Just a Touch Dead Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events

  are entirely coincidental.

  JUST A TOUCH DEAD

  First edition. March 15, 2016.

  Copyright © 2016 Jordaina Sydney Robinson.

  Written by Jordaina Sydney Robinson.

  Edited by Sophie Playle

  “This is exactly what happens when you try to be a responsible adult.” I shook my head in disgust as I looked down at my body.

  My long, pillar-box-red hair fanned out around my head like a vibrant halo, my fringe artfully covering one eye. It looked great, really thick and shiny. Why couldn’t I get it to look like that normally? I looked closer. No, it wasn’t my hair, or it wasn’t just my hair, it was a rapidly spreading pool of blood from the back of my head colouring the pavement. Huh. But at least my white Christian Dior trouser suit was blood free. I’d have died if that’d had any bloodstains on it. Oh, wait.

  No, I couldn’t be dead. If I was dead I wouldn’t be floating around watching, I’d just be, well, dead. Right? And there was only really a smidgen of blood around my head. Barely an eggcupful. Or maybe a teacup. I crouched down to try to peer underneath my body. Okay, so it was more like a small bowlful, but my hair was helping it spread, that was why it looked worse. It must have been coming from my shoulder or something because if that much blood came from my head, I’d definitely be dead.

  I glanced across my body at the bus driver. “I don’t know what you’re so upset about, I’m the one who’s bleeding to death over here.”

  He was slouched on the road, his back against the front right tyre and his head in his hands, crying like a baby who’d just had their dummy confiscated by a mean nanny. I hated criers. I mean, for heaven’s sake, I was bleeding to death and I wasn’t crying about it. I looked down at my body again. Should I have been crying about it? I would be crying if that blood soaked into my suit. I loved that suit and blood never really came out.

  “Have you called an ambulance?” a girl, who was maybe early twenties at a push, with heavily applied makeup and bright red lips called to a suited and booted older businessman at the front of the quickly gathering crowd.

  “He just watched me get hit by a bus. Of course he’s called an ambulance, you idiot.” I waved to him. “You did, right?”

  He nodded back at the girl, who knelt beside my body and started doing chest compressions. With it being summer the girl had teamed the smallest pair of denim shorts with a white racerback vest, which she wore pulled up and knotted under her small bust to show off her very toned abs. That’s what happened in England on the three sunny days we got a year that we laughingly called summer: everyone wore the least amount of clothes possible.

  I watched her move, all elbows and bum in the air. It looked like she was doing a weird sort of push up on my chest. Admittedly, I’d only taken a short first aid course for my job as an event planner but I was fairly sure she was doing it wrong.

  “Er, aren’t you going to checking if I’m breathing first? Maybe take my pulse?” I asked as I watched her throw a smile over her shoulder. I searched over her shoulder to see who the smile was for, and then I realised people were videoing the scene. She wasn’t trying to save me. She was playing to the cameras.

  “Well, that’s just great. I’m in mortal peril and you’re angling for your fifteen minutes of fame.” I turned to the crowd. “Does anyone want to come and help her before she kills me? Is there a doctor here? Maybe a vet? I’d take an optician in a pinch.”

  I turned back to see the girl put her ear to my mouth, listening for breath. She tipped my head back and pursed her lips.

  “Don’t you do it. Don’t you smear that cheap-ass lipstick all over my face. That is Dior Lip Maximizer on my lips right there. Do you know how—” She put her mouth on my body’s mouth and I winced. “Ohhhh, you went and did it.” She must have been a sloppy kisser because her lipstick had marked at least a good centimetre around the outside of my lips. “Annnnnd now I look like a clown.”

  She did some more bum waggling then swooped down for another kiss.

