After Death

 

Tablo reader up chevron

ONE.

There was something about fall that Penny Schubert had always found so consistently endearing.

Maybe it was the sudden shift of the trees from vivid green to oranges and reds and golds, or maybe it was the the temperature that was right between too hot to bear and too freezing to ignore. There was nothing she enjoyed more than sitting on her family's wraparound porch, back pressed against the posts on the guardrail and book perched in her lap, and reveling in the calm weather. She'd anxiously wait out the last few days of summer and giddily slip into her trench coat for the first time as October finally rolled around.

The first stirrings of fall that year weren't any different than they always were. A few crushed leaves lay on the ground, stomped on by the little kids who ran around excitedly in their newly purchased, light jackets and teasingly shoved one another. A few houses had already put up sticky window decorations in the shape of leaves and animated turkeys in honor of the seasonal shift, and one house on Penny's block had even gone as far as to prematurely hang white Christmas lights around the edges of their roof, though they hadn't dared switch them on yet.

Their neighborhood buzzed with excitement and laughter and the realization that the two most heavily celebrated holidays—Thanksgiving and Christmas—were nearly within reach.

A daring eleven year old boy ran up to the Schubert house and shoved his thumb aggressively against the doorbell, running away in delight and mild terror that the high school girl who lived there would catch him or, worse, that her father would run out with a baseball bat in one hand and a phone, the boy's home number already dialed, in the other. People didn't take too kindly to being disrupted by ding-dong ditchers on a relaxing Sunday afternoon.

But nothing in the Schubert household was disturbed by the sudden ringing of the bell. The curtains still billowed and fell as each new breeze swept through the open window, and Penny's AP European History textbook still laid open to page 293, the bottom corner of page 294 slightly crumbled where knee had accidentally nudged it while she studied. And her body still laid in the patch of hardwood floor between the living and dining rooms, eyes blindly staring at the ceiling and a jagged pool of blood surrounding her.

If she looked at herself at just the right angle, it almost looked like the blood formed a halo around her head. A lopsided, dark halo, of course, but a halo nonetheless. It slightly reassured her. It made her feel like maybe, just possibly, she was going to find peace.

Penny wasn't entirely sure how long she'd been sitting next to her own lifeless body, but she'd sat through the entirety of the sun's steady climb into the sky; that had to mean she'd been there at least a dozen or so hours. Maybe it was longer. For reason she couldn't pinpoint exactly when or what had happened to her, and that bothered her more than the sight of blood staining her new blouse and the tears where the knife had sunk through the thin fabric and skin and practically sucked the life right out of her.

Her mother was going to be livid when she saw this. Not only would she be upset that Penny had managed to ruin her blouse after wearing it only once, but she'd berate her for staining their pristine hardwood floors. Penny's mother had an obsession with keeping their house as spotless and gorgeous as humanly possible—something she'd claim was her own doing but was really the product of a biweekly maid—and she wouldn't take too kindly to Penny causing such a mess.

She wished she could clean it, wipe away all of the evidence and repair the now ruined wooden panels, but she couldn't do anything but sit there and stare at her body.

She was so close that her toes nearly touched the blood halo, and she flexed them in curiosity, wondering if toeing the line would result in red-tipped toes or absolutely nothing. She guessed the latter; that's what had happened when she'd tried to call an ambulance for herself. She could've sworn she'd felt the cool metal of her cellphone as her fingers wrapped around it, but when she pulled away, there was nothing in her hands and the phone was sitting where she'd last left it, completely undisturbed.

A few more futile attempts, and she'd decided that paramedics were just going to have to find her body without the tip.

No one had noticed the shattered patio door, though, nor had they seen the brutalized, stabbed body—she'd counted seven puncture wounds—just a few feet indoors. No one had tried calling her; no one had coming looking for her. For the first time in her life, Penny was invisible, and she had no idea how to feel about that.

There was a tinkering noise coming from the foyer, and the voices of Penny's parents drifted through the closed door as they unlocked it and stepped inside. They were talking about some partner they'd met with on their trip, and her mom made some snide remark about her father nearly soiling the entire meeting with his generic conversation. “They don't want to hear about your favorite golf courses, Daniel. They want to hear about how affiliating themselves with us would benefit them, both long and short term.”

