Free Suicide Girls In The AfterLife by Gina Ranalli

Chapter 1
       Tramping through the electric forest on a rainy night is suicide.
   All around me, tin-foil trees glow silver-white, lightning branches scratching the belly of the black sky which thunder-purrs its pleasure and promises a newborn baby downpour.
   Still, the night birds are unfazed by the threatening weather. Back and forth, they sing static to each other and occasionally I get a glimpse of their comet eyes gazing down at me as I pass.
   I’m searching for the river of ice, watching where I step and composing a note in my head all at the same time. The note will never be written but I compose it just the same. It makes me feel better to be thinking as I try to avoid stepping on or tripping over any above-ground tree roots. That would be a careless, unappetizing way to die. And embarrassing. Then I’d be remembered not only as a failure at life, but a klutz too.
   Hence I walk carefully in the direction I know the river to be. It’s the distance that I’m unsure of. Day or night, this forest all looks the same, but at least it’s well lit. Sometimes blindingly bright, in fact, especially on a night like this. Everything is alive with anticipation: dead leaves on the ground crackle and pop, rocks buzz softly, flickering white veins across their surfaces, while two blue squirrels chase each other across my path and up a Sagewood tree, chattering drunken nonsense, trailing sparks.
   I increase my pace, knowing that the instant rain begins to fall, I’m fried. The entire forest will connect to itself and become a web of electricity, impossible to move through without catching more than a friendly volt.
   Tuning out the cacophony of the woods and listening beneath it, I at last hear the clunk clunk clunk of the river. Almost there.
   And then I hear the hiss of the first few droplets.
   Sprinting towards the river, dodging trees and leaping brush, I wonder if I’ll make it. Already, I can feel my hair coming alive, sizzling on my head and reaching for the sky. Moving too fast to avoid a low branch, my shoulder grazes it and I yelp as a jolt shoots all the way down my arm to my fingertips.
   Fuck.
   I get zapped yet again by misjudging the width between two boulders but I can see the river now, shining like diamonds a mere ten yards away.
   Filled with hope at the sight, I dash forward, eyes frantically scanning the trees that live at the very lip of the river, seeking a low enough branch…a long enough branch.
   The forest hums louder, grows brighter, as the rain makes contact with its spitting hide and I am sure to die.
   But then there is a Brain tree, some of its skeletal roots dancing blurs above the river and I am airborne, grasping the longest vine and flying out over the ice just as the forest goes super-nova and I burn blind.
     
     

Chapter 2
       “Upsy daisy.”
   I ignore the male voice, comfortable in my slumber.
   “Ms. Pogue Eldridge,” the voice announces loudly. “Your immediate presence at the Sterling Hotel is humbly requested.”
   Annoyed, I try to roll over but for some reason find myself paralyzed. To make matters worse, someone—the owner of the voice, I presume—starts tugging my left arm in a further attempt to get me up.
   Opening my eyes, I intend to snarl at the stranger, but when I see where I am, all words are momentarily lost to me: in the river, up to my waist in thousands of square ice cubes.
   It’s daylight now and all around me the forest still sputters here and there, happy in its afterglow. The tentacle branch that I grabbed lies nearby, severed from the Brain tree, though the tree itself is no longer at the river’s edge. The ice has carried me downstream a ways, though not far, given its lazy glacial pace.
   “We need to get you out of there,” says the man gripping my arm. He’s an older guy—sixties perhaps—handsome and dressed in an immaculate white suit that matches his