AfterLife (21 page)

Her tightly curled white hair sat on top of her head like a
clown’s wig. Frustrated, Wes watched as she made her way down the aisles of
shoes, using the shelves for support and pushing his neat stacks in all
directions. She stopped after finding a shoe she appeared to like, and finding
the box marked with her size pulled it out of the stack, knocking the ones
above it to the floor. Opening the box, she pulled one shoe out and dropped it
to the floor. To free up both her hands, the woman took the clearance items she
was holding and draped them over the display shelves, displacing the shoes on
top. Using the shelf again for support, the woman lifted her foot to pull off
her shoe and then proceeded to force her foot into the shoe she was trying on.

After watching the show for a few moments, Wes decided it
might be less messy if he offered to help.

“Hello, Ma’am, we have a bench here for you to sit on while
trying on shoes if you’d like.”

“Well,” she said as she looked up at Wes, her upper lip
arching again, “I wouldn’t like to. I’m fine here.” She continued to balance
herself while trying to shove her foot into the shoe. The shifting of her focus
from the shoe to Wes and back again caused her to lose her balance, and she
bumped against the shelves, pushing a few stacks of shoes over. Finally, she
got her foot into the shoe, and apparently deciding it wasn’t what she wanted
after all, repeated the balancing act to replace her own shoe on her foot. The
woman then reenacted the entire process with three more shoes, leaving complete
devastation behind her in the women’s section of the footwear department.

Wes was not happy with the way this customer was destroying
his neat aisles. The fact that he wasn’t busy and didn’t have anything else to
do was beside the point. She was paying little attention to the mess she was
making and showed no concern for the extra work she was causing. He decided she
owed him a year of life. Maybe he’d take two. She’d caused him enough trouble
and a lot of extra work.

The woman made her way to the cashier counter leaving the
mess behind her. She hadn’t selected any shoes. Wes kept an eye on her as he
quickly straightened the area and then followed the woman to the counter. She
had finished paying and was walking through the doors at the front of the
store. “I’m going to help her to her car,” Wes said as he passed the cashier.
“There might be ice in the parking lot.” The cashier, a young high school girl
texting on her phone, nodded but he knew she didn’t care.

Wes followed the old woman outside. He was still relatively
new to the feeding process, but he was sure he was capable of sucking a couple
years from this woman. She was already almost to a car that was parked in a
handicapped parking space even though there was no decal on the license plate.
A strong wind blew across the parking lot, carrying small particles of ice that
had fallen as snow earlier that day. He got to the woman just as she was
opening her car door and pushed it shut so she couldn’t get in.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the woman asked, reaching
again for the car door. “I should go back in and have you fired.”

Wes pushed her hand away from the handle. He experienced a
reaction he hadn’t felt since he’d been approached by the policemen in the
alley. He wanted to attack this woman and tear her up. She was an awful person.

A few seconds passed during which neither of them spoke.
Then with something like fear in her eyes, she turned away from Wes and tried
to open her car door again. He pushed her hand from the door handle again, and
this time the woman cried out. Wes knew he needed to do something fast, so he
pulled the woman’s glasses off and tossed them to the pavement. He grabbed her
head and aimed her eyes at his. He could see his reflection in her dark eyes.
He looked past into the darkness in the pupils to find her life force, locked
in, and began to feed.

Except...he didn’t. As soon as he locked in, the old woman
went limp in his arms and fell to the iced pavement. Wes reached down and
softly shook her. There was no response. What happened? He hadn’t really fed at
all! Did she have that little life left? Had he stolen all the time she had? He
touched her neck to check her pulse but realized he wouldn’t be able to feel it
even if she had one.

Wes ran from the woman across the now empty parking lot back
into the store. If she wasn’t dead he knew he had to get help fast. “Call 911,”
he said as he approached the cashier desk. “The woman I was helping collapsed
by her car.”

