Free On the Edge of Twilight: 22 Tales to Follow You Home by Gregory Miller Page A

Eden was lonely. He was also dead. Yet the loneliness was not that which most of the dead-and-left had felt since humanity’s first tentative steps in the metaphorical garden that was his namesake. It was a loneliness the depth and breadth of which few had ever experienced, and none with any sense would wish to.
    For the multitude, death was not so bad. Many enjoyed it, Eden thought with bitterness. But he had died under violent circumstances, and although the theories of the living rarely came close to approaching the true nature of life after death, some few individuals had embraced one during his lifetime that had turned out to be disconcertingly true: those who died unhappily, and under certain traumatic conditions, were bound indefinitely to the mortal plane: ghosts. And ghosts, in Eden’s experience, were all unhappy. Some people who truly loved life remained partially behind after their body’s demise to cherish the world a short time longer before moving on, but they weren’t true ghosts: a healthy portion of their being had already achieved transcendence, and only a vague essence remained for a time before joining it. True ghosts, the “lifers” as one of his incorporeal companions once ironically termed it, were in the majority, and they all suffered.
    To Eden, it seemed the time immediately following death was cheerless for ghosts, either because of the paths their lives had taken, or because of the way those paths had ended: a secret shame, a raging regret, murder, a car accident, drowning; any facet of life or death that made moving on seem more impossible than the suffering which thrust them into ghosthood to begin with. The instinctual need to remain , to make right, was very difficult for the Afterworld to reconcile; thus, it often did not. If strong enough, need could overwhelm the natural beck and call of higher dimensions, and Eden’s need was very great.
    Looking up at the bright, distant light of the stars and planets, he sighed, and the sigh was such that a thin wind sprang up in a cyclonic eddy before him and moved off down the barren plain. Unhappiness was not stationary: the range of its levels was great, and one manifestation could quickly take the place of another, or, even worse, join with it as two strong brothers often join up against a less fortunate only child.
    He thought of the second manifestation of his sadness: how, gradually, once the sting of his own murder had worn off, the uneasy, hollow desire for revenge began to gnaw at his thoughts. Roughly two years after his death, Eden had visited his knife-handy wife for the first time since his funeral. Preparing for bed, Sarah had opened the bedroom closet to grab a bathrobe, and shaken hands with his cold, clammy hand instead. Her scream was music to his ears, and for the next fifty-seven years Eden enjoyed the various ranges Sarah’s worn vocal chords could achieve when frightened. When she finally expired at the respectable age of ninety-three, having outlived the integrity of most of her vital organs by a number of years, his former wife had been near-catatonic for over a decade and raving mad for another before that, locked away in an asylum on the outskirts of Baltimore.
    Yet following the conclusion of his vigorously-undertaken revenge, loneliness set in, as it does for all who don’t belong where they are. Figuring eternity was a long time to deal with depression without Prozac, therapy, or even the option of suicide, Eden began devising ways to cheer himself.
    * * *
    Eden struck a hard, pocked deposit that lay near the tips of his phantasmic tendrils. It clattered unevenly down the barren plain, kicking up sharp, orange sparks. He waited while the sound faded, the sparks went out, and the rock fell still again. He had been around so long, learned so much, that the ability to move physical objects was ingrained, like breathing had once been.
    He thought again of Sarah, and how long it had been since their last post-death