It started with a Murder. Dialogue Experiment

• I started writing this story on a new keyboard that I bought for a Raspberry Pi.
• I wanted to experiment with dialogue. beyond that I was writing with no plan. 

All good stories start with a description, a character reveal and a setting.

Mine … started with a murder.

Mine specifically.

I don’t really remember much, one minute I was alive, and the next, well I wasn’t.  

I am pretty sure I wasn’t the intended target, least from what I can recall, I don’t really know any good reason for me to be “made dead” by someone.  

It could have been a random attack, or it could have been a past girlfriend, hell bent on revenge, or just my mum because I didn’t make my bed one day…  

 Truthfully, I really don’t know. See when your dead, you are still “you” so to speak, just … well you don’t really remember much from before.  

 
 I think I was a good person, least I feel like I should have been. Like I don’t get angry and want to hurt people if I don’t get my way, so … it kind of makes sense that I would be good … right? 

 When your dead there isn’t a whole lot to get angry about anyways, eternity kind of does that too you. When you have all the time in the universe, other realm/whatever, getting angry is a bit of a waste. When you have all the time, spending any of it being angry is just … well a downer, and no one likes a downer.

I met some other really cool people too! There was Jeff, he was a bit of a weirdo, kept trying to remember the past by doing all sorts of weird mediations. Katinka was also a bit “out there” she/he/they well, most days they couldn’t really work out what they were, I am pretty sure Katinka had a bit of a troubled life. Like, I think other people would have found them really difficult to be around. Mostly because of all the self-doubt.

But when your dead, there really isn’t anything that can hurt you anymore so doubt and risk taking … well it’s a bit stupid to be worried if you ask me.   

“Oh no, I shouldn’t do this scary thing… I might get hurt.”  

Well, the math’s just doesn’t add up right?   

Death > broken bone.

Still, she was good company, she liked most of the stuff that Jeff and I liked and given that the only stuff to like was the stuff that we found … well that was a good thing.

No shops in the afterlife … least none that we have found.

But there WAS a lot of stuff. Kind of like things that had fallen through the cracks of reality.   

Like one day you could be wandering along and find a sock … just one … never two (somethings never change right?) and another you could find a really old ancient textbook, covered in what appeared to be the skin of human sacrifices.   

Jeff had been wandering along with his eyes closed, humming some bizarre pop song he found a while back trying to remember what had happened before he died when suddenly he fell over.

Katinka – who floating behind Jeff, bumped into him. The eye liner pencil in their hand slipping and stabbing their eye.

“For f**** sake Jeff would you bloody well look where you’re going in the future!”  

Jeff didn’t respond.   

“Jeff your dead, get over it and get up, you’re in our way!”  

Jeff still didn’t respond. In fact, Jeff, already dead, was completely still. Almost as if he was more dead than usual, but since being dead is kinda “the end of the line” in terms of being dead being more dead than dead didn’t make sense.  

It was almost as if he was frozen in time. The sight, so unusual, so bizarre it completely freaked Katinka out.

I was, as I usually was around that hour, writing in my notebook. I was keeping a sort of diary, mostly just dot points. Writing long sentences was boring and being bored when your dead and eternity on your hands is definitely something you wanted to avoid.  

Katinka found me just as I had finished writing my notes for the day.

·         Found a pink sock, still no sign of an Orange one to make a good pair 

·         Tried remembering when I last needed to blow my nose. Being dead – can’t get sick – no snot. Weird. 

 
 Really important stuff.

 
 “Monty, where the hell have you been?”   

“Right here, where I always am.”   

“Oh, for Fucks sake, would you just shut up and come?”  

Katinka if you have not already guessed, had quite a potty mouth. When they were not painting their nails black, or brushing their hair, or simply contemplating how to make themselves look darker, and more emo than a dead person has any right trying to look – they were usually swearing.

“Can’t, gotta finish my notes.”   