A few hours later, Wes waited outside the employee entrance
of the department store for Emily to pick him up. The events of the evening
were still playing through his mind, and the guilt he felt grew. For the first
time in his life – or his death – he had killed someone intentionally, and he’d
done it because he hadn’t been able to control his temper.

As Wes’s guilt increased, so did his attempts to justify his
actions. She was already close to death anyway, right? She was a mean old woman
and deserved to die. He hadn’t really soul-synced with her; maybe she had
merely died as he was trying to. Yet Wes knew he was trying to make himself
feel better by blaming his victim, and he knew his last thought was definitely
not true. He had made the connection and he knew it. Not only had he killed
her, he had pursued her to the parking lot with the intention of taking some of
her life. It wasn’t merely accidental manslaughter; it was premeditated murder.

Emily drove up and stopped. He could see her sitting in the
car and hesitated for a second before reaching for the car door to get in. How
would he explain this to her? She always told him how great she thought he was
and now he would have to tell her he was a murderer. Wes opened the door and
sat down in the passenger seat. It was going to be a long drive back to their
apartment.

“How was your night,” Emily asked as they pulled out of the
parking lot. The wind had died down and the soft snow that was falling was just
beginning to collect on the pavement.

“It was okay.” Wes left his reply simple as he struggled to
think of a way to tell her what he’d done.

“Her name was Margret Sager. Her grandkids called her Grandma
Marge.”

Wes looked quickly at Emily who had her attention on the
road. “How do you know what happened,” he asked softly. He looked at her
expressionless face as she maneuvered the car around a bend in the road.

“I work at the hospital, Wes, you know that. I was there
when they brought her in and pronounced her dead. I was there when her daughter
arrived to see the body. I knew what had happened as soon as the EMTs brought
her in and explained the situation. Wes, what happened?”

Wes remained silent. He stared out the windshield at the
snowflakes that flew at the car. “I killed her and I…” Wes’s voice trailed off.
No matter what he said he wouldn’t be able to justify what he’d done. Knowing
that the woman had children and grandchildren made him feel even worse. It was
bad enough when he thought of her as a mean old woman without any connections.
“I’m a horrible person.”

Guilt felt different as a Mortui. There were no guilty
tears. He didn’t have the heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach that came
when he did something very wrong. He didn’t feel anxiety or stress. All the
physical symptoms of guilt that a living, physical body experienced might have
helped shield him from the real pain he now felt from somewhere deep inside.
This sensation of guilt was worse than anything he’d felt in life. It was as if
a part of his soul had torn off and pulled away as he desperately scrambled to
save it. He felt despair, emptiness, and helplessness.

“What you did was horrible, but you’re not a horrible
person, Wes,” Emily said softly as she watched Wes’s face. “I have always felt
that you are innately good. If I’m right, the feelings you’re having right now
and the thoughts you’re struggling with are pretty painful.”

“Another lesson in bodiless pain.”

“Wes, what exactly happened at the store tonight?”

Wes briefly explained the entire situation. He told Emily
how the woman had entered the store and made a complete mess without any
consideration for the people who worked there or for other customers. He told
her how he’d followed her to her car with the intention to feed just enough to
shorten her life a little. He’d had no intention of killing her completely.

“So it was intentional then?”

“Yes, it was. How could I think I had the right to take life
from her? I didn’t need to feed. It wasn’t out of self-preservation. I was
feeling trapped and useless, and I allowed my mental anxieties to control my
actions. I actually fed with the intention of shortening her life. I really am
a horrible person.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Emily said as she parked the car in
front of their apartment. “If you didn’t I’d be a little worried. I’m glad you
feel remorse for what you did. It proves you are the person I always thought
you were. If it makes it easier, and I know from experience it won’t, we all
have to experience this sense of remorse at some point. If we didn’t it would
be easy to justify killing. We could begin to feel entitled. We would become
nothing more than an empty, soulless killing machine.”

