by Gina Ranalli
Suicide Girls in the Afterlife
Gina Ranalli
Also by Gina Ranalli
Novels
Chemical Gardens
Wall of Kiss
Mother Puncher
House of Fallen Trees
Swarm of Flying Eyeballs
Sky Tongues
Praise the Dead
Peppermint Twist (forthcoming)
Still Life with Vibrator (forthcoming)
Collections
13 Thorns (with Gus Fink)
Winner of the Wonderland Award
Published by Afterbirth Books
PO Box 6068
Lynnwood, WA 98036
www.afterbirthbooks.com
Originally published in trade paperback by Afterbirth Books (2006)
Suicide Girls in the Afterlife
ISBN-10: 0-9766310-8-3
Copyright © 2006 by Gina Ranalli. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction.
Cover art and design copyright ©2006 by RazGriz
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author or publisher.
Dedicated to all the unnoticed and underappreciated fire plugs throughout the world.
Hug a fire plug today.
Chapter 1
Tramping through the electric forest on a rainy night is suicide.
All around me, tin-foil trees glow silver-white, lightning branches scratching the belly of the black sky which thunder-purrs its pleasure and promises a newborn baby downpour.
Still, the night birds are unfazed by the threatening weather. Back and forth, they sing static to each other and occasionally I get a glimpse of their comet eyes gazing down at me as I pass.
I’m searching for the river of ice, watching where I step and composing a note in my head all at the same time. The note will never be written but I compose it just the same. It makes me feel better to be thinking as I try to avoid stepping on or tripping over any above-ground tree roots. That would be a careless, unappetizing way to die. And embarrassing. Then I’d be remembered not only as a failure at life, but a klutz too.
Hence I walk carefully in the direction I know the river to be. It’s the distance that I’m unsure of. Day or night, this forest all looks the same, but at least it’s well lit. Sometimes blindingly bright, in fact, especially on a night like this. Everything is alive with anticipation: dead leaves on the ground crackle and pop, rocks buzz softly, flickering white veins across their surfaces, while two blue squirrels chase each other across my path and up a Sagewood tree, chattering drunken nonsense, trailing sparks.
I increase my pace, knowing that the instant rain begins to fall, I’m fried. The entire forest will connect to itself and become a web of electricity, impossible to move through without catching more than a friendly volt.
Tuning out the cacophony of the woods and listening beneath it, I at last hear the clunk clunk clunk of the river. Almost there.
And then I hear the hiss of the first few droplets.
Sprinting towards the river, dodging trees and leaping brush, I wonder if I’ll make it. Already, I can feel my hair coming alive, sizzling on my head and reaching for the sky. Moving too fast to avoid a low branch, my shoulder grazes it and I yelp as a jolt shoots all the way down my arm to my fingertips.
Fuck.
I get zapped yet again by misjudging the width between two boulders but I can see the river now, shining like diamonds a mere ten yards away.
Filled with hope at the sight, I dash forward, eyes frantically scanning the trees that live at the very lip of the river, seeking a low enough branch…a long enough branch.
The forest hums louder, grows brighter, as the rain makes contact with its spitting hide and I am sure to die.
But then there is a Brain tree, some of its skeletal roots dancing blurs above the river and I am airborne, grasping the longest vine and flying out over the ice just as the forest goes super-nova and I burn blind.
Chapter 2
“Upsy daisy.”
I ignore the male voice, comfortable in my slumber.
“Ms. Pogue Eldridge,” the voice announces loudly. “Your immediate presence at the Sterling Hotel is humbly requested.”
Annoyed, I try to roll over but for some reason find myself paralyzed. To make matters worse, someone—the owner of the voice, I presume—starts tugging my left arm in a further attempt to get me up.
Opening my eyes, I intend to snarl at the stranger, but when I see where I am, all words are momentarily lost to me: in the river, up to my waist in thousands of square ice cubes.
It’s daylight now and all around me the forest still sputters here and there, happy in its afterglow. The tentacle branch that I grabbed lies nearby, severed from the Brain tree, though the tree itself is no longer at the river’s edge. The ice has carried me downstream a ways, though not far, given its lazy glacial pace.
“We need to get you out of there,” says the man gripping my arm. He’s an older guy—sixties perhaps—handsome and dressed in an immaculate white suit that matches his hair and trimmed beard exactly. “Have to get you checked in.”
“Am I dead?” I ask.
“You’re dead weight, I can tell you that.” He continues pulling at me.
“I don’t feel cold. I’m dead right?”
He pauses in his struggle. “What do you think?”
I shrug. “I hope so. I tried to kill myself last night.”
He straightens up, crosses his arms and clucks disapprovingly. “Suicides are a classless bunch. Now, get yourself out of that ice. We don’t have all day.”
Without thinking about it, I obey him, climbing out of the river and standing on top of it, facing him. I notice his eyes are the same shade of blue as the playful squirrels I saw the night before.
