Ember

Tears streamed down her face as she stood on the cliff edge, mixing as they ran down her cheeks with the rain that was falling in sheets across the vast expanse of steely grey. Sobs wracked her chest, the sound of them drowned by the waves crashing on the rocks below. Snot flowed from both nostrils and her hair was plastered to her forehead, but Meg didn’t care. Who was she trying to impress? The unfortunate dog walker who would find her once the storm had passed? The coroner performing her autopsy? It didn’t matter now. None of it mattered anymore, now that it was all about to be over.

She looked down to her bare feet, toe knuckles white where her body betrayed her, trying to hold on for dear life to the wispy grass growing on the edge before the sheer hundred metre drop. Her heart thundered in her chest- or was that a thunder accompanying the flash of lightning she just saw?- she had felt so calm when she’d made her mind up this morning.

She had been so very calm when she had written the note.

She had been so calm when she had dropped off her few possessions at the charity shop.

She had been calm when she boarded the train to the coast.

The strong wind blew straight through her thin cotton dress. Meg had decided she wouldn’t need her hiking jacket anymore, and as well as relatively new, it had been pretty pricey. Best to give that to someone who could use it again. No one would want to use it when it had blood and brain matter stained on it. Would they bury her in this dress? She should have written that in the note. It was one she had found amongst her mum’s things in the attic before Meg moved out. It had had a faint trace of her perfume on it, before Meg had chosen to wear it into Storm Henry. Not a lot she could do now.

She took a deep breath, which was hard with the wind barraging the air against her. It felt like a wall, trying to push her back from the brink. A bit late for the world to be on my side now, she thought. Then he was there, in her thoughts, his cruel face leering, the face she had once idolised, his dark eyes glittering as he laughed. Laughed at her. Meg squeezed her raw eyes tightly closed, she didn’t want to be thinking of him at the end.

Courage, Meg. The pain was back in her chest, and despite the chill in the wind, her cheeks flamed into pillar box red. She had to escape the shame, the subsequent loneliness.

Mum would have known what to do, but Mum isn't here. Mum.

I’m coming, Mum.

Zee stood on the rocks, slate in one hand, stylus in the other, watching the figure on the top of the cliff, and sighed. So young. So tragic.

He looked at his watch, two minutes early. Oops. But he was passing through the neighbourhood and this job had popped up as urgent on his board. The next soul, Cyril, wasn’t due for another ten minutes and Zee was sure his family wouldn’t mind a few extra moments. Not that they’d know if he was late or not. No one was ever happy for him to show up, unless it was someone in Meg’s situation when they were practically begging for it.

One minute left. He made sure not to stand too close to her landing site. Not that it would affect him, but it would mean another ‘near miss’ form to fill out and they were so LONG. Zee watched a crab think better of scuttling out into the storm. He could see the mewling sea gulls plunge and soar on the buffeting gusts above Meg’s head before she became a tumbling ragdoll against the expanse of yellow cliff. Any moment now, she’d see him.

“I’m coming, Mum!” Zee had heard her whisper into the wind through his ear piece, and then, a few seconds later, Meg was beside him. She sat up immediately, backing away from the spot where her drenched body lay in a shallow rockpool which was slowly taking on a pink hue.

“What,” she stammered, looking green. She made to touch her old left leg, which was white and bent at an odd angle, but her gaze caught on her arm which was now translucent, turning it and marvelling as the rain continued to fall straight through her. She held out the fabric of her dress, which was bone dry.

Zee’s slate beeped at him, reminding him to check her into the system. Meg suddenly seemed to notice him, her eyes widened at the sight of him, incongruous on the wave battered rocks without a black hair out of place and clothing dry as the storm howled around them.

“Hi,” he said, doing an awkward wave- he really had to get better at his introductions, but he never knew how to approach someone who had freshly arrived in such a tragic way- “I’m Zee-”

“Zee? Are you the Grim Reaper?” Meg asked, her voice shaky.

