Suicide Souls

by Penni Jones

  The smell of sulfur fills the air. At first, I think I’m the only one who notices. But then everyone else is looking around and sniffing, too. It’s odd to see everyone sniff like that. It’s not something that happens around here.

  Doris stands and her eyes dart around the room.

  “Wait!” Ernesto says too late. Doris is already gone.

  An oppressive heat fills the room followed by a toe curling-chill.

  The smell grows stronger, and I can tell by the look on the mentors’ faces that whatever is happening is not good.

  “We should all get out of here right now,” Edith says. Her voice is softer than I expected.

  Before I can ask questions, two more people are in the room.

  “Edgar?” His once pristine suit is covered in soot and ripped at the seams. His face appears to be smeared in ashes and his skin looks drawn and bruised, or at least his illusion of skin.

  I stare at him so long I forget to look at his companion.

  “Who’s that?” Luke whispers loud enough for the entire room to here. Whispering at the right level is impossible here.

  “You!” Tony points at me. He’s as disheveled as Edgar.

  “You two know each other?” Luke asks.

  “He was Doris’ husband.”

  “Oh, we know each other. She sent me to Oblivion.” Tony is also covered in soot. His red hair sticks up everywhere, and it looks like one of his eyebrows was singed off.

  “Is that true?” Luke asks.

  “It’s true,” I say. “It was the only way to save you, Louisa, and Nolan.”

  Luke pulls a chair from the conference table and sits down. He puts his elbows on the able and rests his face in his hands.

  “I had to do it, Luke.” I cross my arms and jut out my chin, my best effort at righteous indignation.

  Luke looks up and says, “I know. But what if it was for nothing?”

  “I’m not going back.” Tony walks toward me with an evil look in his eye that rivals Charles Manson’s. “It’s your turn to go now, bitch.”

  “Get the fuck out of my face,” I say. Tony’s mouth drops open and he backs up a few paces.

  “Wait. You made it back. There’s no reason to get revenge,” Ernesto says.

  “You don’t know what it’s like there, man,” Edgar says. “Not that I’m saying that Tony should harm Naomi. But it’s terrible.”

  Ernesto asks, “How did you guys come back?”

  “We were sent back to collect Doris. She isn’t meant to get another chance. She violated the ethics code,” Edgar says.

  “Sent back by whom?” Greg asks. I had forgotten that he was in the room.

  Both Edgar and Tony look at each other then look down.

  “Hades,” Edgar says.

  “As in the Greek god?” Greg asks. His eyes are alight with mirth. I forgot how nerdy he could be sometimes. It was one of my favorite things about him.

  “Yes. Apparently, the Greeks had some of this stuff right.” Edgar sits next to Luke. His eyes still have a startled, haunted look.

  “Or whoever that guy is renamed himself after the mythology.” Greg punctuates his thought by pointing into the air.

  Edgar shakes his head and says, “Either way, I don’t want to go back.”

  “It wasn’t nothingness?” Luke asks.

  “No.” Edgar looks to the table and continues, “You know what it felt like when the Shadow found us?”

  “You know I do,” Luke says. He puts his hand on Edgar’s back.

  “It’s like that times a hundred. Freezing cold and burning hot, no air but prolonged gusts of wind, despair. So much despair.” Edgar brings his hands to his face and rubs his cheeks.

  “But worse than that,” Tony says.

  A quiet falls over the room.

  “We have to find Doris,” Edgar says.

  “He’s right. Greg what number are you at now?” Ernesto asks.

  Greg pulls the letter from his pocket and says, “267.” He stuffs the letter back in his pocket without looking up from his shoes.

  I am concentrating on Doris with everything I have, but she doesn’t appear.

  Chapter 28

  Naomi

  Stupid, stupid Naomi. Why did I fall for Doris and her mother act? My first instinct about her was right but I still fell for it. I guess I can chalk this to an afterlife lesson. Don’t mistake flattery for honesty.

  “I think she’s gone. She has to appear if we’re all trying to summon her. Unless it’s too late.” Ernesto puts a hand on Greg’s shoulder and looks down.

