Deader Still

by Jordaina Sydney Robinson

  “They normally sew those shut,” Oz said with a grimace as he wafted his hand in front of his face to disperse the smell. “For this reason.”

  “No, no, no, no.” I shook my head and pointed to my corpse. “That’s not coming from me. That's from Michael. He always had terrible flatulence.”

  “Right,” Oz said with a nod, still wafting the delightful eau de death fragrance away. “That’s what that smell is. Flatulence.”

  Michael-the-cheating-scumbag, being so close, took the brunt of it. He turned a beautiful shade of green and gagged. Then he vomited on my corpse’s face. Twice. My mum shook my dad off and reached forward to swing a punch at Michael-the-cheating-scumbag’s head which, since he’d just vomited on an hour and a half’s worth of work, I was very appreciative of.

  However, Michael-the-cheating-scumbag turned to the side and snapped over at the waist to vomit again, this time on the floor. With his sudden movement my mum missed her intended target. The motion carried her forward and her fist landed on The Trollop’s shoulder. The Trollop, who’d darted forward to help Michael-the-cheating-scumbag when my mum had initially slapped him, spun around and unwisely decided to try to save herself by grabbing the side of my coffin.

  Her weight tipped the coffin over. It landed on its side on the floor with a thud. My vomited-on corpse bounced out and rolled twice. It rolled into the back of Michael-the-cheating-scumbag’s legs as he was scrambling to get away and he fell to the floor again. One of my dad’s brothers reached a hand out to him and I could tell from my uncle’s stance it was only so he could get a proper swing in since my mum had missed. But in Michael-the-cheating-scumbag’s attempt to scrabble away, he twisted and kicked my corpse in the face. The sound of a bone crunching echoed around the faultless acoustics of the church. And that was when everything got out of hand.

  My parent’s families hadn’t gotten along when they were married so when they got divorced it became much uglier. I was the only thing they both loved and now, for all intents and purposes, it looked like my dad’s brother was giving a helping hand to the man who’d cheated on me, brought The Trollop to my funeral, vomited on my corpse and then kicked her in the face. The shouting started at the back of the church and spread like wildfire. The priest ducked behind his pulpit as a high heel flew perilously close to his head.

  My dad ignored the fighting and dragged my corpse to the relative safety of the side of the church. He carefully wiped the vomit, and all my hard work, from my dead body’s face and hair with several tissues as best he could. He pulled off her now dangling false eyelashes, cupped her cheek and kissed her forehead.

  “My beautiful little girl, troublemaker to the end. And beyond.” He pushed himself to his feet and slowly scanned the front of the church, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You!” he yelled and pointed into the mass of thrashing bodies around my empty coffin. I heard a squeak that sounded like Michael-the-cheating-scumbag and my dad charged into the fray.

  “This is the best funeral I have ever been to.” Sabrina clapped next to me as she and Edith cheered my mum on. I couldn’t see exactly what my mum was doing, which I figured was probably for the best.

  “This five thousand word essay is going to be an interesting read,” Oz said, trying not to laugh.

  I scowled at him but couldn’t manage to form any words. I felt the familiar pull of a summoning. Not Madame Zorina or Jeremy or any medium. And I couldn’t fight it. The smile dropped from Oz’s face when he saw my panicked expression. I reached for him. His blue-green eyes stretched wide, an echo of my own panic. That was not a look I wanted to see on his persistently calm face. He reached back for me but his hand passed through mine. I was already gone.

  Chapter Three

  “Why were you fighting the summoning?” a vaguely familiar voice asked.

  “I was in the middle of a conversation.” I squinted at the fuzzy blur of a young blonde girl frowning down at me, hands on her hips. At least I thought she had her hands on her hips. My eyes were struggling to focus.

  “This takes precedence,” she snapped with an attitude that reminded me of the twice late Bertha. Twice late as in doubly dead. It would be wrong to wish the same fate on this girl too just because I didn’t like her tone. And because she’d interrupted my funeral. Oz would never tell me who said the nicest things about me. Sabrina would though as long as he’d let them stay. And that was if the priest had managed to get the proceedings back under control enough to bury me. Maybe he’d just throw my corpse in the church’s wheelie bin. I guess it could be counted as industrial waste of sorts for his profession.

