I wasn’t surprised. But at least now I knew for sure. No more faint, niggling doubts suggesting that giving up my faith might’ve been something of an eternal gamble. In case you’re wondering—there is no Hell. And by the looks of it, no Heaven either.
Death is like a colonoscopy. It’s the prep that sucks balls. You don’t feel or remember anything about the procedure itself. I died of a brain tumor. Cancer’s the pits. But death? You don’t even feel it.
It took me a minute to even realize I was dead. I heard the monitor flatline, which should have been my first clue. The nurse came in without a hint of urgency and switched off the machines. She must have known this was going to happen because she wasn’t the least bit surprised or concerned.
I was alone when it happened. That was depressing. It was a little after 3:00 a.m. I guess I shouldn’t have expected my wife and kids to be there that late. Still. That was the hardest part about dying—being alone.
One thing I learned about being dead is, you’re not constantly awake. The next thing I remembered was being in the morgue, laying flat on a metal table with a sheet over my face. Of course, there was nothing I could do to remove it so I just laid there, looking through a veil of white.
“Why are you still in there?” a man’s voice asked.
As far as I could tell, I was alone in the room. No, that wasn’t true. There was another dead guy on the table next to me. But the voice wasn’t coming from him.
“Who said that?” I asked from under my sheet.
“I’m Gary,” he said. “Well, I was Gary.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m over here. Can’t you see me?”
I looked to where the voice was coming from and strained my eyes. I could barely make out the shape of a man. Couldn’t see details at first, but slowly he came into focus.
“What are you?”
“That’s a good question. I was that,” he said, pointing to his pale cadaver on the table next to me, “and now I’m this.”
“A ghost?”
He shrugged. “You don’t have to stay in there, you know.”
“In where?” I asked.
“In that corpse. You don’t need it anymore. You’re free now.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. Freedom sounded suspiciously like exile.
It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d had any other option. I lifted my head to look around and then sat up. I turned to see my body laying under the sheet and it gave me the heebie-jeebies. I rose off the table and regarded my frail body below.
I flinched when Gary sidled up to me. “What was it? Heart attack? Aneurysm?”
“Brain tumor,” I said.
“Ooh, that’s rough.”
“So what are we supposed to do now?”
“Beats me. I got here a few hours before you did. I thought someone would be here to greet me. St. Peter? My aunt Elspeth? Nope. I guess it’s just you and me.”
“I want to see my wife and kids,” I said.
Gary shook his head. “I tried to get out of here, but I can’t get very far from my body.”
I floated up toward the ceiling but before I reached it I felt a tug as if I was somehow tethered to my body by an invisible rope and I couldn’t retreat any further. At that moment, two orderlies came in, zipped Gary’s body into a bag and wheeled him out of the room.
“Maybe I’ll see you around!” Gary said, waving to me as he trailed behind his own corpse.
The next time I woke up I was in my body again and as soon as I realized it, rose up and away from it as fast as I could. My body was naked and a mortician was applying makeup to my pale, waxy face. God, I looked terrible.
I thought I heard my wife in another room and I floated toward the sound of her voice. I expected that invisible rope to go taut once I reached the other side of the room, but it had more slack in it than it did the first time. I floated slowly and carefully down the hallway in her direction.
The rope finally ended just outside another room. I wanted to see her face but I couldn’t get beyond the length of the tether. I could hear her clearly though. She was talking to a man about caskets.
“Very nice choice, ma’am. The Belmont Legacy is one of our most popular selections. And you’d like the velvet interior in monarch blue. Very tasteful. Now there is one more consideration I’d like to offer. Many families opt to select a burial vault for the gravesite.”
“What is that?”
“A burial vault is a concrete structure that prevents the ground around the grave from settling, which could compromise the integrity of the casket over time. It also protects the casket from groundwater and critters from seeping in.”
“Oh, God!”
“Now, it is an extra cost, but I think it’s definitely worth the piece of mind.”
“How much?”
“Our premium protection vault, which offers high strength concrete, stainless steel reinforcements, enhanced waterproof sealing, and customizable options is $5700.”
