As I walked down the sidewalk, my fall clothes melted away to a sundress and cardigan. At the corner, an older couple was loitering on a stoop. I waved to them, and they waved back. Usually the movement would give away my ghostly appearance, but I was still as solid as ever. I bent down to pick a weed that was sprouting through the concrete. The stem snapped under my fingertips. The tear was ragged. A smear of green stuck under my nail as I rubbed my forefinger and thumb together and watched the plant twirl.
This was what it was like to be truly Dead.
It was incredible.
Jobs would be so much easier. We could work without considering lighting. We could easily interact with the things around us. No one would know we weren’t actually Dead.
“Excuse me,” a voice said.
I stood and turned to find a man with a Red Sox hat pulled over his eyes. I opened my mouth to ask want he wanted, but then he was pulling out a gun and pointing it at my chest.
I didn’t run. There would have been no point. It wouldn’t have been the first time I was shot in the Afterlife by a hellhound. Or stabbed with a syringe or run through with a pitchfork or, one time, snuffed out like a candle. It hurt, yes. The unprepared jolt back into the body was excruciating. But the sickness would pass, and the pain would remind me to be more careful next time.
I sighed. “Ugh, let’s get this over with.”
I’d barely gotten the words out before I was pushed to the ground.
I landed on my elbow and knee, pain running up my limbs. It made me slow to move, but I looked up just in time to see the hellhound shoot Dante.
And then I watched my brother disintegrate.
This was no quick disappearance, no instant vanishing. For a moment, I thought it was all a mistake. But then Dante began burning away from the outside in. Crumpling in on himself, ashocked look on his face, until even that was gone and there was nothing where he once stood.
I just lay on the ground, stunned.
“Dante?” I croaked.
The hellhound turned on me, and I braced myself for whatever fate my brother had just met, but before it could pull the trigger, I was jerked back into my body.
Cold air.
A long high note.
Fire racing through my veins, lungs gasping for air.
Tolliver pulled the mask from my face and cradled my head. “Elle? Elle? Are you okay?”
I pushed him back, leaned over the side of the table, and retched.
“Elle? Elle, what happened?”
I couldn’t respond. The ringing in my ears worsened, grew sharper. My body was trembling out of control, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the shock of being sucked back from the Afterlife or because of what I’d just seen: my brother’s soul disintegrating.
At the thought of Dante, I pushed myself up, crawling off the table and stumbling to the one next to me, where his body now lay. And now I understood what the high noise was. Not ringing in my ears.
The sound of his vitals flatlining.
“Bring him back!” I shouted at Tolliver, ripping the monitor cuff from Dante’s wrist.
“He’s gone, Elle. I’m sorry.” Tolliver’s voice was strained.
“NO! The adrenaline!”
I staggered over to the drawer where Tolliver kept the epinephrine shots. Hands shaking, I rifled through, tossing aside anything that got in my way.
“I already tried!” Tolliver gasped, grabbing me. Tears streaked down his cheeks. “It’s too late.”
I looked over to Dante’s body, finding an empty syringe lying nextto him. Some inhuman sound left my throat as I fought against Tolliver’s hold. I shoved him harder than my body was ready for and fell backward into the cabinets. Unsteady, I slid to the floor.
