Death in Spades

by Abigail Collins

  David nods silently, taking in deep breaths out of instinct. I wonder why ghost’s chests heave when they try to breathe, even though they don’t have lungs and can’t swallow air. But I guess if I’m going to start questioning the mechanics of spirits, I’ve got a lot more important questions than why they look like they can breathe when they can’t.

  “I’m here to take your soul… somewhere,” I finish lamely, offering him a sheepish smile. “I don’t honestly know how this whole thing works. This is the first time I’ve done this by myself, and the last time was a lot easier.”

  We stand in silence for a moment, smoke curling up from the

  blue car’s hood and going right through David’s translucent form. His body is still bleeding onto the dashboard and steering wheel, but his chest is completely still and he’s slumped over at an uncomfortable angle.

  “Ugh. I have no idea what to do.” I look up at the sky, hoping my Grim Reaper friend will appear and help me out. The sun is blindingly bright, but David and I are the only spirits here. “Mellie! Come on, I know you’re watching from somewhere!”

  David looks confused, following my eyes with his own and cocking his head at the empty sky. The sound of someone clearing their throat startles me and I catch myself just before I pitch over. David isn’t so lucky – he trips over his own feet and falls into a pile of smashed glass that would tear apart his skin if he was alive.

  A smirking Mellie floats out from behind David’s car, a smug look on her face. She must be some kind of ninja, because I didn’t notice her at all and I thought I was being diligent.

  “I was wondering when you’d call me,” she says, phasing through the trunk of the car and coming out to greet us on the other side. “Hi, David. I’m Mellie.”

  David is starting to look a little freaked out again. I don’t blame him – it’s one thing to see a ghost, but to see two ghosts at

  once must be pretty unsettling. Although, becoming a ghost is a lot more jarring, but he seems to have accepted that fact by now.

  I can’t really remember how I acted when I first realized I was dead. It wasn’t a surprise – that’s kind of the point of suicide, isn’t it? – but some part of me still didn’t think it would work. I pictured my sister finding me in time, a long ambulance ride that

  ended in a dozen stitches and a couple of new prescriptions. As much as I wanted it to work, something had always gotten in the way. That wasn’t my first time facing death with open arms, but to come out on the other side is a different reality entirely. Waking up disoriented, floating in the middle of my room with the acidic stench of my own blood filling my nose like a gas. I can’t imagine what that must be like to someone who wasn’t expecting it.

  “You’re dead too, then. Great.” David gestures wildly at nothing in particular. “What’s next? God, the Devil?”

  “Not yet.” Mellie smiles and holds her hand out to David, who looks at her like she’s suddenly grown a second head. “If it helps, you lived a good life. You’re predestined for Heaven.”

  David’s irises are blown wide and by the look on his face, Mellie’s words are not helping. So I didn’t calm him down completely, sue me. It’s not exactly an easy task, and I’m still new to this. I haven’t even been dead a week and Mellie’s got at least ten years of practice ahead of me.

  “Hey, at least you get to move on. Being stuck here is really starting to suck. Did you know you don’t even get to haunt people in the afterlife? What’s the fun in being dead if you can’t even pull a few pranks on the people you hated when you were alive?”

  Now David’s looking at me like I’m crazy. Exactly the opposite reaction I was hoping for.

  “You’re not here to have fun, Terra.”

  “No, you aren’t. I’m gonna make the most of my time in Limbo. There’s got to be some way I can use these new powers for my own personal gain.”

  I’d almost forgotten David was still here until he lets out a sound like a dying animal and slaps one hand on the top of his car. A loud, metallic echo rings out from the impact and I narrow my eyes, frowning. I thought we couldn’t touch solid objects like that. Trees and walls are one thing, but a car? How did he do that?

  Mellie catches the look on my face and quickly grabs David’s hand, ignoring his sputter of protest.

  “It’s time to go,” she says. “Are you ready?”

