@ ALIENATED HEAVEN

# By Andrew Campbell in 1990 (yeah, 4 - count em' - years ago!)



 Under Steve's shaking hands, the steering wheel shuddered. The car 
skidded from side to side on the crisp, icy road, it's headlights 
beaming left to right, searching the blackness wildly. Snowflakes
pattered on the windscreen, clustering around the wipers, crystalizing
the road ahead.
 He'd been fired.
 Now, driving through the road, away from his place of work, never to 
return, he felt alienated, discarded away from the world. The weather 
was fighting, intent on washing him off the road.
# The world stopped: a child appeared in front of his speeding car.
 Hardly able to breath, he thundered his foot down on the brake. 
 The young kid, a mere black shape in the windscreen, hit the hood
with a dull smack. Even as the car grinded to a halt, it's engine
cutting out, Steve's foot still pressed desperately to the pedal as
though pleading for another attempt to stop in time.
 He frantically unfastened his seat belt and flung the car door open.
Wind howled around his uncovered face, the snow whipped at his skin and
the frosty road crumpled beneath his feet.
# The child lay face down in below the front of the car.
 It was a little girl, her wintery clothing battered with fragments of
snow. Her head was resting in a pool of dark blood. The liquid was
beginning to trickle away and turn a pinkish hue.
 Steve's icy hands slid around the girl's body, across her thick 
winter coat and down a limp, lifeless arm. Already, his face had become
a red plate of sorrow. Tears glistened like icicles in the corners of
his eyes.
 Carefully, although emptied of all hope, Steve placed his ear to the
girl's lips. She was not taking in oxygen. He tried pumping his own
breath into her mouth in an attempt to fill her tiny lungs. After each
painful, unsuccessful attempt, he cried out for help. Each time, until
the very last, he bellowed out into the white fog and beating wind:
# "Help melee! Somebody heeeelp meeeee!"
 Eventually, he gave up.
 The girl was dead and HE had killed her.
 As he cried over the fragile, bleeding body, a heavily wrapped figure
plodded towards him through the snow.
 Steve, devoid of all his energy and reduced to a quivering, disordered
man, looked wearily up at the newcomer, his vision fused by hot tears.
 The child's mother looked down at him, unable to speak. She saw her 
own little girl laid there, a frozen face staring lifelessly into the
white cloud-filled sky - a face belonging to her own family, now 
emptied of life.
 It was plain to see that the man who was knelt beside the child was
the man who had run her down.
# The girl's mother fell to her knees in the snow and wept.


                               - () - 


 Two days later, sat in his own quiet home, unspeaking, unhearing the 
world around, Steven Sparks stared out over the snow-covered 
landscape.
 The whole house was silent.
 Nothing stirred. And now, after almost a day of snow-storms and hail,
the weather was silent too. It all seemed to have calmed down ready 
for him to grieve for the life he had taken.
 Over the time that maybe God had allocated, he had summed up his life
carefully, coming to the upmost agreement that he was a loser; a
complete failure, without anyone, anything or any prospects worth
living for.
 On top of the fireplace, waiting to be emptied were ten large 
syringes. Each one held a full portion of liquid, clear and colourless.
 They were all filled with uthesate.
 The needles - if inserted correctly - would drowse the patient into a
deep sleep, almost instantaneously. And a patient never woke from the 
sleep it gave to them. They used the chemical at vetinary surgeries for
taking the lives of injured or abandoned animals, quickly and
painlessly. To take the life of a human though, the liquid had to be
greatly strengthened and increased in volume.

 A few hours into the afternoon, when the world seemed to have
collapsed completely, Steve scooped up all ten of the needles and
rattled them together in his right palm. He sat down in his comfy chair
and placed each of them down side by side on a coffee table beside 
him.
# He realised he was going to die.
 He was going to leave the world to move on to the next. Maybe he would
go to hell for what he'd done, maybe he'd be forgiven... whatever God
thought of him, he was all in favour of it, because right now, he was
IN hell.
 This whole place was hell. Without a mother or father, with no
relatives, no job (therefore no source of income) and no wife,
girlfriend or even boy friends, the only thing he could see was
suicide.
 If anything is going to change, please make it happen now, he thought.
If someone is going to help me, or someone is thinking of coming to my
assistance, then PLEASE make them come now.
 He was thinking so hard and rapidly that the house seemed alive with 
voices for a few seconds. When he came around, all he could hear was 
his own heart-beat and his own vigorous gasps for air.
# No one was going to come.
# No one wanted to know about Steven Sparks.
 Hand trembling, he picked up the first of the needles and pointed the
end into his left wrist, just below the elbow. Building up the right
amount of confidence to inject himself, even with all the guilt he 
felt, was not at all easy.

