Ghosts and Ideas

Gwen Holmes is dead. Or is she?

1

  of Ghosts and Ideas

When people of death, they think of gone. Gone from this world, this life; gone from speech or though or action. In fact, the exact opposite is true. When people die, it is true they are dead. Their body is dead, every passing second their are rotting. There is no purpose behind their body now: no feeling or emotion or sentience. Their bodies are just flesh, dead flesh. They rot and rot and rot and soon they are just bones. But then their very bones decay until there is nothing but dust. 

Just dust. Thousands and thousands of thoughts and feelings and words and it the very, very end -- it all comes to dust.

Except that it doesn't. 

It's not gone.

People don't die. Their bodies die, but they, what makes them them, it doesn't die. 

All those wonderful, terrible people -- they live on.

I live on. You see, I'm dead. I died about four hours ago. It wasn't a very exciting death, nor a very unjust one, nor a terribly satisfying one. It was Tuesday. I was twenty-four years old, and I was late for work. My fiancée was supposed to wake me up, but he didn't (he never was much use). I was late for the big meeting with my agent and I had to run through the streets of New York like an idiot. I was late, and I was idiot. I turned into an alley. I though it was a short cut.

It wasn't.

There was a guy, maybe a two years older than I was, maybe two years younger. It was hard to tell, and my whole meeting happened very quickly. He wore ripped-up jeans and a dirty coat, and he wanted my money. I was stupid. 

I tried to fight back.

You know how in those pro-feminism books and TV shows about how you should never let a man suppress you and push you around? Fight back, they say. Fight back like it's all you got. They're right. It is all you got -- but it's not your individuality.  It's your life.

But then, they're also wrong. Sometimes you shouldn't fight back. Sometimes you should just run. Because when that punk saw I was the fighting type, he pulled out his security. A gun. I had no idea what type. I'm wasn't trained in that sort of thing. I was an artist, not some sort of policewoman. It was handgun. Once I saw that flash of metal all my free-spirit, all my equality spiels floated away. 

I was twenty-four (really still a kid) and I was alone in a New York alleyway with a man. And he had a gun. I pulled out my wallet and took off my earrings. I was in the middle of un-clipping my bracelet when I chanced a look up at the kid. He was just as scared as I was. He was shaking. He probably had never mugged someone before. Scared, and shaking -- it would make anyone clumsy. Just clumsy enough to accidently pull the trigger.

Bang.

For a kid, he had a pretty good aim. One shot through the head, and I was dead. Gone.

Except I wasn't. 

When I opened my eyes again, I wasn't in the alley anymore. 

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All I could see was white. It wasn't a perfect expanse of color, though; there were cracks. It was a ceiling. For a moment I thought it was my ceiling. I was still in bed; I was still alive. But of course, I wasn't. Though it is true people don't die, they certainly don't come back. Dead is dead. They're dead, but they're not. They're gone, but they're not. They're just somewhere else, like I was.

I turned my head, and saw I was at the end of a long hallway. I stood up, and nearly fell to floor again. Dizzy, I clutched at my head. Soon the feeling of unbalance stopped, and I took a better look around. It was old. The floorboards were worn and scratched and the floral wallpaper had rips in it. Behind the rips there was nothing -- just the dark. I looked behind me. Nothing but a wall. No turning back, it seemed. All there was to do was walk forward.

The hallway was long, and all I could ever see ahead of me was darkness. After a time, down the dark tunnel, I saw a thin pinprick of light, a glimmer of things to come. I know what you're thinking: Don't go towards the light.

You didn't expect me to believe that crap, did you?

I broke out into a run. The pinprick hovered before my eyes, jumping about my vision as I ran. I wasn't quite sure why I wanted to get to it. Maybe it was just instinct. Back when we were living in caves, the dark was synonymous with danger. Maybe I just didn't want to get stuck in the dark.

I was almost to the light when the floor began to rattle. Startled, I stopped running, my Converse making a screeching sound against the batter floor panels.  

Stop.

I wasn't sure whether I heard or thought the word. There was a breeze --  a breeze so strong I squeezed my eyes closed. When it stopped (the winds and the earthquake and the dread, the ever-persistent dread), I opened my eyes. 

A person ensnared in a black cloak stood between me and the light, his hood shading his features. 

"It can't be," I whispered, and then he looked up.

