Life After Death

by Sister Souljah

  “Bitch, stop lying. You keep coming here. You came to his house a bunch of times tryna shake him. You bombed his house and did all types of crazy shit. I know. I was with him the whole time. Bet you didn’t know that. So you’re busted!” I told her.

  “True, some of our army of UBS were there attacking his house of evil,” she admitted. “I was not with them. Although I sent some of them. While others of them fought him for their own reasons.” It felt like she really wanted me to take her side. To believe her words.

  “You don’t recognize me?” she asked after some seconds. “I know everything about you, Miss Winter Santiaga. It really hurts that you don’t recognize even one speck of me,” she said softly. “But I forgive you. You don’t even know who you are, or where you are, or why you are here, or the meaning of what you have done in the past and what you continue to do in the present. So why did I ever believe that you would be able to recognize even a speck of me?” she said as though she pitied me.

  “I hate bitches who try and talk slick and who beat around the bush. Get to the point. Talk straight,” I threatened her.

  “Straight, that’s a good word,” she said, delighted all of a sudden. “Can you handle straight?” I was starting to heat up. Seemed like this young bitch thought she was a cut above me. Seemed like she thought she also knew a bunch of shit that I didn’t know or that she thought I couldn’t possibly figure out. So I took a good close look at her. She looked like a reflection of my younger self. I thought about the first time I saw her. Maybe she is Lexy or Mercedes, one or the other.

  “I can handle whatever. But I control the action,” I finally answered her in my big-sister tone, because I am the first daughter of the Santiaga household. I’m not going to have my youngest sister talking down to me as though she is my teacher, even if we are both dead.

  “You said you know everything about me, right?” I asked her. She smiled. “Everything,” she said like there was nothing to it.

  “What am I wearing?” was my first question. I didn’t know the answer myself. I was checking to see if she could actually see me and what she saw. My look matters the most, I know. If I am looking shabby to her I know it changes my leverage in this conversation.

  “Ah-hum-doo-lah-lah, you are the most beautiful-looking human to me, of course,” she said strangely. “I used the mercy I was given to remove your scar because you seemed uncomfortable wearing it,” she added, and I didn’t like her flipping shit like I owed her something. She probably removed my scar because she knew her ex-lover lusts women with scars.

  “Don’t try and be slick. You still have not said what I am wearing,” I reminded her. Suddenly she started spinning round and round like she was trying to make herself dizzy. Then she started saying words like she was singing a song.

  “Gucci Gucci Gucci, Louis Louis Louis, Fendi Fendi Fendi, Chanel Chanel Chanel, Hermès Hermès Hermès, Birkin Birkin Birkin, Louboutin Louboutin Louboutin, Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Choo Choo Choo, and good Lord Tom Ford! Okay! You are wearing it all.” She dropped to the ground in a squat, then collapsed into a lying-down position. Then she closed her eyes. I guess all that was her attempt to stop the dizzy feeling she caused herself. I liked seeing her throw a tantrum and lose her cool. And I liked it even more that she knew the names of some of the top designers. And she was pretty and nicely dressed, her hair covered with the trademark intricate delicate designs of a colorful Hermès scarf. Her sporting Hermès forced me to forgive her fashion-wise for covering her hair! And she was rocking her mean-ass saddle bag by wearing the strap like a sash across her front and the pouch on her ass. I liked the reversal. Quality fabric, expensively stitched leggings compliment only a sleek body type, like hers. Big sloppy bitches or even little sloppy bitches in dollar store cheap leggings is a crime. Diamond Rain’s fashionable leggings were also like riding pants that rich bitches wear on horseback. Oddly, she wore black leather ballet shoes with the ribbons criss-crossing up past her ankles. It wasn’t my style. I guess her coming from the sky caused her to dress to travel light. She looked dope. I was willing now to give her that. Her fashion outburst had chipped off some of the ice between us.

  “Lexy or Mercedes?” I asked, looking down at her.

  “The cars or your sisters?” she replied, opening her eyes. So she knew those were my sisters’ names without me having to tell her. She passed that little test.

