“Having an interesting conversation?”
What was I supposed to say to that? No, I wasn’t particularly having a good conversation because I’d just learned some quite disturbing things. Or how about, “Yes, it’s great. I love being nearly dead. Can you point me in the direction of my body, please?” Before I’d even decided which tack to go with, my mouth opened and I spoke on autopilot.
“I was just in the supermarket. I had fish fingers in the trolley. They’ll have defrosted by now.”
Mr Black Jumpsuit hovered beside me for a moment longer. Long enough for me to steal a glance at him and see “GB” embroidered in white on the lower right curve of his burglar mask and the right breast of his jumpsuit. So Sean had been afraid of these guys? The GB man turned his back on us and walked back to his post.
“Where did that come from?” Mike murmured.
“Crazy woman in my group said it.”
“Nice save.”
“Do you know who they are?” I asked. “Like, are they the police or something?”
“I’ve no clue. I thought they were security. Why?”
“Because my induction leader was terrified of them.”
Mike shrugged. “No one likes the police.”
I was going to correct him and explain that when I had said “terrified” that was what I had meant, but until we knew more there seemed no point in adding extra stress to Mike’s everlasting queuing experience.
An age, and much mumbled conversation, later we were at the front of the queue. I say it was “an age” because that’s what it felt like, and I had no other way to measure the time.
The person in front of Mike stepped up to the booth. They looked like regular passport control booths. Every now and again one of GB men pointed to someone who was so out of it they didn’t realise they had made it to the front of the queue and needed a nudge, but otherwise they didn’t move or speak.
The guy in front of Mike received his forms back and was ushered on to whatever ridiculousness was next. Mike didn’t move. He stood still and stared at the booth like it was his Mecca. The GB guy pointed to Mike. That startled him awake and he stepped forward. In his hurry, Mike somehow managed to trip over his own feet. He fell face down on the floor with his forms scattered out in front of him. The GB guy looked down at him then up at me. He motioned me forward.
“No, no, he’s next.” I pointed to Mike, who looked up when I spoke. His eyes darted to the guy and then back to me. I didn’t know if it was panic, but he’d stopped collecting his forms and was just watching the conversation.
“He’s picking up his forms. You’re next.”
“No. No. No. He is definitely next. Definitely. I can wait,” I said.
“Well, I can’t,” snapped the GB man. “So, get over here. Now.”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to take Mike’s place, but then he was still sitting there watching the conversation. He could have picked up his forms while I stalled but he hadn’t. Maybe if I’d been stuck in queue after queue I’d have the same rabbit-in-the-headlights expression. But then, I had a body to get back to and he was dead. What difference did an extra queue place make to him?
I stepped forwards and pushed my forms through the little letterbox in the glass. The woman behind the glass didn’t look up; she just stamped, and stamped, and stamped.
While she was doing that I picked up Mike’s forms, neatened them and put them back in his hands. He stared at me with a completely vacant expression.
“You’re next,” I said when the empty eyes got too much for me.
He blinked and came back to life. “Right. Yeah. Thanks.”
I offered him my hand to pull him to his feet and pointed just past the booth, mouthing that I’d wait for him. I felt the eyes of the GB man on me, so I ducked my head and put my zombie please-don’t-arrest-me face back on.
“Do you have anything to declare?” the woman droned from behind the glass.
“Like what?” I asked. Was this like the airport? Was I not supposed to bring liquids through? Did I need to explain I was only on a temporary separated-from-my-body visa?
The woman almost shuddered awake at my response, as if she wasn’t used to being acknowledged. She flicked her eyes to Mr GB to her right and then back to me.
I glanced in the opposite direction to Mr GB at the next booth over. The zombie waiting for his forms back didn’t speak. He got his forms back and passed on through. I turned back to the lady and didn’t say anything else.
“Problem?” Mr GB glanced between the woman behind the glass and me.
“No.” The woman shook her head and pushed the forms back through the hole in the glass.
Mr GB reached for them before I could. “Being dead sucks, doesn’t it …” – he paused and read my name from the front of my forms – “Bridget?”
I glanced to the woman behind the glass and she shook her head almost imperceptibly. At least I though she did. I stared back at the GB man and said nothing. He stepped closer and leaned in, staring into my face for an excruciatingly long moment. Finally, he handed the forms back to me and then nudged me passed the booth. I hovered on the other side and gave Mike the thumbs up behind Mr GB’s back. And then the light in the booth went out. And then the light behind Mike’s eyes went out.
I winced in anticipation since I knew what was going to happen a few seconds before it did. Mike screamed. Not a girly there’s-a-spider scream. A pain soaked sound of total, unadulterated rage. It chilled me all the way to the bones of my distant body. Mike tossed his forms in the air like confetti and launched at the GB guy, who had him face down on the floor before he’d taken more than two strides forward. Mr GB handcuffed him and dragged him to his feet. Mike screamed obscenities at the woman in the booth, at the man who held him, at me, at the ceiling.
