After Death Read Free

couldn’t afford to have looked into right now with their medical plan…
    He splashed some water on his face and decided to shave. He’d let his scrubble go a few days and it looked pretty bad. A clean shave somehow always made him feel better — like he was more presentable and better able to take on the world with fresh and clean skin.
    He was just finishing up, eyes turned inward and glazed, focused on that all-consuming quest for an idea for a fresh and juicy horror story. She was right like she always was. Vampires were all played out—especially if there was no twist to separate it from the hundreds of others… He dragged the razor across the last strip of bumpy protrusions and jumped as he saw a woman’s reflection next to his in the mirror.
    His heart missed a beat until he realized it was Jackie — She’d somehow managed to slip into the bathroom without him hearing… He was about to talk to her, ask her how she’d managed such stealth when he saw the rising thin red line on his neck where he’d accidentally sliced himself.
    The bright red blossomed quickly, the line thickening. He felt woozy and began to sag against the counter — Blood, oh my God, blood! He reached out with a groping hand and found the sink edge and struggled not to buckle completely. The room began to shimmy in a blending of light and motion and he caught a glimpse of his own ghost white reflection in the mirror. For a split instant, just before his eyes rolled backwards, he was alone in the room. The moment seemed prolonged and slowed as in a dream — He noticed a myriad of details as he toppled — the mirror was suddenly old and cracked, the wallpaper drooped off the walls revealing huge black splotches of dark mold underneath, the air was dank with decay and something worse — something ghastly… something unspeakably and oppressively horrible…
    He couldn’t stop his eyes from rolling backwards and he knew he was lost.
    Just before he lost consciousness he saw Jackie leap forward and catch him, narrowly protecting him from collision with the sharp edge of the counter top.
    And then he felt himself descending — sliding into the bottom of a dark well… Down, down… The infinite blackness welcoming him… Then in a quick swoop, he was returning. Her calm voice grew louder and he looked up to see her turning his face towards hers.
    “You’re okay.” She said quietly and firmly. “Don’t look at it, keep the cloth right there, think of something else.”
    All the joking about his phobia of blood while having an obsession for writing horror novels was gone from her face. Her expression was kind, caring — precisely what he needed at this moment.
    “Where’d you go?” He asked weakly from the floor but she must not have heard him.
    She pressed a black washcloth against his neck — black, the color she’d chosen and not by accident. He felt his panic receding, normalcy returning — She was right, it was nothing, just a scratch.
    The color of the washcloth (or absence of color, he couldn’t remember) did its job. He wasn’t supposed to look at it but he couldn’t help it. There were no traces of blood, he was just drying his neck with a washcloth now , he told himself… Still …, the thought started to creep in, the blood could force its way through this meager barrier, the vein could’ve been sliced wide, the bright red fluid could push its way out the sides, gush over his body, splash onto the floor…
    He tried to think of something else. What had he seen as he was falling? It was so vivid, so detailed… He looked around the room from his position on his back—it was all as it should be, clean, bright, well-kept.
    She was staring at him in concern.
    “Do you feel better? Do you want my help getting up?”
    He was about to answer that he was fine, that he was himself again. He felt those self-recriminating needles of embarrassment that meant that he had completely returned — and then it happened again