Just a Touch Dead Read online

  “If you were only going for that then why wouldn’t you just get ice cream from near where you live?” he asked as he climbed back behind the wheel.

  “Everyone knows that ice cream consumed at the beach has no calories, but ice cream consumed on the sofa has twice as many.”

  He shook his head. “Women are so weird.”

  “Thank you for my ice cream,” I said, moving down the bus to find a seat. I wanted to be secure before he took off again and both my ice cream and I went flying.

  “Hey.” Charon called and pointed to the small baggage storage shelf. “You can sit there and talk to me.”

  “Thought I wasn’t supposed to distract you?”

  Charon’s attention flicked over my shoulder. “Do you really want to sit down there with them?”

  I glanced behind me at the crying passengers. “No, they might make my ice cream curdle.”

  He pointed to the baggage shelf again, waited until I was seated then took off at breakneck speed.

  “So are we just going to tour London while we wait for the drugs in my body to kick in?”

  He fixed his eyes on the road ahead. “Something like that.”

  “It’s not the same for them, right?” I pointed at the other passengers with my spoon. From my perspective, being temporarily separated from your body was like a vacation from yourself. Crying about it seemed a little whiney to me.

  “No, they’re dead.” Charon didn’t check over his shoulder; he continued to stare at the road ahead.

  “And you’re absolutely sure I’m not dead?” I asked, scooping up some more ice cream. “Because I don’t feel dead.”

  Charon threw a glance my way. “What does being dead feel like?”

  I shrugged. “When I die, I’ll let you know. You’ll pick me up, right? I bet you don’t remember me.”

  Charon grinned at me. “I’ll definitely remember you.”

  I nodded in agreement. “Yeah, you will. I’m awesome like that.”

  ∞

  Some time later all forty-three of the passengers and I were sitting at desks in a windowless room staring at the sunshine-yellow walls. The desks made the shape of a double horseshoe, inner and outer half circles. Our backs were to the door. We were awaiting the return of someone, anyone, to tell us what was going on.

  When the bus had been full to bursting with crying people, Charon had driven us to an underground car park and shooed us towards a short, dark-haired man in his fifties slapping his hand on a clipboard and calling us all to him. The man’s beige chinos, blue polo shirt and disturbingly wide smile gave the impression of a holiday rep. Obviously when I saw that, I stepped back onto the bus.

  Despite peppering Charon with my extremely long list of questions, he told me nothing. Only that I had to go to a “holding zone” and not to worry too much about what they said there, just to fill out the forms they gave me and to keep my head down until I got to the end of the process. Then I could ask my questions. Like, for example, how any of this was going to help me get back to my body.

  The holiday rep had guided us across the car park, through a set of grass-green double doors into a mint-green stairwell, up three flights of stairs and along several different beige corridors before we finally reached the yellow room. Then he’d given us several forms to fill out, each stacked a centimetre thick, and said he’d be back when we were finished. I didn’t know how he’d know when we were finished, because he hadn’t checked on us since. And that was nearly fourteen hours ago, according to the clock on the wall. Though if I’d just given a group of people an inch and a half of paperwork, I’d probably be making myself scarce too.

  “Are we all done?” The perky holiday rep bounded in and all the way to the front of the two horseshoes of desks.

  “Yes. We were done over four hours ago.” I didn’t even try to keep the irritation out of my tone. I needed to get back to my body. What if some random homeless-soul-person jumped in it? I mean, I didn’t doubt Charon was very good at his job, but surely he missed a dead-soul-person every now and again. Human error and all. And I was hot. Not even getting hit by a bus had changed that. What if an old woman – or worse, old man – jumped inside me? How would I get them out?

  The rep clapped his hand against his clipboard and pointed to me. “Fab. You should have had plenty of time to check you’d filled everything out correctly.”

  “Yes. We were done with that three hours ago,” I said.

