Cody had enough. He pats his back pocket to make sure the note is still there, then slips the noose he made out of an extension cord over his head. He sighs loudly, pulls the noose tight and relaxes his knees, hanging with his feet still touching the garage floor. Soon he loses consciousness and gravity does the rest.

***

Cody was a middle child, the second of three boys. His dad was a mechanic, and mom was a full-time housewife, or homemaker as it is called nowadays.

They were not poor, they always had enough food and good clothes to wear, but they were not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. Cody was always a skeptic. He lived with a strong feeling that nothing was ever what it seemed, and people who just blindly accepted life and situations at face value at first baffled him, then turned to irritation.

He loved mathematics, because it was true and precise, and he despised religion that offered no proof of what it proclaimed. ‘Faith’ was offensive to him. Since his family was religious, they were faithful and wanted him to also be like that. Cody believed that any group whose faith required others to adopt the same faith was stupid and dangerous. He told his mother this, and it earned him a hard slap across the face, and years of being forced to go to church and Sunday school. Both these experiences only reinforced his suspicion that nothing is what it seems, and the unexpected is usually just moments away, lurking below the surface, waiting for the right word, look or action to call it forth.

At least he was smart, very smart. He became valedictorian of his high school, and later went to college on a full ride scholarship. He studied law and graduated with honors. After passing the bar exam he shunned many lucrative offers from prestigious law firms and joined the public defender’s office. Cody saw through the money and prestige that these companies offered and recognized the desire for power that is behind it all. He had one desire only, the truth, so he chose the law and the pursuit of justice. Besides, there are always much need for a good public defender.

***

Cody soon learned that the law is not like mathematics, and that justice is not absolute, or even fair. Laws are not the same everywhere, and even when it uses the same words in its definition, it can be interpreted differently. Judges are also just human beings, and many judges formed strong opinions about the law and how it applies to different crimes and different people! Some will give maximum sentences for certain crimes, while being very lenient with others. This confused Cody and made it difficult for him to find consistency in the law, and fulfilment in his profession.

Eventually Cody concluded that there is a hell, and he is in it. Hell seems to be a place of inconsistency and repetition. Sometimes it is the same thing that happens over and over, with the same characters and often with unpredictable results. He sees the same people pass through the criminal justice system, and often for the same crimes, over and over. The law does not seem to change these people’s behavior to make them better citizens. It appears to have been reduced to an ongoing soap opera where cases are turned over as fast as possible and all sorts of deals and arrangements are made, often to bypass trying the case at all. It felt like playing a game, where the rules are fluid and adjusted to fit the situation.

He learned of a woman who received a worse sentence for insulting her attacker, than the sentence the man who assaulted her got. People would lose their jobs for misgendering someone, while naked adults parade in the streets, where children are present, under the banner of inclusion, with no consequences. In other parts of the country shoplifters steal at will with impunity, and any store employee who attempts to stop them will be fired. People use social media to organize looting, and others make videos of punching people in the street or running them over with their cars. Some of these perpetrators literally gets away with murder, recorded and published on You tube!

The law was not the truthful mistress Cody desired, but a thing manipulated by politicians and other power-hungry people and entities to further their own interests. This became too much for him to bear, and after four years of watching this shit play out, he decided to participate and bend the law, to make if work for him when he desired a specific outcome.

It did not work, one of his clients reported him, a piece of shit baby momma who was in court all the time using the law to milk the fathers of her children. He lied to her about her case against the father of her youngest, and she found out. He was charged, found guilty of lying to his client and disbarred.

The severity of this punishment made Cody realize that there is no justice in the world, except when you make it. He went to the woman’s apartment, telling her he came to apologize, and when she let him in, he stabbed her to death with a kitchen knife. All five of her kids were piled in the filthy bedroom, playing a video game. They did not see a thing. Cody let himself out and reported the crime anonymously. Those kids should have a better chance in life in foster care, he hoped.

Later that day, at home, he wrote his note explaining that he was responsible for the slaying of that awful woman that used her babies to suck the life out of their fathers. He had to confess to the murder for fear that one of them might be blamed for her death. Knowing how the system works and how flawed it is, it was very possible and might even lead to the conviction of an innocent man.

With the note in his back pocket, he went to the garage and hung himself.

***

‘What the fuck! Where am I, what’s happening’, Cody sees light ahead, and he is slowly moving towards the light. He is inside a tight channel of sorts, and the light is getting brighter. ‘Are this what people who had a near death experience see?’, Cody wonders just before the light becomes incredibly bright and he is suddenly free.

Strong and confident hands grab his legs by the ankles, and a voice exclaims, ‘Congratulations mom and dad, it’s a girl!’.

Cody’s vision is not clear, but he sees enough to realize that he has just been born again! The thought of going through life again overwhelms him with self-pity – repeating a life filled with injustice and inconsistency feels like the worst sentence a person can ever get! In anger and frustration, he empties his bladder and screams at the top of his lungs, ‘Oh fuck, I am in hell!’, before he feels himself dissolving, evaporating into the light.

The last thing Cody is aware of is a nurse clamping something that is dangling on his belly while wrapping him in a towel and cooing at him.

By the time the nurse hands the baby to her mom, Cody and all his memories are inaccessible, stored deep in the baby’s subconscious mind, next to all its previous lives. This mind again a clean slate for her parents to use, maybe to write a symphony or a horror story.

Life can be heaven, or hell. Only time will tell.