Our Dearly Departed

Discussions With The Dead

    "So the doctor said that it was down in Town Hall, and that most of the resurrected are going to be attending." Mrs. Holmes muttered, pulling into the large parking lot and getting out of the car.
"And we're just supposed to talk?" Sherlock wondered as he got out as well. John got to his feet and closed the car door, looking around at the mass of cars, ranging from minivans to ancient antique cars; obviously this therapy was going to bring out a wide assortment of people.
"Well, I assume today it'll just be the basics, they don't want you to be spilling out your soul to people who don't understand. They're every other day at five o'clock, so you can talk about whatever problems you're having adjusting to society once more." Mrs. Holmes decided, sounding as if she had been reading the website a bit too much. Sherlock looked up at the building reluctantly, watching as an old couple were leaning heavily on the railing as the ascended, as if the staircase was as difficult to climb up as Mt. Everest. John recognized them; it was old Mrs. Turner and her husband.
"But I was only dead for four days." Sherlock pointed out.
"Which is very, very good, you'll have a very easy time then. Some of these people have been dead for years; all of their family must be gone as well." Mrs. Holmes pointed out. "Think of it like...um..."
"Alcoholics Anonymous." John suggested, and Mrs. Holmes nodded.
"Like Alcoholics Anonymous." Mrs. Holmes agreed, and Sherlock sighed.
"Well that's just great." He muttered, and started his way to the main doors. When they arrived inside (getting there just in time to escort the Turners up the last couple of stairs) there was a large banner hung over the entrance hall, saying Welcome Back, as if all of these people had simply just gone on a long vacation or something. As soon as they saw all of the people milling around, some ghostly pale, others looking very much alive, Sherlock grabbed John's hand again, more for support this time, as if he was scared to associate himself with these people.
"You'll be alright; they're all here to help." John assured with a smile, but Sherlock looked more like he was going to throw up than smile back. There was a clerk at the reception desk, looking a bit uneasy as the walking dead milled around and drank punch and ate the complementary cookies before the meeting.
"Name?" he asked, looking between the two and settling his eyes on Sherlock, as if deciding that he was indeed the dead one.
"Sherlock Holmes." Mrs. Holmes said from behind them, as if neither Sherlock nor John was capable of signing themselves in. The clerk scrolled through a list of names on his computer, obviously a list of the recently undead, and clicked on a name.
"Alright, here you are." He muttered, scrawling a name down on a little name tag that read Hello, My Name Is. Sherlock took the name tag and pressed it onto his jacket, frowning down on it as if he were embarrassed to be seen wearing such a ridiculous accessory. "The meeting will start any moment, for now you can mingle and have some refreshments." The clerk said with a smile. Mrs. Holmes thanked him and they all walked into the middle of the entrance hall, lingering over by the cookie table but none of them were brave enough to eat anything. The thought that all of these dead people had a certain virus inside of them was enough to make John a bit uneasy. He didn't mind being so close to Sherlock, he knew Sherlock, he knew that there was no danger when he was with his boyfriend, but some of these older people, strangers that were sipping punch, they looked very threatening indeed. Most people were very pale, walking around stiffly and keeping quiet while their human companions chattered nervously, trying to pretend they weren't a little bit intimidated by the dead people walking around. Sherlock's grip on John's hand was becoming tighter and tighter as his eyes scanned the crowd, noticing the dead people, knowing that they were all underground together at one point. Maybe Sherlock was more scared of what he was than John.
"Alright if you all could follow me I think that's everyone, come on into the meeting hall." said a friendly voice at the end of the hall, opening a door that lead into a larger room. Sherlock and John started to edge their way over to the doors, following the crowd of people that were walking inside. John tried to keep his distance from any of the pale ones, feeling a bit bad when he yelped after being brushed up against by a middle aged woman whose skin was as white as powdered sugar. He knew that these people were just like Sherlock, that they had all been dead and were now alive, but something about them made John uncomfortable, they just weren't Sherlock, they weren't as friendly and they looked a bit more...dead. Sherlock had always been pale, but these people looked extremely abnormal, contrasting from their human counterparts like night and day. There was a huge ring of folding chairs assembled in the middle of the room, enough for the dead people and their families to sit comfortably. Some were started to get seated, others were waiting rather uncomfortable around the ring, as if waiting to be told what to do. The lady that had led them in, a living woman with dark skin and a red dress, sat in one of the seats, crossing her legs and setting her clipboard on her lap, looking around at the people as if they amused her.