Then a man walked up from behind me with a light bulb in his hand. He handed it to the lady through the letterbox, and a few seconds later the light came back on. Like a moth, Mike instantly noticed the booth light back up. The expression on his face flipped from rage, to disbelief, to disillusionment and then back to rage.
“Noooooooooooooooo,” Mike screamed.
“This isn’t a circus show, Miss,” the man who’d walked past me with the light bulb said and turned me around by my shoulders. “Onwards. Always onwards.”
He escorted me along the narrowing, beige corridor towards the pair of double doors as Mike’s scream echoed behind me. “Straight through there, now, Miss. No loitering.”
“Right.” I nodded but didn’t move. “What’s going to happen to Mike?”
He frowned and looked behind me. “Who’s Mike?”
“The guy the black jumpsuit handcuffed.”
“Oh.”
I waited but nothing else was forthcoming. “What? What does that mean?”
“Straight through there, now, Miss. No loitering. Onwards. Always onwards.” He gestured to the double doors, turned away from me and disappeared through a door in the right wall of the corridor. A couple of members of the zombie horde wandered up behind me. Worrying they were likely to smell my brain still working and think it would make a tasty snack, I hurried through the double doors.
Instead of eight booths and eight queues, there was just one queue, eight times as long. “If someone else is in my body by the time I get back, I’m going to write a strongly worded letter of complaint,” I said with a sigh as I took my place at the back of the queue. I kept my head down and didn’t speak to anyone.
When I finally reached the front of the queue, the man behind the glass took my forms. No smile. No greeting. No men in black jumpsuits. He flicked through the papers, double stamped them, scrawled a huge “F” in his red pen on the top form and circled it.
“You’re grading my form filling?” I asked in disbelief.
His attention jumped up from the forms to my face. He looked surprised I’d spoken. “‘F’ is for Facilitator. Your job.”
I was about to lose my temper at the milli
on things I didn’t know, then I remembered Mike. I moderated my tone. “I think you’re confused. I don’t need a job. I’m not staying. Surely something in those forms explains that.”
“You’re not staying?” He frowned at me as if I were speaking another language. “What do you mean you’re not staying?”
I leaned closer and lowered my voice. “I’m only here temporarily. I need to get through here and back to my body.”
His head jerked back and he turned it so he was staring at me from the corner of his eyes, and then he scanned around the room as if he was going to call someone over.
I was not going through this whole process over again. I was just not. Who knew what would happen to my amazing body if I got caught up in that ridiculous queuing system like Mike? I snapped my fingers and pointed to him. “Just kidding with you. Is it just through here?”
I didn’t wait for him to answer. I walked past the booth and along yet another beige corridor, checking over my shoulder all the way for the black jumpsuits. The corridor behind me remained empty. This time the double doors opened up into a waiting area the size of a football field. To the right a huge, blank screen the size of a fence panel was suspended from the ceiling, to the left were rows, and rows, and rows of seats, nearly all of them occupied. I spied an empty one and headed over. The place had the vibe of an airport waiting lounge, only it was ten times bigger than any one I’d ever been in and much less exciting. This had to be the last stop. Had to be. All I had to do now was make it through here and I’d be back to my body in no time.
The same chatter tape played to mask the silence, but now I knew it was a tape it had a much more sinister feel. Nearly everyone was staring straight ahead with a vacant expression. I nestled myself between an elderly lady, who was doing something very complicated with five small knitting needles and tie-dyed wool, and a teenage girl wearing an “I’m 18 today” badge the size of a dinner plate. Just as well she was zombified because if that had been me, dying just as everything became legal, Charon wouldn’t have seen me for dust. And where had grandma got her knitting? How had that survived the crossover from life to death? Unless she wasn’t dead either.
The elderly lady looked me over with a frown. The teenager ignored me, but that might not have been because she was a dead zombie like the rest. That might have just been because she was a teenager. Who knew?
“You seem a little more lively than the rest of them,” the elderly lady commented as she switched the needles around in her hands. I had no clue what she could possibly be doing or making.
“It’s because I am alive. And I’d say the same for you since you’re wielding those five needles quite effectively.”
“Ah, finally. Someone who speaks.” She smiled at me. “If it wasn’t for this stupid chatter loop, I’d think I’d gone deaf.”
“I wouldn’t mind going deaf for a while if it meant I didn’t have to listen to this chatter loop,” I countered.
“I’m learning to drown it out.”
“Are you trying to get back to your body too?”
Before she could respond, a buzzer sounded and a name flashed up in red on the screen. Daphne Herald. A lady I assumed was Daphne, ten or so rows in ahead, stood and walked through the double doors underneath the sign. The screen went dark.
I pointed to the screen and then the double doors. “What just happened?”
The lady shook her head. “Oh, who knows? Your name flashes up and you go through the doors. I don’t know who, what, where or why is beyond them so don’t ask me.”
I huffed out a breath. “Probably another queue.”
She chuckled and switched her needles again. “Probably. What did you get?” She jerked her head at my forms.
I held it up to show her my failing grade. “F for Facilitator, but I’m only here temporarily.”
She paused in her knitting. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m not dead, I’m just giving the doctors time to fill me full of drugs so when I slip back inside myself I won’t be in pain.”
