Forever After (a dark and funny fantasy novel) Read online

  The smoker coughed a watery cough, bringing a troublesome glob to his throat before sending it back down with a squeamish swallow. He placed the cigar into a nearby ashtray; wiped his mouth with the hairy back of a dirty hand; poked a finger into his nose, inspected the contents and then wiped them on his faded blue jeans.

  He held the sports section of a national newspaper in his left hand, folded into a neat handheld scrunch and held off to one side. In his right hand he retrieved a greasy bacon sandwich from the plate in front of him and took a noisy bite without removing his eyes from the latest failures of the England football team.

  Michael Holland sat on the other side of the diner, watching the hungry reader through tired eyes. It was early, he had been awake less than thirty minutes and along with his cup of coffee and slice of stale ginger cake, death was being served up for breakfast.

  He watched the man take another large bite. A pool of grease infused with tomato sauce leaked out of the bread like blood from a gunshot wound. It ran a rivulet down his stubbled chin, heading towards his flabby neck before being wiped away by a grubby finger.

  Michael felt sick. He’d had a few drinks the night before and had only just managed to settle his troublesome stomach. He didn’t mind dealing with death so early, but having to watch fat people eat and smoke their way to an early grave was unsettling.

  “Is everything okay?”

  Michael, slightly startled at the voice, quickly turned. A petite brunette waitress was standing over his table, a broad smile on her delicate face.

  At the sight of her Michael’s face lit up. There was something so endearing and relaxing in her smile, something so sweet about the pinprick dimples on her cheek; so mesmerising in her green eyes, which reflected the light from the bright morning over Michael’s shoulder.

  He had seen her in the back when he gave his order to a dole-faced woman with a pencil behind her ear and a stick up her arse. He heard her humming softly as she cooked up the breakfast currently clogging the arteries of the man opposite. He caught her smile then, thought he saw something there -- her eyes had lingered longer than simple customer curiosity required.

  “Everything is fine,” Michael replied softly, holding eye contact as he described each syllable.

  She beamed a wider smile, if that was possible. “If you need anything,” she trailed off, hooking a thumb over her shoulder towards the kitchen.

  Michael nodded. She left a smile with him and then turned, heading straight back into the kitchen without acknowledging the other customer. Michael felt singled out, he felt sure there was a spark there. He watched her go; watched her walk. She made it to the kitchen and then spun on her heels, placing a supporting hand on the doorway as she shot a look over her shoulder, her eyes instantly meeting his. She smiled again, looked a little sheepish and then quickly turned away.

  Michael turned back to the man eating the bacon sandwich. He was almost finished -- not paying attention to his food, too intent on reading his paper. Moistened crumbs stuck to his lips, grease pinned the stubble to his chin. He was taking bigger and bigger bites as he neared the end of the large bread bun, chewing less and less.

  Michael shook his head in distaste and turned away. He could see the smiling brunette in the kitchen. Her slim body and petite face in profile as she prepped some vegetables. Her hips moved gently to the swing of a song in her head, her hand took the rhythm of her hips as it diced melodious pieces of carrot.

  There was a time when he wouldn’t have faltered at her smile, wouldn’t have lingered on her interests or her mild flirting. Those times were gone, had been gone for a while now.

  Death hadn’t necessarily changed him, he had been reborn with the same sex drive as when he had died, but the events following his death had subdued him somewhat. He wasn’t the same man anymore and didn’t look at women in the same way.

  He pulled out his timer and glanced sombrely at the screen. He gave it a gentle, understanding nod and stuffed it back into his pocket. He looked at the fat man again. He was shovelling the last piece of his sandwich into his mouth, cramming every inch of greasy bacon into the cavernous orifice. His cheeks bulged like a hibernating hamster when he finished, there was so much food crammed inside that his greased lips could barely meet.

