The Chains We Forge
Some loves are too strong to let go of…
Translucent hands, iron chains.
looked around the room I’d spent so much time in during life. It looked familiar, yet wrong — like Dave Grohl without a beard. The tight metal cuffs pulled me down, and I saw that dozens of chains spoked outwards from me in every direction.
Oh Jesus, I thought. Is God the old guy from the Saw movies?
I followed one at random, link by link. If I still had lungs, I would’ve been out of breath with the effort. So tired I wanted to lay down and die.
“Irony,” I said out loud.
My lifeless fingers reached the end at last and I learned that the chain bound me to the TV lining the far wall. I thought about the uncountable hours I’d spent watching the dancing lights which crossed its loveless face, and yawned.
Glued to the TV. That’s what my parents and ex-girlfriends had all said. Now I was stuck to the fucker all right. Ha-ha.
“Oh, wow!” I yelled. “A metaphor!” I shook my head — God was obviously into Dickens as well as torture porn.
The final link was welded to the center of the TV’s blind eye. I yanked it, and wondered if I was missing a Big Bang Theory rerun. The hook couldn’t be moved, but the chain jiggled a little in its grip.
I licked my insubstantial lips and focused on unhooking it, coaxing the metal to bend a fraction at a time until the chain fell to the floor at last.
I felt a little lighter. Probably all the sweat.
The door to the room opened by itself. Warm light spilled inwards and I could make out other figures outside in the golden hallway, walking in the same direction. Every one of them wore a goofy smile and glazed eyes, like Scientologists heading to meet Tom Cruise.
I studied the rest of my chains, how they joined me to all the things my life had been ruled by — my smartphone, the sofa, the fridge, the discreetly placed sports sock behind the sofa cushion, my collection of sticky magazines, that joke dildo on the bookshelf that was totally not a joke — and I had an epiphany.
I dragged my spirit towards the door, and watched the other souls who had freed themselves of the chains they’d forged in life heading towards the next stage.
“Good luck,” I told them. “I hope Tom’s everything you hoped for.” Then I slammed the door shut as best I could with my bound hands and headed back into the middle of the room.
There were so many chains. It’d take a long time to get out of them all, and even longer to get the cuffs off. If I could be bothered.
Well, it looked like I had time. That, and Tyler Durden as a landlord.
I thought about freeing myself from all of the things I’d owned (but which now owned me, wink-wink) then collapsed onto the sofa, letting out a dead man’s fart and switching on the TV.
“Ah,” I said when I discovered I’d missed Big Bang Theory. “This is Heaven after all.”
I lay back with my cuffed hands sitting awkwardly on my chest and considered ordering a pizza. You can’t have an afterlife without pizza for Christ’s sake (or TV, or dildoes, in my humble opinion).
I was watching some medical program. A man in intensive care lay with his eyes closed, letting the machine breathe for him.
I changed the channel, but the same thing was on every station.
The penny dropped.
My chains writhed as I sat up to study the image. It was me. Duh.
So, I wasn’t dead. Not fully. But, loosening all the chains looked like a lot of work and, since there was nothing good on TV (well, not until the nurse came in to change my bedpan) I got up and shuffled towards the screen.
I bent down with great effort, picked up the chain and hung it back onto the hook in the center of the screen.
I’d always wanted to try this, ever since Videodrome.
Touching the screen with the tip of a finger, I fell into a white so bright it almost erased me.
Something was in my throat. I grabbed at it with both hands, but there was no strength in them, felt like they were lifting heavy weights. Luckily, the nurse burst into the room right then and did it for me.
She shone a light in my eye and asked me some boring questions before she congratulated me on pulling through.
“You must have a strong will to live,” she said. “A deep connection to someone special who brought you back.”
I nodded and asked if she could hand me the remote to the TV in the corner.
She passed it to me with a look on her face as though I’d just confessed I was her biological father, then scuttled off to inform the nearest doctor I was awake.
Alone at last, I switched on the TV.
It didn’t matter what was on; anything would do.
A former columnist for Cracked, Matt Cowan’s genre fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction and The Arcanist. He has won first prize in the New Deal Writing Competition and been shortlisted for the TSS Flash Fiction 400. On Medium, his work has been published by Lit Up, P.S. I Love You, The Weekly Knob, The Hit Job and The Writing Cooperative.
