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  AFTER LIFE

  by Jaron Lee Knuth

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © by Jaron Lee Knuth

  First Edition 2009

  Sixth Edition 2010

  This book is licensed under Creative Commons

  Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0

  United States

  For Marnie

  Day 1

  9:54 am

  Alex poked his fingers through the plastic blinds covering the kitchen windows and opened them enough to glance outside. The polluted snow that floated down from the gray sky collected near the bottom of the frosted glass. People outside ran for cover. The lucky ones pulled their hoods over their heads and zipped up the front of their jackets tighter, securing their winter armor.

  The meteorologist had missed another storm, but no one could blame him anymore. A storm like that was expected in January, not the middle of May. Mother Nature had become an unpredictable bitch, and that day Minneapolis was her bedpan.

  As the young, out-of-shape man turned away from the window, he caught a glimpse of his neighbor, Mr. Peterson, chipping ice from the windshield of his car parked on the street. Mr. Peterson insisted on parking there instead of his allocated parking spot in the back of the building. Alex stopped and he watched the overweight man smash away at the frozen sheet that encompassed the entire vehicle. He smiled, feeling a twinge of retribution as he watched his most rage-fueled neighbor grow more and more irate with his own luck.

  Mr. Peterson's whole ordeal not only reminded Alex of how grateful he was to have the day off from work, but watching his despicable neighbor suffer brought him a simple pleasure. Mr. Peterson was a poster child for Alex's list of pet peeves. The man’s temper was out of control, and Alex was forced to listen to him scream at his teenage daughter every night. When Alex had the misfortune of running into his neighbor outside the apartment building, Mr. Peterson always insisted on telling Alex a racist, sexist, or otherwise socially ignorant “joke.” When you combined these bad personality traits with the unending consumption of alcohol and Mr. Peterson became Alex’s archenemy.

  Seeing Mr Peterson beat down by nature was satisfying, but only served to remind Alex of his own social impotence. His own fear made him a pacifist. His anti-social behavior was beginning to feel more like agoraphobia. Alex wandered away from the window in a daze and crumpled his body onto his couch. He let out an exhausted sigh as he sunk into the permanent crease that had formed from his days of occupation. He felt no physical exhaustion, but his mind was feeling weak.

  Alex felt the emptiness of his apartment creep around him, echoing in its hollowness. The shelves of action figures, collection of movie replica swords, and pile of classic video game consoles did nothing to fill his metaphorical void. The rumble of his neighbor Denny stomping across the floor, and the laughter of Denny's girlfriend were the only noises in the apartment. Her cackles were caused by what Alex could only surmise was pointless, mediocre humor.

  His mind filed through images of his friends one-by-one. He thought of those friends he barely talked to and those that had drifted away. He thought of the friends no longer interested in his dead-end life, the friends that had become married, the friends with children. He thought of the friends who had a better time with a bottle of liquor than with him. He pictured his co-workers. The people like him who turned to a job at Wal-Mart instead of college. They were, for the most part, good people, yet Alex found boredom in all of them. The people outside his apartment had become distant strangers from a foreign land, speaking in a language he didn’t understand and holding to cultural traditions that seemed disgusting and strange.

  As the pictures of these people flipped through his head, his eyes drifted toward his laptop. The top was only open an inch, but the screen lit the keys below it. He never completely turned off his laptop. He never let his BitTorrent program stop trading movies and music. The illegally downloaded entertainment took his mind off the slowly creeping hours that awaited the rest of the day, but the true draw of the computer’s glow was the flashing red light on the corner of the screen. The light that let him know someone was trying to start an instant message conversation.

  Morgan.

  It had to be her.

  Alex snatched the computer off the table, wondering how long he had ignored it, worrying she would cancel the call before he responded. The icon still flashed, asking him if he wanted to respond with chat, or voice. His fingers slid across the touch pad, too nervous for accuracy. He consciously slowed his hand down and he managed to click on the phone icon.

  “Hello?” Alex’s voice was scratchy, gurgling phlegm into the word. He realized how long it had been since he had spoken and cleared his throat. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes? Can you hear me?” The voice was breathy, sultry in the most subtle way possible, even through the distorted computer speakers.

  “Yes!” He took a deep breath, suddenly embarrassed by his excitement, before asking, “How’s it going?”

  “Good, good. I’m just taking a break from work.” Morgan created her own online comic. Her site had begun reaching some bigger numbers and advertisers had taken notice. She was finally able to relax when it came to paying the bills and this afforded her a much more tranquil attitude overall, a sharp contrast from the neurotic worrier Alex had grown to adore. Her new nonchalant lifestyle made Alex feel uneasy around her, as if she was leaving him behind on a lower level of maturity.

  “What were you working on?” His voice trembled, wavering between sincere interest and passive small talk.

  Whenever he talked to her he had to re-analyze what “angle” to take with her. He sometimes thought a passive attitude would push her to become more pro-active when it came to hanging out, or just finding time to talk to him. It seemed the more he pulled away, the closer she stepped in. When she showed him more attention, it made him feel wanted, which was something his diet severely lacked.