  “Fab. I expect these to be perfect then.” He winked at me, that disturbingly wide smile still in place. He just wasn’t getting my digs and that only annoyed me more. “Right. Everyone on their feet, and bring your forms over here, please.” He moved to the left and pulled down a metal door to a chute.

  I knew it was a chute because directly after he’d left the room I’d checked for a way out. He’d locked us in, so the only other option was the metal door to the chute. I’d seriously considered it, except I couldn’t see what was at the end of it. Frying pan versus the fire, and all. I know Charon had said to go with the process, but right now I couldn’t see how filling out forms about my childhood memories or giving detailed accounts of my most memorable experiences for each year of my life was going to help me get back to my body. Maybe it was just to keep us occupied while our bodies had time to fully metabolise the pain drugs. I looked around the room. But hadn’t he said all these people were all dead? What was the point in them killing time?

  Everyone lined up and slid their forms down the metal chute. When it was my turn, I peered down it. I still couldn’t see where it went.

  “Do you have anything I could bind them together with?” I asked.

  He waved his hand. “Don’t worry about that. Just throw them in.”

  “I do worry about that. The forms will separate as they slide down and probably get mixed up with everyone else’s at the bottom.”

  He waved his hand again. “Don’t worry about that. Just throw them in.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Where does this chute go?”

  He shrugged, still smiling. “Don’t know. Now just throw them in.”

  “How do you not know where this chute goes?”

  “That’s not my department.”

  “What’s not your department?”

  “The bottom of the chute.”

  “What’s your department?”

  “The top of the chute.”

  I stared at him. “What is the purpose of these forms?”

  “That’s not my department.”

  “But you asked us to fill them out. You gave them to us.” It was all I could do to not jab my finger into his chest.

  “Yes, handing them out is my department. The rationale behind it isn’t though.”

  I stared at him. If I was still somehow linked to my body, which I was assuming I had to be, then maybe this was all a very vivid coma dream and whatever medication they were pumping me full of was simply not agreeing with me. Yes. That had to be it. This was an incredibly real coma dream. What else would explain Charon, the ferryman of death, not only being real but driving a tourist bus? Maybe he was a manifestation of my subconscious just telling me to ride out this dodgy batch of morphine and wait for the good stuff to kick in.

  Still, all that form filling had felt unpleasantly real. I glanced around the room at the zombies who were just tossing away ten hours of form filling down a chute to who knew where. Morphine dream or not, I couldn’t just let that go.

  “Does no one have a problem with this but me?”

  A long silence.

  “Guess not,” said the holiday rep. He grabbed my forms and tossed them down the chute, not even trying to keep them together. I stared after them in horror. “Next?” he called, politely waiting for me to move.

  I returned to my seat and watched as everyone else simply tossed their forms into the chute. No questions. No complaints. It was weirdly like watching some sort of bureaucratic sacrifice. When it was done, the holiday rep closed the chute and clapped ag
ainst his clipboard.

  “Fab. Don’t you all feel better now?” No one responded. “Fab. My name is Sean and I’ll be your Afterlife Induction Officer—”

  “Hold up.” I held my hand as if to physically stop him continuing. “You’re a what?”

  He grinned and wagged his finger at me. “Shush.”

  I stared at him. “Did you just shush me?”

  “Shush.” He wagged his finger at me again, still grinning.

  I opened my mouth but nothing came out. What did you say when another adult “shushed” you? I glanced around the room to gauge everyone else’s reaction to this. The main expression on show was despondence. There were a few distraughts that were still choking back their tears, but ultimately no one looked to be in the questioning mood.

  Okay, so Charon, or my subconscious-self, had told me to get through the process and then everything would be okay. I closed my mouth with a click. The fewer questions I asked, the quicker I’d be through this and back with my body. Then I could put this ridiculous nightmare behind me and get a facial. That thought stopped me cold. A facial. My face had been undamaged, but I must have cut the back of my head when I landed. What if they shaved my head to stitch it up? They’d just work around my hair, surely? A cold shiver trickled down my spine. They were shaving part of my hair off right at that moment. I knew it. I knew they were. I looked terrible with short hair. Maybe it would just be a small patch I could cover. I felt the back of my head. All my hair was there. But then, I didn’t have any cuts on me either, so who knew what those careless doctors were doing to my beautiful hair at this precise moment.

