The Other Side of Nowhere by JN Chaney Read Free Book Online Page A

two of them. It was an old photograph—about seven years ago—with Gale sitting on a chair and Johnny standing behind her. She was wearing a dark green dress, her long red hair flowing down over her shoulders like a cloud. And her face—
    What the hell? He thought.  What’s wrong with her face?
    It was smudged, distorted, faded. He threw the picture into the sofa—it bounced and shattered onto the ground—and he quickly found another. 
    This one had been taken only a year ago, but his wife’s face was exactly the same as the last. Frantically, he looked through them all, tossing them back until at last there were no others left.  This couldn’t be right. Why were all the pictures smudged? Someone must have done this , he thought.
    He sat again on the sofa, rubbing his forehead so hard it burned.
    He looked at the television again. The headline had changed again. This time, when he looked at the words on the muted screen, his eyes widened, and a sudden rush of disbelief rolled over his entire body. The headline read: Gale Abram Dies of Cancer. She was thirty-four.
    He didn’t move. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t do anything at all. He just sat there, staring at the words. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. Gale was here somewhere, and any minute she’d walk through the front door, back from the market or the church, complaining about how bad the traffic was and wondering all the time what Johnny was up too. And the second she got there, they would hug and kiss and laugh and cry. And she would smile that smile of hers, that wonderful and beautiful smi—
    That smile, he thought, and tried to remember it. It was right on the edge of his mind, but he couldn’t bring it back. It was gone, lost somehow, like he misplaced it.
    Oh God! he thought. I can’t remember anymore!
    He continued to watch the news broadcast in hopes of seeing her face, but they never showed it.  They went through interviews with her friends and some doctors, and finally concluded with a glimpse of her funeral. A lot of people were there, including her parents, friends, sister, extended family, and even some people Johnny didn’t recognize. 
    The tears began to gush uncontrollably, unstoppably, and for the first time since he could remember, Johnny wept for his dead wife—wept so hard his cheeks began to hurt, so red with grief that he felt the warmth of the blood like a fire below his skin—wept and screamed and raged and breathed and loved—wept until he cried out with everlasting joy, of acceptance, of understanding, of something so entirely new to him that it shook his mind in a such a way that only those who have transcended can truly understand—he wept, determined and resolved, his mind transfixed and certain—he wept, and wept, and wept, until, at last—
    Johnny Abram moved again.
                 
    The Door
    It was quiet along the road of the great Void.  For an eternity, there had been silence there—there had been peace.  Its peculiar majesty had not been seen or felt by mortal men since the days of the last Buddha, but time, like so many other things, is irrelevant. The Door will wait forever for the chosen few for as long as men draw life from beyond its arch.
    There was a rustle of sound, soft and feeble—a movement of a sort, and at first it appeared to be nothing at all, but the all-seeing Void knew better, for the strange visitor from the Other Side had stirred.
    Johnny Abram moved.  It started out small—his right appendix finger curved once with every ounce of force that he could muster, bending like a steel bar—but soon he managed to move a second finger, and another, until finally it was a hand, a foot, an arm, a leg, a neck, a waste, and then, at last, Johnny took a step.
    Back again, he moved before the Door. His heart raced with what he had just seen—the dream, vivid with the thought of his dead wife, echoed in his mind like the sound of thunder in an empty room. He had accepted it at