A DAY AND A HALF before their expiry date (and quite a few after their display until date), Fred and Doug Ham were about to become disillusioned. The spirit which had kept them a-cheer since their wild frat days at Pi Gsarse flickered more and more weakly like a candle just about to snuff it. Fred was the more hopeful of the two of them and kept assuring Doug that their day would come. “It’s our purpose, after all”, he kept saying. Doug, who took pride in being a word-weary cynic, just told Fred that he had been streaked by shit, and he had always been closer to Pi Gsarse’s balloon knot.
On some days, Fred and Doug Ham got into quite a row. Fred accused Doug of being a faithless downer, and Doug accused Fred of being a gullible twat. Doug was into conspiracy theories big time. “I tell you”, he kept saying to Fred who would shake in denial, “they’re just trying to keep us quiet. It’s all about keeping up the status quo!”
But a day and a half before their expiry date, even Fred’s enthusiasm had begun to wane. Doug, for a change, stayed quiet. Even though he felt smug about being right, he would feel like an arse if he rubbed it in with Fred. The ham was whistling on his last hole. And after all, they were brothers, and even though he would have never publicly admitted it, Doug loved his brother.
The silence in their box was thick and oppressive.
Finally, just to interrupt it, Doug waved his side rind and inspected it critically, sure that there was an unhealthy greenish shimmer and a slimy residue betraying the signs of aging. “Man”, he said, “I am starting to smell. What does a ham have to do to get eaten around here?”
Fred just sighed inaudibly; by now his morale had sunk so much, he felt like anything he said would have sounded unconvincing even to him. Instead, the reply came from Gerold, the bottom slice of the pack, who had the least hope of ever seeing his day, but took a surprisingly calm slacker attitude about it.
“Yo man”, he said. “Relax man. Enjoy the ride while you can. All that purpose schmurpose baloney just gets your hopes up, man. The truth is, we’re all just gonna rot in the end, you know. So kick back and chill, dude!”
Hearing this was more than Fred could take. He burst into tears. Doug patted him comforting and turned to snap at Gerold: “A little more tact, man? What the hell was that about?”
Gerold scrunged defensively. “Hey man,” he said, “I’m just tryin to stay real, man, you know I’m sayin? I mean, a frickin student bought us. What the hell do ya expect?”
“A) To not rub our face in it”, growled Doug. “And B) we all know students eat rubbish. Expiry dates mean nothing to them.”
“One just can’t live without hope!”, sobbed Fred.
Gerold shrugged with a sour expression. “Whatever floats your boat, man.” And with that, he retreated into the furthest corner of the box.
Doug was seething, but saw no point in pursuing this argument further. He was determined to ignore Gerold in the future – however much that may be – and only silence him with snide remarks when he went completely overboard. Snide remarks were Doug’s trade mark. All boxizens feared them.
“There there”, he said, continuing to pat Fred’s backside, which shook in silent sobs. “Gerold has a point, you know. That fella is probably gonna eat us even when we smell.”
An idea popped up in his mind, and he added enthusiastically: “Hey, maybe you even get fried. Dude, how awesome would that be?”
Fred smiled through his tears. Getting fried was truly the privilege of hamhood, and as Doug assured him, he was the perfect candidate for it. “You’re just pan material, Fred!”
“And the fun thing is, if he eats us too late, we’re gonna fuck up his stomach real good. That’ll teach him!”
Fred sniffed and giggled. Doug smiled to himself and put his rind around his brother. All was well again, and he shot Gerold a last warning glance to make sure that fellow wouldn’t ruin things again because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
***
Fred finally got lucky the following night. A cracking sound tore them all out of their sleep, and a blast of light blinded their drowsily blinking eyes. Doug realised that the lid of their box had been lifted, and before he knew it, his brother Fred ascended heavenwards toward the giant figure towering in front of them.
The boxizens broke out in jubilation. They cheered Fred, who rose higher and higher, and cried ecstatically: “This is it, friends! I’m meeting my destiny!” He smiled down at them benevolently, like a saint during the rapture, until he set eyes on Gerold. His smile turned into a wicked smirk.
“Oh, and Gerold? IN YOUR FACE MAN! IN YOUR FACE!”
Doug’s heart swelled with pride of his brother at those words. He waved at him until he lost sight and their box was thrown into darkness again. While the excited mutterings of his box fellows soon died down and eased into calm breathing, Doug couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. The box suddenly felt very lonely, but the pride at his brother’s magnificient exit kept him a-cheer. “What a way to go, man”, he whispered to himself. “I’ll see you on the other side.”