  He chewed. Crumbs spilled out of his mouth, over his clothes, onto the floor and the table. The food went down but seemed to lodge. A look of alarm spread over his face and for the first time he took his eyes off the newspaper.

  Michael stood up, prepared. He straightened his jacket, double checked his watch, leaned against the table and waited, watching.

  The man held a hand to his chest. He looked anxious, worried. He coughed, sputtered. Shrapnel of soaked bread flew across the room. He coughed again, began to slam the heel of his hand against his chest.

  His face turned red. His eyes bulged. He pushed back in his chair; the legs grated against the floor and screamed a shrieking wail. He lowered his head, punched his chest again and then, with a dramatic gulp and a relieved sigh, he finally forced the food down his throat.

  He looked pleased with himself as he pulled his seat forward again and picked up his newspaper. He looked around to see if anyone had witnessed his struggle. He gave Michael a sly smile, Michael returned it with a sigh and a shake of his head.

  He pushed himself off the edge of the table and turned towards the kitchen. The profile of the pretty waitress had gone. In her place, looking horrified and unsure, was the stern-faced waitress who had taken Michael’s order.

  He trotted up to her. In front of her, flat on the kitchen floor, her head inches from the scuffed shoes of her fellow waitress, was the corpse of the pretty brunette: a pained expression on her face, a hand loosely clasped towards her breast.

  “It’s okay, I’m fine.”

  Michael looked up. The waitress was in the kitchen, smiling politely behind her friend. Trying to console her.

  She saw Michael standing there, returning her smile. “She won’t listen to me,” she said. “Can you tell her I’ll be okay?”

  The stern-faced waitress was trembling, her whole body shook. She was crying, wailing gently in shock and horror. She held her hands to her face to hold back the tears and to suppress her quivering mutterings; her eyes stared horrifyingly at the body beyond her flayed fingers.

  “She needs to know I’ll be okay,” the spirit of the waitress said with concern that came from a contented place.

  Michael held out his hand. “She’ll be fine,” he assured her. She looked at his hand, hesitated, her eyes on her former friend and colleague, and then she took it. The beaming, radiant smile back on her beautiful face.

  “What happens now?” she asked pleasantly as Michael guided her towards the back door.

  Besides Hilda, the stone-faced bitch in the waiting room, the only women he conversed with were the dead or the soon to be. He didn’t mind it. There was a finality to the dead that he respected. He couldn’t hurt a dead woman and he certainly couldn’t alter the course of her life for the worst. As a reaper he was there as their first stop on an unknown journey, an important part of their eternity but one which couldn’t effect their existence ether way.

  It hadn’t always been that way, even since that fateful night when he gave up his own ticket to that unknown land in exchange for immortality. A girl, a beautiful girl, had changed him. After meeting her nothing had ever felt the same.

  2

  The night Michael Holland met the girl that changed his new life; he was hunched solemnly over a pint of cheap cider. He had been sitting in the same spot for a couple of hours, his slumped posture cutting a depressed figure on the corner seat of the corner table in the quiet pub.

  He had been nursing the same pint for over an hour. A small fly had flown in at one point, possibly when he was in the bathroom, he wasn’t sure; he didn’t care.

  He brought the glass to his lips and stared at the wallowing fly. It beat a buoyant path on the edge of the flat drink, its wings d
raped by its side in a soggy crucifix. He grimaced and took a long drink, consuming the cider-drenched fly in the process.

  He raised his eyes for the first time in twenty minutes, and what he saw nearly caused him to choke on the fermented fly.

  The pub was all but empty when he had arrived. It was Friday, mid-afternoon: too early for pub crawlers and weekend drinkers, too late for those stopping by for a lunchtime drink. Other than the bartender -- a gruff, abrupt man who spoke in a succession of grunts -- there was one customer in the pub: a stereotype of the perpetual elderly drunk who has nothing better to do but while away his final days slowly drinking strong ale and perusing the betting form.

