Mays Landing

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MAYS LANDING

a novel by J.C. Mercer

This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, organizations, places, events,
and incident are either
pro
ducts of the author's imagination or used
fictitiously.


Text copyright Cc 2016 by
J.C. Mercer
Chapter
1. THE COSMIC CHAMPAGNE
The
nurse told me I had been dead for over four
minutes. As a third-year
me
dical school dropout, I feel fairly qualified to
state categorically what a

crock of shit that is. Even after "clinical
death," typically defined by the

cessation of vital
functions such as heartbeat and respiration,
brain death
doesn't
usually occur for a good five or six minutes
later, when the brain
runs
out of oxygen and becomes irreversibly damaged.
In truth, the exact
moment
of death is somewhat arbitrary and basically
occurs when in the
opinion
of the attending physician there is nothing left
that can be done
to revive
the patient and the pronouncement of death is
made, along with
the
current local time, which then goes on the
official death certificate.

Doctors love to perpetuate tales about bringing
patients "back from the
dea
d" to elevate their self-perceived godlike
status, as if those present in
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the Bellevue Hospital
emergency room on Manhattan's East Side that

rainy autmnn evening were
witnesses to some divine miracle.

Likewise for
all those so-called out-of-body and near death
experiences
you may have
heard about, such as feelings of euphoria,
walking through
a tunnel
toward a bright light, or visions of your
grandparents or favorite
un
cle beckoning you to join them in the afterlife.
Spiritually reassuring no
d
oubt, but all with very earthly scientific
explanations. As your brain

becomes oxygen deprived, a condition known as
cerebral anoxia even a
th
ird-year dropout can show off by flaunting
medical terms and begins

to die, it releases a wide range of sensory
altering chemicals. These
i
nclude endorphins, euphoria-inducing hormones
known to suppress
pain and
cause the "runner's high" that many experience
after exercise, as
well as
powerful anesthetics like ketamine, which combine
to create a
cacophony of
"neural noise," an overload of often faulty
information to
your brain.
The common experience of being in a long tunnel
with a
bright light at the
end, for example, is generally attributed to the
retina at
the back of the
eye becoming starved of oxygen and its nerve
cells firing at
random.
The majority of these nerve cells live in the
most sensitive part of
the
retina, the fovea, which is the bright spot that
looks like the end of a
tun
nel.
The
only true recollection I have of my brief
excursion to "the other

side" is a strange, effervescing feeling, as if I
was some kind of giant Alka-

Seltzer tablet. No glimpses of God's face, no
revelations or answers to
l
ife's deepest questions. In fact it was just the
opposite if anything I was

struck by the randomness, the meaninglessness of
it all. If spending
eternit
y drifting in an endless sea of ginger ale is not
exactly what you had
in
mind as a reward for a life well-lived, I
apologize. However, we've all

heard stories of near-death survivors who
claimed to have visited the

"other side" and then lead inspired lives in
this world, secure that there is

a better life waiting for
us in the next. I suppose what follows is a
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chronicle of someone who
came back from the experience pretty sure that

there isn't.

To understand my thoughts
in those first moments when I regained

consciousness, it is
important to consider the amount of preparation
that
had gone into my
suicide attempt. This was no pathetic "cry for
help," but
the culmination
of weeks of careful planning. When I finally
closed my
eyes I knew with
i00 certainty that I would not open them again
in this
world. Thus, I
naturally assumed the darkness, interspersed with
what
appeared to be
flashes of broken light to be part the experience
of being
dead, the
afterlife, or whatever came next. Not altogether
unpleasant, I
thought,
except for a growing soreness in my throat.



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