Time's Up

My whole life has been the result of a remarkable run of luck. I flitted from one heist to another, knicking and stealing whenever I could. I got caught a few times, sure, but nothing too dramatic. They used to say evidence against me was like water on a duck's back - it just rolled right off. Yeah, I had a good long streak of luck. It ran out yesterday. A knife to the gut, straight up into the chest cavity. Quick, gory. Fast, which I guess was lucky. I'll say this - dying didn't hurt as much as I thought it would.

When you are alive, people spend a lot of time talking about death. What it will be like, where you go, that sort of thing. Well... It isn't what I thought, that's for sure. And now that I'm here, all I can think about was the things that happened in life. Seems silly really, like I'm focusing on the wrong things.

I spent a long time, right after, just staring down at my body. It was strange, looking at myself, staring up with sightless eyes. Took me bit to figure out what was happening. I got there though. Hearing the undertaker calling to his apprentice to grab your legs when he grabs your arms tends to serve a certain dose of reality.

I always thought there would be... I don't know... something. You know, after I died. I wasn't thinking pearly gates and streets of gold. That always seemed a bit far fetched - like something out of a story. But something. I keep waiting for something to happen. No luck so far. Nobody seems to see me and I haven't been able to get anything to happen. I'm thinking all those stories about haunted houses and stuff might be made up. I can't make lights flicker or doors slam. And so many people have walked through me that I don't think they're feeling a chill.

The question now is, well, now what? I've drifted around most of town by this point, but it's already getting kind of boring. I probably should do something about the guy who stabbed me, but, let's be honest, I started the fight. Serves me right. My family is all long gone, so nobody to snoop on there. You would think I would see others, like me. Ghosts or whatever. No such luck so far. Being dead is a lot more lonely than I expected.

Did you know that I don't need to sleep anymore? Or eat? At first, I thought that was a good thing. But now, I've realized it just means more hours to fill. And I still don't have anything to fill them with. I suppose the best I can hope for is slowly fading away. That, somehow, is much, much worse than death.