After Death

Kind of an experiment... let me know what you think!

“I had a dream last night that I died.” She said as she sat down beside him. Her voice was smokey and broken from sleep. They were sitting on the front steps in their pajamas, looking straight ahead; out across the lawn, then across the street at the neighbor’s front lawn, then past that, through the neighbor’s front window and into an empty living room. She noticed how long the grass was getting. It looked aloof and happily neglected, like a young child in need of a haircut.

“How?” he asked taking a sip of his coffee and looking at her for the first time since she had come out. Her hair was a mess, a fine halo of frizz had escaped her ponytail to shine in the virgin light of the morning, and there were dark circles of mascara smeared below her eyes. She was beautiful.

She hugged her knees into her chest, and frowned, trying to piece the hazy fragments and feelings of her dream into something that made sense in the daylight; something that she could describe within the imperfect constructs of language.

“I was in the tunnel- ”

“What tunnel?”

“I don’t know. The one in my dream.”

“You just made it sound like it was a specific tunnel.”

“It was.”

“I mean you made it sound like it was a real tunnel.”

“Well, it was a real tunnel.”

“ I mean… oh whatever, go on.”

“I was in the tunnel, and I was going somewhere, and I was looking out the window, but all I could see was darkness and -”

“Because you were in a tunnel.”

“No, because all I could see was dark, like, the world was dark.”

“Like it was night?”

“No like it was dark - could you just let me tell it?”

“Fine. Keep going. It was dark.”

“Yes, it was dark. And I was looking out the window, and there was this awful screeching noise like metal scraping metal and it was everywhere, and people were covering their ears, but I didn’t cover mine, because the noise felt good. Like, it matched the darkness so well that I couldn’t not listen to it, and then the tunnel collapsed, and filled with water, and we all died.” She looked at him for a reaction. His brow was furrowed. He was looking at a bird out in the street.

“Then what?” He asked after a moment of silence.

“What do you mean ‘then what?’ we died.”

“Well, did you wake up?”

“Yeah, after a while.”

They watched the bird. They watched the lawn. They sipped their coffee.

“I need to cut the grass.” He said. Then he stood up, and went inside.

She could hear him in the kitchen, washing out his coffee mug and the dishes from dinner the night before. She listened as he clomped up the stairs. She heard the shower turn on and turn off again. She listened to birds chirping, and to the muffled voices of strangers next door; people waking up, getting ready, beginning another day.

She stayed on the steps for a long time without moving, looking at the lawn, and across the street at the neighbor’s empty living room, and thinking about her dream. Especially the part she knew she couldn’t tell him, or anyone. The part after she had died, where there was nothing. No thoughts, no colors, no sounds, no darkness even.

She wondered if it had really been just a dream, or maybe something more, maybe she really had died for a moment, sleep apnea or something like that, it seemed possible, it had felt so real.

For a moment she let herself long for the nothingness again. It had been nice.

Then she got up and went back inside, washed her coffee mug, clomped up the stairs, showered, dressed. She began another day.