Afterlife

Gene likes being dead. It’s not as though living was bad, it’s just the afterlife was way better. Gone were the class systems and tyrannical governments that so plagued society back in the mortal realm. Here, everything was as it should be. The flowers bloomed year round and there was always food on the table.

When he was alive, Gene had been deathly poor and helpless, picking at the scraps of others and condemned to walk forever on his knees. The middle class passerbys fixed their eyes on the horizon while his gaze never strayed from their feet. Blue converse, black kitten heels, wild pink cowboy boots. He stared at the pumps and dress shoes and flats and Vans and wondered what it would be like to wear something besides dirt on his scrawny feet.

But here Gene had a house all his own with wide windows and a glittering lawn. The neighbors knew nothing of his past, didn’t even ask what life had been like for him. Instead, they smiled and greeted him as he stood with his feet buried in the grass and checking the mail every morning. They invited him over for pot roast and Korean delicacies he had never heard of. And when he went home at night, he found a little black puppy bouncing in the doorway and a warm sweater without any holes.

Life was perfect, or, rather, death was perfect. So, of course, things could only get worse. People started to disappear, vanishing into the shadows, sinking through the sidewalk, dissolving in broad daylight. With no time constructs here, it was difficult to tell how long Gene had been there when the disappearances started to occur, but one thing was for sure; he didn’t want to leave.

So when his lovely neighbors evaporated, Gene took precautions. He made his house a fortress, stringing barbed wire along the fence, building up the walls, and barricading the doors. Overnight his happy home had turned into the ultimate military base, far better than anything on Earth.

He huddled for days in his bedroom with his dog, determined to hang on to death. But he started to feel the life creeping back into him. The air conditioning was never at the right temperature any more. The food tasted like dust in his mouth. The blankets on his bed were too scratchy.

Then he started to disappear. It was slow and terrifying. It was the crawl of something invisible sliding over his feet and slowly up towards his head. He looked in the mirror and saw just the bare essence of himself. He was wispy like thin clouds and strands of twirled cotton. He begged, pleaded, fought for death, but no one heard and no one cared. He cried in his agony and clutched his little puppy, shaking as life took him.

When he woke up he was alive, and there was nothing he could do about it.