  “Well, that depends on the conversation, doesn’t it?” I said placing a hand over my eyes and waiting for the room to stop spinning. There was something familiar about the way the place smelled. Pine disinfectant and chalk, but neither could totally mask the musty scent that permeated the air.

  The summoning had been exceedingly bumpy and I’d landed hard on my bottom, legs outstretched and with the room spinning around me. I’d had a fair bit of experience with being summoned so I was conversant enough with the process to be thoroughly unimpressed with this girl’s skill. Tunnelling was the ghost transportation mode of choice, which was basically the dead version of the Star Trek transporter beam. It felt like swimming through a huge washing machine but in the direction of the spin. Summoning, however, was the equivalent of being dragged in the opposite direction of the spin. Suffice to say, it was supremely unpleasant, and that was when the summoner was good at it. If the summoner was bad at it? Well, murders had been committed for less.

  “No. This takes precedence,” she said with an arrogance that put my teeth on edge.

  I looked up at her as the room started to settle around me. I recognised her.

  “Jenny?”

  The last time I’d seen her, actually the only time I'd seen her, she was being handcuffed and dragged off to serve an undetermined prison sentence for unauthorised haunting. So, then, this was a jailbreak? How could she summon me from her jail cell? Why would she summon me from her jail cell? Why would she summon me from her jail cell? Was she even still in jail? I quickly glanced around. The room was filled with rows of desks with upturned chairs resting on them, childish art on the walls and units of small lockers at the back of the room. It looked more like a classroom than a jail cell. Although, an eternity in a school was probably the worst punishment I could think of.

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know why she’d summoned me, what she was involved in, what she was trying to get me involved in. I was absolutely not getting involved in anything remotely illegal. And I was not taking the blame for this. Whatever “this” was. I blew Oz’s whistle really hard. He usually had a two second response time. Two seconds passed. No Oz.

  Jenny smirked at me. “Your parole officer won’t be able to save you this time, Bridget.”

  Well, that just did not sound like a happy hello.

  “Oz didn’t save me last time,” I said, assuming she was talking about my almost murder not so long ago.

  I rolled to my feet and grabbed the nearest thing to throw – turned out it was a chair – and hurled it at her. Not waiting to see if I’d caught her I darted across the room. Jenny leapt onto my back and we hit to the floor with a thud. My hands slapped the linoleum floor hard, saving myself some pain, but the air still left my lungs in a gust that reminded me of my corpse.

  Before she could get the upper hand I jerked my head back into her face. I felt it connect with a crack and a yelp from her. I pushed up and blindly jabbed an elbow behind me. She grunted as it caught her in the ribs. Jenny rolled from my back and I scrambled to my feet. I made it to the door and jerked it open.

  A reed of man stood in the way. I didn’t hesitate. I kicked my foot forward into his shin. He screamed and dropped to the floor, cradling it. I hesitated a moment, startled by such an easy win. I dodged him and was out into the corridor. I tried tunnelling but I couldn’t. Som
e places in the afterlife you couldn’t tunnel in or out of and this, for whatever reason, was obviously one.

  I glanced both ways along the corridor. It was my old high school. No wonder I recognised the smell. Weird, but we could deal with that later. I glanced over my shoulder; the guy was up but favouring his right leg. Jenny joined him in the doorway. For some reason neither made a move to grab me. That probably should’ve told me they probably weren’t out to murder me but I figured I’d escape first and ask questions later.

  Left or right? Left was the assembly hall. Right was the reception. The assembly hall. It had an emergency exit next to the stage. I remembered because we used to have it open during summer morning assemblies. Escape route in place, I turned to run and came face to face with a tall slim lady dressed in a black trouser suit with a flouncy white blouse and her dark hair pulled into a neat bun. Dr Watson. I’d had a therapy session with her a week or so earlier because Oz felt I wasn’t adjusting to my new afterlife.