“Grim Rea- Oh! No!” He laughed, “No, sorry, the Boss Man farms out most of the work nowadays, growing population and all that. I’m Zee, I work for the Department Escorting Arrivals To Heavell.” He held out the slate to her, where Meg could see her details in glowing red letters; her full name, age in years, months and days and then today’s date. “I need you to sign here,” he started, handing her the stylus. Incredulously, Meg signed her name in blue, wobbly letters. Her details turned green and she heard a small ‘ping’ come from the board as she handed it back.

“Great,” Zee said, taking back the slate and tucking it into the pocket in his black cloak. “Have you got everything?” Meg looked around her, at her old broken body, the bare rocks, and shrugged. “Then we’ll get going,” he offered her his hand and she stepped up on to the rock beside him. He tapped on his watch, setting the destination and without a word, they were both plunged into darkness.

The sound of the wind and the waves faded, and Meg was aware of it being replaced by echoing voices, like that of a huge cathedral filled with people. Zee put his watch against a panel and suddenly light appeared around the shape of a door, a light that brightened like the sunrise on a clear morning.

“This is your door to Heavell, only you can see what is on the other side.”

“You’re not coming with me?” She looked even more scared now.

“No,”

“What’s on the other side?” She asked.

“Like I said, only you can see that,”

“Have you ever been through the door?”

“Of course, once, my own door-” he stopped. Too much. Don’t say too much. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, trying to put a reassuring smile on his face. She still had hold of his arm, and he gently extracted it from her grip, giving her a shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“What if I don’t want to go through? Can I just stay here?” She looked around at the darkness that stretched to infinity around them, her face lit from the light shining around the door in front of her.

“Why would you want to?” another shrug.

“So I could stay with you,” she looked set to cry, but she found tears wouldn’t come.

“I don’t stay here. I have a job to do. Besides, you’ve only just met me,” Zee could feel irritation biting at the edge of his voice. He had to stay calm. The slate beeped, he was going to be late for Cyril.

“But you were there for me, at the end,” she croaked. It took all he could not to roll his eyes. Teenagers, so dramatic. He tried not to meet her gaze. He pushed his dark fringe back from his forehead and sighed.

“Meg, this isn’t the end. It’s just the next chapter. You can’t stay here.” he said it as gently and as frankly as he could, peeled her fingers from his sleeve and gave her a slight push towards the door. The voices were becoming more distinct, and being closer to the door she could now hear someone calling her name.

“Mum?” she whispered, turning to look at him again, “Is she in there?” It was Zee’s turn to shrug. Meg didn’t wait for the voice to call again, she pushed against the heavy panel, exposing them both in the most brilliant light. Her skin glowed gold. She gasped loudly, a smile breaking across her face as she saw what was beyond the door frame. He watched her fade into the light as the door swung slowly closed, leaving him in the darkness again. His slate beeped again, urgently.

“Not another one,” he sighed in exasperation. He accepted the new job. Cyril was going to have an extra hour to say his goodbyes.

The next job found him on the landing of a modern three bed semi. He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. Only a minute to go. He cast a glance at the photo frames lining the hallway. Happy, smiling family over the course of a decade or more. He was here for Jack. He could see Jack had left behind his chubby, bucktoothed smile in recent years for a gaunt, surly scowl, his frame, hidden beneath oversized t-shirts and hoodies, becoming more skeletal.

Woosh.

Zee looked up suddenly from a photo that had its glass broken recently. He had been joined on the landing by another D.E.A.T.H employee in the customary black cloak, slate in hand.

“I think there’s been a mistake,” he snapped. He checked his slate, twenty seconds left. The girl in front of him checked her slate.

“Hello to you too, Zee,” she said, “I’m here for Lila,”

“Jack,” he replied, relaxing slightly before he frowned again.

