Post Mortem
I should not have smoked that sativa goodness with a total stranger at a Halloween party out in the suburbs. In the house of Justin’s parents who were on vacation. Like we were goddamn teenagers again. Fitting how he invited most of the attendees at our high school reunion. He definitely peaked in high school.
The strand I brought to the party was stronger than I was used to. I could have handed out some to make friends. It was probably why I got invited. This might have been how this stranger had become my friend during the night. My memory was a mess though.
“So … it wasn’t a costume?” I just thought that guy had really been into cosplay.
So was I, over a full month I had made my completely black maid’s uniform. It had taken me hours to give my hair that Edwardian poof.
He looked straight up demonic. Tight red and black leather pants aside. There was something both feline and reptilian about his face, and his wine-red eyes with slit irises. No hair, and holes for ears like a lizard. His mouth had human traits, the bottom half at least.
Sitting up, my legs were sprawled on my right. He was kneeling beside me. I poked at his bare bulging chest it was warm, plush and firm. Not bouncy like silicone. His skin was pitch black with a blue sheen and stratified indentations. The lighting was shit. The windows were too small for the morning sun. If I had spent the night passed out on the ground, I didn’t feel sore at all. Had he looked over me this whole time?
I put my palm over his peck. “So, this is real too?”
He did not shoo off my hand, staying put. “Yes, I’m not human.”
I looked around at an empty unfinished basement. We were both down on the grimy concrete floor. My mind was crawling out of one hell of a fuzz. The musty smell was distracting.
“Why are we still here?” I stood up and notice the ripped yellow police tape blocking the exit. It wasn’t the fake flimsy stuff used as decoration. “What happened?” I turned back to him. “What are you?”
He got up next to me. “I’m sorry Layla, it’s my fault. Humans are not usually able to see us while they are alive. I got too excited.”
“Are you insinuating that I’m dead?” I slapped my face and it hurt. “I’m pretty sure I’m not high anymore.” Why did I feel so numb?
“I’m afraid we partied a bit too hard last night.” He gesticulated while he spoke. As if he was attempting to recollect what had happened. “I think they already took your body.”
I began to walk in circles. “What are you talking about?” I could not have died like that. “We just smoked a joint each. I rolled them girthy but … oh, then I started doing shots. How many did I get?”
He visibly cringed, sucking air through his teeth. “I lost count after fifteen.”
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.” Memories were creeping up like heartburn. “I didn’t even bring alcohol.” That was me, I was the asshole that showed up, drank other people’s booze and died from it in a nasty ass basement. Way to ruin a party. Unless I was found in the morning. That’s not a surprise you want cleaning up your parents’ house with a hangover. Justin was going to need therapy for that.
“You kept handing people joints as if it was candy.” The man, creature, was scratching his feline nose. “Me included.”
At least I had brought something to share. I circled my side of the basement for the fifth time. “Still, fifteen shots would not have been enough to kill me.” I briefly stopped to stare at him. “Would it?”
His hand clung to his chest. “I might have helped you steal a bottle of liquor and sneak away to this basement to drink it.” He did not need to feel guilty over my self-destructive ways.
“Don’t worry about—”
“I didn’t know humans were so fragile in the mortal realm.” He was shifting his weight from foot to foot. Fidgeting. “And apparently, I’m very sensitive to that weed I smoked with you.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m deeply sorry. I wasn’t sent here to bring back your soul. I was here for another guy in town. I stopped by this party because it looked fun. Then you waved at me and—”
I cut off his anxious rant. “Where is he?” Someone else had been supposed to die.
He let go of my shoulder. “Who?”
“The guy you came to get.”
“At home probably.” He had a harsh tone. “Getting ready for work where he mistreats the elderly.” He was moving onto beating himself over that too. We were going nowhere.
I put my hands to my hips. “Well, what are we doing here? We gotta find him. If I died stupidly like this, why does he deserve to live?”
He patted his pants pockets. “He doesn’t, I was sent to collect his soul because he unknowingly has terminal cancer in his lungs. Wait was it his stomach?” He patted harder with worry in his port-coloured eyes. “It’s all in his file…”
“Did you lose it?” A memory from last night smacked the back of my head. He had tried to show me my own file on his phone with a creepy ass fleshy phone case, which I had put in my pocket. I shoved my hand in, realizing my black garments had turned grey. “Oh.”
He pulled out all his pockets frantically. “What, oh?” They were all empty. “Do you know where my file’s book is?”
It was my turn to cringe. “In my pocket, probably with my body. Unless the mortician gave it to my family if they could see it. It might still be in my costume.” They had better have been treating that costume like the pearl it was.
He grabbed a little bag filled with dust. “I better go get it. Wanna come with?”
