Waking Up Dead

by Savoy, Skye

  “Well, it was a dumpster intervention, mom. I was staking it out in case Kitty decided to show up.”

  “You watch your tone, young lady. I may not be able to spank you anymore, but I can sure come down to haunt you any time I want.” Big Mama’s bouffant wobbled to punctuate her threat.

  “Sorry." I cast my eyes down to the patchy asphalt. I hope I managed to look properly chastised.

  “Your sister is looking for happiness in the bottom of trash cans. That ain’t right.”

  “I agree, Big Mama. It’s a sickness.”

  “I think being sick in the head runs on your daddy’s side of the family.” She stepped onto her scooter, and motioned for me to follow.

  “Whoa, now. Where are we going?”

  “I found out Stacy never made it to Heaven or…that other place,” she whispered through one hand cupped over the side of her mouth.

  My heart and jaw descended at the same time. “What? How?” I stammered, then eyed her scooter for some sort of running board. “Big Mama, how do you know where she is, and where am I supposed to get on this thing?”

  “I told you I have friends in high places.” She motioned to the basket attached to the handle bars. “Now get in there and let’s go. Oh, wait a minute.” She peered down into a GPS system. “I gotta punch some directions in this thing.” The machine beeped when she pecked information in it with one finger.

  This was certainly not the mother who raised me. My mother was the last to get a microwave because she was afraid of radiation poisoning. It was mind-boggling to think, as an angel, she used new technology and rode a scooter like a Harley.

  “Big Mama! Can’t you just teleport us there instead of making me hitch a ride on that” I did a “Price is Right” hostess gesture, “thing?” I was much thinner as Stacy than I ever was as Ava, but I felt ridiculous. Pre-pubescent children, not fifty-one year-olds, hopped into baskets for joyrides to who knows where.

  “Avalita Mae!”

  I sprang to military attention at “the voice.”

  “Hush your mouth and get in there,” she ordered through gritted teeth.

  My heart pounded. I scurried to obey her. It was so irritating to think my mother still exerted such control over me.

  I planted my butt firmly in the basket, my fingers wedged into the holes in the metal. I held on for dear life. Big Mama revved up the motor and headed right for the wall.

  “Oh, help.” I drew my legs as close to my body as I could and shielded my face from the impact.

  We made it! An audible sigh of relief emanated from somewhere deep inside me where reality still hung by a string. My stomach lurched like a Model T. I also needed an antacid to quell the nausea caused by the streaks of squiggly light zooming by us at warp speed.

  “You didn’t think your Big Mama could do it, did you?”

  I craned my neck to see a smug smile on lips, coated in their traditional Coty Coral color. In the 70s, when they discontinued her shade, she went to the drugstore and bought a case. It lasted until a few years before she passed away.

  “No. I honestly didn’t think—” I stopped mid sentence as we were spit out of a portal onto some bleak terrain that rivaled the salt flats of Utah I’d only seen on the Travel Channel.

  “Big Mama, where exactly are we?” I pried my hind end out of the basket. My modest mother remained behind me, but I absolutely had to rub the marks where the metal indented my flesh. I stiffly turned to face her.

  “Well, my friend Amelia’s son Ben, works in the file rooms in the Akashic Plane where they keep all the records on people,” she said and leaned in, “Seems he had a heart attack in jail doing time for embezzling. He accepted Christ while he was in the big house. I guess that made him good enough for the first stop into Heaven but not Heaven itself…”

  A cold wind wrapped my sundress around my legs. Goosebumps popped out on my arms. The last gust of air heralded the arrival of a demon. “Mama, it is freezing. Can you just get to the point?”

  She gave me a dirty look. “He’s a real nice boy, Ava. Too bad you can’t meet him.”

  Super. Big Mama wants to fix me up in my afterlife with a reformed con.

  “It ain’t like you’ve done any better, Ava.”

  Mental hand to the head slap for me. I forgot about her mind reading thing.

  “Anyway, Ben gave me the coordinates for where Stacy ended up.” The scooter visibly shuddered when she got up.

  Big Mama surveyed her surroundings with a three hundred sixty degree turn. “Huh. If this is Stacy’s astral plane, I’d sure hate to see what her h…e…double sticks looks like.”

