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Andrew Lenahan's Death, Part III
Andrew Lenahan's Dead
or
“Is That a Picture In Your Locket Or Are You Just Happy
To See Me?”
short fiction
by Andrew Lenahan
The elevator wasted no time in sliding madly down the shaft in a shower
of sparks, the metal sides agonizingly shredded against the guide rails as the
support cables flailed around randomly above like steel bullwhips. Tearing wildly down the shaft, it
finally reached the bottom and… slowed gently to a gradual stop.
* Ding! *
Chet looked around, showing mild surprise at his failure to die. Oh well, it would have been an
ignominious way to die anyway, in a sort of combination explosion/squishing. He wasn’t entirely against the idea of
dying in the office building, though, as he was sure this meant some sort of
wonderful bonus on his life insurance. However,
when the doors creaked open, we wasn’t sure he was even still in the office. The room where the elevator stopped
looked something like a basement, with pipes near the wall and crates strewn
about, but unlike any basement it seemed to have a stream of water down the
middle, which looked about fifteen feet wide.
The stream connected two gaping cave openings, which were the only
obvious exits except for the elevator, and he was sure that wouldn’t work
after the whole “Lever Of Doom” incident.
Chet peered back inside the elevator to see if the zombies were still
alive (or as ‘alive’ as a proper zombie can be, anyway). They were all on the floor, and they
seemed to have mostly melted on the way down, so they resembled some sort of
liquid meatloaf. In any case, they
certainly weren’t moving anymore. Chet
thought to himself “Maybe what would kill a zombie won’t kill a human but
what would kill a human won’t kill a… woah, sit down, all this thinking is
making my head hurt.”
Chet sat down on the nearest available crate, wishing he hadn’t left
his thermos of room-temperature water on the roof. After a few seconds he began to hear a
creaking noise from the upstream cave. A
small boat began to reveal itself, with a cloaked oarsman at the helm, a dark
hood covering his face. He jammed
the oar into the water, stopping the boat near Chet. “You look upon the ferryman to the
Land Of The Dead, mortal. I am
Charon.”
“Well ‘Hootchie Cootchie’!” replied Chet, grinning.
“What?”
“Nothing. Do I have to
ride in that?”
“Why, what’s wrong with it?” The
boat was small, with just one seat. Despite
an ominous creaking sound it seemed to be seaworthy (or streamworthy at least). However, it was painted bright pink and
had a wooden carved poodle head on the front.
“It looks like Barbie’s Dream Gondola” said Chet with a smirk.
“Look,” said Charon with an annoyed sigh, “My usual boat is getting
fixed. This boat belongs to my
little sister, Charie. I swear. Honest.”
“Okay, but what if somebody I know sees me in this? It’s even worse than those swan boats
at the Tunnel Of Love… uh, not that I’d know anything about that, of
course.” Chet sat down on the
little seat.
“I require two coins for passage,” said Charon, pointing to a little
handwritten sign on the boat which read, appropriately, “I require two coins
for passage.”
“Aw, jeez,” whined Chet, digging in his pocket. “How about one coin and one bus
token?”
“That’ll do me a lot of good down here.”
“Would it help if I said it was a magic bus token?”
“No.”
“Good, because it’s not.”
Charon realized it was probably as good as he was going to get, so he
deposited the coin and the non-magic bus token in his coin belt and set off down
the stream. Soon the stone cave
lead into a huge metal drainage pipe. Charon
was silently working the oar, and Chet decided not to bug him, although he
thought of some really rude things to say about the pink poodle boat. It wasn’t long before they arrived in
a larger chamber filled with broken furnature, bricks, and other debris. Charon motioned to Chet to get off the
boat. “Why here?” Chet asked as
he climbed onto the side of the chamber.
“You are not yet ready to travel further. When your time comes you shall make the
final journey far beyond here.”
“I sure hope you have a different boat by then. I wouldn’t be caught dead in that
thing!” Chet laughed as though this was an absolutely hilarious thing to say. Charon didn’t laugh, though. Chet figured that Charon had probably
heard it before. “I don’t
suppose you have any frequent flyer miles for me, do you? See, I heard this voice…”
“It was my
voice you heard, Chet.” It was
much clearer now, distinctly female, but with a peculiar accent.
Chet quickly
looked around. There was all sorts of rubbish in the small chamber, but he
couldn’t see anyone except Charon, who was rowing away. Suddenly Chet glanced at the ground
beneath him and immediately recoiled in horror… a few feet in front of him was
a corpse, at least a century old, mostly a skeleton by now. Chet steadied himself; after the zombies
this wasn’t really so bad. Then
he heard the voice from the roof again, much louder and clearer than before.
“Chet, it was I who called you to this place.” A shimmering
transparent blue image of a young woman appeared before him, hovering in the
still air above the body.
“What are
you, some kind of hologram?”
“I am a
restless spirit… in your words, I am a ghost.”
“Who ya
gonna call?”
“What?”
“Oh,
nothing. Please, continue with
whatever it was you were saying.”
“Alright. I am a ghost. In life, I was the daughter of a Russian
nobleman who fled to your country over a century ago. However when he arrived he—“
“Jeez, if
I wanted to hear a biography I’d watch A&E.
Can we fast-forward to the end here?”