“Your blasted notes can wait, this is important, Jeffs gone and killed himself deader than he was before.” 

Now this was interesting, you can’t really be more dead than dead after all. So, grumbling for the sake of it I followed her.

Jeff was exactly where Katinka had left him, his lips mid syllable, even the spittle coming out of his mouth seemed frozen.

“Whoa! I haven't seen this happen before”.   

“I know right,” said Katinka.

Walking over to Jeff its clear he wasn’t faking it. The guy was lazy at the best of times but holding this position would have been a herculean task.

In hindsight, being dead kinda made you careless. It wasn’t as if you were likely to ever do anything that could jeopardize your heath. Like, I know this is ground I have already covered with you, but I think it’s important for you to understand just the sort of thinking we were dealing with at the time.  
 

It wasn’t as if anything worse than death had happened to us, in all of the eternity that we had been dead already. So naturally none of us could have predicted what came next.
 

NEW chapter.

“Oh shit! Something is glowing under his foot!”  

For the last, dunno say five minutes I had been walking in circles around Jeff, who deader than dead had still not moved at all.

The scene was fairly innocuous, around us were the usual remnants of the land of the living that seemed to have fallen through the cracks of reality.   

Imagine a scene from your favourite John carpenter movie. Think, Escape from New York, desolate and worn buildings, rubble littering the foot path, except that the usual flaming 44 Gallon drums were empty – no one around to light the fires right. The crap that fell into our realm was usually junk.

 Like we didn’t exactly know how it ended up in our realm, but one thing we knew was that just about all of it was stuff that its owners would have most likely forgotten about or didn’t give a hoot about anymore.  

So, you can understand Katinkas delight when she spied something interesting under Jeff’s foot. The problem was, of course Jeff’s foot. Frozen in time and firmly on top of it.

Katinka pleaded with me to help them move Jeff. She ended up agreeing to trade with me several X-Men comics she had stored in her stash.

We ended up needing to wedge a plank between one of the many 44-gallon drums and Jeff. Picture a horizontal seesaw only on one end with the frozen form of Jeff and on the other the two of us pushing against the time worn timber.

It took quite an effort but after a few well-placed heaves we managed to topple Jeff’s frozen form off of the object.  

 The effect was near instantaneous, the moment Jeff had been pushed over, it was as if his timeline had caught up with the present. Now with the added momentum of our levered shove and his existing falling momentum, he slammed into the ground. Had he have been alive, he would have surely broken something, such was the impact he had with the ground.

“OW! Just what the fuck are you guys doing!??” 

“It’s your fault Jeff, you were not watching where you were going!” replied Katinka.

The two of them continued to bicker, used to it, I immediately began to tune them out.

My interest had turned to the glowing object that was now fully revealed and laying on the grubby footpath.

Squatting down beside it, I had to shield my eyes just to even look in its general direction.

 

“How the heck did you miss this, Jeff?” I asked.  

The two of them, stopped bickering and glanced in my direction. Immediately both of them also began shielding their eyes. The glow was intense, like nuclear bomb intense, like the kind where you could almost see your bones through your skin intense.

It was surely getting brighter, a moment ago it was barely glowing under his feet, and now we had a second sun only a few feet from us.  

Katinka screamed, as did Jeff and me being the closest actually felt real Bonafede pain. This was horrifying. I had never felt anything like it since the moment I realised I was dead.  

And …  

 And…  

 IT WAS AWESOME! My eyes screamed in pain, the tips of my fingers, my chest and face felt like they were on fire. But oh! To be feeling something again. I didn’t care that it was pain. It was wonderful!

 It was as if the light was reaching out to find my soul and tear it from my dead flesh. The pain was agony, it was horrific and yet it was bliss!

My eyes rolled back towards the back of my skull. Behind me I could hear the gurling screams of both Jeff and Katinka also feeling what I had been feeling. None of us had felt anything from the moment we arrived here.