  I smiled at her continued refusal to say “hell” even though she’d already made it to Heaven. She floated from the scooter to a clump of sage brush. I’d never seen any personally, but it was as I imagined from all those Westerns I watched as a kid.

  “That GPS thing-a-ma-bob says she’s supposed to be over here somewhere.” She drifted near a formation of gray boulders.

  It smelled like one of those ozone air machines. Weird. My dress caught on a stubby shrub. Dried up branches resembled little arms grabbing the fabric for dear life. Poor thing wanted out of here as bad as me. “This place is creepy.”

  Big Mama stopped, mid float. “Stop your whining and come on. We owe it to Stacy to see why she’s here when she could be in Heaven with her family. It’s what you shoulda’ thought about when you had a choice.”

  “Why do I have the feeling you’re about to tell me it’s too late to change my mind,” I moaned and caught up with her for a trek across the dark side of the moon.

  “Nothing gets by you, does it?”

  My eye roll earned a stern look from her. “With that attitude, none of them,” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “d-d-demons around here are gonna’ mess with you.”

  Yeah, right. I grabbed the hem of her sweater like I used to do as a child. It was comforting. My supernatural abilities were uncooperative on this plane. Earlier, I tried to zap myself beside her only to end up where I started facing backwards.

  “What’s with all this akashic and astral plane stuff?”

  “Your antenna wasn’t up,” she chided. “According to the Eternal Education Classes I’ve been taking, the astral plane is the place betwixt life as you know it on Earth. People who didn’t want to leave life or who ain’t smart enough to know they’re dead, live in a world created by their emotions. That’s unless they’re loafing about on Earth trying to figure out what happened to them.”

  I paid no attention to her obvious jabs. “It seems to me like Stacy is still going through her Emo phase with this gloomy, barren scenery.”

  “That, darlin’, is the sign of a mental imbalance. ‘Course with Kitty’s crazy habit, I guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree on your daddy’s side, not mine. ”

  Big Mama talked about how we turned out like we did despite her best efforts while we picked our way across desolate, pebble strewn ground. The terrain got darker except for an occasional streak of purple or pink lightening.

  Did Big Mama transport us inside some cheap lightening globe from the 70s? My lungs constricted at the thought of being trapped inside a sphere with a dwindling oxygen supply. The chance to get crispy fried by the increasingly frequent electrical bolts was another unpleasant possibility.

  I tripped over something rough on the way to giving into total claustrophobia. Boom. Down I went like a sack of potatoes. Luckily, my mother remained upright. Her three hundred pound body floated, which was mystifying. I doubted she’d pop right back up like one of those inflatable bop bag clowns if she landed on top of me.

  I remained on the ground with my arms and legs in a snow angel position. Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, Ava. How could you be so stupid as to blindly follow your long dead mother into a stupid situation that could land you on your stupid ass in more ways than one?

  Big Mama huffed. She read my thoughts again. Damn.

  My fingers splaye
d, not into dirt, but acrylic fiber as I pushed myself up. Carpet? Splotches of pink, gray, and white paint splattered the carpet. I swiveled to see the expanse went on for a mile until it ran into a white wall with graffiti on it.

  “Well, are you gonna sit a spell, or do you think you might want to get a move on any time soon?” Big Mama stuck her hand out to help me up.

  “I’m not sitting here for my health, not that it matters anymore.” I let her help me up, then smoothed my dress down. “I tripped over the edge of some carpet,” I gestured to the barrier. “It seems like it goes on for days.”

  “Let’s hope it don’t. We ain’t got days.” Big Mama flashed us forward to the middle of a living room where all things Emo went to die.

  Furniture, upholstered in patches of cutesy pink plaid hearts, black sonar circles, and the traditional skull and crossbones adorned with a pink bow, was randomly placed in front of the wall. A fire big enough to hold wood from a couple of trees, roared in a gothic fireplace. Above the ornate mantel, the outline of a heart was painted as if it was sliding down the wall. A double image of the skull and crossbones with pink scribble behind it was enclosed in the heart.

  Big Mama was speechless for a change.

