Free Orpheus and the Pearl & Nevermore by Kim Paffenroth

didn’t react to his glower, merely
pushed the glass toward him and said, “Have at it then.”
    Just for that, Malcolm took a thick gulp. It
tasted slightly sweet. He looked into the glass. “What’s with
this?”
    “ It’s scotch.” Jean looked
at him. “What do you see?”
    “ I see you,” Malcolm
muttered.
    “ Hmm.” Jean sat back and
yawned. “I am very drunk.”
    “ You good to drive?”
Malcolm asked Ray.
    “ Sure. You ready to call
it a night, then?”
    “ I think so.” Malcolm got
up and fished for his wallet. “I had a nice time. I did. It’s
fine.”
    “ I’m going to come by
tomorrow,” Bonnie said, but Malcolm knew she was coming for Ray,
and offered only a sullen nod in response.
    The sky split the moment they walked
outside. Malcolm was soaked to the bone before he made it to the
car.
     
    “Are you really okay?” Ray asked.
    “ As good as it gets.”
Malcolm fell onto his bed and pressed his palms to his temples.
“You sure about taking the couch?”
    “ I sleep on the couch in
my office most nights,” Ray said. “Do you drink that much very
often?”
    “ Never again,” was all
Malcolm said. “Never again.”
    The door closed. “Never again,” he
whispered, and slipped into a sea of black clouds.
     
    11:07 PM
     
    His first awareness was of the fact that he
was dead.
    It was a simple truth, and
he could not articulate in his thoughts how he knew, except that he
knew he was nothing but thought. There was no sensation. The darkness of
sleep had given way to a storm of white light, light he wasn’t
really seeing so much as he was being permeated by it. What
substance he had was less than a mote, and the light had absorbed
him.
    He knew he was dead, but
he didn’t know where he was, or if here was even a place. There was no
point of reference, no sense of orientation. Maybe he didn’t exist
in places anymore. Maybe he was reduced to something that had no
fixture in any dimension. Maybe he had joined a great
nothing.
    But the light was there, and it was real,
and then there came a dull sense of something behind the light, a
rising cacophony that unsettled his awareness. He couldn’t
concentrate on whatever it was, couldn’t discern its nature or
source. All was chaos. If he could have, Malcolm would have
screamed.
    No senses. No body. He was
suddenly keenly aware of the lack of Malcolm . No prickling flesh, no
tired bones, no pulsing veins or swelling lungs. There was no
pounding heart or surging adrenaline. He supposed that was why he
felt so still despite his utter confusion.
    But that thrumming chaos
was building around him, and unease was growing in his being. It
was a discordant sea of sound— sound! It was sound he perceived,
vibrations bombarding him from every direction, as with the light.
The sound of the living world. He had it now: a ticking clock. The
settling building. The changing pressure in the walls. Mites
scrabbling through carpet fibers. And falling rain.
    He focused on the rain, giving him a point
of reference. Rain on the roof overhead. Slowly but surely, those
less significant noises retreated into the background. It felt like
he was really hearing the rain now. And the particles of light
about him began to fade.
    His mental focus was giving him sight now.
He recognized the outlines of his bedroom. His perspective was at
eye level, as if he still had eyes in a head on a body. And, though
his focus was narrowing, he sensed that he had a full 360-degree
view of the room, if he wanted it. Malcolm wondered at it all. If
he’d been screaming, the scream would have died, and been replaced
by a gentle, disbelieving laugh.
    He was at the foot of his bed, and there
before him lay his dead body.
    The clock read nine past eleven. He wondered
how long he had been dead. Time seemed as alien to him now as
gravity or temperature. As alien as the sack of flesh lying prone
on the bed. For the first time he saw himself as others must have.
His still-clothed body lay atop