  “Which one are you?” I asked, still keeping it brief.

  “Neither Mercedes nor Lexus are dead. Miss Winter, you are dead,” she said, sitting up and turning the mood very, very serious. “I am not Mercedes or Lexus. If I were either one of them, you would not ever have been able to see me or them, because you are no longer in the realm of living humans.” I didn’t need no clarification.

  “So fucking what? You’re a dead bitch just like me!” I shot back. She leaped up. “Otherwise you wouldn’t even be here.”

  “I am not a ‘dead bitch,’ as you say. And I wish you would change your manner of saying things. It would be to your benefit.”

  “So why exactly are you here? You said that I’m dead, yet you say that you can see me. At the same time, you said that I cannot see the living and you say that you are not dead, but clearly I can see you. What are you then?” I asked forcefully.

  “Very good,” she said, and I didn’t like her slick compliments or how she spoke them softly with a smile.

  “First things first, Lah-il-la-ha-illah-huwa,” she said.

  “Speak English or fuck it all,” I threatened her.

  “You must never follow up sacred words with niggardly words,” she said. But I was tired of her foreign shit.

  “English is only one of thousands of languages in the universe. UBS are suited to speak all of the languages in existence as part of our mercy, Alhamdulillah. Our mission is to be relatable. We introduce dead humans whose souls are lost and roaming in error to the path of cleansing. We show them how making prayers to the ONE is a means of protection for themselves. And also, it is absolutely the only path out of this area.” She pointed out beyond the green towards the looming darkness that I had been stuck and sitting in. Then she continued.

  “Our prayers and praises to the ONE are always only in the language that the ONE revealed the Truth in. So when we are speaking to dead humans in their language, we will often add in some words of prayer and praise to the ONE. This is the proper way of speaking for all of us servants. And, Miss Winter, you and I and every soul are each and all servants of the Maker of all souls.”

  “Servants!” I cracked up. Thought the bitch was pretty but crazy, pretty crazy!

  “Miss Winter, for you to get permission to leave this realm, you will need to stop mocking Faith and stop blocking the Truth, which your soul already knows to be true. Down here, the biggest wrongful error any soul can commit is to pretend that it does not understand when it does understand and has understood all along. This is a bigger wrong than murder or suicide in this realm. Do you understand what I have said so far?” she asked me as she stared into my eyes. I just stared back at her. Didn’t say shit.

  “So I am here to help you place everything in the right order. We have already established that there is only ONE God who is the Maker of all souls. If a soul does not feel and acknowledge this truth, every other thing and choice it makes will be completely out of order, all confusion and chaos.”

  “Is this some fancy Jesus talk? Are you down with those crazy Seventh-day Adventists who go around knocking on people doors who they don’t know like they ain’t got no damn sense? Back in Brooklyn, one of ’em got shot dead for knocking on the wrong door talking shit.” I laughed.

  “Shot dead… same as you, Miss Winter,” she said, and I felt an anger and a chill.

  “Jesus, peace be upon him, was a servant of the ONE. Jesus was not a partner, an equal, a son or a relative to the ONE. The ONE has no partners, no children, no equals. No one and none of us compare to the ONE who created time, created the sun, moon, and all stars, the
universe and all souls, spirits and living things. Jesus was given many, many MERCIES from the ONE, Ah-hum-doo-lah-lah. MERCY is something only the ONE can grant permission for and give. MERCY is the reason you can walk today and see, hear, touch, feel, and talk. In this realm, when you see the atmosphere turn green, it is an indication that the ONE has provided a MERCY happening at that moment. And because the devil is a liar, him and his army of demons shows up and spreads mischief and confusion among the population of lost souls such as yourself, Miss Winter. The demons prey on the weak-minded and convince them that it was they who healed you, gave you feeling, healing and mobility, sight and sound. Demons show up when they perceive the green color in the atmosphere. The same way that sharks show up when and where they perceive blood.