There was a loud clink as keys hit the foyer table, and she could hear their luggage being placed by the foot of the stairs to be carried up at a later time. A panic coursed through her, the first genuine emotion she'd felt in hours, and she stared down at the mess she'd made, wondering how severe the punishment would be. Mother really loved those floors...

“Penelope? Are you home, honey?” her mother called as she stepped into the living room while gently rubbing her forehead, a habit she thought would help reduce stress-related wrinkles. Her icy blue eyes, the exact same color as Penny's, caught sight of the shattered back door first, and she let out a small noise in surprise before her eyes fell down to see the mess that broken glass had left on her expensive floors.

She'd expected to see a haphazard pile of glass shards, but she never imagined she'd find her eighteen year old daughter's lifeless body right beside it.

Helen Schubert's piercing scream caught her husband's attention, and he rushed into the living room after her, pausing as his eyes found the first thing that had caught his wife's eye. “Helen, what...” He trailed off as he noticed his wife cradling a thin, frail body to her chest. He caught a glimpse of a limp arm dangling by his wife's leg and light blonde hair draped over Helen's shoulder before realization hit him hard, and he rushed to his wife's side with a muttered plea that God please not let this be real.

Daniel tried to pry the body from his wife's arms, but she was stronger than he'd anticipated, clutching their daughter so tightly that he was barely able to move the hair back enough to see that it was, in fact, Penny's expressionless face pressed into the woman's chest. He let out a sob and fell back, eyes wide, as Helen rocked her daughter's body back and forth, a veiny hand reaching up to pet the hair that was sticky with blood.

“Helen,” Daniel began, but she let out a wordless shriek that warned him to back off. He did, standing up and fumbling in his pocket for his cell phone; his hands wouldn't stop shaking, and he had to try three times before he could correctly dial a number as simple as 911.

Penny watched from her place on the floor, her legs almost brushing her mother's, and allowed her eyes to fall closed as she imagined how her mother's warm hand felt as it caressed the back of her head. Her mom, while strict and far from perfect, had always been an affectionate parent, but she hadn't been so tender with Penny in years and the girl suddenly missed the simple touch.

It was difficult to focus on feeling her mother's calming motions when the woman was sobbing so obnoxiously.

“Hello? Hello?!” Daniel shrieked into his phone, but neither Penny or her mom looked up. “Yes, my... my daughter's dead. She's dead.”

It was the first time the word had been uttered aloud, and though it'd been clear to everyone in the room for some time now, finally saying it somehow made it more official.

Penny cried harder than she ever had in the time it took the coroner to get to her home and load her into his van. Not a single tear fell.

- - -

Her death had been easily ruled a murder; there was no way a brutal stabbing could be a suicide, and it certainly wasn't natural for a healthy eighteen year old girl to suddenly sprout stab wounds in her chest and abdomen.

The evaluation of her body had been relatively quick and mechanical. They'd searched for any evidence of who had committed the heinous crime but found nothing except information on the weapon—a ten inch kitchen knife. It was either new or recently sharpened, judging by the clean incisions it'd made as it cut through her stomach, and it'd been used to stab her a grand total of seven times. Overkill, Penny thought before snorting in approval of the wit she'd clearly carried into the afterlife from her living years.

The hardest part of the afterlife wasn't the knowledge that she was dead and never going to amount to any of the post high school expectations everyone had had for her, though that was a nearly unbearable thought. Not knowing how to move forward was even worse, and for good reason. Penny had always been one to obsessively plan out every detail of her day, week, month, life. She never found herself anywhere without having planned it beforehand, and her detailed schedule was something she'd taken both pride and comfort in over the years. But it was difficult to carefully plan out her afterlife when she had absolutely nowhere to go.

There was no career to strive for, no family to look forward to, and no home to return to after a stressful day at school. After following the passing of her body from van to examiner to morgue to funeral home, Penny finally settled on just returning to the place she'd called home for fifteen years, deciding it was better than sitting next to her casket until the wake. And she decided that it might be a cathartic experience, returning to the place where she'd taken her last breath.