  David looks anything but ready, but he nods and lets her drag him away regardless. Last time, Esther went to Heaven on her own and Mellie and I watched her turn into a ball of light and disappear. This time, I’m left watching as both David and Mellie rise into the clouds and vanish in a spark of blinding yellow light.

  I just greeted my first fellow newly-dead and helped – kind of – him through the initial shock of dying, and now I have more questions than answers. How did David hit the car and not phase right through it? How can Mellie take people to Heaven like that without being able to stay there herself?

  Why is Mellie having me help her when she can do the job just fine on her own? Part of me is afraid to know the answer to that one.

  Chapter Five

  I decided to die on a Tuesday. There was a thin layer of frost on the grass outside and I remember wearing my favorite army-green jacket to school that morning. I went to my first two classes, if only to see my friends one last time, and skipped out on the rest. My father was at work and my sister was still in school, so nobody would find me for at least another hour, provided my sister decided to come home for lunch. That was plenty of time, I told myself. It probably wouldn’t take more than a few minutes anyway.

  But when my sister got home, nearly two hours later, I was still alive. I can remember the look on her face as clearly as a photograph - the way the shock faded away into resignation the moment she realized she couldn’t save me. If there’s anything I regret about my death, it’s that. But I don’t regret it enough to wish I hadn’t done it, not that it matters anymore anyway.

  I haven’t seen Mellie since she took David away. It’s almost like she’s avoiding me. Maybe she knows how many questions I have for her and she doesn’t want to have to answer them, or maybe

  she’s finally getting sick of me. Either way, it’s lonely being the only ghost around for miles. Some part of me is hoping someone else will end up stuck here like me, just so I can have someone to talk to. How sad is that?

  Not that I’m not glad nobody else has died since David. Watching what happened to him was bad enough; seeing it again would be torture. Is that what Mellie wants? To see me suffer?

  Mellie doesn’t seem like the kind of person who gets off on other people’s pain. When Esther was dying, Mellie pulled her soul out early to lessen her suffering. I don’t think Mellie intended for me to catch onto that, but what am I supposed to do with that information? Does she honestly expect me to walk – fly – around yanking people’s souls out of their bodies? I’m not that crazy.

  Since I’ve got a pretty much unlimited amount of free time until the next dead body turns up, I decide it’s finally time for me to go back home. The last time I was there I was bleeding to death on my bedroom floor, and the memories alone are almost enough to keep me away. But I need to see my father and my sister. I need to make sure they’re okay.

  Yeah, there’s a selfish side to suicide. It’s not like I was really thinking of anyone but myself when I went through with it. Death is kind of a one-sided experience.

  I still don’t regret it, though.

  My house is a small, white-washed building right in the middle of the city, with a simple exterior and a ‘vintage’ interior, which is just my dad’s way of saying we’re all too lazy to update any

  of the old stuff. As soon as the blue shutters and rickety white fence come into view, my chest clenches painfully in the place where my heart should be. Crap. I don’t know if I’m ready for this.

  See, that’s the thing about dying – you’re not supposed to come back. And there’s a good reason for that. Because sometimes
seeing what you’ve left behind is more painful than death itself.

  It’s a Wednesday afternoon, so thankfully my sister is still at school. My father works at a shabby little co-op on the edge of town and gets weekends off, so he’s at work right now. I breathe out a fast sigh as soon as I realize this; I don’t have to worry about seeing anybody.

  Not that they could see me anyway. Right?

  I test my flight skills by floating up to the second floor and phasing through my bedroom window, only stumbling once when my feet get stuck in the floor. Hey, I’m getting pretty good at this. I wonder if I get any cool upgrades for completing Level One of being a ghost.

  My room is the same as I left it, minus the massive blood stain in the middle of the carpet. It looks like someone tried to wash it out but waited until after it was dry, so the tan carpet is dyed burgundy in a couple of places. They should get a rug to cover it or something; it can’t be easy to look at. I wonder if anybody’s been in my room since I died, besides whoever cleaned the floor. Did my dad clean it or my sister? My stomach churns thinking of either of them leaning over my blood, scrubbing at it with their bare hands.

