AAAAND WE'RE DEAD

I was snapped out of my thoughts when I heard voices. They were far enough away that I could make out the owners in the half-light the weak lights provided, and I scrambled to my feet and ran toward them.

“I’m not sure we can use this one…” As I approached them, I began to make out clear sentences, and four or five dark figures appeared ahead of me.

“Look, another one!” Someone called. It was a boy’s voice, cracking on “another.”

“I love when they just come to us,” a woman murmured, her lips turning up at the corners in a Cheshire cat smile.

I could make out her face then, covered in bold make up to hide newly forming wrinkles. She was wearing a fury stole and a grand, sequined purple dress. She stood in a loose circle with three other people, none of whom seemed to belong to each other. There was a gangly freckled boy who seemed around fourteen, dressed in a tuxedo and baseball cap. If that wasn’t strange enough, the huge, burly man next to him had a full sand-colored beard that went to his chest and appeared to be dressed as a Viking. The only normal looking person in the group was a young black woman, dressed in a fitted University of Georgia T-shirt and denim skirt. She fiddled absentmindedly with gold bangles on her wrist as the circle of strange people assessed me.

I noticed what they had circled around, and I screamed.

It was a little boy, a horrific little boy. He was standing there, blinking at me, confused as I was, but every inch of him seemed to be covered in blood. His right arm was missing from the elbow down, little strings of flesh dangled from it, a huge chunk from his left shoulder was missing, and the front of his thighs were shaved away so that pieces of were visible. A flap of partially removed scalp caused fuzzy black hairs to wave at me as he tilted his head to look me over, dark almond eyes fixating on the pipe through my head. His once-yellow shirt had a picture of a cheerful frog on it, with bubbly Korean script going across the bottom. He was probably six or seven.

When I screamed, the black woman giggled and the Viking rolled his eyes. The woman with the purple dress grinned excitedly.

“Oh, she must really be new!” she cried.

I thought about asking questions like Shouldn’t we get him to a hospital? and Who are you, why are you dressed like that, and why are you in a sewer? However, no one seemed concerned about the terrible injuries, not even the little boy, and the second one seemed awfully rude.

Instead, I asked, “Where am I?”

They all laughed then. All of them excepted the boy, who whined, “Everywhere is itchy,” and scratched the stub of his missing arm. I cringed.

“This girl’s kind of dumb, yeah?” the teenaged boy in the tuxedo said.

The black woman smiled and shook her head in the way you would at a kitten’s antics. “Honey, where do you think you are?” she asks.

“Uh… in a sewer?” I try. Various degrees of condescending amusement appeared on their faces, except the Viking man, who just looked annoyed. So I tried again. “Am I dead?”

“Bingo,” the woman in the purple dress says, grinning manically at me. I smiled nervously back, wondering if she’s been sipping the crazy juice. Then she adds, “Just look at how perfect she is!”

“Hey,” the black woman interjected. “She’s too young for you. If anyone takes her, it’ll be me.”

“What about me?” the teenaged boy protested, scowling at them both. “You hardly ever let me go up.”

The continued arguing like this– I wasn’t really sure what they meant by “taking” me, maybe taking me up out of the sewer?– but I stopped paying attention. I was dead, according to that woman. And that made sense. Sort of. It explained the pipe, and could possibly explain everything else, although I wasn’t too familiar with being dead, so I couldn’t be sure. It certainly explained the poor little boy in front of me, scratching away at his itching wounds.

“Look, she’s the perfect match for me,” the black woman was saying. “Only a few years younger, she looks American–”

It all just seemed so surreal.

“Only a few years older than me, and I bet she’s Canadian–” the teenaged boy interrupted.

I knew I should feel sad, missing my family and friends, but I felt a dreamlike haze wash over me instead. I was dead. I had a pipe in my head. The afterlife was a sewer. It just made so little sense I couldn’t convince myself it wasn’t some kooky hallucination.

“She looks like a Toronto girl,” he continued. “Yeah, Toronto.” The black woman tapped her foot impatiently.

“And she’s a girl,” she finished. “You’re not nearly mature enough to go parading around as a sixteen year old girl.”

Wait, what?

“I’m seventeen,” I muttered. “And I’m from Pennsylvania.”

They ignored me. The woman with the purple dress pursed her lips.

“I speak English perfectly well, you know,” she said. “I lived in London for two years.”

The black woman rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but your accent is some weird, French-British hybrid. No one ever believes you.”

“And Tisha has a Southern accent,” the teenaged boy piped up, pointing at the black woman. None of them had an accent. I almost pointed this out, but then he said, “Even if she says it’s faint, some chick in Philly isn’t going to magically gain one, but me– me, my accent is neutral.” He smiled triumphantly at the two women, as if he had won whatever this argument was about. The Viking watched silently with a peeved scrunch about his thick eyebrows, and the little boy picked at his frayed ears.

“I’m not from Philly,” I said dumbly. Their conversation was making warning bells go off in my head, but they were probably my best bet for getting out of the sewer (If there’s a way out, I thought, panic prickling in my brain again. What if this sewer is the entire afterlife?), so I told myself I was just being paranoid.

They stopped arguing and stared at me, and the little boy suddenly asked, “When are you taking me to my mommy?”

The woman in the purple dress gives him a rueful sort of smile. “Right after we show this nice lady the way out of the sewer,” she said.

“So there’s more to the afterlife?” I asked, hopeful.

“Of course, sweetheart,” the black woman, Tisha, said, bangles jingling as she put her hands on her hips. “It’s just that, for some reason, lots of new arrivals end up down here. Like Min-jun here.” She waves at the little boy, who asks for his mother again.

“So… then how…” I motioned upwards. “How do I get out?”

“Just follow us,” the woman in the purple dress said, Cheshire cat smile back. I felt my feet taking a step back from her, only to have the Viking gripped my arm. His huge hand wrapped all the way around my elbow easily. I tugged away from him, but he held me effortlessly, that same perturbed look on his face. The teenaged boy grabbed my other arm.

“Don’t worry,” he said, smirking at me. “Being dead is great… you could even say, to die for.”

I couldn’t believe he’d tried for a pun that corny, but I also couldn’t believe I was being mugged in an otherworldly sewer. Or kidnapped. Or killed again somehow. How lame would that be?

I struggled against them as hard as I could. I kicked the teenaged boy in the knee. He yelled and I managed to yank my arm from his hands. But know matter how hard I kicked and pulled, the Viking just glared down at me, stoic and utterly unamused. The woman in the purple dress snorted.

“Don’t even try, Pennsylvania,” she advised. “You don't have a chance against Asgrim here.”

My headache had exploded from the struggle, but I stood tall glaring at the hateful woman. She just smiled back at me like a playful cat. The teenaged boy reattached himself to my other arm. Tisha was pointedly ignoring me, kneeling next to Min-jun and stroking his bloodstained hair. He seemed about to cry.

The two males frogmarched me down the sewer after the woman, who exaggerated the swing of her hip as she walked. Tisha followed, leading Min-jun by his remaining hand. The blood didn’t seem to bother her.