After Life

by Jacquie Underdown

  She shoved at his chest as hard as she could. “GET OFF ME!” He flung upwards until his balance stumbled, and he fell to the ground beside her. She watched him panting on his back, surprised she’d managed to muster such strength.

  Zoe rolled, lurched to her feet and stood over his wheezing body. “I am so sick of spirits like you thinking you can come into my life and do whatever the hell you want—wake me from my sleep, talk to me through videos, hang from my ceiling—”

  A low, deep chuckle sounded in the distance.

  Zoe spun, saw the boatman. Like I need an audience.

  She pressed her hands to her hips and snarled. “What are you laughing at?”

  The boatman rolled his head back, his chuckle chiming out through the stillness like ripples on a body of still water. “That’s my girl.”

  “Your girl? Your girl? I’m nobody’s girl!”

  Another rumbling laugh. “Tell me something I’ve not heard before.”

  He stepped off the boat and walked with long determined strides toward her, his red coat flapping behind him as though there was a strong breeze—but there wasn’t a breeze. There wasn’t anything but dark sand, a sloshing silver river and a black sky illuminated by a constant stream of forked lightning.

  Standing in front of her, his bright blue eyes burning into hers, he pulled back the hood from his robe. She looked up at his face and gasped. This close to him, despite the eerie strangeness of his appearance, he was exquisite: his flawless skin glowed; his jaw was strong, and his nose and cheekbones were chiselled; his long glossy hair blew in the non-existent wind.

  He reached for her, his hand slowly nearing her face, but she flinched away despite the sting of affection in his eyes. Pain flickered across his features, then a solid shield came down and his expression neutralised.

  What did that mean?

  Zoe squared her shoulders; she couldn’t get distracted. She was here for a purpose, and she wouldn’t waste it. “What am I?” she blurted. “What is this place? Please, I need answers.”

  When the boatman spoke again, his voice was flat, emotionless. “All these answers will come in due course.”

  He spun and marched back toward the boat.

  “No! Don’t you dare,” she yelled, jogging after him.

  Over his shoulder, he said, “If you want that excuse for a human to come with me, he needs to pay.”

  Zoe glared at the man and contemplated leaving him with all the other penniless souls hidden by shadows, but when she pressed her hand to her chest, she found a soft leather pouch. She squeezed the bag feeling the hard circle of the coin inside.

  At least, if he goes with the boatman, the remaining girls at the hospital would be free, and she wouldn’t have to face them again. Zoe reached into her pouch, pulled out the coin and yelled, “Here!” Then threw it as hard as she could at the boatman.

  He spun and caught it in his palm. Eyes wide and bright with lust, he lifted the coin to his teeth and bit down hard. With a satisfied smirk, he called to the spirit, “Hurry now.”

  The spirit hastened ahead and sat at one end of the boat, head bowed, his expression solemn. That mocking sneer was nowhere to be found anymore as though he’d finally accepted his fate.

  The boatman stood at the other end, the long oar in his hand. He stabbed it into the water and pushed hard. The boat propelled with a rushing ripple away from the ragged banks.

  “Please, I need answers,” she cried.

  “Do not forget, this is how you wanted it, Zoe.”

  Chapter 24

  Zoe woke with the taste of copper and fading memories on her tongue.

  This is how I wanted it?

  How I wanted it?

  That didn’t make sense. She didn’t want any of this. She wanted to go to sleep at night without the rude interruption of ghosts. She wanted to walk through the school grounds without seeing spirits wallowing down the halls. And she certainly didn’t want to be flittering between here and god knows where accompanying the dead to what could only be described as the Afterlife.

  Her face hurt. When she opened her eyes, she realised why. Her cheek was crushed against the centre console of the car. She must have face planted it when she blacked out.

  “She’s awake,” came Asher’s voice.

  Zoe peered up to see Theron frantically steering, then the car came to a stop. Slowly, Zoe sat up and rubbed her face. Through the harsh glare of headlights, she could see that Theron had pulled the car over to the side of the road alongside bushland.

