Your Afterlife Explained

Authors Note:

I apologise, this isn't a finished story but I think it has a lot of potential. Think it's still worth a read :)

Your Afterlife Explained

Bernie sat down for a meeting set up by his ghost. it was a special meeting.  They were to discuss the celebratory meal, their  ‘Melt’ was 20 years ago today.  Not everyone celebrated their Melts but Bernie was sentimental.  His ghost, Evie, could never find it in her to care. It was hard for her to feel anything being dead. 

Ghosts started appearing over 100 years ago, there was never any scientific explanation as to why but most assumed that the afterlife was blocked up.  ‘Cogged up like a drain’ Evie would say, ‘it just needs someone to put down the bleach, or whatever the equivalent’ she’d snap.  She always got a little touchie when people pushed her on it.  ‘Just because I’m dead, doesn’t mean I know the meaning of life.’ She’d say.   But she did wish she knew, ‘Even if I did’ she thought, I wouldn’t say a thing!’. 

‘So what are we going to do then my dear?’ Bernie looked at Evie and gave her a warm smile.

‘Oh whatever you breathers do to celebrate these things. Eat a cake for all I care.’

‘That’s not the spirit dear, how about we go and see the dales? You like the dales don’t you?’

‘Right now Bernie, I don’t particularly like any of it,’
‘Well that’s just not the spirit is it, what in Heavens as gotten into you lately? You just aren’t a sport for anything.’
Evie had had a strenuous time being dead.  It had been 20 years since she lost her own life, and the longer she was dead the less she remembered what it was to feel alive.  Everything around her felt so foreign, unfamiliar.

‘Oh I’m just out of sorts, it takes it’s toll this ghost business. It’s nothing like the stories you get told.’
‘But that’s why we Melt dear, so you can cling on to life.’
‘So you say, but is that really the best thing for us? Shouldn’t we be allowed to just be alone? I never asked to Melt with you, it was all prearranged by my father.  On my death bed no less!’
‘Well I for one don’t regret a thing! You’re one of the best things to happen to me, and you know it.’
‘You’re sweet. You are.  But you need to understand I’m unhappy, you can tell that much can’t you?’
‘I guess I can.’ Bernie looked at Evie, the ectoplasm swirling graciously before him.
Bernie and Evie never did celebrate their 20 years of Melt, instead they performed a ritual to separate from each other.  It was sudden and abrupt and ‘an awful fuss’, Evie said. Bernie, being too kind to argue graciously watched as Evie got on with her Afterlife, and he, being as old as he was, with no real romantic relationships in his life other than Evie walked to the basement and hugged his neck around a noose.

Bernie woke up hours later.  His ghost dropped beneath the noose and softly he fell, stopping moments before the floor. He looked at his body, bruising around the neck and tears from his eyes. He stared at his own corpse, waiting to feel something, but nothing.
‘Well this is rather odd.’ He thought to himself.  He expected more regret, more sadness. 
Bernie left the house he had lived in for over twenty years.  He suddenly had no attachment to it.  And like gears working in his brain he thought about Evie. ‘Poor woman, stuck in this cluttered mess with me all that time.  Glad she got out.  Good for her.’

As Bernie walked away, pondering whether to abandon his home, he looked at his picket fence, the same fence he had painted every summer for the past ten summers, he thought to himself, ‘well I’m not haunting this.  I’ll leave the painting to someone else thank you very much indeed.’  And strode triumphantly out to begin anew as his foot landed on a pamphlet, articulately placed.

COPING WITHOUT EMOTIONS: YOUR AFTERLIFE EXPLAINED

‘A little on the nose.’  Bernie thought, but nevertheless read through it.  It reminded him of an information pamphlet at a jobs fair.

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“How did I die?”

Fifty percent of all deaths are sudden. But don’t fear, the Institute of the Afterlife has detailed records on all deaths, no matter how small or how sudden.

“I can’t feel a thing.”

This will take an adjustment period, getting used to the numb sensation you now feel is why many turn to Melting. [See: pg 3]

“Where do I go?”

Afterlife is exactly what it sounds like. It’s Life after Life.  You can do whatever you feel, whenever you feel. But first, and when you feel ready, take your new ghost presence to your nearest Poltergeist Depository (PD). [As shown on Map]
This will help you on your way into your new Life, after Life.

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Bernie stepped into the streetlights, the amber lights flooded down on him washing away what remained of his existence.  He was ready to start again.  The blackness between the bulbs caught the shadows of other wondering souls, figures standing tall, and some moving, and one that stood out more than most.

