PART 1
THE JOURNEY
Chapter 1
When I opened my eyes, I found that I was standing on the lid of a casket
in an open grave.
Not a pleasant experience, to say the least. I would have preferred
just about any other setting-except, maybe, standing on the ledge of a
thirty-story building. Or crawling on a wing of a plane in flight.
But this was bad enough. I was standing in a cemetery and it was
late in the day. Anyone could tell it was a cemetery-the gravestones were dead
giveaways, please excuse the pun.
A giant swell of heat rushed up my back.
Casket. Grave. Cemetery.
Definitely not a good
omen.
Possibly the worst omen one can think of.
I closed my eyes again and held them shut. When I opened them again,
I was convinced I'd find myself in my own bed, awakening from some strange
dream. I have strange dreams all the time. Some involve misshapen creatures
running around, making weird noises, others a beautiful leather-clad woman
whispering sexy things in my ear. Most are nonsensical, pointless vignettes,
usually starring members of my software company.
But I knew that when I opened my eyes again, everything would be all
right. I might even find myself in a dream with Leather Babe this time.
I opened them. My heart sank.
I was still standing on top of that damned
casket. No Leather Babe, no creatures. No one from the office.
Was this real?
It couldn't be. For
one thing, it made no sense. I didn't even know how the hell I even got
here.
Only moments ago, I was crossing the road outside my apartment,
heading for the mailboxes.
What the hell happened?
I was a logical sort of guy. I had to be, given my profession as one
of the heads of a software company. My career depended on solving
problems. One important thing I'd
learned long ago was that to solve a problem, going back to its source was the
best way of figuring it out. You did it calmly and carefully and if you didn't
panic or lose your train of thought, you'd eventually find your answer.
I could solve this. I knew I could. All I had to do was go back and
take it step by step.
Last thing I remembered, I was leaving my apartment. I was alone,
had finished breakfast and just made a fresh pot of coffee. Then I went outside
to get my mail.
I live by myself in a two-bedroom garden apartment in Winter
Park. My place sits in one of those
newer developments they've stuck in the middle of a cleared field that was once
someone's farm in the old days, before Disney and Universal Studios and
everyone else turned the quiet little town of Orlando into the mega-mess it is
today. By the time the apartments were finished, the once-peaceful area was surrounded
by a shopping plaza, two strip malls, a mega theater, a foreign car dealership
and half a dozen filling stations. Everything is within walking distance.
Our mailboxes stand in metal clusters across the street at each
corner. A mere fifty feet away from my front porch. The posted speed limit is
15, making the process of grabbing your bills and newspaper convenient, safe and much less traumatic than crossing a main road or
major highway.
I crossed the street as I normally do. I remember listening to the
agitated squawking of the sea gulls one hears regularly in Central Florida. I
also remember thinking that if I closed my eyes and forced myself to drown out
the heavy wash of traffic noise, I might well imagine myself on the beach,
watching the bikinis parading by.
When I was about three-quarters of the way to the boxes, the roar of
someone's tricked-out muscle car or pickup tore into the warm breeze somewhere
on my right, shattering my beach vision. I didn't think too much of it at the
time. About a quarter of a mile from our entrance, Semoran Boulevard constantly
roars with heavy traffic. When the wind is just right, it sounds like the flow
is directly outside the door. In Florida, peace and quiet quickly become fond
memories. The longer you live here, the less the commotion fazes you.
Although my mind hinted that a freight train was quickly coming up
behind me, I knew that didn't make sense. The closest station was miles away.
Even if it was closer, a freight train wouldn't be allowed to enter the
complex.
My mind had played tricks on me countless times before.
What was different now?
The noise was loud. Hell, it was deafening.
An instant before I could turn around to determine its source,
something huge and solid slammed into my side. The next thing I knew, I was flying through the air.
Such a sensation can be strangely pleasant. In my own case, I wasn't able to properly enjoy my sudden catapult. An intense
pain exploded from my side, branching outward. A heavy gushing of severe heat
poured down my legs and up my back. An avalanche of bright new pain spread
throughout my body when I landed.
