Sort of Dead

Chapter 1-2

“He can do that twice a day,” Max informed, sounding rather glum about it. “Sometimes more. Always alone. Guy never goes out. Works from here, plays from here.” He again locked eyes with me. “The show at my office is far less enjoyable.”

My smile finally returned. “You’re gay, Max.”

He nodded. “Was. Though I suppose that, too, comes along for the whole death-ride. I was born gay. I’m dead gay. Seems to stain the soul as well. Thank…” He pointed toward the ceiling. “Judging by your interest in the spectacle…” He was now pointing at the flagging flagpole of a prick. “Souls of a feather…”

I looked back his way and joined his nod with one of my own. “I still don’t get how this…” It was my turn to point at the rather fetching flagged flagpole. “Can make you go poof.” I snapped my fingers, little good it did me. I mean, my fingers snapped, but there was no crackle, no pop, and definitely no snap.

“Doesn’t make you go poof,” he said. “Clearly.” To which he added, “But what if my family still lived here, a spouse, a sibling, a father or mother. What if they said something, did something to bring some sort of closure? Or what if I went to work, saw a project I’d been working on come to fruition? I’m guessing, we’re guessing, the multitudes of others, that it’s the closure, finishing some sort of unfinished business, that brings about the poof.”

“Guessing,” I echoed.

He shrugged. “Everything is conjecture. All of it. There’s no handbook. Still, it does seem that everyone eventually goes poof. Some just quicker than others.”

The fully-flagged d**k disappeared. We were back in the other place. “And how long do you think you’ve been here, Max?”

He shrugged. His grin had returned. Whatever this place we were in was, it brought some sort of happiness, peace. “As I said before, hard to tell. A good many years now, anyway. Long enough for my lease to end, for Mister Horny back there to move in, for my sister to get married, to have a kid, for the company I worked for to go public. I saw most of it happen.”

“But still no poof.”

His shrug had remained in place. “Those things weren’t my unfinished business, I suppose.”

I paused. I held his hand. His smile grew. So did mine. “And how did you…” My pause returned. I was in uncharted waters here—had there, of course, been any water. Or sky. Or anything really. How do you chart nothingness? Plus, I was dead for less than an hour. You can’t get any more uncharted than that. “I mean, how did you die, Max?”

“Leukemia,” he replied. “I was thirty-two.” The smile miraculously remained. “I knew I was going to die, Nord, mainly because I’d been doing so for five years. I’d made peace with it. Maybe something inside of me knew of this place. Or maybe I was simply ready to release all the pain, the fear. To die slowly for that long, it makes you not want to live. Makes you want to believe in…” He pointed into the void. “Well, this.”

I was still gripping his hand in mine. “But there is no this in this.”

“Yet.” We walked. Or what felt like walking. We passed other naked people. “There’s no pain here, no fear. You feel it, too. That much I do know. We all feel the same way. And there is a this in this, Nord. I talk to people, endless people. I hear their stories, see their lives through their words. It’s like going to the movies, reading books, like living, as it were, through others.” He looked my way. We stopped. “What is it? What’s wrong? You’re not smiling anymore.”

I wasn’t and knew exactly why. “I wasn’t dying, Max. I was also thirty-two. I had a great life. I’d just received a promotion. I’d paid off my student loans. I was alive, and then I was…here.”

He nodded. He’d obviously heard this story before. They all had. People died every second for all sorts of reasons. Had I been killed, hit by a car, a random bolt of lightning, or something like an aneurism, a heart attack, an electric shock? “We could find out, Nord. It’s not been that long. We could go see.” His smile flew south. “But no matter how you died, whatever we see isn’t going to be pretty.”

I stared at him. He was indeed pretty. He was, in fact, far nicer to look at than anything back in the real world, that much was certain. Still, I had to know. Maybe knowing would get me that poof. “Will you come with me?” I asked him.

He nodded. “You sure, though? You’re just barely dead. What if no one has discovered your, you know…body?” He whispered the word. The word made me wince. My soul hurt. And since I was nothing but soul, everything hurt at once. Not a physical pain, but a pain, nonetheless. “We could wait. We could go to a familiar place later, hear what happened rather than see.”

“Did you go back?” I asked. “I mean, right away?”

The nod turned shake. “Almost. I thought about it. But I knew what had killed me, so what would’ve been the point? I went home to my mom’s a while later. That was hard enough. I went back some more; it never got any easier. I couldn’t hug her, couldn’t talk to her, let her know I was okay. Same with all of them, all my family. Plus, it felt like spying. Instead, I go watch that guy jack off. I like being in my old home.” His smile returned. “I like it here, too, for now. The bliss, it’s easy to grow accustomed to.”

