(no subject)
*Opening dialogue adapted from the text of Remember Me by Christopher Pike.*
“We scared the hell out of her. It might work.”
I’m not sure how a dead girl can roll her eyes, but Shari managed it. I laughed a little on the inside and waited on the quip to roll out; Shari had always been one of the few girls who could keep up with me and that was part of the reason I loved her.
“What was the deal with the rhymes?”
Not as bad as I thought, and I furrowed my brow a little in mock concentration before answering, my voice smooth and confident as if I’d just been tapped to deliver a speech at graduation. The best quips always needed the perfect amount of gravitas mixed in with the deadpan.
“Devils always speak in rhymes.”
Shari looked like she was going to huff again and I suppressed the snort that threatened to rise up out of my throat. I didn’t know why; it wasn’t like I was trying to hedge my bets and make sure she’d go out with me next week given we had the rest of the afterlife to hang out, but some holdovers from life die hard. Trying to impress pretty girls is definitely one of those and I’d been a consummate professional at that when I was alive.
“How do you know? Have you ever met any?”
I laughed and gave her a wicked little grin. Oh, it was fun to have Shari again and it’d damn near killed me when she hadn’t showed at my funeral. Now, of course, I knew that was because she’d been so beside herself with grief over my death that she couldn’t leave her house for days, but I didn’t know that at the time. I remember being pretty hurt over that, but when Shari Cooper flashes you a smile, it’s hard to feel anything but happy in the wake of it.
“No,” I conceded. “But I read about it in the Enquirer.”
Shari gave me another one of her looks, then softened and tilted her head a little, saying she had somewhere to be. I didn’t know where and I didn’t ask; if Shari hadn’t volunteered, it just wasn’t my place. We had plans to finally let go of the Earthly plane and cross over into the Light, as goofy as that sounded, and if she had a little unfinished business before we left, I wasn’t going to begrudge it; my own unfinished business had wrapped up ages ago and I knew a few places I could go to pass the time. I nodded at her as she blinked away, headed somewhere I couldn’t follow, and I closed my own eyes to imagine my destination. I’d try talking to Jeff one last time; maybe all the time he’d spent with Jo Foulton lately had left him with a little more openness about the things beyond this mortal coil and, if not, I could at least see my brother again.
When my eyes opened, the first thing I was struck by was a feeling of intense warmth. One thing they don’t give you in Welcome to Death 101 was the primer on how the physical world no longer affects you; you don’t get sick, you don’t get hurt and you don’t feel pain, pleasure, heat or cold. I hadn’t felt the sun warming my face in two years and when I opened my eyes, I was surprised to see a stretch of sandy beach and a big, yellow sun. In the afterlife, the colors are all off and things tend to sparkle more. It was almost...
No. There was no way I was alive. The big stuff, life’s mysteries, can’t really be explained in words that humans can comprehend. Heaven isn’t pearly gates and angels playing harps and reincarnation isn’t being a shitty person in life and being reborn as a cockroach...it’s all a lot more complex than that. From what I knew of reincarnation, I was pretty sure you had to be reborn as a baby and that you retained few, if any, of the memories of your prior life. I remembered everything about my life and about the events of the past few days; no way I was reincarnated.
Maybe I had gone into the Light, but this felt too visceral and too tangible to be the afterlife. I had to be alive. I had to be.
“Hello? Shari? Anyone?”
If I was alive again, Shari had better be with me.
“We scared the hell out of her. It might work.”
I’m not sure how a dead girl can roll her eyes, but Shari managed it. I laughed a little on the inside and waited on the quip to roll out; Shari had always been one of the few girls who could keep up with me and that was part of the reason I loved her.
“What was the deal with the rhymes?”
Not as bad as I thought, and I furrowed my brow a little in mock concentration before answering, my voice smooth and confident as if I’d just been tapped to deliver a speech at graduation. The best quips always needed the perfect amount of gravitas mixed in with the deadpan.
“Devils always speak in rhymes.”
Shari looked like she was going to huff again and I suppressed the snort that threatened to rise up out of my throat. I didn’t know why; it wasn’t like I was trying to hedge my bets and make sure she’d go out with me next week given we had the rest of the afterlife to hang out, but some holdovers from life die hard. Trying to impress pretty girls is definitely one of those and I’d been a consummate professional at that when I was alive.
“How do you know? Have you ever met any?”
I laughed and gave her a wicked little grin. Oh, it was fun to have Shari again and it’d damn near killed me when she hadn’t showed at my funeral. Now, of course, I knew that was because she’d been so beside herself with grief over my death that she couldn’t leave her house for days, but I didn’t know that at the time. I remember being pretty hurt over that, but when Shari Cooper flashes you a smile, it’s hard to feel anything but happy in the wake of it.
“No,” I conceded. “But I read about it in the Enquirer.”
Shari gave me another one of her looks, then softened and tilted her head a little, saying she had somewhere to be. I didn’t know where and I didn’t ask; if Shari hadn’t volunteered, it just wasn’t my place. We had plans to finally let go of the Earthly plane and cross over into the Light, as goofy as that sounded, and if she had a little unfinished business before we left, I wasn’t going to begrudge it; my own unfinished business had wrapped up ages ago and I knew a few places I could go to pass the time. I nodded at her as she blinked away, headed somewhere I couldn’t follow, and I closed my own eyes to imagine my destination. I’d try talking to Jeff one last time; maybe all the time he’d spent with Jo Foulton lately had left him with a little more openness about the things beyond this mortal coil and, if not, I could at least see my brother again.
When my eyes opened, the first thing I was struck by was a feeling of intense warmth. One thing they don’t give you in Welcome to Death 101 was the primer on how the physical world no longer affects you; you don’t get sick, you don’t get hurt and you don’t feel pain, pleasure, heat or cold. I hadn’t felt the sun warming my face in two years and when I opened my eyes, I was surprised to see a stretch of sandy beach and a big, yellow sun. In the afterlife, the colors are all off and things tend to sparkle more. It was almost...
No. There was no way I was alive. The big stuff, life’s mysteries, can’t really be explained in words that humans can comprehend. Heaven isn’t pearly gates and angels playing harps and reincarnation isn’t being a shitty person in life and being reborn as a cockroach...it’s all a lot more complex than that. From what I knew of reincarnation, I was pretty sure you had to be reborn as a baby and that you retained few, if any, of the memories of your prior life. I remembered everything about my life and about the events of the past few days; no way I was reincarnated.
Maybe I had gone into the Light, but this felt too visceral and too tangible to be the afterlife. I had to be alive. I had to be.
“Hello? Shari? Anyone?”
If I was alive again, Shari had better be with me.