Dead Fred

“What’s going on,” Berry demanded. “Why are all of you people in my living room?” No one answered, which frustrated him almost to the point of spontaneous combustion. He could feel his face heating up and he knew his face would be purple. He demanded louder, “Why the hell are you people in my living room and how the hell did you get in? What gives you the right to just come into my house?”

Again, no answer… 

“What do you think happened?”, he heard one lady say. He thought he had seen her before – someone from the neighborhood maybe.

He inched closer to the circle of people. He recognized his neighbor, Kathy, among the strangers who were gathered, and peeked over her shoulder. She was just short enough for him to get a good view, “Kathy, what is it that is so interesting?” She wouldn’t even look at him. He liked Kathy and thought she was a good neighbor, but to ignore him, while she was standing in his house… that was uncalled for. “That’s it! Everyone needs to clear out. What made you all think it was OK to just let yourself into my house?” Then he saw it, what everyone thought was so intriguing. Lying on the floor, was a lifeless body, an odd shade of grayish blue, that looked kind of like him. “Kathy. What is this? What’s going on?” Still, no acknowledgement from her. 

“Do you think it was a stroke or a heart attack,” someone else asked.

“Kathy! Helloooo?” He felt invisible in his own house and the disrespect was appalling. 

“She can’t hear you.” He heard a voice from somewhere, but no one standing around him had spoken to him or was paying any attention to him.

“Who said that?”

“I’m down here, next to you,” he heard the voice say again, but from whose mouth, he wasn’t sure.

“What? You’re not next to me. I’m looking around and you’re definitely not next to me, because no one around me is talking to me. What kind of game are you people trying to play with me? At my expense? This isn’t funny! You stop whatever sick game you’re playing and get out of my house!” He tried to put a hand on Kathy’s shoulder, to turn her around and demand they take whatever this circus was, outside, but he missed…. Or his hand went through her shoulder?? That couldn’t be right. He tried again. He watched his hand go through Kathy again, as he tried to touch her shoulder one more time. He was going crazy. No, this was a dream… a nightmare, and he wanted to wake up right now.

“You can’t touch anyone either. You can keep trying, but it won’t work,” the non-existent person’s voice stated.

“I hear a voice, but it’s not real. You’re not really here. I’m not really here. This is a nightmare and I’m going to wake up any minute. Wake up Berry! Wake. UP!” He didn’t.

“You aren’t going to wake up, because you’re not asleep.” A long-haired, gray and white cat appeared, from the middle of the crowd. It walked over to Berry, tail in the shape of a question mark, and circled his feet. The voice was coming from his cat? His dead cat.

“What the… you… what? Oh yes. I’m definitely having a nightmare!” He slapped his face and pulled his hair, trying to pull himself out of this lucid dream. He turned around and crouched down into a runner’s stance, then launched himself forward, with as much momentum as he could muster, then rammed right into the wall between the kitchen and the living room. He went right through the wall between the kitchen and the living room and ended up standing in the middle of the kitchen island – literally, in the middle of the kitchen island. He jumped forward to escape the boundaries of the island, then almost fell through the stove, landing on his butt instead. “Wake up!” He shook his head, like a dog with a plush toy. “Wake up!”

His very dead, very not-really-here cat, jumped in his lap and faced him. He bunted Berry’s cheek with his head, then out of nowhere, slapped Berry right across his left cheek, with his right paw.

“What the hell Sheeba? What was that for,” Berry asked, as he held his cheek.

“You never were the brightest crayon, were you? You’re dead Berry. D-E-A-D… DEAD! Get it?” He reached his gray and white paw up to administer another slap, but Berry blocked it.

“That’s enough. I get it!”

“That one was going to be for you naming me Sheeba. I’m a male cat. You could have named me Fred for all I care, but Sheeba… really? We are going to have a discussion about that. I’ve been stuck with it, because you’re my person, so you’re the only person that can name me. Who knows how long I would have been stuck with this name if you didn’t die today.”

“Fair point. Wait. Why can we touch, but I couldn’t touch anyone else?” He took his right index finger and poked Sheeba on the nose.

“Oh, for God’s sake Berry, if I can touch you, of course you can touch me. Seriously Berry. Do I need to spell it out in my cat litter for you this time? They are alive. We’re dead. We can’t touch them. They can’t see us. We can see each other and touch each other, because we’re both dead. Get it? Understand?”

“Wait. You’re dead, but you still have to use a litter box,” Berry asked, as if he were learning for the first time, that earthworms can grow their tails back, if they are cut off.

“Yes. I still poop and you have to change my litter box for all of eternity, Berry.”

“Really,” Berry asked, horrified, that he had to scoop poop from a litter box for all of eternity.

“No. You really are so gullible, aren’t you,” Sheeba squeezed out between breaths, from laughing so hard. “I’m a ghost. I don’t have a body. How am I supposed to poop?”

