You’re In The Spirit World Now - Ch. 1

Montgomery Combs was dead and couldn’t decide how he felt about it.

You’re in the Spirit World Now Chapter 1 Audio

Sure, the experience of floating above his fresh corpse had been decidedly disconcerting. One minute he had been at the desk in his office, sipping a glass of scotch and going through the files of a recent case, and the next he was looking down at his body, blood leaking from the bullet hole in the back of his head to mingle with the spilled scotch. Judging by the amount of blood he supposed it had been longer than a minute. Time gets fuzzy when you’re dead. He had looked around for his murderer but they were long gone.

On the other hand, being dead kind of felt great. The persistent twinge that had plagued his lower back for the last ten years had disappeared with his corporal form. Along with the back pain, the hum of a constant stress headache he hadn’t even realized he’d been living with was gone. He felt like he could think clearly for the first time in who knows how long. His whole life maybe? That sounded right. And it was with that newfound clarity that he was able to tell he had been lying to himself. He knew exactly how he felt about being dead.

He was pissed. Pissed that some cowardly asshole shot him from behind, sending him off to the great beyond with one last mystery as if he hadn’t got his fill of those during life. Pissed that he’d only taken two drinks of the scotch before he’d been killed. The bottle was a gift from a client, way outside his normal price range. Pissed that after suffering all the indignities of life, he was now in an afterlife that resembled a DMV office.

Could this be heaven? A beige room barely bigger than his bedroom, the walls lined with grey chairs that had once been cushioned but had long since been worn flat. The only color in the room was a thin, olive stripe circling the room at waist level and matching olive flecks in the white tiles. Rather than add any life to the room, the olive merely succeeded in giving everything a slightly sick tinge, like the skin of a person who was recently bitten by a zombie but hasn’t made the full transition and even though they insist they’re totally fine the audience knows they’re bullshitting.

Montgomery was the only person in the room but he had still been kept waiting for at least forty-five minutes. The clerk at one end of the room stared at her computer and chewed bright pink gum, tongue shooting out occasionally to blow limp bubbles. When Montgomery first appeared in the room, he’d gone up to her but before he could open his mouth to say “Excuse me, what the fuck is going on?” she held up one finger to shut him up then turned it ninety degrees to indicate he should sit down and wait. She had spent the time since then focused on her computer, mouse clicking and dragging in the recognizable manner of someone obviously playing computer solitaire.

The only magazines in the room were Popular Mechanics from the 1980s, Guns & Ammo, and one issue of Highlights but someone had already marked all the seek-and-find pages. Montgomery reached into his pocket for his phone, the impulse to stave off boredom by tapping and scrolling strong enough to persist beyond death. Of course, he didn’t have a phone with him which was probably a good thing. He wasn’t sure he’d want to see what Death Twitter looked like. Couldn’t be much worse though. So no phone but his pocket wasn’t empty. He pulled out a plastic lottery ball with the number 37 stamped on it. Another mystery for the afterlife. He had barely finished rolling his eyes when the clerk called his name.

“Montgomery Combs, please come to the front desk. Montgomery Combs?”

Montgomery waved his hand as he stood. “Uh, yeah, I’m the only one here.”

“Don’t get snippy with me, sir, I’m just doing my job,” the clerk said.

He forced himself to take a deep breath and not say the first thing that came to mind which was “Are you sure? Cause it seemed like you were playing solitaire”. That kind of comment had got him kicked out of a few too many Chili’s in his life. No need to push his luck in the afterlife.

“Now, I’ll take your winning lottery ball,” she said, holding out her hand.

“This is actually a lottery ball?” Montgomery said. “And I won?”

“Of course you won, why else would you be here?”

Montgomery looked around at the zombie skin room. Didn’t seem like much of a prize.

“Now that you mention it, what exactly is here?”

“The Transitory Spirit Department. We help the lottery winners get back to Earth.”

“I get to go back?” Montgomery’s squeaked with excitement. Maybe he’d get to finish that scotch after all.

“Sort of. Your spirit gets to go back.”

“I’m going to be a ghost? Ghosts are real?”

The clerk nodded.

“So what, I just go back and haunt people?”

“Person,” the clerk said. “You get to haunt one person. Though we don’t like the term haunt. We prefer Imprint. When you go back to Earth you can reveal yourself to one human. They will be the only one who can see you, hear you, or interact with you in any way.”