  When this worked, it felt selfishly good, but his true feelings always came out in the end. He was a horrible liar and even worse at playing any kind of social “game.” He wanted to be there for her in every capacity. He yearned to know everything about her because he truly found her that interesting. So he always leapt to her attention, and begged for the same affection in return.

  “I’m just trying to finish today’s strip.” Morgan’s voice sounded tired. Bored.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She sighed loudly, pausing for a dramatically long moment before answering, “Nothing, really. Just bored with… everything.”

  “Everything?” He knew she was being vague, but wouldn’t let her get away with it. He wanted to show his interest, so he dug deeper. “Are you just bored with your comic?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And life in general.”

  “Oh come on.” He tried to keep his tone lighthearted. He didn’t want her to talk herself into her own depression. “You can’t mean that. What’s at the top of your list?”

  She sighed again, struggling to get her thoughts out. Finally she said, “My list of things I’m bored with? I don’t know. I read a bad review of my comic this morning and I know, I know. It was just some dumbass with a blog, but-”

  “What did they say?”

  “It doesn’t even matter. It's just…”

  The silence lingered.

  “What is it, Morgan?”

  “Can you meet me for coffee or something? I seriously can’t work today. I need to smoke like a million cigarettes.”

  Alex cringed. She knew he hated her
smoking. He had tried smoking once and never smoked again. His mind brought up memories of cigarettes mixed with her perfume, but he pushed the thought away.

  “Of course. Where do you want to go?”

  “Somewhere warm. This weather is fucked up. Are people ever going to realize we are totally fucking the environment up?” Morgan cursed freely when she was feeling confident, or trying to give the impression of confidence.

  “We need to go outside the city limits if you want to smoke.” He tried his hardest to control his tone. He truly didn’t want her to feel guilty for smoking. It wasn’t his place.

  She made a noise of agreement before saying, “I can come pick you up if you want.”

  Alex felt emasculated for a fraction of a second before he remembered Mr. Peterson. The thought of that man's frustration allowed Alex to remember that he liked not owning a car.

  “Yeah, sure.” Alex tempered his excitement. He hadn’t seen Morgan in over a month and the last meeting was only a brief encounter. She was always with her fiancé. That was why seeing her alone was almost too good to be true. Alex considered her, in some strange way, to be his best friend, even though they barely spoke anymore.

  “Okay, um…” She paused, as if considering something silently. “I need to do a few things around the house and then I’ll be over.”

  For some reason, her nonchalant attitude bothered him, but he didn’t let it show. “Cool. Just honk twice when you’re in the parking lot. That way you don’t have to get out in this snow.”

  She ended the conversation simply. “Okay, I’ll see you in a bit.”

  The icon on the screen grayed out with the message, “Call disconnected. Do you want to re-connect?” He clicked the NO button and then he checked his downloads. Most of them had completed overnight. He left his computer on out of courtesy to all the people downloading the files from him.

  He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. He knew he had to shave, but couldn't decide what he should do with the three weeks of growth. He knew Morgan liked facial hair, but wasn’t sure what looked good on him. After trimming his beard into a mustache and goatee, he then realized he hated the mustache so he shaved the mustache and left just a goatee. Alex finally just shaved his entire face clean.

  “Maybe I’ll seem more kissable,” he caught himself thinking as he ran his fingers over his smooth cheeks. He rolled his eyes at himself, feeling slightly pathetic for still having thoughts like that. He had, in the past, hoped there was a chance for something beyond friendship with Morgan.

  They had been friends ever since they tried dating in the seventh grade. He asked her out to a birthday party, and when they went outside, Alex showed her the pack of cigarettes he managed to buy off an older kid at school. Morgan didn't really want to smoke, but she thought Alex looked dangerously cool with the cigarette in his mouth, so she accepted his offer to join him for a smoke. After pretending they both enjoyed the cigarette, he kissed her. They made out for hours underneath a streetlight on the road in front of the party, stopping only to nervously smoke more cigarettes. After the seventh or eighth cigarette, while Alex’s tongue was exploring Morgan’s mouth and ignoring the pain from her braces, his hand began to reach up her shirt. Just as he passed her navel his stomach rumbled uncomfortably. The cigarettes had made his head woozy and his stomach was reacting.

  Being a pre-pubescent boy, at first he ignored the pain, concentrating instead upon his fingers and their ever so slow march up Morgan’s belly. But, soon it became too much for him to ignore. His stomach groaned loudly and they both pulled away from each other in shock.

  It was right at that moment that a crowd of kids started making noises. A crowd of kids who had gathered behind the tree to watch the two of them kiss. With hoots, hollers, and everyone making kissing noises, the kids poured out from the shadows.

  Something gripped Alex’s stomach, twisting all of the birthday cake and Mountain Dew he had ingested throughout the night. His eyes went white as his head lurched forward. He released the contents of his stomach, spraying the liquid ooze from his mouth. He had aimed away from Morgan, but the splatter effect worked against him, flinging his dinner all over her feet and legs. He fell to his knees in pain, releasing a second load of fluid onto the pavement.

