Forever After - By David Jester Page 0,42

drew him in and they both forgot about the friend.

After saying a brief farewell the dejected friend left, firing an insidious glance at Michael before departing in feigned good spirits.

They talked even more when they were alone. He found out she loved classic literature, impressionist art, 60’s pop music, modern punk, day-trips to the seaside, holidays in winter. She adored takeaway food and it adored her hips. She loved ice cream but hated any flavours other than vanilla; loved politics but hated politicians. She had a thing for Michael Jackson but also had a secret crush on Elton John.

They talked until the pub filled up. Michael avoided any taxing questions about his life, but his clandestine veil was unwrapped when the skies outside the windows had burned the last ember of sunshine and dwindled into blackness.

“So, why were you looking so depressed earlier?” she asked him.

He feigned bemusement.

“When I came in with Julie,” Jessica clarified, indicating her arrival with the friend that had left annoyed and lonely four hours earlier.

He shrugged his shoulders, stared down at the floor. He didn’t know what to tell her. He certainly couldn’t tell her the truth but he also didn’t want to lie to her, so he opted for something in between.

“It’s an anniversary,” he said vaguely. “It’s complicated, but let’s just say that one year ago today, something life changing happened.” He explained, quickly wondering why he had emphasised the word ‘life’.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” Jessica asked politely, offering her sympathetic shoulder as she lifted her wine glass to her pursed lips.

Michael grinned and tried to shake the question off. “Not important,” he said. “Well, not now anyway. Maybe another time.”

That night they said their goodbyes, exchanged numbers and a brief kiss, and parted ways outside the pub.

Michael’s mood changed. He was happy, he had a hop in his step as he strode down the street, bypassing the clubbers and revellers drunkenly making their way from club to club.

His timer told him that he was going to have a busy night, two dead within half an hour and one mile of each other, but he didn’t care. He would sleep an excited and happy sleep that night.

****

The corpse looked familiar. He had seen that face before. A spark of recognition fired in his brain and was immediately extinguished by a voice from behind him.

“Hello,” it said happily.

Michael turned away from the bloodied, broken body to face a happy, beaming spirit. The spirit didn’t look familiar, didn’t spark the same recognition. Although he hazarded a guess that if he did know this man, he probably knew him as the mournful, dole-faced person looking shocked and broken on the floor, and not the smiling simpleton in front of him. In Brittleside only the dead smiled.

“Good evening,” Michael said with an acknowledging nod. He paused before offering his assistance. He glanced at the corpse again. “Do I know you?” he asked.

The spirit shrugged his ethereal shoulders, the smile still fastened onto his face.

“I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere before,” Michael persisted.

“Maybe I just have one of them faces.”

Michael made a humming noise. One of those faces, in this instance, happened to be very ugly, almost impish features with a thick set jaw, bulbous nose, long, stubbly chin and eyes that refused to line up. If one of those faces happened to be the grotesque sort fit only for a mother’s love and a villainous role in a horror movie, then he definitely had it.

“Maybe.”

A group of alcohol scented revellers spilled out of the nearby clubs and began to crowd around the body. Excited whispers, female screams, male bravado. Michael escorted the spirit away as his body became a sideshow attraction for the drunk and the idiotic. In the distance the sirens from an ambulance and a police car collided to create an approaching cacophony.

“Seems you pissed someone off,” Michael told the spirit. “Technically you’re my first suicide you know.”

“I didn’t kill myself.”

“Oh.” Michael paused, looking a touch perplexed. “What were you doing on the roof of a club?”

“I lost my Frisbee.”

Michael laughed, the spirit didn’t flinch. He stared at him, waiting for his grinning stupidity to shift and break into a vein of sarcasm. It didn’t budge. He turned away with a blasé shrug.

“Fair enough.”

He thought he recognised the second soul as well. A female, dead on the street. She had choked on her own vomit after ingesting an assortment of cheap cocaine and cheaper vodka. She was alone when he found