Susan Whiting Kemp,
Sorry, Wrong Afterlife
excerpt
Sorry, Wrong Afterlife Publisher: Treble House Publishing Retailer: https://susanwkemp.com/ Date: April 14, 2025 Length: 264 pp. ISBN: 978-1-7336452-8-7 |
This novel is based on the short story “Sorry, Wrong Afterlife” by Susan Whiting Kemp, originally published in Bewildering Stories, issue 1003.
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Chapter One
“We’re dead, Morris. Deader than disco. Shovel-ready. From now on, we’re going to wake up on the wrong side of the dirt.” I hoped saying it out loud would help me adjust to our new normal.
My best friend and I were crouching on a massive tree branch, surrounded by nests of sticks, grass, and mud. No birds, just nests — some shaped like cups, some like gourds; some the size of my fist, some larger than laundry hampers.
Tropical warmth bathed the air. Vines with white flowers hung all about like discarded feather boas. They smelled like sweetened butter. This was a jungle, not the Cascade Mountains where we’d been hiking just a few minutes ago.
Morris twisted his lip piercing and plucked at his earlobe. “I guess so. We’ve been eighty-sixed, Leo, but it’s hard to believe. It was so sudden. That avalanche came out of nowhere.”
Luckily shock had tamped down my horror, because I remembered the previous moments all too clearly. The rush of snow and ice roaring toward us and burying me, Morris, and my wife, Lilly. The pain under the weight of all that snow, the panic at being unable to move, the frustration at being powerless to help my wife or my friend, the realization that death was imminent for all of us. Then finally, the fading of consciousness.
And now this. I never imagined that I would end up in a treetop after death. Where were the silken sheets and sumptuous banquets? Where was the workshop where I could build furniture to my heart’s content? Where was the award ceremony in which my furniture designs could finally win first place?
“I’m too young to be dead!” said Morris. I nodded vigorously. It sucked to kick the bucket at thirty-two (Morris) and thirty-two and a half (me).
I fished in the pocket of my extra-breathable nylon-spandex hiking pants, digging out a small keychain with a green metal four-leaf clover and hangnail clippers. “So much for my lucky charm.” I nearly tossed it away but then thought better of it.
Shuffling carefully on the tree branch, I turned around to see how my wife Lilly was doing with all this. She could probably use a comforting hug. Certainly I could use one. It was an excellent time for a group hug, come to think of it.
She wasn’t there.
The woman who stuck I-love-you Post-its on the underside of the toilet seat for me to find. The woman who found forever homes for seventy-two dogs, fifty-eight cats, three horses, and a bald guinea pig in a single month. The woman who had a positive affirmation for any situation (example: You can and you will), which would be extra helpful about now.
She was dead too, so why wasn’t she with us? The avalanche had pushed us right next to each other, our heads in a little air pocket, my cheek near her mouth. I could feel it when she stopped breathing. It was the worst moment of my life. It was also the last moment of my life.
My head swiveled like a barstool. My throat tightened into full-on squeaky toy. “Where’s Lilly?”
Morris looked up, down, and around, then spoke with an energized rasp. “Not here. That means she’s still alive!”
“No. She died right before I did.”
He ran a hand over his buzz-cut fade while pondering. “Okay. Then she’s got to be around here somewhere. If that’s how it works.”
His uncertainty made my skin prickle. What if that wasn’t how it worked? What if she’d been put somewhere else? I tried to peer past the tree leaves, which were shovel-shaped, dark green, and glossy as plastic. “Lilly, Honeybunch? Where are you?”
In his loudest outdoor voice, the one he used to call to his students on the other side of the playground, Morris shouted, “Lilly, come out, come out, wherever you are!”
There was no answer. I couldn’t see her teal-dyed hair, cherry-red windbreaker, orange shape-sculpting leggings, or engaging smile. Yes, the leaves were dense, but she was colorful. If she had been anywhere close by, I would have spotted her.
Would my cell phone work here? I reached for it, but it had been in my backpack, which I’d taken off just before the avalanche hit. It was just as well, since as far as I knew, my plan coverage didn’t extend to heaven.
I took a step, caught my toe on a twig, and stumbled. Luckily the branch supporting us was wide as a footbridge, so I didn’t fall out of the tree, but I landed hard onto my elbow. I made a noise like a jilted marmot, then swore a few times.
“Leo! Are you all right?” My friend scooted over and examined me. “You’re bleeding. You know what that means? You can get hurt here, even though you’re dead.”
I let that sink in. Life’s pains and travails were over, but those of death had only just begun. We’d ceased to be, yet peril lived on, for me, my friend, and my wife.
“Lilly was carrying a heavy backpack to build muscle. It could have made her fall!” Holding on tightly, I peered down from the branch, but a mist — far, far below us — kept me from seeing the ground. I could tell, however, that our tree was at least as high as a water tower.
If she’d fallen, she could be hurt badly. We had to get to her fast, but the tree trunk below us was limb-free and smooth. “There’s no way down.”
