You Are Dead. [Sign Here Please]

by Andrew Stanek

  You Are Dead.

  (Sign Here Please)

  by Andrew Stanek

  If you enjoy this book, there is a sequel: You Are A Ghost. (Sign Here Please). In fact, this series now has five books in total. You can find all on Amazon and other online retail outlets.

  Also, you can sign up for my mailing list at http://eepurl.com/bhTc9H to receive emails from me about my writing, including information about sales and book giveaways!

  --Andrew Stanek

  Prologue

  One of the most inexplicably peculiar things about humans is their enduring fear of death. Death numbers among the greatest fears that humans have. It isn’t number one but ranks a strong number five or six, just after public speaking, spiders, heights, clowns, and forgetting to put your clothes on before going outside. This is peculiar because, rationally speaking, since no one has ever died before, no one knows what will happen afterward, and therefore you should make no assumptions whatsoever about it, including assuming that it might be unpleasant or in any way worse than life. But humans continue to fly in the face of rational judgment by fearing death, thereby assuming that death is a bad experience, even though colossally huge numbers of people mope around complaining about how horrible their lives are, while almost everyone who has ever died has elected to stay dead rather than come back to life and complain about their death experiences. Those who have chosen to come back to life tend to have done so an immensely long time ago, suggesting that if the afterlife was in any way unpleasant previously, it has remarkably improved over time, while life itself has - if the mopers are to be believed - remained a lengthy marathon of toil and drudgery, with only shiny gadgets and reality TV to distract us from our unpleasant existences.

  Because most people who have ever lived have died, those that haven’t are left with a strong suspicion that they are next and the end might be coming for them any day now. Therefore, most major world religions have developed their own beliefs about the afterlife. Christians, for example, believe that after death the righteous are sent to bask in eternal bliss in the light of god while the wicked burn in endless torture in hell (which probably tells you something about the people who fear death). Hindus believe that after death your soul is recycled back into the world and you are reincarnated into a better existence if you had good karma and a worse existence if you had bad karma - which means - as with the Christians - fear of death is predicated entirely on the suspicion that you might have done something horribly unforgivable in your present life. Buddhists also believe in reincarnation, although the Dalai Lama, a prominent Buddhist spiritual leader, recently floated the suggestion that he thought he’d had a pretty good run this time and he might not reincarnate after all. There has as yet been no word from him about what he intends to spend eternity doing if not reincarnating into infinite mortal iterations of himself.

  So everyone has their own theory about what happens. The Christians believe in heaven and hell. The Hindus believe in reincarnation. Horace Pickelfern of 289 Timbercrest Road, Anchorage, believes that after death everyone is hugged by a giant spirit bear, and if you fail to hug him back then he mauls you to double-death and you have to progress to the after-after-life, which is on the whole less pleasant. But the one thing that they all agree on - even Horace Pickelfern - is that when you die you finally get answers. Whether in heaven or hell, you get to sit down with your creator (or his designated proxy) and have a nice long chat about the meaning of life, at which point you presumably learn the meaning of your particular life and if you did it right.

  As a certain Mr. Nathan Haynes of Nevada was about to find out, they were all wrong.

  Chapter 1

  “Hello. I’m here to kill you.”

  Nathan blinked.

  “What?” he asked.

  The man standing on the doorstep smiled broadly.

  “Hello,” he repeated. He reached out and seized Nathan’s palms in a jaunty handshake. “I’m here to kill you.”

  Nathan blinked again. There was a pause.

  “Oh yes, yes of course!” he exclaimed. “Do come in.” Nathan stood aside and the smiling man walked briskly into his foyer. He looked around and smiled at the modest furnishings.

  “You have a very lovely home.”

  “Thank you for saying so - Mr. - er, what did you say your name was again?”

  The man’s smile broadened even further.

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “I understand completely,” Nathan said, his voice thick with sympathy. “You can’t be too careful - so many weirdos around. Now, you said you were here to kill me?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How very interesting! Please have a seat.” Nathan waved him into a nearby comfy chair.

  “Oh, I couldn’t possibly impose-”

  “Sit - sit,” Nathan insisted. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  “Well, if you insist.”

  The smiling man sank down into the greenest of Nathan’s several green chairs. Nathan took the opposite chair.

  “Can I offer you anything?”

  “Oh, no, thank you very much. I’m fine.”

  “I remember you called ahead,” Nathan said, frowning. “I’m afraid I can’t quite remember what you said - I have a medical condition, you see -”

  “-I had heard about that, yes-”

  “-but I remember you said that it was terribly important that you kill me-”

  “-yes, exactly, extremely urgent.”

  “Why was that again?”

  “Ah, that’s getting straight to the heart of the matter.” The smiling man rubbed his hands together. “Very direct. I like it. You see, I am a serial killer.”

  “Are you really?” Nathan said with astonishment. “How does one get to be a serial killer?”

  “It’s mainly a matter of personal choice and, if you don’t mind my saying, willpower.”

  “How interesting.”