  “Are you okay?” Theron asked.

  She nodded, peering through the windscreen at the road ahead of them, the long white lines marked into the bitumen glittering in the light.

  Asher rested her elbows on the front seats and leaned forward. “Is it gone?”

  Again Zoe nodded. “He’s gone.”

  “And you don’t want to go back for the other ones you were going to help?” Theron asked with little conviction that he wanted the answer to be yes. She didn’t blame him for not wanting to visit that hospital again.

  She shook her head hard. No way. One trip to the Afterlife was enough for one night. “Just head home. I really need something to eat.” Her stomach growled, backing up her statement with hard evidence.

  When she met Theron’s gaze again, his lips were slanting upwards. “Seriously?” he said. “After all that, you’re asking for nothing else but food?”

  Zoe smiled too, then giggled. Asher chuckled from the backseat. Zoe dissolved into laughter, tears falling from her eyes. Theron and Asher joined in, holding their stomachs as fits of giggles and guffaws filled the silent car. It was completely delirious and irrational, but perhaps laughter was the safest way they could all release their pent up fear and energy.

  The only discussion on the drive home was what takeaway they were going to pick up. Turned out to be pasta. By the time they arrived back at the dorm, Zoe was shaking, her stomach painfully empty.

  Asher rushed to grab forks and bowls, then helped dish out fettuccine carbonara for each of them. Zoe’s bowl was filled to the top, a serving double to what the other two were eating. Seemed impossible, but she managed to eat the entire bowl.

  When Zoe placed her empty plate on the coffee table and leaned back in the lounge rubbing her full belly, Theron laughed. “I’m in awe of your abilities to store food in quantities food should never be stored.”

  Zoe laughed. “I have honestly never been hungrier in my life.”

  “Do you think fainting spells or fear may burn heaps of calories?”

  Zoe shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Theron placed his empty bowl on the coffee table and clasped his hands together. “Did you go back to that same place?”

  Zoe nodded and told them everything that happened with as much detail as she could recall. She found it difficult to translate her experiences into words because what she saw and felt there sometimes didn’t have an earthly vocabulary to match.

  “He definitely sounds like the mythical man we were reading about—Charon,” Theron said.

  “Very much so.”

  “But he wouldn’t answer your questions or tell you anything about what is going on?” Asher asked, frowning.

  Zoe shook her head. “But he said one thing that stung me.”

  Theron arched a brow; Asher leaned closer.

  “He said that the answers will come to me and …and this is how I wanted it.”

  Asher grimaced. “In a way, saying that you have had a say in what is happening to you?”

  Zoe bit down on her lip as she nodded.

  Theron squinted. “I don’t get it.”

  “Because you’re trying to see it through your current reality—a flesh and bone world. Where Zoe goes is different, perhaps even existing well before her present consciousness can recall. The correct way to look at this would be to decide if this other world exists outside Zoe’s mind. We don’t see her go anywhere, yet she is aware of being in another place and unconscious of the one sh
e is physically in.”

  “But we’ve seen the overlap with our own eyes,” Theron said “We’ve felt that world intruding on this one. We can’t possibly say, anymore, that this other world is a fantasy of her mind.”

  Zoe sighed. “I am still in the room. You can include me in this discussion too.”

  Theron smiled apologetically.

  “Well, what do you think?” Asher asked.

  “I agree that place isn’t like here.” She pressed her fingers into the soft flesh of her forearm. “It’s not made of this. But I feel everything and see everything as though it’s made of matter, but it’s like an illusion. The wind blows, yet there isn’t any. There’s ground beneath my feet, yet I know it’s not there. And emotions ...”

  She decided not to mention the affectionate gaze the boatman gave her, inciting a familiar aching feeling inside her, one she couldn’t pin down nor identify. She didn’t trust where that emotion would lead her—but intuited that it would end badly. Very badly.