Bone -- dirty, white bone. There was no flesh on his face -- just  aged, dirty bone. He was a skeleton. A skeleton, with a black cloak, (a rumble of thunder and a flash of light and suddenly a scythe appeared in his skeleton hand) holding a scythe.

I had just met Death. 

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You're dead.

The words boomed inside my head, and the sound groaned and cracked like tumbling rocks. Despite his impressive persona, I was struck with the odd sensation of flippancy.

"Yeah, I missed that bit, thanks for clarifying," I drawled. "I think the more important question here is where the hell am I?"

Somehow the unmoving bones of his face manged to look mildly displeased. Yet he continued: You are in the transition to the Afterlife. 

"Transition? Like, I could still be saved? I'm not dead yet?" 

He shook his head. No. You've been dead the moment you woke up in the hallway. When I say transition, I mean evaluation. I am evaluating to see if you really ought to be in the Afterlife. 

"An evaluation? God, I'm dead, you'd think I'd be done with those." I narrowed my eyes at him.

There was a silence. He had no eyes, no mouth, no tilt of the head that could possibly allowed me to intrepret what he might've been thinking. It made me uncomfortable, and I turned my head away. There was nothing see there but the torn wallpaper and the darkness that lurked beneath. 

You are fit to proceed into the Afterlife. 

"Um, cool?" I moved towards the light behind him. He lifted the hand that wasn't holding his scythe and held  it in front of me. Halt. 

Before you can go, you must agree to the One Ultimate Rule of the Afterlife.

I folded my arms across my chest, ready for the worst.

Never --

his deep, dead, dark eyes stared at me and I found myself unable to look away.

-- under any circumstances --

Deeper and deeper and deeper. His eyes had no end -- just the deepest black I've ever seen.

-- never contact any person of the mortal world.

Like I said before, something strange happens when you die. You should be sad and guilty and angry, but you're not. You're just...you. Maybe it was just me being strange old me or maybe I was going through shock. But whatever it was, I wasn't the least bit intimidated of the scary, scary skeleton. In fact, I laughed in his face.

"What is so amusing, Ms. Holmes?"

I smiled quite brightly at him, and said: "I think you might want to invest in some breath mints. Just a tip, you know, from a friend." 

His skeleton face stared at me in what appeared to be shock. I ignored him, and proceeded towards the beautiful light.

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Behind the light, there was a city. It looked very much like New York, but I knew that it wasn't. It had tall buildings, skyscrapers, that went up and up and up and touched the perfectly blue sky. The bricks of the buildings very nearly glittered. The whole city, in fact, was too scenic. Cities on Earth were dirty and sleazy and a bit wonderful, and this city wasn't anything like that. The air was too clean and the buildings glittered like diamonds and the sky was just, too, impossibly blue. Unnaturally blue. To be honest, the whole thing sort of gave me the creeps. 

"Are you Ms. Holmes?"

I jumped a bit in surprise. I looked to the guy who was addressing me. He appeared to be some sort of guard, in what looked like an official uniform. He wore a serious, stern expression. 

"Erm, yes, that's me." I hated the fact that my voice was now wavering like crazy -- a sure sign it wouldn't be long now before I was going to cry. I was gonna cry like a freaking four year old who lost her teddy. 

"Welcome to the Afterlife. I will be escorting you to your apartment." He began to move down the street, and I was too unnerved to even think of a sarcastic remark. Wordlessly, I followed him. It wasn't long before he stopped in front of one of the glittering buildings. The guard lead me through the door. Inside was your typical hotel-like lobby. Regal carpet, classical music lilting from the speaker system, and a all-around posh attitude. I wanted to investigate more, but the guard was already moving again. 

He lead me through winding corridors. Door numbers flitted past -- numbers that went well into the thousands. How many people lived here? It didn't look like there were so many rooms from the outside. 

When he did stop, it was so abrupt that I nearly bumped into him. He motioned to the door. It was like any other hotel door I've ever seen. Probably wooden, but I could never be sure. But then upon closer inspection, I saw that it had no lock - electronic or otherwise.

"You may open it," he said when I hadn't done anything. I glanced at him, and then at the doorknob. There was only one option, it seemed.

I opened the door.

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"The Afterlife provides you with a place to stay. It is created by your own desires, and you may change it anytime you wish. For example, if you want blue curtains, just think of blue curtains and then you will have them at no charge. This same concept applies to everything in the Afterlife. You may even change your appearance, if you wish. Many girls your age, ahem, enhance their assets." The guard's tone lowered a bit. "Though you have no need for that, do you?"

