[FN][HM] Aftervill, a story about the after-life

Aftervill

“Hello, you have died. Do you mind if you confirm some things?” A sharp, high-pitched voice woke me up.

“Hmm?” I groaned, rubbing my eyes.

I was lying with my back to the ground; above me stood an old lady with a really big, spikey, bright blue mohawk on her head. She wore something like an office suit, but made of denim with a lot of stickers on.

“What?” I asked.

“Your name is Richard Wingston, isn’t it?” she said, looking at a clipboard in her right hand. The clipboard was also covered in niche-rockband stickers, at least they looked like that. Not that I know anything about rock, besides a few awkward childhood moments.

“Hello? I can’t waste the day, Boulder Mike’s 278th world tour is tomorrow, and I have never missed one. I have to go prepare, you know, this hair isn’t easy to maintain, or cheap, so that’s why I have this job — not that they pay me anything though.” She kept talking, not stopping for a second.

You have died. The words focused in my mind like lightning.

“What’s going on? Who are you? What happened? I was just in the bakery!” I screamed. I jumped to my feet and almost got hit by a speeding car.

I was in the middle of the road.

“Holy shit, lady!”

I grabbed the old woman by the shoulder and pushed us onto the pavement, falling to the ground.

I glanced up just as I was about to get my head stepped on by a man.

“Watch where you are going!” I yelled.

The man didn't glance back as I scooted myself out of the way of the moving crowd; nobody else even looked at me.

The old lady was standing upright in front of me. I noticed she was actually hovering in front of me, only a few inches off the ground.

She was looking down at me with pity.

“Sorry, dear, I didn’t realize you didn’t get the Tunnel of Light vision. Usually, people get the memo for what happened before they get here.” She sighed and slowly hovered towards me.

She hovered straight into a passing man and phased right through him.

“What is going on? What are you?” I screamed, a heavy feeling setting in my throat.

“You are dead. This is the after life, or at least the waiting room to the after life, some guess,” she said, kneeling in front of me while still hovering. Three of the spikes on her mohawk were bent from hitting the ground.

“What are you saying, lady? I am clearly not dead,” I said weakly. I could see figures flying on the road besides the lady, but my mind wanted to ignore them.

“I hate this job,” the lady muttered under her breath, “Richard, you are dead, you will have a lot of time to come to terms with it. And as for proof, look up.”

I did so.

The view was something I couldn't really process.

The street itself looked normal, the same as it did a moment ago.

But another city was built on top of the buildings lining the road. Buildings upon buildings going as high as skyscrapers, a Roman temple and then a pineapple with a door and window on top, a bridge of marble connected it to a solid block of steel on the other side of the road.

A lot of others looked like normal apartments; none of them looked to be from the same time period. Most were interconnected with bridges, bridges with such designs that in no way should they be able to stand. One looked to be nothing to hold it. Yet people walked on it casually.

Also clearly useless, since I could see countless figures flying around. The few that were on the bridges were chatting idly with others.

The sky was worse; it was … full.

It wasn’t a sky anymore. It was stuffed, choking with things too big to belong there: planets, buildings and monuments, and just objects so weird I couldn't even tell what they were, some so close they were under the clouds.

Five planets, multiple moons circling them, crowded above me. One had a hand, a hand the size of a continent, closing around a smaller planet like a stress ball. They hung so low I thought they’d crash through the clouds any second.

The chaos of it all numbed my shock for a moment. It was completely overloading my senses, but in a way that made you unable to look away.

“Quite beautiful, right? People have a lot of free time here. You should see my place, it's way cooler than anything you have seen,” the lady said.

“Did I really die?” I whispered, eyes locked upon the giant hand. It had started moving up and down, shaking the whole planet in its grasp.

“Yes, sadly. Now let’s do my job. Alright?”

“Alright...” I muttered, trying to grasp the whole situation. How did I die? I was just buying a muffin.

“Are you Richard Wingston, husband of Emilia Luchente Wingston, father of Vivienne Roudouns Wingston?”

My family... Oh God, I've left them behind. Will Vivi have to grow up without a father now, and Luchente will have to be alone?

“Yes,” I said, trying not to cry.

Could I actually be dead? I didn't feel any different. Is this a hallucination, after all?

“Age 38, 194 centimetres tall, weighing 87 kilograms, size L?” she scribbled on her clipboard.