  “The demons cannot and did not and could never give you anything good or useful at all. They cannot heal you or answer your prayers or save your soul. They cannot protect or preserve or prolong your life or alter or interfere with your death and the return of your soul to the ONE. They are only evil demons lurking, luring, and striking at the right time to utilize the MERCY that the ONE has allowed to further mislead the many lost souls. Once you or any lost souls falls for it, Shayton, who is the devil, and an evil whisperer, who makes millions of evil suggestions through his army of demons, whom he calls his sons and daughters, will mislead you to great harm. The key is, Miss Winter, without your permission, cooperation, and acceptance, the demons cannot cause anything whatsoever to happen to you. You must resist and rebuke them. Humble yourself to the ONE who created your soul and all souls and gave you life.”

  Young and sharp, she spit game like a real motherfucking pimp, a lady pimp. She was doing double talk, meaning she was talking about my forever nigga without admitting that that was what she was doing. She was throwing shade on him in such a way that she was twisting his character. She was so devious she wanted me to flip on him and to believe that I made the choice to do so and she had nothing to do with it. He had done so much for me. She wanted to flip it and make it seem like he had done nothing good at all. She was redesigning and packaging my forever nigga as a powerless predator. She was like those crafty detectives that tried to get me to give up info leading to Bullet. They came at me from so many different angles all at once. I didn’t let them in. I didn’t let them win. I wouldn’t let her win either. Did she think that I preferred a life of being a boring-ass praying servant to any fucking body? Oh hell no!

  “Miss Winter, I have only seven Earth minutes remaining in my MERCY to you. I want to leave you with the information that you will need in order to cleanse your heart, mind, and soul and make choices that will not destroy you any further,” she said, interrupting my train of thought. She shifted her saddle-bag strap. Now the pouch was hanging in front of her. Her hand rested over it.

  “You are extremely far away from Jannah, which is Heaven in your English language. You are so very far away in terms of actual physical distance and in terms of spiritual distance, which prevents your soul’s return to the ONE who created you. If the ONE chose to do so, you could be in Jannah in an instant. But you have not earned a place on any level in all of the peaceful beautiful heavens, which is so vast that no mind can even imagine it. There is no pain, debt, deafness, blindness, paralysis, burning, screaming, breaking, cracking, hissing, plagues or viruses, crimes or torture or illness in Jannah. There are only good souls and good interaction, and beautiful rivers and elaborate comfort and most of all there is great PEACE.” She lifted her arms in a victory gesture. Guess she thought she had won me over with her talk.

  “On the left hand, this realm where we are right now, in the absence of the ONE’s mercy, Ah-hum-doo-lah-lah, has not even a molecule or grain of Heaven. The same way you are Brooklyn born, the County of Kings, in the State of New York, in the country of the United States of America and all of those names accurately describe your prior location on Earth, this place where we are standing right now is first known as the Last Stop Before the Drop, the County of the Ungrateful, the State of Ignorance, and the Land of Arrogance. Population is around five hundred million, give or take a thousand or so souls depending upon their choices, prayers, and actions,” she said.

  “Five hundred million!” I laughed. “You almost had me,” I lied. “But I’m the bitch who sat here on this curb for what felt like six thousand years. I was dead alone. There was no one here but me. Five hundred million, yeah right!”

  “Winter, you are able to lie. I am not. So everything I say will be the truth. It is a condition of my permission to access my second mercy to you.”

  “Everybody lies,” I said. She paused and didn’t reply.

  “Yes, you are right. Everyone who resides in the Last Stop Before the Drop is a liar. Including you. However, I mentioned that I am not from here—”

  “Then what the fuck are you doing around here? Why are you sweating a nigga who is not from your hood?”