"I guess we should get seated." John muttered, and Sherlock nodded, still clutching onto John's hand as they went to find three empty seats. When they sat down they had Sherlock in the middle, just so that he was cushioned on all sides by familiar faces, but that also meant John had to sit next to some middle aged man with a large scar across his neck. John wasn't going to ask any questions, and he certainly didn't want to stare, but he edged as close to Sherlock on his chair as possible without looking rude. The entire room got silent except for one person scooting their chair around, trying to make the circle as symmetrical as possible maybe, John didn't know nor care, his attention was focused on the lady in the red dress, just like everyone else. When the scuffling stopped and everyone was attentive, she smiled, tapping on her clipboard and scanning the crowd before.
"Hello everyone, and for some, welcome back to the world!" she said with a smile, and a couple of people laughed, others just stared at her as if insulted. Sherlock's hand tightened yet again around John's. Maybe he was more uncomfortable in the presence of these dead people than John was.
"Well, my name is Ella Thomson, I'll be your counselor for these next couple of days, and my goal is to help adjust you back into the world of the living, I know a lot of things had changed for you all, technology for one, I've been alive this whole time and I still don't have to work my IPhone." She admitted with a laugh. Some people giggled nervously, but no one found the joke even remotely funny.
"The people in your life may have changed, the atmosphere, the way life is lived, all of these things change so rapidly in the span of someone's life that we don't really notice it, but after coming back to life and getting hit head on with these changes, it might be intimidating, maybe even a little bit overwhelming. So we're gathered here today and these next few days to help each other along, kind of like our own little club, kind of like freshman orientation, just to help each other out and explore this new world in a helpful and stress free environment." John only half listened, he was more focused on Sherlock's hand in his, more focused on exactly what his friend to the left was doing and just how far away he was, just so that John didn't catch any of his germs of something. Ella seemed nice, certainly someone who would be a good councilor and therapist, but John doubted she really knew what these people were going through. She had no idea what it was like to die, to sit in a coffin and dream for years and then suddenly open your eyes and crawl back into a world that had changed completely. Sherlock was one of the lucky ones, he had only been gone a couple of days, but some of these older people, with no family and older clothes on, John could only imagine they were there for years. Imagine how much has changed in only one year, and how you never really notice. Now multiply that by five, or ten, or even twenty years. Some of these people might not even know what the internet is! The other thing that John didn't like was the idea of leaving Sherlock alone in a room full of risen zombies. It was one thing to be here with him, to be able to hold his hand and walk him through when he was nervous, but leaving him alone, what if one of them went rogue? What if the disease decided that it was going to eat away whatever was left of their brain at the meeting and they started to crave brains and human flesh? Would they attack their fellow dead people? And if one went rogue, what's to say it wouldn't spread, encourage the virus to speed up and then the entire room of people would be lumbering down Main Street, moaning and groaning for brains. He didn't want to leave Sherlock alone, and by the way Sherlock's hand was tightening and wringing around John's, he was willing to bet that Sherlock didn't want him to leave either. They went around the circle and introduced themselves, only the dead ones; the family just nodded and patted them on the shoulder as if proud they had remembered their own name. When it was Sherlock's turn he started to get very nervous, John could feel his hand quivering, and he muttered his name so softly that even John couldn't hear it very well, but everyone nodded and said hello and was very friendly about it. Some of these family members might even recognize him from the newspapers. John counted twenty two dead people, out of twenty four that their little town had, which was a pretty good turnout considering the community did little to no service events or anything like this. Maybe the other two that couldn't make it didn't have rides or were too embarrassed to show their faces. The rest of the meeting was filled with people raising their hands and talking about what their experiences back on earth were like, their first day, how they walked from the cemetery in the middle of the night, all of these very general very basic stories, not talking about their death or the hardship of adjusting back to civilian life. John didn't expect anyone to pour their soul out just yet, especially when families were here that simply wouldn't understand. Sherlock stayed quiet, he listened, staring at the floor, but he didn't share anything. John felt rather bad for him, but he wasn't the only one that looked nervous, Carl Powers, the kid that had drowned, was tapping his foot anxiously and leaning very close to his mother, as if afraid of all the other dead people in the room. He couldn't be more than eight or nine; honestly it was a terrible thing to imagine that he was the same age when he had drowned a couple of years ago. This whole dead rising thing, it really was a miracle, something that John simply couldn't process. Humanity didn't do anything to deserve their dead coming back, it wasn't like they were taking care of the earth and coexisting nicely, to be honest John thought they deserved a plague more than reincarnation. It made him wonder if this wasn't a blessing at all. Maybe there was something more to it, maybe the disease inside of Sherlock's head, inside all of their heads; maybe it wasn't a gift at all. Maybe it was a curse, maybe this was the start of the apocalypse, Armageddon, and yet people were still flooding into the churches to praise their God, thank their higher powers for possibly inflicting the end of human life as we all know it. When the meeting was over Ella thanked everyone for their time and got to her feet, signaling to everyone that they were free to go. Most people got up and made a straight shot to the doors, mostly families dragging their pale loved ones out the doors, looking as if they had no intention of going back in them every again. John and Sherlock stood up, Sherlock was looking rather sweaty and uncomfortable, but Mrs. Holmes was looking extremely chipper and excited.