When Penny finally arrived at her house, she found her parents gone and the place sealed off by flimsy ropes of police tape. She wondered if she should obey the tape, but a quick mental reminder that she was dead and therefore no longer needed to follow society's rules urged her to move forward. Carefully, she dodged the bushes on the side of the house that her mom spent so much tending to and slipped into the backyard, stopping as she reached that shattered sliding glass door. The scene of her death was carefully mapped out, every speck of blood and fingerprint heavily examined and recorded; she felt like she was peering into the set of some gory forensics show, not the home in which she was raised.

A part of her, a part that had spent too much time reading cliché stories and watching generic movies, had thought that returning to “the scene of the crime” would somehow kick her memory into action. She thought that seeing the huge smear of dark blood and the shards of shattered glass coating the floor almost as thickly would help her remember what had happened or who had done this, but all she felt was empty.

She wondered how many people had dodged the police tape and crept between the houses just like she had to catch a glimpse of the gruesome sight. She couldn't blame them. While gore and horror hadn't been interests of hers during the living years, she could understand why others might be interested in seeing if the atrocities they'd surely read about in the paper and been told on the news were more or less gruesome than they'd been portrayed. “More gruesome probably,” she muttered to herself as she soaked up one last look at the murder scene before slipping out from where she'd came.

As she crept around the side of the house and turned to look at the peaceful, aside from the police tape, front, she noticed that the sidewalk was glaringly empty. The emptiness she'd felt only a few minutes prior was suddenly and aggressively filled with an anger that started in her stomach and spread outward in waves.

Penny had done everything for her high school since she'd first stepped foot in there. She'd created the Mock United Nations during her freshman year, and it'd quickly grew into one of the school's more successful clubs. She'd served as class president every year, always winning by a landslide, and had done everything in her efforts to make sure her class raised more funds for their junior prom than the school had seen in years. She'd maintained straight A's and her status as valedictorian even while taking on the role of student council president, and she even found time to chair a few fundraisers for charities along the way.

She was her moderately-sized town's crowning jewel, and they couldn't even be bothered to make a sidewalk memorial for her. There were no blown up school pictures or white, tea light candles that had been extinguished as soon as the wind had picked up. There were no sweet messages from people who hadn't known her outside of her accomplishments stating that Penny was “now an angel looking down on everyone” or “someone who will forever be loved and missed.” There wasn't even a bouquet of her favorite flowers there to honor her memory.

Maybe they'd all been so distraught that they couldn't find the strength to properly commemorate her and were simply waiting until the wake to give her the proper makeshift memorial she deserved. Either way, it annoyed her.

Penny sat down on the sidewalk, legs stretched out in front of her and crossed at the ankle and hands clasped in her lap. Notes made out to her and left in her memory could've kept her busy for as long as it took to ready the visible ones, but the sudden turn of annoying events meant that Penny had more free time than she'd anticipated or wanted.

She sighed and leaned back, back and palms pressing against the pavement. She couldn't feel it, though. The pressure of rough cement against the bare skin of her arms and the backs of her tights-clad thighs felt less like rough cement and more like cool water licking at her skin. It was a strange sensation, one that had caused her to jump up in surprise when she'd first sat down in her house after her death, but the sensation had become less of a surprise and more of a fact of nature as time passed. After only a few days of dealing with it, it had become something she barely even noticed anymore.

As she stared up at the barely visible stars in the black sky, she thought about her wake. It would begin in exactly fourteen hours, and her mind ran over every person who might make an appearance. She knew that all of the teachers she'd had since kindergarten through senior year would be there as a sign of respect to their former student, and she was aware that anyone who'd ever considered her a friend at some point in their lives would show up as well. That was common courtesy. She was sure there'd be more than a few randoms who'd never spoken a word to her during her living years who'd show up and act as though they couldn't move on now that Penny Schubert was no longer in the world.

Things like that used to annoy her, but now that she 'd be the subject of their fake grief, she couldn't help but look forward to it. If nothing else, it'd be a confirmation that she was one of the most popular students in the school.

Some stray leaves on the ground were picked up by the wind and somersaulted unceremoniously through the air; the shedding trees swayed and whistled as they shook from the heavy breeze. Penny instinctively wrapped her arms around herself to brace her body from the chilly air, but she didn't feel a thing. It was like she was in her own impenetrable bubble, safe from everything in the world that could disrupt even a hair on her head. It'd only been a few days since she'd entered that bubble, but already she missed the way goosebumps and a chill down her entire body always accompanied a chilly breeze.

