Forever After - By David Jester Page 0,4

all it came down to; four snippets of information, leaving Michael feeling that he got more out of their life than they did.

Moments later the details dropped away, replaced with a notice stating: “Thank you. Your account has been credited” before the screen returned to default, retaining the slip of paper.

Michael walked past the waiting room without a glance. He felt the sneering eyes of the receptionist on his right shoulder; the snobbish glares of fellow reapers on his right. He made for the exit, but before he could slip out, and back into whatever part of his world he chose, he bumped into someone who regarded him with equal degrees of snobbish sneering.

The tall foreboding figure stood defiantly in front of a line of teenagers all wearing expensive clothes and sombre expressions. As Michael took an instinctive step backwards, the spindly giant shifted forward, looming over him.

“Anything good this evening Michael?” he asked. His sunken eyes glared down at Michael like a warden studying a new arrival.

Michael didn’t like the man, but he couldn’t help but feel meek in his presence. “Hey Seers. No, not really,” he answered submissively

Jonathan Seers stepped back. His bandy legs shifted sideways to expose the line of sullen teenagers that had all but vanished in his shadow. They all looked up at their warden expectantly.

“I gate-crashed a party,” Seers announced smugly.

He grabbed the boy at the head of the line, his thick, long fingers tightly grasping his shoulder length hair. He pulled him forward with a hard yank and held him in front of Michael like a prized turkey.

“Freddy here turned 18 today,” Seers explained as the boy capitulated to the overbearing presence still grasping his hair. “He wanted to be popular. Wanted to give his friends a night they wouldn’t forget. He tried to buy some pills,” he pulled harder on the teenager’s hair, lifting his tiptoes off the floor and holding him up by the mangy locks. “Smart-arse ended up with a batch of rat poison from a dealer who didn’t take too kindly to being talked down to.”

Seers grinned. Michael feigned a smile.

He yanked the boy backwards, back into his prominent shadow. The boy toppled and fell over his own heels, but he seemed relieved to be out of the grasp of the derisive behemoth.

“Another exciting day in the Heights,” Seers gloated, the smirk still smeared on his bony face. “Maybe you’ll join me someday.”

“Maybe,” Michael replied without conviction.

Seers grinned one last time and then shoved his way past Michael into the waiting room. Michael held his ground until the last of the followers had sulked their way past. In the waiting room he could hear the greetings and arse-kissing that Seers received, even the glum receptionist was up on her feet with an adoring smile on her face, as Seers worked his way around the room like a King addressing his loyal and adoring subjects.

Michael whispered under his breath: “Fucking prick,” before scooping the hood of his jacket over his head and walking out of the little piece of Purgatory.

2

On streets rife with despair, where the pavements were murky with ash from a million smokers and the gutters clogged with the wares of the downtrodden -- condoms, cigarette ends, needles -- Michael walked with his head down and his hands stuffed deep into his pockets.

In life he lived in mediocrity, never achieving success or comfort, but was content with his under-accomplishment. He had been happy with what he had: his one bedroom flat, his frozen meals-for-one, his weekends down the pub. In death he found himself in a metaphorical hell, on the lowest rung of society; mixing with the worst of the worst.

A shoulder moist with body odour and thin to the bone with malnourishment, brushed past him on the street. The man didn’t apologise to Michael, didn’t even acknowledge him.

Michael sighed and shook his head.

Ahead the street was alive with skimpily clad women offering their bodies for the price of a fix. Their flesh tight to their bones, bruised and blackened; their eyes sunken deep in their skulls; their lips a mixture of cracked, dried, blue and diseased, all covered over with lashings of lipstick which shone a defiant shade of black and red against their pale skin.

“Want me to show you a good time?”

“Hey cutie.”

“What, you not even going to look at me?”

Michael brushed past without raising his head. It was better not to acknowledge them; better to avoid their Medusa stares. Not because they exuded a powerful