Different Kinds of Dead

Is that the phone?

 

Brrrrrrrriiiiing.

My eyes snapped open as the phone, not a foot and a half from my head, rang with the explosive intensity of a low-grade nuclear weapon. A moment ago, I nestled comfortably in the warm oblivion of sleep. Now, I lived beneath the bloody bells of Notre Dame.

            Sleep-dazed and numb from the chemical stew that flooded my dream-riddled mind, I swung an arm toward the hated form of my alarm clock, rolling onto my side in the process. The smug blue digital display didn’t read seven a.m. Instead, 3:33 stabbed at my night-sensitive eyes like little azure needles.

Brrrrrrrriiiiing.

            With renewed urgency the phone rang, the metallic clamor of the digital facsimile of bells set my teeth on edge. It was far too early to be getting calls. My hand walked blindly away from the alarm clock and toward the telephone receiver. I lifted it from the cradle and collapsed onto my back, sprawling against the still-warm sheets and drawing the earpiece against my aching skull.

 In my best early morning rasp, I answered. “Hello?”

“Good morning, Alex.” The voice was friendly enough, but a wave of static broke apart the amiability of my name, making it come out in a harsh buzz. I didn’t have a clue who was on the other line, but they obviously knew me. I decided to play it cool. I’d figure it out in a minute.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Actually, not really.” Definitely a male voice, a light, lilting baritone. That is, beneath the buzzing hiss of interference, of course.

“It’s three o’clock in the morning, man.”

“Is it really?”

“It is, really. What the hell do you need?”

There was a pause on the line, a heartbeat in which the disembodied voice seemed to contemplate. In a whisper like crumpling paper beset by honey-bees, the voice asked simply, “Do you know who this is?”

Damn. I’d been called on it.

“No. Who is this?”

“This is William calling, Alex.”

Something cold and sharp crawled along the slender avenues of my central nervous system, winding its way between axons, dendrites, and naked nerve endings. I ran my tongue over my lips to wet them, but found it had gone dry too. My jaw worked furiously to expel my cracked reply.

“That’s not funny.”

“I know.”

“You can’t be William.”

“Why not?”

“Because William is dead. I helped carry his coffin!”

It seemed then that the line went slack for a moment, even the interference fading out like the last embers of a starving fire. Then the voice on the other end heaved a small sigh.

With calm, even tones, William began to speak. For fifteen minutes, he recalled things that only he would know: The name of his first girlfriend at the tender age of twelve, the color of his mother’s hair, my sister’s middle name, our high-school football team’s record for our senior year, the name of the mediocre garage band we had started together, even a detailed retelling of the first time we had gotten high in his father’s garage, right down to the spilled bong-water that had gotten us busted. It was William. There could be no doubt.

Clutching the sheets closer against the chill that crept through my blood like a legion of icy army ants, I sat up and put my back firmly against my headboard. “Alright, you’re William. Tell me how.”

“I called.” He paused a moment, just long enough for me to flex my jaw for a disbelieving retort. “The phone is a tool, one that takes signals, processes them, and unscrambles the code into something that approximates human speech. It was just a matter of figuring out what signal was necessary.”

The buzz was back, and getting louder. It was like a thousand angry wasps through a bullhorn by the end, a hellish, grating approximation of human speech.

“Alright, Will. Why? Why call me? Your mother I could understand. She took your death the hardest. Your ex, maybe? I mean, she was sort of responsible. Hell, you and I weren’t even best friends. Close sure—“

“Because I have to tell you something.” The buzz subsided until it was just like the old days; William calling his buddy to come over for poker or to get a beer. “I want to tell you that it’s beautiful.”

I felt my brow furrow. “What?”

For a moment, the question hung, unanswered in the soft velvet black of the bedroom. Hours ticked by, or perhaps minutes, or seconds.

“Death” The buzz crept up behind the word, the faint clicking of a million tiny razor-blade mandibles. “It’s beautiful, Alex.”

 “William—“

“No, Alex. Hear me out.” The voice on the other end drew a breath. Do the dead breathe? “Ever since the rope went taut, as soon as the world began to melt away, I knew killing myself was the best decision I ever made. I didn’t have to think about grades, or homework, or the future, or my cheating girlfriend, or my alcoholic father—“

“William—“

“No, damn it. Let me finish. I just felt the black close in.” The buzz began to distort the words so heavily that it sounded like a warped cassette, some careless thumbprint on the tape which broke the words of my dead friend into chilled daggers. “I’ve been watching, Alex. Ever since the funeral.”

“William, you’re scaring me.”

The curtains that covered the window billowed ominously, a night breeze turning the blue fabric into grasping claws which cast their gnarled shadows on the wall in the half-light of the alarm clock.

“I’ve seen how hard it is for you. You lost your scholarship…slacked off a little too hard in economics, huh? You really needed that money, didn’t you?”

“I got a job. No big deal.”

“A dead end job that you hate. You get up every day knowing that no matter how much you put aside, it’ll never be enough. And your love life?”

“Gloria and I split under good terms.” Damn him, he thrust his fingers into the bitter little wounds that dotted my heart.

“Good terms for who? She’s dating again, you know. Has she told you that? No, of course not. Three months with a guy named Tom. She’ll marry him in two more. Three kids. Soooo happy.” It couldn’t be William on the other end of the line. The hissing buzz became a metallic grate, a trash compactor made of nightmares.

“How? You don’t know that! You can’t know that!”

“Time is fluid here. I see how the pattern goes now that I’m not part of it anymore. You can see it too. It can be just like old times. The two of us! Together again. God, you can’t even imagine how beautiful it is. No pain, no fear, no hate.” All of a sudden the grate shifted back into the familiar baritone. “You use manual razors, right?”

I slammed the phone onto the cradle, swung my feet out of bed, stood, and tore the phone out of the wall. With a bestial howl, something boiled from the animal core of my being, the basic survival instinct; I grabbed the entire phone and dashed it against the wall, shattering it into twisted plastic shards and tangled wire.

Wracking sobs tore at my lungs as I sank down beside my bed, my chest heaving. I cradled my head in my hands and tried with all my might to calm my breathing, to stop the rush of adrenaline through my veins, to slow the beating of my pulse as it hammered in my chest, my throat, my temples.

“I don’t want to die, Will.” My whisper flowed between my lips without conscious thought, a creature with a mind of its own, bent on escape. “I don’t.”

“There are different kinds of dead, Alex. There are people who feed the worms, sure. Others just shamble on, husks and shells with no meat in the middle. Some people just don’t have the courage to accept that their life is already over.”

The disembodied voice was so close, just behind me. Had he gotten in through the window? Was he perched on my bed like a bird of prey? Did he have my razor in one cruel hand? I heaved a sigh, or perhaps a final prayer, and decided that, in the end, it didn’t matter.

And you will too.

See, William was right. When the razor-blade bit into my skin, reality sank away, blurring out like an out-of-focus movie on an old school projector. What was left was the warm oblivion of…well, you’ll see. You see, I have to tell you something.

I think I hear the phone ringing. You had better answer it. It could be important.

Reviews

[Amanda Knotts]

wow..spooky..I hope I can sleep tonight thanks! anyways you acheived the eeriness well! Good Job I approve! I want to know how he crossed over?: The story it incredible okay I think I have said that like 5 times in 5 different ways now.
Your discriptions are very vivid and inspiring, This is something I am working on right now. I actually felt cold a couple of times as I read this.

*smiles* Kudos