“… For if God did not spare angels when

they sinned, but cast them into hell and

committed them to  chains  of gloomy

darkness to be kept until the judgment;”

Peter 2:4

A SHOCK

Hot News, 2:00 P.M.

Early 1960s on Staten Island, New York

Graniteville Gazette

AUTHOR ATTACKED BY A DEMON FROM

THE FREEZING DARKNESS OF HELL

Oddities in the life of one Cephas Adams

HE is standing near the main gate at the Baron Hirsch cemetery when out of the gray gloom a funeral procession emerges. An antiquated, dull black, giant Cadillac hearse and a couple of sedans creeping behind it. As if driving to their own funeral. The monster hearse’s trimmings appear Victorian pompous, though everything is tarnished, including the windows’ frazzled silver edged drapes.

Just as the Cadillac gets into the gate, and halts, its rear door violently swings open and a shiny black, marble-like, bronze affixtured sarcophagus slides out and drops on the cement road.

“THUNK!”

“THUNK!”

He hears the two loud, teeth-chattering bangs as the heavy death-box lands on the hard pavement, first the front then the rear. And a moment later, a skinny, corpse-pale hand in a freely pink sleeve thrusts the coffin’s lid open and the deceased head appears. Only it’s two heads instead of one, first Merylin Monroe’s, with her sexy rictus still on, and then the depressing Walter Cronkite’s with his facial special for that ‘It’s the end of the World, folks! So much for tonight. And that's the way it is.’

And, of all the petrifying things—that same Merylin’s corpse-pale hand, in a freely pink sleeve, is now beckoning to him—inviting him over. As if she is saying:

 “Come-on, Cephas, try my new lodgings, Hon. You’ll love’m.”

As if every newly departed should try her windowless, post mortem accommodations. With Walter, her new friendly agent-decorator helping with personal colors and materials. As if she is still that wanton seductress on the move and old Walter is now doubling as her promoter. He can even see the blood rivulets trickling down Cronkite’s chin and the spectacle makes him sick with revulsion and shocks him.

‘I’m dead? I must be because she is dead and talking to me.’

The frightening question and the indisputable reminder run through his mind and he feels already cold, his blood beginning to freeze in his veins.

For a prolonged moment of fright, he just stands dumbfounded, horror-struck at the gate pillars when the staccato gun fire from one of the two sedans hits him.

Almost simultaneously, he hears Merylin’s yell notifying him of his demise.

“You’re with us, Cephas!”

Stunned, horrified, with the painful sting in his chest, he snaps out of the nightmarish dream and bolts out of bed, then realizes the whole thing was no more than a foolish nightmare. A dream charade.