“Your parents are freaking out. They thought Eric . . . well, you can imagine what they thought. They filed a missing person’s report. When the police came by, all your neighbors said you hadn’t been here in months, but the building manager was going to check on the apartment later today to make sure there wasn’t a dead body in here.”
There is a dead body in here, I think.
When I don’t respond, she repeats more forcefully, “Where have you been?”
“I was here,” I repeat woodenly, staring past her at the wall. “I’ve been here the whole time. I’m fine.”
She sits beside me on the sofa. “You’re not fine, obviously! What on earth happened?”
I think about it for a moment, and arrive at the only logical conclusion. “I died. And now I’m in hell.”
When I turn my head and look into her eyes, all