A car full of teenagers whizzed by, not even bothering to slow as they passed the Schubert house, and Penny felt that familiar annoyance come to a boil in her stomach again.

For the first time, she felt so angry that she could punch a wall. But she stayed where she was on the sidewalk, knowing that if she tried, her fist would just slip through the brick like air.

- - -

To Penny's own surprise, she was excited for her wake. It was a sad occasion, she knew that, and she wasn't looking forward to seeing how her parents were handling her passing, but it offered some much needed activity to her otherwise uneventful after life. Much of her free time thus far had been spent wandering aimlessly, sitting in her empty house, and wondering if there was anything else to death.

She wondered if ceasing to exist would've been better than living without being able to really live.

Penny watched as the funeral home directors moved her casket into the showing room, adjusting everything to make sure it looked just as her parents had requested. They set up three large poster boards full of pictures ranging from infancy to just a few weeks ago, two on the right side of the casket and the other on the left. Directly beside her cast on the left was a wreath of white roses with one of her senior pictures in the center, blown up to a size that nearly took up all the space within the wreath. It was one of her favorites from the semi-professional photo shoot, and she moved down the eerily quiet aisle and stopped in front of the boards to admire the photos her parents had picked out. She thought about how hard it must have been for them to search through their family pictures when the pain from her death was still so fresh.

The son of the owners walked over to the casket and propped open the top half of the cover, Penny's lifeless face coming into view. He stared down at her for a few seconds, and Penny moved beside him to join the viewing party, wondering if she looked the same in death as she had in life. It was a well-known cliché to say that dead bodies looked as though they were only sleeping, but as Penny looked down at herself, all she thought was that she looked dead. No amount of foundation or blush could make her cold, bloodless skin look anything but sickly.

“Hey, Lizzie!” The young man suddenly shouted, and Penny jolted at the sudden noise. It was so quiet in the funeral parlor, and she wasn't expecting such a sudden, severe end to the silence. She waited for the appearance of the girl he'd called, but there was only some shifting in the other room as someone moved a few things around. “Lizzie? Hey, I need to ask you something.”

“Can't you just come back here? I'm doing something,” a voice called back, and with a slight huff, he wiped his hands on his dress slacks and made his way out of the room.

Penny felt strange being alone with her body. It wasn't the first time she'd been in the same room as it, but it was somehow different in this setting. All those who cared about her or even knew about her would be coming to say their final goodbyes, and while she looked forward to the somber celebration of her life that was going to ensue, she couldn't help but worry about seeing her parents.

The last time she'd seen them, they'd been hysterical over her body, her mother refusing to let go of it and forcing the paramedics to unceremoniously rip the limp body from her arms. It'd been a disturbing sight, one she couldn't easily block out, and she was worried her wake would be just as upsetting for them. This was the first time she'd see her parents since they'd found her body, and it would be the first time they'd see her since then, too.

The sound of footsteps made Penny turn to peer over her shoulder, and for the first time in a few days, she found someone staring directly into her eyes.

“Oh, God. I knew it,” the wide-eyed redhead who'd entered the room murmured just loud enough for Penny to catch before spinning around and quickly storming out of the room.

Penny was afraid to move, afraid that if she dared to follow the girl, she'd find that all of that had been a figment of her imagination. She was afraid that if she confronted the girl, she'd find that they hadn't made true eye contact but had only caught each other's glance by accident. She was afraid that the sudden hope of being visible to someone was false and that the girl couldn't see her anymore than the hundreds of people she'd walked past since her death could.

“Thanks, Lizzie,” the boy called out as he walked back into the room with a bouquet of white roses in a tall, glass vase. He set them on a pillar that was pushed back between two of the poster boards, adjusting it so the fullest roses faced the audience. The redhead, who Penny could only assume was the Lizzie he was thanking, stepped into the doorframe that led into the parlor room. She stared intensely at the center of the wall parallel to her, not daring to look anywhere else.

“Hello?” Penny loudly called out, speaking for the first time in God only knew how long. She'd always been a chatty person, and she worried that her voice would feel rough from lack of use should she ever find an opportunity to speak again. It didn't feel any different than it always had. “Can you see me?”

The girl visibly flinched and closed her eyes in what looked like pain, rubbing a freckled hand along her face. “I'll be right back, Noah. Don't break anything while I'm gone.” The boy waved a hand in acknowledgement as she walked back from where she'd come, and hurriedly Penny followed after her.