  “Who!” She balled her hands into fists and set them at each side of her waist. “I see that you don’t even know his name. How could you? You don’t even know anything about him really. Down here the real name is the name of the soul. The nickname is the name of the action. So even though you don’t care and never asked because you can only care and think and feel and concern yourself about yourself and him, the name the ONE gave my soul is Siddiqah. It means ‘believes in the words of Allah and Allah’s books.’ My nickname is Bomber Girl, ’cause I bomb the devils every time that I am not bowed in prayer or out on a mercy. I am a servant dispatched to destroy devils. Now your guy, the name of his evil soul is Lucifer 66. He is the sixty-sixth ‘son’ of his ‘father,’ Shayton, the head devil who is condemned to the Eternal Fire and likes nothing more than to invite lost souls to join him in his eternal misery. Lucifer 66’s nickname is ‘Dat Nigga,’ because a nigga is a spirit, soul, or person who refuses with all of his or her will and might to learn, grow, and change. Also, he is called Dat Nigga because he is a top recruiter for Shayton, an expert at luring souls. I really can’t believe that after your gruesome death and your periods of loss of eyesight, hearing, touch, feeling, mobility, and health that you are still talking and thinking about him,” she said to me all indignant. “Yes! Of course you are! He is the same one who you ran away with and left me for on my first mercy.” Then she laughed. “Me and twenty of my UBS chased after you. We were fighting fiercely and outnumbered by his sixty-five jinns. They still couldn’t defeat us, but definitely did slow us down considerably until we were too late to retrieve you. You had already willed to remain with him. We can defeat evil jinns, but we cannot defeat the will of a dead human’s soul.”

  “All bitches talk greasy about their ex-boyfriends and baby daddies. Sometime a bitch be telling the truth, and sometime a bitch be lying for a thousand different reasons,” I said, folding my arms in front of her. She needed to know that I could and should teach her, instead of her trying to lead me around.

  “Let me put you up on game,” Bomber Girl said, spinning on her ballet shoes. She was somehow sounding like me. She stopped spinning, landing close up in my face wearing an aggressive expression that was more familiar to me, but that she never had with me before. I liked this expression because I could see her anger in it. I was like, Yeah bitch, now you showing your real face!

  “Blah blah blah blah blah!” I spit and then talked over her talk. “Wow, how could a teenager talk so damn much! I see why Dat Nigga cut your ass off. No man wants to hear all of that bullshit. It’s a real downer! How could he even keep a hard-on with you talking all of that shit. Fucking you must have been a nightmare, a total wet blanket. Fuck you if you think that I’m a stupid, dumbass, clueless, whatever! I know what a soul is. Soul is the feeling in the music, or the look in the fashion, or the style in the jewels, or the rhythm in the streets. My soul was created by my momma, who pushed me out of her big coochie after my father went in her, repeatedly.” Then I laughed a little.

  “Funny you should mention Momma,” she sang sof
tly in a melody like they were lyrics to a song, withdrawing any trace of her anger. That got me thoroughly heated.

  “Don’t say shit about my mother. This may be another fucking realm but where I come from, you don’t say shit about anybody’s mother unless you want to get knocked out, stabbed, or shot dead,” I warned her.

  “So you do have some emotion, concern for, and memory of your mother. I did not think so. After your body was shot dead, the Most Merciful ONE allowed you three visitations of your choice. You did not even think about or ask about or choose to visit your own momma. Honestly, you would not have been able to have visited her, though, because she is no longer of the Earth’s living and the three visitations are granted to say goodbye to the Earthly living ones whom you cared about the most and whom you would miss the most as your soul exited the Earth realm immediately after your death.”

  “Are you a fucking mind reader?” I spit. “How would you know if I thought about my mother or who I visited after my death?”

  “I cannot share with you just yet how I know.”

  “Well shut the fuck up then!”

  “Here,” she said, suddenly handing me her saddle bag. I didn’t like that she was giving me some type of hand-me-down even though it looked brand-new. But it was Gucci dope style. So I took it. It was heavy. I learned from living in the streets that if anybody hands you a bag, you better look in it right then and there. Know what you’re holding! So I looked. In it was a book so heavy that no one in their right mind would ever open or read it. Even I know an author should have some fucking consideration and keep it brief. That’s why I love magazines. They’re less wordy, more art and photography. They are constantly updated, so they keep up with the flow of fashion, the movement of models, celebs, and caked-up people, and display the finest furniture, newest technology, awesome travel destinations, elite products, and the flawlessness of jewels. I handed the saddle bag back to her.