“The fuck is this?” Brad Jordan asked angrily after he stepped through the black oval that hovered in the space behind him.
A dark-skinned man with hard, black eyes stepped through the oval and stood in a long-sleeved turtle neck and black slacks that rested casually on dress shoes that came to a point at the tip. Brad Jordan shook his head when he turned back toward the black oval as it shrunk and disappeared completely.
“I knew you wasn’t no angel,” Brad Jordan said and he no longer felt like the spirit of a dead man who had been plucked from perpetual dreams by this man who called himself Owuo and was taken to the fake heaven they had dwelt before they arrived here. “What the hell is happening. Am I still dead?”
Owuo nodded. “You are a dead, my friend, and I have brought you to Deads’ Town. You’re welcome. It is a more similar experience to your life than the perpetual sleep. Even I wouldn’t send a soul to that wretched end, but it is the fate of most Earthers who die. What a waste. Deads’ Town proves that the afterlife for an Earther need not be wasted in dreams. Given a place of peace to mingle together, Earther souls can still create, innovate, imagine. So thank me, Earther, fall at my feet in worship and promise fealty to me. When I bring Zacchaeus to you, it will be a ploy to gain his loyalty.”
“Who you that you can move my soul around and use me to get at Zacchaeus?” Brad Jordan asked. He chose to ignore the strange sights around him that he caught in his peripheral vision.
Deads’ Town was a cozy village in a mostly dark forest that had an eerie, light blue glow to it created by a mist that crept everywhere, obscuring the lush grass and dirt roads. There were humble structures made of wood, like cabins, and archaic looking lamp posts also made of wood with lamps lit by fire at the tops. Brad Jordan and Owuo stood on a hill that breached the mist and there were black trees with thick branches and big orange leaves.
“I am the worst nightmare, and all that business, but Brad Jordan, you do not have to know that side of me. I am fond of some humans, I appreciate conversation and friendship. I need you to satisfy a bet I lost in a card game, you can appreciate that right?”
He could, but he couldn’t help but feel like he was being wooed by evil and it unsettled him in this unsettling place. The town wasn’t busy with others, but a few of the deads of Deads’ Town moved about the mist; two deads approached the hill, following a path that was obscured by the mist. Brad Jordan couldn’t help but to turn away from Owuo and he watched the two people in simple clothing seemingly walking backwards as they conversed. They moved naturally like they were used to it and it unsettled Brad Jordan when they interacted. It was like he was watching them in reverse. When they looked at him, their heads didn’t turn, the features of their faces appeared on the side of their heads that faced him and they both smiled and waved as they moved in the uncanny way that they did.
“You’ll get used to that,” Owuo said. “This place is not for the living, and the deads may look like the living, but they do not act like the living. You do not. I have arranged for Baity here to show you around.”
A man appeared on the hill and Brad Jordan jumped.
“He is very nice,” Owuo continued. “I have to go. I will see you when I see you.” He lifted a hand in the air, the pinky, middle and pointer fingers high, and the other curled down to connect to the thumb.
“Wait!” Brad Jordan said and took a step closer to Owuo, “Don’t just leave me here!”
But Owuo blinked out of existence and Brad Jordan unknowingly turned in the way that the other deads had acknowledged him to face the strange man who was left standing on the hill.
PRL Serials 