“Uh, yes on the first one, I don’t know the second one and third one, and yes on the fourth one,” I said.

“Great, that’s all. Let’s get going now.”

She flew off immediately.

I stared at her distancing figure for a moment before she abruptly stopped and turned around.

“I’ve been working here for 120 years and I'm still making this mistake,” she muttered under her breath as she grasped my shoulder.

“Woah,” I said as I started floating too.

“We have to do this like birds, you know, get you up, then let you figure out how to do it yourself. The guidebook demands it.”

I will be thrown off a building?

My instincts told me to hold onto something, but I realized that I didn’t feel any different than being on the ground. No motion sickness as we flew off; I didn’t feel the wind even at great speed.

“I really am dead. Are we like ghosts or something?” I asked her.

“Yes, and depends on your political views, I guess,” she said. She was trying to fix her spikes with her hand; they didn’t stand up anymore.

A thought hit me.

“Are you taking me to see God? Am I getting judged? Are you like an angel or something?” I screamed.

The lady laughed. “I wish I could, hun, but no. I’m taking you to the Registration Office to get your ID. But thank you for the compliment,” she giggled in that old-lady way.

“What do I need an ID for if I’m dead?” I asked.

We passed by a bouncy castle as big as ten other apartments. Small figures could be seen jumping behind the mesh wall.

It was weird calling them apartments, but that’s what the skyscrapers looked to be. People were at their windows or on balconies, and not only people, as I saw all kinds of beings ,from bipedal reptiles to figures that looked like pure fire in humanoid form. One of the fires was just a bonfire with arms and legs. I smelled s’mores as we passed by it.

“How else would you get hired? You also need to go get a bank account and a job, though the latter is only if you want to. You can just do whatever after you get your ID.”

Her phone rang in her pocket. She took it out. It was one of those 2000s flip-flop phones that tried to look futuristic but looked tacky instead. This one was also covered in all the same niche rock band stickers.

The lady cried out in shock , the person on the other side of the line told her Boulder Mike’s concert was canceled tomorrow, and that he would take a break until next year. The lady looked outright despaired over the news.

We were flying quite close to the ground. I could see people , living ones , going on about their day. A weird detail I only now noticed was that I couldn't hear them at all. Cars passed, and I saw people yell, but none of it reached my ears. The city on top was quite loud instead, with all kinds of music and... construction sounds.

Have I been living with all of this above my head? It was a weird and eerie thought.

Will I have to watch my family from now on like this?

After a short time, we arrived at the Registration Office. It was almost a carbon copy of the registration office in the living world I always saw on my way home. But this was built at the top of a tower made of other registration offices, all widely different looking. The bottom one, right above the living world one, was just a rock with a cave entrance. Did cavemen need IDs too?

We landed on the front steps of the building.

“If you have trouble with your documents, come only to this one. The ones below are no longer in business after a few scam scandals. And the bottom one is, in fact, a caveman registration office. Some guy back then ate the right ,or wrong , kind of mushrooms to induce bureaucracy in his psyche.”

We walked up the stairs to the door. I realized the lady was no longer hovering above the ground.

She stopped right beside the door and looked at me. I stopped and looked at her.

“Go on?” she said, confused.

“Aren’t you going with me? I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“I’m not your butler, Richard. More like a tour guide, of sorts, for your first day in Afterville.” She did the jazz hands at the last bit.

I stopped in my step.

“No way that’s the name for this place. That’s so lame. Afterville? Who named it that? Isn’t this Heaven? Why not call it that?”

“If you want to believe this is Heaven, do so. We have laws regarding freedom of political opinion of the dead,” she said matter-of-factly. I didn’t question why she kept mentioning politics when I asked about this place.

I didn’t get to reach the door before it opened on its own.

A small boy stepped out, dressed in a perfectly fitting black suit. His hair had so much hair gel in it that it shined bright like a mirror in the sun. His eyes looked me up and down, dark circles under them. He was sipping from a coffee mug with “Best Son” written on it in his right hand.

“Richard Wingston?” he said and sipped some coffee.

“Um, yes.” At this, the boy dug in his back pocket and handed me something — an ID.

