Forever After

3


On the night of his death Michael had experienced the same contented sobriety that he had since glimpsed in the eyes of so many of the recently deceased.

That night, when the final rain drop splattered on his pale face and his soul slipped out of his body, he felt empty. He felt like he was the body his soul had left, and not the other way around.

The man who had spoken to him before his death and then watched him die, extended a hand.

“Samson,” he offered with a smile.

Michael looked at the proffered appendage and then at his own lifeless body. “I’m dead?”

Samson withdrew his hand, tucking it into his jacket. “I’m afraid so.”

“You knew this was going to happen?”

Samson nodded apologetically.

“So what now?” Michael clambered to his feet and looked around the dim alleyway. There were no bright lights at the end, no ethereal melodies. “Is this it?”

“It doesn’t have to be if you don’t want it to be,” Samson said cryptically. “That’s what I’m here for. My offer still stands.”

Michael took a step back and rested a hand on his forehead. Dying and then being offered a job was a lot to take in at once, but what bothered him was that he wasn’t stressing out over it; his conscious had been sedated.

“Does it always feel like this?” He asked. His eyes picked out the glinting police lights in the distance as they sparkled against the freshly fallen rain. “Death, I mean.”

“I guess so,” Samson said.

Michael turned to the older man. “You don’t know? Didn’t you die?”

Samson shrugged. “Technically I’m dead. But I didn’t die.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s not important.” Samson carefully stepped over Michael’s dead body and put an arm around the shoulder of his living one. “Come with me,” he said.

They walked out of the alleyway and into the street where the rain beat a staccato rhythm on the road and the streetlights spilled their sickly glow onto the pavement.

They walked slowly past the closed shops, quiet bars and simmering houses. Beyond the pub where old alcoholics drank their sorrows away; the nightclubs where the young danced and drugged the night away. They passed a beggar on the street who looked up at them both, shook a tin cup that rattled with the lonely sounds of a solitary coin, and then groaned when they passed by unsympathetically.

They walked for ten minutes before Samson spoke again. “You like this part of town?”

Michael laughed scornfully. “It’s a f*cking dive. Never seen anything so disgusting in my life.” As if to add emphasis to his statement a short fat man stumbled out of a pub further up the road with an empty pizza box in his hand. He vomited all the way down his jumper with the ease and comfort of a baby, then, finding the pizza box empty, he began to tuck into the vomit; mistaking it for spilt pizza topping. “We come here for a bit of down-an’-out,” Michael added, sneering at the drunken man who had now stumbled into the street, still chewing on a slice of regurgitated pepperoni. “A laugh. A rumble. A slag.”

“You know these streets well though.”

“I guess so.”

Samson nodded as if he already knew.

They crossed onto the bridge which marked the West end of the town, things became a little brighter on the other side, the council estates turned into middle-class suburban homes for the blue collared workers of the district.

There was someone waiting ahead of them in the middle of the bridge, his attention on the blackness below, his head hung low. Michael watched him until he felt Samson’s hand gently squeeze his shoulder.

“This is the deal Michael,” he said, stopping him. “I give you immortality. I give you another life, an infinite one. I give you a job, a reasonable pay. You give me your commitment and dedication.”

Michael nodded, waiting for more.

“What do you say?” Samson asked.

“What job?” Michael asked. “I don’t understand, what do I do? Where do I do it?”

“You collect the souls of the dead. Like I did with you tonight.”

“Like the grim reaper?”

Samson smiled broadly. “Something like that, but there isn’t just one Grim Reaper, there are thousands in this country alone.”

“So why do you need me?”

“I need you here.” He opened his arms around him, gesturing to the town as a whole. “I need you to work Brittleside.”

“You’re shitting me.”

Samson slowly shook his head.

“But this place is the f*cking pits. What do I get in return?”

Samson opened his mouth and then snapped it shut again, looking a little puzzled

“Oh right, the immortality,” Michael recalled.

Samson grinned.