Now that was morbid.
“To go see my own dead body?” My costume, I needed to know what had happened to it. “Sure, I’ll come.”
He put an arm around my shoulders to drag me close. “It’ll probably help you pass unto the next realm. And with your help I won’t have to search all the morgues in town. Hold on for a bit and we’ll be there.” He didn’t have to tell me twice to grab hold of his sturdy waist. “Think about your body. The mortal envelope you have left behind.”
I closed my eyes as he threw the dust at our feet. Chemical aromas wafted in my face. When I looked, there was a bright light. The morgue had some intense LED bulbs. The metal everything reflected it straight into my dead retinas. I was drawn to a black body bag on the table in the corner of the room. My novel friend opened it, as my hands fell through. There I was, still in last night’s all-black maid’s uniform. The same I had painstakingly sewn for weeks by hand because the new strap for my antique Singer took too long to get delivered. Even the damn bustle pad was of black cotton on the outside. All my sewing budget for half the year had gone into it. Natural fibers weren’t cheap. Sewing black fabric with black thread had wrecked my eyes but damn it looked good.
I made it to participate in activities some people from my condo block were organizing. That was the excuse but that was a project I had wanted to get to for years. I was supposed to play a maid in a murder mystery out in the condos’ little yard. Then it rained and my props got destroyed. I had been invited to a party too. So, I went there instead with most of my personal stash of weed I had prepped for a horror games playthrough marathon the night after the activities.
I pointed to my dead body’s hip. “It was in my right pocket.” Adding deep pockets to all my skirts was how I had gotten into sewing.
Mom had gotten rid of my sewing stash when I used old sheets as materials. She would never use them. I had been trying to give them a second life. She had gotten mad because they were her late mother’s. The same woman she had put in a shitty nursing home where neglect had killed her.
He slipped his hand inside the opening on the side of my skirt and pulled out his phone. “Do you feel the itch?”
I shivered at the sight of my two dead eyes staring at the ceiling. “The what?” I should not have looked at my face. I shifted my gaze to his, as he zipped up the bag containing the meat mecha that had housed me as far as I could remember.
He gestured at the grey iteration of my costume. “You look like you have some time to spend in purgatory. Usually, people feel itchy when they are about to go there.”
I gestured to my body bag, now thankfully closed. “Nope, no itch. I’m just crept out.”
He turned on his phone, it had beating arteries. “Tell me if you feel the itch.”
I rolled my eyes a little. “If you don’t mind me asking, are you the grim reaper or something?”
He was doing a poor job for a reaper. “No, I was just sent on an errand by my boss. I work in the elderly abuser department. I torture bad nursing home workers. We are kind of short-staffed because capitalists tend not to care for their aging relatives.”
I knew that too well. “Is somebody going to come pick me up?”
If he wasn’t the grim reaper would the real one come for me? He went back to scrolling. “Usually, people just wander until they feel the purgatorial itch.”
“Do I have to stay here?” That morgue was giving me the creeps.
“Do you want to?” Nice of him to ask.
“No.” I was not the wandering type.
He showed me a candid photo straight out of one of that asshole’s social media pages. “Do you want to help me take the soul of this guy?”
It’s not like I had anything better to do anyway. “Sure. I mean, why not?”
“Great.” He whispered with a smile. “Do you know where this address is?” he scrolled below the picture.
Now this was surprising.
“Is that guy my neighbour?!” I had just moved into that building two months and a half ago.
He looked at the phone then me. “Really?”
I checked the address again, fucking astonished. “Yea, that’s the condo below mine.” I had never seen him before. “That’s a weird coincidence.” I would still have met this demon if it had not rained. Without the alcohol I would probably be alive too.
He grabbed hold of me again. “Odd. But helpful.” He poured some dust into my hand from a little red leather bag. It felt wet but it looked dry. “Think hard about your condo and throw it at our feet.”
I followed his instructions. I thought about the walls I had to repaint white. My new furniture from a second-hand store. The vintage wood chairs. My brand-new mattress and duvet. The ugly bathroom I couldn’t clean the mould out of. My precious coffee table, it was carved oak and could not hold a cup flat. It was the fruits of my hard work to put my past failures behind me. Now I would leave all of it. I wasn’t the haunting type either. I threw the ashes. Poof. We were in my living room. Shit there was my mom and my brother bawling their eyes out on my floral couch I steam cleaned outside just in case it had bed bugs.
The demon patted my back gently. “Seems like they received the news.”
I sighed, “I knew this day would come. But I thought I would see time fly by, get bored, and just end it.” In a way I did.