I lay on my back, unable to feel the hard pavement beneath me. As I
lay there, the screeching of brakes reverberated behind me. A piercing scream
bounced off the buildings on my right. It sounded female, but you just can't be
too sure about such things any more. More screeching of brakes resonated farther
down. The constant groan of distant traffic filled my head. The shrill cackle
of the gulls seemed even more agitated than moments before.
The pain in my back ebbed.
The sounds diminished.
A warm, heavy blanket of blackness consumed me...
When the blackness finally lifted, I was standing in a rectangular hole
in the ground in the middle of a graveyard.
Standing there, wondering what the hell happened.
And most of all, wondering what I was doing in a graveyard...
I closed my eyes again. Back to the source.
What happened next? The ambulance ride? A hospital bed? Visitors? A
wheelchair? A kindly orderly pushing me outside? Thanks for your business,
Mr. Mild...take care...hope we don't see you again...
Think. Remember. Retrieve any images floating around that make this predicament
more logical.
I remembered only the front porch outside my door, the smooth
pavement separating my building from the curb, and the mailboxes at the corner.
Traffic sounds, a scream or two, the screeching of brakes...and, of course, the
deafening roar slamming into me.
Nothing else.
About a hundred feet away, three figures-two middle-aged men and an
elderly woman, probably in her seventies-wandered down the grassy slope, toward
the highway at the foot of the hill. All were sloppy-dressed and looked like
they'd just come from a soup kitchen. I yelled at them. They glanced my way but didn't lose a step on
their way down the hill.
The sight of someone standing in an open grave, I imagined, wasn't
something the average person wants to see close-up.
I scanned the graveyard, then turned back to where the threesome had
gone. There was no sign of them.
Strange.
An old man appeared from behind a cluster of scrub oaks about thirty
yards to my right. He was smoking a curved briar pipe and shaving a small block
of wood with a penknife.
"Hello." I tried a smile, but my mood prevented me from giving it
all I had. He'd just have to settle for my half-assed attempt.
He stared at me for a few moments, then sauntered over.
His pipe smoke, tangy and thick, grew stronger as he drew closer.
"Hey, sonny," he said in a high-pitched voice. "Ya
new here?"
"What gave me away?"
"Haven't seen ya before. Young, ain'tcha?"
"Thirty-six."
He shook his head and clucked.
"How'd I get here?"
He shrugged. "How d'ya think?"
My first thought immediately went to the idiot in the truck.
But I didn't want to go there. I chose humor instead. With humor,
you can overcome a lot of unpleasantness.
"Well, it's been a while since I've had such a wild dream. I had a
pastrami sandwich the other night before bed. I have this issue with gas. It
does weird things when I'm trying to sleep. Pastrami always-"
"You're dead."
"What?"
"Ya hard of hearing? You're dead."
"Dead?"
His grin lit up his tiny gray eyes. "There ya go."
It slammed into me. I trembled.
"You...sure?"
"Yup."
"Positive?"
"Yup."
Dead. I was dead. Gone. A spirit.
Nothing left but darkness. For eternity.
No more apartment. Or company. Or women. Or sex.
Don't panic.
Logical. Be logical. It's what you do best.
"I can't be dead." I knew how ridiculous that sounded, but I
just couldn't grasp the reality of the situation.
"Everyone dies, sport."
"I'm too young. I've...I've
got...stuff to do." I didn't have
anything specific in mind. My car needed a tune-up, and I had to do something
with my underwear drawer. I kept tossing my socks in there. No big thing, of
course. But every once in a while I ended up a sock short, and it was beginning
to bug me.
I felt I had to justify my existence...somehow...
But it sounded lame the moment it left my lips.
He pushed a heavy wad of gnarled gray smoke toward me. It dissipated
almost immediately in the warm breeze. When it vanished, I saw his seamed face
more clearly. I could almost see the darkness directly behind him.
"Guess what?" he said.