  I’ve got a small collection of figurines on my nightstand and

  a huge stuffed bear my sister bought me for my birthday a few years ago tucked neatly in one corner. The walls are painted with splashes of blue and purple that I must have thought looked cool when I was trying to be an edgy tween. Now it just looks like a mess.

  Memories flicker through my mind like a slideshow – the day I rearranged my room so that my bed blocked one of the windows across from the door; when my father bought me a candle shaped like a dragon and I refused to burn it because I was afraid of ruining the perfect image; the time my sister came running into my room after prom and told me that she loved a boy. But nothing about my mother.

  Most of my memories are scattered and sporadic, but when I look around my room I can clearly see the most recent set of things that happened here. It feels like watching a movie; everywhere I look, a different scene unfolds before my eyes. When I look at my printed duvet I remember getting it as a Christmas present the year I turned fourteen; the computer on top of my desk reminds me of the website I tried to create when I was barely old enough to be on the internet; my dad’s face pushes into my memories when I see the beautiful jewelry box he bought me on his way back from work just two weeks before I died.

  The overall theme of my room is organized chaos. My closet is packed with whatever doesn’t fit on the shelves and dressers in my room, and my drawers are full of unfolded clothes that were haphazardly stuffed away whether they were clean or not. But all of

  my trinkets are arranged meticulously, a thin layer of dust settling over everything I haven’t touched in years. It looks like I grew up

  somewhere in the middle of this mess and my life just took too long to catch up.

  I don’t go in Olivia’s room. I already have the baby-blue walls and white furniture memorized, and I doubt she’s redecorated in the two weeks I’ve been gone. And I don’t know if I can handle any more memories right now; they’re giving me a headache.

  Floating down the stairs is tricky, and I settle for walking with my feet hovering an inch or so above the steps. My old school photos are next to Olivia’s on one wall in the hallway, peppered with images of my father, my sister and I as babies, and a woman with long blonde hair who must be my mother. My memory of her hasn’t returned yet, so she must not have been in my life in the past couple of years. My mind is rebuilding itself backwards, and only a flicker of her face even tells me I knew her.

  But she’s beautiful. It’s obvious that Olivia takes after her; they both have the same hair and face and thin, perfect body. My dad has the same dark skin I have, with the boring brown hair and eyes that I inherited. I don’t even remember my mother, but I already wish I was more like her.

  I touch the frame of a faded old picture of my parents, trying my hardest to make contact with the splintered wood. Instead, my fingers fade right through it and the wall on the other side. Disappointment wells in my chest. How could David, who had only been dead for a few minutes, do something I can’t even do?

  I pull my hand back and whip it at the picture, anger pulsing through me like waves. The frame doesn’t even wobble.

  The front door opens and I jump back, knocking my elbow through the wall. It must be lunch time; my sister always comes home for lunch. How could I forget something as simple and routine as that?

  Olivia, for all of her charms, is a very plain-looking girl. She’s got our mother’s shiny blonde hair and our father’s dark brown eyes, but her face is as ordinary as they come. Her only defining features are the mole on one side of her mouth and the thick globs of makeup she covers herself in every day. Because of that, boys flock to her like pigeons, but she’s only had two steady boyfriends, and neither of them lasted longer than a year. She was too good for them anyway. I was always the one who held her while she cried over them, even if I never let her do the same for me.

  She’s got her backpack slung over one shoulder and the house keys swinging from a bejeweled lanyard in the opposite hand. Her hair is pulled back in a high ponytail today, and she’s wearing a dress she’s had since she was fourteen. I was always a little jealous of how small she is; it sometimes felt like for every pound of weight she lost, I gained a clump of fat on my thighs and around my waist. Not that I ever thought I was pretty, but next to miss-prom-queen, I must look like a gargoyle.

  At least she looks well adjusted. She doesn’t look happy, but she’s not crying through her mascara either. I almost call out her name, but I know she won’t hear me anyway. Being dead isn’t that

  bad, but being stuck in Limbo in the same town I killed myself to get out of is like my own personal Hell.