“But how does it work, I mean, will I be a ghost?”

“Your other life, your other self, will still be dead. But you can live a normal life as you did before. Your friends and your colleagues may be a little,” he pondered for a moment, “different,” he said with enough emphasis to make Michael feel uneasy. “But everything else will be the same. You can function like a normal person for as long as you want.”

“But I’ll be dead. My friends, my family...won’t they know? Won’t they go to my funeral?”

“That Michael will remain dead. His friends, his family, his job and his memories are with you, but are redundant now. This Michael,” he said, gesturing to him. “Will be the same to you and to everyone that matters, but to everyone that doesn’t he’ll look like a completely different person.”

Michael thought about this for a moment. He had never experienced such clarity in his life, but there was a lot to take in. A lot of thoughts threatened to cloud that clarity. “And my name? I mean this is only a few miles from where I live.”

“Keep your first name. Your surname we can change in time, when it matters.”

“To what?” Michael said quizzically.

Samson shrugged. He seemed to be growing impatient. He peered over Michael's shoulder, towards the middle of the bridge. He checked his watch and then beamed at Michael again.

“The surname’s not important,” he said. “Whatever you want.”

Michael nodded acceptingly.

“So, do we have a deal?” Samson said, stealing another look over Michael's shoulder.

Michael turned around to see what he was looking at. “I guess so,” he said, seeing a solitary figure hugging the railings and peering into the blackness below.

When he turned back around Samson was gone. He looked around, studied his surroundings. He wasn’t there and there was nowhere he could have run to so quickly.

“Is that it?” Michael asked no one in particular. “What do I do now?”

Seemingly hearing him, the man in the middle of the bridge shouted back. “It’s too late, you can’t stop me now!”

He began climbing onto the railing, steadily lifting his legs until he was positioned on the other side. He leaned cautiously back onto the railing, his legs inches from the edge.

“I wasn’t trying to,” Michael called out, finding himself walking towards the man.

“Too late!” he yelled.

Michael walked closer. The stench of cheap alcohol clawed at his nostrils when he came to within a few feet of him.

“You seriously going to jump?” he asked.

The man turned around, glaring drunkenly; his eyes flooded with tears. “Of course! And don’t you try to stop me!”

Michael held up his hands defensively.

“My life is a joke,” the alcohol drenched despondent droned. “It’s pointless!”

“It can’t be that bad mate,” Michael said as warmly as he could. “Come on, let’s go and have a coffee. It’s on me.”

The man turned to him. Initially shocked and angry. A gradual sense of pleasant surprise swelled on his face. “Why do you care?”

“Because I know what you’re going through. Life can be a bitch, trust me on that. But there’re ways around it. Ways to beat it.”

“Really?”

“Sure,” Michael stepped forward, smiling all the while. “Even in the bad there’s plenty of good, you just have to learn how to see it.”

“I like the sound of that.”

Michael was inches away. He reached out for the railing, slowly, as not to alarm. “Now come on, let’s go and have a drink, get you warmed up and cheered up huh?”

The man smiled. “Okay.” He released himself from the railings and slowly turned, facing back towards the bridge.

“What’s your name by the way?” Michael asked.

“Me? I’m--” his foot slipped on the rain soaked lip. Michael saw the horror explode on his face as he felt himself falling backwards. He reached out for the railing; Michael reached out for the flailing hands, neither connected. The man fell backwards. The final thing Michael saw were his feet kicking aimlessly in the dark, before his body disappeared into the blackness.

He ran to the edge to look down, hoping the suicidal man had managed to somehow grasp onto the ledge. A heavy splash below indicated otherwise.

“Shit,” Michael spat, staring into the gloom. “What a f*cking shame.”

“Ian,” a voice from beside him said.

The jumper was standing next to him, a look of serenity on his face as he joined him in peering over the side. “My name is Ian,” he repeated. “What’s yours?”

“Michael.”

“Nice to meet you Michael. Want to go for that drink now?”