Near Death by Glenn Cooper

Erica squealed.
    “Yes, you’re right, Sam. Full marks. The Uroboros is a symbol of the infinite and the immortal, the serpent who destroys itself then brings itself back to life. And what this rather dog-eared group of individuals who congregate here like to contemplate is the idea that life is only a short segment of a longer, more interesting and far more complex journey. We like to talk about concepts of heaven and hell and other manifestations of the afterlife. We aren’t denominational; some of us don’t even have a religious bone in our bodies. We often return to thesubject of near death experiences, or NDEs, as a laboratory for the study of postlife consciousness. A few of us have been blessed or cursed with our own NDEs and we perpetually bore the others with the details. Again, for Sam’s sake, raise your hands if you’re in
this
club.”
    Alex raised his own hand high. Virginia, a patent lawyer in severe black-framed glasses, raised hers too. Two other men joined in.
    “We talk. We meditate. Sometimes, some of us use adult substances like grass, ketamine, salvia, DMT or LSD to facilitate meditation and out-of-body experiences.”
    Sam grinned. “I’m down with that part, man. What’s on the menu?”
    “Just talk, I’m afraid. The cupboard’s bare. Then some group meditation. But first, Larry Gelb is going to share a paper on circular archetypes in near death experiences, which I know will be fascinating. So I’m going to shut my gob now and Larry is going to commence to dazzle us, as is his wont.”
    Gelb immediately launched into his talk, so enthusiastic and animated he was unable to remain seated. After a few moments he sprung up and stood at the center of the circle where he rotated his body slowly, like a lazy Susan, sharing himself evenly.He soon was speaking of Plato and his account of the near death experience of a soldier named Er, who described seeing a cosmic axis of light holding together eight spheres that revolved around the earth. “Over and over again,” Gelb told the group, “going back as far as Plato, the image of a sphere or circle or mandala pervades the near death experience.”
    While he talked, Alex’s thoughts caromed like molecules in Brownian motion, pinging from the speaker to Davis to Jessie to the new kid, Sam, to Thomas Quinn to Cyrus O’Malley to the pumpkin girl and always back to the tube in his fridge; then, a violent startling daydream. O’Malley was in his kitchen blocking his way. Alex saw himself savagely throwing him down, kneeling on his neck and plunging the surgical drill deep into his skull.
    He shook off the disturbing image and became aware that Gelb was wrapping things up, intoning portentously, “I return, my friends, like a broken record—you see, another circular image!—to the indisputable fact that the occurrence of the same symbols and archetypes appearing in all cultures across the sea of time is indisputable evidence of the existence of a collective human unconscious, and I further challenge you to disprove thefollowing: that lurking behind that collective unconscious is the presence of God.”
    Later, when they were alone, lying on top of their bed, Alex was rigid and staring, out of synch with Jessie, who was folded against him, sleepy and dreamy.
    “What did you think of Sam?” he asked.
    “I liked him.”
    “Me too. I watched him while we meditated. He got into it, with an intensity. Everything about that kid is intense.”
    “Do you think he’ll come back?”
    “I hope so. Probably depends on whether Erica sleeps with him.”
    She laughed and said, “Do you want to make love to me?”
    He turned to face her and propped his head on his fist. “Jessie, I need to do something tonight.”
    She reacted to his suddenly serious expression and stayed quiet.
    He didn’t speak for a few moments and instead tenderly moved some strands of hair out of her eyes until he said, “I may have made a breakthrough in the lab. There’s only