The Destroyer of Worlds

Bethe woke up dead which, it must be said, was an altogether unpleasant way to wake. It was very much like waking up alive, only without the ponderous weight of a body holding her down. She was instantly amazed at how a person, sorry, ghost, could move with simply a thought, no longer restricted by sinuous messes of fat, muscle, and bone.

The knowing she was dead came instantly, which was rather unlike the groggy, confused state of waking alive. She woke to memories of life; pain, regret, sorrow, pleasure, love, joy, and so much more. She woke to the strange, unnatural feeling that, for once, she'd got enough sleep.

The memories that came with dying made Bethe rise as if to throw up, but, again, ghost. She had nothing to throw up, or to throw up with.

Beneath, and somewhat inside her, was her body, and lying beside her now-dead self was Alex, her husband. She didn't need eyes to know, a strange state of all-seeing that would have been terribly useful while she was alive.

It might have helped her not be dead.

Bethe noticed the stranger standing beside her, cloaked and hooded and looking not unlike Death in its infinite and irrevocable form.

It reached out a hand and spoke to her in tones louder than eternity, heard directly in what once would have been her bones.

IT IS TIME. COME WITH ME.

She raised an incorporeal eyebrow.

'The shit you say? Don't you be tryin' some lame-ass jedi mind trick on me, bud,' she swore, batting the raised hand aside. She 'hopped' down from the bed on which her body lay and decided that she should stop thinking of the things she was doing while dead differently than she thought of things she had done before she was dead. Rather, she should just think what she was doing, rather than thinking it was a thing she was thinking she was doing differently, because in the end it was all the same, wasn't it?

It was a vast, dizzying array of thought, and while she sorted it all out the stranger beside her was looking at its skeletal palm.

WAIT...

It said | thought | projected through the very aether of reality,

DID YOU JUST?

Bethe turned, one hand on her hip. 'Damn right I did, bud, now what's your deal? I'm dead, so are you here to take me to heaven or some shit? 'An do I get docked points for swearing?'

NO, I...

Conceivably-Death started, and Bethe turned away immediately.

'Well that's good then, 'cause I've got some unfinished business to take care of now, don't I?'

DO YOU?

Bethe walked out of the bedroom, and a-credible-approximation-of-Death followed closely behind, still staring at its palm.

***

It was a dark and stormy night somewhere in the world, though unfortunately it wasn't one at the exact location of Bethe's heretofore unrevealed murder, just now revealed.

'Did you just say something?' she asked of the stranger.

NO, maybe-death intoned, and Bethe shrugged.

'Arright then.'

YOU WILL REGRET STAYING the stranger foreshadowed.

'Yeah, well, I regretted a lotta things in life, I don't 'spect that to change just 'cause I'm dead now eh?'

Bethe walked into the room across from the bedroom, bending down to check on a young child. 'I got a question for ya bud,' she asked, then asked the question to the intervening silence.