In The Most Peaceful of Places

“McGraw…” Miles whispered as he ruminated on the meaning of his own surname. “I wonder what that would mean to anyone else if I asked them.”

He leaned back in one of three lawn chairs that he and two of his friends had set up on the roof of his apartment building four years ago. He sat in the third chair from the door—the one all the way at the end separated from the other two chairs by a small ceramic table that, not two summers ago, Thomas had won from a particularly good day of haggling with old department store owners.

Thomas’s seat was the first in the line because, unlike Miles, he was always reliable in a pinch and clever enough to cheat a coin toss without being caught. As for why Miles didn’t get the second seat to the door, it was because his notoriously bad luck favored Layla instead. Not that it had mattered very much to any of them. The seat order didn’t really matter. There was no intrinsic advantage to the positioning for any of the chairs. They were still cheap, still hung low, and the bare aluminum arm rests grew unpleasantly frigid in the cooler seasons. But no matter how terrible the quality, those chairs made memories.

Even something like the order in which they sat gave birth to what would later become their greatest hit yet. Layla, in all her courageously corny wit, deemed them the three musketeers on account of their three chairs. Thomas, naturally, was the first musketeer, with Layla as the second, and Miles the third and last. It was funny to Miles because, character-wise, they didn’t seem to add up. Thomas would’ve been the tragic, brooding leader-type Athos but that was more Layla. Layla was to be Porthos, the vain, boisterous, and physically strong but that was more Thomas. As for Aramis, the romantic, the manipulative, and the refined? Well, perhaps that one fit Miles more than he cared to admit.

So many good times came from that roof. From house parties bursting with energy and alcohol to slow mid-night musings over a blunt rotation beneath the blurry stars that hung above the city’s polluting light. It brought them so much joy and to think that all of it came from the fact that none of them could figure out which seat to take. They couldn’t decide where to sit in the city’s park, or in the public library, or even in the karaoke booths down the road. And, of course, that didn’t change when they finally made up their own spot, opting to let chance speak through the spare change Miles had in his pocket.

The greatest things came from the simplest and goofiest of decisions. Something Miles wished he’d known long before those moments had become memories.

Miles gently released a breath he was letting marinate in his lungs and watched as the smoke curled up into his view. It floated up in swirling tendrils until the night’s wind tore it apart leaving nothing left for him to see but the small, milky white dots everyone called stars.

It was nostalgic. Being up there with a half-smoked blunt resting between his fingers made him feel close to those times. It hurt Miles to think that, at one time, he had made a habit to hang out with two friends and actually enjoyed their company. He assumed it had something to do with them being an inseparable trio since elementary school because he just couldn’t find the same connection with anyone else. And he didn’t have it in him to try. Not because he’d fallen out of touch with those he’d grown close to or because they broke away in some dramatic fashion that left their relationships unsalvageable. It was something rather worse. It was death.

The universe's greatest law had never been something Miles McGraw thought about too much. He, after all, was in the prime of his life at the spry age of twenty-three and knew little about the world. In retrospect, Miles knew his ignorance was the cause of all of his grief. But he tried not to let that bother him too much because he couldn’t control the actions of others. If he’d learned nothing from Layla’s overdose and Thomas’s suicide, he’d learned that.

Miles listened silently to the wind. He loved the mid-spring nights in the city. There was something so still when everyone went to sleep and the incessant droning buzz of the day died out. It allowed him moments to reflect on the past in peace without the disruptive cacophony of car horns that had become a staple for his street. Though, for all of his reflection, he didn’t feel any better about what had happened.

He told this to his foster mother and her response was to pray on it. To give it to God. Miles wasn’t very religious to begin with and, at first, he denied it entirely but as time went on the guilt he’d felt for not doing enough for both of them ate away at him and he caved. He went to church and splayed his heart out open wide for all to see. He gave so much honesty to the parish that he would have overwhelmed even Abraham Lincoln himself. And after all of his efforts, all he got in return for it was a few strange looks and dead silence from that man hanging on the cross.

An ambulance shrieked off in the distance, tearing Miles from his daydream as he felt the serene bliss of imagination bleed from him like a wound. Disappointed, he flicked what was left of his blunt onto the ground and looked over to the ceramic table that neighbored him. On it was a large ashtray half-filled with rolls of ash and five burnt-out butts, a couple of empty beer bottles nestled beside a near empty bottle of rum, and a small glass bottle of pills sitting atop three scratched lottery tickets. He eyed the pills before anything else and snatched them off the table. They were the same way Layla had gone out. Miles only found it fitting since he didn’t have the nerve to stick a gun into his mouth. Thomas always was the more brave of the two, for better or worse.