[Name: Richard Wingston
Age of death: 38
Current age: 14 minutes
Appearance: Richard Wingston (Human)
Address of origin: Living Earth
Nationality of origin: Earthling and American from New York
Current address: Dead Earth
Current nationality: Aftervill-er]

The picture on it was a picture taken a moment ago as I was walking up the stairs. As I looked at it, the 14 minutes switched to 15 minutes.

“Erm... thank you?” I said.

The boy showed me the OK sign and slammed the door shut.

“He is very good at his job, best in the industry. He lived as a medieval English peasant; he is doing this job just for the love of it. He died at 9 years old, killed by a raging pig that escaped his neighbor’s house,” the lady said, looking at the closed door in admiration.

“I can’t keep calling you ‘lady.’ What’s your name?” I turned to her.

“Oh, sorry, dear, I forgot to introduce myself. I am Lighting Skull Death, and I welcome you to Aftervill.” She started doing the jazz hands again.

“Kinda late. Also, are you kidding me? Is that your actual name?”

“Yes, it is my name,” she said, taking out another, but now modern, phone. She popped the case off and showed me her ID stashed in it. It was actually her name. Her picture showed something that I felt like I saw in one of those human evolution TV shows ,a bipedal, slightly less hairy, monkey-looking human. There was a sticker plastered on the “current age” section of it; the age of death was 103.

“How old are you, lady?” I asked in disbelief. I was not calling her Lightning Skull Death.

“Well, that’s rude to ask.” She huffed and started walking down the steps.

I followed.

“So, what now?” I asked, catching up. I could still somewhat ignore the knot in my stomach. Not like I didn't want to go home, but I don't think I could handle seeing my family if I couldn't even comfort them right now.

“I am going to go with you towards your house ,your before-after-life house. And then I’m going to go home and watch my recording of the 124th world tour of Mike’s; that’s the best one,” she exclaimed, remembering something.

“Before we go, do you want to change your appearance or name?” she asked.

She pointed in the distance, where I could faintly see an ominous-looking tower with a jagged surface. It seemed like something one would expect to see in a dark fantasy movie. I guess that’s why she looks nothing like her ID picture.

“I’m good,” I said. Way too ominous looking.

“Great, let’s go now. I’m not carrying you anymore, so you must fly yourself.”

“How?”

“Just think of flying, instead of walking.”

I was skeptical, but I imagined myself hovering like she was doing. And then I started hovering too.

“Well, that’s anticlimactic, though it will be more cinematic. Why do you even need to bring me up for this?”

“An outdated rule, we haven't gone over them in a few decades. But don’t get cocky, everyone can do this. The real challenge is managing to walk on the surface.”

“Why is that a challenge?” I asked as I bopped up and down, getting a feeling of flying.

“They try to grasp your feet from below,” she said in a somber tone.

“Below? Like demons? Is Hell real?” If Heaven was, which was what I thought this place was, Hell being real would make sense.

“That depends on your political view,” she said in a dead-fish tone.

I stepped over the edge of the stairs. I didn’t notice before, but this place was immense.

Tall apartment towers occupied the whole of NYC, all on top of the actual buildings. Some of the towers were built on top of other actual skyscrapers, making them super-skyscrapers.

One such building had a gigantic Chinese dragon looping from its base to the top. A neon sign depicting a Chinese noodle box was strapped to the thing's head. Chinese characters flew around the general area.

“It’s not a real dragon. We had this accountant who was really, really bored and good at origami. We used it to scare the newly dead at first, but doing that creates a lot of animosity since we all have to live together for a long while after,” the lady added.

The dragon roared and spit a wall of flames towards a zeppelin as big as a town flew somewhere in the distance. On top of it was a small island with a castle on top. I could feel the vibrations from the roar in the ground. Must have been a really bored accountant.

The lady tapped her heels on the ground.

“You have to go home, Richard. It will be sad for now, but not for long until they too die and come here. In the time-span you will be here, the time you were alive will become meaningless,” she said. She looked over the city with a weird look in her eyes. It wasn't a sad expression.

“I am kinda avoiding it, aren't I,” I sighed, kicking a loose pebble over the edge, “but I don’t know if I can handle seeing that scene when I can’t talk to them. I can’t hear anything from the living world, it seems. Can't even hear their voices one last time.” Would be too much.

“I go home and what? Watch my wife and daughter without being able to comfort them, to say I am still here.” I wiped my eyes.