“I just died, Sheeba. You could be a little more sensitive. I don’t know how all this stuff works. You’ve been dead for five years, so you’ve had time to figure it out,” Berry said, unamused by being the butt of a joke, and still cross with Sheeba for slapping him.

“Please, for the love of God... stop calling me Sheeba. And I’ve seen a lot in these last five years. All the times you picked your nose and wiped it on the side of the couch. The times you didn’t flush the toilet, and left the bathroom, without washing your hands. I saw it.” He put his right paw up to the side of his mouth and whispered, “When you did things in your room, by yourself, that no one should ever see… you didn’t even cover up with a blanket, Berry. I saw that. No one should have to see that. If I wasn’t already dead, I would have climbed to the top of the house and jumped.”

Berry turned red, “You saw that?”

“Yes. I saw that and I can’t unsee it. That image is permanently burned in my head. I see it when I close my eyes. I’m a ruined man, Berry!”

“You’re a cat, not a man, so there’s that. Get over it. How many times did you sit on the couch next to me, or in the middle of the room, to lick your genitals? You could have done that alone, but you insisted on an audience. I never said anything, because that’s what cats do.” Berry crossed his arms and tried to lean back, against the stove. “Why do I keep falling through everything?”

Sheeba rolled his eyes. “You’re a ghost? Remember? You have to learn how to do everything all over again. It’s not the same as it was when you had a body. Everything is different now.”

Sirens.

“That’s probably the ambulance. You’re dead, but they’ll figure it out pretty quick. Doesn’t get any deader than you, my friend.” He climbed out of Berry’s lap and walked from the kitchen to the living room. “Come on. Aren’t you a little curious?”

Berry got up and followed. He walked around the island and to the living room.

The paramedics were walking through the front door with their bags and defibrillator. The circle of people parted, forming a U around Berry’s body, giving the paramedics just enough room to do what they were there to do.

“Was anyone here when this happened,” a portly, male paramedic asked.

“I don’t think so,” one of the women in the group replied.

“Not me,” another one responded.

“No. I don’t think anyone was here,” one of the men said, looking at the rest of the U.

Kathy spoke up, “I live next door. He was supposed to come to my cookout today, but he didn’t show up. I came over to make sure he was ok and to ask if he had any mustard, but when I knocked, the door opened. I saw him lying here on the floor. I knew he was dead as soon as I saw him. His lips are so blue, and his skin was cold when I rolled him over, and his body…. So stiff.” Her face twisted and she started ugly crying. “He was so alive yesterday. I saw him in the driveway, and he waved. He was always so friendly. It’s such a shame. You just never know when it’s your time.”

“You were always really nice too, Kathy.” 

“Shhh,” Sheeba hissed.

“Do you know how he died,” Kathy asked the paramedic.

“It appears to be a heart attack, but we can’t be sure, until an autopsy is done.”

“A heart attack. It was not a heart attack. I was in great shape. Look at my body.” Berry pointed to his body. “I took good care of myself.”

“You sat at your computer, writing code all day. You drank Mountain Dew and Red Bull. You ordered Uber Eats every day. You had good genes, so you thought you didn’t have to work out, because the mirror told you that you were in shape, even though you never went to the gym. And if I’m being honest Berry, you were a little soft in the middle.” Sheeba pawed at the stomach on Berry’s body.

“I was not! You take that back... Sheeeee-ba,” Berry said through gritted teeth. "

“Enough with the name!" Sheeba puffed his chest out and stood tall. He cocked his head to the left and narrowed his eyes. "You were skinny fat. Yes, I said it. You sat at the computer and ate like crap, and when you weren’t doing that, you were reading… what did you call them? Graphic novels? Yes, that was it.”

Berry folded his arms again, then remembered his comics and all the characters from the pages. “Ohhhh…. Can I fly? Can I do cool ghost stuff?” He closed his eyes and focused, eyes squinted, then tried to touch the paramedic. When that failed, he stood nose-to-nose with Kathy and yelled, “Boo!” Nothing. “This isn’t going to be fun at all, if I don’t have any awesome powers or abilities. Am I just supposed to live the rest of my life… I mean, afterlife, just being a ghost, that can’t ‘ghost’?”

“You really read way too many comic books,” Sheeba said, as he started walking toward the front door.

“Graphic novels,” Berry retorted. “Hey, where are you going?”

“Well, we can’t stay here forever. Come on. There are some cool places we can go, that are just for souls like us, plus, now we can start on your training.”

“My training? Like flying?”

“No. I was joking. You can’t fly, Berry. Pay attention.” And with that, they walked out the door to begin their afterlife together. “And we need to work on the name thing. I really can’t go any longer with this hideous name. I need a proper name.”

“What about Fred,” Berry asked.

“You know I wasn’t serious when…” He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Fine. I’m Fred.”