  “Stop.” She held up her hand to reinforce her command. She definitely hadn’t been there a second ago. Had she tunnelled in? How had she tunnelled in? Stupid afterlife with its stupid different rules for different people.

  I was tempted to pretend I didn’t understand and kick her in the shin too. Not because I considered her a threat to my safety, just because I didn’t like her. But that would’ve been childish. Then again, we were in a school.

  “What are you doing?” Watson asked, her face showing the same eerily vacant expression that she’d worn in that one session.

  “She summoned me here and then threatened me,” I said, pointing to Jenny as I backed up a couple of steps to put some distance between both parties and me.

  “I did not! She attacked me,” Jenny yelped, cradling her very red cheekbone. Damn it, I’d been aiming for her nose.

  “‘Your parole officer won’t be able to save you this time’?” I arched an eyebrow at Jenny. “That’s not a threat?”

  Jenny shook her head and spoke to Watson. “I didn’t say that.”

  My jaw dropped open and I stared at her. “You totally did! Why else would I try to escape from you?”

  “Because you’re a mal-adjust.” Jenny’s voice was heavy with tears. If she cried, I was going to have to find something else to throw at her. Really, I was.

  “Please. I’m a mal-adjust?” I didn’t even try to keep the derision out of my voice. “You were the one who was arrested for unauthorised haunting a few days into your afterlife.”

  At my first Ghostly Acclimatisation meeting, a mandatory and nightly support group where you learned about ghost stuff, Jenny had haunted a livie. Two Ghosting Busters, the über police of the afterlife, had appeared in a puff of smoke, handcuffed her and disappeared. The lasting impression was if you even flirted with haunting a livie, an alive person to the uninitiated, the GBs would come for you and you wouldn’t like the consequences.

  That said, Edith had been illegally haunting and getting away with it for a long time so I wasn’t all that certain how hard and fast that rule actually was. Or maybe Edith was just too smart to be caught. The only thing I was certain of was that there were no more certainties. Especially since here was Jenny.

  “Oh, you’re so clueless, it’s adorable,” Jenny cooed with one hand over her heart. “The GBs asked for my help. I was a plant. They always do it. Helps enforce the no haunting rule.”

  And that right there was why I didn’t trust people who cried in arguments. I knew I should’ve heaved the desk at her instead of the chair.

  Watson held her hand up for silence before I could think of a scathing enough response. “Do either of you two need to visit the medical centre?” she asked. Jenny and the man both shook their heads. “Then everyone to the assembly hall, please.” Watson gestured to the double doors at the end of the corridor.

  I folded my arms and stayed where I was. “No.”

  “Yes.” Watson offered me what I think she thought was a smile. It just looked like a twitch to me.

  “No.”

  The door of the next classroom along opened and Warren, a member of my GA group and an idiot, walked out. An older man, maybe late fifties and wearing a brown jumpsuit, followed him. Jenny and the man I’d kicked were both wearing white jumpsuits so I assumed he wasn’t anything to do with them.

  “Jenny. Matthew. Please escort these two gentlemen into the hall while I speak with Bridget.”

  Warren tutted at me. “What have you done now, Red?”

  “Since you’re here, I’m guessing the same thing as you,” I said.

  Warren smiled, the light playing off his three eyebrow rings, lip ring and the rest of the metal he had in his face. “It warms my heart to know we’ll get to share this experience.”

  “Jenny. Matthew. Please.” Watson gestured to the doors again. Jenny and Matthew moved to stand behind Warren and the other guy and made shooing gestures. Warren started to walk in the direction of the hall.

  “You’re just going to blindly go with these people?” I called to his back.

  “Yep.” Warren turned and glanced around the group. “They look trustworthy to me.”

  “Don’t you remember her from our first GA meeting?” I nodded to Jenny but spoke to Warren. “She was a GB plant.”

  Warren looked her over. “Oh, yeah. I thought you were familiar.”

  I shook my head at Warren. “You’re an idiot.”