  “Yes - well, as a serial killer, it is my job - and I would go so far as to say my duty - to murder as many people as possible.”

  “Of course, of course, that makes perfect sense,” Nathan said fervently. “I don’t suppose it could be any other way, could it?”

  “No indeed. But I have a problem. I haven’t killed anyone in a fair long while.”

  “Really? Why is that?”

  “It’s sad to say, but one encounters rather a lot of negativity as a serial killer. It’s all ‘no, please don’t!’ and ‘you’re an awful person’ and ‘stop in the name of the law, this is the police, we have you totally surrounded, come out with your hands up.’ And well, with all of it, I just fell into a bit of a rut, and it’s been a while since I’ve killed anyone at all, and that’s not good for business. Just between you and me, I shouldn’t have let it go quite this long - embarrassing really - but I just sort of woke up this morning and realized that the papers were all full of reports about other serial killers and none about me at all! So, you see, it’s extremely important that I murder someone right away. Otherwise I’ll fall behind the Gunderland Strangler and the Oregon Truck Stop Killer, and we can’t have that, can we?”

  “No, no, of course not,” responded Nathan, who was obviously supposed to agree. “I understand completely that you’re in something of a bind, but why do you need to kill me particularly?”

  “I’m happy you mentioned that. I received an excellent tip that you have an unusual medical condition.”

  “That’s right. I have - um - a sort of brain lesion and a condition. It’s actually a bit like an amnesia. It makes it hard to remember things sometimes. I remember it had something to do with my hippocampus... either I have too much hippocampus or not enough hippocampus or the ri
ght amount but in the wrong place or something, but the point is that I have brain damage, and it’s left me with no self preservation instinct whatsoever.”

  “Really? None at all?”

  “No, none at all.”

  “Yes, well you must see that’s absolutely perfect for me,” the smiling man continued. He thrust out his wrist and checked his watch. “But I don’t think I have to kill you quite yet if I want to make the evening news, so we have a few minutes to talk. And color me intrigued. You mean you don’t have any self-interest at all? You don’t care what happens to you?”

  “Oh no, that’s not true,” Nathan said, shaking his head. “I care quite a lot about what happens to me. I get very mad if I can’t get my morning cup of coffee or if my neighbors are too loud and keep me up and night. It’s just that I have no fear of death.”

  “How extraordinary! And can you tell right from wrong? Good from evil?”

  “Er - I have a little more trouble with that,” Nathan admitted. “I guess that’s just a consequence of the brain damage. My doctors told me that I needed to be very careful because my condition would make me very suggestible to people who would want to take advantage of me - present company excluded, of course. I don’t think I have anything to fear from an honest, upstanding serial killer such as yourself.”

  “Is there anything that makes you suspicious?”

  “Suspicious? Oh yes. I’m suspicious all the time. I remember I was watching a report on the news just the other night about a con artist who was tricking people into signing over their houses to him. I’m always careful about signing things - I think with all this fine print and legalese these days, you never know exactly what you’re agreeing to.”

  “I agree completely.”

  “You don’t need me to sign anything, do you?” Nathan asked anxiously.

  “No, nothing.”

  “Oh, that’s good.” Relief was palpable in Nathan’s voice. “So you can kill me without any paperwork at all?”

  “Yes! I conduct completely paperless murders. In fact, I view a paper trail as something of a detriment. It could cause complications further down the road.”

  “With litigation, you mean?”

  “Yes. Something like that.”

  “I like your attitude,” Nathan said fervently. “If more small businessmen had ideas like yours, the world would be a better place. I remember not so long ago I was listening to something about murders on the news. I think it was how we don’t have nearly enough murders. Yes, that must have been it.”

  The serial killer’s smile broadened. He checked his watch again.

  “Well, I think it’s just about time,” he said. “You do live alone, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes. Totally alone.”

  “Good, good.” As he spoke, the serial killer was drawing the blinds on all of Nathan’s windows. “And do you have a cell phone or a webcam or cameras or anything like that?”

  “No. I don’t hold with most of this modern technology. I don’t even have a computer.”

  “Really? No technology whatsoever?”

  “I did have a laptop but it’s broken now,” Nathan admitted. “But I never quite got the hang of using it to begin with.”

  “So no cell phone or cameras - excellent. And do you have a land line?”

  “Yes, right over there.” Nathan pointed to his phone, which sat on the wall of his living room.

  “We’ll just have to take care of that,” the smiling man said cheerily. He walked over to it, reached into his pocket, and took out a small pair of wire cutters, then snipped the phone line.

  “Hey!” Nathan exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “Was that entirely necessary?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” the man said apologetically. “I’m very sorry for any inconvenience I’ve caused you, but we’re almost done. Just one last question - would you say this room is soundproof?”

  “Oh, no, not at all. The neighbors are awfully loud. Sometimes they keep me up all night.”

