I was the first one of my friends to die. I didn’t even notice until my roommate didn’t come home, and I went to ask our neighbor if she had seen her. My neighbor who used to be a very nice old woman was now a guy that was around my age.

“Hey newbie! How are you holding up?” That was the first thing he said to me. I didn’t even know his name, but he was assuming I was new to the apartment building I had lived in for over three years. Needless to say, that threw me off.

“I’m sorry. What? Actually no I really don’t care. Have you seen my roommate anywhere?”

“Oh no one’s been by to tell you the news have they?” And that’s how I found out that I was dead. I was living in the same city but I could only see the dead, and only the dead could see me. The guy, Ryan, was pretty nice, even if he was overly blunt. He showed me the ups and downs of death. For example, we didn’t have to pay for food, but we didn’t have to eat it either because we never got hungry.

Everything was fine for a month or so. Ryan and I became friends, and while I got homesick every once in a while, I was adjusting really well to the afterlife. Things got weird again when Ryan and I were hanging out in my apartment and suddenly we realised we weren’t alone in the room. Lizzie, my old roommate (back when I was alive) was sitting on a red chair, shimmering in the corner with a glass of wine in her hand. She gradually became more solid and when she came to, she gasped and the glass fell to the ground. As it shattered, the room was filled with the smell of fermented grapes, but something didn’t smell quite right.

“Denise?” she asked. “What on earth is going on? Am I going crazy?”

“No, Liz, you’re not crazy. But I… I do have some bad news to tell you.”

“Bad news? Denise you aren’t dead! How could any news be bad news right now?”

“Oh no. No, honey. I am dead. The bad news is that you are too. That’s why you’re here.” When Lizzie started to laugh, I understood how crazy it must’ve seemed, but I knew she would come around eventually. “There’s one thing that I really need to ask you. Do you remember what you were doing right before you got here?”

“I was just drowning my sorrows like I do every night.”

“When did you start getting drunk every night?” I couldn’t help but be concerned. She never had more than one glass of wine. And she only drank at dinner.

“After you died,” she said. That one dug deep, but I couldn’t dwell on it, because I needed to know what had killed my twenty three year-old, health nut best friend. I nodded.

“What’s the last thing you remember, Liz?”

“Coming home from work, grabbing the bottle of wine off of the counter and a glass, and then sitting in this chair. I can’t remember anything after the first few sips. Why does it matter?”

“You don’t think its strange that both of us died within a month of each other?” I asked, “ I mean at first I thought that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time when they mugged me but what if they were going after me specifically? And you were obviously poisoned-”

“Poisoned?” She squeaked.

“Obviously,” Ryan interjected, “Do you remember leaving the wine bottle on the counter before you went to work?”

“No… No I don’t. Who are you?”

“I’m Ryan. I live next door.”

“Oh. And you’re…”

“Dead. Yeah. You’ll get used to it. It’s kinda fun.” Lizzie stared at Ryan for a little while before I decided it was time for us to move on.

“It really does get to be kind of fun. Get this: Everything is free. So yada yada yada. I’m so sorry you’re dead, but I’m also really glad you’re here. Now lets go exploring!”


Over the next few months, three more of our friends found their way into our lovely post mortem city. Gracie found Lizzie and I while we were walking in the park a few blocks away from our apartment. Her cause of death was a car accident. Brooke was kidnapped and killed. Alice was the last to show up. She jumped off of the highest building she could find after she realised that we were being picked off one by one. She was the last and she had all of the answers. We had gone to a frat party during our freshman year and were the only ones who left the party sober. We saw something we weren’t supposed to while we were on our way back to the dorms. There were very few street lights on the road we decided to take. The lights from each one only spanned a few feet, and the rest of the sidewalk was bathed in a dark so deep that we held hands as we walked so we wouldn’t lose each other. We were scared. We were five freshmen, wearing dresses and heels that we couldn’t run in, making our way slowly down a street we didn’t recognise. It was early October and most of the campus was still foreign to us. Our only comfort came from Alice who had training in self defense and Gracie who was taller than most with a sturdy build. She was the mother bear of the pack and when she was around we felt a very false sense of security. As we walked we heard voices coming from somewhere within the dark void. Whoever they were, they were having a very passionate argument. We weren’t close enough to hear what they were arguing about but their tone made us sure that we didn’t want to interrupt it. One of the voices faded and the argument seemed to die so we figured we would just keep walking. When the gunshot went off, we were standing in a pool of light, totally visible with no where to run. We stumbled to a halt and a voice called out to us.