‘Step right up, you sir, you’re requisite phantom, an apparition of good taste.  Newly deceased? Mourn no more, for Costellos Transparent Elixir will see you right. No need to Melt when you’ve got Costello in your veins! What do you say sir? Ah say no more. You’re a sturdy gentlemen, you won’t take nothing from a hoodlum like me will ya? Well how about you take this, free sample. My Infamous CTE, remember that’s Costellos Transparent Elixir.  Tell your friends, and come back for more. Melt No More with Costellos! Good day to you sir, good day!’
The figure, Costello, his arms moved like shadows, there was a lack of physics with his movements that made one feel like they were blinking too often.  Bernie took hold of the Elixir and stored it into his jacket’s inside pocket between his waistcoat.  He looked at that man with wariness.
‘Well I guess I should say thank you very much. I’m sure it will come in handy.’
‘That it will, sir.”
Bernie watched as the figure now known as Costello moved back into the shadows, Bernie sensed something was not quite right about that ghost, maybe it was in his grimace.  That way he held his smile too long or his slender thin and tall figure whose limbs moved too loosely.  He watched Costello slink into the shadows and noticed how the whites in his striped grey and white jacket made him look like a pair of curtain blinds.

‘How queer.’  Bernie thought as Costello waved him on, ‘how very queer.’

Evie was at a lost.  The last time she had her independence was 20 years ago when she was alive.  It made matters very complicated for her.  Having performed their Melt straight from death the usual procedures with looked over, which left Evie in a predicament she had not anticipated.  She had nowhere to go, and the world seemed different to what it was.  Without a Melt the emotional attachment of the world seemed to give it its colour.  Evie watched as the colours bled before her, bright reds becoming faded pinks, into solemn greys.    ‘Well this is just not what I was expecting at all. Where’s the help.’  A ghost, crooked and worn, walks by Evie, he looks at her, giving her a dead-eye.

‘You there.’ Evie triumphantly shouts.  ‘Why on earth is this place always so dull and grey.’
‘I think you’ll find m’am, that it’s white as day. There’s not a thing around these parts but you or I.  Mind you, it’s been a while since I’ve connected to anyone. See you though don’t I? Wonder why that is.’  Evie, caught of guard and not wanting to seem uninformed let the crooked ghost continue. Any information he can provide now will prove valuable. 
‘That’s what happens now isn’t it?  When you don’t connect you don’t just lose the colour of everything but the bloody walls go to! No bloody wonder we can walk through walls, they’re never there to bloody start with!’   The crooked ghost looked Evie up and down.  His eyes shifty. 
‘You must be pretty far gone to be seeing grey I tell ya that much.  You better get yourself a Melt soon or prey be a junkie with them Elixirs.  Cause it sure ain’t as bad as this I tell ya.’
‘Well thank you all the same.  You’ve been rather helpful. Good day.’  Evie clutched her purse, and walked away leaving the crooked ghost in the distance.
‘Why hey, wait a minute. You’re the first ghost I’ve seen for years! Want to be friends?’ 
Evie hears the crooked ghost, his words a whisper bearing slightly louder.  She hurries faster.  Leaving the crooked ghost in her dust.

Bernie had in his hands his new documents.  The PD allowed him to be Melt-free for 10 years before he pursued another Melt or before his emotions depleted.   Bernie thought this was generous, that was until they further stipulated that if her were to not find a melt, or somehow keep hold of the emotions that the Poltergeist Depository donated then he would be evaporated from matter and existence or his ghost would deplete into his soul. Bernie had heard rumours, but it was never really discussed. One does not talk about a friend who goes insane, or goes off the rails, so why would one talk about those who go into the brink and lose their humanity? You wouldn’t. It’s just rude.

Bernie learned a lot that following evening about ghosting.  Primarily the fact that once you are a ghost, you no longer have a permanent residence.  Unless of course you have a Melt.   So, Bernie took it upon himself to find places to haunt.  It took him a while to get used to haunting.  He remembered that Evie said that ghosting was never like it was in the stories, and she was right.  When people would see him, in the corner of their eye, in the middle of a underground passing amongst the graffiti and smell of urine they never screamed.  No, instead they would say ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.’ Or ‘Dear, isn’t this a stinky place!’

The problem with so many ghosts being less transparent was that it made them friendly.  And Bernie had quite enough of being friendly in hid life time.

Evie was on the cusp of letting go.  She thought she had gained her freedom from releasing her Melt but instead it left her alone.   Without realising it, and perhaps from the animosity she had for Bernie she had become bitter.  Afraid to open herself to others.  The world around her was becoming white, and in the centre of it all was a shadow that seemed to move autonomously.   It’s arms waved up and down as if they had a life of their own.   Through the jagged shadows a head popped through as if cutting open the ground, and before her, a tall looming figure stood.

‘Mam, if you don’t mind me saying so you look a bit bewildered, lost, confused.  A bit like you want to get somewhere but you just don’t have the right engine? Amma right? I’m right. I know I’m right, I’m alwaysright. You see I’ve seen this case before.  ‘The case of the lonely blues.  You know what Elvis said right? I’m so lonely I think I could die. But you’re one up on Elvis cause ya dead already.’ Evie broke into a smile.   ‘They call me Costello, cause I give you the cost first, then I say hello.’  Evie was captivated, the man’s words seemed to make her smile, no matter how unnerving his body she felt safe in his presence.

Costello brushed his straw finger against Evie’s hair.  The effervescent locks briefly had life blown into them, and as Costellos straw fingers fell away so did the life in the hair.  Momentarily Evie could see the white world around her fill with colour. 
Costello grimaced, in a way only a salesman to the desperate can and held a tonic infront of Evie. ‘A cure for what ails ya.’