Waking Up Dead Read online

  “All right. I’m ready. Do something…” I waved my hands, “miraculous!”

  Stuffing this oversized soul into the waifish body of a girl still going through an Emo stage at age twenty-five definitely constituted a miracle.

  Suriyel crossed swords with Sam. They raised their free hands to the heavens. Suriyel chanted in a rolling, unfamiliar language. Sam repeated the words.

  Two shafts of brilliant white light reflected from their hands onto the amulet which seared my skin as it sunk into my forehead. Molten metal drifted through my thoughts as my soul became liquid. I literally melted into her body.

  My eyes flew open. I gasped for air and shouted, “Goat!”

  I looked from Suriyel to Sam who crouched down on each side of me. The concern on their faces quickly changed to confusion.

  “Really now, there’s no need for name-calling. A simple, ‘thank you’ would be the polite thing to say,” Sam said as he extended his hand.

  “Figures,” said Suriyel who grabbed my other arm to help me up.

  “I mean, it was a goat that made her wreck her car.”

  “You mean the goat made you wreck your car,” Suriyel reminded and returned me to an upright position.

  “Had you been drinking and driving?” Sam asked in a condescending tone.

  “Look, Mr. Holier Than-Thou—“ I stopped to check for the taste of alcohol. “No. She—I mean, I haven’t,” I said, pleased with my niece for having better sense.

  A raw sensation between my legs caused me to stumble as the angels helped me walk to the car. I stole a glance at Suriyel, and nervously wet my lips. Would he smell sex on me? Would he be jealous? Oh God! I prayed Stacy remembered her birth control.

  I tripped over a heel yanked off when she—I catapulted through the windshield. How do you walk in these things? The old me got nosebleeds if I wore anything higher than kitten heels.

  I shrugged Suriyel and Sam off to retrieve the shoe. I put it on, took two steps and did a “Miss Congeniality” stumble to the ground.

  “I-I’m okay.” Who am I kidding? I might never be okay again in this tight, black, plether skirt, and irritating thong underwear. I held the skirt down with one hand to keep it from riding up too high. I used the other to dig the butt-floss out from where it cut into my tailbone.

  The angels peered at me with their hands on their hips. I suspected they waited to be entertained by more of my stupidity.

  “Teaching her to impersonate a human is going to be a lot harder than I thought,” Suriyel muttered to Sam as they hoisted me up again.

  “You’re an idiot for thinking it’d be easy in the first place.”

  The sound of a screen door slamming spiked my adrenalin.

  “Um, I think Farmer Brown’s awake. In case you didn’t know, people who live out this way are more the fire, aim, ready type.”

  “It would be even more irritating to have to collect you again in the same day,” Suriyel said before we suddenly appeared by the car door.

  “Most people don’t go around telling others how they really feel. I think God forgot to give you a filter.” I rubbed my temples to ease the boiling pain in my head.

  “Dear, uh…,” asked Sam.

  “Stacy,” I supplied.

  “Yes, dear Stacy, it’s both a blessing and a curse.”

  The fabricated roll of thunder chimed from their phones simultaneously. I knew it wasn’t God but flinched anyway.

  Suriyel read the screen. His full lips thinned and turned down. “I believe we have been summoned.”

  “Cheer up, maybe there’s been an airplane crash or tsunami. That last one was fun.”

  “Samael, you are entirely too dedicated to your work.” Suriyel rolled his eyes. He turned to me. “Our boss is calling. I expect to return to collect you shortly.”

  I grabbed Suriyel’s arm. “Wait just a minute! Ya’ll can’t leave me here to get shot now that Farmer Brown probably heard your stupid little phones go off. And, how the hell am I supposed to get me and this banged-up car back to Kitty and Robert’s?”

  “You are a resourceful human. You will think of something.” My hand slipped through Suriyel as he faded away.

  “Come back here. How do I explain all this,” I asked the thin air.

  “What’s the problem? Just tell them the angels were watching over you,” Sam’s disembodied voice answered,

  “That’s not even funny!”

  No answer.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” I huffed.