  “Jenny. Matthew. Please.” Watson gestured to the doors again. There was no insistence. No change of tone. The woman just plain creeped me out.

  “I’d like to know what’s happening too,” said the man in the brown jumpsuit.

  “You will, once everyone’s assembled inside.” Watson’s arm was still extended in the direction of the doors.

  “Right,” I said. “For all we know you’re trying to cull the ghost population and there’s a sheer drop on the other side of the door.”

  Watson turned to me, her arm still extended towards the doors. “Interesting that you would assume a negative unknown rather than a positive unknown. It could be a surprise party.”

  “That still sounds like a negative unknown to me,” I said and the man in the brown jumpsuit mumbled an agreement. “And you dragged me here without my permission or knowledge. Without my guardian’s permission or knowledge so, yeah, it kinda feels like a negative unknown.”

  Jenny walked to the double doors and pulled them open. There was a group of roughly thirty chairs with attached desks arranged in exam formation at the front of the hall, facing the stage. All but three were occupied. Most occupants wore brown jumpsuits but there were a couple of lime greens and a red. Red was the colour of the ghost postal service. I’d never seen brown before, though. Or white.

  “See. Everything’s fine,” Warren said and sauntered along the corridor and into the hall. A small woman, clad in the same type of white jumpsuit as Jenny, greeted him and directed him to a seat.

  The guy in the brown jumpsuit looked to me and raised an eyebrow. I sighed but nodded and followed him into the room. I wasn’t comfortable exposing my back to these people. Maybe Edith was right about needing a self-defence weapon since Oz hadn’t heeled to his whistle.

  The assembly hall was exactly as I remembered, scratched parquet flooring, tall windows with heavy brocade curtains, chairs stacked around the perimeter. A whole host of unpleasant teenage memories flashed before my eyes. Instinctively, I searched out the fire exit for an escape in case of, y’know, teenage memory overload. I’ve heard people can die from that. My eyes fell on a patch of new bricks where the fire door had been. It had been bricked up? Who bricked up a fire exit? What was wrong with these people? Maybe they’d just moved it. I glanced around the hall for a new escape route but when I saw the scene at the front of the hall I just stopped looking.

  A wheeled chalkboard stood below the stage with “start”, “finish” and some other information I didn’t understand written on it. A teacher-sized desk sat front and centre. On it re
sted several stacks of paper. I felt the first pricks of a cold sweat on my upper lip. It was just like a high school exam. In my old high school. And some moron had bricked up the fire exit.

  I scanned the other faces. Maybe I was wrong since no one else looked panicked. Some faces I recognised from my community service, and most of those were wearing the brown jumpsuits. Maybe brown was for newly deads who hadn’t been allocated jobs yet. Jenny directed me to the only empty chair, front row and centre. Directly opposite the teacher’s desk. The worst desk ever.

  “Thanks, Jenny.” Dr Watson walked in and pulled the doors closed behind her. Her low heels punctuated each step with a muted clip as she walked to the front and addressed the group. “I’m Dr Watson. I’ll be overseeing this assessment. These are your assessment leaders, Jenny, Gracie and Matthew.” She gestured to the three white jumpsuited people at the front of the hall. They each waved in turn. Gracie reminded me of an energetic gerbil. She was short, chubby and bounced from foot to foot while staying in place. Matthew couldn’t have been over six foot but he stood like a giant next to Gracie. He was thin in the manner of someone blessed with a fast metabolism with blond, spiky hair. He looked like a six-year-old boy who’d been stretched to adult height. Sloth-like ineptitude radiated from him, or perhaps that was because Gracie’s eyes shone with a fevered enthusiasm.

  Jenny was the only one who seemed half way normal. But who knew? She might be working as a GB plant. Again. Watson stood at the front of the hall next to Jenny and made eye contact with everyone in turn as she spoke.

  “Now, we all know why we’re here—”

  “I don’t.” I called out. I refused to put my hand up to ask permission to speak. We might be physically back in school but I was an adult, damn it.

  “Questions later, please, Bridget.” Dr Watson patted the air as though to pat down my objections. Why did they all do that? “Now—”