by Virginia Watts

Short Story published by South Florida Poetry Journal

You think you would be cooling down, growing colder, when you are newly dead. It turns out. That’s not true. You are hot. Your lips spark as you set them gently and absent-mindedly together. Absent-mindedly, because there is nothing alarming about being newly dead. You arrive to this state as a matter of fact.

 At first, it is fun having a body that is hotter than it ever was before. If you smack your lips, you set off an endless light show of orangey red fireworks. Same thing when you blink rapidly. Little fire tears fly out and fall. A special glitter.

Here’s another kicker. You can still breathe during the first seconds of being newly dead. Don’t waste those seconds. I didn’t. I had an instinct. I sucked in air, closed my mouth, clamped my hands over where I thought my ears might still be and blew with great force through my nose. In other words, I became a dragon. Who doesn’t want to be mythical at a time like this.

That’s some of what I was doing newly dead. My car was there with me, accordioned as it was, a crumpled tin can spinning on its roof like an out of whack compass needle. An object about to explode near the concrete wall of an abandoned tuna fish processing plant.

The authorities would find nothing left of me, not even my teeth. Or maybe they did compare bite marks. I’ll never know. I had to leave. We have only a few minutes before we are fully dead.

Wonder why I chose a tuna fish processing plant? It was the stories-high tuna painted on the side of the building. The different shades of blue curving her fins. She was so realistic and entrancing. She served as a bullseye. I aimed straight for her gaping mouth. Someone added long eyelashes to the fish’s googlies and some Betty Boop cherry red lips. That fish looked like a cheerful, irreverent honkytonk pick up. At peace with her life choices. A person with two names for a first name, like Ruby-Jo. 

I know, enough about the fish.

Okay, so I was dead. Newly dead. I had seconds to go some special place before one of the celestials vacuumed me aboard. I’ll just tell you that part now and get it over with. What happens when we die? The biggest mystery faced by mankind. Pretty simple. We do go straight up, but not that way. We return to dark space. To the combustion of stars. In other words, we return to our incendiary elements.

Know this. You won’t be surprised in the least by the last earthly spot you stop by before you are fully dead. 

I did make one pit stop. The last known address of a person I’d been close to. I wondered what he was up to. He was actually in bed having sex and for a second or two, I folded my energy into the woman’s frame so I could look up at him. He was definitely in the moment.

They were talking too much. A new relationship. He peered down into our eyes. Didn’t miss a beat. Didn’t notice anything suddenly amiss and familiar. Just her there, under him. He’d forgotten all about me, heart wise. I whispered an apology no one heard and left. 

The last place I went? My old high school football stadium. A frigid wind battered my cheeks. Whistled though the bones of silver bleachers. Golden stadium lights stood facing each other like titans in opposing end zones. My footsteps crunched over a decayed running track, then all sound was smothered by the field’s wet grass. I walked to the middle of the fifty yard line and stopped.

 As a live person, a girl of sixteen and seventeen, all I could ever think about when I was inside that massive concrete structure were the stars in the oval cutout of space above my world. I was obsessed with them or maybe, they were obsessed with me. The few random photos that still exist of me there are of my chin, tilted back. Strange girl. Constantly looking up. Now, as nearly dead, I finally understood why.

Copyright © 2021 Virginia Watts. All rights reserved.