Free Suicide Girls In The AfterLife by Gina Ranalli Page A

hair and trimmed beard exactly. “Have to get you checked in.”
   “Am I dead?” I ask.
   “You’re dead weight, I can tell you that.” He continues pulling at me.
   “I don’t feel cold. I’m dead right?”
   He pauses in his struggle. “What do you think?”
   I shrug. “I hope so. I tried to kill myself last night.”
   He straightens up, crosses his arms and clucks disapprovingly. “Suicides are a classless bunch. Now, get yourself out of that ice. We don’t have all day.”
   Without thinking about it, I obey him, climbing out of the river and standing on top of it, facing him. I notice his eyes are the same shade of blue as the playful squirrels I saw the night before.
   “That’s better,” he says. “Now, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Salvadore. I will be your escort to the Sterling Hotel and I suggest we get a move on. You have a reservation.”
“I do?”
   “You do.” He offers me his arm. “Shall we?”
   
     

Chapter 3
       Salvadore leads me through the electric forest until I’m completely disoriented. East, west? I don’t know, and Salvadore isn’t saying. For a while, I assume we’re lost, but he assures me that he knows exactly where we’re headed. The Sterling Hotel, of course. Wherever that is.
   I still have no clue where we are when we finally make our way out, but it’s nowhere I recognize. A hot dusty road, dry despite last night’s rain, quiet but for the sound of chirping insects. Huge cliffs on either side, lined with enormously tall, purple-leafed Sagewoods. Up ahead, a stone tunnel, its throat yawning and cavity-black.
   “Are we going in there?”
   “It’s the only way there is,” Salvadore says matter-of-factly.
   “Well, are there any sidewalks? There’s none out here. What if a car comes?”
   “No car will come.”
   I frown. “How do you know?”
   “Look.” He jerks a thumb behind us and, confused, I turn and immediately see what he means by ‘the only way there is.’
   There’s nothing there.
   No road, no cliffs, no trees.
   Nothing.
   Behind us lays a vast white emptiness, a new canvas without borders. No left, no right. No up, no down. Just white nothing, snug up to our backs.
   My heart stammers. “What the hell…what’s going on?”
   Indifferent, Salvadore reaches into an inner pocket of his pristine white jacket and pulls out a small roll of candy. He pops one into his mouth and offers me the roll. “Life Saver?”
   I stare at him.
   He shakes the candy. “It’s green,” he says temptingly. “Fungus flavor.”
   “Salvadore, where did the road go?”
   Deciding he’d like the green candy for himself, he deftly flips it from the roll and into his mouth before returning the Life Savers to his pocket.
   “Salvadore?”
   “Now is all there is,” he tells me with a small smile. “It’s best not to give it much thought. Just come along. We need to get you checked in.”
   We resume our journey but I’ve only gone five or six steps when I sneak a glance back and see the white again. Fascinated, I turn around and retrace my steps, peering into the nothing for some sense of…something. There’s a moment when I think I see movement in there, in the nothing, and I stop, straining my eyes. And then I see it again, a flickering flash, white on purest white and I reach out my hand, wanting to touch the motion despite a sudden and distinct chill that surrounds me.
   “No!” Salvadore has come up beside me once more, swatting my hand away. “You don’t want to do that, Pogue.”
   “Why not? What’s in there?”
   He opens his mouth as if to speak, then closes it again. “Come on. We need to—”
   “Get me checked in, I know, but…” I look at the wall of white and then back at him. “You’re not going to tell me?”
   “There’s nothing to tell. Now, come. Look, we’re