Emily and Wes sat in the car. Neither of them moved to get
out and go inside. Wes watched as the snow slowly drifted past a nearby street
lamp. It fell through the light and settled on the ground below, glittering in
the soft yellow rays of light shining on it from above. The image was almost ethereal.

“I think you’re done with your training, Wes,” Emily said
finally, breaking the silence. She turned to him. “I’ve taught you all you’re
going to learn here, and you’re as ready as you’ll ever be to go to a bigger
city.”

“I don’t think I’m ready at all,” Wes said, thinking about
Grandma Marge. “I haven’t learned anything.”

“Tonight you learned one of the hardest lessons there is.
Killing for the sake of killing is an awful thing. Even though Margret was
close to death, the few days you took should have been hers. When we feed, we
do it because we have to, and we never take life from the sick or the elderly.
I think you understand that now.”

“I still don’t think I’m ready to be on my own.”

“Don’t worry. No one is ever on their own. You’ll have
another companion.”

“Really? Oh. I don’t know why I thought I’d be left alone.”

“We’re too tight of an organization for our members to be
without a partner. Tomorrow we’ll head back to the Hub and get you all set up.”
Emily smiled at Wes.

The snow continued to fall on the windshield, eventually
blocking Wes’s view of the street lamp. “I still don’t know if I can do it,”
Wes said, looking at Emily who seemed to be lost in her own thoughts as she
also stared out the darkening window. Moving onto the next step of his life
after death was not really what worried him. He knew he would be separated from
Emily, and she had become more than a trainer to him. He no longer saw her as
the sister she liked to refer to herself as.

Emily pulled herself away from her thoughts and looked at
him. “You’ll be amazing Wes, you shouldn’t worry about that.” Emily touched
Wes’s face and smiled. “I’m gonna miss you, little brother.”

Wes smiled back, hoping the smile looked genuine. He didn’t
want to be her little brother; he wanted more.

D
uring the
three months Emily and Wes had spent in Charleston, they’d made several visits
to the Hub for various training purposes. Each time Wes noticed the Hub was
busier than the previous visit. Mortuis from all over the region were coming to
get new assignments and special training to prepare for AfterLife’s new focus:
counteracting the growing threat of the Atumra against antemorts.

Wes left Emily at the Den and walked down the hallway to his
room. It was surprisingly smaller than he remembered. In fact, it was smaller
than the closet room he stayed in at the yellow house, but it still felt more
like home. The personal items from his life helped create an atmosphere of
familiarity. He dropped his bags to the floor and sat on the cot to soak in the
calm before going back to the Den to meet up with Emily.

The seating area in the Den was full of Mortuis. They sat in
groups talking and laughing, and the scene reminded him of a lounge at a
college dorm except for the greater variety of people. Wes felt slightly out of
place as he looked around the room. Emily hadn’t made it back yet, and no one
paid him any attention as he walked in. That is, no one until he recognized
Meri, the woman who had found him in his apartment after he died. She was
staring at him from the couch, and when she saw he recognized her she aimed a
friendly grin his way. Wes returned the smile. Meri patted the vacant spot on
the couch next to her, and Wes acknowledged the nonverbal cue to join her.

“How have you been, Wes,” Meri asked after he sat down.

“Good. Training was a little rough out in the middle of
nowhere, but I made it through.”

“Yes, you did, and you look well. Much better than when
Jordan and I found you.” Meri reflected for a moment as she looked down at her
hands in her lap. She rotated the ring bearing the AfterLife emblem around her
left thumb. “He’s no longer with us.” She looked back up at Wes with a forced
smile.

“Who? Jordan?”

Meri continued. “Yep. He’s gone to the dark side. He decided
Atumra is the place for him.”

“That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.” Wes recalled once thinking
the opportunity to live again could be a strong incentive to join the Atumra.
He now realized it was selfish and that he could never be part of the Atumra or
accept their philosophies. Living as a Mortui was a fate he could accept for
now, and being part of AfterLife was where he belonged. He had made his
decision and didn’t need to rethink it every time the issue came up.