Unbearable Lightness of Being Dead

There was something about being dead that was likeable and yet unsatisfiable.  You roamed free, yet were trapped. Life always seemed a little strange when you were dead, you were there but not there. If that made sense. One thing was certain about it all, you never remembered who you were. 

“Existence is a funny, trickle little thing isn’t it?” Veto thought. If he could think his own thoughts, or rather someone else’s thoughts. He always remembered his favorite phrase that he failed to do.

“What would you do if money was no object? Better to have a short life full of what you love doing, then a long life spent miserably. Then you must ask yourself this one question; What…

“...did I desire?”  Veto finished the thought. The reality was, what did he desire? He sat down in a bar, on a stool, in a limbo replica of Las Vegas, a world between worlds. The limbo he created for himself was black and white, with infinite shades of grey between the spectrums. 

His checkered three piece suit wrinkled as he bent over the counter and sighed. He reached into his suit and pulled out a cigarette, and with a snap of his fingers a blue-white flame appeared at his fingertips, he lit his cigarette and smoked it, inhaling the smoke he nonchalantly blew it from his puckered lips, flecks of ice forming at his lips. His fedora draped over his face concealing his identity from view, and from an empty world. 

He heard voices from behind him and the unmistakable laughter of maidens drunk on wine and champagne, he didn’t bother to turn, he knew it wasn’t real well not in his reality that is. Thing is he dwelled long enough in his self made prison to realize that his cell, brushed with other cells and other minds that created the same thing with a small change. Constants and variables as he liked to quote it. It was something he dwelt with, sometimes he’d wander for a time period at once and never know how long since the sun never set on the horizon, it just stopped at dusk, and time moved differently in his world than others, a day here and year there. He’d move between the self made city and occasionally see a shadow of a person or faceless masses squandering their wealth and well being on the poison that was the city. Just an echo of time. One thing he kept going was the news, he liked knowing what was going on outside his cell, so he watched the world through a giant TV screen, seeing all of it’s mistakes and downfalls made him uneasy at the world, thing is he could turn off the news when he doesn’t like what he sees, that’s easy to do when it’s population one. 

He finished his cigarette and discarded it to the bar floor, as soon as it touched the checkered floor it vaporized into smoke and dust. Veto raised his hand up to signal an absent bartender for a drink and with a flick of a wrist, a glass of whiskey materialized from one end of the counter and was passed down towards him by an unseen force as he caught it with one hand raised it to his mouth and downed it quicker than most people could in the real world. He knew he couldn’t get drunk, or drink his problems away but maybe he just liked drinking, it was something he used to do frequently. 

He got up, said his thanks to whoever or whatever served him and left the bar, stumbling onto the Las Vegas Strip and cautiously looked around, something was wrong in his own little world. He looked beyond The Strip and saw his world disintegrating, slowly the blocks of his mind were whisking away and floating upward into a spiral of nothingness. Each road leading outward The Strip was just not there it was a white mist layered with lightning, he knew this day would come, he just didn’t anticipate so soon, or maybe the time was right. Veto also knew he wouldn’t be able to stop this, he just had to die through it again. He started off at a brisk pace down The Strip, hands in pockets he pulled out another cigarette and in the same fashion lit it and walked down the road of his mind. 

Veto looked into one of the stores lining The Strip and saw a toy store. He stopped near it and cupping his hands around his eyes, peered into the darkened window and saw something of himself. It was him, in slacks and button up shirt sitting down playing with a wooden gun and car. He remembered that day, he remembered that day of his childhood. Veto chuckled, as he saw himself there, as he saw him mother pass him by and hurry him up saying they need to go to church.