  “I see. We’ll need this, then. Where did I put that?” The smiling man rummaged through his pockets, patting himself down until he found a long metal tube covered with honeycombed structures - a silencer, Nathan realized. The man then produced a semiautomatic pistol and screwed the silencer into the barrel.

  “Now, could you just look over there for me?”

  Nathan obediently looked at the indicated point on his own wall.

  “Some people prefer to close their eyes,” the smiling man added. “This won’t hurt a bit.”

  Nathan felt the cold, metal tip of the gun’s barrel in the back of his head. Then there was a muffled bang and the world went black.

  Chapter 2

  The whole world was infinite unending blackness. Then, through the vast nothing, Nathan heard a mechanical woman’s voice. It sounded like a loudspeaker.

  “Station number four, please.”

  As the voice spoke, a little desk jumped into existence directly in front of Nathan. The desk was large and square, stacked high with files, with a little snowglobe-paperweight sitting on top of the highest one. Behind the desk there was a slightly unattractive frumpy-looking woman wearing a heavy sweater and blocky glasses. Her expression was severe, her face lined, and black bags circled underneath her eyes. Her light hair was done up into a tight bun at the back of her head. She did not look pleased to see him. Nathan was not particularly happy to see her either - her sweater was a strikingly ugly shade of orange.

  The woman glanced up at him with distaste, then spoke briskly and tersely.

  “You are dead. Sign here please.”

  She pushed a piece of paper across the desk towards him and gestured towards an adjacent blue china mug full of pens. Nathan plucked out a blue fountain pen that suited him and stared down at the paper she had indicated. It was just one page, but it was covered from top to bottom in the most incredibly dense legalese in a font so unimaginably small that Nathan felt he would have needed something like a scanning electron microscope to decipher the print. At the bottom, the words, “the undersigned agrees to all of the above terms,” were visible, considerably larger than all the rest. There were two blanks with the labels “Print Name” and “Signature,” underneath.

  Nathan felt slightly disoriented and he was about to do as he was told. He took the pen and moved it to the paper. He was just about to sign when he paused, his pen hovering a quarter-inch or so above the page.

  He frowned. The memory of the news report about a fraudster who was tricking people into signing over the deeds to their houses dimly flashed through his mind.

  He looked up. The frumpy-looking woman was paying him no attention and was instead flipping rapidly through a very heavy file, which was filled with pages just like the one she had pushed towards Nathan. Every so often she made little tutting noises. After a few moments, she turned slightly and noticed Nathan was not signing. She glowered at him.

  “Print your name here and sign there,” she said. “There’s no need to date it. That sort of thing doesn’t matter much here.”

  “What is it?” Nathan asked.

  “It’s a 21B - Decedent Acknowledgement and Waiver of Liability. It says that you understand that you are dead and that you agree to waive any liability and hold us harmless for any damages - mental, physical, spiritual, or otherwise - that you might incur during your stay in the afterlife. Sign it and hand it back to me so I can countersign. Then you have three more abbreviated waivers to fill out in triplicate, but you only have to initial those. Hurry up about it. There are people in line behind you, you know. We’ve had almost a hundred new arrivals since you got here.”

  Nathan frowned down at the densely inked form. He quickly reached a decision.

  “I won’t sign it.”

  The woman blinked.

  “But you have to sign it.”

  She looked, if anything, confused, almost as if no one had ever said this before.

  Nathan put back the pen and drew away from the table. He c
rossed his arms, demonstrating that he had absolutely no intention of signing the form.

  Now the woman was staring at him with incredulity mixed into the same expression of distaste that she had originally.

  “Most irregular,” she murmured. “Why won’t you sign your 21B?”

  “I don’t want to,” Nathan replied stubbornly. He was not entirely sure why he didn’t want to sign the form. It was the principle of the thing, he supposed. On the whole Nathan simply did not hold with form-signing. He made a habit of avoiding it. Nathan very much thought of people who signed forms as types who walked around in suits and chatted to each other about things he found wholly deplorable, like the business news and the weather. Also, the vague suspicion that this was all somehow an incredibly elaborate ruse to steal his house continued to whirl around in the back of his mind. As this was probably the more rational of his concerns, the little voices that ran his brain decided this was the best explanation to vocalize to the woman, who was pointedly waiting for him to say something.

  “This could be a trick. You might be trying to steal my house,” he said.

  The woman’s eyebrows shot up into her hair - quite judgmentally, in Nathan’s opinion.

  “Do you not believe that you’re dead?” she asked.

  Memories of the sensation of the serial killer’s gun pressed against Nathan’s temple and the final report of the gunshot before everything had gone black played back through Nathan’s head like a film. That nice serial killer had gone to all the trouble of explaining that he was going to kill Nathan and then did exactly what he had promised. Nathan felt a bit stupid. As he didn’t like feeling stupid, the voices in his head rapidly devised a new line of defense.

  “Well, of course I’m dead,” he said matter-of-factly. “But you still might be after my house. Or maybe you’re trying to get my clock. I have quite a nice clock.”

  At this, the woman stared at him with disbelief mixed with utterly palpable hatred.