Afterlife

iv

The ride back to Aden's place was quiet. I looked outside through the window. Suddenly the speeding ars, and the night sky did not matter anymore. I had never felt more solemn in my life. But then this was not my life anymore. I was dead already.

"You covered quite some distance." Aden muttered. "Considering you are dead. The Undead cannot run."

"Tell me my mother won't be shown that badly crushed dummy."

"The body won't even be sent for post-mortem, if that helps." Aden passed me a momentarily gaze. "The Ministry of Dead are good with covering up the missing of undead bodies. To avoid the unnecessary human chaos."

I did not know what to reply. I continued staring outside, and then after a while, sighed.

We reached his home. It was slightly out of town, and I definitely had not been to this area before, during my life. He grabbed my wrists out of nowhere, making me jump. I stared at him, and his eyes stared back. Then he handcuffed me.

"Of course." I said to myself.

The house was huge. It was two storey high, but it did not look very modern in architecture. It looked too simple, a façade to fool the passing people maybe. But at the same time, nobody would expect there to be an old, dark dungeon inside for the undead.

Shrugging these thoughts away, which seemed too silly at the moment, I followed him inside.

"Let me take you back to your cell." He rubbed his chin. "So you do not run away again."

"You don't need to." I replied. "I won't."

He eyed me, surprised.

"Can I sleep on the couch? It seems pretty good for the night." I suggested.

"Hmm." He mumbled, and then walked to the main door, where I heard some kind of keys being pressed. He must be safeguarding the house by locking it up with a password. Meanwhile, I walked over to the fridge, and quenched my thirst with a can of beer.

When he came in, I had already emptied a can, and was throwing it off.

"How did you do it with the handcuffs?"

"They're not that bad after all." I smiled. "All gates secured for the night? Can I go to sleep now?"

He was about to say something when his phone rang, startling both of us. He saw the contact, and walked away.

I sighed. Even Collectors have an iPhone, with the classic ringtone everyone supposedly never changes to show off the fact that they have got an iPhone. Or maybe they are just too busy people to go thorugh the other wide range of options that the company provides? I just had a normal Samsung phone. Maybe that is something that doctors would only understand. Being a doctor, you have all the money you need to lead a bloody lush life. But you just don't have the other crucial thing: time. Sometimes I used to feel so tense after work I used to say to myself what the hell was wrong with me when I had decided to join medical school. It had rendered me so dumb and useless, and all I did when I got some free time was study the latest journals about new medicines. And all in vain. I saved other people during my lifetime, but I am dead at ta time when I should not have been. But is there ever a right time to die? Gosh, I should probably write a book with these philosophical chain of thoughts. What should I name it? Afterlife?

It was very quiet, and I could almost hear him mumbling something behind the walls. Gosh, I hated it when people talked about me behind my back. And I did not know why but I had a feeling that I was the subject of his late night conversation on the phone.

He came back in, and pressed his lips together. He slipped his phone carelessly into his pocket, and eyes me. I could read his thoughts.

"Don't put me back in that dark, cold place." I did not like it when things did not happen my way, especially when my mood is low. "I won't go out again. There is nothing out there."