Forever After - By David Jester Page 0,36

very bright but clearly someone told them what you could do to them. I guess if they had the timer they knew where you would be and how long they had to finish,” he shrugged, “whatever it is they were doing.”

“How could they see the spirits? They were mortal.”

Naff dropped the timer into his pocket and shrugged. “They had a hard time identifying us, and they seemed unsure about their actual targets,” he explained, watching as Michael inspected their identical faces. “It seems they can see us but they can’t distinguish--”

He stopped short. Michael had removed the sunglasses from one of the men to expose a set of glimmering metallic eyes which appeared to be whirring inside his skull.

“Creepy,” Naff said with another little shudder.

With a brave thumb and forefinger, Michael reached into an eye socket and plucked out the metallic orb, leaving a black hole embedded with a fine silver lining inside the skull. He rolled the eye on his palm like a marble. It had stopped whirring, but it still glimmered like polished steel when it caught the light.

“What about these?” he asked, tossing the eye over his shoulder to his friend.

Naff toyed with the catch, bouncing it off his palm with a twisted face, as if his friend had just tossed him Chip’s balled collection of body hair. He watched it spin uncontrollably out of his hand and onto the sofa. “Never seen them before,” he said to the back of Michael’s head, hiding his hands sheepishly behind his back. “Could have something to do with our missing souls though.”

Michael stood up, straightened his body with a complimentary groan. He looked at his friend and noted his hidden hands with a small flicker of bemusement.

He held a weapon and a vial in front of Naff, the question on his lips unspoken.

Naff nodded knowingly. “No doubt that’s how they collected--”

A cough from the other side of the room alerted them; they turned to see the ghosts of Alan Richards and his wife standing serenely and expectantly. They were both smiling, their arms locked.

“What happens now?” Alan asked them.

“Now you can rest in peace,” Michael told him. “Come with me.”

“To heaven?”

“To the alleyway.”

10

“Hold on,” Chip raised a quizzical eyebrow; it looked like a hamster was folding into the foetal position on his forehead. “Didn’t the clones have souls?”

Michael continued walking, ignoring the inquisitive imp behind him. The waiting room had filled up somewhat since his last visit. In the corner a short, stocky reaper who had never introduced himself, or even spoken a word of a greeting, sat with his head down, catching up on some sleep. Beside him a teenage spirit twiddled his thumbs and took in every inch of the room with wide, awe-filled eyes.

“Clones don’t have souls,” Naff told Chip.

“But the original one would have,” Chip pushed, clearly perturbed by the event.

Michael turned around at this, he grinned at his friend. “Precisely!” he declared triumphantly.

He was having a minor eureka moment or a stroke, Chip wasn’t sure, but he shot back a grin that said otherwise.

Michael dropped the eyeball taken from the clone onto the reception desk. It bounced with a heavy clunk and then settled.

Hilda stared at Michael and then at the eye. She picked it up with great caution and trepidation and then rolled it around her palm when she decided it wasn’t going to bite.

“What is it?” she wanted to know.

“Eye ball.”

Hilda dropped the eye like it was made of molten lead.

“Where the hell did you get that from?” she asked, surprisingly disgusted for someone who worked with the dead and looked like she spent her free time cackling over a cauldron.

“Where do you think?” Michael said dryly.

“Why--”

“I need to speak with Azrael,” Michael interrupted.

She snapped her mouth shut and glared at him under thick, arched eyebrows. “I told you no,” she warned.

“This is important.”

Hilda was looking over Michael’s shoulder, a hint of perplexity on her haggard face. “Hasn’t that naked man been here before?”

“Where is Azrael? I need to speak with him.”

“He looks a little lost,” she said distantly, her eyes lowered to crotch height as they followed James Waddington on a merry wonder around the room.

Michael shook his head in exasperation. He took the wondering soul by the arm and beckoned for Alan Richards and his wife to follow, taking them all into the processing room and calling for Chip and Naff to stay and wait.

The room sparked into life as Michael entered. An automated voice cackled into existence all around