I guess for an average person you probably thought us to be sick. But MAN, to be able to feel anything again, even this horrific, skin being scraped off your bones, flesh burning pain was just, well it was just wonderful!

The light was now so bright we couldn’t see anything. Our ears, suddenly ringing with the sound of thousands of bicycle bells began to protest their very existence – and suddenly, overwhelmed with the newfound feeling and the realisation that the pain was indeed actually not quite pleasant the three of us fell to the ground, hands clamped over our ears.  

Imagine listening to your favourite song, while sitting in front of the speakers only they were of the kind that might be dragged along to a stadium concert, your favourite band belting out their lyrics, the drummer executing their solos perfectly and the guitars singing like angels but … all while suffering from the worst possible flu you can imagine, then you might have some idea of what we were experiencing.  

I was vaguely aware of Katinka and Jeff vomiting as I too began to heave my stomach uncontrollably.

Have you ever needed to vomit, but found that there was nothing left in your stomach? That’s basically what we were doing. We hadn’t needed to eat anything for as long as we could remember, and that, considering everything, was a pretty long time. 

Our vison so overwhelmed with the light, began to turn grey ... then white … then unbelievably it just stopped.

Like everything stopped. No light, no sound, no vision. Just nothing. It was if my two eyes were floating in an inky blackness, while still being attached to a functional brain.

I couldn’t feel my arms, my hands, heck I didn’t even know if I was standing anymore. I had no idea where Jeff and Katinka were, but something in my soul told me that they were nowhere near me.

Have you ever stumbled through your house at night, or been standing in the dark and somehow, you just knew your younger brother, or your wife was there near you? Like not touching you, not making a sound, but you just knew.

In that same way – while I knew it wasn’t Katinka nor Jeff, I knew that I wasn’t alone. Something was in this darkness. Pacing, swirling, menacing … old.

In a weak voice I managed to murmur a pathetic “Hello?” 

The otherness, froze. Almost as if it too was now suddenly aware of my intrusion. I say intrusion because I just knew I was not supposed to be here. This was not the realm of the dead; we were somewhere else.

Suddenly I was aware of my arms again because all of the hair on them was now standing on end.  

In the darkness I could HEAR the smirk that followed. Smoky lips curled upwards, their corners lifting as a wider grin formed. What my eyes couldn’t see, my soul knew to be true.  

That something gathered itself, its mass began to gather itself in the darkness its mindless pacing ceased. Twisting, coiling, my greeting gave it newfound, yet long ago lost purpose.

It saw me even when I could not see it. Its giant immense bulk, twisted, and contorted until it came back together. Like smoke boiling off a fire in reverse, it revealed itself as one giant grotesque and indescribable mass. 

And then, it too, for a few brief seconds was as still as everything else. Its entire and malevolent intellect focused itself towards me. 

With its form now gathered I could see myself better, black soot smeared my hands, and ash filled the sky. I was actually perspiring. This place was hotter than anything we had experienced in the realm of the dead.

I slowly exhaled. My eyes squinted. Powerless in front of this thing. 

What now? I thought to myself. Your move creep.

The deep reverberating laugh caught me off guard. It came from deep inside. Almost as if it was thousands of different people all laughing slowly and in sync with each other. Slowly the laughing grew in cadence, the thing grew in size, then like a wave about to break it bent over and rushed towards me.  

In horror I threw my hands in front of my face. With what should have been the force of a freight train it slammed into me. My head filled with impish laughter, the howls and cackles of bigger things, unspeakable things bounced threw my skull.

The tips of my fingers bored into my skull as I tried to stop it. I could feel my lungs emptying in what should have been a scream.

The voices, shifted again, like a radio getting close to a station they suddenly snapped into perfect resonance and in one roaring all-encompassing voice I heard it say the one thing that I had been dreading it say.

It started small, like a young child figuring out how to blow out a candle and as it grew in confidence it became unmistakably clear.

FffffffffffffFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEE