She was staring
at a pile of dead bodies on the floor of a hallway when she finally realized what was happening.
She floated just
above the floor, going slowly at first to get the hang of the brand of spectral
movement she was expected to endure from now until the end of days. The carnage
seemed less shocking from her current perspective. In her last few seconds, covered
in her own blood and breathing frantic breaths, she had been mortified by the
sight of so much gruesome death all around her. Now it was just part of the
scenery, a painting done exclusively in shades of crimson, and it was oddly
beautiful.
In life she had
never been attracted to death. in truth she had been utterly terrified of it.
But now it was as if every dead body she saw was just an affirmation that, in
stark contrast to her time spent among the living, she was most certainly not
alone.
“Hello?” she
hazarded, expecting ghostly avatars of the bodies strewn across the hall to
spring out of their mortal confines and join her in the afterlife. The air
remained still and apparition-free, however.
“You’re new to
this, aren’t you?” someone asked from the top of the stairs. She looked up in
shock, even though she had just been steeling herself to see a chorus of ghosts
erupt from mangled bodies. At the top of the landing, there was a translucent
young boy with dapperly combed hair and a striped t-shirt looking down at her
with a child-like expression of curiosity on his face.
“Y-yes,” she
stammered. “Just started a few minutes ago, I think.”
“I’m Mike,” the
boy said abruptly. “What’s your name?”
“Dana,” she
replied without really knowing why.
“Does that scare
you?” the boy asked, nodding at the pile of bodies in the hallway. She looked
at the scene again, still expecting to feel repulsed by the sight of it, but
still she examined it with a strange sense of appreciation.
“No,” she
replied hazily. “Why is that?” The boy shrugged.
“I guess it’s
because you aren’t afraid of dying no more. You know, ‘cause you’re already
dead,” he posited. “Come upstairs. Everyone’s upstairs.”
“Everyone?” she
asked.
“Yeah,” Mike
said, “All of the others.”
“What others?”
she asked.
“You’ll see,” he
said. “Come on.” He waved his hand invitingly and disappeared through a wall.
She glided towards the staircase and started walking up it, though her feet
never actually touched any of the steps. Mike reappeared at the top of the
stairs, a curious look on his face.
“What are you
doing that for?” he asked.
“Doing what
for?” she asked.
“Using the
stairs like that. You know you can fly, right?”
“Sorry,” she
chuckled, “Old habits die hard.”
“Harder than
that?” Mike asked, nodding once again at the carnage in the hall. She looked
down at all of the bodies again. From this angle, she finally realized the
brutality of the scene. Blood had splattered the fading green wallpaper where
severed arteries had sprayed out the last of their contents, a collection of
limbs were hanging from the cheap plastic chandelier, and internal organs that
she would have known the names of if she’d paid attention in high school had
been distributed untidily on top of a cabinet in the corner of the hall. But
still none of it fazed her.
“No,” she
admitted. “I suppose not.” With a tremendous amount of effort, she willed
herself off the ground with such force that her head went straight through the
ceiling and into a children’s bedroom on the next highest floor, wherein there
was another grisly scene involving at least five different men of varying size
and ethnicity.
Mike’s head
popped up next to hers, a boyish grin splashed on his face.
“It’s okay,” he
said reassuringly. “Some people never really get the hang of it.” His head
started to slowly drift away from her. “Come on. This way.” She followed him
slowly, not wanting to accidentally pass through Mike before knowing the
ramifications of ghost-on-ghost contact. He rose out of the floor just before
reaching a door and turned back to her with a smile.
“She’s here,” he
called out loud before disappearing through the door. She slowly rose upwards
as well, her feet drifting a few inches above the floorboards.
For some reason
she couldn’t understand, she took a deep breath. That would have been her
normal response when she was alive, but even now, just a few minutes after she
had lost the need for oxygen, she thought she was just being silly.
Old habits die
hard, she thought to herself, but not as hard as the poor bastards in the
hallway downstairs.
She drifted into
the next room, eager to start her afterlife.
