The Afterlife, Now

Written by Kay

(it only begins when there is nothing.)
I

The shrill sirens were a mystery to me at first.

I hated that sound. Wouldn’t you have too? Wouldn’t you have woken up pissed to stick your head out the window and cussed off whoever was making that noise?

Maybe not.

Maybe I was just overreacting. Yeah, that’s it. I was overreacting. But it was justified, my drama. Because as soon as I opened my eyes, I found myself not in my bed but in darkness.

It wasn’t the darkness that unnerved me. Oh, hell no. What really tripped me out was the fact that I was floating on the darkness, as if it were a nice, comfy mattress with the sole purpose of suspending me in mid-air.

At first, the sight of my own blood painted upon the sidewalk was surreal. It was interesting to see, to say the least. I won’t pretend to be bad-ass and say that I stuck up my middle-finger and obnoxiously laughed it all off. No, I blubbered like a wittle baby, screaming nonsensical, blasphemous things that would have shocked even the dirtiest of nuns.

And thus, the sirens were a mystery no longer.

II

She was freaky chick, and no, I do not mean freaky as in getting-it-on freaky. She was seriously freaky freaky.

I noticed her while floating over the bar, a place fondly referred to as Hell’s Parlor, where I got drunk for the last time in my life. It’s a tendency, especially for nostalgic ghosts like me who don’t really understand why the hell he had to die, to haunt the places in which they’ve occupied their last days of life. I guess it’s just one of those ticks.

The bar is a crowded little hole in the corner of this part of town. But it is homey -- there are worse places that I could have haunted. The inhabitants are generally seedy characters -- crackheads, shit-scoopers, sexually deprived mid-life crisis types. But back when I could screw and drink, I’d get lost here easily, sometimes under the dozy influence of pot or just the natural haziness of camaraderie.

People exaggerate. The Parlor isn’t truly cheap shit -- it’s just lit that way. Old Tony wouldn’t stand to use those white-bulb lamps that everyone else uses. We go all-out with our “Eat at Joe’s” and “Broadway” neon lights. And as darkness settles over the city, the thin layer of tobacco smoke hanging down from the mildew-stained ceiling slowly lights up like a radioactive mushroom cloud. Before midnight, the TV set plays cheap movies from the eighties; after twelve, the screen suddenly blinks to shitty porn to which even the dreamiest of hippies can’t wank off. It’s the charm of the Parlor, an escape from the norm of ass-kissing that most of us perform in the course of life.

Oh, but I’m getting off-topic. Where was I? Oh yeah, the freaky one: my enigma, my savior, my biggest pain-in-the-ass. But of course, I’d never tell her that.

III

It was an instantaneous thing, squeezing through the holes in her skull. I think I should have tried the ear canal, but I don’t think she really minded. After all, she was already pretty wasted as soon as she stepped into the Parlor. I couldn’t understand why she would come to a place like this especially at this time of the night. I’ll admit; she was moderately attractive, minus the splotchy blemishes on her chalky face. Probably got dumped.

Her body movements were jerky and stiff as I expanded myself, and for that moment, I wept as I reached the orgasm of this advance. It was amazing, the sensation of being able to smell the sweat and to feel the muggy heat and to sing along with the heavy, sultry voice of a twenties bar-singer droning on in the background.

Who the hell are you?

I swear I could even taste the cheap alcohol on her breath. I wanted to cry with happiness. And yet, my brilliant response was, You . . . can feel me?

Why the hell wouldn’t I? You are inhabiting my body, asshole.

Holy shit. I had just possessed the body of a clairvoyant.

IV

“That’ll be thirteen dollars even.”

Thirteen even! Looks like it’ll be your lucky day!

She pays the money with the slightest twitch of a smile, which might have looked like a zombie convulsing in a trance. The girl, paling several shades in the face, handles the money and looks godly glad to send the clairvoyant over to the receiving counter.

I can’t believe you drink that shit in the morning.

I grunt as she pushes me toward the corner of her sharp skull. Fuck off, you little body-thief. It’s bad enough that I had to listen to your crowing this morning in the bathroom.

Anything to take my mind off the stench of your vomit, darling. No one told you to get so wasted.

She snatches her hot prune juice from the coffee-maker’s hand and whisks out of the place, her bag of slasher movies swinging happily from her arms.

Do we really have to watch more of your damn movies? Haven’t you watched the bloodiest of the bloody this past month? I didn’t know axes ran that deeply into a person’s skull.

She manages to run into the bus before the driver closes the doors. Settled in happily, she then holds the movies tightly to her chest.

You freak.

She kicks herself in the shin. I grunt -- we both feel the pain.

Aren’t we feisty this morning.

Go screw yourself, she says amicably, obviously counting down to the minutes when she could settle herself in front of the television screen to the screams of disembodied young women.

You’re always such a scary bitch in the morning.

V

“Ah, the Skeleton Man. His eyes, do you see them?”

The girl, an attractive blond with bouncy hair and a slightly rounded figure, bends forward to stare at the tarot card. I couldn’t help it -- her breasts were just hanging there in that beautifully low neckline. I bend the clairvoyant down for a look.