  The elderly man was still there, fading into the shadows at the back -- his first pint of ale still clutched in the arthritic fist of his right hand, the heavily scribbled betting form in his left -- but there were now two women at the bar. The sight of them had failed to cheer up the grunting bartender, but it had certainly piqued Michael’s interests. He straightened up, kicked the hump out of his fatigued body, and leaned back. Trying to look casual and cool.

  The women talked happily to each other. The shorter of the two, with long curly blonde hair, a tight figure and large hips, gave her orders to the bartender and leaned on the bar whilst she waited. The other girl seemed much more timid, she spoke with a soft chime, her voice barely travelling the fifteen or so feet to where Michael sat. She had fiery red hair which cascaded down to the middle of her back, and deep, dark, intelligent eyes.

  The red haired girl was facing Michael as she spoke to her friend. She caught his eye a few times -- a sheepish, shy look on her dimpled smile. There was a brief, instinctive twitch in her features when she caught him looking at her.

  They took their drinks and shuffled away from the bar. Michael heard the softly spoken red head say something to her friend, acknowledging him with a furtive glance in the process; they exchanged a giggle and then took their seats.

  Michael drained the cider in his glass, waited for a few moments -- stealing a glance in the process -- and then sauntered confidently over to their table.

  He had been dead for a year and had spent that time trying to become accustomed to his newfound existence, but he still had the charm he possessed when he was alive. Within minutes he had them at ease in his presence and before long he had learned everything he wished to know about the beautiful redhead.

  Her name was Jessica and she was twenty-two. She was a law student attending college in the area, out for a few drinks with her friend before retiring for an early night. She was soft mannered, intelligent, passionate and humorous. He fell for her instantly and there was a suggestion in her eyes that she felt the same way about him.

  They spoke for an hour. He addressed them both at first, not wanting to alienate her friend -- a dominant and standoffish girl with suspicious eyes -- but after an hour of idle chatter she drew him in and they both forgot about the friend.

  After saying a brief farewell the dejected friend left, firing an insidious glance at Michael before departing in feigned good spirits.

  They talked even more when they were alone. He found out she loved classic literature, impressionist art, 60’s pop music, modern punk, day-trips to the seaside, holidays in winter. She adored takeaway food and it adored her hips. She loved ice cream but hated any flavours other than vanilla; loved politics but hated politicians. She had a thing for Michael Jackson but also had a secret crush on Elton John.

  They talked until the pub filled up. Michael avoided any taxing questions about his life, but his clandestine veil was unwrapped when the skies outside the windows had burned the last ember of sunshine and dwindled into blackness.

  “So, why were you looking so depressed earlier?” she asked him.

  He feigned bemusement.

  “When I came in with Julie,” Jessica clarified, indicating her arrival with the friend that had left annoyed and lonely four hours earlier.

  He shrugged his shoulders, stared down at the floor. He didn’t know what to tell her. He certainly couldn’t tell her the truth but he also didn’t want to lie to her, so he opted for something in between.

  “It’s an anniversary,” he said vaguely. “It’s complicated, but let’s just say that one year ago today, something life changing happened.” He explained, quickly wondering why he had emphasised the word ‘life’.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?” Jessica asked politely, offering her sympathetic shoulder as she lifted her wine glass to her pursed lips.

  Michael grinned and tried to shake the question off. “Not important,” he said. “Well, not now anyway. Maybe another time.”

  That night they said their goodbyes, exchanged numbers and a brief kiss, and parted ways outside the pub.

  Michael’s mood changed. He was happy, he had a hop in his step as he strode down the street, bypassing the clubbers and revellers drunkenly making their way from club to club.

  His timer told him that he was going to have a busy night, two dead within half an hour and one mile of each other, but he didn’t care. He would sleep an excited and happy sleep that night.

  ****

  The corpse looked familiar. He had seen that face before. A spark of recognition fired in his brain and was immediately extinguished by a voice from behind him.

  “Hello,” it said happily.