  Farmer Brown’s dog barked at me. I opened the car door, brushed the broken glass from the seat and plopped down.

  “Nice. Real nice, ya’ll.”

  I listened as the dog and its master came closer. I didn’t want to explain anything to anybody. I really didn’t think I could right now or ever.

  Back up the short bus to school. If I teleported myself to my niece’s side, then why can’t I just zap myself and the car to Kitty’s house? Yeah, but how do I explain the wreck? Oh, stop talking to yourself Ava—Stacy, and do something.

  I closed my eyes, laid my hands on the dash board, and visualized all the glass returning to the window. I heard a pop as the front bumper unfolded. “Heal car! Heal,” I said in my best tent revival minister voice.

  “Who’s there?” The farmer’s voice jarred my visualization.

  I looked over the steering wheel to see the farmer’s thin body, a distorted, dark shadow closing the distance in the gray morning light. He stopped to raise his rifle to his eye.

  “Oh, my Lord!” I grabbed the wheel and wished to be in Kitty’s garage with every fiber of my being.

  Rifle shot echoed in my ears. I opened my eyes to find myself and the car, engine purring, in my sister’s circular driveway.

  “Thank you,” I breathed to the heavens.

  The sunrise reflected in the fully restored windshield. I walked to the front of the car. No crunched metal. “Don’t that beat all?”

  Four divots from the killer goat glared at me from their place in the hood. The farmer rudely interrupted me before I could visualize their restoration. I placed my hand on the hood for one last car healing and heard the slam of a car door echo in the garage.

  Kitty pulled her Land Rover half-way out. She let the window down when she saw me. “Well, look what the cat dragged in. I was just going out to uh…”

  “Yeah, dumpster diving at Wal-Mart. I know.” Fatigue made me grumpier than usual.

  The woman was everything I wasn’t—svelte, blonde, and filthy rich from marrying the town’s only dentist. Her quirks outnumbered mine by a mile. Kitty hit a different dumpster every day then hoarded everything she found until Robert forced her to eBay it.

  “Since you’re up, you want to come with me?”

  “Not today Kitty, I’ve had a terrible night!” I moaned. I struggled to open the back door.

  “Kitty? You graduate from college and think you’re old enough to call me ‘Kitty?’ I am still your Mama.” The aggravation in her voice rattled all over the garage.

  Hell. I screwed up. “Yes, Mama,” I emphasized the name through gritted teeth and rummaged through my purse for the keys.

  Kitty left her car running. She got out and plucked a key from an empty flowerpot under the porch light. “You must have had a bad night. This key’s been here for years. I don’t even want to know what happened to your keys.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. I just need some sleep right now,” I grumbled as she followed me a few steps down the hall.

  I forced Stacy’s bedroom door open until it hit something very solid and vibrated back.

  Kitty fought me to close the door. “Are you drunk? It is morning, and you know I turned your room into storage. You’re in the guest room.”

  My entire body drooped from mental and physical fatigue. The boxes stacked evenly against the wall of the dining room we passed looked like they’d make a great bed. I labored to keep up with her as she led me to one of four extra bedrooms. T
his one had a wider pathway through the junk. Mental note to self, turn her into the A&E show, “Hoarders,” on the way to the hereafter.

  “I know you’re only here for a few days, but you really need to keep decent hours. Your daddy and I would like to spend a little time with you while you’re here,” said Kitty in a stiff, half-whisper. The master bedroom where Robert slept was at the end of the hall.

  “Yes, Mama,” I said and fell face down on the bed.

  Her shoulders fell. She left me with an exasperated sigh before she closed the door.

  Chapter Three

  “Get off my face you stupid cat!” I muttered and batted the fur from my face. Sunlight blasted through a hole in the dumpster-find drapes. It pierced the mat of dark hair over my eyes. I flew up in bed.

  “Oh, hell,” I said flatly. Last night’s nightmare really happened.

  I looked down at the skirt barely covering my thighs. Another “Oh, hell,” fell out of my mouth. Why did young girls think they had to hang out of everything just to be sexy? Just wait until they turned fifty and everything hung out whether they wanted it to or not. Believe me, it wasn’t sexy.