“But this isn’t the usual site for a double death,” he started. His watch beeped. Jack had arrived. Zee went through to the dingy bedroom at the top of the stairs, which had been given as Jack’s exact location. Jack’s translucent form was standing, staring, at the foot of a double bed, upon which two bodies lay curled up together. The air smelt of stale smoke and vomit. On the dusty bedside table lay empty vodka bottles and a note propped up against a half empty glass.

“Lila,” Jack whispered. She was still alive, barely. Her breath came out in rattling gasps, and her eyes had rolled into the back of her head. Jack made to go to her, but Zee grabbed his arm as he moved.

“Jack, no-” Jack turned at his grip, swinging his arm above his head to try and shrug Zee off, but he held on tight to Jack’s grey t-shirt. Jack roared, throwing himself past Zee and to the unconscious figure on the bed, desperately trying to stroke her face but finding, instead, that his hands fell straight through her skin.

Another roar.

“What have you done to me?” he howled to Zee, “I need to help her.” Zee could see the pain on his face, the way his mouth fell as he made a keening round. “Lila, Lila, wake up, Lila-”

“It’s too late,” Zee said, in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. He tried to pat Jack’s shoulder but the boy shrugged him off again.

Outside, a beeping sound. Lila would be arriving soon.

“Jack?” a whisper, and there she was, a translucent double of the body on the sodden duvet, although the make-up stains down her cheeks had disappeared and her lank hair was now full and bouncing on her shoulders.

Jack leapt from the bed and embraced her in his arms. “We made it,” he said.

“Are we ghosts?” Lila asked, looking from the bodies on the bed to Jack, and then down at her own shimmering form. This was getting ridiculous, Zee thought. He cleared his throat. Lila suddenly seemed to notice him standing there.

“No, you’re not ghosts, but you are dead,” Nix, the other D.E.A.T.H escort said bluntly. There was almost a hint of boredom in her voice. She had been leaning on the door frame, watching the drama unfold.

“Shit, what-” Lila started

“That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?” Nix replied, gesturing to the bodies on the bed.

“Yeah, but I didn’t think-”

“I thought we’d wake up,” Jack said. “Or I don’t know, it never worked before.”

“Well, it worked this time. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.” Nix turned her slate towards Lila.

“I need you to sign here,” she said. Lila gingerly accepted the stylus and was about to put it to the slate on the red line but Jack slapped it out of her hand.

“What the hell is this? Who are you? I’m not signing anything until I know what’s going on.” Zee sighed, the unexpected calls were always difficult. For someone who had been so set on suicide, Jack wasn’t prepared for the next step at all.

“I’m Zee, this is Nix, we’re from the Department Escorting Arrivals To Heavell,”

“The fuck?”

“Heavell. We take you from here, where you died, to the next place. Heavell.”

“What’s the next place?” Lila asked timidly, holding Jack’s hand tightly in hers.

“It depends,” Nix said. “We can’t tell you.”

“Will we be together? We need to be together.” Lila said, a note of hysteria entering her voice. She gulped back tears. Nix exchanged a glance with Zee.

“We don’t know. It depends. All next places are unique.”

“So we’ll just stay here,” Jack said, pulling Lila to sit on the bed with him. “Thanks but no thanks, you guys can fuck back off to wherever you came from.” He pulled Lila into a kiss, making it clear they were no longer welcome, if they even had been in the first place.

Zee was about to protest, but Nix nodded her head to the landing. He bit his lip and followed her out. She pulled the door shut behind him and put her head close to his. He could smell her perfume, an earthy mix of lavender and rosemary.

“We have to get them to sign and go through,” she hissed.

“You don’t have to tell me, “ he retorted,

“Zee this is no time for you to get sassy with me. You know they can’t stay here,”

“Don’t want to ruin your streak?” he teased. She gave him a piercing glare and he looked down at his black boots to avoid it.

