From Jester To King XXVI

-I was flying about, I was hovering kind of floating in what seemed to be a banqueting room and she was controlling me.

-Blimey!

-Do you want to hear this or not?

-I believe you. I’m demonstrating my interest.

-One minute you’re alive the next you’re dead and you hardly even know it. I realised oh my god I’m dead because I was flying. People don’t fly, people cannot just fly. I remember it dawning on me that if I can be flying now I cannot be alive. And I can remember the moment I died, it’s so weird, but I can’t really make any sense of it for you. One second I’m alive and then everything went black and then I’m there in this room flying. It was as sudden as that but also seamless as if the whole process has taken place endless times as if it’s always and eternally happening. I was flying over the surface of the ballroom and gravity wasn’t pulling me down. If anything the woman kept making me go higher, I kept ballooning up like an out of control airplane that was the scary bit, I kept being buffeted that’s the word, she kept making me go higher and obviously the higher I was the further I had to fall. And I think she knew I didn’t want to go higher every time and that pissed me off because she knew I was scared and kept doing it anyway.

-What woman?

-Good question. I don’t understand where she came from or who she was because she didn’t have a body. She is possibly the first spirit I think I’ve met. Maybe she’s the spirit of the dead. She must be a spirit because she was there just as much as you’re here now now except she had no physical form. I knew she was there, I could feel her she was everywhere in the room, in every single tiny part of it. It was like she was blowing me about this room with some unknown wider objective of her own. It was terrifying how every second I thought I wouldn’t and couldn’t go up any further, this extra power came under me and pushed me up up and up. It was terrifying the lack of control.

-But you were dead were you not?

-Even when you’re dead it’s scary. What’s weird is that I actually remembered being dead. You’re not supposed to remember.

-Is that so?

-Are you being sarcastic? Have you been being facetious all along? I can never tell with you.

-Not at all.

-Well what’s this stilted is that so language for?

-Can I not just be a little playful?

-Anyway. I remembered it clearly so I can tell you. The whole point of passing through is to stop you telling anyone.

-Telling them what?

-What it’s like. The point of dying is to stop you telling anyone else what it’s like being dead. No one alive is meant to know. We’re not meant to know, that’s obvious, there must have been a glitch in the matrix as they say. Perhaps I’m supposed to tell you, maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe something must have gone wrong with me and I came back just to tell you.

-Well I feel unduly privileged. And now I know what it’s like. You feel like you’re flying in a banqueting room.

-Don’t be fatuous, that’s just the preliminary bit anyway. I suppose you go further afterwards. Probably into the house beyond.

-The houses of the holy.

-The flying room had this wood panelling and the old criss-cross parquet flooring that I used to have at my primary school. You used to get it in church halls and it stank of sour and wood and musk somehow stinking more potently than anything has ever stunk before. The wood panelling reminded me of these hotels that used to be castles or country houses that they’ve now converted for weekend wedding usage with a few conferences thrown in for good measure. It had this high ceiling. Quite pretty really. Not a bad place to be dead all things considered. There was something a bit Oxbridge about it, a bit churchy. Or even like the main hall at Harrow or Eton not that I’d ever know what they’re like.

-Now I’m afraid it’s all gone a bit Harry Potter.

-Never read them I’m afraid.

-They fly about in old school halls on broomsticks.

-Can I just try and clearly convey this flying thing. It wasn’t flying as in with the body horizontal arms-stretched-out ahead-like-superman type flying. This was the sort where you’re being blown up in the air by one of those enormous air blowers that allow you to experience momentary weightlessness. It was like being blown by an enormously powerful one so that you went much higher than you expected. I got that horrible sinking feeling in my stomach more than a couple of times. Constantly being buffeted. I just wanted to make clear also that my body wasn’t horizontal but more like at a thirty degree angle to the side wall so more vertical if anything. Does that make sense?

-I see it perfectly. You’ve described it perfectly.

-I thought clairvoyants are supposed to know about these things anyway.

-I’m a psychic not a clairvoyant and who says I don’t?

-You don’t appear to. Jussayin.

-Just listening to you, old friend. Lending a friendly ear.

-I think I’m going to have to take over your clients, what’s left of them anyway.

-Quite possibly, a trial period with free training to boot.

-You’ll see.