"I. Am. Not. Dead!"
I glowered at the two people who rescued me from the Dark. Webb and Vale just laughed at me in return, their arms full of their scavenged loot.
"Hear that, Webster?" said Vale as I trudged after them both through the thronged city street. People shoved past us, hurrying to unknown destinations. Others reached out from hovels, asking for trades or begging for the lux—what I assumed were the glowing red gems—the pair carried. Vale ignored them all as she snickered at her friend. "It's as simple as that! Guess you and I have been alive all these years, too!"
"How can I be freaking dead?" I yelled over the buzz of a thousand conversations. "I don't even remember dying!" Finger quotes around dying.
Both scavengers went stiff. They spun around to gawk at me. The whites of their wide eyes bright under the endless tangles of blood-red light strands suspended above us. There seemed to be no natural sunlight in After. No sun, moon, or stars hung in the black sky that swallowed the tops of the looming decrepit skyscrapers. I avoided looking at that abyss, focusing only on Webb and Vale's confused faces.
One of Vale's brows rose. "You can't remember anything?"
"I..." I bit my lip. No, I didn't remember dying. Actually...my memory began when I inexplicably woke up in the Dark. I couldn't even say just how long I'd been lost out in that wasteland. "No. I can't."
Vale clucked her tongue. "Consider yourself lucky, then."
Webb winced at her.
I stood rooted to the ground, hugging myself while my vision blurred. Where were my memories? How did I get here? Was I really dead?
Hands found my shoulders. My eyes followed Webb's gangly frame up to his face, where he sported a wide grin. "So, anyway," he said, nodding at the city of ghosts before me. "This is After! As in the afterlife. Your new home for the rest of eternity!"
I balked at the rusted, filthy wreck of a city. Inside the wall that encircled it, After was a monochromatic metal monstrosity. The creaking skyscrapers looked like they could collapse at any moment. Vast sections of their siding had long since sloughed away, revealing their skeletal insides like they were the rotting corpses of giants. Between the shambling crowds, all wearing the same gaunt expressions, I caught glimpses of graffiti of varying crudeness covering every surface. Ahead on a grimy wall, some soul had painted WELCOME TO HELL in dripping letters.
I wanted to throw up.
Yet, no nausea ate away at my stomach—only that aching, hollow feeling seethed inside me. I did not want to spend the rest of eternity here.
"Webb! Vale!" hailed a voice from the shanty ahead of us.
Webb and I followed Vale's flowing cloak toward the call. Bulbs buzzed and flickered all around us, casting dizzying splashes of color across the street. Somewhere, the pounding bass of music throbbed. People packed the streets; huddling around skeletons of cars, smashing into windows, brawling with each other under illuminated signs that advertised strip clubs and other unsavory businesses.
Swimming through the crowd was a struggle. More and more ghosts shoved in between my companions and me. Gritting my teeth and cursing my short stature, I shoved back, not willing to lose sight of Webb and Vale. I let out a yelp when I stumbled over a heavy weight in the street. I reeled inwardly at what appeared to be a dead body just lying there, barely avoiding getting trampled by the careless herds that went about their nocturnal business.
Even more corpses littered the ground ahead of me.
No one else seemed concerned about the lifeless bodies they all skirted. I stood there, numb with shock.
"Whoa there!" Webb said before steering me from the middle of the street toward an old shanty where Vale waited for us. "Gotta watch your step around here, Skye." He sounded so lackadaisical while I trembled between my two comrades beneath a wooden sign spray-painted to look like a bright red sword with the words FORGE MASTER written across the sword's blade.
"Why were those people—?" I stammered.
"Oh, don't worry about them," Webb said. And that was the only answer I got as the blond guided me inside the shop. I pretended I hadn't seen how vacant those corpses' staring eyes had been—pretended it didn't bother me that the ghosts of After didn't even give them second glances like it was a normal thing.
Inside, a heavyset man behind the counter greeted the two ghosts like old friends. "Good scavengin' tonight?" he asked, a Southern drawl curling his words. He flashed a friendly grin behind the bushiest of beards.
Vale let her supply of scrap metal and lux spill from her arms onto the counter. "Pretty decent haul. What do you have for all this, old man?"
The man's face lit up. He practically salivated as he held up one of the crystals. Then his eyes swiveled to me and searched me up and down.
"Oh, yeah. We also found her," Vale said, nodding at me and crossing her arms beneath her cloak.
"Nice to meet yew, small-fry!" the hairy man said to me, beaming. "I'm Orville Dover! Lemme tell yew that ya couldn't've been found by two better scavengers. Hopefully, they'll git some use outta yew, and yew can find me some more lux!"