  “Whoa, whoa, hold up there, missy. You’ve already messed up my makeup, last thing I need is for you to mess up my breathing.” I swiped my hand at her shoulder to knock her away and my hand went straight through her. She shivered, her mouth an inch from my body’s, and a brief ripple of nausea passed through me. I bent at the waist and took a few deep breaths. I did not want to vomit over my body. And who would vomit anyway? Would I vomit or would my body vomit? I was assuming this was just a temporary out-of-body experience since no brilliant white light had opened up for me, and I did not want to kill myself by choking on vomit.

  She had her face an inch from my body so I tried to push her away again but my hand plunged into her chest. “Well, that’s just perfect.” I sighed before the nausea rolled back through me.

  The girl shivered violently again and then scrambled back from my body with a squeal. By the time the urge to vomit had passed, I looked up to find her shaking her hands out at her sides and shrieking while doing a knee lift version of jogging in place. She emitted a high-pitched keening noise, almost like a dolphin, and pointed at my body. I heard the words “soul”, “violated” and I’m not sure but I think there was a “possessed” in the mix as well. It was hard to focus on the words with her ear-piercing pitch. The crowd just stared at her, my and my body’s fight for survival completely forgotten.

  A guy in his late twenties walked up beside me. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked, his mouth turned down at the corners as he looked at the girl.

  I spared him a glance. He was tall, slim and athletic. His blond hair was short on the back and sides but a little longer on top. He wore a slim-fit black suit with a narrow black tie. Not bad looking but not really my type.

  “Karma,” I said with a smile.

  “Ah, I’m a big fan of her work,” he said, and we watched the still screeching girl for a moment longer. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Yes,” I said. I lay down over my body so we occupied the same space, keeping my head just above the blood pool. “Whenever you’re ready. I need to wipe her cheap lipstick off my painstakingly applied Chanel foundation.”

  He frowned at me. “What are you doing?”

  “You’re sending me back, right? Back into my body.” I sat up and gestured to my body. “Obviously.”

  “Er. No.” He glanced at my body then back to me. He opened his mouth, frowned more deeply and then closed his mouth again. After checking something over his shoulder, he turned back to me. “We’re taking a time out. A day trip, if you will.”

  “Why do I need a time out?”

  “Your body’s trying to heal. If you jump back in now, you’ll be in agony and you won’t be able to jump back out. Give the doctors chance to pump your body full of drugs and pop back in then.”

  “Sooooooo, you’re, like, an angel?” I looked him over again. He certainly had the innocent face.

  He threw his head back and laughed. It was such a carefree sound, like tinkling bells and wind chimes, it brought a smile to my face. Definitely an angel.

  “Can I choose where we go?” I asked as I took his hand and he pulled me out of my body, so to speak.

  “Sure. Come on.” He jerked his head in the direction of an old-fashioned, red tourist bus parked in the middle of the road behind us, blocking the street. It was the kind with the swirly staircase at the back that led to the open-air top deck. It would’ve been lovely to take a ride on such a beautiful day but the sunshine seemed to shy away from it.

  I waved my hand at the bus and stepped back. “I’m not really a public transport kind of girl, but thanks. And, y’know …” I gestured to the bus m
y body lay in front of.

  “I thought we were taking a day trip?” he asked, matching me step for step as I backed up.

  “Well, now, you’re suddenly a little clingy. That’s not an attractive trait in a man, and I’m an engaged woman.” I held up my hand so he could see my ring. He didn’t need to know that I’d just found the scumbag who gave it to me in bed with another woman. Or that I was technically not engaged anymore.

  “We’re just on a schedule, that’s all.” He held up his hands and stopped matching my steps. “You’re not the only one coming on this day trip.”

  “Wait, we have to take other people?” I grimaced in disgust.

  He laughed again, just a light tinkle this time, and nodded. “I know, it sucks, right? But they’ll be in pain too if they try to climb back inside their bodies, so …” He jerked his head in the direction of the bus again.