Oh, brilliant. There were even perverts in the Afterlife. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised.

I looked away from him, and towards the room I had supposedly created myself. Not so surprisingly, I was exactly like the bedroom I had on Earth, the one I shared with my fiancée. I ventured into the room, each footstep a precise, measured action. It was almost as if I was afraid to tread too hard upon the familiar floorboards lest they suddenly dissolve and ruin the only reminder I had of my life back on Earth. One hand reached out, a pioneer, and touched the purple bedspread that had always rested on my bed since I was nineteen. It felt like every other time I had touched that bedspread (that tear-stained, celebrated bedspread). It was real.

The whole room was real. 

Except it wasn't.

I glanced over to my nightstand. My alarm clock was still there, but there was no time displayed: just little, fuzzy red lines. Next to that was a book. It was one of my fiancées, one of Derek's architecture books. I grabbed it and then flipped open to a random page. There were no words or pictures or anything printed on the textbook's sleek pages. There were only mere black, blurred smudges. An idea of a book. An idea of a bedroom.

Everything here was just the idea (the ghost) of something else. Not quite real. 

"Is this it?" I found myself saying. "We have to stay here, forever? We can never go back to the mortal world? Never, ever Again?" I thought of Death's One Ultimate Rule.

"Not at all, Ms. Holmes. Ghosts like yourself are free to visit the mortal world." Ghosts like me. That single word made me to want to laugh and cry. I would have never believed ghosts to be real if I hadn't been one myself. I had better start thinking of myself as a ghost from now on. "Of course," the guard continued, "You would need to go through the Security if you wanted to go Out There.  The Security is -- of course, a very official business. Imagine it to be like...like, airport security!" He nodded happily in agreement with his metaphor. "Is there anything else, Ms. Holmes?

"Yeah, actually. Take me to this 'Security' place." I couldn't just let go. I couldn't just let my whole life just slip through my fingers. Derek, my mum, my job -- everything. I was dead. The news seemed fresh upon my ears. I didn't want to be. I had a life back on earth -- a wonderful life. I was successful artist and I had a wedding and I had a family who, though sometimes distant, loved me.  How could I let all of that go for blue curtains and a smaller waist size?

I had to go back.

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 The Security was a polished, gleaming white building occupied by workers with sleek haircuts and even sleeker attitudes. I trudged up to the front desk, feeling much like a bull in a china shop. One of the many receptionists greeted me with a wide grin. "Hello there, Ms. Holmes. Have you decided to take a visit into the mortal world?" 

I shuffled my feet. "Yeah."

Her smile did not falter. "Fantastic! All you need to do is sign yourself into the ledger." One petite hand motioned to the open book in front of me. I picked up the complimentary pen and signed my name. The receptionist continued to smile brightly at me. The whole effect of the white office and the overly cheerful workers stirred up eerie memories of the orthodontist's office when I was in junior high. 

"Thank you, Ms. Holmes. Now, we do need to remind you of our Lord and Master's One Ultimate Rule." I could only assume our Lord and Master was Death himself. "It would be in your very best interest to not contact any mortal being while Out There."

I narrowed my eyes at her in a sort of mocking inquisitiveness. "My best interest, you say?"

If it might've been possible, her smile turned even brighter. "Oh yes, Ms. Holmes. As in the words of our Lord and Master, we do have much more, ah, unpleasant places we could send you to. That is, of course, if you did disobey the One Ultimate Rule of the Afterlife."

Ooh. Nothing like a bit of blackmail to help you feel welcome. I smiled.

"Now, here is your Teleport Device," the receptionist went on, smoothly glassing over the possible unease of the conversation. She handed a round, metal disc that was secured to a chain over the counter. "The Device lets you travel anywhere on Earth. To use it, you only need to think of the place you wish to be and then press firmly upon the disc. The Device also allows for a certain amount of time travel -- say, two or so weeks in both the future and the past."

An idea struck me. "You mean...I could go to my funeral or something?"

"Exactly!" she chirped. "Many ghosts choose to see their own funerals. A bit of foreclosure, you know."

"Quite."

I picked up the Device from the polished desk, and cautiously placed it around my neck. The receptionist nodded in encouragement. Here goes nothing, I thought, and pressed down on the Device. Like melting chocolate, the Security office blurred and gave away to a whole new world.

Earth.