I died right before my 21st birthday… like the very hour before.\u00a0 I was fucking pissed.\u00a0 Well I wasn’t pissed in the British sense of the word, and that made me pissed in the American sense of the word.\u00a0 I should have died drunk, but being the good little boy I was, I had never had a drink or sip or smell of an alcoholic drink.<\/p>\n
Yep, I died… um… dead sober at 20 years, 364 days, and 11 hours.<\/p>\n
Why so specific?\u00a0 Fuck, I don’t know.\u00a0 Someone, somewhere, has a sense of humor.\u00a0 And whoever it is, I fucking hate the guy.\u00a0 Of course, that means it is probably the big guy in the sky.\u00a0 And welp, that would be just my luck.\u00a0 My shitty horrible terrible disastrous luck.<\/p>\n
So you may be asking how the hell is a dead guy writing all this out right now?\u00a0 Because of my cosmic luck.\u00a0 Let me back up… to the day I died.<\/p>\n
I woke up suddenly with a killer headache.\u00a0 Which wasn’t much of a surprise considering the amazing thing I had just escaped.\u00a0 Escape, perhaps not the best word choice, but at least a horrible amount of humiliation I would have received if it had happened.\u00a0 I came to as a witness to a very lively scene.\u00a0 There were two crowds watching said scene.\u00a0 The first crowd happened to be normal people just passing by… going shopping, running errands, on to get their prostrates checked, you know, herding themselves along like cattle.\u00a0 The first crowd tended to just circle the scene in abject horror, mouths agape, mothers shielding the eyes of their progeny, some men calling 999, others puking into the gutter.<\/p>\n
The second crowd wasn’t really a crowd, per se.\u00a0 More like a few interested parties.\u00a0 They stood in a small cluster, pointing and laughing, with drinks in hand, giving each other high fives and making brash puns and jokes.\u00a0 If the contrast between the two crowds is shocking to you, imagine how I felt.\u00a0 I was lying down in the middle of this odd and crazy scene.<\/p>\n
An introduction is needed.\u00a0 The leader of the second crowd was one Charles Mann. Most folks just called him Chuck, a fewer number called him Mary.\u00a0 Chuck is the first one that caught my eye.\u00a0 Mostly because of the extremely rude jokes he was making, and also because the rest of the crowd (the shocked ones) paid his lewd and disturbing comments no mind.\u00a0 That is because they couldn’t hear him.\u00a0 Or see him. Chuck was dead.<\/p>\n
A ghost.\u00a0 A specter.\u00a0 A man from beyond the grave.\u00a0 A dead man laughing.<\/p>\n
He quickly noticed my stare, and giggling all the more, he excused himself from his onlookers and headed over to me.\u00a0 I would like to tell you that he pushed and jostled his way over to me, but he just kind of passed through everyone in the way, leaving a trail of shivering people in his wake.<\/p>\n
“WELL, THAT WAS GREAT, DOUG!”\u00a0 He said rambunctiously. “I mean damn.\u00a0 No, I mean DAMN!\u00a0 That was great.\u00a0 I feel in need of immediate feedback to your great person-hood with a simple enjoyable clap.\u00a0 Bravo.\u00a0 Braaaaaa-vo!”<\/p>\n
He furiously clapped his hands together and tossed in a few whistles for good measure.\u00a0 I tried to lift my head to look at him, but I found it pretty difficult to move.\u00a0 I tried to look to my left shoulder, and slowly things rotated, revealing nothing but an old wad of chewing gum and more spectators.\u00a0 I tried to roll my head backwards, it lolled like a rag doll, and I could make out nothing more than I already had.\u00a0 So I looked straight up.\u00a0 As I saw it, looking right was going to be a hassle, and getting up seemed right out.\u00a0 So I let my head fall back to a neutral position and looked up, which seemed like a completely rational choice.<\/p>\n
It was a mistake.<\/p>\n
There, hanging very precariously, was a dead, limp body.\u00a0 Hanging.\u00a0 From the back of an elephant.\u00a0 Yes you read that right.\u00a0 A dead body, covered in shit, hanging from the back of an elephant.\u00a0 The elephant was still alive.\u00a0 And in obvious distress.\u00a0 I mean, come on, it had a human head stuck in it’s anus.<\/p>\n
Then it dawned on me that I was looking at myself.\u00a0 Or what was me.\u00a0 A 20 year old stage hand, helping a trainer with a live elephant for a bit of practice.\u00a0 A very dead me was swinging back and forth from the elephant’s ass, the neck at a very odd angle.\u00a0 It didn’t look healthy.\u00a0 But it wasn’t healthy, because I was dead.<\/p>\n
I am dead.\u00a0 And the elephant is screaming because it has a foreign object lodged in its ass.\u00a0 Everyone knows how painful a hard shit is, it feels like something is ripping its way out as you strain over the bowl, but this poor elephant couldn’t get its painful ripper to pass. So it trumpeted, and stamped, and tried to quickly move in a circle.\u00a0 It was restrained by its trainer, so instead it was forced to swing its shoulders, causing a chain reaction of swinging, culminating in a dead body twisting and swaying like a pendulum.\u00a0 I won’t even bother describing the grinding noise my neck was making.<\/p>\n