  “And I also don’t know if I could trust what the boatman says. It does seem so farfetched that I could have decided on any of this. I hadn’t even experienced that world until a month ago.”

  “I guess we’ll just keep searching for answers.”

  Zoe nodded. There wasn’t much else they could do.

  “So, do you think we might get a visit from another ghost?” Asher asked, voice straining to hide her excited anticipation.

  “I have no idea.”

  Asher peered around the small dormitory. “I really need to set some cameras up around the place just in case.”

  “You’re a freak, you know that, don’t you?” Theron said, shaking his head at Asher.

  Asher’s palm patted her heart, and she feigned tears. “Theron, that’s the single most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  Zoe burst out laughing, and Theron even cracked a smile.

  A knock sounded at the door interrupting their deep conversation.

  Theron’s eyes widened. He jerked to his feet, ready to run into Zoe’s room to hide.

  Asher giggled. “Don’t stress. I’m expecting a visitor.”

  The entire girls’ dormitory was like Grand Central Station. The teachers would have a heart attack if they knew the comings and goings that were happening right under their noses.

  Asher raced to the answer it, tussling her hair before opening the door. It was Rosalie, the girl from the other night. She kissed Asher’s lips and peered past her to Zoe and Theron sitting in the lounge room, empty plates and takeaway containers strewn around.

  “Didn’t realise we were having company.” Her tone was etched with disappointment.

  Zoe shifted in her chair, suddenly feeling very intrusive, despite the fact that she lived here.

  Rosalie followed Asher inside. They sat beside each other on the lounge. Zoe watched Rosalie from the corner of her eye, befuddled by how someone while living could appear so very dead—pale skin, pale eyes.

  A smug grin formed on Rosalie’s face. She shuffled a hand through her dark red hair. “Look at you all. Wide-eyed like deer in headlights.”

  “We had a productive night,” Asher said.

  Rosalie twisted the bull ring in her nose, sliding it one way, then the other. “How could I forget, tonight was the big hospital adventure. Went well by the looks of it?”

  Zoe narrowed her eyes, unsure why sarcasm had leaked into Rosalie’s voice.

  Theron cocked his head to the side and stared at her. “Got a problem?”

  Rosalie shook her head and dismissed his question with the most bored expression possible. “Just a bit tired of hearing how weird and wonderful Miss Zoe is.”

  Zoe frowned as she met Rosalie’s hard gaze.

  “No need for the sarcasm,” Theron said, his words rough and loud.

  The air was a violently charged soup of tension. Zoe stood, pulling Theron by the hand. “We might head to bed. Leave you two alone.”

  Asher nodded. Rosalie looked away.

  When inside Zoe’s room with the door closed, Theron scowled. “What the hell was her problem?”

  Zoe rolled her eyes. “Don’t know. Don’t care. I’ve got bigger things to occupy my mind than Rosalie.”

  “You’re right. Who gives a shit what she thinks?” He rubbed Zoe’s arms, then pressed a kiss to her mouth. “Especially because now I have the privacy to be alone with you.”

  His suggestion arrowed need to her core.

  Just one touch and she was almost panting.

  Zoe peered into his green eyes. The lust inside her expanded, swelling in her bones and blood.

  A nervous smile played across her lips. “Exactly.”

  Theron’s grin stretched wider, and he pulled her in closer until her chest was flush against his hard body. His warmth spread its arms around her, trailed fingers of sensation across her skin.

  She peered up at his face, into those eyes, down to those lips. Her own lips tingled with the memory of his mouth, tongue, taste.

  He bent, encompassing her in his big embrace as he did, and neared his face to hers. Lips found hers, gently at first, then more firmly. A moan filled the air, and her heart stuttered when she realised she had made that desperate sound.

  He pulled back, stroked hair behind her ear. “Should we move this onto the bed?”

  Those words made her stomach tense, darts of sensation shifting along her limbs to her chest, lower.

  When she was close to Theron like this, anticipating the moment they would share, there was no room for any other thoughts, no room for any other sensation than that of bliss.