“But what if it takes decades to move on? What if that bliss turns bust? What if whatever is next is even better? Or what if you’re wrong and that next never comes?” I was still holding his hand. I’d known him for less than whatever brief time it was, but it felt like forever. Maybe that was because we were literally in forever. Either way, the conversation was uncomfortable and his hand in mine was comforting. “Can you get an erection here, Max?”

He laughed in that supremely nice way of his. Where had he been all my life? And, yes, the irony of that had not been lost on me. He then fiddled with my d**k with his free hand. I followed suit with his. It felt nice, though that was more likely because our souls were touching. Which is to say, nothing shifted, rose, pulsed, gushed, spewed. “No blood, Nord. Nothing to fill it with.”

I shook my head. “Nope. This place is great, but not perfect. What if the poof is perfect?”

He seemed to think this over. Eventually, his sea of blue locked into my puddles of brown. “Just think of a place, Nord. It has to be a place you frequented, that you had ties to. There seems to be a connection made in life that tethers you in death. Work, home, family, you can link to them if you choose to.” The smile had returned, but quivered. “Where were you last?”

I’d been at my desk, at work. I could still see the screen in my head, then the ceiling that wasn’t a ceiling. Maybe there had been a fire, some sort of explosion. How does someone die at work, someone so young, someone in the picture of health? People suddenly died of aneurisms, like I’d thought before. That must’ve been it.

“I was working,” I replied. “Why do you think I can feel your hand in mine, your hand on my d**k?”

His laugh returned. “You make odd segues, Nord.”

I laughed. It was weird to laugh given that I had just sort of died. “My head is full of questions. I want to ask them all at once.”

“Yeah, been there, died that.” He squeezed my hand in his. “The body stained the soul. The soul knows of feelings, sensations. Those feelings seem to be mimicked here. It’s not the same but a close facsimile. Just as nice, either way. Just as real-feeling even when we know it’s not.”

“I can see your body, can feel it.” I touched his chest, ran my fingers through the matting of hair, but there was no heartbeat. It wasn’t real. I was grateful for the facsimile, but how long would that gratefulness last? “Let’s go, Max.”

He nodded, and we were suddenly back at my office. It had been around lunchtime when I was still alive, best I could recall, and now it was dark outside. Inside was another matter entirely. Every light was on. The place was full of people. None of them were my coworkers. All of them were either cops or paramedics. There was a bag on the floor by my desk, body-sized, black as coal.

“f**k,” I said.

He pointed at my desk, at the carpet. “Blood, Nord.”

Lots of blood. Too much blood. I didn’t have a stomach anymore; still, I felt queasy. Rest in peace, my ass. Did people bleed from an aneurism? My computer was still on. I floated closer in. It wasn’t what I had been looking at. It was an old report. Why had someone pulled it up? Of course, the better question was, “Why did someone kill me?”

We hung around, waiting for an answer, but, for now, people were taking pictures, writing things down, shipping me off. I tried to follow but couldn’t. Seemed that tether that Max had mentioned was all too real. I tried to punch my keyboard, to see if I could pull up a history of what else had been searched for, but, yeah, good luck with that.

We floated there until we were alone again. I’d learned nothing, apart from the whole murder thing. Me. Murdered. I mean, I’d been no Mother Teresa in life, but no Mussolini either. People generally liked me. I was likable, after all.

“Should we go?” asked the see-through version of my newfound friend.

“Why would someone kill me? Doesn’t make sense. I was at work. I got along with all my coworkers.” I pointed at my screen. It had been left on. “That report must be the answer. I didn’t put it there. The person who killed me must have.”

“What is it?”

I again stared at the screen. “It’s a financial report. Two-year’s old, at least.”

“Is it significant in any way?”

I tried to remember, exactly. I’d barely been with the company six months then. I was in the creative department, so I probably needed the report to determine future expenditures, what to spend my resources on, how much to spend, where to spend it. It was significant to me, but, again, it was an old report. Meaning, it was no longer significant. Though, seemingly, it was. At least to someone.

“I don’t see how,” I replied. We were again back in the nothing. “What do you call this place, Max? I mean, it’s not heaven, right? And I feel too good to be in hell. Purgatory doesn’t seem to fit either. That has some negative connotations, right? Religious meaning, right? I don’t see any angels, and God doesn’t seem to be showing up with a welcoming fruit basket.”

“Arby’s,” he said.

I grinned. I was glad I still had it in me after what I’d been through, namely being murdered at my desk. What an awful place to die. Couldn’t someone have shot me at a Gaga concert? So much better for the obit material, right? He died as he lived: fabulously. “You call this place Arby’s?”

He shrugged. “I loved Arby’s in life. I loved Popeyes even better, but my town didn’t have a Popeyes, so I settled for Arby’s.” He pointed all around. All around were naked people grinning. I preferred to look at him. “Arby’s seems a good name for it.”