An array of swords and other bladed weapons lining the wall behind him shuddered as he laughed, all of them glowing like Vale's katana. I pondered the absurdity that people would need weapons in the so-called afterlife. Were ghosts just as mortal as the living? Shadows—whatever they were—certainly seemed capable of ending a ghost's afterlife.
Orville caught me staring and glanced back at his wares. "Ah. Yew've got good taste, I see! Coated these blades in lux muhself. Summa these pieces are genuine antiques. Been with me since 'fore that cannonball took me out, and I sprouted from the sand here!"
Webb leaned to whisper in my ear, "Dude died in the American Civil War. We like to rub it in his face that the South lost."
My vision blurred again while Orville's braying laughter drowned out the street noise outside. This man had just told me about his gruesome death by cannonball in a war that happened centuries ago...and he was laughing about it. My brain still desperately clung to the hope that this was all a dream, or perhaps a cruel joke that everyone in this rotting place was in on. Ha ha. So funny...
I wobbled on my heels. "I need air," I said.
"No, you don't!" Webb called in a sing-song voice as I left his and Vale's sides.
I ignored him and escaped Orville's shop and fought my way back into the street. I bent over, gripping my knees, and hyperventilated even though, just as Webb said, my body no longer craved oxygen. That old guy was dead, too. And he had his memories. Where were mine? My eyes stung, despite tears never coming. I clamped them shut not wanting to see After and its ghostly inhabitants for a second longer.
Someone touched my back, gentle and caressing. I expected to find Webb beside me again. "You're gonna be okay, new blood," I heard Vale whisper, which caught me by surprise. Her tone was soft. It contrasted with her rugged appearance and perpetually scowling face. "We've all been through this. Dying isn't easy."
"No..." I said in return. "I'm not going to be okay, Vale. I have...I had nothing." I racked my brain while Vale continued to lean into me. I clawed my way through the emptiness in my head. There had to be something in there—some small hint at who I was and what I'd lost.
I...I had...
Someone's blue eyes flashed in my mind.
A name lingered on the tip of my tongue.
I straightened up with a gasp, but the memory ebbed.
"Come on then," Vale said. "Let's go home, yeah?"
I pressed my head against the window frame. No pane of glass separated me from the pavement countless stories below, but I had no fear as I nestled into the window seat. From up here, I could fully appreciate just how massive After was. Its ruined expanse stretched on and on beyond either horizon. Above me climbed skyscrapers that were taller than any that existed on Earth and below, people carried on their way, looking like ants to me.
"So many people," I murmured. "Are they all dead? ...Ghosts?"
I turned to Webb and Vale, who had brought me to their little corner of the world like I was a stray dog. To them, 'home' was an old slum of an apartment that was as decrepit on the inside as it had appeared outside.
"Yup," Vale answered, doing her best to tidy up the place that was cluttered with furniture and random bric-à-brac and...debris. Her brown eyes caught mine. "We all call ourselves hollows, by the way. I'm sure you're figuring out why."
"Hollows?" I repeated. I touched a hand to my chest. Sure enough, beneath my ribs slumbered a nebulous, black hole where my heart had once beat. Even my emotions were diluted.
I was hollow.
Lifeless.
"Huh," was all I could say.
Webb tossed some old rebar out a blown-out window without a care, his way of cleaning up. "Don't worry," he told me. "You'll...mostly get used to the feeling."
"I'm dead," I said.
"Correct," Webb confirmed.
I pointed at the male hollow. "You're dead."
"Yup."
I looked at Vale. "And you're—"
"Dead as dead can be," she said.
I leaned back against the window frame. "And what does it mean that I can't remember how I supposedly died?"
Webb's mouth floundered like a fish's. "I-it means—"
The other hollow stepped in between Webb and me. "Those are cool trousers, by the way," Vale said, pointing at me. "Real cute."
I looked down at myself. I'm sure my cheeks flushed as cherry red as the lights outside. Evidently, my life had expired while I'd been wearing an old t-shirt and pajama pants spangled with smiling cartoon frogs.
The two other hollows lost their minds, laughing at my expense. I couldn't help but laugh in return as I pointed at the duo's hole-infested layers. "I'm sorry I didn't die in full-on apocalyptic gear like you guys did!" Honestly, they and most After's populace looked like they had just sprung from some zombie flick.
Vale shook her head with a smile. Now that she had removed her cloak, her toned midriff was on full display between a tight cropped shirt and worn black leather pants. I tried not to stare at the intricate tattoos of thorny roses and Asian dragons adorning her arms and waist, where her katana swung in its holster. "Oh, we didn't die wearing these get-ups," she explained. "Still, froggy PJs are better than what Webb, here, rose from the sand in the Dark wearing. Nothing but a hospital gown with his bare arse hanging out."
