Ghost Stories...

fiction

To borrow from Charles Dickens, I was dead to begin with.

I read A Christmas Carol when I was in school and my teacher told us that he started it that way, "Marley was dead to begin with," to make sure people knew it was a ghost story. Because that's what it is, a ghost story, not a Christmas story. Though it's a Christmas story as well. And back in the day that's what people did around Christmas. They told ghost stories.

It fell out of favor to the point where when we heard "and scary ghost stories" in that Christmas carol, not in A Christmas Carol the story, but that Christmas carol as in one of those songs everyone sings around Christmas even though nobody knows what a figgy pudding or boughs of holly are but we still sing them. ANYWAY...scary ghost stories were a thing. And Dickens was kind of a trashy paperback writer so he made a scary ghost story. Not that there is anything wrong with trashy paperbacks, but we think of him as CHARLES DICKENS now and in his day he was more like just a guy writing stories for a buck. Or pence. Or whatever.

So anyway to borrow from Dickens, I was dead to begin with. Though this is not a Christmas story, this is just a ghost story. And I guess it's not really to begin with, but to end with? I was dead to end with. That's not right either.

I was dead.

There that about sums it up.

I was dead. I knew that much to be true. I was surprised, not that I was dead, not really, but that I was wrong. When I was alive I had a sort of reputation for being right a lot of the time. Some people would say a know it all, but it wasn't my fault I often did know it all. And if I didn't know it, I would look it up and find out. But this was one of those things you couldn't really know it until you lived it. Or died it.

But I had always thought that we had one life. That was it. Live it. Enjoy it. Because when it was over that was it. The switch flipped and you went from something to nothing. Just nothing. No afterlife. No reincarnation. No heaven. No hell. Just nothing. But here I was.

The first thing I remember was sitting with a lot of other people and having to say how we died. I didn't really know. I thought it was a brain aneurysm. I remembered thinking "wow this is a bad headache" and then I was in a room with a lot of other people talking about how we died. So I think it was an aneurysm. It wasn't a painless way to go, but at least it was quick. Some of the people in that room had seemed to be dying for almost as long as they had been living. And for some of them they weren't quite through with it. Like they hadn't really accepted that they were dead. That it was done.

Those people were collected and moved to someplace else. Those of us who were just fine with being dead stayed. Or I guess maybe not fine, but understood we were dead. There was a lot of regret in that room. Even me. I'm not going to tell you that I had no regrets. I wanted more life. More time. I still had people to meet. I had people that were going to miss me. I know that sounds egotistical but I couldn't really say I was going to miss them. That feeling just wasn't there. Like I wanted to see them again, I enjoyed them, I knew all of that, but miss them? Regret for not enough time? Yes. Sadness? Grief? No.

I guess that's what dies when you die. The full emotional attachment to being alive.

So after our group share on how we died we were sorted again. There didn't seem to be any sort of logic to the sorting. It wasn't like by age, or gender, or occupation. Not by family size or if you had a dog or a cat. Or even how you died. It was just you go here, they go there. Thank you very much, enjoy the rest of your death.

Okay, they didn't say that last part, but that's what it felt like.

I was in a room with four other people. Really hard to make small talk when you are dead. You don't care about the weather. Nobody has any interesting weekend plans. Once you covered how they died and who they left behind you were pretty much tapped. Which, honestly, I hadn't been a fan of small talk when I was alive so this wasn't that much worse.

The five of us sat and stared at each other for a bit until finally one of the older women asked if we thought there was coffee. I hadn't even thought about food or drink. I didn't seem to be hungry or thirsty. But she really wanted some coffee. I told her I would go ask somebody. But when I tried the door it wouldn't open. We weren't going anywhere.

So we sat and stared at each other again.

Finally someone came in to the room and...look I'd like to say they opened the door and walked in, but that's not really how it worked. They just came into the room. Like one moment there were the five of us, then the next there were six. Then I noticed the door itself was gone. So we were all in a room with no door.

And no coffee. She asked.

A guy in the corner said, "I bet you're all wondering why we called you here" and then laughed at his own joke.

Number 6 smiled. Of course they knew why were all called there so I guess to them it might actually have been funny. I'm not sure if I would have thought it was funny if I hadn't been dead to begin with, but as it was I didn't. I didn't find it not funny either, just to be fair to the guy in the corner. I just didn't care about it one way or the other.

So Number 6 (I don't know what else to call them) smiled at all of us and said, "I bet you're all wondering why we called you here." And, I did think that was funny so maybe my sense of humor hadn't died with me. We all chuckled a little. Except the guy in the corner who I think was a little miffed he hadn't gotten a laugh for the same line. Timing, my dude, even when you are dead it's all about timing.

Then we were sorted again. I was with two of the people from the first group. The coffee lady and the jokester were no longer with us, but we were joined by two other people who had been in the original "tell us how you died" gathering.

These sortings happened over and over and over again. I never could figure out why we were sorted the way we were. If there was any sort of reason. But over and over again we would find ourselves in new groups. Sometimes big, sometimes small. Then finally I was alone.

The places we were sorted to had stopped looking like rooms at all after the first few sortings. No doors. No walls. Nothing that made you think "room" except it was a space and you were there. This was no different. It was just a smaller space. I guess for one person it didn't need to be that large.

Just me. Alone in a not a room.

"How did you die?"

"Oh am I dead?"

"Do you remember being alive?"

"Was I alive?"

"How many times have you been sorted?"

"Sorted?"

"How did you die?"

I just smiled and shook my head. I wasn't sure anymore what to say. I didn't know. Not really. Which seemed odd to me. Like I should know. Like I used to know. But now? I didn't know.

"Okay, this one is ready. Send it on!"

And then the room got much smaller. And...

Well. Here I am. I was dead to begin with. Nobody really believes me. But sometimes when I hear a woman ask if there is coffee, or a man tells a joke that nobody laughs at I search their faces to see if they remember me. If I remember them.

But a lot of people want coffee. And a lot of people aren't very funny. And I guess I don't know what I'd do if I found them. Maybe just feel better about being right. Even now I really do like to be right.