  His eyes were blurred with tears, but he heard the laughter. The group of kids mocked Morgan relentlessly. It was his faux pas, but their minds had found another conclusion.

  “Morgan metal mouth ain’t so cute! If you kiss her, she’ll make you puke!”

  The chant didn’t even rhyme well, but it was easy to remember and remember they did. The story lingered for years. Alex was mocked for kissing poor “Morgan metal mouth,” but it was infrequent and easy to dodge. She was the real victim of the night.

  One month later he gave her a mix CD he had burned for her. In black magic marker were the words: “I’m sorry” written over and over again as many times as he could fit. It was filled with the darkest emo-rock he could find.

  She called him a few days later, and after that they talked on the phone nearly every night of high school. They foolishly agreed that they should just be friends, but it didn’t take long for Alex to develop real feelings for her. Deep rooted feelings that went beyond the temptation of just putting his hand up her shirt.

  Although that feeling was still there.

  She dated other men, and she always called Alex when it didn’t work out. They talked about love, dating, and sex. They found that they agreed on almost everything. They could talk for hours about the simplest of subjects and analytically tear them down. They laughed at dark humor and openly cried with each other. He introduced her to comics and she drew him notebooks full of pictures.

  But they never touched the subject of dating each other. When high school ended and college started, Alex rejected his own feelings. His hope began to fail.

  And then Morgan got engaged.

  Her fiancé, Christopher, was nice enough. While she was going to school for web design, he was studying drama. He loved to talk about movies and the art of film. He was intelligent. He was attractive. He got along with everyone.

  He was the loss of hope for Alex.

  Alex never spoke a word of discouragement. He used morals to justify why he felt he should respect both of their decisions to marry. The truth was he had lost any self-esteem that would have made him feel worthy of her. He had no money to offer her, and Christopher’s family was beyond rich. He wasn’t popular, nor did he get good grades. He was depressed more often than not and found himself complaining about life more than enjoying it.

  Their friendship became random emails and the occasional mutual acquaintance’s party. He always smiled and nodded at Christopher’s self-righteous rants on the genius of Tim Burton. He watched in silent protest as Christopher had “private rehearsals” with every attractive cast member of his student films. Yet, Morgan appeared happy. She talked of the beauty of “open relationships,” and the maturity and honesty it took to accept each other as people who make mistakes. Infidelity had become “the adult thing to do.”

  It only served to convince Alex that Morgan was wrong for him. He told himself that she had grown incompatible with him. He was loyal if nothing else, and considered it a trait he would require in a partner. He told himself she had changed too much to make him happy. He also thought he had only himself to blame for his sadness, and did so daily.

  As impossible as his romantic delusions were, he still found himself worrying if he put on too much cologne before she picked him up. He decided he had and he flapped the hooded sweatshirt in front of him, hoping to air it out.

  While he waved the sweatshirt around his apartment he heard the double honk from the parking lot and ran to the window. Morgan’s tiny, blue Volkswagen sat in the parking lot with its wipers furiously trying to keep the huge flakes of snow off the windshield.

  Alex put on his faded gray shirt and grabbed his black pea coat. He slipped his boots on in the hallway while he locked h
is door. He walked down the back stairwell and tugged an old knit cap down over his head. He then pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over that before stepping out into the blizzard.

  Keeping his head down and his face out of the falling flakes, Alex ran to the passenger side door of Morgan’s car, high stepping through the drifting snow. He grabbed for the latch and found the door locked. Morgan laughed inside the car and leaned over, popping the lock up with the tips of her fingers.

  As he burst into the car trying to escape the weather, Morgan shouted, “Hey!” and pointed angrily at his boots. “I don’t want that shit in my car!”

  Alex looked down at his boots and saw the ugly snow all over them. He smiled and banged his feet together outside her perfectly maintained car, knocking the clumps of wet, dirty mud onto the ground.

  “Hi,” he finally said with a smile. Smoke from Morgan's cigarette mingled with the scent of a vanilla air freshener. “How's it going?”

  Morgan shrugged her shoulders. Her short curly hair hung in a crazy frizz around her thick black-rimmed glasses. She raised one eyebrow in a frustrated contemplation and answered all in one breath, “Some dude just randomly ran out in front of my car on the way here and I almost killed him. It’s snowing in May. My fiancé left for California today, and some douche-bag on the Internet thinks my comic is 'a feminist, man hating diatribe blaming western culture and the current presidential administration for every misogynistic oversight ever made by mankind.’ Can you believe that? Misogynistic oversight? What the fuck does that even mean?”

  “Christopher went to California?” Alex blurted the question out, ignoring any other words she may have said.

  Morgan laughed as she blew out smoke from her mouth. Her lips were plush and slightly chapped. “Yeah, his agent got him an audition for a really good role.”

  “I thought he was going to do that play? The one about the homosexual trees?” Alex was scared of the answer.