  “Whoa. This is a far cry from her ‘Hello Kitty’ days!”

  The chair closest to the fireplace rotated to face us. Eyes rimmed in a double layer of black eyeliner widened in surprise.

  “B-Big Mama, is that really you?” Stacy undraped her legs from the arms of the chair, took two steps, and flung herself at Big Mama at top speed.

  “I was beginning to wonder if Ben gave me the right location for you.” Big Mama squeezed her tight, then picked up a piece of blue tinted hair. “What on earth did you do to yourself?”

  Stacy ignored the question and burrowed her face in Big Mama’s neck. She pulled back. Genuine awe replaced relief. “Wow! You glow! It’s just beautiful!”

  My snort of disbelief forced two sets of eyes on me. I held my breath as I waited for Stacy to recognize her former body. Guilt clamped down on my conscious. I stole her body, and she ended up trapped in her own personal nightmare on the astral plane.

  “Ava, you’re working on my last nerve. Just because you see me in the same tacky outfit you let your sister bury me in, don’t mean it’s the way I really look now.”

  “You don’t look like my Aunt Ava. She was fat with short, brown hair. Oh, and she had cankles.”

  “First of all, I have never had,” I could barely bring myself to say it, “cankles! And, the bottle Bev used said ‘Champagne Blonde,’ not brown.”

  Big Mama laid a hand on each of us. “Stacy, she really is your Aunt Ava. We have a little problem she needs to talk to you about.”

  “Okay.” I took a dramatic breath. “Here’s goes. Stacy, this is your body with my soul inside.”

  “Oh, hell-to-the-no!” Stacy’s skin instantly reddened to a nice shade of flash fried.

  “Language, Stacy!” Big Mama admonished.

  Language, smanguage. My niece reacted in a much more sane way than I did.

  “B-but, the guy told me I was dead and brought me here, wherever here is. So how can she be in my body and,” she pointed at my hair, “what the hell have you done to me?”

  “Your friend, Mel did this. I think it looks a lot better than the freaky streaky Goth look you’ve got going on.”

  “It’s Emo. There’s a difference.” Her dark maroon lips snapped together in disdain.

  “Well, until we set things right again, it don’t matter if you look like a nice young lady or something from a carnival.”

  Stacy slammed her arms in front of her chest, obviously peeved at Big Mama’s choice of words. She flopped down in her chair. “You may have noticed I’m dead. Not sure how you think you can undo that.”

  “What do you think we should do exactly?” I followed suit and collapsed onto the end of the couch.

  Big Mama sat gingerly on the opposite end. I didn’t realize I’d braced myself against being catapulted into the edge of darkness until I let my breath out.

  “What we should do is start at the beginning.” Big Mama nodded toward Stacy. “Tell her how you got into her body. Maybe we can figure out how to make things right.”

  I didn’t want to make things right. What would they do if I yelled, “Hell, no, I won’t go?” The most exciting thing I’d ever done in my entire life was jump into Stacy’s body. All right, it was my afterlife and it was a little too exciting given all the attempts to end it. I looked great and kicked ass thanks to a certain fallen angel I’d fallen for. “Well, shit.”

  “Ava!”

  Get over it, Mama. I loved Suriyel. I dreaded the grease fire inside my heart when we did figure things out and I went onto an afterlife without him.

  For the second time in a two day period, I spilled the details on my transformation from Ava to Stacy. The story ended with the part where the demon showed up and Mason bolted for the door. Stacy’s forced depression lifted. “How is Mason? I mean, does he miss me?”

  “What about that story did you not hear? He thinks I’m you.”

  “Oh, gross!” Stacy spun her chair away from us.

  “Hey! He’s not my type.” I had my sights set on a big, muscle bound, he-man, warrior, fallen angel.

  She twirled her chair around. “Yeah, you’re too old for him.”

  I understood where her anger originated, but it didn’t stop me from bristling. “Now look here…”

  “You’re both acting like teenagers. Stacy, Ava is too old for your boyfriend,” Big Mama intervened.

  “Mel isn’t.” I mentally clapped a hand over my mouth.

