In Death We're Gods

Chapter 1: Luke

Chapter 1: Luke

"I don't like what you're suggesting..." Mark snarls at me, nostrils flaring. And then that asshat just turns around and elbows his way through the crowd.

I remember a time when my mates were everything to me. When nothing was more important than us getting together and taking the piss out of everyone else. I don't know when they became such selfish bastards.

I don't remember what I even said to set Mark off. It's just drunk talk, I swear. It's just a stupid uni party I shouldn't have bothered with.

I get really wasted. Wake up in your birthday suit on a hard, cold floor in a big dark room kind of wasted.

No idea how I got here. All I know is that with how much I drank last night—I remember a blur of full then empty glasses—I am going to have the worst hangover of my life.

Sam always treats a hangover with a beer. But I don't want to think about Sam right now. He's a traitor, like Mark. Treating me like an old sock while I took the heat for them.

My head really doesn't feel so bad, all things considered. I reflexively groan as I sit up, expecting my stomach to protest.

And it does. Sort of. But I manage to keep it down.

It's too dark to see. I'm lying on a stony-feeling table. I swing my legs over the side and my bare feet touch a stony-feeling floor. I must be in someone's cellar.

It's definitely not our cellar. Ours is full of rubbish.

A glimmer of hope lights in my chest. Maybe it's Liz's cellar. I remember talking to her last night.

She was apologising about something. My stomach tosses. Yeah, I don't want to be thinking about that right now....

I can't find the stairs that lead back to the house. I find an old-fashioned wooden door with a metal ring serving as it's handle instead.

I yank on the ring. The door slides inward easily.

Bright light momentarily blinds me. I blink several times to adjust my vision. I'm not in a cellar, just in a weird dark room. I turn around.

The table I was lying on is a white slab of marble. It looks like an altar.

I walk out into a wide airy corridor. One side of it is just a glass wall showing a dazzling expanse of emerald grass several football fields large, glittering in the sun. The other wall of the corridor is lined with doors similar to the one I'd just walked out of.

Where the hell am I?

I just stand there, staring at the grass and the blue sky and all that sunlight.

No way is any of this real. It's November and bloody freezing these days. In the distance I see lots of green trees. Not bare, skeletal winter trees. Green, as if it's summer.

What the hell?

No way. It's got to be some kind of photo.

I touch the glass.

Outside, about a foot in front of me, a bronze-skinned girl in a long peach dress runs right past me. She bends over and picks up... some furry animal. A cat?

She cradles it. It's got too many heads to be just one cat.

I'm pretty sure I'm dreaming.

The girl's head snaps up suddenly. She's pretty. Big, brown, luminous eyes. Plump, juicy lips. She's a will-never-need-any-photoshop kind of pretty.

Her lips part when she sees me. She drops the animal she's holding.

It spreads a pair of black wings and flaps away.

I step away from the glass, my hands going down to cover whatever they could. She vaults towards me, coming through a door I could've sworn was never there.

"Hi," she says, advancing towards me, completely oblivious to the fact that I'm trying to save her the pleasure of seeing all my private bits. "You are... New?"

My back's against the well. "Er..."

"Did you just arrive?"

"Uh..."

Her gaze flicks down unashamedly towards my body. "Look at you," she says, smiling a dazzling smile. "My, my... That is some passive body. Gary'll flip."

Huh? Passive body? What?

I wonder if she's talking about my—

I reflexively look down.

Abs. An eight pack of them underneath skin that is just the right amount of tan to make the etched lines of each muscle stand out.

That is not my stomach. And those thighs corded with muscle are not my thighs. Nor those arms with triceps, biceps and all those other ceps. Nope. Not mine.

Only my toes look familiar.

"What the fuck?" I scream, because, no matter how much I would've liked to look like this, I don't and this dream is feeling a bit too real.

"Oh no..." says the girl, looking left and right. "Oh no, no, no, no... I remember now. It's been a while, I'm sorry. This is a lot to take in. "

I forget to worry about being polite. I move my arm just to see that arm move. I look at the veins pushed to the surface by more pulsing muscle.

Then I look at my friend downstairs.

Oh fuck. Fucking hell. That isn't my—

A cool hand grabs me under the chin and brings my head up.

"My name is Dari," says the girl. "What's yours?"

"Luke...." I mutter.

"Luke," she says.

I try to look down, but her fingers tighten on my face. "Look at me," she commands.

I swallow around a lump in my throat. There's something off about this girl. She's too pretty and too luminous and her voice penetrates my brain making my bones shudder.

"Come, let's get you something to wear..." She turns me around, brings her hand to the nape of my neck and begins leading me back to the room I came out of.

"What is this place?"

She purses her lips together, marches me up to the marble altar where some folded up piece of cloth was waiting and I hadn't noticed in the dark. It's a white satin dressing gown.

I put it on and immediately feel a little bit better. I can still feel hardened muscles on every inch of myself, but at least I can't see them.

She sits on the marble altar and pats the space next to her.

"What is this place?" I ask her again. "What's going on?"

"Sit, Luke," she commands.

I obey.

"I am going to tell you something that will be distressing to hear," Dari says. "So try to take several deep breaths."

"What? What is it?"

"Luke..."she begins. "Last night....you died."

I laugh. Because, really. Is that the best she could come up with.

She stares at me, frowning.

"Okay, okay, I'm listening to you. Seriously, tell me. I'm ready to hear it."

She sighs. "That was it, Luke. You're dead."

"Hah. How would I still be here if I were dead?"

"Because," Dari says. "This is your afterlife."