With what Miles had saved up from odd jobs, the five kids currently at the foster home that he’d grown up in would be able to go to college debt-free. That was the only way university was any kind of useful in the modern era. That’s what Miles came to know. Match that sum with the small amount he won gambling on long odds and his life would’ve meant something to someone, at least. It was all he could do because he was tired and he knew that nothing else in the world would help him more than a belly full of sleeping pills.

So he took them and, in spite of his raging instincts to spit it all back up, he followed it with a swig of rum and reclined. The next thing he knew he was lying there wide awake, struggling to fall asleep so that he could pass peacefully. That is until someone cleared their throat and the simple sound echoed loud enough to cause Miles alarm.

He shot up and opened his eyes toward where he believed the stairs to the rooftop were. To his surprise, there was nothing there. Absolutely nothing but a vast white void with a tanned man wrapped in loose, white garments standing before a vibrant art collection.

Miles pushed off of his reclined lawn chair only to turn and find it wasn’t even there.

“What is this?” Miles asked under his breath. He turned back to the man and projected his voice. “What is this? Am I dead? Is this Hell?”

“No, it is not Hell,” the man said, staring at a specific painting amongst the vast collection that, as Miles approached, he came to notice had stretched on in two opposite directions forever.

Miles appraised the exhibition of paintings and the impossibility of it as he grew closer. “Then what is it?”

“Why did you believe that Hell was to be your first destination?”

“Because I’m pretty sure I killed myself.” Miles’ eyes scanned his surroundings once more before landing on the man. “Who are you?”

“I am no one important to you, Miles,” the man said. “But you are someone very important to me and I’m sorry about Thomas and Layla. When they arrived they were similar to you; they asked a bunch of questions, answered the questions themselves with those beautiful brains of theirs, and made their choices. Even if that choice was to not make a choice, in the end they still made one. As will you.”

“Are you God?” Miles asked.

The man’s neutral expression bent upwards into a warm smile as he made his way over to Miles. “No. Not your God. As per your choice to decline me in your heart.”

“My choice?” Miles laughed. “Is that what you think? I come into the world unwanted, grow up with kids who were destined to be wage-slaves until they drop dead of health disorders, fight addiction at every turn because everyone’s trying to escape that fate even for a second, and you talk to me about choice?

Oh, and, are you telling me that religion would’ve helped? I tried that! All I got was a head full of fictional fairy tales with false promises and empty values that people only believe in because they are scared of death! I tried, I really did, but all I got was silence!” Miles stopped to compose himself. “Wha—? Is that…? Are you being serious? Is that seriously what you think? That I had a choice?”

“I would’ve never made you into the world if you weren’t wanted.” The man stepped away from Miles and sat down on one of the many benches. He shimmied over and offered Miles a seat that the boy firmly declined. “I think that it takes a great amount of courage to believe in something you can’t see, touch, or feel. Especially in a world that doesn’t value integrity or loyalty. Belief, as you pointed out, goes against all instinct or reason. Yet people still believe, isn’t that amazing?” The man swelled his cheeks up and popped his lips. “Faith, that is a real miracle.”

“Okay, what is this?” Miles demanded. “Am I getting a lecture after death, too? As if all of the ones I got in life weren’t enough, now, God—-I assume? Is giving me a personal lesson?”

The man stood up and smirked. “I do enjoy your snark. It’s one of my favorite things about you. It’s quite charming.”

“Listen, if you aren’t going to answer me I’m going to pick a direction and start walking,” Miles said. “What is this? I’m dead, right? You’re God, right? So judge me or send me on my way or something.”

“Oh, come now, there is really no need to waste your wonderful sarcasm in a place like this,” the man said, waiving Miles closer and gesturing to one of the paintings. “I’m curious as to what you think about this piece, I’ve always liked this one.”

Miles made his way over to the painting and studied it. It was a memory, one of his, of a time where he told a joke and for the first time everyone laughed. It was a joke at his own expense but it was worth the personal embarrassment to hear Thomas and Layla laugh that hard.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” The man asked.

Miles stepped back and glanced at the next painting. It, too, was a memory. Not a good one like the one before it. A bad one, very bad. Something he’d rather not remember. So he looked to the next painting and the next and the next until he realized they were all moments from his own life that he lived.

