A naked woman kills a man on Nude Day in a hit and run accident.
"I'm dead, I'm really dead, but somehow I'm still alive," I said staring at my dead body.
Even though I'm a dead man, literally, I'm grateful that I can still tell my story. Don't ask me how because I'm just as freaked out by all of what has happened, as you are reading that a dead man wrote this story.
Relegated to spend, not sure how much more time on Earth, as a ghost haunting my killer, I'm waiting for someone to pull the plug to release me, so that I may rest in peace. Then, I wonder, will I ever rest in peace? For sure, just as being a ghost is no way to live, becoming a ghost is no way to die either.
At the same time, I wonder how many ghosts there are on Earth experiencing what I'm experiencing now. Nothing like I ever imagined when dying, never figuring I'd become a ghost, this is surreal. Even though I'm a ghost, I've yet to see another one. Maybe ghosts can't see one another in the way that people can or think they can see ghosts.
Based on what happened to me, dying instantly, I figure, because I died so quickly, my brain, body, and soul didn't have the time to make the transformation and the necessary adjustment for a permanent disconnection from life to death. Unable to think of another explanation, theoretically, it makes sense to me. Thusly, here I am, doubly fucked, dead but not dead, alive but not alive. Even in death, as it was for me in life, I can't do anything right. I can't even die, so to speak.
I mean, I'm dead, of course, but I'm still here. What is that about? Why me? I feel like such a loser. If anyone was to find out what happened, I'll be the butt of a comedian's routine. I can hear Jay Leno giving his late night monologue and using me for the humor.
"Did you hear about the guy, who was so dumb that when he was hit by a car, he was too dumb to die? Yeah, this guy was a real loser. Even after seeing his dead body strewn in piece everywhere, he still didn't know he was dead. He was a ghost."
Now that I think about it, didn't they make a movie about a dead guy not knowing he was dead, who became a ghost? Yeah, The Sixth Sense, with Bruce Willis. Here I am starring in my own sixth sense. Never would I have believed this could happen, if it wasn't happening now.
I was always of the mindset that, when someone died, nothing else existed, except maybe for Heaven and angels or Hell and devils. Even though I'm not or wasn't a very religious man, I believed in God and figured that if I didn't go to Heaven, I surely wouldn't go to Hell. Living my life somewhere in the middle, I was hoping that there was some in between place, a staging area, where good but not good enough souls go first, a temporary purgatory maybe. Surely, we all can't be as saintly as was Mother Teresa, just as we're all as evil as was Jeffrey Dahmer.
I was hoping to go to the same place, where they put the Popes, Cardinals, and Bishops for living a holy life but for being tempted by all those riches in Vatican City. I was hoping to go there, instead of here, as a ghost. Even after taking the vow of poverty, the men who give their lives to God manage to somehow live a royal, regal, and luxurious life, while the rest of us struggle to put fast food on the table, even the Nuns.
Dying was my only personal chance, after all, to find out if all that is written in the Bible is true or false. I'd like to know if the Bible is non-fiction or fiction. Or, maybe there is no God, just aliens. Wouldn't that be a kick in the pants having to be subservient to a superior being, who looks just like a giant ant? When I think about all the ants that I killed in the course of my life, I'd hate for that to be my judgment day.
Yet, someone had to make the aliens, so now I'm back to square one, while wondering about the existence of God. I figured it would take me to die to find out. Yet, I truly figured that, once I died, I'd know the answer to life and to the same question we all ask.
"Why am I here? Are we alone?"
I'm more than curious to know, if there's a God, a super alien being, or both coexisting in harmony in this vast unexplored universe. Was the Bible the greatest story ever told or is it all true? Now, being stuck here on Earth in a ghostly limbo, alive but not alive and dead but not dead, I may never know. To be honest, with being a ghostly apparition, I have more things to worry about than Heaven and the existence of God and Hell and the existence of the Devil.
When I was alive and pondering the life's important questions of the universe, what I thought would be fun being a ghost and being able to watch women undressing sucks. Hey, it was a relevant and important question at the time, especially when I was trying to get myself off. Yet, now, I have more important things to ponder than to spy on women in dressing rooms.
Never is when I figured I'd ever hear myself say that. That's not to say that I won't spy on women changing in dressing rooms. Maybe later, after being a ghost for a while, I'll hang around a dressing room in some swanky boutique on Rodeo Drive to watch all the celebrity bitches get naked. I'm not ready for doing that just yet.