The blond hollow took a seat on an overturned crate and sighed wistfully with his chin in his hands. "I do miss that sweet, sweet freedom!"
Vale dug through a trunk. She threw aside all kinds of rubbish before tossing a handful of clothes and a pair of boots at me. "Here. You can try those on. Unless you'd prefer to wear your frog pajamas for all eternity, of course."
I knotted my fingers through the fabric she'd given me. Even my sense of touch was numbed. "Clothes," I said. "You guys have things like motorcycles and flashlights and swords and...um." I scanned the messy room around me. "Garbage. Where does all this stuff come from?"
The female hollow shrugged. "Sometimes when people die and arrive in this realm, they carry objects with them; copies of things they were holding, touching, or had in their pockets or whatever when they kicked it. It makes for good trading, especially for lux. Not many idiots go out into the Dark to scavenge for lost objects or lux. Too many shadows out there." She turned away from me. "Not all new hollows make it to After. Very few are as lucky as you to be found by scavengers before the shadows devour them."
Webb grinned and pointed at himself with his thumbs. "And you got found by the two biggest idiots in After!"
Vale brandished her flashlight and switched it on. "Check it out. Lux is a necessity around here. We use it for light and to keep the shadows away." She popped open the battery compartment of her flashlight, revealing a fizzing nugget of lux nestled inside. "And for power. Oh, shit."
The lux she showed me suddenly popped and withered into dust. The flashlight died. Vale scowled and fished out a fresh crystal from her pocket and shoved it inside. "Lux doesn't last forever though, unlike us."
So that explained why all the lights were red around here.
"Light..." I said. Then I straightened up with a jolt. "What about that white light that appeared when you saved me? That kept the shadows away, too!"
A muscle in Vale's face twitched. "Stay away from that Light, Skye."
"Don't go into the Light!" Webb said, albeit in a much more light-hearted, jokey manner.
"Thank you, Webb," Vale said, elbowing her friend. She gazed at me again. Some hint of a weak emotion that I couldn't fathom swam in her eyes. "Don't go mentioning that Light to people around here." She let her warning hang in the air for a few moments, then her expression brightened. She clapped her hands together and said, "Why don't we leave you alone now, eh? I'm sure you've got a lot to process."
The other ghosts shuffled off together into another room, still teasing each other. By myself now, I hugged my gifted clothes to my chest and buried my face into them, inhaling. No scent. Nothing had a smell here. I didn't even have the scent of clean clothing to grant me the smallest of comforts. I pressed the fabric into my tired eyes with a defeated groan.
This couldn't be all. This wasteland couldn't be the terminus for countless ended lives. It was all so...so anticlimactic. Where were the pearly gates and the puffy clouds and the halos and fat, winged babies strumming harps? I didn't remember who I was, but I knew I wouldn't accept this fate. This place wasn't home. My home was with Dominic—
My eyes shot open.
Dominic.
All at once, wispy memories swept over me like a flash flood. Dominic. My Dominic. In my mind, I saw his sky-blue eyes and that dimple in his right cheek whenever he smiled. I recalled the way he smelled—like fresh coffee and dew-covered grass on warm Summer mornings. My heart awoke inside me. I remembered his face, clear as a bright day.
...Because I'd glimpsed it in that portal of Light I had summoned in the Dark.
And I remembered how his eyes had lit up, so alive, because, through that strange Light—that portal back to the living realm—he'd seen me too. He'd mouthed my name as I reached toward him.
Something tugged on my ribs like an invisible tether. I stared out the window, turning my head toward the sensation's pull. I'd summoned that portal before. Perhaps I could do it again? But not here in the city, no, not after Vale's cryptic warning. My eyes found the wall, the edge of my prison. Outside the wall lay that Light in the Dark. Outside lay my way home.
To him.
I threw on my long beige tunic and a shabby pair of matching pants. I slid into new boots, tossed a moth-eaten scarf over my shoulder, then grabbed a flashlight from Webb and Vale's stash. Something else caught my eye at the bottom of the trunk I rummaged through. I lifted a gleaming dagger to my face. Its blade was a polished silver, not brilliant lux-red. Surely, it could still be enough to fend off shadows, right? I pocketed the weapon and shuffled my way out of the apartment, unnoticed by the other ghosts. After hurrying down endless flights of stairs, I made my way into the street, now looking like just another miserable figure in the crowd.
I glared dead ahead at the shut wall-gate that separated me from the black desert wasteland and the monsters that lurked in it. My escape from this place was in motion.
With each step, my heartbeat quickened.
In the land of plenty, we don't know what the word no means
Give it to me, give me all the things I want
Make it new and shiny, and make them watch me, make them watch me
Turn the power on and wait for light