  I tried leaving, once, the day after Mellie told me I couldn’t. I made it as far as the city limits before some kind of force field stopped me. It hit it square in the face and it felt like an electric shock went straight through me. I don’t know why I’m stuck here of all places, but I’m just torturing myself more by revisiting the sites of my worst memories. Starting at the beginning, with my death.

  I watch Olivia silently, following her as she sets her bag down in the living room and makes her way to the kitchen. She’s wearing a flowery perfume – the smell is strong enough to wake the dead, literally. Or at least, for the dead to feel like the entire room has been doused with the sugary-scented concoction.

  My obituary is on the kitchen table; Olivia pointedly avoids looking at it as she makes her lunch and sits in the next room over to eat. I wish I could pick it up and read it, but I’m also kind of glad I can’t. It’s probably some bull about what a great person I was, anyway. I wasn’t a great person, for the record. Olivia of all people should know that.

  “The kitchen table, seriously?” I mumble, glaring at the photo of me on the front page. I’m wearing the barest hint of makeup and my hair is styled in the tight curls my sister insisted I get for my first school picture as a freshman. That’s probably the nicest picture of me that my family has. It makes me cringe just looking at it.

  The rest of the house is exactly the way I left it. I don’t know what I expected. Did I honestly think my death would rocket through

  the place like a hurricane and that I’d come back to a trash heap full of crying people? I’m glad everyone’s moved on. Honestly. I’m totally thrilled. Now if only I could do the same.

  Olivia eats her lunch in silence, watching some stupid program on the television that I don’t recognize. I stare at her the entire time, captivated by her presence. It’s like I expected my death to shatter her into a million pieces and I’m surprised that she can still do something as simple as eat a sandwich without crumpling into a mess of tears. Not everyone is as sensitive as me, I guess; it still kind of hurts to see her like that. Maybe I’m being selfish. I never said I wasn’t a selfish person.

  After Olivia leaves I float around the hous
e aimlessly, inspecting each room even though I know nothing will have changed. Memories flicker slowly past me like a photo reel, and my father and sister appear in nearly every one. My sister doing my makeup for the first time, my father baking cookies with me for Olivia’s birthday. But my mother doesn’t show up in a single one of them.

  I try touching a couple more things, but my hands just go right through them. As good as I’ve gotten at using my powers, I still can’t touch anything but the ground and a few stray tree branches. Mellie told me that’s because those things are natural, and spirits like us are just another part of nature. I think that’s a complete cop-out, especially since I’m pretty sure a sports car isn’t something you can find growing out of a bush in the wild. And I’ve touched walls and floor boards before, which aren’t exactly sprouting from the ground either.

  “Come on, Mel,” I say, my voice echoing in the empty air. “I deserve some answers, don’t I? I’m getting really sick of being here, and I still don’t know how to move on or whatever I’m supposed to

  do, and you’re the only one around here who seems to know what’s going on.”

  Silence. If Mellie’s hiding somewhere, she’s doing a really good job of staying hidden. She does that a lot – disappears at the most inconvenient moments and shows up later like she never left. I wonder where she goes when she leaves. If she was dealing with other deaths, wouldn’t I know it by the pulling sensation I always feel around them?

  “Mellie, I know you can hear me. Stop messing around.”

  I know Mellie well enough to know that she’s listening from somewhere. Either she’s ignoring me, or she’s playing a prank on me. It’s not the least bit funny anymore.

  “Mellie!” My voice raises an octave until I’m almost shouting. I realize what an idiot I’m being, since Mellie’s the only other ghost around who can hear me and she clearly isn’t going to answer, but I don’t care. My emotions have been going crazy all day and I’m so sick of feeling like my heart’s going to explode when I don’t even have one. I’m angry and disappointed and sad and afraid all at the same time, and with David and Esther gone, Mellie’s the only one who I can actually talk to. “Mellie, please! I know you’re listening, dammit!”