Penni Jones - Suicide Souls

“I’m not the sidekick. You’re the sidekick.” I reach to put my hand over hers just as the pulling starts.

It shouldn’t be so jarring by now. Apparently, I’ve been doing it for a decade.

A bar. This is the first time I’ve landed at a bar. It’s dingy and looks like it smells terrible, but it’s pretty cool. There’s a jukebox playing Al Green. My charge leans against it and smokes an imaginary cigarette.

“Hey, Nolan,” I say.

“You can see me?” He flicks his imaginary cigarette. He’s really committed to this pretend smoking thing.

“Not only can I see you, I’m here to help you.” I smile and hold out my hand. “The name’s Luke.” I’m doing my damnedest to sound masculine.

We shake hands the way souls do.

He looks like a man’s man. Tall and burly with a trimmed beard. He probably loved beer. Or maybe Nolan was a whiskey man.

“Why am I at Wanda’s Tavern?” he asks.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Running my pickup off a cliff. I took my seatbelt off first, but I probably didn’t need to.” Nolan gestures to a small table and we sit like we’re two regular fellas, getting ready to drink and shoot the shit.

“You are now a suicide soul. In order to move on from this phase, you have to witness your friends and family grieving for you.”

It’s like I’m a teacher, and my student is an old dude. The only teaching I ever did when I was alive was teaching Daisy how to roll joints. This instruction is probably more important.

“How old are you? Sixteen?” he asks like he already hates me.

“I was twenty when I died.”

Nolan stares at nothing and says, “Twenty. That was a helluva year. I was in college smoking grass and bagging babes left and right. There’s no way I would have killed myself at twenty.”

“Well, I reckon I didn’t know how good I had it.”

How has Nolan’s suicide become about my failure to enjoy my youth? Nolan’s kind of a dick.

“Let’s get this started. Who’s important to you in this place?”

Nolan looks around and shrugs. “Hell if I know. Maybe the bartender? I probably tipped her enough to pay her rent the past couple of years.”

“You’ll have to watch her grieve. You can emit a scent that will remind her of you. You can manipulate the energy around the jukebox and make it play a song that will make her think of you.”

“So, I just have to make her cry?” he asks.

“Yeah. Pretty much.” The bartender is cute like a young Sally Field. She’s chatting with a customer and smiling like she’s interested in what he’s saying. “And you have to watch her for a bit and then you’ll be moved somewhere else.”

I hope my next body is already twenty-one. I’d really like to hang out in some bars. Meet some cute bartenders. Pick songs from a jukebox. Maybe I’ll get everyone in the bar to call me by a nickname like “Tex” or “Ace.”

“Moved?” he asks.

“Yeah. Moved. Like transported or beamed up or something. It’s painless. Just weird.”

“Parkinson’s.” Nolan points at me for punctuation.

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t you wonder why I did it?”

“Oh,” I say for lack of something more eloquent. I don’t feel right telling him that I already know about his Parkinson’s. And about his erectile dysfunction. Or that his wife who had the same name as his mother left him one year ago for an aikido instructor. The two most important women in his life were named Janet. Both of them pretty and selfish.

No wonder Nolan’s kind of a dick.

“I did woodwork. I made headboards, chairs, coffee tables. Lots of details.” Nolan spread out his hands and held them out in front of me. “These big old hands made dainty delicate details. Until the shaking took that away from me.” He draws his hands closer to his face and says, “But they’re not shaking no more.”

“The good news is that after you finish your grief watch, you get to try again. You have to find a vapid body…”

“How the hell do I do that?”

“I have no idea. But we’ll figure that out later.” I smile like I’m confident about that and continue, “You will have another chance. You can make art again. You just have to watch your loved ones cry first.”

Nolan nods and says, “All right. Let’s do this shit.”

“ You have to do this shit, Nolan. You just have to…”

The pull starts to happen before I finish my sentence. I’m back in the food court. But I’m not alone.

Louisa appears in Luke’s seat as soon as he’s sucked away. I wonder if he’ll miss me. I’m not sure if he likes me or hates me. Maybe both.

The poor girl is wearing an oversized tie-dyed T-shirt and boy short underwear.

There should be some kind of PSA to let people know that what they die in is what they will wear for a potentially long time.

Her hair is dyed black and her light brown roots are showing. I’m not sure if she’s a Goth or a hippie. Is Goth hippie a thing now?

“Where the fuck am I?” she asks.

“Hello,” I say. “I’m Naomi.”

“Where the fuck am I, Naomi?”

“Louisa, you’re a suicide soul. So am I. We’re in a sort of limbo or purgatory or something.” I hold my hands out for her, but she doesn’t touch them. A tough girl even in death. “You were a cutter, weren’t you?”

Louisa pulls her arms together and shoves them down like her scars are showing. But that’s not how I know. I’m just really intuitive.

Just kidding.

It was in her file.

“I’m not judging you.”

Ruthie Mae was a cutter. She never told anyone but me, at least as far as I know. And she stopped doing it during our senior year after a cut got infected and her mom took her to a therapist.

When she came to visit me at college, her latest boyfriend had seen the scars. She did her best to keep them hidden. To only undress in the dark. But she let her guard down.

She changed the subject, and he let it go. He was probably pleased with himself for trying, just in case it was a for-real problem. That was enough for him to feel good about himself, but it shouldn’t have been enough for Ruthie Mae.

“I should have put on pants before I killed myself,” she says.

“Tell me about it.” I point at my chest. “I’ve had my tits out for a year.”

Louisa smiles. Just a slight smile, but it’s significant.

“What happens now?” she asks quietly.

“You have to watch everyone who loves you grieve. And you have to do it within a reasonable amount of time.”

“This is fucking bullshit.” She stands and tries to turn the table over, but her hands just go through it.

“What’s the problem? It’s not that big of a deal. I mean, all things considered.”

“I killed myself to get away from my molesty dad, and now I have to see him again. It’s not fucking fair.” She crosses her arms over her chest.

She’s right. It’s not fair. Souls should be able to skip the people who helped guide their path to suicide.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “Hey! If you catch him asleep you can slap him or hit him and he’ll feel it. It’s really satisfying.”

Louisa narrows her eyes at me. “We can make actual contact?”

“Yeah. I slapped my ex-boyfriend. It was rad.”

Louisa lets her arms drop and sits back down. “Well, okay. When do I start?”

As soon as the question exits her lips, she is sucked away. She doesn’t have all of the instructions and helpful hints.

I guess whoever’s in charge here isn’t crazy about suicide souls having help.

“Where’s Edgar?” the girl swivels her head, looking around the non-café. She’s more of a woman than a girl, I suppose. But she’s petite and blonde. Not bottle blonde, but that blonde that usually only occurs naturally in children. Like sin hasn’t had a chance to darken their heads yet. She’s wearing something that’s overalls on the top and a skirt on the bottom. It’s like a scout uniform without patches or buttons. The overall look is familiar, but I can’t place it.