  I slid out of bed. So what if the skirt rolled up to my butt cheeks? I stubbed my toe on a stack of boxes and hopped on one foot into the bathroom. I looked in the mirror. “Oh. My. Lord!” My former self stared at me with the face of my niece. Her dark Halloween eye make-up smeared itself from temple to temple. At least it matches her hair.

  “You look lovely first thing in the morning.”

  A stupid girlie eeep came out of my mouth, Suriyel stood in the doorframe. I whirled to face him. “Are you trying to kill me dead?”

  “I believe you would be dead if I killed you.” His finger made my skin hot where he wiped some of the black lipstick off my cheek.

  I shoved his hand away and immediately wanted it back. “Don’t make fun of me! You almost gave me a heart attack!”

  His eyes moved down to where my black thongs with silver skulls and crossbones peeked out. A flush of heat shot straight from my core to my face. What would he do if I ripped the underwear off and jumped him right there in the bathroom? Nah. He’d be so startled, I’d end up before God in skull and crossbones underwear.

  “I don’t know what they taught you in fallen angel school, but it’s not polite to bust in on a person when they’re in the bathroom. Get out!” I tried to shove him out. It was like pushing a brick wall, a very muscular, dangerous-looking, brick wall. His eyes were still fixed on my underwear.

  I struggled to ignore the salute my nether regions gave him as I laid into him with my shoulder.

  “Oh, no you don’t. No free shows even for an angel. I mean a fallen angel, which is exactly what you’re acting like right now.” I gave one last good push. “Would you just wait outside?”

  He vanished as I ran into the bathroom door with a “thud.”

  “Ow! Sh…!” I recited a long string of expletives in my head and swung the door open to find Suriyel. I ran right into him.

  “Well, you ordered me to leave, so I left,” he said with a smirk and a shrug.

  My lips were guided missiles. I wiped the annoying look off his face with a searing kiss. He responded by delving deeper with his tongue. The angel took my passion and slammed it back into me with heart stopping, fire igniting intensity. It was frightening. I jerked my lips free and fought for air.

  “Do not mess with what you do not understand,” Suriyel said with almost as much force as his Earth-shaking kiss.

  My brain sputtered as I tried to process what just happened. I wasn’t standing before God in slutty underwear which was a good thing.

  Suriyel stuck his phone in my face and pulled it away. “In case you had not noticed, it is one forty-two p.m., and your…I mean, your aunt’s body has still not been discovered.”

  I remained immobile.

  “You need to do something.”

  Ack! “Me? Why me?”

  I turned green at the gills. No way. No how. Somebody else needed to find my rotting corpse. I ran through my mental calendar. Nope. No cleaning service. No produce deliveries. No social visits. Not a thing on the schedule for today except for church.

  Hold on. I rarely missed Sunday service because I expected Big Mama to come down from Heaven on her big golden Hoveround and mow me down. Why hadn’t anyone thought to check on me?

  “Hello?” Suriyel brought me out of my pity-party by waving his hand in front of my face. “You are wasting precious time.”

  “All right already! I’ll have you know it’s a disgusting thing to ask me to do. But, I’ll get dressed and go after I take a shower. There’s no telling where this body has been.”

  Spite and a whole lot of curiosity made me leave the door open as I turned the shower on. I did a slow shimmy to get the skirt and panties off at the same time. When he finally looked at my face, he arched an elegant eyebrow and disappeared.

  “Humph. That’ll teach you—you bad, bad angel.” The water turned cold. I yelped in surprise. Coincidence? Hell no.

  It took an hour to figure out how Stacy wore her make-up and another one to come-up with a plan. The first part of the plan involved a make-over for my niece. No more black eyeliner or dark eye make-up. When I tried to apply it, I looked like rabid raccoon.

  And, her wardrobe! I sported jogging suits or pedal pushers with three-quarter length sleeve tops to hide my flabby upper arms. What did I know about wearing hoodies over T-shirts (in the summer no less) and school-girl skirts with fishnets?

