Live Forever
(Part 1 of the Afterlife Chronicles)

	Normal days don’t last very long for me.  It’s just when I think maybe this time I can live in peace when God reaches down and bitch slaps me.  How much crap should one person take before they just give up?  Anyways… It all started on a day just like any other…

	The insistent buzz of my phone’s alarm woke me half passed six in the morning and with a groan, I rolled over and absently turned it off.  Sleep never lasts long enough when your dreams are more fun than every day you live.  I rolled out of bed and shambled zombie-like to the bathroom to wake up under the hot shower spray.  Same routine, different day.  Without even bothering to eat breakfast after dressing, I left and made my way to work, walking like I’d had to for several days.

	I live with my grandmother, you see, and she was out of town for a good ten days on a cruise, so I had to drag my own ass to work every day they wanted me.  Not that it really bothers me though; I find the long walk through the slowly waking city to be refreshing.  I loved that town; it had always felt like home to me.

	I should have known as I passed the Starbucks at the corner that my day was going to hit the shits.  I didn’t notice him as I passed though; just was aware of the insistent stiffness in my neck from someone staring at me.  He watched me with cold gray eyes that were so conflicting with his dark skin.

	Yawns plagued me as I finally got to work and stepped inside.  I don’t hate fast food, but I seriously hate the rude customers that come in thinking I live only to serve them.  While I work, I constantly consider bitch-slapping the next rude customer, but sanity has a tight grip on me, so I never do.

	He came inside just shortly after I got back from my break, coming to stand in my line as I was punching in my clock-in number.  My cap blocked the tall black man from my view but when one of my co-workers gasped, I looked up instinctively and stared down the barrel of a nondescript handgun.  I just blinked once and my blue-gray eyes shifted to meet his emotionless ones.

      In that instant, I saw nothing but the reflection of the gun pointed at my face in his eyes.  I couldn’t even react as he pulled the trigger and the gun fired, spitting a hot slug into my cheek just below my right eye.  Lead tore through flesh and shattered bone, an explosion of blood and bone splattering against the machinery behind me as my head finally jerked back.  I didn’t feel any pain though, only a tug on my face and a sting at the back of my head.  Distant, I hear a scream as my cap falls off and I fall back as if in slow motion.
      
      Blackness hits me as I fall and I find myself floating in a sea of ink, not understanding where I am.  “Do you want to live forever?” a voice so sweet rings out in the black.  Live forever? Of course not, what’s the point in watching everything around me die when I cannot?
      
      “No…” I don’t even know where I found the strength to reply, it just slipped out passed my teeth.  The voice laughed a humored laugh and the world came rushing back.
      
      My body stilled in the air, my back arched, and then I straightened with a snap, my head coming up with my left eye locking on the man that had shot me.  He was already running for the door but my body leapt over the counter.  No sound, nothing.  The world rushed as I moved, like I was watching a movie inside my head and someone else was moving my body.  I didn’t even recognize the hands that grabbed the man and tore off his right arm at the shoulder.  Blood as cold as ice splattered against my skin, strange how I could feel that but nothing else.
      
      This time I knew the screams came from the man as I pinned him to the ground and slammed my fists into his face over and over.  Bone crunched and more ice splattered up against me but that didn’t stop me.  Over and over I tear chunks of flesh from his body as easily as children tear play dough.  The man was dead, I knew it, but I didn’t stop, I just kept rending him open and apart.  Suddenly, an insistent gnawing in my gut drove me to bite into his arm and tear off a chuck of meat.  Sweet as honey, flavor erupted in my mouth, drawing a moan from my throat.
      
      More, I needed more.  As I tore and clawed and devoured, sensation returned to my body, my right eye rolled down and the hole in my face closed, healing without a mark.  It was only then that sound came back and I realized all I could hear was me feasting on this dead man’s cold body.   Belly full, I stood and wiped my mouth, though the action was affectless since I was drenched in blood all over my front.
      
      I turned slowly as the body on the floor crumbled into ash and gazed at the people just staring in clear shock and terror at me.  The blood on my skin and in my clothes slowly faded as I stood there till absolutely nothing of the man that shot me remained, save the flesh and bone in my stomach.  I didn’t even waste time speaking. I just turned right back around and left; leaving behind everything I’d ever known.
      
      Just like that, with the flash of a gun, I died… and came back.  Was I a zombie?  I still don’t know, because hell if I was a zombie, wouldn’t that make Jesus one as well? He came back to life after dying though he didn’t kill anyone when he did...  It turns out the afterlife is just as messed up as ‘normal’ life is… with the exception that you’re already dead so you can’t die again.
      
      ~To be continued~