Free The Afterlife of Billy Fingers: How My Bad-Boy Brother Proved to Me There's Life After Death by Annie Kagan Page A

and smell and taste and touch.
    Before, when I was the Universe, I was in a nighttime sky, and my memories were see-through, like watercolor paint. I wasn't thinking about that until now that this new color thing is happening. There's that now thing again, so there's definitely some kind of time going on here. Like I had no body and now I have one. Time here has nothing to do with clocks or earth's turning. Here, time has to do with something being a certain way, and then a change. Moments are oceans ebbing and flowing and taking you with them. You're not waiting for the next one. You're just in the ride.
    My new eyes are looking up at something indescribably bright, but it's definitely not the Sun. The Sun is puny compared to this giant blue-white ball of light over my head. I'll try to describe it accurately. It's a giant sphere—so big I cannot see where it begins or ends—with rays shooting out of it, and the rays are as bright as the sphere. It's the best thing I've ever seen, alive or dead. It gives me this feeling, no, this experience—it's more like you have experiences here, not feelings—that everything I ever hoped was true, is true, and is even better than I could have imagined.
    So I'm standing under this blue-white sphere and a smiling radiant man comes along. I use the word“man” to let you know he isn't some other species or anything like that. Whether he's a man or a woman doesn't seem to matter much to me. He's also wearing a robe. I'm surprised by the robe because it's brown and looks like burlap. It's the most earth-like thing I've seen so far, so I'm guessing he has something to do with what goes on down where you are. I couldn't care less about his robe, really, because the radiance of his face is so spectacular.
    I don't know him, but he seems familiar. And although I don't remember ever meeting him before, I know his name is Joseph. His hair is silver, and I think he's an elder, but he's not old. His hands reach out towards me as he looks at me with the bluest eyes I've ever seen. I know it sounds corny and contrived, but it's not. It's brilliant and oddly familiar, like I'm being welcomed home from a long journey, only the land to which I've returned, well, I've forgotten how brilliant it is. Everything is waving with energy. That's a good way to describe it. It's all energy instead of matter.
    Joseph puts a book in my hands. It's not really a book, but let's call it a book for now. He just puts it in my hands and I can feel everything in it. It's such a privilege, such a gift. Gift is too small a word.
    I never thought of myself as smart, Annie. In fact, some of the brilliant teachers I've had tried to convince me I was stupid. I was never stupid. I just didn't go along with the party line. They were trying to spoon-feed me their interpretation of life, instead of letting me live and find things out for myself.
    Joseph looks down through a hole in a thick layer of clouds, which I now notice below us, and there you are sitting at your computer. And I know for certain that you and I are supposed to do this.
    I understand. This journey we're on together can get scary for you sometimes. Having your newly dead brother appear, talk to you, show you his world, and arrange synchronicities in the form of little clues to prove to you he is real—well, it's disorienting.
    Why is this happening? Because it can. Did you know that Harry Houdini spent years trying to contact other dimensions, looking for evidence of an afterlife? And even though he was the greatest magician ever, his attempts to communicate with the dead or contact the living after he died never succeeded. He was missing the essential ingredients—the right sender, the right receiver, and permission from those on this side of things.
    I know you don't want people to think you're flaky. I told you before; don't worry about what others might think. That's another important secret of life. Don't live by what you “ think” others think. You