“Hey! I know you can head me, so there's no point in pretending you're deaf.”

The girl picked up her pace, walking toward the door that led outside the back of the funeral home. She pushed it open aggressively, rushing into the bright sunlight and cool air. The door slammed shut before Penny could catch up to her, but she slipped through the glass pane effortlessly. “Hey!”

“What do you want?” Her tone wasn't rude or biting; she just looked like she wanted to get as far away from Penny as possible.

“You can see me,” Penny murmured in a state of disbelief. If it was possible, she would've cried. “You... you can see me right now, right? You're not talking to someone standing behind me?”

The redhead offered her a small smile and took a step closer to her. “Yeah, I can see you, and I'm talking to you. But I...” She shook her head, looking down at the shoe that was rubbing against the gravel before facing Penny with an apologetic smile. “I can't help you, alright? I want to, trust me, but it's too risky. So please just... tell me what you want and go.”

Penny blinked. “I only wanted to speak with you for a few minutes. I haven't spoken to another person in nearly a week. Being dead is really lonely.”

The girl offered her a weak chuckle. “Yeah, so I've heard from the others.”

“The others?”

“Yeah, I'm... what you might call a medium. I had a near-death experience when I was little, and ever since, I've had a close connection with the other side. You know, seeing ghosts, hearing strange voices, and helping lost spirits move on. The whole shabang. Over the past few years, I've accumulated some groupies who I try to help out, but I can't with you.”

“Because it's too risky,” Penny elaborated for her, and the girl nodded.

“Right. There's this bad energy that always follows the spirits of murdered people... I can't surround myself with that. It's hard enough keeping out all the dark energy with just the few spirits I spend my time with. I can't add someone like I'm you. I'm so sorry. I want to help, but I just cannot do it.” She gave a little shrug, though Penny could tell from her expression that she seemed genuinely sorry about not helping her more. Maybe that was why Penny wasn't as angry at her as she normally would've been.

“Are you still going to help with my funeral?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the girl nodded, peering over Penny's shoulder to make sure her brother hadn't started looking for her. “I'll be helping and paying my respects. I didn't want to since the whole, you know, bad juju thing, but my mom thought it'd be good for one of your classmates to help with the arrangements.”

“We went to school together...” It was more of a question than a statement, and the redhead couldn't help but laugh in response.

“Yup. Since freshmen year. Liz Campbell. We had a few classes together here and there, but you were always so wrapped up in your newest pet project to pay attention to any of the randoms in your classes. Which isn't to say that that's a bad thing. It's just a fact.”

Liz. Penny searched her mind for any memory of the girl, no matter how small, but she couldn't even remember passing her in the hall before. “I'm sorry,” she began, but Liz held up a hand.

“Don't bother apologizing. It's totally fine. We need to get back inside, though.” Liz maneuvered to get past Penny, and their arms lightly brushed for the quickest of seconds. The contact felt as real as it had in life, and Penny sucked in a surprise breath, hand reaching out to grab Liz before she could comprehend her own actions. Her fingers closed around skin—warm skin—and tingled at the touch.

“I can touch you.”

Liz laughed kindheartedly at Penny's shock and reached her other hand around, placing it atop Penny's. “I can touch you, too. It's part of the whole 'medium package.'”

Penny's eyes moved from the clasped hands to Liz's dark green eyes. “Please. Please help me.” She'd never been one to beg, but she would've gladly gotten down on her knees if necessary. “I don't know what to do or where to go or how to get there. I need guidance, and since you're the only person who can see that I'm still here, its your guidance that I'm going to need. Please.”

“Liz!” The young man called from inside the funeral home, and Liz looked between the closed door and the girl clasping her arm. With a huff, she shook herself from Penny's grasp and nodded in defeat.

“Fine, I'll help you, but you need to listen to me closely, alright? If I tell you to do something, you do it. Because not listening could cost me or the others our lives, and I think I speak for everyone when I say the last thing they want is to die again. Okay?”

“Okay,” Penny agreed without hesitation, standing up straighter and nodding seriously.

“Alright. Now it's time to lay you to rest.”

Comment Log in or Join Tablo to comment on this chapter...
~

You might like 's other books...