Chapter 5 first person met in heaven

Don't be afraid. The blue-skinned man slowly got up from the chair: Don't be afraid His voice is reassuring, but Eddie can only stare at him. He doesn't know this person at all. Why do you see him here?That face is the kind that pops up in your dreams and makes you wake up the next morning and want to tell others that you will never guess what dream I had last night. Your body is like a child's, right? Eddie nodded. That's because you were a child when you met me.In the beginning, what you feel is what you once felt. What was it at the beginning?Eddie was puzzled. The blue-skinned man lifted his chin.His skin was an odd color, a whitish blueberry shade.His fingers were wrinkled.He walked out.Eddie followed behind.

The pier was empty.The beach was deserted.Is the whole planet empty? Tell me that the blue-skinned man pointed to a wooden roller coaster with two peaks in the distance. It was the Sky Express. It was built in the 1920s. Turn at high speed unless you want to send the whole train flying off the track. Tell me, is this Sky Express still the fastest car on earth? Eddie looked at the creaking old thing and shook his head.It was taken down many years ago. Ah, I think so too.The blue-skinned man says: Things won't change here with us.However, looking down from the clouds, I can't see the changes you mentioned.

here?Eddie thought to himself. The blue-skinned man smiled slightly, as if he heard Eddie's inner question.He touched Eddie's shoulder, and Eddie felt a warmth he had never felt before.His thoughts flowed out sentence by sentence. How did I die? an accident.said the blue-skinned man. How long have I been dead? One minute.One hour.A thousand years. Where am I now? The blue-skinned man pursed his lips, thoughtfully, and repeated the question: Where are you now?He turned and raised his arms and suddenly, all the rides that used to be at Ruby Pier creaked and moved to life: the Ferris wheel spinning, the bumper cars clattering, the Sky Express clicking. Cocks climbed up, and the horses on the Parisian carousel moved up and down to the lively and cheerful organ music.The sea is right in front of you.The sky was the color of lemons.

where do you think you areThe blue-skinned man said: This is heaven. No way!Eddie shook his head violently.impossible! The blue-skinned man looked happy.Won't?Can't this be heaven?He said: why not?Just because this is where you grew up, wouldn't it be paradise? Eddie mouthed a word.right. oh.The blue-skinned man nodded: Hey, people often underestimate the place where they were born.Yet, it is possible to find paradise in the most unlikely corners.And heaven has many stages.Now here, is my second stage, for you it is the first stage. He took Eddie all over the amusement park, past the cigar shop and the sausage stand, past the fool's casino, where a lot of fools lost their coppers.

Heaven?Eddie thought.This is so funny.He's spent most of his adult life trying to get out of Ruby's Pier, which is just an amusement park, a place where you can scream at the top of your head, get wet, and trade your money for dolls .He could not imagine what blissful resting place such a place could be. He tried to speak again, and this time he heard a small grunt coming from his chest. The blue-skinned man turned back: your voice will come back.We all go through the same process.You're new here now, so you can't talk. He smiles: it helps you pay attention to what the other person is saying.

You will meet five people in heaven, and the blue-skinned man suddenly said: Each of us has a reason for existence in your life; you may not know what that reason is at the moment, and this is the function of heaven.Heaven is for you to know your whole life on earth. Eddie looked confused. When it comes to heaven, everyone thinks of Bliss Garden, thinking that in heaven, you can float on the clouds and be lazy by the Shangdian River.However, a beautiful landscape is meaningless if it does not comfort people. This is God's greatest gift to you: an opportunity to see what happened in your life and explain why.This is the serenity you've been looking for.

Eddie coughed, trying to make a sound.He didn't want to be silent anymore. Edward, I was the first person you met.When I died, there were five other people who explained my life to me, and then, I came here to wait for you, to line up here, to tell you my story, and let my story be yours of a plot.There are others waiting for you, some you know and some you may not.However, before they died, they all met you by chance on your life path, and your life path has changed since then. Eddie tried his best to force a voice from his chest: What is he finally made a hoarse voice. His voice seemed like a newborn chick that was about to break out of its shell.

what hurt you The blue-skinned man waited patiently for him to speak. What killed you? The blue-skinned man looked a little surprised.He smiled at Eddie: It's you.He said. ◇◇◇ Today is Eddie's birthday He was seven years old, and his birthday present was a brand new baseball.He gripped the ball with his right hand, then with his left, and felt a rush of force up his arm.He imagined himself to be some baseball hero, like the baseball player card that came with Handsome Jack's syrupy peanut popcorn, like the great pitcher Walter G.Walter Johnson. Come on, let's pitch.said his brother Joe.