“Yes, but
please listen very carefully, as this is of great importance. When your building was renovated, the
workmen found my body and took my locket, which has great sentimental value to
me. Without it, my spirit has grown
restless, and I cannot return to the next plane of existence. I need you to find the locket and return
it to my body. Only then can my
spirit be appeased. However, be
aware that the journey may not be easy. Your
search may be long and arduous, it may take you to the sinking canals of Venice,
the teeming marketplaces of Marrakech, the torrid jungles of the Congo,
the—“
“Hey, what
does it look like?” Chet interrupted.
“Well,
it’s silver… heart-shaped… sort of flat.”
Chet stooped
down and picked something up from the dusty floor of the small cavern.
“Like
this?” he said, holding up a small locket.
“Yeah,
that’s it… maybe they dropped it.”
“Yeah, or
maybe they didn’t want it. I
mean, it’s kind of girly.”
“They
dropped it!”
“Fine,
have it your way.” He opened up the tiny clasp and peered inside, squinting in
the dim gray light to make out two tiny ancient tin photographs. “Is that your family in there?”
“No, those
photos came with the locket. I was
going to replace them. Oh well.”
“Yeah. So, you want it back now I guess.”
“Right. Just put it back on my body, around my
neck.”
“On your
ghost body?”
“No, my
real body.”
“Ugh, I
don’t want to touch that, it’s gross. Besides
it’s really just a skeleton, not really a body.”
“Look,
it’s either that or I start taking haunting lessons. Have you ever seen Poltergeist?”
“Okay,
okay, but I’m using my hanky.” Pinching
his expensive monogrammed handkerchief daintily between two fingers, Chet
carefully placed the delicate locket back on the skeleton’s neck.
“Yuck, I
touched a skeleton. I’m going to
buy some of that Lava soap and use a whole bar just washing my hands.” The ghost rolled her eyes. “So… there’s a lot of people who
work here. Why did you pick me to
help find your locket?”
“Chet, you
have something very special..”
“You mean
the key to the executive crapper?”
“Noooo…
I mean intellect. I really liked
what you did with your paper clip cup.”
“Oh, yeah. Well don’t tell anybody about that,
okay? I don’t want anybody to
steal my idea.”
“I know,
Chet. I know. Goodbye…” and with that she
dissipated slowly into the darkness of the cavern, returned at last to wherever
she was supposed to be.
Chet glanced
down at the empty, dark air where she had floated just a moment ago. Then down to her bones still gathered on
the floor, the locket catching a gleam of light amongst the cold remains.
The only
sound was the faint gurgle of water from the drain which brought him to this
somber place.
“Hey, what
about my frequent flyer miles?”
Chet sighed. Too late.
“Damn
it,” he said to himself, “I just know
she’ll tell everyone about my paper-clip idea.” One can’t trust anyone these days, he
reasoned. Not even the dead.
Slowly, he
turned to leave. The long drain
pipe was now nearly dry, so he crouched down slightly and waded through it. Eventually he came to the original
chamber where he had met Charon. The
elevator was open, and it looked as though someone had given it a good
scrubbing. He rode it up to the
top, facing front, arms at sides, standard elevator procedure. After a minute or so he heard the *
Ding! * sound and the door swung open on the dark ventilation room. Looking up the shaft he could just make
out the tiny square of blue sky at the very top.
Straining to reach the bottom rung of the service ladder he began the
slow ascent back to the roof and to the domain of the living. When he arrived at the top he took a
deep breath of the fresh, clean city air, pausing momentarily to take in the
sweeping panoramic view of the fading sunlight reflecting majestically off the
gleaming mirrored buildings. Several
bald eagles flew past. He silently
vowed that this experience would change his life.
As the last rays of sun painted the twilight sky in brilliant hues of
azure and crimson, Chet was a man reborn.
The next
day…
“What
about e-mail?”
“Uh…
just one. Something about
time-share condominium opportunities in the Gobi desert. I deleted it.”
“Oh.”
“Is that
it?”
“Yeah. Uh… what about faxes?”
“No faxes
either. Can I go now?” Vicki paced the floor in front of
Chet’s desk. She let out a yawn,
then stifled it.
“Sure, I
guess so.” Chet answered as she turned to leave. “Strange how your intercom got all
smashed up like that.”
“Yeah, I
wonder how that could’ve happened. It’s
almost as if it was done on purpose” Vicki replied, rolling her eyes.
“Everything
happens for a purpose, Vicki. Everything.” He looked down at his blotter paper,
adjusting it slightly to account for the curvature of the Earth. “Hey, I’ve got a great idea! I’ll reorganize my pens ‘n’
pencils drawer alphabetically by country of manufacture! Hey, Vicki, where do you suppose this
“No. 2” one came from?”
Just then, a
heavy book flew off the shelf and smacked Chet squarely on the head.
“Did you
see that?” he shouted.
“No.”
“Neither
did I, Vicki. Neither did I.”
THE END
Bonus
section: Where are they now?
Chet
returned to work as usual but was disheartened to learn that magnetic paper-clip
holders already existed. He
considered suing the manufacturer but the case was thrown out of court when it
was discovered that the idea was patented over two decades before Chet was born. Chet is currently in therapy.
The spirit never returned to Chet’s
building. She resides with her
family on a cloud in Heaven in one of those Russian buildings with the
onion-type things on top. She
enjoys gardening, poetry, and bridge. She
keeps several dead pets.
Chet’s
secretary Vicki ran away with
Chet’s boss seven months later, taking four months worth of company payroll
money with them. Neither of them
have been heard from since. The
company board of directors agreed to offer a free company-logo coffee mug to any
employee with information on their whereabouts.
So far, no-one has accepted.
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