***
Fred had been gone for a while when finally, it also became Doug’s turn. Gerold by now had gone so foul that not even a student would have eaten him anymore. Served him right, thought Doug briefly when he rose up toward where his brother had gone. He couldn’t wait to see his Fred again in the heavenly bliss that had always been promised to them from the beginning, and that Fred had never stopped believing in.
“What a good lad”, Doug thought tenderly. Then things grew dark around him.
***
It had been a hell of a ride. Chomping and squeezing, and then suddenly a big drop. When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Doug found himself alone. All he could hear was the sound of the rhythmic churning that had accompanied his bumpy journey and an occasional gurgle. Gases rose in splattery geysirs, and he realised he stood knee-deep (had he had knees) in a foul-smelling broth that felt like it burnt him. Lumps seemed to float all around him, deformed and unrecognisable as to what they were or used to be, smelling even worse than the primeval soup surrounding them. The impression Doug got was that of a hellish kitchen, somehow alive but left to its own devices, as if the devils that ran it had taken off in a rush.
Suddenly, there was a whimper behind him.
Doug spun around. He suddenly felt uneasy. More so. He felt an unspeakable dread rising, something he couldn’t quite grasp, but too strong for him to ignore.
“Hello?” he whispered into the dark. His voice was scratchy and unsure.
The whimper came again, this time louder.
Then, to his horror, something rose to the surface at his knees (had he had some), something that, for a second, could have been something familiar to him, but the dark and the fact that it was distorted by bubbles rising from it before it almost immediately sank again left him unsure about what he had actually seen.
“Is someone here?!”, he almost shouted, and he found himself shocked at the terror in his voice. Where the hell was he?
And to his horror, ahead of him a figure grew out of the dingy fog, first like a vague shadow, but increasingly gaining solidity as it moved towards him. Doug’s fibres froze. His juices trickled to his bottom half and he felt himself go weak. (In the knees. If he had any.)
“Who are you?”, he managed to whisper.
It was Fred.
But the Fred he saw now was only a shadow of the Fred he had known in the box.
The Fred he saw now was discoloured to a horrid blotchy grey-greenish shade, and what once was a shiny pink juicy surface was now shredded and torn. Some bits had been chewed off completely, and were probably somewhere floating in the murky brew they were both standing in. He didn’t know whether it was the horrible looks of what used to be his brother, or the stench that surrounded them – probably both – Doug suddenly felt sick.
“Fred...?” he asked, hesitatingly.
“Hey Doug!”, Fred said, trying hard to sound casual. But the dull way he looked back at Doug, the way he could not hold his glance, betrayed how he really felt.
He looked like someone who had just been proven wrong in the most humiliating way and hoped that his opponent would not rub his face in it. Would gracefully overlook the subject.
Worse. He looked like someone who had lost all hope.
For a second, a crazy notion in Doug made him want to reply: So how is life in the afterlife, but he managed just barely to bite his tongue. It would have been even worse.
Instead, he just said: “Good to see you.” It was the moment for a brotherly hug, but Doug felt that if he had to touch his brother he would have to scream. It would make things real.
“How are you keeping?”
Fred laughed a quiet, sarcastic laugh and looked down on himself. “Not at all, I guess. My life is literally falling apart.”
Doug didn’t know what to say. Fred looked at him, still huffing out an ill laughter, then suddenly broke out in tears. Brushing all repulsion aside, Doug waded over to the sobbing crumpled mess that was his brother and held him.
“What the hell has happened to me?” Fred cried. “What is all this? Where is the heaven they promised us? Where is our purpose? I mean, this can’t be it, right? Right??”
He sniffed, and then said, with a glimmer of gritted-teeth optimism that reflected his survival instinct more than his frame of mind: “Maybe it’s still to come? What do you reckon, Doug? Maybe we’re still not there...”
Doug had no idea. And he had no comfort. Any cliche he could say would be an obvious lie.
And so he didn’t speak at all.
***
It wasn’t long until the end. Doug comforted Fred even at the point when they were both not recognisable anymore, when the acid brew had eaten away their features and all hope for a change for the better had abandoned them. What was there to hope for? And when one day Doug’s remains found that his brother had gone, the last of his fibres were torn in grief, grief that did not last because death would finish it off before long.
Finally, also Doug disintegrated, dissolved into molecules, and these molecules twirled and danced through ruby tunnels, a dance of joy and life, and it was then that he not just found his brother, but figured that Fred had been right after all.
(c) Patty Dohle 2006
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