Besides, who wants to see a naked women, when you can't even touch her, feel her, caress her, and make love to her? That's frustrating, as all Hell. Being able to watch a woman undress, taking off her dress, her bra, and her panty, watching a woman get naked, and unable to grope her is pure torture. Not being able to have my way with her is too much like being married.
While watching my wife, if I had one, which I don't, thank God, because she'd be a widow right now, undress and getting ready for bed, seeing her naked, before she slips on her nightgown, I'd always think, no doubt, that tonight is the night that I'm going to get lucky. Only, she's not in the mood, has a headache, or it's that time of the month. Yeah, being a ghost, seeing naked women, but unable to touch them, is much like that and too much like being married.
Meanwhile, back to my present situation, I don't remember much about the night that I died, except that it happened on National Nude Day, of all days.
"Weird. Go figure. What is that about?"
I didn't even know there was such a day, until my killer told me there was and that she was on her way to celebrate the naked holiday at a party.
I struggled with the meaning of dying on National Nude Day, but still haven't come up with a connection and explanation, other than it was just coincidental. Only, I had a nagging sensation that there was a reason for dying on National Nude Day. Only, for the life of me and the death of me, I couldn't think why I died on that particular day.
Certainly, there's no good answer for dying on a day that I should have been sexually excited, that is, had I known about the holiday beforehand, in the first place. Of all days, why that day, National Nude Day, instead of the Fourth of July, Christmas or New Years? Maybe it is just a coincidence, but I never even celebrated National Nude Day. Yet, now the fact that I died on that fateful day means that I'm doomed to relive the day I became a ghost for the rest of my life and the rest of my death because, being a ghost, I'm not sure if I'm dead or alive.
The fact that I died on such an auspiciously lurid holiday, as Nude Day, gives me reason to never forget when I died. Never forgetting the day I died has good and bad ramifications, I imagine. Yet, more importantly and not to mention, it's extraordinary that I should have any conscious memory of my death and any conscious thought, at all, but I do. Yet, meaningless to me at the time, what did it matter, I didn't even know such a holiday existed? I may be looking for clues of my death at a dead end.
Too late to participate in the freeing and festive mood that goes along with a holiday that encourages people to get naked in public, I wish I had known about Nude Day, before the death of me. I could have had some sexy fun with Nude Day by partying naked. Who knows, maybe I would have met miss naked right, instead of dying alone with my bad self?
It's astonishing to me that I remember anything at all, even though it's taken me a very long time to recall what I do remember. I'm glad that I was able to piece together all that actually happened on that inauspiciously fateful night that I died. I mean, of course, I remembered all of it, immediately after it happened, but as a way for my brain to protect me, as quickly as I remembered it, I forgot it. What I do know is that I'm dead, but I'm not dead. I'm a ghost, an apparition, a ghoulish spirit, while on a mission to haunt my killer. I'm the dark, unknown thing, the bump in the night with the covers pulled tightly over your head, before filling the night with terror filled screams, that they write scary movies and scary stories about.
"Boo!"
I'm having a difficult time wrapping my brain around the reality of being alive, but not being alive. Then, I wondered, what if we all experience this when we die? What if, for a little while, we all become ghosts, as a way for us to leave our prior life behind, before continuing on in our death. What if becoming a ghost for a little while is our way to say good-bye to our loved ones?
"Cool."
Maybe this is something we all must go through, before finding our permanent place in eternity. Okay, I can live, I mean, die with that. Maybe we all continue on as ghosts, before finally fading away and disappearing and resting in peace, gone forever and never to return. Only, where do we go? Are there directions to my final destination? Does someone take me there or do I have a GPS code that unlocks in my brain, once I'm dead and I go there on automatic pilot?
Go here and not there. Turn right instead of left. Do not pass Go and collect your $200. Leaving Earth and my little life behind, I always imagined, when I died, that I'd travel at the speed of light to another universe, where all the dead gathered. Finally, I could give a piece of my mind to Michael Jackson, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe.
"What the Hell were you thinking? Duh? You had it all and you threw it all away."
Only, with my luck, I'll spend the rest of eternity, such a long time, traveling a dark universe. Unlit by stars, deep in the clutches of a black hole that continues forever, until the forces of it pull what's left of me apart, that will be my last horrific amusement ride. Finally, spit out of the black hole, so much like scum leaking out of a sewer pipe, there I am for the remainder of my time in tiny specks of dust strewn all around space.
"Time? What's time?"