“Can you see me?” the voice asked. We could see him, but Alice shook her head and called out a very feeble “no”.

“Good. I hope you aren’t lying. I’m going to go away now. You are all going to stay in that light and count to a hundred before you move a single muscle. Then you’re going to go home, and go to sleep, and forget this happened. Pretend it was dream. Do not tell anyone. I will know if you tell and I will hurt you. If you never tell a soul, then you will be safe,” We all nodded with tears sliding down our faces. “Start counting.”

After we counted to a hundred, we took a moment to compose ourselves. I was the first to speak. “Gracie? Do you mind if we all crash in your and Alice’s dorm tonight?”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Gracie whispered. She steered us down a side street so that we wouldn’t have to see what ever mess the strange man had left behind. We got back to the dorm sometime between two and three AM. All of our rooms were on the same floor, so we split up long enough to change into our pajamas and grab a few blankets and pillows. We met in Gracie’s room and sat in a circle on the floor.

“I know that we aren’t supposed to talk about it, but I think we need to clear some stuff up first,” Lizzie said, “We were standing in the light. He saw us. He knows our faces. I think its best if we take an oath not to speak a word of this to anyone. We don’t know anything about him. He could be anywhere. Honestly, I don’t care what he did. Our safety is most important. We don’t need to worry about the police because they will never know we were there. If we don’t say anything then we’re safe. He said it. I say we go with it.”

“I agree completely,” I mumbled. She stuck her hand out in front of her.

“Hands in.” One by one, our hands formed a stack in the middle of the circle. We all fell asleep in a pile on the floor as the sun was rising. A scratching noise pulled me from my sleep at 11. Brooke was scribbling furiously in her journal. I was only awake for a second, and I never really thought about it until Brooke was sitting in front of me in the afterlife.

We were all there. Together again and sitting in a circle on the floor of my apartment, the way we used to when we were in college. After that night, we never spoke about it. We all had ways of dealing with our trauma. Alice took up more self defense lessons, Gracie got really into running and hot yoga, Lizzie joined a sorority, Brooke got back into writing after what seemed like years of writers block. I personally chose to study a lot and got a job in the cafe on campus. One day, Brooke left her journal in class. She didn’t notice until much later, but when she couldn’t find it she got really worried. We all told her that it would be okay. Lizzie even got her a new journal. It didn’t occur to any of us to think that it was the journal that she had written in on the night of the accident. She never found the journal. The journal made its way from hand to hand until it found the one person that Brooke hoped would never see the entry. Thus, we all came about our demise. I died walking home from work. They beat me, stole all of my stuff, and stabbed me right in the heart. It only took a few minutes for me to bleed to death, but they were the most painful minutes of my very short life. Lizzie was poisoned in her apartment. She died drinking her favorite wine. I wish I had died that way. Gracie died in the hospital three days after a horrible car accident. She could have lived, but at the end of her stay, someone unplugged her ventilator and she slipped from that world into the world we all occupy now. Brooke had the worst death of us all. She was kidnapped. She doesn’t know what happened in the time between her kidnapping and her death. We believe she was heavily drugged and possibly raped before they killed her and left her body in the desert. Alice was the last to die, but at least she got to go out on her own terms. She had always wanted to go skydiving and figured that jumping off a building without a parachute (or anything to catch her at the bottom) was the best way to die. So she went to the highest roof that she could get access to and flung herself over the edge.

Our story is horrible and sad, but luckily it’s over and we truly are in a better place. There’s nothing to be scared of here. We’ve already faced death and have nothing left to fear.