“That’s better,” he says. “Now, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Salvadore. I will be your escort to the Sterling Hotel and I suggest we get a move on. You have a reservation.”
“I do?”
“You do.” He offers me his arm. “Shall we?”
Chapter 3
Salvadore leads me through the electric forest until I’m completely disoriented. East, west? I don’t know, and Salvadore isn’t saying. For a while, I assume we’re lost, but he assures me that he knows exactly where we’re headed. The Sterling Hotel, of course. Wherever that is.
I still have no clue where we are when we finally make our way out, but it’s nowhere I recognize. A hot dusty road, dry despite last night’s rain, quiet but for the sound of chirping insects. Huge cliffs on either side, lined with enormously tall, purple-leafed Sagewoods. Up ahead, a stone tunnel, its throat yawning and cavity-black.
“Are we going in there?”
“It’s the only way there is,” Salvadore says matter-of-factly.
“Well, are there any sidewalks? There’s none out here. What if a car comes?”
“No car will come.”
I frown. “How do you know?”
“Look.” He jerks a thumb behind us and, confused, I turn and immediately see what he means by ‘the only way there is.’
There’s nothing there.
No road, no cliffs, no trees.
Nothing.
Behind us lays a vast white emptiness, a new canvas without borders. No left, no right. No up, no down. Just white nothing, snug up to our backs.
My heart stammers. “What the hell…what’s going on?”
Indifferent, Salvadore reaches into an inner pocket of his pristine white jacket and pulls out a small roll of candy. He pops one into his mouth and offers me the roll. “Life Saver?”
&
nbsp; I stare at him.
He shakes the candy. “It’s green,” he says temptingly. “Fungus flavor.”
“Salvadore, where did the road go?”
Deciding he’d like the green candy for himself, he deftly flips it from the roll and into his mouth before returning the Life Savers to his pocket.
“Salvadore?”
“Now is all there is,” he tells me with a small smile. “It’s best not to give it much thought. Just come along. We need to get you checked in.”
We resume our journey but I’ve only gone five or six steps when I sneak a glance back and see the white again. Fascinated, I turn around and retrace my steps, peering into the nothing for some sense of…something. There’s a moment when I think I see movement in there, in the nothing, and I stop, straining my eyes. And then I see it again, a flickering flash, white on purest white and I reach out my hand, wanting to touch the motion despite a sudden and distinct chill that surrounds me.
“No!” Salvadore has come up beside me once more, swatting my hand away. “You don’t want to do that, Pogue.”
“Why not? What’s in there?”
He opens his mouth as if to speak, then closes it again. “Come on. We need to—”
“Get me checked in, I know, but…” I look at the wall of white and then back at him. “You’re not going to tell me?”
“There’s nothing to tell. Now, come. Look, we’re almost there.”
Reluctantly, I face forward and see the tunnel. “We’re not that close.”
“We’ll be there in five minutes if you can manage to keep your feet moving.”
The impatience in his voice tells me that I’ll be better off just doing as I’m told for the time being and the thought distresses me. Dead and still taking orders? What a drag…
Chapter 4
Salvadore speaks the truth. As we walk forward, the tunnel’s opening grows nearer much faster than it should have. It seems as if it too is moving, closing the distance between us, meeting us halfway.
But, of course, the tunnel can’t be moving. That’s impossible.
Nonetheless, we arrive at the mouth within five minutes, though it had previously appeared to be at least a half-hour walk. I stop in my tracks and peer uneasily into the darkness of that black, gaping cavern.
Beside me, Salvadore stops as well. Apparently sensing my trepidation, he says, “There’s nothing to fear, I can assure you.”
I glance at him skeptically before assessing everything around me once more. Before me, a tunnel of darkness. To either side, what appears to be dense forest and behind me, nothing. I look down and wonder if the road beneath my feet is anything more than a mere illusion.
“How do I know this isn’t a tunnel to hell?” I ask.
“There’s only one way to find out,” he says. “Besides, what choice do you have? You can either enter and see where it leads or you can stand here on the brink for all eternity.”
I consider the options, and decide that maybe staying right where I am forever wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I’d have the trees, the distant sound of birds and insects. Quite relaxing, actually.
Once again reading my thoughts, Salvadore says, “You’d stand here for about an hour before boredom and anxiety set in and then you’d steel yourself and enter the tunnel anyway. But, you’d be doing it alone, since I have other appointments to make and don’t have time to hang around and baby you.”
I’m tempted to argue—certainly it would take more than an hour for me to get bored—but I know he’s right. Eventually, I’d start to get freaked out, sandwiched between vast white and black, and would probably end up lunging into one or the other without any sense of what I was doing.
Clenching my fists, I inhale deeply and take the first steps into the black tunnel, Salvadore at my side.
Chapter 5
I have no idea how long we’re in the tunnel but it seems to be only an instant. In that instant however, I lose all sense of self: there is no up or down, I can’t hear, see or smell anything. I can’t feel my body or the ground beneath my feet. I have no sense of any movement whatsoever, much less feel myself walking. If Salvadore is still beside me, his presence is undetectable.