  I eyed the bus and then him. Something funny was going on here. I’d heard of people seeing white tunnels of light or floating above their bodies in this type of near-death experience; I’d not heard of people taking day trips on a tourist bus. Unless they were memory wiped after and force-fed the white light rubbish. What if he memory wiped me and I couldn’t remember who I was? Or why I hated my ex-fiancé? Or that carbs were bad?

  “Y’know what?” I said as I backed up. “I think I’m good on my own. I’ll just give it a few hours and then hop back into my body. Thanks for the heads up though.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m off to get ice cream.” I figured since I wasn’t actually in my body, if I ate anything fattening I wouldn’t pay the calorie price. At least I hoped I wouldn’t.

  “I can’t let you do that,” he called after me.

  “I can’t let you stop me.” I held my hands out wide and shrugged, but when I turned to walk away he was already in front of me. I checked back over my shoulder to where he’d been standing. “How did you do that?”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “You can’t haunt people.”

  “Of course not. I’m not dead. But if I were, there are so many people I would haunt. My boss, for example, who just fired me because I had to slap some sanity back into a MOB. Or my fiancé, who I just found in bed with some trollop from his work, but” – I shrugged – “I’m an excellent grudge keeper, so they can wait until I die. I should have a much longer list by then.”

  He looked me over. “You’re a little slight to take on a mob, especially by slapping. Didn’t you have a pitchfork to hand? Everyone needs a pitchfork when tackling a mob. Was it emergency measures?”

  I frowned at him. “A pitchfork? What would I— No. Not a mob. A MOB. Mother of the bride. I’m an event planner.”

  “Don’t people plan their own weddings anymore?”

  “Not as well as I do. Anyway, that can all wait since” – I jerked my thumb over my shoulder and raised my voice so he could hear me over the approaching sirens – “I kinda just got hit by a bus, so I feel today should be about ice cream. Then again, I think most days should be about ice cream.”

  He nodded. “I feel the same about pastries so I’m sorry to do this to you.”

  Before I could even ask what he was sorry for, he had his hand on my shoulder and we were inside the sunlight-repellent tourist bus. The first thing I noticed was it was even gloomier inside than it had appeared from the street, and I hadn’t thought that was possible. The second was that the bus reeked of the sugary sweet smell of a bakery – guess he hadn’t been kidding about the pastries. The third, and most horrific, thing was that the bus was not only full, it was full of crying people.

  “No.” I knocked his hand off my shoulder. “Day trip or not, I refuse to be confined with these people.”

  “Imagine how I feel.” He grinned at me and moved back behind the wheel.

  He didn’t give me chance to find a seat or even something to hold onto. He revved the engine and we were off. I managed to grab hold of one of the rails in time before I went flying down the passageway. I monkeybarred along the aisle and to the front.

  “You’re not meant to be up here. It can distract the driver.” Still grinning, eyes on me, he spun the wheel to the right.

  I didn’t scream but that was only because if I opened my mouth I was going to vomit. I was not a good traveller on the best of days. When the bus straightened out and I could breathe again without fear of seeing my breakfast, I tapped the driver on the shoulder.

  “I’ve told you, you’re not meant to be up here. You could distract me.” He was still grinning as he jerked the wheel from left to right in such abrupt motions there was a moment I thought the bus was going to tip. I assumed he felt it too because he stopped playing.

  “You’re an idiot,” I said as I braced myself as best I could against the pole I was holding on to, and then reached down to engage the handbrake. The driver slammed on the brakes to aid the handbrake and the bus came to a screeching halt.

  He leaped out of his seat to face me, fury sparking in his dark eyes. “Do not ever mess with my bus. Now sit down.” He pointed to the back of the bus. “Go.”

  I folded my arms and stared back at him. “No.”

  “Sit down.” He didn’t growl exactly, but the menace in his tone came through loud and clear. And then his face changed. Or it didn’t change exactly, more like a shadow hovered over it. A shadow with reptilian eyes and short porcupine spines for a beard. I leaned in closer to get a better look. Obviously, bleeding out in the street had made me mad. Or hallucinate. Or just something. Maybe his soul was out of sync with his body somehow, being an angel. I was so trying that porcupine beard thing when I got back into my body – I would never need to slap a MOB again.