  “Too late?” I ask. “What does that mean for Greg and Luke?”

  “I’m on number 271.” Luke’s voice shakes.

  “There is a way. I think. I don’t know anyone who has actually tried it but there is something we can do.” Ernesto looks up with a finger in the air from his eureka moment.

  “What is it?” Luke asks. “I’ll try anything.”

  “We have to get loaner bodies,” Edgar says. His skin looks better than it did and if I’m not mistaken, his suit does, too.

  “Exactly!” Ernesto says.

  “How do we do that?” Greg asks.

  “Where did everyone go?” I ask. Meeting my new staff has certainly been a bust. There’s no one left at the conference table. Seems like they would stick around and at least offer to help.

  “They all scattered. Can’t say I blame them,” Ernesto says.

  “What do we need to do, Ernesto?” I ask.

  “Right. Loaner bodies.” Ernesto holds out his hand and a file appears. He opens it and says, “Only two of us can go.”

  “Why?” Greg asks.

  “There are only two loaner bodies available. There might be more in a matter of hours or even minutes, but right now there are two.”

  “I’m going,” I say. “I know Doris better than the rest of you do.”

  “I’m going, too,” Edgar says. “That bitch is mine.”

  “You shouldn’t go. We have to find her so she can stop taking spots from these boys. It’s not time for revenge. Not right now.” Ernesto closes the file and says, “I’ll go with Naomi.”

  “No. I will.” Luke stands with his shoulders squared and chin out. “I’m not going to wait around for someone else to fix this.”

  Ernesto focuses on Luke’s face and nods. “I’ll give you a briefing and send you on your way. You must be very careful. I’ll follow behind as soon as I can get a body.”

  Tony is suddenly closer to me than he was before. He puts his hand on my arm, producing an oppressive, heavy heat. Maybe from his anger or maybe a leftover sensation from Oblivion. “I’m letting you go so you can find Doris. When you get back, we will settle this once and for all.”

  “Gee, can’t wait.” I give him a fake smile and flip him off.

  “Let’s go,” Ernesto says.

  Ernesto, Luke, and I are back in my new office.

  “You’ll have to remember how to keep time. If you don’t return within twenty-four hours, you’ll be stuck.” Ernesto talks as he flips through another binder. His eyes are scrunched together like he doesn’t quite understand what he’s reading. “There are a lot of unknowns to what you’re about to do. It’s pretty risky. If you die and it’s not suicide, you’ll be sent to a final afterlife with a mixture of your memories and the loaner’s. You have to be careful.”

  “How do we find Doris?” Luke asks.

  “Her name is Dylan Pine. She’s been carrying his headshot around for a while now. I think he’s an actor,” I say.

  “Did she mention where he lives?” Ernesto asks.

  “She did.” I close my eyes and think, really think. So much of what Doris said about Dylan didn’t go directly into my brain. I got tired of hearing about him. She said something about visiting the Statue of Liberty. “New York.”

  Ernesto pulls a file out of the air again. “That’s good. Both loaner bodies are in the same house in Connecticut. You should be able to get to New York quickly.”


  “How are we going to find Doris, or Dylan, whatever? New York is huge, right?” Luke says.

  “This is where the Internet will come in handy.” I put my hand on his shoulder and smile. I have a glimmer of hope that this will work. “We should be able to search for Dylan Pine and find his address or where he works or something like that. Hopefully, he has a MySpace account so we can look for details there.”

  “I’m glad you’re going, Naomi.” Ernesto pulls a necklace from his pocket and drapes it around my neck. “When it’s time to come back you’ll have to kill yourselves again. This is a timer.”

  “Won’t that send us to Oblivion?” I ask. “That would be a second suicide for both of us.”

  “No. The loaner bodies are different. It’s not your second chance.”

  “Are you sure this will work?” Luke asks.

  “No. But it’s all we have,” Ernesto says. “We just have to hope for the best.”

  * * *

  Luke

  “Andy!” A man shouts from the hallway.

