Dead
A Short Story by Richard Hamer

Samantha died. Sam to her friends – if she had any friends - died at precisely 2:17 p.m on Saturday 20th March, aged 32. She had emerged from the dark catacomb that was her half dilapidated East London Flat and blinked in the strange and harsh light. A cold wind was blowing through the streets, whipping up newspapers and leaves that brushed up against her legs. She adjusted her large, brown spectacles and wrapped her large brown cardigan around her body - to keep out the worst of the cold.

She stood at the edge of the pavement and pressed the little button. 10 seconds passed. The little green man blinked insistently at her from across the street. She took five steps forward and was hit at 70mph by a red Ford Escort. Her body was flipped unceremoniously across the bonnet, pirouetting in the air like the childhood ballerina she had been, before depositing her in the middle of the road. Her body was broken and twisted, all unnatural angles and dark, angry bruises. A crowd flocked to her side – some to help, some just to watch this little piece of grim street theatre unfold.

Sam blinked. She got to her feet and found herself in the least likely place she ever expected to be – the pier at Brighton Beach. She blinked again, just for the effect. She was dead. She realised it almost instantly – she had an almost perfect sense of clarity. Her head felt… lighter, somehow. She didn’t seem to be especially worried that she had died; she didn’t feel especially worried about the parents she had left behind. She didn’t even care that she hadn’t fed her cat this morning.

In her cruelly short life, Sam had never amounted to much of anything. She had a boring job, a shitty flat, annoyingly infrequent sex and a cat with massive flatulence. For a moment, in the sea of calm that was now Samantha’s head, she felt a tinge of annoyance. If there was an afterlife, there was probably a God – or something answering to that name – and they had a lot to answer for. A quiet, slowly bubbling rage began to build up in her as she felt about every bad thing that had ever happened to her, every job she had lost, every friend that had cheated her, every man that hadn’t rung back.

Why do I have this appearance?
Why do I have this personality?
Why did I have the life that I had?
Why is my friend Debbie happily married and living in three-storey detached house?
Why?

She felt anger and jealousy like she had never felt before– more emotion and raw feeling welled up inside her now than had ever done in that cold, slow torment that had been her other existence. She wanted answers, and all she got was the South Coast of England – the colour bleeding away from this fake world before her eyes. Silent and still, the world faded to black before her.

Lost and lonely, in death as in life.

“Samantha?”
She turned around. Before her, stood a black cloak – huge and foreboding. When it spoke, it was less a voice, more an echo that seemed to reverberate in your soul. She gripped the railings beside her in shock and stared into the face of death.
“Death?” There was that clarity again. There was shock – yes – but not fear. Not real fear. The figure seemed comforting, somehow. It was her only company in an empty landscape, and it held out its hand to her.

No one had ever wanted to take her hand before. Not ever. That anger was still there, brooding away just behind her eyes – but now there was some semblance of calm wafting through her. She felt security.

“Come with me”. That voice was like a death rattle.
“Where… where am I going? Am I going to Hell? I know… I know I didn’t believe but… but… I’ve always tried to be a good person”. She could tell she was rambling, and managed to stop herself. She wasn’t afraid, but she was nervous.

He stayed silent.

He turned away from her and began to walk down the pier. She hurried after him. All at once she suddenly tripped and fell to her knees and began to cry. She didn’t know exactly what it was she was crying for but… somehow… she just felt despair. All other emotions were washed away and were replaced with emptiness. Deep, choking buckets of despair that streamed down her cheeks and shook her entire body. Her vision began to blur from the tears, as she felt her glasses drop away from her face and clatter silently to the ground.

”Why? … Why did this happen to me? ... Why my life, why anything?” She reached out her hand and grabbed on to the end of his dark robe, pulling him back, trying to make him face the women he would condemn.

“What… was the point….of anything? Why did you give me this life?” The being stopped and turned to her and, with one swift movement, pulled her to her feet where she stood, trembling.
“Be quiet, my child. Take my hand and I will lead you away from this place”. Almost overwhelmed with her own emotions she took his hand and stared up into that empty, black hood that now offered her such comfort.
“Good”, he said “you’re suffering through Hell was only small compared to that of others but – for you – it was an endless torment from which you could find no escape. But now you have reached the end of that life, I have come to take you to a… another place”.
She stared, confused and uncertain, up into that face that she couldn’t see.
“When…when did I go through Hell? … I don’t remember that?”
“Of course you do. Surely you remember the last 32 years?”

And so Samantha took Deaths and moved on – moved on out of one life and into another. She didn’t know if where she was going was anywhere better than where she had left, because Death had given her no guarantee. She didn’t know if she was moving from one Hell and into another, or whether – maybe – she was going to a better place. A Heaven, of sorts.

She wouldn’t know until she got there. All she was knew that the whole point of this journey known as life was to walk the path presented to you, and find out where it leads.

Richard Hamer
20th March 2004