Welcome to the Afterlife

Yesterday I continued writing Graham's interview with ex-dead girl, Maya. He asks her about what she experienced in the few minutes she was dead:

“Everything was red, like when you’re lying out on your back sunbathing, and the sunlight is shining through the blood vessels in your eyes. I wasn’t in pain. I wasn’t scared, but I wasn’t really feeling anything. I don’t think I was numb, it was more like being bored.”

“Like being bored?”

“Well there wasn’t anything to do. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to go. Like it was an all-red waiting room, but without furniture or magazines. I remember calling out “Hello” and “Is anyone here?” The words felt flat, like they weren’t traveling very far. If it were a cartoon I guess they would have come out of my mouth, traveled a few feet and then smashed to the floor with a thud, except the sound of the thud wouldn’t have traveled far either.”

...

“Do you remember hearing or smelling anything?”

“It was silent, I mean dead quiet. I heard the sound of my voice, but it didn’t sound right. Other than that I didn’t hear anything until someone was shouting something like ‘...live again, in the name of the Lord’ and then I woke up, or came back to life or whatever. I didn’t smell anything until that happened, either and then I smelled a really bad stink, like rotten eggs and stale cigar smoke or something. Must have been the car exhaust.”

“So no bright white light? No angel choir?”

“No. Just boring, red, quiet, stinkiness.”

“Do you think you were in, well, you know, ‘the other place’?”

“Hell? Nah, unless my punishment is eternal boredom; in which case ‘why bother,’ I mean, just make me live in this town forever.”

(daily word count: 2,044 words; total word count: 17,008 words; words remaining: 32,992)