  “Right.” Sean clapped his hand against the clipboard again. “Let’s get to the fun stuff. Now, I don’t know if this will come as a shock to you buuuuuuut …” – he stretched the word out and bent forward as he looked around the room – “… you’re all dead. Yaaaaay.” He waved his hands above his head, still holding the clipboard, and did what I can only assume he thought was a happy dance at this revelation. “Isn’t that just fab?”

  “Er, yeah, some of us aren’t. Some of us still have bodies to get back to, so do you think you could hurry this along?” I know Charon, or my subconscious, had said to keep my head down, but this guy was annoying the little life I had left out of me.

  Sean stared at me blankly for a long moment then burst out laughing. It sounded like a choking dog. “I can see I’m going to have to watch you.”

  Huh. Okay. Time to keep my mouth shut then. I rested my elbow on the desk and supported my head on my hand, slouching in temporary defeat.

  “There are so many important things we need to get through to turn you dead slugs into dead butterflies—”

  “Caterpillars,” I corrected without evening meaning to. I wasn’t touching the whole dead issue. I just didn’t have the energy.

  Sean leaned forwards again and cooed at me as if he were talking to a baby. “What was that, you little mumbler?”

  I didn’t even bother raising my head from my hand. “Caterpillars turn into butterflies. Slugs are always slugs.”

  “Well, alright then, Little Miss Smarty-pants.” There was no malice or attitude in his voice. “We need to turn you dead caterpillars into dead butterflies before we can release you into the wild. To kick off—”

  “What exactly is ‘the wild’? Is that, like, the real world?” I glanced around again to see if anyone else was relieved by that, but no one else appeared to be mentally present in the room, and I was including Sean in that. And I had no idea why I expected him to have answers. Induction leaders never had answers in life, so why would that be any different in death? Or temporary out of body experiences. Or drug induced coma dreams. Or whatever it was I was having.

  “Aren’t you just full of questions?”

  I gave him a flat stare. “Yes.”

  “How about you keep them until question time?” he asked, still smiling, still happy. There was something very wrong with him. He walked around the outer horseshoe, handed me a pencil and unclipped a sheet of paper. He looked me over, frowned, then unclipped two more sheets and handed those to me as well. “Write them all down, and that way you won’t forget anything.”

  I accepted the paper with a thank you and the manners my mother had taught me, and he walked back to the front of the class.

  “So, to kick off, does anyone have any questions?”

  I looked up from my sheets of paper to see his expectant expression as he gazed from despondent face to apathetic face to downright zombie face.

  I sat up in my chair. “I have a question, but I thought you said it wasn’t question time yet.”

  “It wasn’t when you interrupted, but it is now.”

  I frowned at him. “So, because I asked you a question before you asked if we had any questions, you wanted me to write it down so I wouldn’t forget it while you walked back to the front to ask if we had any questions?” I must have this wrong. I’d either zoned out and missed a chunk of time, or it was a really bad batch of morphine the doctors were pumping into my body.

  “That’s right. Was that your question?”

  I lifted my hands up in a helpless gesture and looked around the room. Was anyone else hearing this? Maybe the rest of them were all non-compos mentis because they were all dead. “You know that wasn’t my question.”

  He grimaced but somehow still managed to keep his smile in place. “I don’t know. That sounded like a question to me.”

  I stared at him. “Are you serious right now?”

  He clapped his hand against the clipboard and pointed to me. “Whoop! There’s another one.” He held up his hands and made a patting motion as if he was trying to calm the distinctly disinterested room down. “And I should have said earlier, my little chickens, you only get one question per question section.”