No wonder bystanders where puking.\u00a0 I would have too.\u00a0 Chuck reached out and offered me his hand.\u00a0 I took it slowly, my body coming to, the senses flooding back down my limbs.\u00a0 I was all pins and needles as everything woke up.\u00a0 Chuck started pumping my hand as soon as I was on my feet.\u00a0 I still felt detached.\u00a0 I knew my head was attached to my body and definitely not broken, but the horror next to me kept making me feel like I needed to swallow.<\/p>\n
“Very good to meet you Doug, my friend!\u00a0 The name is Charles Mann, but you can call me Chuck.\u00a0 Like the beaver.\u00a0 Or woodchuck?\u00a0 Whatever.” He said.<\/p>\n
“I… uh…”\u00a0 I tried to say something intelligent, but nothing seemed to want to come out.\u00a0 My mouth was open.\u00a0 Oooooohhhh… this is what going into shock feels like.\u00a0 I had always wondered.<\/p>\n
“Thinking about spoons?\u00a0 Spoons, eh?\u00a0 Or forks?\u00a0 When I ‘passed on’, for some strange reason I thought about swiss army knives.\u00a0 No idea why.\u00a0 When I passed on the mantle of life, as it were, I could not stop thinking about pocket knives.\u00a0 My consultant said that I was a rarity indeed. She was a spoon person herself, like most folks.”\u00a0 He said.<\/p>\n
“Spoons?”\u00a0 Actually, I did wake up thinking about spoons.\u00a0 Silver ones.\u00a0 From my aunt’s house out in Liechester.\u00a0 The little souvenir ones that are completely useless for anything else but gathering dust. “Yeah… little silver ones.”<\/p>\n
“Nothing like a silver spoon! Ha!”\u00a0 He clapped me on the back.\u00a0 “Welcome to world, you were born with a silver spoon in your head.\u00a0 And your head… well… your head has seen better sights.”<\/p>\n
“Yeah.\u00a0 I think it has.”<\/p>\n
“So Doug.\u00a0 How’s it hanging?”\u00a0 Chuck started laughing hysterically.\u00a0 Peals of laughter.\u00a0 It was a good laugh, infectious. “Don’t worry about too much.\u00a0 That sad sack of meat up there isn’t you.\u00a0 Your you.\u00a0 That meat sack up there will be the source of hilarious and entertaining stories for years to come, but for you, it was just a speed bump, my friend.”<\/p>\n
“Uh, yeah.”\u00a0 I tried to look away.\u00a0 I did.\u00a0 I seriously tried.<\/p>\n
“Look on the bright side, Doug… at least you didn’t die from humiliation!”<\/p>\n
“That happens?” I asked.<\/p>\n
“Oh, a fair amount.\u00a0 Plenty of people die every day.\u00a0 People choke on Jello.\u00a0 Which makes the wake awkward, because some fool always has to brings a jello salad.\u00a0 Nasty things, aren’t they.\u00a0 And then no one knows what to say.\u00a0 Every Jello-toting great aunt is a right bastard anyway. Am I right?”<\/p>\n
“I guess?”<\/p>\n
“Right.\u00a0 Now all these folks are in a quandary.\u00a0 Look at them all, scratching their heads.\u00a0 How exactly does one pull the head out?\u00a0 Do you grab the feet and yank really hard?\u00a0 Or do you leverage against the elephant’s ass cheeks and push at the corpse’s shoulders?”<\/p>\n
“I would have just pulled.”\u00a0 I said.\u00a0 I was still confused, give me a break.<\/p>\n
“Me too.\u00a0 Too funny.\u00a0 Let’s ‘shuffle’ off.\u00a0 Ready?”<\/p>\n
“What about your friends?”\u00a0 I asked.<\/p>\n
“Oh, they have all moved on by now.\u00a0 Come along, Doug.\u00a0 Let’s expand our horizons, shall we?”<\/p>\n
“Wait a tic.\u00a0 I am naked.”<\/p>\n
“Why, yes, you are.”<\/p>\n
“Where the hell are my clothes?”<\/p>\n
Chuck smiled and pointed a thumb over his shoulder at my corpse.\u00a0 “Right over there.”<\/p>\n
“How can I get them off the other… me?”\u00a0 I said sheepishly.<\/p>\n
“You can’t, Doug.\u00a0 Someone out there thought that every person enters the world naked, and that is how they should exit it.\u00a0 So welcome to the world.\u00a0 Happy Deathday!”\u00a0 He tossed me an envelope and then for some bizarre reason turned away modestly.<\/p>\n
The envelope had my name hastily scratched onto the front, with my middle name included.\u00a0 I flipped it over, and instead of a standard closure, it had a small red pull cord, labelled… what else?\u00a0 Pull.<\/p>\n
I yanked on it, and with a cough of an old dying man, the envelope unfolded into something that looked like a Japanese Ghi.\u00a0 I pulled the pants on quickly, and pulled the front together as best I could.<\/p>\n
“Sandals and the belt are in the front pocket.” Chuck called over his shoulder.<\/p>\n
“It all fits.”\u00a0 I commented.<\/p>\n
“Of course it all fits.\u00a0 Everything always fits.”\u00a0 He was looking at the corpse again, and started chuckling, ending in a small trailing sigh.<\/p>\n
Happy Deathday, indeed. Happy Fucking Deathday to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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