“We can’t make them come with us, we can’t force them to sign. We just need to tell them what the alternative is, and if they’re happy with that-”

“Would you be happy with that?” Nix snapped. Zee shook his head, shuddering. Rarely did arrivals take the ‘inbetween’ choice, or even consider it. Lucky for him. The red name on his slate shone ominously. He could also see that he was now even later for Cyril. Could someone else not go?

“What do you suggest we do?” he asked her. He’d only had one arrival decide not to sign, and that had set him back ten thousand. He was still working off the debt, he could see his tally on the slate. A permanent reminder of his failure. Nix, he knew, had never had a situation like this.

“We could show them what happens.” She started tapping away on her slate and came up with a set of coordinates. A picture flashed up, too. Zee’s heart sank. No. Not him. She looked up and saw his ashen face. “Look, it’s the only option. Do you want to witness another ten thousand arrivals on top of what your tally is already?” Zee held his slate to his chest, but she had already seen the large number at the top of the screen.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “If it’s the only way.”

Nix put the coordinates into her watch and tucked her slate away into her cloak pocket, Zee did the same. He pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders and put the hood up over his head then followed her into the bedroom.

The couple were still locked in an embrace and Nix had to cough pointedly to get them to stop.

“What do you want-” Jack started to say, but before he could finish Nix had pressed the button on her watch and they were standing on wet slabs of rock in a cave.

No one spoke. It was cold in the cave, not that they could feel it. The light filtering in from a hole high above their heads was that of a watery sun barely breaking through fog. Water dripped incessantly in the darkness nearby, where it stretched beyond their line of sight, beyond cracked rocks and pools of dark water. It stank of mould and salt and death.

“Bill?” Zee called, her voice echoing round the vast chamber. They listened to it fade. Jack and Lila clutched at each other, eyes wide as they looked round. Suddenly, Lila shrieked.

“What the fuck is that?” Jack cried, pulling Lila closer to him and away from a grey slime that was seeping out of the stagnant pool by their feet. He kicked a rock towards it, but it passed through the shape and part shattered and part bounced off of a boulder behind it, revealing it was actually a decaying skull. A human skull. A piece of waterlogged flesh sloughed off of the forehead. Zee felt sick.

“This is Bill.” Nix said matter-of-factly, face not revealing any emotion. “Bill didn’t want to come with us either. He thought it would be better to stay in between. How’s that going for you, Bill?” she turned to ask the haggard outline of a man who had once been tall and imposing with tattoos down his arms and on his neck. The tattoos were striking against the shimmering grey of where his skin had once been. He didn’t look like a human anymore. As they watched, his outline morphed and swirled as if it couldn’t hold his form. Bill went to speak, but there was no voice, only a couple of drops which fell from the gap where his mouth should have been, the sound of their drips lost in the chorus of the trickling water in the cave.

“Why don’t you tell our lovely couple why he didn’t want to sign,” Nix said to Zee, giving him a sideways kick in the shin. Zee started. He had his eyes fixed on Bill’s, they were the only part of him still clear enough to recognise. There was so much anguish in those black eyes, but there was nothing Zee could do to help him.

“He’d wanted revenge,” Zee croaked, “he wanted to find who had killed him and get revenge.” More drops fell from the form.

“Did it work?” Jack asked, his voice shaking, his eyes trained on Bill. A real trickle of water now, and then Bill’s form threw itself against the cave wall, again and again and again with increasing force and urgency.

“Shit,” Lila whispered and hid her head into Jack’s shoulder.

“Why’s he down here though?” Jack asked, when Bill’s outline had sloped off into the darkness.

“It’s where he died.” Zee replied, quietly. “It’s the only place he can now remember.”

Zee and Nix didn’t have to say anything else. The couple were gazing at each other, hands clasped so tightly had they been alive they probably would’ve broken bones. Lila nodded, her eyes pleading with Jack. Slowly, he nodded too.

“Ok,” he said. “Give me the damn pen. Where do I sign?”