by Russell Fee
The night sky was aflame with burning bodies. Overhead, thousands of celestial cremations were taking place.
According to the readout on the screen of the tracker given to me by the funeral home, the capsule cradling my grandfather was reentering the atmosphere where, within seconds, it would ignite and plunge through the firmament as a lighted torch, exploding above me in a conflagration of fire and blazing metal, my grandfather’s ashes becoming one with the heavens. With the aid of the tracker, I would know the point in the sky and the exact moment of his incineration.
The development of cheap solid propellants and light disposable rockets the size of coffins revolutionized the funeral industry overnight. The growing clamber to launch deceased loved ones to the outer edge of the thermosphere became a stampede.
The industry’s pitch was, “Heaven bound? Have the sendoff of a Viking prince with an audience of millions. You deserve nothing less.” In keeping with the theme, the capsules were christened snekkes (pronounced s-nick-ahs) – Norse for the smaller Viking funeral ships.
The scheduled simultaneous launches across the country of thousands of snekkes filled the sky with showers of flame as they fell towards earth. The monthly show was a national communal event.
The spectacle of death had never been more entertaining. But to me it was a modern-day Roman circus replete with its prurient fascination and enthrallment with death.
My grandfather’s launch was a blinding flash that propelled his capsule into the heavens with such speed that it vanished from view within seconds. In what seemed only seconds more, the tracker pinpointed one of the thousand blazing orbs above me as my grandfather’s. I watched as down they all plummeted, each with a luminous trail of sparks, until they, almost as one, burned themselves out in a final brilliant burst of light, leaving only the stars to mark their passage.
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As I drove home, I thought back on my grandfather’s excitement about his launch. It began when we took him to attend the astral display of a mass cremation. He was in hospice then, but we had received permission to take him to a viewing area. When the night sky became alive with the falling capsules, he had looked up from his wheelchair and raised an arm, pointing to the flames. “I want that,” he said. “I want it.”
From then on, his life, or what remained of it, was devoted to the preparation of his sendoff. He somehow summoned a reserve of energy that fueled an almost joyful race to his demise—a marked contrast to his earlier surrender to an emotional and physical decay. He directed the decoration of the skin of his snekke (it was to be painted dark and light blue, the colors of his first car) and chose those things that would go with him into the heavens, including his service medals and the necklace he gave my grandmother on their wedding day. He picked the suit he retired in to wear.
Such strange enthusiasm in the face of death had perplexed and disturbed me. But as I watched through the windows of the crush of cars carrying the deceased’s loved ones home, I saw that none were grieving. Instead, their expressions were radiant. My grandfather had held the same visage the night he watched the extravaganza of the funereal snekkes.
I understood then that he had perceived in the night sky what I had not: He would not pass away alone. Thousands would go with him into the beyond, and thousands more would be witnesses. In the end, he no longer feared his death. He had experienced death’s ubiquity. He had seen what would come after. And he had embraced it.
Til Valhalla.
~
Bio:
Russell Fee is the author of the multi-award-winning Sheriff Matt Callahan mystery series. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Star 82 Review, Bright Flash Literary Review, Witcraft, Literally Stories, Spank the Carp, Short Circuit, and Hemingway Shorts. To learn more about Russ and his work, visit his website at outerislandpress.com,
Philosophy Note:
This story ponders the burgeoning popularity of mass celestial cremations.
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