  I pointed to his jaw area. “Y’know, beard oil might help with that.”

  The reptilian eyes blinked at me then faded, leaving mildly confused human ones. “What’s your name?”

  I held out my hand. “I’m Bridget. Who are you?” I liked him. He was rude and, I had the impression, not a people person.

  “I’m Charon.” He looked at my hand as if he expected me to retract it. I didn’t. He frowned. “The ferryman of the dead.”

  “Yeah, I know who you are, but my Greek mythology is a little rusty. Who is your mum?”

  His frown intensified. “Why?”

  “Because you’ve left me standing here with my hand outstretched.” I waggled it for emphasis. “So either you’re impolite or your mother didn’t teach you any manners. Whichever, I think she and I need to have a conversation.”

  His frown morphed into a huge grin and he slapped his hand into mine, shaking it more vigorously than I thought necessary. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Bridget.”

  “I’d say the same but that kind of depends whether you lied to me about our day trip.” I threw a pointed glance over my shoulder at the sobbing passengers. “I get the sense you may have stretched the truth.”

  “Maybe a little,” he said and climbed back into his driving seat.

  “How much is ‘a little’? You’re just filling in for … Is there a Greek person who looks after the temporarily displaced people?”

  “People? You mean souls?”

  “No. I mean people.” I point-blank refused to think of myself as a soul. It was just far too weird. The sooner I was back in my body and this hallucination was over, the better. I’d decided it was a hallucination since the ancient Greek ferryman of the dead was driving a tourist bus around central London in a well-cut black suit. Realistically, what else could it be?

  Charon shook his head. “We don’t have a nanny for temporarily displaced souls. That’s why your soul is here with me.”

  “You have a nanny for permanently displaced souls?”

  Charon gave me a flat stare. “Yes. We call him Hades.”

  “Well, I walked right into that one,” I mumbled. All this talk of souls and Hades was just so very not how I’d expected my day to go.

  “But that’s not where I’m goi
ng, right?” I asked. “Because I’m not dead.”

  Charon shook his head, a small smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “You’re not going to meet Hades, no.”

  “Because I’m not dead,” I stressed the point.

  “As long as your heart’s beating, it’ll be fine.” He shrugged.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I have your word on that?”

  “As long as your body’s still alive, you’ll be able to climb back into it.” He crossed his heart and held up his hand.

  “Like Odysseus, right? You ferried him to the underworld and he still came back to the world of the living.”

  Charon rubbed his chin and laughed. “There’s a name I’ve not heard in an age. Let me tell you, the real story is nothing like the one you’ve heard. Damn media, always manipulating the facts.”

  “Homer was a reporter?”

  “Of sorts. Not in the way you’d understand it, but yeah.”

  “How about you put your foot down and get us to the beach? You can tell me all about it as we paddle in the sea and eat ice cream in the sunshine.”

  Charon paused as if he was considering it and then shook his head. “We have a few more people to pick up so that wouldn’t be very responsible of me.”

  “I was a responsible adult today and went to work when I wanted to go to the beach. Look how that turned out.”

  Charon laughed. It was such a carefree sound it felt out of place in such a grim environment. “I’ll meet you halfway.”

  “Halfway to the beach is still not at the beach,” I said, but he’d done that disappearing thing again before I’d finished.

  He reappeared in front of me with a healthy-sized tub of whipped ice cream covered in chocolate sprinkles, chopped nuts and raspberry sauce with a small yellow spoon sticking out of it. He handed it to me.

  “Halfway point?” he asked.

  I took it from him and clutched it close to my heart. “Final destination. I was only going to the beach for the ice cream.” I dug out the spoon and ate a mouthful.