Free Forever After (a dark and funny fantasy novel) by David Jester

with an incessant whirring sound before halting with an expectant click. A small shutter flipped open across its surface like a Jack-in-the-box preparing for a jovial surprise.
                  Michael placed his timer inside. The shutter closed, the machine whirred. A succession of electronic sounds followed, overlapping the background purr.
                  An automated voice leapt from the invisible walls, bouncing around the room like an echo with no origin.
                  “Failure to collect souls will result in a warning and deducted pay,” the gender neutral voice announced in monosyllables. “Repeated mistakes will result in demotion.”
                  Michael sniggered under a snarl. “You can’t demote me any fucking further,” he mumbled under his breath.
                  “The deceased remains unaccounted for,” the voice continued.
                  The whirring stopped, one final beep, like the sound of an arriving elevator, sounded and the shutters of the noisy box sprang open, revealing Michael’s timer.
                  Michael took the device, dropped it back into his pocket and exited the room before the automated voice could offer its preprogramed message of salutation.
                 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    5
     
     
                  Martin Atkinson’s body festered where it lay, feeding the maggots and have-a-go scavengers on the edge of the park. The whereabouts of his soul was as big of a mystery to Michael as the people who killed him. Human victims were clear, their hidden lives, their potential deaths and their darkest secrets were usually revealed just as quickly as their eye colour or their accent. But the undead, of which there seem to be so many, were as opaque as the night.
                  “Good morning!”
                  A smiling vicar passed Michael on the winding footpath, nodding pleasantly as his incense-scented aroma wafted by. Michael didn’t return the greeting.
                  He didn’t believe in God or religion when he was alive and still wasn’t too sure in death. The vicar, a man who had never glimpsed the afterlife and had spent the majority of his adult years preaching about a martyr he would never meet and praying to a God he wasn’t sure existed, probably knew more about the afterlife than Michael; a man who had been dead for thirty years.
                  Michael liked religious people, it took a certain type of dedication to devote your life to an ideal and it usually created a pleasant and peaceful character, but Michael knew Reverend Edwards, there was nothing pleasant or peaceful about him. The only good thing about his existence was that it would be over within the decade.
                  He sat down on a bench and watched the vicar disappear out onto the street; waving to people he passed on the pavement, chatting jovially to the ones friendly enough to stop.
                  Michael turned away in disgust. The Reverend had a history. He had more skeletons in his closet than Dennis Nilsen; because the holiest man in town had, in his youth, gotten away with rape, robbery and assault, and currently spent his days dreaming up plans to get into the pants of his eleven year old step daughter. A few years from now he would find a way into her pants, right before she found the machete he hid under his bed and used it to hack him into Michael’s hands. If Michael still had his job by then that was -- he couldn’t be certain of anything in a world he barely understood.
                  The dark ones had an energy that was unmistakable and made them easier to read. They stood out likes flares in the darkness. Their deaths and their lives had a bigger impact on the lives and deaths of others, thus weaving an illuminating web.