Afflatus

In a dimly lit warehouse on the outskirts of town, Carl sat in a bored stupor tending a metal stamping machine. The greasy behemoth shrieked with each press of a button, puncturing the virgin steel he dutifully fed it. As usual, his mind wandered to quieter places, escaping the harsh cacophony of the machine shop. So engrossing was his reverie that he barely reacted when he saw his finger roll away from his hand. An incident report would later state that Carl had activated the stamping press just before his hand cleared the safety guard, slicing his digit clean off. It didn’t hurt, at first. Just a sharp pressure. Then, a burst of red. Calmly, he wrapped the bleeding stump with a handkerchief and went on his hands and knees to retrieve his finger from the grease-blackened floor. As he did so, his vision narrowed, and the machines around him tilted as he collapsed onto the cold concrete. Co-workers rushed to his aid, turning him over and putting pressure on his wound. When asked about it later, they would note that he looked oddly happy as he lay there, life draining from his eyes.

Despite doctors’ orders, Carl returned to work the very next day. If asked why, he would shrug and say he was unsure of what to do with himself at home, and that the painkillers were working wonders. Besides, they were short of help and couldn’t afford to have him miss work. Although both things were true, his real motivation was to return to the scene where it happened. As Carl lay bleeding out on that warehouse floor the previous day, a story had revealed itself to him. He had never been the literary type and was unfamiliar with the creative spark that gripped him in that moment. He could remember how it felt. Like everything made sense. The ineffable made simple. The comprehension had filled him with comfort unlike anything he’d felt before. But now, trying to focus on the story itself felt like grasping at smoke. Carl sat at his machine and ruminated. It’ll come back, he thought, it has too.

That night, Carl sat at his kitchen table, a stack of unpaid bills next to his stiff drink. He stared at an empty sheet of paper, pen in his good hand, trying to pull the memory from its murky depths. An hour and three drinks later he scrunched up the failed attempt, flinging it into the trash with a frustrated growl. “You alright Carl?” His wife’s voice called from the living room. He ignored her and poured another drink. There’s gotta be others, he thought. He checked a few pockets before finding his phone and began searching online forums. There were plenty of stories of near-death experiences. Yet they all seemed so personal. The universe didn’t open itself up to him, as some people described it. He had opened it.

A week later, at a follow-up appointment, Carl discussed the memory issues with his doctor. The man seemed unfazed, calmly explaining how cortisol and adrenaline had likely flooded Carl’s brain, as a shock response protecting his future self from memories of the gruesome incident. He suggested Carl try some psychotherapy to help tease out the memories.

In the weeks and months after, Carl tried everything. Therapy, hypnotism, sensory deprivation tanks, psychedelics, prayer. With each failed attempt, his resentment deepened. How could God do this to him? Why tease him with a glimpse and then take it away? Or was this even God’s doing? He remembered how inadequate his religious beliefs had felt in the presence of the story. Whatever was responsible, Carl felt cheated. His anger festered into an ugly, hideous thing, directed at those closest to him. When he launched the family’s laptop through the upstairs window, his wife left with the children.

Carl fantasized about hurting himself intentionally, to get back to that state. Maybe that’s what God wanted him to do, he would think. To sacrifice something more. He experimented with escalating injuries. A deep gash, then slicing a tip off his ring finger. He even staged another accident at work to lop off the other pinky finger. When those didn’t work, he became desperate. The shop finally fired him when he was caught sticking his left foot under a cutting wheel. He figured he could do without a foot, with the state of prosthetic technology.

Jobless, directionless, Carl floated from bar to bar. Eventually his church barred him from attending, after forsaking its teachings in a drunken tirade on Easter Sunday services. On the day his accounts finally ran dry, he was six whiskies deep at a saloon in a forgotten part of town, one of the few that would still serve him. He slurred through his description of the story he lost, to anyone who came close enough to hear. The bartender’s patience wore out, and when Carl’s card was declined, he was not so gently escorted out of the establishment. Cocking his head upwards while stumbling across the parking lot, he howled into the clear, starry sky.

Drunk and groggy, Carl was seeing ghosts while driving the winding roads out of town. Coming around a corner, he swerved to avoid a phantom car. The world tumbled around him, then he flew over the ground. Skin and glass skidded across the pavement. He lay on the cold asphalt, looking up at the inky black expanse. He couldn’t move. Warm blood pooled around his head. Just as it had before, the story played out in front of him. The beauty of it all revealed to him once again. Utter and still and meaningful darkness. Then Bang! Light and energy. So much life, so tragically far distances, but somehow traversed. Then clarity and purpose. Carl knew he could summarize it all with just a few powerful sentences. Then the story repeated, but different in configurations. Endless cycles. Then darkness.

Tears welled in his eyes. With a final rattling breath, Carl’s body gave out, and the greatest story of all died with him.