25

You: Hello.

ME: Oh!

YOU: What?

ME: You scared me.

YOU: Sorry.

ME: Where are you?

YOU: Right in front of you. Can’t you see me?

ME: No. It’s too dark.

YOU: Never mind. You don’t need to see me. We can just talk.

ME: Who are you?

YOU: Don’t you know?

ME: You sound like—Oh my God.

YOU: What?

ME: Words fail me.

YOU: They always did.

ME: But it can’t be you. You’re dead.

YOU: Thoroughly dead. There’s nobody deader.

ME: What’s it like?

YOU: Death? It’s not like anything.

ME: Are there bodies? Or are you only voices?

YOU: We have bodies. We can’t touch the living, but we can touch each other.

ME: You’re not alone?

YOU: No. There’s other dead people here. Many, many other dead people. Which makes me glad. Whoever said “Hell is other people” was an idiot. Can you imagine the opposite? An eternity of solitude? Without company or conversation? With no words but your own. Nobody to tell you other people’s stories? Forever and ever.

ME: The dead like to hear stories?

YOU: Oh yes. We tell each other stories all the time.

ME: Do you follow our stories too?

YOU: The living? You mean, do we watch you? Like television?

ME: Yes. Do the dead still care about the living?

YOU: Enough-about-me? What-do-you-think-about-me?

ME: I didn’t mean it like that. I meant—I think about you all the time, Ben. Selfishly, yes. I admit it. But I do think about you. Do you ever think about me?

YOU: Why else would I be here?

ME:——

YOU: What’re you doing, Cal? What’s that noise?

ME: I’m crying. Don’t you remember crying?

YOU: Oh yes. Crying. What the living do.

ME: I’m just so happy to have you here and be able to talk to you again. So this is real. I’m not just imagining you?

YOU: Oh no. You are imagining me. But that doesn’t make it any less real.

 

Caleb set his pencil down, blinked a few bright needles of tears from his eyes, and read over his words. You’re a funny guy, he told himself. A very strange and funny guy.