“It’s something you must do, since your building permit will be on top of your old house. That’s where you will live from now on. I will call the construction company to come tomorrow and start the work,” she said softly, approaching and putting a hand on my shoulder.

“But you are taking it better than most. The usual arrival is in denial about being dead. They try to fight me sometimes. Go back inside their body to try and revive, stuff like that. Not like that’s an actual thing by the way. Don’t try to go back in your corpse. It sometimes creates a zombie in the living world. Nothing like the movies though. They are dead, just sentient and rotting away until they die again and come here. It’s a weird thing really, since it’s not you that goes back, you kind of get copied so there will be two of you here after.”

This lady really can’t stop talking, I thought.

“Alright, I get it. Let’s just go.”

We jumped off the stairs and flew towards my home. It was harder to navigate due to not being able to see the city below, but we managed.

We lost some altitude so we were flying between the buildings. I passed by an apartment being built, construction workers hovered about. The apartment was a weird mix of futuristic cartoon-ish style and classic urban home style. A lady holding the hand of a kid was arguing with a construction worker over a flying table with blueprints on it. Even though the apartment being worked on was still bare-bones, it didn’t make the ones on top of it fall.

I also noticed that it didn't cast any shadow. Even with the skyscrapers lining the road, it was perfectly illuminated by sunlight.

“Why isn't there any shadow?” I increased my speed to catch up to the lady.

“Oh, light just passes through the stuff we build. But at night they do cast shadows from light sources we build.”

“Wait, is this all built by you?” I asked, baffled. I had assumed this was just how this place was. A pre-built heaven or something.

She grinned. “Put people for almost an eternity in a place with no limits, be it materials or physics, and they will build amazing stuff just to pass the time.” She pointed towards the planet with the giant hand on it. “That planet is called Miras. It was built by hauling dirt and rocks from here. It took a few thousand years of combined effort to build, but it looks quite nice.”

“Almost an eternity?” So this wasn't the afterlife?

“For most of us it's a full one, but some people just vanish and take all they've built with them. Don’t ask why some vanish and others don’t. We don’t know. Some think this place is just a waiting room for the actual after-life with God and stuff.” She turned to fly, looking up and pointing to the sky. “See that fancy-looking building?”

She was pointing towards a building that looked like a library from a rich college campus, stone pillars on both sides of the immense door.

“That’s the archive. Some people decided to spend their time here recording all that is built in case it disappears, to be remembered. It's a nice thought, at least,if pointell in my opinion” she hummed.

The size of this place was still mind-boggling. Beyond the archive, I could see countless other objects in space.

“How do you build all this?” I asked.

“A lot of boredom, but if you mean the logistic part, we kinda kill rocks and other materials in the living world. You see, we can’t get through living world stuff, be it buildings or dirt. But we have this knife. We don't know where we have it from anymore, but if you stab a rock, a ghost-rock pops out that we can touch, and it can be done indefinitely on the same rock.”

“This place is weird,” I turned to fly on my back too.

“It's amazing. If you have anything you want to do, you can do it. Anything.” She smiled, looking at the sky.

BAM!

I collided with something headfirst. A yelp sounded from what I hit.

“Ah, fuck!” I grabbed my head.

“Watch it!” the person yelled.

I looked up, not a person at all, but a fox. Well, a humanoid fox, with nine tails slowly rotating counterclockwise behind her. She wore a white summer dress patterned with sunflowers.

“Oh, you’re new,” she said, noticing my baffled face. “Don’t worry, I’m not a monster. I just changed my appearance to this. Name’s Kitsune, it means ‘fox’ in Japanese!” Her tails started rotating clockwise out of nowhere.

She pulled an ID from behind her and flashed it. The picture showed an old-style painting of a woman in lavish clothes, the art distinctly Japanese. Why is everyone so eager to show their ID?

“I’m sorry for bumping into you,” I sighed. This was probably related to that creepy tower too.

“It’s alright. Injuries hurt less, last even less here, which is weird since we are all dead already. One of the many mysteries of Aftervill.” She also started doing the jazz hands, which I assumed was an inside joke or something.

She smiled softly, at least I think. Her fox face didn’t seem too good at facial expressions. “After you visit your house, come by the Dragon Noodles Tower sometimes. I work there. I can tell you more about this place than your ‘guide’; they don't actually care about the job, just a way to waste time,” she whispered and nudged her head towards her.