Stop it!

“His eyes . . . look black . . . ? I can’t see anything. Can you make the lights brighter?” the girl whines, completely oblivious to the fact that the witchy clairvoyant in her thousands of layers of see-through nylon shawls just caught a glimpse of her huge breasts.

“The skeleton’s eyes are blue,” the clairvoyant bristles. She does so hate the light. She hates the sun. She hates . . . actually, there are very few things she does not hate.

The girl blinks then massages her slender neck. If I were only alive . . .

You know what? Why don’t you just go to sleep for a minute if you’re going to get a spectral hard-on? At least get horny while I’m sleeping or something!

She can be the most demanding creatures. I shudder to think of how domineering she would be in --

Perverted son of a -- I swear to God if you don’t stop those nasty thoughts, I’ll drench myself in holy water and --

“So the blue eyes . . . what does that mean?”

The clairvoyant snaps out of her reverie and snarls. A characteristic trait, that snarl.

The cute blond shrinks back in her seat and looks nervously around the small, baroque-style living room. Hard to call this place a “house” without the added adjective “haunted” in front of it. Stained, half-tattered sheets are draped over ancient armchairs. The broken hand of a grandfather clock remained eight past six for the last fourteen hours. Eau du dust assaults our nose with each fucking breath. How the hell does she survive in this place?

“You know, if you’re so damned unhappy about this arrangement, why don’t you get out of my body?” the clairvoyant finally snaps, standing up tall in her chair.

The blond is on the verge of screaming. My little clairvoyant does mightily look like a witch, especially in this house. “Wh-what?”

“Well? You’re not answering again?”

A screech. Then a tumble of a wooden chair. And finally, quick footsteps clicking and clacking all the way to the door. The clairvoyant looks across from the purple-draped table and screams angrily, finding her customer’s chair empty.

“Damn it! That’s my third customer!”

If you wouldn’t yell so much . . .

“If you wouldn’t get so fucking aroused every single time I see a girl under the age of seventy --”

You don’t understand! I’m wailing, and I’m damn proud of it. I'm stuck in the body of a GIRL! A DAMNED GIRL! Do you just know how frustrating it is, especially when the girl is YOU?!

Another snarl. She sits back down and pulls off a loose floorboard.

I’m getting hysterical now.

It’s not like YOU ever sleep with anyone. At least not in the five months I’ve been using your body.

A bittersweet tang. She drinking again. That gets me truly pissed.

Sure. All you do is tell your half-assed fortunes and DRINK your problems away. You fucking COWARD.

“Shut up, stupid ghost.” She says this in a low and even tone. A warning sign that she’s seriously angry. I should have shut up, but I’m me. And I’m the biggest jackass on the face of this planet, including the dead side too.

What are you going to do? Exorcise me? You’ve already tried, honey, and that didn’t work out so well, did it? Some fucking pyschic you are.

Suddenly the bottle of liquor flies out of her hands and shatters against the dilapidated fireplace. The shards of glass sparkle like thousands of broken stars.

Silence.

Then the heavy breathing.

What . . . why did you --

“Shut up,” she says to me again. Then she says words that I never thought she'd ever say. “You have no idea what it is like to be me.”

VI

She wakes up in the middle of the night sometimes, her face scrunched up. Dreams, she usually tells me. I warn her that she’ll get wrinkles if keeps doing that, but she waves me off.

Aren’t you afraid of living alone? I had asked her once when she woke up after a dream.

She shifted in her bed and asked skeptically, “What of?”

I don’t know. Men and women are afraid of different things. What do women fear?

She said nothing. Fearless little tramp. Trying to be brave. The bastard part of me poked out then.

Ah, I know. Rapists. Serial ones. Aren’t you worried that someone might rape you?

She closed her eyes for a moment, drawing the dusty covers up to her thin chest, and I remember thinking, Ah hah! I finally got her rattled.

But then she sat up slowly, combing her scraggly hair back from her face. Quietly, she stood and walked barefooted toward her bathroom. She flicked on the lights, and I drew in a breath (of course, it was a figurative breath, since I didn’t breathe). A mirror. She stared into a mirror.

Despite myself, I felt a bubbling hint of revulsion and a wash of curiosity. A girl stared back at me, a girl who could not be more than twenty. Her skin was as pale as chalk, dotted with blemishes -- scars from severe acne she probably had suffered from her earlier pre-teen years. Her lips were thin and discolored, almost gray, but still with an interesting curve to them. Her nose was long, thin, and hooked wickedly, like that of a story-book witch. I could have burst out in a little jingle (“Ding dong, the witch is dead, the wicked witch, the wicked witch . . .”), but I didn’t. It was because of her eyes. Her eyes stopped me cold -- they were impossibly dark eyes, almost black in color, if that was possible. She possessed no lashes to speak of, and her eyebrows were paper-thin, but her eyes . . .

“Do you see now?” she quietly demanded.

I couldn’t answer. What was she asking?