Drinking with the goal to escape my loser life. At twenty-seven, nobody wanted to settle down with me. For reasons, I was a walking red flag of not caring enough. All I did was smoke dope, and sew while watching other people waste their life playing games on a screen. All the folks at my high school reunion had been in a long-term relationship, half with kids or had been trying. All but Justin and I. The guy who couldn’t leave his high school days behind and the loser with no future. A loser who was dead now.
Mom wailed when she opened one of my photo albums. She was acting like she didn’t spend all our time together calling me a failure. My brother wasn’t much better. He even looked at my baby pictures with visible pity.
“Are you feeling the itch yet?”
“Nope. Let’s go.” I headed towards the door.
“You don’t want to say your goodbyes?” If my new and only friend knew me, he would not be thinking this crap was giving me any sense of closure.
I already knew how little people would attend my funerals. How most if not all wouldn’t know me enough for a meaningful eulogy. I could already picture the strands of clichés my mom would weave into a blanket of lies. Shit like “She had so much to look forward to.” I had no reason to stay and linger just to watch them cry over the idea of me I had never been,
“It’s not like they’ll hear me.” I turned to him. “And there are elderly folks in danger right now. Best get to it.”
He frowned, “If you say so.”
We both walked through the door aiming for the stairs.
I tapped his shoulder trying to catch up to him,
“I’m curious about something. How does the whole immaterial thing works?”
That was something far more interesting than hypocrites’ tears.
He took my hand to help me keep pace with his thick long legs. Oh, he had clawed feet. Hands too. They were large to have such dainty claws. He must have kept them trimmed and sharpened. He was careful not to nick me.
“The more energy you put in a movement the more it can have an effect in the world of the living,” he explained. I tried to slap the phone out of a teenager’s hands while they were waiting for the elevator. He glanced at me bemused as my hand went through it. “Spirits like you don’t have much energy. Unless they died while going through strong emotions.” He guided me down the stairs.
The walls inside were a yellowed beige. People must have smoked there. It was an old building too. Its inhabitants were friendly, most of those I had met prepping for Halloween activities.
I had never taken the emergency stairs. No matter how Mom pressed me to do it. That and eat three meals a day. At least something healthy when I did eat. She would gloss over how I needed to get stoned to have an appetite in the first place. I stepped down by his side,
“So, I can’t touch anything, and I have to wander until I get itchy. That’s boring.”
“Remember when I said we are short staffed?”
“Cuz capitalists don’t respect their elders. The poor ones anyway.”
“The chief of my department is so desperate for help with office work, he might even accept help from purgatorial souls.”
I chuckled. “Are you offering me employment?”
“Unless you want to walk.”
That was one efficient selling point. I reached the sinner’s floor first,
“How would that work? The bit where I join your department.”
The steps were a little short, he was careful not to stumble down. He reached me after a minute. He gestured towards the door,
“The time you spend working in hell should technically be taken out of your time in purgatory.”
We walked out of the staircase into the hallway below my floor. It looked exactly the same. Off white with bumps and scratches. Bits of paint flaking off in the corners. Those were moulding spots underneath, weren’t they? Man, this place was a dump.
I scrunched my nose at it for the first time. “What will I do in purgatory?” I got the feeling it would be just as boring as wandering the earth as a ghost.
He proved me right. “Walk until you reach heaven. The distance depends on the shade of your clothes, or robes if you had died naked.” My outfit was of a mid gray. “For you I’d say half an eternity.”
It would be pointless to think further of the fate of my original costume. It was out of my hands. I was a loser of my living I wasn’t going to haunt a damn Halloween costume. As intricate and accurate as it was. No matter the hours of work and love I poured into it. If that demon didn’t bring me with him, I was going to watch over the costume. Technically it wouldn’t be a haunting. It was time for me to ask some distracting questions, “How are the work conditions in hell?”
He pulled out his phone answering, “Workload is kind of big these days, but we still get breaks to eat and go home to sleep.”
“What do demons eat?”
“Depends on the type of demon.”
“What do you eat?”
His eyes shone for a moment as he glanced at me saying, “The pain and suffering of wretched souls.” They dimmed down a little. “And whatever’s the main meal option at the cafeteria.”
Did suffering taste that good? I had to know, “Which is your favourite?”
He chuckled at his own theatrics, “Pasta Alfredo.” Apparently, suffering was not that tasty.
“Y’all eat good.”
He stopped scrolling and looked up at the door numbers. “Are you tempted?”
I followed his slow seeking steps. “A little, how’s rent?”
“We don’t use money. Our living quarters are based on the amount of time we’ve been working, our performance and department.” Oddly socialist for a place like hell.
With no previous work experience in the land of painful punishments and suffering, “Bet I would get a broom closet I’d have to share.”
