When Death Forgets You

This story begins with my death. Don’t worry, I won’t ruin anything else for you, but I figured I’d be upfront. This isn’t the Sixth Sense and I’m not trying to surprise you. Well, maybe a bit. Shock factor is everything nowadays.

Thirty-five and minding my own business as I walked down to the little market shop in my tiny town, none of us even registered the initial shockwave. Just another windy day. But the heat. The heat was something else. The trees wept leaves in the middle of spring. A sweltering temperature crept across the open fields and neighboring town like an invisible, gigantic sludge leaving pale death in its wake. People, grass, cars, trees, rocks, everything melted. Babies in strollers, teens on dumpsters behind the school smoking pot, adults waiting for the bus at the stop. We all just… fell, stumbling a bit, some worse off screamers not quite passing out as their lungs disintegrated. It was fucking gruesome.

I might have made it if I hadn’t promised my damn brother I would pick up a carton of milk. Death by milk. I suppose I understand the lactose intolerant better now. I guess if I were feeling more generous I would admit that I did drink the last of it. Oreos just taste better dunked in a cool glass of milk and to be fair, I probably wouldn’t have survived anyway. Those that did manage to survive certainly did not prefer the alternative. Deformities, and not the cool X-men kind, destroyed lives and dreams and the ability to get laid by a model. Not that lots of people who lived in my town would have been able to manage that even if they ever did get to the big city, but still, I thought I’d mention it. Who am I to sneer at my cousin Don’s dreams?

The blast was huge. We still aren’t really sure who shot it off first and I don’t really care. Shots were fired and what was left wasn’t worth much. Deserts would have been preferable to the dry, lifeless, limp thing the earth became. I should know, I’ve been living dead for about fifteen years now and what I’ve seen leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I sorta wish I could die-die, but I haven’t quite figured out how to manage it. I think it has something to do with what I was wearing when I kicked it.

My gran had passed the year before, lucky gal. Stage four COPD. If you don’t know what that is Google it. Just kidding the internet was one of the first to go down. No electricity kinda hampers the ability to reach into the informational realm floating invisibly all around us. It’s a respiratory disease. You essentially drown in the air. Nice huh? Well at least she didn’t freaking melt into the asphalt. Fifteen minutes at least. Maybe it was longer. I blacked out eventually. I used to hold a grudge, but at this point it seems silly since… well, even the animals have mostly died out and I’m relatively alone here. It’s really freaking quiet. Just mostly wind and silence. I never realized how much you hear wind merely because of the trees. When there’s nothing… it doesn’t really matter if the wind is blowing or not.

As a living dead person I miss other senses of course. Smell. The world has smells. You don’t realize you take them for granted until you can’t note them anymore. I even miss the bad ones if that tells you anything. Cat piss. The sweet stench of death. I’d take anything at this point. I can’t taste anything either and boy have I tried. You have no idea. It was a real low when I stopped at the zoo that one time. Wasn’t I telling you something more relevant? What I was wearing? You dog.

But yeah, did you know that when you die you’re pretty much stuck in whatever you’ve got on? What a day to choose my worst bra. The thing pinches like hell, damn underwire. You’d think because I melted that would have been taken into consideration, but no. It must be a punishment. Anyway, I can interact with the world around me which is strange. People can’t hear or see me for the most part. I think many of the empaths either died or were killed off first. Too kind for their own good. I’ve seen one or two in the first decade, but at that point in the apocalyptic world, the only ones left behind were… well mean is literally the nicest way to put it. But at this point, I’d take down right nasty if I could at least talk to someone. Anyone. Anything.

Right. What I was wearing. The only article of clothing I could remove was this damn, dented, heart shaped locket. I wouldn’t call it a keepsake even though it was from my gran. We found it in the very back of a box buried in dust bunnies under her bed. It had this old picture of her and sorta handsome man with most of his face marked out. Probably my grandfather before he turned into an asshole who left his wife and kid taking all the money and leaving only debt and bills behind on the tail end of the Great Depression. My gran used to say she’d hang him by his toenails and drip acid on his… well, you get the picture. I guess she’d be sorta happy he melted into his walker while smoking a cigarette I’d bet. At least, that’s where he usually smoked them, right inside the open garage door. Didn’t know what hit him. I was surprisingly sad about that.

Anyway, this locket is the only thing I can take off. I’ve tried breaking it to see if I can pass on. I haven’t met any others like me. I don’t want to eat brains. I mean at this point I might try it just to see if anything cool would happen, but there really just aren’t any brains left. No animal brains. No human brains. The world is just… nothing. I thought I would regret taking that damn locket because it would be just one more item I couldn’t get rid of. Another trinket I rarely wore to gather dust and oxidize in the back of my own box. But, this non-life it has seemingly given me was not it.

The world is empty. I am utterly, unavoidably alone. I think what I wish the most, is that I had learned to be alone while I was alive. Maybe then, this wouldn’t seem like such hell. But, I doubt it. I guess no one, myself included, will ever know.