She ran her thin, spindly hands down her body. She started from her abnormally long neck then grazed her roughened palms over her bony shoulders. Her small breasts were next, slightly round yet sagging just a bit, despite her youth. Her stomach was a illustration of a concavity -- the result of too much vomiting and too much alcohol. Too skinny to be attractive, she could have been a model. One of those really tall, really thin, really giraffe-like models. I told her. She could also have been a scarecrow, but I didn’t tell her that.

She then turned back toward the mirror, facing her own reflection with a slight snarl, combing her thin fingers through her bushy black hair -- black hair that reached down to her incredibly thin waist.

“You don’t answer.”

I don’t get it.

A small sigh. “No one would want to rape me.”

VII

You should stop drinking. You’re going to kill yourself.

We're back at her flat now, away from those weird grandfather clocks with which she seems to have an unhealthy affiliation.

“Stop trying to be such a righteous bastard,” she slurs, stumbling this way and that.

I can’t take this. I break free of her weakened, drunken control and settle her down in her bed.

“Bastard! What the hell are you doing, controlling me?! Get out of my body! Get the fuck out!” she screams hysterically, thrashing her arms and legs this way and that.

No.

Her screaming hits my heart, you know. It salts every fucking wound on my body that I've gained right before my death.

“You bastard. You stupid bastard,” she sobs. “I hate you. I fucking hate you.”

I force her to close her eyes.

I know, I say quietly. I know.

VIII

She shifts the cup of coffee in her hands. “I feel like shit,” she mumbles.

Didn’t I tell you to stop drinking?

“Don’t lecture me now.”

I hesitate. Sure you don't need one? A lecture, I mean.

“Yeah. I'm sure. So just shut up for once.”

And I do. Because I think she has finally decided.

IX

She comes back to the street across the Parlor in a few weeks, her hair done up in a tight bun so that she’ll scare off less people. She still wears those freaky-ass clothes -- the thousands of see-through nylon shawls -- and she still watches those freaky-ass slasher movies.

“Are you sure this is the place?” she asks, staring about curiously. Her prune juice is warm in her hand. I want to fucking hurl my guts out every time she drinks that, but at least it isn’t a bottle of liquor. “This place seems so ordinary.”

Yeah, it’s ordinary, but I’m sure. Fucking truck hit me right here.

“And the blood? I don’t see it anywhere.”

You idiot -- it’s gone by now. That happened a year ago.

She doesn’t speak for a while and merely squints, her nocturnal eyes not used to the brightness of the sun. “There aren’t many ghosts here.”

I scared them off. Then I add as an afterthought, Yeah, I scared them all off -- just for you, my breastless skeleton.

I can feel her getting pissed off. It’s a secret thrill of mine.

“I can’t believe I put up with you for twelve months,” she replies tartly.

You know you loved it.

Silence.

“It’s a good day to let go,” she finally says. “A good day to fly.”

I guess it is.

More silence between us, and for the first time in months, I hear the birds chirping. It's strange how the extraordinary beauty of the ordinary now reveals itself to me completely this very day -- I smell the trees; I follow each twining bough to the zenith of its growth; I trace every single blade of grass poking out from the cracks of concrete, noting with slight amazement that they could indeed be toothpicks made from the clearest of emeralds.

I think it’s the first time I ever wanted to cry.

X

She sits down by the bench facing Hell’s Parlor for almost three hours. The prune juice is cold in her hands now, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She doesn’t mind at all, even if the shadows lengthen and the sun sets over the horizon. Washes of purple and blue greet us in majestic flourish, painting the concrete sidewalk with charcoal streaks. The air, once warm, slowly begins to cool. When she breathes in, I can taste the crispness of red autumn apples lingering in the air.

Then the light. Hell’s Parlor soon comes alive, blinking in bright pink and orange neon lights.

“I think I went in there once,” she muses. “I remember -- that was after that guy groped me. Fucking pervert.”

I didn’t know you were supposed to be hot.

“I didn’t know either.”

The sweet voice of a singing woman slowly drifts in the night air. Sounds like Marilyn Monroe. Damn jukebox. It's nearing midnight.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to ask,” she told me.

What.

She pauses, then finally asks with a casual swig of her prune juice (to which I respond with a gag), “Why me?”

Huh?

“You heard me.”

The music gets louder and louder. It starts. Waves of dizziness crash into me. Then that lukewarm whirlwind forces me to loosen every single attachment I’ve made upon this girl’s soul. How divine. I can barely keep my head straight.

I . . . don’t know.

Her anger flares again. Despite her occupation as a clairvoyant, she herself hates vague answers. Fuck. I can’t see anymore.

I wish I did. Know, I mean.

First it's the complete darkness and then the paralysis. I’m losing my grip.

“Fate?” she asks, her voice a bit high. I can almost sense her in this black void, groping about in this hurricane, struggling to grab a hold of me.

No, I don’t think so.

My thoughts grow fainter.

“Then why?”

Because.

Reality is warped.

Because . . . I think we NEEDED each other.

She pauses, and for the first time that in the lifetime that I'd known her, silent tears run down her cheeks. Maybe I was crying too. But I’m dead, and I’m a ghost. Ghosts can’t cry.

“Thank you,” she finally says.

And then, I let go.

(it only ends when you've lost everything.)
(but you never stop gaining.)
finis.