go peddle your spec script to some other sucker for financing." But despite a childhood of arduous training in how to gently and politely dash the hopes and dreams of moderately gifted, earnest young talents... maybe just because I'm exhausted... maybe because I realize that the eternal afterlife will seem even longer without the distraction of even low-quality reading material... I say, "Sure." I say, "Get me a clean copy, and I'll give it a read."

Even as I'm drifting off to sleep, my hands still gripping the Vanity Fair with my mom's face on the cover, I sense that the front of the car is no longer climbing into the sky. It's leveled off, and, as if we've crested a mountain, we're slowly beginning to tilt downward in a slow, perilous, straight-down plunge.

From the rearview mirror, still leering, the driver says, "You might want to buckle up, Miss Spencer."

That said, I release my magazine and it falls down, through the partition hole, and lies flattened against the inside of the windshield.

"Another thing is," the driver says, "when we get to our destination, you don't want to touch the cage bars. They're pretty dirty."

The car plummeting, plunging, diving impossibly fast, in ever-accelerating free fall, I quickly and sleepily fasten my seat belt.

XXVII.

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. By their nature, stories told in the second person can suggest prayers. "Hallowed he thy name... the Lord is with thee..." With this in mind, please don't get the idea that I'm praying to you. It's nothing personal, but I'm simply not a satanist. Nor, despite my parents' best efforts, am I a secular humanist. In light of finding myself in the afterlife, neither am I any longer a confident atheist nor agnostic. At the moment, I'm not certain in what I believe. Far be it from me to pledge my faith to any belief system when, at this point, it would seem that I've been wrong about everything I've ever felt was real.

In truth, I'm no longer even certain who I, myself, am.