  “Then why did you give me so much paper?” I waved it at him.

  He pointed to the paper in my hand and stage whispered, “How about you write that down and keep it for the next question section?”

  “How about you just answer my initial question?”

  He pointed to the paper again, still smiling. “And keep that one for the time after. Now …”

  I turned to the vacant-looking lady to my right while Sean flipped through the sheets on his clipboard. “Excuse me, do you mind if I have your question?”

  She turned to me, her eyes focused on mine but her gaze vacant. “I was just in the supermarket. I had fish fingers in the trolley. They’ll have defrosted by now.”

  Uh-huh.

  I turned back to Sean and waved at him to get his attention. “Excuse me? Hi? This lady said I could have her question.”

  Sean stared at me, eyes wide in horror. “You can’t do that. You can’t talk to each other,” he hissed, checking over both shoulders as if he expected someone to appear behind him.

  “What? Why not?” This was so far past ridiculous it was, well, ridiculous.

  “You just can’t.” He leaned forward, still holding the clipboard but with his hands extended to me palms up, sort of flapping them up and down.

  I reclined in my chair and folded my arms. “Well, I guess you should’ve told us that before you locked us in here half a day ago, because we’ve been having a great chinwag.” We hadn’t. No one had spoken. I was just baiting him because I was a bad person and he was annoying me.

  Sean gasped and covered his mouth with his hand. Then he covered his mouth and his hand with the clipboard for a double whammy. Then he fainted. No one else in the room even noticed.

  I stared at the empty space. “Well, that’s just great.” I stood up and turned to the door behind me and tried the handle. It was locked. I banged on it. “Hey? Hello? Someone’s fainted in here. Can we have some help, please?” Nothing. “Or maybe just some sort of acknowledgement someone is out there?” Nothing. “How about one tap for ‘hello’ and two taps for ‘you have pretty eyes’?” Nothing.

  Turning back to the room, I blew out a breath and adjusted my a
lready perfect fringe. I walked around the side of the outer horseshoe to the front and looked down at Sean. I wasn’t all that good with sick people, or whiny people, or happy people. Actually, considering I was an event planner, which meant dealing with people all day every day, I wasn’t all that good with people in general. That’s how I came to slap the hysterical MOB and be fired.

  “Hey, does anyone know what to do?” I asked the room as I knelt down over him. I hadn’t really paid all that much attention at that first aid course I’d attended.

  “About what?” a male voice asked.

  I scanned the room to see who’d spoken, but no one was looking at me. Since they’d not even realised there was an unconscious man on the floor, banking on them for help was probably not the smartest idea. I leaned over Sean to check he was still breathing and had a flashback of the terrible CPR the girl had attempted on me and then her screeching. The thought made me smile. That was the moment Sean chose to wake up.

  “What are you doing?” he shrieked. “Why are you hovering over my unconscious body grinning like that?”

  “I’m sorry. This isn’t the question part of our session.” I pointed to his clipboard. “How about you write them down so you don’t forget?”

  He scrambled back from me and pushed to his feet, using the wall for balance.

  “If you could return to your seat now.” Sean attempted a smile, but it wasn’t anything like the same as before his fainting spell. He waited until I returned to my seat. “To continue. You all will be assigned roles in your new lives. Okay. And that concludes your induction. Yay. Well done, everyone.” He clapped his hand on his clipboard, giving us a shaky round of applause. “Everyone up, and let me take you to processing.”

  “Whoa, whoa.” I waved my hand at him. “That’s not an induction. That was two sentences: ‘you’re dead’ and ‘you’ll be assigned a role’. What does that even mean? What role? Who’s going to assign it?” I purposely closed my mouth and shook my head to clear it of questions that were irrelevant to my current situation and focused on things I needed to know. I just hated not having all the information. “What happens if you’re not dead? I don’t want to get overlooked and stuck here. I have a party on Saturday. I’ve just bought a new dress.”