Life after Life: Part 2

   Well, that was... a week. Between the weather-change pain, being sick, my youngest being sick, the brain fog that comes with the weather-change pain, and almost three days of some fun vertigo (sarcasm! Three days of vertigo isn't fun at all), Friday is happening way before I'm ready for it. That said, I'm also totally ready for a weekend, so maybe Friday is happening right when I need it.  :)
    My oldest is back to school on this coming Tuesday, with my youngest starting school the week after, and I really don't know what I'm going to do with a few hours honestly alone every week. Probably write more and start getting some of those near-to-complete projects finished. Maybe drink coffee from a mug and not exclusively from a travel mug. Fairly certain there will be some knitting, and possibly some sewing. Maybe... time for seeing friends?
​    LOL pphhfftt! "Time for seeing friends"... I crack me up. :D   
    For everyone having it, hope this September Long Weekend is just what you're needing too!

2. In the Bright

        The instinctive voice tried to panic, but Liam was having fun teasing himself by taking his hand in and out of his pocket and playing with the ground that wasn’t actually there. He seemed to still have everything he’d been wearing before McTrucky de Grill had sped through a red light and reduced his torso to a sack of mulch, so Liam counted himself lucky in this current situation that he hadn’t died naked and decided to start walking. That decision ended after less than a minute when the smooth whatever-it-was he was in curved up to a slope that overcame the friction of his shoes and he slid back down. He turned around and went the other way. In double the first amount of time the same thing happened. He tried a bit of a smartass gamble and stayed up right at the cusp of where he was sliding and walked along it, but that didn’t seem to have an end so he made the assumption he was going around in circles like a goldfish.
        He did a couple running jumps, but everything felt off balance and weird because he had to keep his elbow over his eyes to stop the bright from piercing through to the back of his skull. Maybe he was being judged? Some religions had a thing after you died that you got judged. (Maybe it was most religions? Liam hadn’t really paid attention.) If so, the trial was taking a while longer than he would’ve expected. He was somewhat miraculous in that he wasn’t a by-product of his terrible childhood, but his personality hadn’t lent itself to making a lot of near and dear friends so maybe he was a by-product in all the diagnosis terminology that usually got thrown at him whenever he’d been put in counseling, so maybe there was something there that needed a while to judge. Mostly he kept to himself, understood that being educated was his only way out of his crappy childhood, and didn’t really care too much about a lot. Or anything, if he was honest. There really shouldn’t be that much to judge.
        Nish had said he was a cold fish, but that was a confusing description because she’d always crawled into bed with him when she wanted to warm up. He didn’t recall anything that he’d done which was immoral or illegal so far as society went – being a kid had let him know what that crap led to – and he’d never followed a religion. He’d helped out a couple people when he could, handing off a spare coat to that homeless guy and beating up some dick who tried to rape that drunk girl at a party the one time. The guy he gave a coat to had sincerely thanked him. The dick had pressed assault charges. Liam had been sentenced to a fine and some community service, but the girl had given him a hug and some cupcakes because she’d been recording herself on her phone when she’d passed out and gotten a video of the whole thing. The judge had figured it was excessive for Liam to have put the guy in the hospital, but the cops in the courtroom that day had mostly laughed when Liam replied he preferred putting the dick in the hospital than know that’s where the drunk girl had ended up.
        And if this was some kind of judgement thing, wouldn’t there have been some kind of representation or booming voice full of wisdom? Even idiots got assigned a court lawyer that was obliged to meet with them once or twice. Unless the real god or gods didn’t buy into the modern notions of religions and all that theology was – as he’d mostly found he believed anyway – completely bunk. Wouldn’t that be the absolute cosmic joke on the human race? Ha-ha and hee-hee on everyone who keeps killing themselves and neighbors over their interpretation of spiritual supremacy: the higher powers all believe in something else and people are bumbling along on paths they made up on their own.
        There was another loud shunk sound and Liam slowly pried his elbow away from his eyes. No searing brightness stabbed through his eyelids, but the total blackness hadn’t returned. He carefully opened one eye and was confronted with an endless, perfect, grey. He blinked both eyes open and looked around. There was nothing. Well, not quite because there was him standing there in the same clothes he’d dressed in this morning, but otherwise there wasn’t anything around him. He didn’t even have a shadow, a theory that he tested by jumping a couple of times and lifting his knees high enough to see under his feet.
        He smiled at being able to do that, jump high and look around. He’d started as a kid doing what he’d learned years later was called ‘parkour’, only he’d been doing it whenever he wasn’t in foster care to get away from whatever asshole his mom was having sex with for whatever food, clothes, lodging, alcohol or drugs she was trading for at the time. Once he found out what parkour was, and that it was a sport he was legitimately good at it, he’d gotten further into the sport and further away from his upbringing until he was six foster homes separated from his mom and old enough to rent his own place. The two cops who’d gotten him into the last foster house and been references for him on his first apartment even came out to his tournaments and cheered for him as if he had parents. That was pretty nice. They were probably going to be upset that he was paste beside the sidewalk. That sucked.
Now that he really thought about it, being dead wasn’t so great. Just grey and boring. Unless he could figure out some way of making it not boring…? After all, he didn’t have to keep his eyes covered anymore.
        He found a curve and did some running jumps with his sleeves held tight over his fists to see if he could find a top to whatever he was at the bottom of. No luck on a top, but he did find a ledge. It was a high ledge, but if he could get his hands to it than it was only a matter of physics to get the rest of him up there. Figuring out the correct jump to consistently reach the ledge was easy, figuring out the twist and pull to get on it was harder due to not being able to use his fingers; the ledge was made of the same smooth can’t-touch-this as the rest of the bowl.
        Once on it, Liam found it was more of a catwalk than an actual ledge. If he lay flat on his stomach and reached as far as his jacket sleeves allowed, then he could hook his fingers around each side of it. He made the instinct part of his mind freak out a bit when he smirked and dropped his head forward, his shirt collar pushing on his throat, then figured he should attempt to see where this weird catwalk went and stood up. He was about to take the first step when he realized that would be a really dumb idea. He crouched down to the most uncomfortable position for walking imaginable so that his left hand ran along the edge and his right hand pressed against the grey nothing in front of him.