“Who told you that? That’s not how it works.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, scanning the room to make sure no black jumpsuits were around to witness our conversation.
She shook her head. “If you’re here, you’re dead.”
“No, no, no. I have it on excellent authority I’m just passing through,” I told her with a swipe of my hand. “Excellent authority.”
“Unless God is your excellent authority and he’s given you a pass, if you’re here, you’re dead.”
“It wasn’t God but it was close. Sort of.” Was Charon a god? Was he a demigod? My Greek history was a little rusty on the finer details. It would be handy if Odysseus popped up about now so I could hitch a ride back with him. How had Odysseus gotten home again? If I’d known that ancient Greek legends were going to have practical real life applications, I’d have paid more attention in school.
“I like your hair. I wish I’d died when I was younger,” said the older lady with a wistfulness tone, jarring me out of my poor attempt at escape planning.
I frowned at her. “Really?”
“Uh-huh. Now I have to spend eternity as an old woman. At least my arthritis is better though.” She wiggled her knotted fingers at me. “There’s always a silver lining if you’re willing to look.”
“At least you got to live a full life.”
The lady shrugged. “It all seems a bit pointless now though, don’t you think?”
“Do I think my life was pointless?” I didn’t really like the direction this conversation was going. “It wasn’t the best it could have been, I suppose, but I intend to make it a lot more fun when I get back to my body. Talk about a wake-up call.”
“You want to think your life had meaning, purpose. And then you die and you realise it was all just pointless.” She placed her knitting on the floor at her feet and stood up. She waved her arms in the air. “Pointless!” she screeched at the top of her voice. “It’s all just so pointless.” She sat back down, picked up her knitting and turned to me. “Don’t you think?”
I gave her a small nod, keeping my eyes on those five needles her dexterous fingers were twisting wool around without her even looking. “Sure. Pointless. I agree.”
I was like a magnet for crazy people. It was one of the reasons I never used public transport. It didn’t matter if the bus or train carriage was empty or packed, that crazy person always found me. Death, or my temporary ghostly state, was similar to public transport, it appeared. Wasn’t that just lovely?
A GB walked out through the doors Daphne had gone through moments earlier. He headed straight for us. I stared directly ahead, fairly sure I knew how this was going to go.
He stopped in front of the lady next to me. “Excuse me, ma’am, can you come with me, please?”
“I’m busy,” she told him with a toss of her head.
“Now, please, ma’am.” He held out his hand to her and she flung her knitting, five needles and all, in his face and took off running along the aisle.
Mr GB cursed and chased after her. For an elderly lady, she was pretty spry. I guess death was good for all kinds of joint problems. She led him a merry dance around the waiting room. And she was fast. She zipped in and out of the aisles, clambering over empty chairs to try to lose him, all the while calling him a host of rather impolite names to taunt him. It was the best entertainment I’d had in a good, long time and yet no one else’s head even turned as she charged past.
As she ran past me again she grinned and gave me a wave. I waved back. I couldn’t help it, she just looked so happy. Mr GB leaped the row of chairs in between and launched himself onto her back. They hit the ground so hard with him on her back I was amazed she didn’t break anything. Personally I thought she had a good case for GB brutality. He handcuffed and pulled her up, ignoring her protests and insults.
“Do you think it’s all pointless too?” he asked me over her yells.
“Tell him you do,”
she shouted at me. “Tell him that there’s no point in living at all now, since we don’t die. Tell him there’s no point in going on. Tell him we might as well be dead. Tell him you want a time machine so you can go back to the seventies and kill me when I was young. Tell him you want shepherd’s pie for tea.”
Mr GB shook her handcuffed wrists as if that would quieten her. It didn’t.
“Well?” He raised his voice to be heard over her madness.
I cast a glance at the quite clearly crazy old lady and then back to him. Something told me that giving an honest response at this current moment wasn’t going to do me any favours.
I put on my most zombified expression. “I was just in the supermarket. I had fish fingers in the trolley. They’ll have defrosted by now.”
“No. She told me to do it. She’s faking it. She faking it!” she screamed.
“What brand of fish fingers?” he asked.
What brand of fish fingers? What. The. Hell. What was I supposed to say? I don’t know because the woman I stole that vague remark off didn’t specify. What would one of these other people say? Would they say anything? I did not want to be handcuff and put in a cell with the crazy lady and Mike. They’d kill me. I’d never get back to my body.
“Michael’s favourite,” I said. It seemed like a decently vague response.
“Who’s Michael?” he asked.
I figured the more I said, the more likely I was to give myself away as a sane, conscious, undead person, so I did what I’d seen most of these people do. I cried. Well, not cried exactly, but I snivelled, wiped at my eyes and hung my head.
That seemed to suffice since he grunted and turned away, pushing the still screaming elderly lady ahead of him. I glanced down at her knitting basket and the needles and pile of wool on the floor. Now it was laid flat, I could see it was a sock.
“This has to be the weirdest day of my life.” I shook my head as I thought about that for a moment. “I really hope this is the weirdest day of my life.”
Just a Touch Dead Page 4