Like hell.
A cold chill wracked my overrun body. Blind, deaf, and nearly dumb, I could only intertwine my blackened limbs with Shannon’s. My tongue stump licked at her teeth and my lips pressed to her mouth. Whatever was left of me retracted within, and the sensations I shared with Shannon were left on the surface of a puddle that became a pond that became a lake and finally an ocean. I sunk not to the ocean’s floor but into a vast canyon etched into the floor. The darkness was total.
And there I found the light.
At first, it was a speck no bigger than a freckle. I grasped it with the hands I no longer owned, and then it blossomed forth like a crystal—rays spawning more rays that branched into even more rays. The light pierced the darkness with a hundred sharp blades that soon reproduced into a thousand. It looked for all the world like a giant snowflake cut out of construction paper—the kind you made from folding paper again and again and snipping the edges, but this kept unfolding and unfolding. This glowing shape lifted me out of the canyon and out of the ocean, or maybe it shrank the ocean back into a puddle, because soon I stood over the darkness and in the blink of an eye was back snug inside my aura, which once again glowed white.
Maybe it was the bit of tongue—that piece of me inside her—that brought me back. Maybe it was that bit of me that tingled deep inside when I passed through the Light beam. Maybe it was all the time we’d spent linked together during the long night. Maybe it was our togetherness that overcame the darkness. Maybe it was that tiny speck of light that we both found in each other. Maybe it was straight-up sexual tension. The thing of it was, it didn’t really matter. Sometimes life—or death—isn’t about knowing how something worked, just being grateful that it did.
To my surprise, Shannon came back with me. The blackness receded from her limbs and torso. Even her eyes glowed that spectacular pale blue. I wanted to kiss her again but I hesitated. Fortunately, she didn’t.
She grabbed my hair and pulled me to her. Our bellies pressed together. My heel slid off and orbited around our intertwined legs. I ran my hand down her spine, enjoying the tickle of her aura. She arched her back and tilted her head. Our lips met, softly at first. Her tongue slipped into my mouth, across my teeth. My tongue’s tip popped up her throat and reattached to me.
I kissed harder, running my hands through her hair and down her sides, her curves, her ribs. My fingers sipped and savored at her tight little body, so much different from a man’s. It was only when I felt the ponytail ring slide back into place, holding her hair tight, that I remembered where we were at, what we were doing, who we were with.
By the time we pulled away from each other, Mr. Shady had covered more than half the distance between him and us. He soared toward us—arms and legs spread, lip curled.
Shit. We were screwed.
Shannon and I pulled apart, hands still clenched together. Our auras glowed silver. This girl had killed me, and now our souls were going to die together. I looked into her eyes, wide with fear, and suddenly it came back to me. My last living moment. I’d been rolling through the intersection at the four-way-stop when I realized her car was bearing down on me. Panic filled me. I stared into the oncoming driver’s face. At the same time, my hand fumbled with the steering wheel to honk the horn but I’d missed.
The horn.
Back in the van, she and I had honked the horn when I was trying to get out. We’d honked the horn. Later, we’d worked the phone. Together, we could move things.
I pointed to the nearest piece of debris, what looked like an oversized solar panel. A beam of pure light refracted off its surface. She stared at me with a wrinkled brow and shook her head. I motioned for her to come with me. Together, we swam through space away from Mr. Shady and toward the discarded debris.
As finales go, it was pretty damned anti-climatic. It may well have taken an hour for us to reach the debris. All the way, Mr. Shady closed in on us. He ranted and raved but his words went no further than his black tongue.
When we finally pressed our hands upon the hunk of junk, I conjured all my strength, all my will, and all my love. That goddamn sermon came back to me—the one from the pickup truck.
Friction is how we move forward. There are peacekeepers and there are peacemakers.
As he closed in, we pressed against the panel, trying to aim the beam of light at him. We sandwiched our bodies together, tension growing between us. Slowly, the panel shifted. Likewise, the ribbon of light fractured upon its surface cut outward, narrowly missing Mr. Shady, who now tried to slow his plunge through space. Except he couldn’t. He was coming too fast, with no leverage to stop himself.
As we move forward and rub against one another, we need to lubricate ourselves with the oil of the Holy Ghost.
I slid my hand over Shannon’s mangled belly. My fingertips brushed her insides, gathering drops of ectoplasm. She ground her ass against my hips. I rotated my pelvis against her. My glistening fingertips slid lower, as did hers. I gritted my phantom teeth and shoved until my aura merged with hers. Mr. Shady was within spitting distance, his face now contorted with rage and desire.
We must be anointed. Adversity is sometimes necessary.
Shannon and I pressed together. I moaned mutely as her fingertips worked in a circle around my clit. Those frantic circles became the center of my universe. I orbited around her blissful touch. Our knuckles bumped together as my fingers entered her. Our merged auras glowed silver. Pleasure swelled inside me. My hands trembled. My body shook. A beautiful storm gathered inside me, and I wanted to laugh and scream and pray. The panel slid still further. Mr. Shady reached his black hands out to grab us.
Friction is necessary.
The panel shifted, and the light swerved back directly into his path. It cut him right up the middle. He curled into a ball as the light filled him. A second later, he slammed into the panel, Jeremy’s ghostly form now fractured with a hundred cracks of light. He screamed and flailed then ricocheted off the panel and plummeted back to Earth in a swirl of black holes and white cracks. By the time he hit the atmosphere, he’d become a grey shooting star arcing through the clouds.
She pushed me against the panel and moved to kiss me. The anticipation of sweet relief throbbed inside me.
Except it had to wait.
Something truly remarkable happened. The panel kept moving until it pulled free of the light. Or rather, until the light pulled free of it. When that happened, all the other tangles of light glowed a little bit brighter. The heavenly knot around the Earth—the mess that had bound all the souls to our planet—loosened a little bit.
I looked first at the mess of black souls crowding the sky on Earth, and then at Shannon. She must’ve understood because she wearily nodded her head. We had a lot of work to do. We couldn’t have each other just yet. Not while so many souls waited in torment. We had an afterworld to save.