  The girl had an identity problem when she was alive. I transformed it into identity theft. My image barely passed for respectable with hair thrown in a ponytail. The rest of me got squeezed into black jeans and a black, skull emblazoned T-shirt. I set my sights on a shopping trip before I went to my funeral.

  I stalled for time by driving the GT instead of doing the fallen angel teleport thingy. It gave me time to figure out what to do with my body when I got to my—Ava’s house. First item on my mental list is to call Sheriff Tharp. We dated in high school. He dumped me—Ava for Lorna, one of the town’s biggest busybodies. Wouldn’t it be perfect if he broke down when he saw my body?

  I stopped to wait for the train on the town’s only track and a plan started to hatch in my brain. If I stayed in the same circles and did the same things I did when I was alive, I’d sniff him out. As Stacy, my circles were totally different. I-Ava had a fundraiser and a cotillion to cater.

  “Hey!” I uttered aloud. “If Stacy could somehow inherit my catering business, then I could still stay in the loop!” This would involve changing my Will, if I could find my copy.

  My—Ava’s house was exactly like all the other two-story, stucco-ed homes in the upper middle class neighborhood. I grew up in a tiny farmhouse, so this was ten-thousand steps up from it and the trailer Big Mama let us move onto her property as newlyweds. Craig loved the plastic columns on the front. I hated them. They looked too much like “Gone With The Wind” to me. Heat rose in blurry waves from the lawn. I noticed the potted plants desperately needed water as I removed the hidden key from underneath a paver and let myself in.

  My eyes needed a second to adjust to the darkness in the house. I breathed in through my mouth to calm my nerves and avoid the smell of decaying flesh. The stairs creaked as I climbed to my-Ava’s bedroom. My tongue stuck to my lips when I went to lick them.

  “Couldn’t I just call the police from Stacy’s cell phone from Kitty’s nice comfy guest room?” I asked the stale air.

  A deep breath helped steady my nerves. I grabbed the door handle, pushed it open. Samael stood between me and my former body. My hand flew to my chest in a good impression of Fred Sanford’s “I’m comin’, Elizabeth!”

  “Oh, excuse me for startling you.” He laughed and ushered me out of the room. A rush of electricity made the hair stand up on my arms. “I don’t think you need to see your former shell. It’s quite disgusting.”

  I thought I saw dark dots swirl behind him and
form the shape of a person. I was too busy getting over my second heart attack of the day to be sure.

  “Are ya‘ll going to keep popping up like this until I find the dumbass who killed me? If you are, I am going to have to get a pacemaker or something. What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “Just trying to spare you the ugliness. You really shouldn’t go in there.” Sam leaned against the closed door to bar my way.

  Big Mama always said I was hard-headed. If she told me “no,” it made me try all the more. He forgot I didn’t need a door to get in. I focused on the inside of my bedroom and materialized there with a genie-like poof. The door flew open with such force, I expected Sam to be angry, but he wasn’t.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He shrugged and stayed put at the door.

  The figure on the bed was bloated beyond belief. I barely made it to the balcony before I lost whatever little Stacy ate the night before.

  A handkerchief? Yes, a handkerchief appeared in Sam’s hand. He covered his nose with it. “Human bodily functions are so revolting.” He shook his head in disgust. “I warned you.”

  I glared at him all the way out of the room. “I hate being such a girlie-girl.”

  Sam followed me downstairs. I got a glass of water to wash the taste from my mouth before I called 911. I counted on the grotesque sight of my old body to make my plea for help realistic.

  “Don’t you have some soul to escort or something?” The corners of my mouth took a petulant downturn.

  “I am certain they will send me a message when they need me. Aren’t you going to call the police?

  “Well, if you’d let me be, I would!” I picked up the phone and put it down in the cradle. “Will you just go somewhere until I finish this call?”

  He sulked then disappeared into nothingness.

  The hysteria in my voice convinced the dispatcher to call Sheriff Tharp and all cars in the area. It equaled a whopping three, if they all showed up. Now the race was on to find the Will. Oh, and call Kitty. I sprinted to the office while trying to dial Kitty’s cell on Stacy’s cell. It was much more advanced than anything I used.