  Zoe untangled herself from his heated embrace, entwined her fingers with his and climbed onto her bed. He lay beside her, arms around her back, the other gently touching her face as their lips came together, more heated.

  The sounds of their rustling clothes, the clicks and sucks of their lips and hastened breaths were muted by blood rushing in Zoe’s ears. Her heart thumped out of control.

  Her hands were moving all of their own accord, grasping and sliding over his hot flesh, needing to consume him with her touch.

  And when he caressed her body with as much want and intensity, she thought she would combust beneath the heat of his hands.

  She had forgotten how a male body felt—scorching, hard with muscle, smooth on his stomach, coarse from the hairs on his forearms, prickly over his chin.

  She loved discovering the contrast, the long hard length of his thigh, the tight roundness of his shoulders and the undulating muscles in his arms and back.

  When his hand drifted up under her shirt, over her stomach, higher, her lips broke from his with an inward gasp. “Oh, that feels …”

  He teased her flesh with his gentle fingertips, and the sensation spread all through her body.

  How could this feel so good? She had no idea. Keep going. Please, keep going.

  Theron obeyed her unspoken plea. Nothing else in the world existed but right now. Nothing else mattered.

  What they were doing in this moment, together, was so utterly right that it made everything and everyone else in the world fade to beige. Against this bright and burning moment, beige would never be enough again.

  His hand drifted up her leg, under her skirt, edged further up her inner thigh. She gasped at the sensation, of having someone touching her most intimate part of her body.

  Convulsively, she rocked against his hand. “I’ve never gone this far,” she gasped.

  His mouth fell from hers, his hand fluttered away. “I assumed … we can stop … take it slower …” Theron’s voice was so low and husky, to hear it made her ache with need for him to keep going, to never stop.

  She shook her head. “No. I want this. I want you.”

  He peered into her eyes. “You sure?”

  One look into his concerned green eyes and she knew the answer. “Yes. I’m sure. But … be gentle.”

  He pressed his lips to hers and sighed. “Zoe, of course, I’ll be gentle.�
��

  His kiss was so caring and passionate, yet an undercurrent of primal need accompanied his every breath and touch. Her hands were all over him; she loved the feel of his strong body.

  “Let’s get you out of these clothes.” And when she lay before him, completely naked, he watched her, gaze sliding from her toes all the way up to her face, and he whispered, “You are so beautiful.”

  She was lost in his green eyes and honest words. She was lost in him.

  Theron tugged off his clothes and lay beside her, his chest pressing against hers, bare skin on bare skin. His body was exquisite, long lines of muscle, so fit.

  “You certain you want this?” he asked.

  Flutters swarmed in her belly, her heart was racing, but her flesh was burning with need. Never had she felt more ready to give herself to Theron. “I’m sure,” she whispered.

  ◆◆◆

  Zoe must have dozed for a little while. She was still naked. Theron was asleep beside her. She crawled quietly out of bed and rummaged for her pyjamas in her dresser, throwing them on quickly.

  She sat at the end of the bed and combed her hair in front of the mirror. Her cheeks were full of colour. Her body still tingled from Theron’s touch. A delicious ache throbbed between her thighs.

  Her gaze drifted to her hair, normally light brown, but was now dusted with a darker shade than she was used to seeing. She stopped combing mid-strand and focused harder.

  “What’s up?” Came Theron’s sleep-drunk voice.

  “My hair look darker?”

  Theron’s eyes narrowed, then widened. “Yeah, it is.”

  Zoe placed her comb on her dresser and spun to face him. “What the hell is happening to me?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t have the answers to that.” He held his hands out, and she went to him, lying beside him, allowing him to wrap her in his arms.

  “I don’t weird you out?”

  He chuckled. “No. Should you?”

  “I weird myself out.”

  He hugged her tighter. “I love that part of you.”

  Love?

  She rolled on her side, facing him. He did the same and entwined his long legs with hers. “I love other parts of you too,” he said, kissing her gently.