    "Well that sounds lovely, don't it?" she asked with a wide smile, hugging Sherlock from behind for no apparent reason. Sherlock let go of John's hand and shook her off, scowling. A couple of people were helping put away the chairs, and Ella was talking to Carl Power's family, who were obviously a little bit apprehensive about letting their child come to meetings all alone. John noticed that Ella talked a lot with her hands, she gestured a lot and waved her fingers around in the air, as if unable to keep her hands still, as if they were the ones doing the talking.
"I think we should go up and talk to her, see what this is all going to be about." Mrs. Holmes suggested. Sherlock shook his head wildly, stepping back ever closer to John.
"I don't want to." He muttered. Mrs. Holmes just sighed with a smile on her face; as if Sherlock's social anxiety was just exhausting.
"Come on Sherlock, there's nothing to be scared of, you'll have to get to know her eventually, might as well start now, one on one." she insisted, starting to walk over to wear Ella was now folding her chair and stacking it on the rack, her clipboard laying on the ground beside her. The Powers family was now walking out of the hall, swinging Carl between them as he laughed. That was a sight that warmed John's heart.
"Hello, Mrs. Thomson?" Mrs. Holmes asked, standing a bit away so as not to scare her. Ella turned around and smiled, and as soon as she so much as glanced over at Sherlock he grabbed onto John's hand again, standing so close that their shoulders were almost overlapping.
"Hello Mrs.....sorry, what was it?" she asked in a polite voice.
"Mrs. Holmes, this is my son Sherlock." Mrs. Holmes said, shaking Ella's hand with a smile on her face. Sherlock just smiled weakly.
"Hello Sherlock." Ella said sweetly. "And this must be your...um, boyfriend?" she asked, her eyes flickering down to their interlocked fingers and flicking right back up, as if embarrassed to even notice.
"Yes, John Watson." John said with a smile.
"Hello John." she said with another wide smile. "And Sherlock, how long has it been since your death?" Sherlock opened his mouth but no sound came out and he proceeded to stare at his shoes, leaving a very awkward silence to hang between them.
"A week ago, actually." Mrs. Holmes admitted. Ella just smiled, as if that was lovely to hear.
"Oh well that's great, not even enough time to mourn! Got snapped right back into the world of the living, huh Sherlock?" she asked. Sherlock nodded, again not even attempting to make eye contact.
"We've been lucky." John agreed, feeling the need to talk for him.
"Well I imagine your adjusting is easier than most, I know that some of the older folks here have been dead for years, I think our longest is actually twenty two, I think it is, poor old Mr. Thomas, no family left." She said with a sigh.
"That'll be difficult, very difficult." Mrs. Holmes said with a frown. "Well we're very impressed with the program, and very excited that the community is willing to hold such a lovely event for our recently risen."
"Yes, when they asked me to supervise I was only too happy, and I'm always available for private counseling, in case you need any one on one time to really admit your feelings or your fears, the number is on the papers." Ella assured.
"Ooh, we'll definitely keep that in mind, won't we Sherlock?" Mrs. Holmes asked, and Sherlock nodded stiffly. "Can't get him to tell me anything, to be honest I've barely seen him since he's gotten back."
"Where's he going?" Ella wondered, as if she couldn't imagine how a high school student couldn't even spend time in his own house.
"John's house, of course. Always John's." Mrs. Holmes said with a sigh, trying to make it sound a bit amusing but she was obviously very upset by it. John couldn't help but feel a little bit bad, but honestly it wasn't like he was intentionally keeping Sherlock all to himself, the boy was a little bit, possessive.