  Michael turned away from the bloodied, broken body to face a happy, beaming spirit. The spirit didn’t look familiar, didn’t spark the same recognition. Although he hazarded a guess that if he did know this man, he probably knew him as the mournful, dole-faced person looking shocked and broken on the floor, and not the smiling simpleton in front of him. In Brittleside only the dead smiled.

  “Good evening,” Michael said with an acknowledging nod. He paused before offering his assistance. He glanced at the corpse again. “Do I know you?” he asked.

  The spirit shrugged his ethereal shoulders, the smile still fastened onto his face.

  “I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere before,” Michael persisted.

  “Maybe I just have one of them faces.”

  Michael made a humming noise. One of those faces, in this instance, happened to be very ugly, almost impish features with a thick set jaw, bulbous nose, long, stubbly chin and eyes that refused to line up. If one of those faces happened to be the grotesque sort fit only for a mother’s love and a villainous role in a horror movie, then he definitely had it.

  “Maybe.”

  A group of alcohol scented revellers spilled out of the nearby clubs and began to crowd around the body. Excited whispers, female screams, male bravado. Michael escorted the spirit away as his body became a sideshow attraction for the drunk and the idiotic. In the distance the sirens from an ambulance and a police car collided to create an approaching cacophony.

  “Seems you pissed someone off,” Michael told the spirit. “Technically you’re my first suicide you know.”

  “I didn’t kill myself.”

  “Oh.” Michael paused, looking a touch perplexed. “What were you doing on the roof of a club?”

  “I lost my Frisbee.”

  Michael laughed, the spirit didn’t flinch. He stared at him, waiting for his grinning stupidity to shift and break into a vein of sarcasm. It didn’t budge. He turned away with a blasé shrug.

  “Fair enough.”

  He thought he recognised the second soul as well. A female, dead on the street. She had choked on her own vomit after ingesting an assortment of cheap cocaine and cheaper vodka. She was alone when he found her, her spirit was waiting by her body, leaning against a lamppost with the casualness of someone waiting for a bus.

  “Who are you?” she demanded to know when he approached her. She looked content, as they all always did, but there was a touch of trepidation in her voice.

  “I’m here to pick you up,” Michael said. He couldn’t help but smile as he reran his comment through his head and watched as she peeled her scantily clad figure away from the lamppost. />
  “Is that a joke?” she asked genuinely.

  Michael shook his head. “I’m--”

  “You’re going to take me to the other side?” she interrupted.

  “I think so.”

  “You think so?”

  He frowned. The dead usually weren’t so quizzical.

  “Why weren’t you here before?” she wanted to know, growing increasingly impatient and uneasy. “I’ve been here for ages. Three people went by over there,” she nodded to the other side of the road, brightly lit under the fluorescent glow of a streetlight. “Not one of them stopped. Not one of them replied. It’s like they couldn’t even hear me.”

  Michael thought about replying but quickly swallowed his words. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t see or hear her needful spirit; they all had probably seen her corpse and not one of them had stopped to check if she was alive.

  “So, where were you?”

  He had been caught up in his own idleness, drinking stale coffee at a nearby cafe and absently staring into his own thoughts. Most of those thoughts had been about Jessica, she had dominated his mind since he had met her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said honestly. “But I’m here now.”

  Samson had told him that he would develop a second intuition. He said he would know the whens, where’s and how’s of his victims’ deaths. He said it would come as a second nature, gradually birthing in him from the moment he took the job a year ago. But he hadn’t felt a thing, he never knew anything; their deaths came as a complete mystery to him until he read their impending doom on the screen of the timer.

  He didn’t know if the intuition would come to him and he couldn’t ask. Samson had seen him twice since his death, and on neither occasions had he stayed long enough to answer any probing questions. The only other higher authority that he spoke to was a repugnant receptionist who wouldn’t stop glaring at him and a psychiatrist who read his mind but offered no solutions to the problems within.