“These are mine, my memories,” Miles muttered as he returned his attention to the first painting and touched his hand to the canvas. A flood of nostalgic emotions ravaged his mind as the laughter and delight he’d felt that day revived in him causing a small chuckle to escape his lips. “Is this what people mean when they say that you see your life flash before your eyes as you die?”

The man chuckled. “I suppose you could call it that. It’s different for everyone.”

Miles turned to the man. “Why?”

“Why paintings?” The man’s eyes shifted between Miles and the artwork. “So I can do this.”

With a great heave, the man pulled the wall to the right causing the entire display to slide like one big film reel. Miles snapped his hand back in alarm as, with a gentle touch from the man, the entire display came to a halt on a painting Miles didn’t recognize.

“Is this one mine?” Miles asked as he admired its beauty. It was a master crafted capturing of a wedding with many unfamiliar happy faces. He eyed the groom half-expecting it to be him but was a bit disappointed to find that it wasn’t him or anyone he recognized.

“It is yours,” the man said. “Or, it is a future moment of yours. I know you can probably feel it just by looking but this was to be your proudest moment. Go ahead, touch the surface.”

Miles did as suggested and, instead of being submerged into the familiar, he was assailed by hundreds of small memories.

At thirty he would publish a book about suicide that would prevent hundreds of deaths. By thirty-five, his foster mother would die of a stroke and he’d take over the house that was under her care. By thirty-nine, he would see those children grow into their own. And through his parentage, by forty-three, those children would go on to effortlessly carve their mark into the world with the exception of one. A boy who would attempt to take his life early on, fail, and try again until he’d nearly succeed if Miles didn’t stop him. That boy, through Miles’s help and connections, would find his purpose and become the sublime man he sees waiting at the altar for a gorgeous woman with heart and soul enough to put Miles’s foster mother to shame. It was too much.

Miles ripped his hand away from the painting. He could barely see beyond a few feet because his eyes were overflowing with tears and as quick as they came, the memories faded leaving strange feelings to linger in their place.

“This is what you were meant to be, Miles,” The man said. “If you had continued the same way you were going, this would be your future.”

“S-So, my life can just be… mapped out like some kind of fucked up display?” Miles’s voice wavered. “What’s the point of saying I have a choice if fate chooses for me?”

“Fate isn’t as simple as everyone believes it to be,” The man said. “It’s fluid and changes with every choice you make; with each thing that requires a choice opening up a different path to walk down. However, every path you stumble upon—-should it lead to your glory or your destruction—-was made by me. Everything was made by me and so all of the billions upon trillions of choices you make, no matter how small, are all triggered by something I once made. So I already know how all of your stories end, Miles. All of your worst failures to your best successes; all of the versions of you that could be Hell bound or Heaven bound. I know them all. But it’s up to you to choose one, Miles. It’s up to you to decide how this story ends.”

Miles wiped away his tears. “You’re talking like I’m not already dead…”

The man stepped close to Miles. “You won’t remember most of this, Miles. But you will feel that something profound happened. What you do with that is up to you.”

Before Miles could ask any questions or protest, the man clapped and a roiling imminent eruption in his stomach viciously rang a warning bell in his brain that snapped him awake. With seconds to act, Miles wiggled himself to the edge of the lawn chair, doubled over, and vomited onto the ground. He continued to puke until nothing came out but a dry heave and wretched some more. After some time, Miles’s teary eyes cleared, giving him a full view of the mess he’d made on his apartment’s roof. Parts of him were relieved, parts were annoyed that he’d failed, and one part in particular wondered what had made him throw up.

The suspicious part of his mind thought it was the weed. He’d had to use a different method to obtain it than normal; it might’ve been laced. His logical mind thought differently and assumed he’d gotten alcohol poisoning despite him grazing his limit. Either way, Miles had to sort it out.

Whether that meant taking the express way to the first floor or sticking it out for just a little bit longer, he didn’t know. One thing he did know, however, was that he thought it a shame to kill himself and leave such a mess behind for someone else to clean up. So he needed a mop and the only mop he knew of was located in the first-floor maintenance closet that he shouldn't've had access to.

“Stairs it is, I guess…” Miles muttered as he stood himself upright.

He then also thought that while he was at it, he’d visit Layla and Thomas’s gravestones; clean them up a bit, too. This time, he didn’t really know why, but he was compelled to leave them each twenty-five cents just in case they were still struggling to make a decision beyond the grave.