"Fuck that hurt."
It was all I could think of saying as I picked myself up slowly from the side of the road, amazed I was still in one piece after being hit by that lorry. I could hear screaming all around me and wondered what the heck they were screaming at, until I looked down at the road and saw my own mangled body a few feet away.
I did a quick double-take and looked down at myself. To my eyes, I was intact yet at the same time, I could see that crumpled heap of flesh and bones that was clearly me lying on the roadside, surrounded by screaming people. At that point I think if ghosts could faint, I would have fainted. Instead, I just stood listening dumbly to the crowd of onlookers who were mumbling things like, "She didn't stand a chance," and "Has someone called an ambulance?"
"Hi there, guess it must be a bit of a shock but in case you haven't realised it; you are dead."
I looked towards the voice and found myself staring at a black man with a ridiculously large afro, wide flares and a shirt that was so loud, if I could have put on sunglasses I would have.
"Dead?" I said not sure that I heard him right, "How can I be dead I am only 23 and fit and healthy."
"Well, you are definitely dead," replied Afro man, "I'm Darren by the way and before you ask, I died in 1973, styled myself on the super cop Shaft."
I had seen the remake of the film a few years before and had forgotten that it was first around in the seventies.
"Sally," I replied without thinking and then seeing my boyfriend Jamie shouted to him, "Hey Jamie over here." To my surprise, he totally ignored me and even when I walked over and waved my hand in front of his face, he continued to ignore me as he spoke to the policeman who was trying to keep people back from the body, well my body.
"She just stepped out... I tried to stop her, but she didn't listen," he said between sobs.
Now they say the moment you die your life flashes before your eyes. For what it's worth that's not quite true. For me the only thing that flashed before my eyes were the headlights and grill of a very large articulated lorry. What you do remember when you are dead is what happened the moments before you died, you remember them very clearly.
I quite vividly recalled calling Jamie a bastard and a cunt, but that was because I had just received a text from my best friend telling me that my boyfriend was fucking someone behind my back. If there was any doubt as to whether it was true or not, there was a picture of some blonde slut giving my boyfriend a blow job in our flat. I also remembered quite clearly telling Jamie that he could find somewhere else to live as I wanted him out of the small flat we had bought together on a joint mortgage. What I didn't remember was stepping out in front of the lorry, but as I thought about it, I did remember a thump in my back just before the lorry hit me.
The realisation that my boyfriend had killed me dawned on me. "You bastard," I screamed and leapt at him with the full intention of clawing his eyes out. To my shock, I went straight through him and landed on the grass on the other side of him. If there was any consolation it was that he shivered before he continued to play the part of the grieving boyfriend.
"OK time for a quick 101 on being dead," Darren said as he helped me up. "Ghosts can only hear other ghosts. You can't really interact with the living that well." I just stared at Darren as he went on, "Ghosts can interact with other ghosts," he sniggered as he added, "Something we do a lot by the way."
"You mean there is nothing I can do to make him hear or feel me?"
At that point, a woman threw her arms around Jamie telling him he would be OK and she would be there for him. Well as you can imagine I saw red as I recognised her as the slut with the dyed blonde hair who had been blowing Jamie in the picture. I leapt at the pair of them with fury in my brain and again passed through landing on the road with a thump. I looked up to see a bus almost on top of me as I sat in the middle of the road and screamed loudly. My scream continued as the bus simply passed through me or was it that I passed through the bus?
Darren held out his hand to my surprise, as he said I could grasp it and allowed him to pull me to my feet.
"Some do say that at the moment of orgasm, we can interact," Darren said and paused before he went on, "Well in fact I know that's true."
I wanted to question him how he knew but I was more interested in getting even with that murderous bastard of a boyfriend.
"So do you fancy sex?" Darren asked looking at me hopefully. "If you want, we can watch to get in the mood."
My head was spinning as Darren walked me across the road and towards a row of houses. "This is a great road; you have everything here so whatever takes your fancy. Number 36 is good as that's a very sexy older woman who has a string of well-endowed lovers, sometimes two at a time."
"He only says that because it's his ex," said a woman who had appeared next to me.
"She was just a casual acquaintance," spluttered Darren in reply.
"Yes of course she was," laughed the woman, "he says causal but forgets that I used to watch them fucking like rabbits long before he died." Then she put her mouth close to mine and whispered, "And the string of other lovers she had that he never knew about."
I stared at the woman who looked like she had walked straight out a period drama. Her dress was wide and round on her bottom half whilst the top was so revealing as it pushed her breasts together and almost out.
"If you like my boobies you can have a feel anytime you like," she said jiggling her breasts, "My name's Emma by the way and if you want to watch something really entertaining there are a pair of lesbians at number 78."
My head was spinning when Darren grabbed me and pulled me into a doorway, well more like through the door and into a hallway.
"Sorry to be a bit rough but saw a gang of marauders coming and didn't think you were ready for them yet."
I could see the concern all over Darren's face and said simply, "Marauders?"
Darren looked a little uncomfortably before he said, "The trouble with being dead is there are no laws to control people. There are groups of people who go around preying on other ghosts and taking what they want, often by force."
"Don't be daft," I said laughing thinking that as I was dead there was nothing I had they could possibly want. As the thought ran through my brain, I realised that Darren was eyeing my body up and down and it dawned on me what he meant by what they want."
"Rape?" I said quietly. Darren nodded. "Is there nothing I can do?"
"Just don't let them catch you," Darren laughed, "and if they do just lie back and think of England."
"How does the clothes thing work then?"
"Well not really sure if I am honest," Darren said scratching his Afro as his face split into a large grin. "Things seem to stay the same as if by magic and it seems to be governed by distance."
He must have seen the confused look on my face as he bent down and slipped off one of his Cuban-heeled boots. He placed it on the floor next to his foot like it was a weird third foot. Then picking it up he hurled it at the front door which it passed through like it wasn't there. There was no discernible change but when he held up his leg the boot had returned.