  “I knew it!” Stacy emphasized with a punch to the arm of the chair. “Some friend she is. The minute I’m dead, she makes her move.” She blew a strand of streaked hair out of her face. “She was probably trying to steal him away the whole time I was at culinary school!” Again, the chair whirled to its original position.

  “I’m sorry, hon. I think we’re all a little stressed out.” I sighed. Where the hell is my filter? It’s not like she wasn’t depressed enough already “Why don’t you tell us how you…” I gulped, “died?”

  “What does it matter? I’m dead, dead, dead,” Stacy replied melodramatically over her shoulder.

  “Of course it matters,” Big Mama said as she floated over to lovingly smooth Stacy’s hair from her forehead. “You may have kicked the bucket, but you ain’t supposed to be here.” The shudder shook her frame and overemphasized the point.

  I mouthed, “I can’t believe you just said that,” to her. Stacy stared at the fireplace.

  “I’m just saying what’s true. She’s dead. There ain’t a thing we can do about it except help her move on.”

  My thumb and forefinger flew up to pinch the bridge of my nose so my head wouldn’t fly off like a deflating balloon. Big Mama possessed no couth.

  “Thank you, Big Mama, for making that awkward situation even better.” I uncurled myself from the couch and moved to stand in front of Stacy. “Just tell us what you remember before you died. I mean, was something after you?”

  “After me? You make it sound like somebody was chasing me with a chain saw or something,” she scoffed and swung the chair so her back faced me.

  “Don’t you remember anything that happened right before you died?” Like a goat with red eyes jumping on the hood of your daddy’s car?

  “I don’t see why it’s so important.”

  “Look, lil’ Ms. Sour Puss, Ava’s asking these questions because she thinks something is after your mama. So you better get to remembering unless you want us to go away and just leave you here,” Big Mama said in a tone guaranteed to knock the attitude out of a rap star.

  Stacy twisted in the chair. Her jaw unclenched, which told me her go-to-hell exterior was dented by Big Mama’s reprimand. “I don’t really remember what happened other than I’d dropped Mason off.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Big Mama arched her
brows while Stacy shot me a glare sure to melt my mascara.

  “Sorry, go ahead.”

  “Okay. I was driving past a farm when a black and white goat landed on top of the car. I was pretty freaked out, so I swerved, went through a fence, and that’s all I remember.”

  “Did the goat have red eyes?”

  Big Mama zapped herself onto the couch. Stacy’s mouth gaped. “When the fallen angels put me in your body, an image of a goat with red eyes flashed in my mind. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now.”

  “Just what do you understand?” If rice could be any whiter, it’d be the shade Stacy turned.

  “I think the demon that’s been after me possessed that goat and killed you.”

  “Oh, pahlease. Can demons even possess animals?”

  “They did in the Bible in Matthew, Jesus cast all those d-demons out of that man, Legion, they got into a herd of swine and got choked. I bet the villagers had bacon for a year after that.” Big Mama licked her lips in a way that led me to believe they didn’t have bacon in Heaven.

  “So you’re saying a possessed goat made me wreck my car and bite the big one,” Stacy repeated flatly. “That’s pretty certifiable.”

  “Until you fight off a possessed Elvis impersonator, I can’t expect you to understand.”

  “I don’t even want to know.” Stacy threw her head against the back of the chair.

  “Come to think of it, I remember a squirrel running out in front of me when I was leaving Ida’s house. It just stood there, looking at me with those beady red eyes,” Big Mama recounted. “I jerked my Rascal®, real hard to avoid it. There was a blast of hot air, which was unusual ‘cause it was a nice fall evening. I went over like a tree into Ida’s stupid pool.” She shook her head. “Nobody as big as Ida needs a pool out in the front yard. Anyway, I tried to get up but it felt like something was pressing me down.”

  “Hunh,” I mused as I resumed my spot on the opposite end of the sofa. “Kitty and I never believed Ida when she said a squirrel ran out in front of you.”

  “How’d Ida know what happened? She was laid up in bed with her foot. The woman called me over ‘cause she stepped on her grandson’s Hotwheels fire truck and couldn’t bend over enough to pull it out of her foot.” Big Mama chuckled. “It took her three days to figure out the siren sound she heard when she got up from in front of the TV wasn’t actually coming from a show.”