Free The Monstrous Child by Francesca Simon Page B

We’re not exclusive. No VIP section. No velvet ropes.
    Welcome.
    My gate slams on your heels. Your name passes out of use like withered grass.
    Goodbye. Good riddance.
    You who are full of easy time, gloating and careless, singing in your chains –
    Remember.
    Everyone is mine at the end.
    *
    While we’re on the subject of death journeys, here’s a useful tip. Pack your jewels and inlaid shields and gold arm rings and ditch the rest. Because you would not believe the junk the deceased bring with them. Hams. Sheep’s heads. Apples. Mead buckets. Why? Did they think it was going to be one non-stop feast here? One eternal party with dancing bears and fighting? Swords, axes, brooches, pots, coins, cauldrons, grindstones, helmets, sickles, stools, goblets, horses, dogs, slaves, hawks. Thanks awfully for the silver spoon and I can always use another gold ring, but no thanks for the broken pots and bent swords.
    When the corpses find out that I take everything valuable they’ve brought for tribute – which is only fair, mind you; they are living here for eternity, the guests who never leave, the guests who stink like long-dead fish – they yell and scream even more. But what werethey hoping to buy – a new body?
    Once I’ve grabbed what I want, the gold and jewels to decorate my hall and fill my treasure rooms, I have the trash flung outside. Let them fight over it. They drift about rustling like dry leaves, gripping some old cup as if their life – ha ha – depended on it. I tell you, it’s like a grisly bring-and-buy sale held on a reeking rubbish tip.
    That One-Eye. What a mean trick he played on his followers, telling them that every man who died in battle would enter Valhall with as much wealth as he had on his pyre. What a death jest. What a liar.
    Those Valkyries nabbed everyone they needed in the time before time. Valhall’s doors are shut. The benches are full. No one can budge up at the nightly feast.
    Hero, you’re too late. I’m your hostess in the afterdeath.
    Hard luck.
    Bad fate.
    Yeah, whatever.
    You might as well drop that sword now and be a farmer. Forget the battle heroics and do something else. Because, whatever happens, you’re coming to me.
    Sorry to be the one to break the news, but at least this way you’ll be prepared for the inevitable rude welcome Chez Hel.
    *
    Some of you decide to stick around in your grave-mound, sitting blank-eyed and staring on your high chair, throttling any of the living who dare to break in to steal your treasure. Or, worse, you go haunting your former homes, savaging the sheep or scaring the Hel out of your family.
    If the living are wise, they’ll cover up any mirrors or water in their homes, in case the dead souls are drawn to their reflections and sneak inside to hang around Midgard a bit longer. I honestly don’t know why they bother. Is it really so much fun terrifying your family by creeping up the stairs or popping out of chests? What good does that do? You’re still dead. Face it: howevermuch they loved you in Midgard, they really don’t want you lurching about now.
    But even you restless ones finally descend to my dark kingdom, after those who have carved your name upon your gate posts have gone, and your memory slowly vanishes from the worlds. Then you’ll drift down the fog road to me.
    The mists of Niflheim and my beckoning voice will fill your grave barrow. Slowly you’ll sink to my world beneath the worlds. And ultimately you’ll join the oldest corpses, who flit like smoke. They stare with glaring eyes from which all speculation is banished, as one so-so poet once wrote. The dead live here in an everlasting past. Then present. Then …
    However, there is no point in complaining. I never listen. I just don’t care. You’re not happy? Go somewhere else. There’s a nice dragon I know who always needs feeding …
    I’ve told you too much. Far more than I intended. But storytellers get carried away. Words spill from unlocked word