“How long do I get to haunt, I mean, Imprint? How long do I get to stay on Earth?”

“Until you fulfill your purpose.”

“Which is…?”

“Solving your murder of course.”

Goddammit, he still had to work even as a ghost. Though he did like the idea of finding the bastard who shot him.

“Now, do you have someone in mind who you would like to Imprint upon?”

“Detective Reid,” Montgomery said with zero hesitation. Reid had been his main contact on the force and sometimes fed him cases. A fine detective and an excellent drinking buddy. If anyone could help him solve his own murder, Detective Reid was it.

“Excellent. When we pass you down, we’ll make sure you land near him.” The clerk made a few notes on the computer before looking back at Montgomery. “You can proceed through the door to your left and be on your way to Earth.”

Montgomery took a step toward the door then stopped. “Wait a minute. So ghosts are real. And there’s a lottery to decide who gets to go back to Earth. That’s how the afterlife works?”

“Of course not dear. The whole process is far more complex and far more random than a human mind can comprehend. This is all a construction of your mind trying to force a sense of cohesion and meaning upon a random, ultimately uncaring reality.”

“Oh.” Montgomery looked around at the waiting room. This is what his mind conjured up? He knew his life had been boring but damn. He shook his head. “Do I still get to go back to Earth and solve my murder?”

“Yes, that part is real,” the clerk smiled. “It’s the getting there that’s a real doozy. This whole thing makes the transition a little easier.”

“I see,” Montgomery said, though he didn’t really. “Then, uh, thanks I guess?”

The clerk had already turned back to her solitaire game. Whatever. Time to get back to Earth and find a murderer. Montgomery opened the door and had to shield his face from the blinding light that erupted from it. As far as he could tell, there was nothing beyond the door but the intense light, like the surface of a thousand suns. Here goes nothing. Montgomery stepped through the door and felt the light’s warm embrace. The moment before his foot touched the ground lasted a lifetime. Finally, the light disappeared and Montgomery opened his eyes. He was back on Earth.

Earth was bright and loud. He’d never noticed it when he was alive. So many colors and such movement all around. He could hear wind through the trees, birds chirping, dogs barking, cars humming by, a basketball steadily thumping on concrete, tennis players smacking a ball back and forth, each strike punctuated with an airy grunt. Sensory overload. And he wasn’t even sure he actually had sense anymore. It took him a minute to piece those senses together into a picture of where he was. The park next to the community center on Main Street in Broken Arrow. That made sense. He was supposed to get dropped near Detective Reid and Montgomery knew the other man liked to walk Main Street and its parks. Montgomery glanced around the park. Ah, there he was. Detective Reid was on the path, crossing near the basketball court where a young girl was jacking up three-pointers by herself.

Montgomery jogged over to Reid. It was a strange experience. He knew he didn’t have a body but when he looked down he saw his normal form. And it felt like he was really jogging. Only his shins didn’t immediately start warning him that shin splints were imminent and he didn’t feel the piercing pain in his lungs.

He stopped a few paces away from Reid, realizing he had no idea what to say once he revealed himself. How do you tell someone you’re back from the dead and want to team up to solve a murder? Start with a joke? Hey, I’m a ghost but don’t worry we don’t have to do pottery together or anything. Nah, that was a lazy joke. Probably better to just man up and say it, like asking a woman for her phone number. The lead up was always scarier so best to get it over with.

As Reid came even closer, Montgomery realized he had no idea how to actually reveal himself and Imprint on his friend. Did he have to say something? Magic words? Whatever, it was probably just instinct. Let’s do this.

Montgomery stepped forward and looked Reid straight in the eyes. After a moment’s hesitation, he felt a tingling along his arms. Well, his ghost arms. Like a pressure building up. He just had to push through that pressure and Reid would see him. Three. Two. One—

An orange blur passed in front of Montgomery, smashing into Reid’s face, sending the Detective to the ground.

“Ohmygod I’m so sorry!”

Montgomery turned to see the young girl running up to grab her wayward basketball.

“Is he okay?” She asked, looking at someone behind Montgomery. Wait, no. Not behind him. At him. Montgomery met her eyes and said his first words as a ghost.

“Shit.”