“I don't have all day to laze around like you do, Kitsune! I have a job and other stuff to do,” the old lady murmured in indignation, lifting her chin up.

“Yeah, yeah. You employed people always think you have the life here figured out,” Kitsune said.

“See you,” she said and flew off, her tails spinning faster as if to propel her.

I saw my house in the distance. There was nothing on top of it, which seemed out of place.

“There is nothing on top because your father, who built it, isn’t dead yet. Also because nobody has ever lived on that piece of land, which is weird…” she blabbered on.

Two police cars were parked in my driveway. I lowered myself closer to the ground.

Through the living room window, I could see the cops talking to my wife. She was crying on the floor with the cops looking somber in front of her.

“Luchete…” I whispered and approached slowly.

BAM!

The front door burst open. Vivienne stepped outside and pointed towards me.

“Dad, you died the lamest way possible. A pigeon tried stealing the muffin you were eating but accidentally impaled your brain through your eye!” she yelled, an angry expression on her face. “My friends will laugh at this for decades!”

“What?” I exclaimed.

“Vivi, can you see me?! And I can hear you?” I zipped towards her.

“Of course. I’m amazing like that.” She nodded to herself.

“How? Can Luchete see me too?” I asked the old lady, who had a dumbfounded face on. She was staring at Vivienne like she was a unicorn.

“Well, I guess your daughter is a psychic or something, though I have never heard of one until now. I don’t know.” She pulled out the modern-looking phone and started making calls.

“I will help you talk to Mom,” Vivienne declared, grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me inside the house.

“Wait, are you able to see this too? Since when?” I pointed to the sky. A spaceship as big as one of the planets passed by.

“Since about nine months before I was born! I’ve been telling you forever that I’m amazing!” she grinned, gripping my arm tighter.

She has been living all along with this ability to see Aftervill?

We burst through the living room, Luchette and the police turned to us, shocked.

“You two, get out!” Vivienne pointed to the cops, who obeyed the order like it came from royalty.

 “Oh, Vivienne.” Luchette lunged for Vivienne and hugged her, crying on her shoulder.

I wondered if this was the right way, if telling her I was here would be better than her wandering. What if she wanted to come here after hearing of this place?

The fear of thought gripped my heart; from what the lady said, they will both come here eventually, but that didn't mean I wanted them to come now. They should live first.

I tried petting Luchette's long black hair, but my hand just passed through. Can't pass through dirt but pass through people? Such a bullshit concept.

“Maybe this isn't a good idea, Vivi,” I said.

“No, this is better. I see the future where I don't do this and Mom isn't happy.” She can see the future too? How amazing exactly is she?

Luchette raised her head, her nose was runny and her eyes red, and looked around.

“Who are you talking to, Vivi?” she asked.

“With Dad, he's here as a ghost!” she pointed at me.

“Honey…” she pulled her into a tighter hug.

“No, I am telling the truth. Dad, tell me something you shouldn't be able to know!” she declared smugly.

I stayed silent. I still felt this wasn't right. I wanted to talk to Luchette, but I could wait until she died. The feeling of thinking that sent a shiver down my spine; I still wasn't used to the whole being dead part.

“Dad, trust me, I've always been right!” Vivienne yelled.

She was always right. Honestly, I never saw this kid fail at anything. We thought we had a genius on our hands, but I guess we had a shaman daughter, probably. Whatever Vivienne was.

I felt that I could trust her with this too.

“Well, tell her that I still remember when she tried paying me after our first date.” A big misunderstanding where she thought I was a ‘Hire-a-boyfriend’ service; we never spoke of it to anyone, a small marriage secret. I smiled at the memory.

Vivienne side-eyed me with a weird look on her face.

“Dad says you tried paying him for your first date.”

Luchette stopped crying instantly.

“Is he really here?” She looked around wildly. I lowered myself to stand in front of her.

Luchette immediately turned to stare right at me, or at least at my torso.

“He’s right in front of me, isn't he?”

“Yes,” feeling the air in front of her with her hands.

“Yeah,” Vivienne smiled brightly, “I think you can sense Aftervill a bit too! Maybe I can train you to see Dad!” She jumped up and down with excitement.

I really can't wait to talk to my wife now, who's probably also a shaman in training or something.