I was afraid to ask. "What?"
"Ya just ran outa time." He turned and
walked away.
"Where are you going?"
He shrugged. "Don't matter none, does it?"
I didn't want to be left alone. The realization of being dead rocked
through me. I wondered how I could stay on my feet.
Maybe if I could get him to talk to me, I could find out more about...about
all this... "What are you making?"
"That don't matter none, neither."
"Then why do it?"
"Why not?"
"Are you sure I'm dead?"
A nod.
"How do you know? I
mean, really know?"
He shook his head the same way my parents and teachers did when I
said something really stupid. "How d'ya
think?"
It registered coldly. "You, too?"
"There ya go." He left, chuckling.
Dead. I
was actually dead.
Here I was, Jason Mild, co-founder and vice
president of MilCo SoftSystems, Inc., standing in
spiritual form in a hole in the ground. Killed by an idiot who didn't let speed
bumps-or wandering residents-slow him down.
This was it? The?
Dead? At thirty-six?
I turned to say something else.
Like the other three I'd just seen, he'd disappeared.
I was alone. And dead.
Talk about being down and out . . .
No one tells you about weird stuff like this-possibly because no one
actually knows. No one alive, that is.
All we know is what we see.
We see the funeral guys dumping the corpse into a heavy-duty black
sack. They take the corpse to a place where a gaggle of rich professionals
stand eagerly over it like a flock of sweet-smelling vultures. What they actually do, they won't say. But what we gather is this:
they remove the corpse's clothing and then perform some really disgusting
procedures to the body. They take out what is no longer needed and pump in
formaldehyde. Then they apply powder, makeup, glue and
thread, turning the corpse into a well-dressed clown. They arrange the clown
carefully-like some fancy window decoration-in an expensive, polished box.
For the next couple of days, a crowd of people stands over the box
and talks about how important they were to the deceased and how much the
deceased loved them. The box is then closed, wheeled outside
and shoved into the back of a sparkling black limousine. At the cemetery, some
empty words are said and an incomprehensible line or two from the Bible is
quoted. The box is lowered into the ground and later covered with dirt.
Kind of pointless, when you think about it.
Especially the dressing-up part and the lying-in-the-box part.
I don't remember any of that. But I'd seen what those high-priced,
sociopathic ghouls did to my parents a few years ago. I'm glad I wasn't awake
to see whatever was done to me. I was obviously zoned out at the time. Maybe
flying around somewhere, waiting to touch down-I don't know. I don't remember much
of anything after being smeared.
What mattered was that I was dead.
And that I didn't want to stay here.
I decided to climb out.
Standing here was bumming me out. If I was indeed dead, I didn't
have to spend eternity standing in my own freshly-dug hole, did I? The old man
didn't. Neither did the other three I'd seen a few minutes ago.
If they didn't, why should I?
The old man even had things to do. He had a pipe to smoke, a block
of wood to whittle. Mind you, those things were a tad insignificant for a guy
like me, who used to wheel and deal daily in the software business. But right
now, little tasks like that seemed just as important as the business proposals,
bank transactions and problems with ex-wives and ex-girlfriends I'd dealt with during
the last ten years.
Amazing how things changed so quickly.
But rather than stay here and analyze everything, I decided to see
what all this mystery was about.
I immediately discovered I didn't have to climb out. I merely thought of climbing out and
found myself rising-as if the
air beneath me had actually pushed me out of the hole-until I was standing on
the grass a foot or so from the hole itself.
Good deal. Apparently death, like most everything else, had a perk
or two up its sleeve.
Hopefully there would be others.
The roar of heavy traffic rushed up from the foot of the hill. Just
beyond the skyline, the coppery moon glinted in jagged shards behind the
distant pines.
Last I remembered, it was around noon-which is when I usually pick
up my mail. But now it was obviously well past six in the evening, and traffic
was very heavy. Rush hour. In Central Florida, rush hour usually lasted three
hours.
It hit me again.
I'm dead.
Truly dead.
Could my day get any worse?