  My lungs fill with air as my surroundings start to register. I have moved around abruptly now for a very long time, but this time is definitely the strangest. I breathe in and out, in and out. How did I do this for two decades without thinking?

  I’m in bed and I have a boner. A blessed, blessed boner. I’m in a small bedroom with posters on the walls that have the names of bands I’ve never heard of. I’m wearing only boxer shorts and tube socks. I stand from my bed and stretch every muscle I can stretch. It feels amazing. I move my head from side to side, cracking my neck.

  There is a bathroom attached to the bedroom. In the mirror is the most handsome face I’ve ever seen looking back at me. It’s like Matt Dillon and Ralph Macchio had a baby and I am him. I’m older than I was when I died, maybe close to 30. But if I’m that old why am I in this tiny bedroom?

  My body. My God, my body. A six-pack, those broad shoulders Sasha told me about, bulging biceps.

  I look inside the boxer shorts. The boner isn’t as huge as the rest of my body prepped me for, but it will do.

  A man steps into the room. He has a camera on his shoulder and some sort of ID badge around his neck.

  “Dude, you’re on set in two minutes.”

  “On set?”

  “We’re starting in the kitchen today, remember?”

  “I guess I forgot,” I say.

  “Lay off the weed, man. It’s eating your brain.” He backs out of the room as I start looking for clothes.

  The closet contains several pairs of jeans that look tiny and about a dozen shirts with embroidered details. I’m not sure if these are fashionable or if Andy has bad taste.

  I select an outfit and walk into the hallway.

  “Hey, Andy.” A girl emerges from the door across the hall. She has long auburn hair and giant eyelashes. She’s wearing a tight tank top and tiny shorts. “We better get a move on.”

  “Yeah,” I say. She leads the way down the hall, and I follow with my boner freshly returning.

  “Late night last night, huh?” She turns around and winks at me. It’s a cartoonish, exaggerated wink.

  “Did we have sex?” I ask before I can stop myself.

  The girl tosses her head back dramatically and laughs. “You wish.” She looks at me over her shoulder and says, “If you play your cards right, I’ll let you past third base tonight.” She stops and turns around, placing her hand on my chest. “Maybe I’ll let you slide into home.”

  “Naomi?” Please, please be Naomi.

  The girl’s jaw drops. “Who the fuck is Naomi?” She rolls her eyes and turns away from me with her arms crossed over her chest.

  We walk into a massive kitchen. It’s bigger than the apartment where I killed myself. There are people everywhere. Several men and women with cameras on their shoulders line the walls, and there are a couple of people with boom mikes.

  “Good morning, love birds,” a tall Black man in basketball shorts says with a laugh. He pours a glass of orange juice and takes a drink.

  “Turn the label toward the camera, Mike,” a fortyish woman with a clipboard says. She’s wearing glasses and headphones.

  “We’re not love birds.” The girl sticks her lips out in a pout and says, “He just called me Naomi!”

  Mike erupts in laughter. The other non-crew people in the room do as well, except for an older woman who sits at a stool at the island countertop. She pulls a coffee cup to her lips with a trembling hand and raises her drawn-on eyebrows at me.

  A short girl with a pixie haircut and tortoise shell glasses says, “Way to go, Andy. Put that bitch in her place.”

  “Shut up, Elle!” the girl puts her hands on her hips and says, “No one has remembered your name since 2002.”

  “Ladies, it’s too early in the morning for this,” a gray-haired man standing over the stove in pressed slacks and a crisp button-down shirt topped with a white apron says. He’s scrambling eggs but looks like someone should be doing it for him.

  I’m dizzy with confusion, so I take a seat next to the old woman at the counter. The creases around her lips are stained with decades of lipstick. Her face is familiar.

  She was on TV for something. An actress? A news reporter. No.

  She was married to a famous televangelist! She would cry on cue and ask for money. Her dogs had collars with real diamonds. She was old even then, but old in the way everyone over forty is when you’re in your teens.

  “Juniper Haskell?” I ask.

