Highway to Hell

            Alex woke up to a crash and sat up in bed, listening intently, heart pounding in his chest.  At first he thought it must have been his imagination, but just as he was about to lay back down, he heard another noise.  It sounded like a floorboard creaking, followed by the soft sound of a padded shoe on a wooden floor.  Alex held his breath, ears pricked to hear any other sounds.  And sure enough, he heard another footstep, almost silent, but just loud enough to carry through the empty house.

            Alex climbed out of bed and glanced around his room, looking for anything he could use as a weapon.  He couldn't find anything very deadly, so he grabbed an umbrella and hoped the intruder was unarmed.  He opened the door carefully, trying to make as little noise as possible so as not to alert the thief to his presence.  Peering down the hall, he saw a dark figure crouching in front of a cabinet, stuffing anything of value into a heavy sack.  He crept up behind the figure as silently as possible, brandishing the umbrella, ready to strike as soon as he got close enough.  Suddenly, the thief turned, and, panicking at the sight of Alex, pulled out his gun and fired.

* * *

            Alex opened his eyes, his mind swimming.  His vision was blurry and he could see nothing.  Slowly, his mind settled and it all came back to him, the burglar, the umbrella, the gun.  He must have survived the shot, and now he was in a hospital.  Except hospitals were usually bright and white, and he saw just darkness.  He focused his eyes, and realized he was looking up at the ceiling of his hallway.  He was still in his house, he realized.  No one knew he had been shot.  Had he been shot?  He didn't feel any pain, but he didn't seem to be able to move.  He tried to push himself up, but nothing happened.  Where was the burglar?  Had he left or was he still here?  How long had he been out?  Questions swam through his mind as he stared at the dark ceiling.  He heard a noise.  Footsteps.  Someone was walking towards him.  And sure enough, out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone approaching.  Someone in all black.  It didn't look like a paramedic, but it didn't look like the thief either.  He couldn't see the face, it was all just darkness.

            The figure stopped right next to his head.  Alex tried to say something, to ask who it was, or what had happened, but he couldn't speak.  He still couldn't make out the identity of the figure; he just saw darkness.  The figure reached out a hand towards his face, and Alex saw long, white, bony fingers.  The hand seemed to reach toward his mouth, and then it was picking him up, pulling him to a standing position.

            The figure let go of Alex, and he was standing, shocked, staring at the still-dark figure.  Even just a foot away, Alex could not see any more detail of the figure.

            "Who are you?" he asked.  The words did not seem to come out of his mouth; instead, they just reverberated in his head.

            "Who do you think?" came the reply, filling his head again.

            "Am I... dead?" Alex asked.

            "Bright, aren't you?  Look down, Alex," the figure answered.

            Alex looked down and saw his own body, as he knew he would.  It was lying there, lifeless, a bullet wound in its chest.  His own eyes stared up at him, unseeing.

            "So you must be...?"

            "Obviously," Death replied.

            "What happens now?"

            "Good question.  I'm just here to make sure everything went smoothly.  You can figure out the rest for yourself."  Death turned away, starting to fade.

            "Wait!"  Alex shouted.  "Where am I supposed to go?"

            "You'll know," Death replied, before disappearing completely.

            Alex stood, staring at the space where Death had been, then back at his body.  He heard sirens in the distance, and he knew the ambulance was finally on its way.  A little late, he thought, glancing down at the pool of blood surrounding his former body.  Someone could've been seriously injured, here.

* * *

            The next few days were a rush of people coming in and out, examining the scene and Alex's body.  After they had taken all the necessary pictures and measurements, they wheeled it out of there and brought it to the morgue, where it was pumped full of preservatives and put in a suit by a couple of grave morticians.  The process was paid for, he learned, by some distant relatives who had bought him the cheapest funeral they could get when they learned they were his next of kin and would get everything he had owned.  Wait'll they find out I rent my house and I'm thousands of dollars in debt, he thought.  Good thing funerals aren't returnable.

            His no-frills funeral was attended by the aforementioned distant relatives, a few of his coworkers, and his next-door neighbors, none of them looking very grief-stricken, but mostly just bored and distracted.  After he was buried, he stuck around just long enough to chuckle at his relative's outrage upon inheriting his debt and his rented house, and then decided it was time to leave.

