"Darn it! Why can't I move...."
That was my first thought when I learned that I was dead.
At first, when the pictures all stop coming, the thing that gets you is, you know, being dead. But after a while, it's the little things: not breathing, not drinking, not seeing, well not exactly anyway, because it's not like you can use your eyes.
But I guess being dead is the kind of thing you get used to, I mean, you have a long enough time to get used to it...
Being dead is like having all of the fabrics of your life folded up, and placed in the closet. All of the different textures that make up living fade away. There are no more folds, no unclean little nooks-- everything is just sort of evened out. All of the things that consume the living are irrelevant now-- I'll never get the things I want, but I will never fail again either-- I don't even have to worry about where my next meal is coming from. All of that is gone now. And that is what being dead is supposed to be like. But for me it was different. For me, there was this one little thing that wouldn't go away. For a dead person, it really was a very small thing, since nothing really maters anyway....
But, even though it was the littlest thing, just by the fact of it's existence, it became huge to me. With all the colors of life faded away, this little tiny little spot on the canvas began to give me meaning again, it gave me definition again, and so it gave me life again.
It was a small, small thing. If I had a heart to feel with, it might feel like a doubt. And now I need to find out how I died-- not to find out who did it...
but to be sure of who didn't do it.
Chapter 2 submitted by Je Suis
Despite all the inventive slandering and ceaseless shouting, the Muslims hadn't killed me, I was pretty sure about that. They seemed to be a pretty angry bunch, those ones, especially the more radical Muslims, who appeared to have grudge against me for being one, white; two, western; three, breathing. But the various terrorist squads out there had always remained a little outside of my social circle, you know? Ditto the Chinese, Egyptians, Starbucks baristas, Marxists, and people who shopped at Wal-mart. Also, my parents, seeing as they were dead. This, by the same logic, means Mark Twain did not kill me, Francis Ford Coppola had no hand in my death, and no member of the Ghandi clan or the French Revolution ever conspired against me. More's the pity, because if no one famous killed me, that meant my chance of being famous after my death was quickly diminished, possibly beyond all hope of restoration. I would like to be famous, even now, when I’m dead. Curious desire, this. I had never been remarkable for very much outside of my private circle of acquaintances. There was the time I auditioned for the post of weatherman down at the local television station. Those people probably still had my demo tape somewhere, probably filed under W for "We Are Absolutely Never Going To Hire This Idiot". "Looks like rain," I remember declaring confidently on that tape as I stood in the sun-warmed spray of the sprinkler on my neighbour's front lawn while his kids screamed and chased each other around me. "Pervert," their mother had yelled at me as she ran down the steps, and, after I had reasonably replied to her charge, "Yeah, well you can go to hell yourself, Speedos are NOT pants. And get off my property." Well, maybe she killed me. Which would have been unkind of her. I would never have touched her kids. Everybody who knows me – dammit, knew me - knew I only liked either gorgeous women or fat women. And also my cousin. But she was both gorgeous and fat.
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Despite all the inventive slandering and ceaseless shouting, the Muslims hadn't killed me, I was pretty sure about that. They seemed to be a pretty angry bunch, those ones, especially the more radical Muslims, who appeared to have grudge against me for being one, white; two, western; three, breathing. But the various terrorist squads out there had always remained a little outside of my social circle, you know? Ditto the Chinese, Egyptians, Starbucks baristas, Marxists, and people who shopped at Wal-mart. Also, my parents, seeing as they were dead. This, by the same logic, means Mark Twain did not kill me, Francis Ford Coppola had no hand in my death, and no member of the Ghandi clan or the French Revolution ever conspired against me. More's the pity, because if no one famous killed me, that meant my chance of being famous after my death was quickly diminished, possibly beyond all hope of restoration. I would like to be famous, even now, when I’m dead. Curious desire, this. I had never been remarkable for very much outside of my private circle of acquaintances. There was the time I auditioned for the post of weatherman down at the local television station. Those people probably still had my demo tape somewhere, probably filed under W for "We Are Absolutely Never Going To Hire This Idiot". "Looks like rain," I remember declaring confidently on that tape as I stood in the sun-warmed spray of the sprinkler on my neighbour's front lawn while his kids screamed and chased each other around me. "Pervert," their mother had yelled at me as she ran down the steps, and, after I had reasonably replied to her charge, "Yeah, well you can go to hell yourself, Speedos are NOT pants. And get off my property." Well, maybe she killed me. Which would have been unkind of her. I would never have touched her kids. Everybody who knows me – dammit, knew me - knew I only liked either gorgeous women or fat women. And also my cousin. But she was both gorgeous and fat.
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