B.C. Johnson - Deadgirl

I don’t know how I still lived…existed. I guess there, in the Grey, we have nowhere else to go. Maybe we couldn’t use enough juice to die. Something there sustained me—I knew that—the aching cold always disappeared, temporarily, when I went there. It was there, in the other place, the real place, that we had to burn so hot to stay alive. I let out a long slow breath and turned back to the Abraham-monster.

“I think I know how to beat you,” I said, finally. The solution had occurred to me only as my eyes opened. Something Puck had written, without even knowing it.

How is that? A voice floated to me, maybe in my head, maybe not. It sounded tired. Abraham’s real voice, probably.

“Can I ask a question?”

The impaled, glowing form shook, and I marveled. It was unmistakably a laugh.

I’m not going anywhere.

“Were you going to kill me?” I asked him. Lying beside each other, broken, without the strength to stand, we made quite a pair.

Can’t kill the dead.

“What is it then?”

We remove you. We undo the damage you’ve done.

“Where do I go?”

Nowhere. You cease to be.

I didn’t talk, for a long while.

“What about my soul?” I felt childish asking it, but nothing had ever seemed so important.

Another long pause. Finally, the white-glowing form turned its featureless face toward the sky.

Haven’t figured it out? You are your soul. Naked. A light bulb filament without the glass. Burning so hot and so bright because it can’t not. It burns or it ceases to be—like you.

He sounded sad—I’ll give him that.

“But…why?”

Some people with great willpower who die in times of happiness…you couldn’t accept your death. And so you traded your soul. You used it…to live. Now, you take the bits of other souls to sustain yours. Fuel for the fire. And your’s is an inferno.

“If I die? If I…fade away?”

You’re gone.

“Heaven? Hell? Whatever?”

Not for you. Where does a burned up leaf go? The air, maybe. Maybe nowhere.

I closed my eyes.

“What are you? You sent by…God or something? You an Angel of Death, Abe?” I whispered, unable to disguise the wry laughter in my voice. I watched the brewing storm far above us with little interest.

I don’t know. I was killed by one like you…forty years ago. I was his first murder. I think that’s how it works.

“Puck?”

No. Life isn’t that interesting.

“This is revenge?”

It’s…my duty. My job.

I covered my eyes and let out a long slow breath. My cheeks were slick with tears. My breath came in hitches and jerks.

“I’m going to kill you now, Abraham,” I said.

I wouldn’t tell you these things if I thought differently.

I reached over and touched his hand. I jumped a little—his fingers curled around mine, like two lovers holding hands. I took a deep breath and flipped us.

Bright florescent light pierced my eyes, and I took a deep breath. Ice flooded into my lungs, and I jerked. It covered me, penetrated me. Defined me. I glanced down, not surprised to see my feet and calves had already faded. My thighs were turning transparent. I held up my arms…gone up to the elbows. No wonder they didn’t hurt so much. I laughed a sardonic, depressing chuckle. An upside?

Maybe I wasn’t gonna kill anybody. Maybe it was over.

I turned my head to the side. Human-looking Abraham lay beside me, his once white lab coat scarlet with blood. A wooden spike the size of a baseball bat stuck out of his stomach, and one of his long-fingered hands held it, cradling it like a baby. The other hand lay motionless beside mine…as soon as we had flipped over, he’d let go of my hand. He stared up at the ceiling, his skin paler than normal. He took shallow, raspy breaths. They were, I noticed, becoming stronger.

“Abe,” I whispered. “Maybe you win after all.”

Abe said nothing. I don’t think he had the strength.

We breathed beside one another, mine growing fainter, his stronger. I tried to move or crawl, but I didn’t have the limbs or the solidity. I looked up at the ceiling—I lacked the courage to watch my body disappear. Or my soul, I guess, if anything Abraham had told me was true. I think it was.

I’d never been a religious person. I guess being religious wasn’t terribly cool, and had gone out-of-fashion. But I’d thought about things. I’d thought about what happened at the end. The very end. Everyone does, once in a while, I suppose. We have to. At some point, we have to tangle with Death. The first bout is just a thumb wrestle—a question from a child.

Mommy, what happens when we die?

Not a fun question for mommies around the world. I remember when I’d asked my mom that very same question. I asked her with tears streaming down my eyes yet in a calm voice. I’d come from my talk with Dad about Scooter, our little beagle that had been run over by an old lady in a Volkswagen. He told me that Scooter had passed away—that he wasn’t around anymore. I thought that was a funny way of explaining that my little puppy, who licked the stray barbecue sauce off my face like it was communion, was now a red trail of guts thirty-feet long down Thistle Street.

Mommy told me that Scooter the Beagle had gone to Doggy Heaven. That he could play all day with all the other white-robed, ghost puppies, and never had to take a bath or go to the groomers or go to the vet ever again. That he could just chill out.

“Doggy Heaven sounds nice, Mommy,” I said to her, wiping the cold, used tears from my cheeks. “But it sounds kinda smelly.”

She said it was, and that all the Doggy Angels preferred it that way. That made sense, I thought. Scooter always did have his cute little nose jammed in the worst substances he could find.

I didn’t need any more explaining beyond that. If doggies went to Doggy Heaven, little girls went to Little Girl Heaven. There weren’t any mean boys in Little Girl Heaven, and there definitely wasn’t homework or chores or broccoli. The idea worked for me—I guess it works for all of us. It lends life a pleasant symmetry.

My idea of Heaven evolved, as I did. Suddenly maybe Little Girl Heaven had a few boys in it, the right kind, anyway. Okay, maybe it had a lot of boys in it. The homework and the chores thing pretty much stayed the same. It wasn’t a place I thought about often. I don’t think many fifteen-year-olds think of Heaven very often. Death doesn’t even have your address when you’re fifteen. Or at least, it only has the address of a small, unfortunate group. The rest of us float along, wrapped in a forgivable sense of immortality.

But I always knew I’d go there, when all was said and done. That God or the Force or the Flying Spaghetti Monster could forgive the little transgressions and find a spot for me. He’d wag his finger at the time I’d stolen a Twix bar from the Food Mart. Or the time I’d punched Bobby Petrino in the nose for calling me a Cootie-Factory . He was mean, and he deserved it, and I felt the allegation to be a serious, slanderous one.

He’d wag his finger, but the Pearly Gates weren’t padlocked.

I guess they were now. I didn’t have Little Girl Heaven…I didn’t even have Doggy Heaven—which I always secretly hoped was right next door to Little Girl Heaven, and that there was some kind of policy on visitation rights.

Now I’d fade away. I’d cease to be. Forever.

I felt colder than I’d ever felt before.

“Please.”

That’s all I said. I didn’t have any more breath. I didn’t have lungs to draw more—they were gone. I was gone.

My eyes began to go dark, even though they were open. I felt like I had been floating on top of a swimming pool, and I was slowly…sinking…down.