* * *

Alex started out on his journey the third night after his death.  Somehow, it felt right to travel at night, and so, although he had no reason to stay after his funeral, he waited and people-watched for the rest of the day.  He enjoyed standing in the street and watching everyone scurry by like ants, busy with their own lives, paying no attention to him, and yet unconsciously avoiding him, crowds flowing around him like a rock in the middle of a river.  Sometimes, he would follow a single person around, listening to their conversations and learning about their lives, then leaving when he got bored with them.

            Finally, as night began to fall, he started to walk, heading south.  It felt to him as if there were no other directions to walk, no paths to take other than the one he was on.  He walked straight, along the street, and, when the street ended, through houses and trees, across a river, through a mountain.  He walked in a perfectly straight line, never turning, never looking anywhere but straight in front of himself.  He walked for what could have been minutes, hours, or days, and the sky stayed dark above him, the stars and moon the only light illuminating his surroundings.

            Eventually, he left the wilderness and found himself in civilization once more, on a large, empty highway, heading directly south.  The highway stretched long into the distance, as far as Alex could see.  This is going to be a long walk, Alex thought.  Not like I have anything better to do, though.

            A little while after Alex started down the highway, he heard a noise behind him.  Looking back for the first time since he had started walking, he saw a van coming up behind him.  It was an old, white van, with no windows except for the front two, and it was covered in dents and scratches, and had dirt smeared all over the sides.  It slowed down as it passed him, and then came to a stop on the side of the highway ahead.  The driver got out, an old, grimy man, who started to limp towards Alex.  Alex continued to walk, wondering why the old man had stopped and what he was doing.  The man seemed to be looking directly at him, and when he got a few feet away, he spoke, in a hoarse voice, through his toothless mouth:

            “Need a ride?”

            Alex looked behind him to see who the man was talking to, then turned back when he saw there was no one there.

            “I’m talkin’ to you, idiot.  There’s no one else here.  You need a ride?”

            Just as Alex was about to reply, he heard another noise behind him and turned to see a candy-apple red convertible drive past.  The driver, a beautiful blonde woman, hair streaming in the wind, turned towards Alex and the man as she passed, then slowed down and pulled over in front of the van.  She got out and strode over, heels clicking on the asphalt as she approached.

            “What’s going on?” she said in a soft, sweet voice, looking from Alex to the old man.

            “I was just offerin’ him a ride, Miss.  It’s a long way to walk ‘long here.”

            “Where are you headed?” she asked, turning towards Alex.

            “South,” Alex said, speaking for the first time since he had died.

            “I’m going that way, too,” she said.  “I’d be happy to give you a ride.”

            “Doesn’t matter to me, I guess,” Alex said.  “Either of you have a coin?”

            “Certainly,” said the woman, smiling, and pulled a shining silver coin from her purse.  “I’ll be tails.”  She handed Alex the coin, which felt solid in his hand

            Alex tossed the coin into the air, watching as it spun to the top of its arc, and then seemed to hover there for a second before falling into his outstretched palm.  He glanced at the result, but the design was unfamiliar, and it wasn’t clear what it was supposed to be.  As he looked closer, the picture seemed to resolve itself more and become, quite literally, tails.  They were long and twisted, and seemed to come to points at the end.  As he looked even closer, he realized it was actually just the normal back of a quarter, with the familiar eagle staring up at him.  Must have been a trick of the light, he thought.

            “Tails,” he declared, looking up.  The woman smiled and the old man glared at her before turning around and limping back to his van.  Alex started to hand the coin back to the woman, but she refused.

            “Keep it,” she said, still smiling.  “For luck.”

            “Thanks.  I’m Alex,” he replied.

            “Call me Belle,” the woman said, as she walked back towards the car and climbed in.

            “Did you know that guy?” asked Alex, following and pulling the door open.

            “We’ve met.  You’re better off coming with me.”

            “Why’s that?” he asked, pulling on his seatbelt.

            “He’s got a bit of a reputation around here.  Best to just steer clear of him.  I do.”

            “If you say so.  Where are we, by the way?”

            “On the highway, of course.”

            “I can see that.  But what highway?  And why are there no signs?”

            “Everyone knows where they’re going around here.”

            The road split into a fork ahead, half going uphill, the other down.  The woman turned the car onto the half going down.  Alex looked up and saw the white van was going the other way.  The car continued along the road as it went farther and farther downhill, with no end in sight.