And in a blink of an eye, we emerge on the other side, whole and still side by side, standing atop a high green hill and looking down upon a brilliant and sparkling glass city.
Instinct tells me that if I turn to glance back at the tunnel it will no longer exist, but I look anyway and see that I’m right. Only lush forest lies behind us now, cool and dark, inviting in its impossibility.
I face front again, gaze down at the bright buildings, sunlight glinting off windows and chrome, and release the breath I have pent up in my lungs, the very same breath I had taken just before entering the tunnel.
“Welcome to the Virgin City, Pogue,” Salvadore says. “Spectacular, isn’t it?”
Nodding, it takes a moment for the name of the place to register with me. When it does, I look at him. “Did you say Virgin City?”
“I did. You’ve heard of it?” He seems surprised.
“No…but why virgin? Is that one of the prerequisites for getting into heaven? Because if it is, you definitely brought me to the wrong place. I haven’t been a—”
He hushes me by holding up his hand and shaking his head. “It’s nothing like that. Look.”
My eyes follow his pointing finger to the sky, to the sun, which it turns out, isn’t a sun at all but the gentle smiling face of the Virgin Mary. She is gazing down at us with a pleased expression beneath her baby-blue cloak, nodding her approval and giving me a wink.
Salvadore raises a hand and waves to her, nudging me to do the same. I do and her grin becomes wider, all teeth, white and blinding.
I look away, blotches of light dancing on my retinas. “Damn,” I say. “She sure is bright.”
“She’s happy to see you,” Salvadore says.
Rubbing my eyes in an attempt to see again, I say, “What’s up with this anyway? I’m not even Catholic.”
Ignoring my question, Salvadore places a hand on my elbow and says, “Come on. We have a bus to catch.”
“A bus?”
Chapter 6
Sure enough, after we descend the hill and enter the city, we walk down an impossibly clean street to the corner, where there is a bus stop and a bench. Salvadore sits down and pulls a hanky out of an inner jacket pocket and blows his nose.
“Where is everyone?” I ask. I can’t help but notice that we are the only people within sight. And not only are we alone on the street, but neither is there any traffic. Absolutely nothing moves anywhere, except us. Not even a single candy wrapper blows by. “This is kinda creepy,” I say.
“Maybe they all have the day off,” Salvadore says, returning the hanky to its pocket. I start to reply but the appearance of an immaculate city bus distracts me. It appears to be brand new, sparkling clean, like the buildings themselves.
“Here we are,” Salvadore says, rising from the bench. “That wasn’t too long of a wait.”
The bus door hisses open and Salvadore gestures for me to board first. I climb the steps cautiously, eyeing the black female driver with more than a little suspicion. She smiles cheerfully at me as I look around for a coin box that isn’t there.
“No toll,” Salvadore says from behind me. “Just take a seat.”
I do as I’m told, choosing the first bench on the left, and slide over to the window. Salvadore sits beside me as the door closes and the bus pulls out onto the deserted street.
“Almost there now,” he says.
Frowning, I look from him to the view outside the window just as the bus is pulling over at what must be the next bus stop. Before I can make any reaction whatsoever, he has risen from the seat and is exiting the bus again. I leap up, hurrying after him.
Once more on the sidewalk, I say, “Was that even half a block? We could have just walked.”
Salvadore isn’t listening though. Instead, he is smiling up at th
e building before us. As I turn to follow his gaze with my own, I notice that it is no longer day but night here in the Virgin City. A comfortable, breezy night, late summer or early fall by the feel of it.
And we are no longer alone either. People are everywhere; happy people, every last one of them. Milling around, talking, laughing, smoking, joking. Some of them are dressed to the nines while others appear to be homeless and in rags. A good number of them I hear commenting on the beautiful evening, the stars and the moon.
Glancing skyward, I once again see the Mother Mary smiling, replacing the moon as she had replaced the sun. Her countenance is more than just the moon though. Peering closing at the stars, I can just make out her blue cloak on each and every one of them. A billion Marys hang above us, twinkling and joyful and I have to look away quickly, suddenly feeling a bit queasy.
“Overwhelmed?” Salvadore asks, placing a hand on my shoulder. Without waiting for my response, he continues and gestures at the building before us, “Why don’t we go inside.”
For the first time, I focus my attention on the grand white structure lit up as if for a debutante’s ball. “What is this place?”
“This,” Salvadore says, “is the Sterling Hotel.”
Chapter 7
We move through the crowd and begin ascending the hotel’s two dozen marble stairs to the revolving glass doors that allow us access into the elegant building and its beautifully refined lobby.
Despite all the bustling outside, the lobby is relatively calm. A few people are seated on lush white furniture, speaking in soothing tones and smiling and nodding at each other.
“This is too weird for me,” I say, stopping in my tracks. “Why does everyone seem so nice?”