My blunt statement seemed to trigger him. He squatted on the branch with his hands cradling his knees. “Leo, I can’t believe we’re sleeping with the fishes. My parents will be devastated. And my exes too.”
Morris was the affable kind of guy who remained friends with ex-girlfriends. Luckily there was no current girlfriend, because she’d have died with us.
I grasped his shoulder with my good arm and tried to keep my voice steady. “What’s done is done, and we’ll see them all eventually when they come here. At least we’ve got each other. Right? We’ll get through this, just like we got through puberty together.” I admit that was an awkward statement, but as any adult can attest, it’s truly an accomplishment.
He took a power breath in and let it out in three great huffs. “I guess. But I shouldn’t be dead. It’s not my time.” He rubbed his knees, then stood. “So, where are we?”
It was a good question. I realized that depending on the answer, Lilly might have been shuttled to somewhere else entirely. I had been brought up on Christianity, which prominently featured heaven and hell, but it really depended on which religion, if any, had described the afterlife correctly. If we knew more, we might be able to figure out where she was.
“Could this be heaven?” I ventured, although this was nothing like I’d imagined it to be. In fact, it should surpass anything the human imagination could dream up, and this place fell far short. Plus, Lilly’s absence implied she’d ended up in hell, which was impossible. I was sure of it. Really sure. Pretty sure.
Actually, I wasn’t sure at all. After all, Morris and I seemed to be in the wrong place, so that could mean mistakes happened.
Mistakes happen. Could it be that we weren’t supposed to die? What if we were here mistakenly, while so many others were still alive, still had their families, still had their meaningful occupations and/or engrossing hobbies? A familiar feeling lit up my belly, like a cigarette lighter was burning my duodenum (just below my stomach). Why were they still alive, while I had ceased and desisted?
It wasn’t fair. I deserved to have survivor guilt just as much as anybody.
No. I couldn’t let myself be distracted by envy. I had to find my wife. I thought of her cross-eyed determination at a jalapeño-eating contest, and also her determination to eat the year’s worth of jalapeños she won. She’d succeeded, and so would I. I resolved to be that formidable. I resolved to chew up my obstacles until I found Lilly!
There was motion in a nearby nest. It held three fist-size eggs speckled blue and brown; one of them was jerking. The bird inside was trying to hatch.
Nests. Bird eggs. Morris is a bird fanatic. A theory started to form in my mind. I pushed it aside as ridiculous. But was it?
A tiny crack worked its way along the egg, then a naked chick burst out. Beige, all beak. It gave a single squeak, like a tiny door opening.
“I name you Esmerelda,” said Morris.
I didn’t ask him why that particular name, since I knew he wouldn’t have an explanation. Thoughts came to him and he voiced them, even while teaching, making him one of the most loved yet parodied teachers in his grade school.
I myself was a furniture designer. My day revolved around the blending of the tactile, the visual, and the experiential. And now, suddenly, it didn’t. I had an idea why.
I decided I’d better just say it. “We’re here because you’re obsessed with birds. To you, this is heaven.”
His voice rose an octave. “You think we’re in this hot jungle because I’m a birder? That’s ridiculous.”
I kept my own voice in the same key. Almost. “We’re in a tree filled with bird nests.” I peered into a few of them. “They’re filled with bird eggs. We made it to heaven, but yours, not mine. Morris heaven.”
Morris grunted. “This isn’t my idea of heaven. Not even close. No women. No beer. No avocado toast.”
Certainly it was his fault we were here, but he could apologize later. In the meantime, I needed to unclench my teeth and find Lilly. I just didn’t know yet how we were going to do that.
“Never mind.” I tried to sound magnanimous but might have only achieved flippant. “Let’s find Lilly. We can start up here, and if we don’t find her, then we’ll climb down. Somehow.”
Morris wiped his face in a this-is-so-crazy gesture. I could tell he was still annoyed by my accusation. “We might lose each other. If only we could use crumbs or stones to mark our way. Or mark the trees somehow.” He thought some more and said fervently, “I wish we had a roll of yellow caution tape.” He held out his hands as if one would magically appear in his palms in response to his wish.
Honestly, if we had been granted wishes, it would have been more helpful to try, “I wish we hadn’t been killed by an avalanche,” or “I wish Lilly was with us,” or even the old favorite, “I wish I had a hundred more wishes.” In any case, it didn’t work. No danger warning tape appeared in his hands.
“Let’s just stay together,” I said.
We clambered from tree branch to tree branch and from tree to tree, calling for Lilly, looking up, looking down. I looked for signs of her passage, but no branches were broken, because they yielded as easily as the swinging doors in a Wild West saloon. If there were any trails of blood (heaven forbid!) they were camouflaged by dapples of sun and shade.
Her absence reminded me too much of the darkest day of my life. We’d only been married a year when Lilly collapsed in our kitchen. She wasn’t breathing and her heart wasn’t beating when they took her away in the ambulance. At the hospital, a doctor informed me she was dead. For three hours, I thought she was.