They ran along the atrium plaza, past a game stand where knocking down three or more green bottles won a coconut and a straw. Come on, Eddie, Joe said: let's play together. Eddie stopped and imagined himself standing on a baseball field.He throws the ball.His brother retracted his elbows and immediately squatted down. Too much effort!Joe growled. my balls!Eddie yelled, "You're so annoying, Joe." Eddie watched as the ball bounced, rolled onto the boardwalk, hit a post, and fell into a small clearing behind the sideshow tent.He chased in the direction of the ball.Joe followed suit.They jumped into the clearing.

do you see the ballEddie said. No. At this time, there was a heavy bang, and the two stopped.One side of the tent curtain was drawn back.Eddie and Joe looked up, and there stood a very fat woman, and a shirtless man with red hair all over his body.They're the weirdos on weirdos and weirdos. The two children were petrified. You two smart brats, what are you doing behind the scenes?The furry man said, grinning: Is the skin itchy? Joe's lips trembled, and then, he began to cry.He ran away as soon as he kicked his legs, his arms were swaying rapidly. Eddie stood up to find his baseball at the foot of a sawhorse.He looked at the shirtless man, and slowly moved towards the ball.

This is my ball.he whispered.He scooped up the ball and ran away after his brother. Listen, sir, Eddie's voice is rough: I definitely didn't kill you, okay?I don't even know who you are. The blue-skinned man sat down on the bench.He smiled, as if comforting his guests. Eddie was still standing, trying to protect himself. Let me tell you my real name first.The blue-skinned man said: My baptized name is Joseph.Ković, my father was a tailor and lived in a small village in Poland.Our family came to America in 1894, when I was very young.My mother holds me, leaning against the rail of the boat, and that scene is one of my earliest memories, my mother rocking me in the New World breeze. We, like the vast majority of immigrants, have no money on us.We slept on a mattress in my uncle's kitchen.My father couldn't find a job, so he went to work in a garment factory, sewing buttons for coats.When I was ten years old, he picked me up from school and started working with him. Eddie looked at the old blue-skinned man's scarred face, thin lips, and baggy chest, and thought: Why is he telling me this? I was a nervous kid by nature, and the noise in the factory made it worse.I was too young to work there, with big men who complained all the time. Whenever the foreman approached, my dad would tell me to bow my head.Don't let him notice you.But once I tripped and a big bag of buttons fell on the floor, and the buttons were scattered all over the floor.The foreman cursed loudly, called me a useless child, and told me to go.I still remember that moment vividly. My father begged the foreman like a beggar in the street.The foreman sneered and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.My stomach is all knotted and it hurts.Then, I felt something wet on my leg, and I looked down.Then the foreman pointed at my poop-stained pants and laughed out loud, and the other workers laughed too. After that incident, my father stopped talking to me.He thinks I'm embarrassing him.I guess, in his world, I did embarrass him.Speaking of which, a father can also ruin his own son, and after I went through that incident, it can be said that it was over like this. I was nervous as a kid, neurotic as an adult, and worst of all, I still wet the bed at night.In the morning, I would sneak the soiled sheets into the washbasin and soak them in water.One morning, I looked up and saw my father.He saw the dirty sheets and gave me that look I'll never forget, as if he wished he could break my life from him. The blue-skinned man paused.His skin looked like it had been soaked in a blue liquid, and there were small circles of fat on the waistband of his trousers.Eddie stared intently. I haven't always been this freak, Edward.He said: Medicine in the past was underdeveloped.I went to a pharmacist and asked him to do something about my mental problems.He gave me a bottle of silver nitrate and told me to take it with water every night.Silver nitrate!I found out later that it was poisonous.But that was my only antidote at that time.But when I took the pills it didn't work, I can only assume I wasn't getting enough.So I increased the dosage.I take two gulps, sometimes three gulps at a time, and don't mix it with water. It didn't take long for people to start looking at me strangely.My skin is gradually turning gray. I felt embarrassed and anxious.I swallowed more silver nitrate, and eventually my skin turned from gray to blue, a side effect of silver nitrate poisoning. The blue-skinned man paused again.His voice grows lower and weaker: The factory kicked me out.The foreman said I scared the other workers.Without a job, where can I get food?where do i live I found a tavern, a very dark place, where I could conceal myself with my hat and coat.One evening a group of traveling jugglers were sitting in the back of the saloon, smoking cigars and laughing.One of them was a small guy with a wooden leg, and he kept staring at me.After seeing it, he came to me. That night, I agreed to join their touring troupe.The commercial value of my life also starts from here. Eddie noticed the resigned expression on the blue-skinned man's face.He used to be curious about where all those jugglers came from.He believes that there is a sad story behind every juggler. My stage name was given to me by these touring troupes.Sometimes I'm a blue man from the Arctic or a blue man from Algeria, sometimes a blue man called Nuciel.I've never been to any of these places, but if it's just a signboard to make people think I'm from a foreign country, that's fine. The so-called performance was actually very ordinary. I sat on the stage