  “Is that who I am?” she asks while taking a sip of coffee. “Lucky-fucking-me.”

  “Oh, no,” I whisper. The others have moved onto a conversation about Elle’s glorious-and-gone pop star career.

  “Look at those girls. They’re both young and have great bodies, yet here I am. Juniper Haskell—old woman with too much makeup and a terrible dye job.” She looks me up and down and says, “Still want to touch my tits?”

  Any remnant of my boner has evaporated.

  “No, thank you.” I feel kind of sorry for her. Maybe I should at least look at her tits.

  “We have to give these assholes the slip,” she says. “Dylan Pine is a train ride away.”

  “I, uh,” I say. I should speak clearly, should agree with her. She is right after all. But my brain can’t make sense of Naomi being in this body.

  Back in her career prime, Juniper would appeal to the camera and drain money from old folks trying to buy their way into Heaven. Her face taking up the entire screen with black tears running down her cheeks, she would go on and on about God’s love and how she and her husband needed money to further God’s causes.

  “Stop staring at me like that. I know what I look like.” She looks down into her coffee mug. “At least the coffee is good. Let’s get this shit done so I can get out of this body.”

  “What are you two all cozy about?” The girl who definitely is not Naomi says.

  “Honey,” Naomi says as Juniper in the strong southern accent I remember from my youth. “Andy here has offered to drive me to the train station. My son called this morning, and he needs me right away.”

  “Oh, hell no.” The woman with a clipboard walks toward us while waving her hands at the cameramen. “You cannot leave here today. You’ll be breaking your contract and I’ve had enough of your bullshit.”

  “You can’t keep me here against my will. I’ll tell everyone that you’re keeping us prisoner.” Juniper smirks at the producer and then says, “Americans would hate to know that you kept a poor old woman away from her ailing son. How would that look for your little program?”

  The producer’s moxie dissolves in front of our faces.

  Oh, yeah. It’s Naomi.

  “Andy can’t take you. He needs to finish the scene with McKenna,” the producer says quietly.

  “I’m not filming anything with this asshole today,” the busty girl whose name is apparently McKenna says.

  The producer throws down her clipboard and rips off her head
set.

  “FINE!” she stomps out of the room as the crew members make feeble attempts to stifle their laughter.

  “I need to find some shoes,” I say.

  “And some car keys, numb nuts,” Naomi says.

  “Does anyone have a car we can borrow?” I direct the question to the entire room.

  The only answers I get are shrugs and mumbles.

  “Come on, please,” Naomi says. Tears erupt from her eyes and roll down her cheeks. “My son,” she says between choking sobs, “needs his mama.”

  Two male and one female crew members reach into their pockets and pull out keys.

  “Whose car is the fastest?” she asks while wiping her tears.

  “I have a Camaro,” the female says. “Be gentle with her, okay? She’s my baby.”

  “Thank you, child,” Naomi says as I take the keys. “One day you’ll have a real baby and I hope someone repays you this kindness.”

  The woman scrunches her eyes together and nods. “You’re welcome?”

  Chapter 29

  Naomi

  This Camaro would have been the answer to all my prayers in high school. Instead I had an old Nissan. It was fine, but it wasn’t a Camaro with a low growl and tinted windows.

  “What’s this?” Luke asks. He has a small black rectangle in his hand.

  “A phone, maybe?” It’s not the kind of I had when I died, but I don’t know what else it could be.

  “No way! This is like some sci-fi shit.” He pokes at it until the screen lights up with a photograph of Andy.

  “He is his own wallpaper?”

  “How do I use this thing? It looks like I need a code.”

  “No idea.” I pull the GPS screen from the front window and shove it toward him. “Find us a train station.”

  “How?” He turns the GPS around like the directions might be on the back.

  “For fuck’s sake.” I snatch it from him and push buttons until I find the “transportation” section. The train station is less than ten miles away. “I looked at a schedule before I left my room this morning. There’s a train leaving in thirty minutes,” I say as I put the car in gear and pull out of the parking lot.