Then I got the call. She was alive. Nobody understood it. She’d somehow revived. Well, I knew that you couldn’t be dead for hours and come back from it, so it was obvious that she hadn’t died in the first place. Somebody had made a big mistake, but all I cared about was that my Lilly was alive.
I’d gotten Lilly back that day, but now, after a couple hours of searching, I despaired of getting her back again. I squatted on a branch, head in hands. “We’re never going to find her.”
Morris punched me on the arm. “Snap out of it, Leopold.” I preferred to be called Leo, so I knew he was still mad at me. “We haven’t looked everywhere yet.”
He was right, but he didn’t have to be so rude about it. I snapped out of it, because I needed to, not because he told me to.
Being a natural explorer, Lilly could have climbed upward to look for us. I liked to joke with her that she was an alpine ibex (which climbs a cliff as if gravity didn’t exist). She would respond that I was a flatland giraffe (which lopes across the savanna in an ungainly yet enthralling manner). How I wished she was there to tease me about my height!
Above us I could see nothing but tree canopy. “I’m going to the top to get a feel for the terrain.”
“Man of action,” said Morris sarcastically.
I considered making a snappy retort, but instead allowed him some leeway. It’s not every day you find yourself taking a permanent dirt nap in a tropical canopy.
We climbed. It was much easier than it would have been when I was alive, although my elbow still hurt. “I’m stronger in the afterlife,” I said.
“I am too. Good thing, this is hard work.”
I brushed against a pitch glob and it stuck to my arm, making it look like I had an amber boil. I wiped it with some leaves, but it stuck fast, and now the leaves were stuck to me as well. “Watch out for the pitch,” I told Morris. “It doesn’t come off.”
“Too late.” His attempts to get pitch off his wrist looked like he was dancing a hula. Thinking how I would rather be attending a luau than pushing up daisies, I sighed and continued upward.
At the top there was nothing but jungle canopy as far as we could see. I kept turning, hoping that a different perspective would reveal something I’d missed the first time around, but after several 360-degree turns I had to allow that there was nothing around but trees.
As for Morris, he was looking upward, into a cloudless sky the color of blue bubblegum. “I was hoping that heaven would be up there. I was sure I’d see sunrays, like in the pamphlets.” His lower lip began quivering. I searched for words of consolation, but could only think of “stiff upper lip,” and it was his lower lip that was the problem. “Stiff lower lip” didn’t have the right ring to it.
The poignancy of our situation compelled Morris to create a poem. He cleared his throat like he usually did before a performance.
“Where are the lost souls?
The emptiness fills with more emptiness
Void of humanity.
Me and my shadow
Search for God and for Lilly
And find egg.”
The words made me feel like I was floating in a pleasantly warm sensory deprivation tank. Annoyed as I was with him, I couldn’t help gushing, “That was one of your best. I would never have thought to make egg singular, but it completes the poem.”
“Thank you,” he acknowledged with a stiff bow of the head.
“She’s not up here. We need to look for her on the ground.”
The pitch was still stuck to my arm. It was strong stuff, which gave me an idea. “Let’s make a stick-on ladder!”
We climbed back down to where we’d arrived and began breaking short branches off the tree. Using the pitch, we glued the branches onto the trunk, creating ladder rungs. It was hard work. Still, we made excellent progress, and I judged that we were about halfway down the tree when Morris asked, “What if hell is down there?” He held on to the ladder tightly, as if a sudden wind might propel him into a fiery inferno.
I imagined Lilly among demons, with their slathering jaws, slicing fangs, scarlet hides, extendable claws, and rude remarks. My skin crawled. She was good with animals; she was a professional dog skateboard instructor, specializing in bulldogs and their social media content. But I doubted that she would have the same touch with demons.
Of course, I’d traverse the fiery depths of hell to save my wife, but now work on our ladder was stopped, and I had to reassure Morris to get him moving again. “Oh, pshaw. Hell isn’t down there.”
I wasn’t very convincing, partly because I’d never used the word pshaw before, and it sounded more like a leaking air mattress than a motivational exclamation.
“What if it is there?” His tone implied that I was being dismissive without considering the ramifications.
“What if it’s not?” My tone implied he’d gone too far with his accusing tone.
“What if it is?” His tone implied that I was out of line and I should check myself.
I resumed building the ladder without him. My passive-aggressive grunts implied that he was a coward, and finally he joined me once more.
After a couple of hours we passed through the mist, giving us a view of the jungle floor. Well, not actually the jungle floor itself, because it was obscured by ferns and shade-tolerant bushes. It smelled like grated nutmeg and freshly turned earth.
“Lilly?” I called. “Are you down there?”
There was no answer. Just the sound of the breeze shifting the leaves of the undergrowth. I felt my brow knit together. If she was here but not answering, that meant she was hurt, and I needed to find her more than ever.