with disheveled clothes. Tourists walked by in twos and threes, and the propagandists told everyone how pitiful I was.In this way, I can earn some money to live on.The manager once called me his best weirdo, and, sadly, I was proud of it.If you are abandoned by the whole world, even if someone throws a stone at this time, it is something worth cherishing. One winter, I came here, Ruby Pier.They're going to put on a sideshow called Stranger Stranger Things.I love it, being in the same place, escaping the life of being on the road in a bumpy wagon. This became my home.I live in a room above the sausage shop.In the evening I played poker with other jugglers and blacksmiths, and sometimes even with your father.Early in the morning, wearing a long gown and covering my head with a big towel, I went for a walk on the beach so as not to scare others.It sounds like nothing, but for me, this freedom is something I have hardly ever enjoyed. Speaking of which, he looked at Eddie. Do you understand?Why are we here?This is not your paradise.It is my paradise. ◆◆◆ One story, read from two different angles. Take a July day in the late 1920s.It was a Sunday morning, after it had rained, and Eddie and his friends were tossing and catching a baseball: the baseball Eddie had received for his birthday the previous year. At one point, the ball flew over Eddie's head and landed on the road.Eddie, in tan trousers and a wool cap, runs after the ball. He ran in front of a car. It was a Ford Model A.The car braked sharply and swerved away, past Eddie. Eddie, shaking and out of breath, picked up the ball and ran back to his friend. The ball game is over in no time, and the kids run to the playground to play the Lake Erie Monster Hand, grabbing toys with that claw-like robotic arm. Now, look at the same story from a different angle. A man sat in the driver's seat of a Ford Model A that he had borrowed from a friend to practice his driving skills.It had rained in the morning, so the road was wet.Suddenly, a baseball bounced across the road, and a little boy popped up and ran after it.The driver slams on the brakes and turns the steering wheel hard; the car skids and the tires screech. The man was able to control the situation, but the car continued to spin.The little boy was no longer visible in the rearview mirror, but the man's body was still in a state of shock: thinking that he almost caused a tragedy.A large amount of adrenaline was secreted, making his heart beat as fast as a drum, but his heart was not very strong, and the heartbeat was too fast for him to bear.The man felt dizzy, and for a moment, his head drooped.The car he was driving nearly hit another car.The driver of the car honked the horn, and the man turned the steering wheel and slammed on the brakes.He slid along the main road and turned into an alley.His car wobbled and crashed into the back of a parked truck.There was a small crashing sound.The headlight is broken.The force of the impact caused the man to slam into the steering wheel with a snap.His forehead was bleeding. He stepped out of the car to inspect the damage, then passed out on the wet pavement.His arms twitched.His chest hurts.It's Sunday morning.The alley was empty.He was there the whole time, on the side of the car, no one noticed him.Coronary blood no longer flows to his heart. An hour passed. A policeman found him. The medical examiner pronounced him dead, giving the cause of death a heart attack.no relatives. The same story can be viewed from two different angles.Same day, same moment, happy ending from one of those angles, the little boy in the tan trousers, dropping a penny into the Lake Erie Monster Hands and playing it again and again; from the other From the point of view, there is a regrettable ending. In the municipal funeral home, a staff member called another staff member and said that the newly arrived corpse today was so strange that the skin turned out to be blue. do you understand?The blue-skinned man finished the story softly from his point of view: You little boy? Eddie shuddered. Oh, no way.he whispered. ◇◇◇ Today is Eddie's birthday He is eight years old.He was sitting in the corner of the checkered sofa, his hands folded across his chest, his face smoldering.His mother was tying his shoelaces at his feet.His father is putting on his tie in front of the mirror. I do not want to go.Eddie said. I know, his mother didn't look up when she spoke: but we must go.Sometimes, bad things happen and you just have to do something about it. But today is my birthday. Eddie looked sadly across the room, at the Master Builder kit in the corner, where there was a pile of toy steel beams and three little rubber tires.Eddie is working on a truck.He's very good at putting things together.He had hoped to show the truck to his friends at a birthday party, but his parents told him he was going somewhere else and asked him to put on his go-to clothes.How unfair, he thought. His brother Joe put on woolen trousers, a bow tie, and a baseball glove over his left palm.He slapped the glove hard and made faces at Eddie. Yours are my old shoes.Joe said: My new shoes are better. Eddie scowled.Why did he have to wear Joe's old clothes? He was annoyed. No more wiggling.said his mother. It hurts.Eddie was whining. enough!His father growled and glared at Eddie.So Eddie shut up. In the cemetery, Eddie didn't recognize the group on the pier at all.The grown-ups who usually wore gold-woven vests and red headscarves were all in black suits today, and so was his father.The women also wore black dresses; some even covered their faces with veils. Eddie watched as a man shoveled dirt into a hole.The man said something about dust.Eddie held his mother's hand and squinted at the sun.He knew he should be sad, but he secretly counted in his mind, counting from the beginning, hoping that when he counted to a thousand, he could go to his birthday.