“Technically you would have to find a place to crash at.” Wow it was worse. “Or just work all the time. Purgatorial souls don’t need sleep.”
But I had loved sleeping. I would sleep over ten hours a day. “Because we are supposed to be walking all the time?” That had me bummed out
“Yes. You can stay at my place on your down time. But do note that your down time will not count to pay for your purgatorial debt.”
Either I worked all the time or got stuck as a purgatorial soul longer. Walking was boring. So, that was out of the question. I frown as I thought of something, “What do you get from bringing me in?”
He could have been trying to gain brownie points from his boss. He made them sound desperate for staff. They didn’t know I was a bum yet.
“A friend hopefully,” he replied without looking at me all coy. That was cute and full of innocence for somebody who fed off pain and suffering.
“Well,” I decided to play along, “if we get to hang out, I might be tempted a bit more.”
He stopped in front of the door below mine with a grin. “You do have to be cool with torture. Always keep in mind that the people on the receiving end of things are there for a reason.”
I stood next to him waiting. “I won’t be torturing people. Right?”
He kept standing glancing down at me. “Oh, we wouldn’t give that type of job to a purgatorial soul. It could increase your debt if you enjoy it.” Was he waiting to knock or something?
I sensed something wretched beyond the door. It was like a faint sulfuric scent. I scrunched my nose. “Does hell smell like this?”
He put his phone in his pocket sniffing the air. “You can smell that?”
I dipped my head through the door. The smell was worse. There were also trash bags in the entrance,
“Yea it stinks.”
He walked in pulling me through. “What does it smell like to you?”
I followed his pull. “Rotten eggs.”
He shrugged letting go. “To me it smells like mangoes.”
We walked in the kitchen it looked like mine. Except fresh fruit on the counter instead of ripped rolling paper and popcorn wrappers.
I stepped to the epicentre of the stench, the bathroom. “What smells like that?”
The demon stood beside me. “His soul.” He pointed at my neighbour placing a bottle of painkillers back in his medicine cabinet while wearing sunglasses indoors.
I guessed it made sense it smelled good to him. With the feeding from the pain and suffering of wretched souls. That guy looked like shit. Not ugly, in bad health. If I had survived my bender, I would have seemed in the same state as this sinner. Probably crawling on the floor thankful I didn’t work on Wednesdays.
My hellish friend grabbed my hand to lead me in the bathroom,
“That’ll do it with a failing liver like his. Alcohol is one thing, except when someone drinks as much as you did. What I’m trying to say it that Acetaminophen is a silent killer. He’s been taking them daily. Extra strong too.”
Look at that. The ceiling was mouldy where the bottom of my wall was. There must have been a leak in there. The guy sat down on the toilet staggering. Then suddenly he could see us,
“WHAT THE FUCK!”
I gaped at the one here to take his soul, “Just like that?”
There were now two of the same sinners. The one in brown rags got up while his body fell over on the floor. “Get out of my house!”
Mister demon stuck an X-shaped sticker on the other soul’s mouth that had him lose his ability to speak and he could not remove it. Witnessing a death made me hella curious about my last moments. I had been too drunk to register them.
I turned to the red-eyed man who had been there during my last breaths. “What happened when I died?”
“You were passed out,” he summed up.
Now there was more than a sulfuric stench. Still staring at him, I asked, “Why does it smell like shit?”
He looked down at the body in front of us. “His body’s sphincter isn’t working anymore so…” Gross. Did that mean my body went through the same thing?
“Did I—?” Nope. I didn’t want to hear that from a hot guy, demon.
“Your body did not go through the same thing if that’s what you were asking. I was surprised.” He made a weird face. That was a lie, wasn’t it?
My costume! The morgue smelled so weird. I must have not noticed it. “You don’t need to lie.”
His hands went up to his chest, he was uncomfortable. “I cannot physically utter a lie.”
Weak defence, how could I know that was the truth? “Why did you make that face then?”
He was tight-lipped. “Are you sure you want to know?”
I sure did now. “Yes.”
He sighed in defeat. “Right before you died. You went to the bathroom for a while. While I was eating a can of chips.” He hesitated, “When you came back you bragged that was the most massive shit you ever took. That might have been the reason there was nothing to—”
I shut him up. “Alright, I get it.”
We both stared at the sinner for a second. He was now assessing his own dead body with a mortified face.
“Um,” the demon cleared his throat. “Do you feel the—”
“No,” I kept avoiding his gaze, “I do not feel the purgatorial itch. Are we leaving?”
“Cool. Just checking.”
He took his little dust bag and picked up the struggling wretched soul over his shoulder. He lifted the arm holding the baggy. I snuck in there holding on to his waist. He dumped some dust and more of that sulfuric smell hit me like a truck.