 It took him ten minutes to place the needle into his flesh. A further
ten minutes passed before he decided his life was to end.
 Once the syringe was empty, Steve immediately grabbed another one and 
didn't stop. He jabbed himself again, desperate to get the liquid 
inside himself, eager to get it all done so he could relax and die; to
take note of what it actually felt like to leave his body and go to
another world, another time, maybe into infinite oblivion. 
 A third needle penetrated his skin.
 On the fourth injection, Steve felt butterflies in his stomach. They 
were not just fluttering around in there, they were chewing on his 
guts. He felt sick with fright, curiosity and sheer wonder.
 He had injected the fifth measurement when he lost vision and began 
to fade. His feelings weakened and he dropped the sixth half empty 
needle to the floor, holding his head.
 A few seconds passed in which he wondered why he had done such a thing
to himself. He simply couldn't understand why he was dying, and he felt
the desperate need to stay alive. 
 But the drug was now in operation, taking him into the deep sleep from
which no one ever wakes. He was an abandoned pet, an animal with no
choice but to be terminated.
 Now he knew what they felt before death. Now he knew how frightening 
it was to actually know you were going to die.
 In ten seconds he was dreaming about his workmates. His ONLY friends,
the ones that had helped him to overcome shyness, to be a part of a
team, taught him to be confident.
 He saw a girls face, a pretty girl with whom he had worked. She had
been so kind, gentle, loving, he almost wished he'd said a last
goodbye to her. What was her name now? Nicole. That was it, Nicole
something, she had been a French girl, living with her family in
England... 
 ...another face drifted past him, a dead, white face. A little girl,
looking up into a sky as white and as lifeless as her own skin. She
suddenly blinked, then stared at him, smiling. The back of her head 
was sticky with blood. 
 "Steven..." She whispered. "Steven Sparks killed me..."
 Steven shook his head, trying to tell her that he had never meant to 
kill her, never meant to run her down that cursed day. But his words
would not sound. 
 The girl's face twisted into a skull, her soft skin shrivelled up 
horrifically, her eyes bulged out of their sockets, her lips became 
rippled, white maggots. She shouted to him : "BURN IN HELL!" Then the
terrible image vanished and there was nothing.
# Just oblivion.

                               - )( - 

 Steven Sparks sat up in the hospital bed and watched as Nicole walked
into the room. She closed the door, blocking out the noise of the 
busy hospital and sat beside his bed, a hand out for him to take.
 "Steve..." She whispered. "Why did you do it?"
 "Because I'm alone." he said.
 She shook her head. "No you're not."
 "I am!" He snapped and started to breath rapidly. "I want to die!"
 Tears glistened in his eyes.
 Nicole squeezed his hand, "Listen, I care about you-"
 "So what?" He shouted, "My whole life is a complete disaster."
 "No," Nicole wailed, losing confidence. The man's will to live seemed
to have been driven from him.
 "How come I lived?" He asked her. "How come?"
 "Don't know." She whispered, "Just calm down. Everything will be-"
 "Fine?" He raised his eyebrows, staring at her. "Oh sure, yeah."
 "It will."
 "It won't for Christs sake! I killed a six year old girl, I lost my 
job, I lost my family-"
 Nicole's eyes filled with tears. "What are you talking about?"
 "You know." he shouted.
# How could she ask him such a question?
 "Lost your job? Killed...? When?" Nicole whimpered.
 He looked at her dumbly. "Don't act like you don't know. You can't 
pretend it didn't happen you silly bitch-"
 "STEVEN WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!" Nicole screamed.
 His eyes met hers with a sudden sharpness. "Two days ago... my job."
 "You've have NOT lost your job you stupid man!" She shouted, "You OWN
the company, how could you possibly lose the job?"
 "What...?" he breathed.
 "Your job, what-what are you talking about?"
 "But... I was fired-"
# "WHAT?"
 "But, the girl-"
 A loud knock at the door interrupted them. 
 "Come in." Nicole sobbed, wiping her eyes.
 The door opened and the girl Steve had killed ran in to the room, her 
mother, young, attractive, and filled with happiness stepped after 
her, holding a box of chocolates and a few books.
 Steve was froze with shock.
 The girl jumped up onto his bed and gave him a hug.
# She felt so warm and alive.
 "What's happened to me?" he whispered, staring at Nicole through the 
golden web of the little girl's hair.
 Her mother handed him a box of chocolates.
 "Here," the mother handed him a box of chocolates. "Just something 
for saving my daughter's life." she said quietly. "It's all we can
afford right now Steve, but I hope they'll help you get better."
 A hot tear sped down his cheek.
 "I killed your daughter..." he whispered.
 The mother frowned and shook her head. "I'm sorry? I didn't catch 
that, love. Are you alright? Shall I get a nurse?"
 "Your daughter... she's alive." Steve said.
 "Well, yes, thanks to you. You saved her Steve. Don't you remember?"
 He shook his head, "This isn't happening."
 Both Nicole, the young girl and her mother looked at him, concerned 
and confused. 
 He pulled the little girl from his chest and looked at her. She 
blinked at him and smiled unsurely.
 "My God... am I in heaven?" he whispered.