“Oh, wow.”
Don’t do it, Vanessa. It’s a scam. Who cares if bugs eat my rotting corpse? You won’t even be alive by then.
“It may sound like a lot,” the funeral director continued, “but it’s worth knowing that your husband will be forever protected from groundwater and creepy crawlies. Hell, not even the Holy Ghost can get in there!” He chuckled and then quickly comported himself by clearing his throat.
She considered it for a moment. I imagined she was pinching her chin as she always does when she’s mulling something over. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
“Excellent.”
No! What a waste of money! Of all the useless, superfluous purchases this woman has made, this had to be the most unnecessary. I wished I could have haunted her right then and got her to change her mind. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t even do that when I was alive.
The meeting concluded and I watched her turn back down the hall toward the front entrance.
“Vanessa!” I called out. “Vanessa!” But she kept walking.
I followed her all the way through the front doors and into the parking lot before the invisible rope went taut and I was flung backward. My tether was getting longer by the hour.
“That your wife?”
I startled. Gary was suddenly at my side again. Ghost don’t seem to have a sense of personal space. He must have been at the same funeral home.
“It was,” I replied.
“Nice.” He leered at my wife as she got into her car.
“Dude.”
“Oh, sorry. Hey, listen, turns out there’s a lot of us around here.”
“Us? You mean, ghosts?”
“I don’t super love that term, but sure. A few of us are getting together later by the old mill. You should come.”
I demonstrated my travel restriction by tugging myself away and getting pulled back toward my body. Gary assured me that in time, the tether would extend.
And it did. Later that night, I joined Gary and about twenty other ghosts down by the old mill. I may not have gotten into Heaven, but at least I had company. Being a ghost wasn’t so bad. You never got hungry or experienced any physical pain. And you didn’t have to go to work. It was like early retirement but without having to worry about getting any older.
Over the next few days, I cycled in and out of consciousness. I wasn’t sure how it happened, but I always woke up in my rigid, formaldehyde-smelling corpse. I didn’t love that so much. But every time I woke up, I was able to travel further and further away from my body.
I even visited Vanessa and the kids a few times. Not gonna lie, it was pretty depressing over there. I missed being a dad to those little shitheads—I really did. Vanessa was really going to have her hands full. Nothing I could do about it now.
The day of my funeral I sat on the limb of a nearby oak and watched the whole thing. Gary appeared out of nowhere. I lost my balance and fell off the branch I was perched on. You would think ghosts were immune to gravity but you’d be wrong. Apparently, my translucent new friends were throwing me a burial party tonight by the old mill. That should take my mind off things.
I waited until they lowered me into the ground and figured I’d seen enough. People lined up behind Vanessa and the kids to throw dirt on top of my shiny new casket. What a weird fucking tradition. I should have asked to be cremated. I told Gary I’d catch up with him and the gang later and floated up and up until the mourners looked like little black ants.
I woke up in my body again. It was dark. Of course it was dark. My body was buried six feet under ground. I rose up out of my lifeless body and through the lid of the casket until I hit something solid.
I pushed up against the cold hard surface. This was strange because I hadn’t previously been impeded by solid material. I’m a ghost. We go through shit. I floated to my right and pressed up against another wall. Another wall to my left.
That’s when I recalled what the funeral director said:
Hell, not even the Holy Ghost can get in there.
The vault! I thought I was trapped by my wife’s needless spending in life—and now it’s trapped me in death.
I bounced against all six sides of the stainless steel enforced concrete prison like a pin ball, shouting and wailing like a banshee for days on end. No one could hear my screams. And no one ever will.
I take it back. There is a Hell.
And I am in it.
J. B. Velasquez is the author of the metaphysical portal fantasy Tourist Trapped and the dystopian adventure novel Every Last One: The Rise of Sylvia Boone.
Wifey knew what she was doing. Don't want ghost watching her have sex with the next guy! 😫😖😱😂
As soon as the funeral home employee offered the vault, I knew where this would end up. Despite this, you built the horror of the character's discovery so well. Great read!