Dead Tom excerpt.

Dead Tom.

Caution:  This story uses language that some people are too lily-liveredto handle.

    It all started when I fell of the roof.  I know, not the normal way to start a story, but bear with me.  I was pretty sure my first autobiography wasn’t going to start that way.  But you’ve got to work with what you’ve got.  Anyway, I was working on the new Twin Towers (on my day job.  A guy’s gotta make a living).  I was on break having a smoke.  It’s my one vice, everyone has one.  You know you do.  I was on the very top of the roof enjoying the view and a cancer stick when this spider (fucking twelve feet long, swear to god) bites me.  Now look, I don’t freak out easily.  I mean, hell, I spent three weeks in college during the first Mortality Riots doing coverage for the school paper.  But I have this thing with spiders.  Let me put it to you like this: me at five, my mother and a black widow.  But that’s another story I guess.
    Getting back to it, this eight-legged little S-O-B gets a chunk of me from out of nowhere and I freak out on the spot.  It’s not really the bite that got me, but it helped.  I was trying to get down to street level when my buddy, Nick, comes over, tells me to calm down and let him help (I’m a rational dude, but when something that can kill me bites me, I react badly). I reacted with my usual wit (“Fuck off!”), turned around too fast to catch my balance and then fell.  They say that when you fall from high enough up, you black out.  I can say without a doubt, that you do…when you hit the pavement.
    Kills me again to think the last thing before it went black was how much the ring I got for Meggie cost.
    I woke up in North General Hospital in Harlem.  Well…woke up sounds like the fall wasn’t fatal.  I rose in North General Hospital in Harlem.  You ever end up hung-over on a subway and realize you lost five hours between leaving the bar and waking up?  If you haven’t, try imagining.  Not pleasant, is it?  What I got was that, but swap five hours with three days and a morgue instead of the subway.  And the first thing they asked me was what I saw.
    “What do you mean; ‘what did I see?’”
    “Seems coherent,” he said to himself, “What’s your name, son?”  A skeevy looking doctor asked me.  You know the type, scrawny, big head, thick glasses…the kind you don’t want asking you to turn your head and cough.
    “Thomas Jones…where am I?”  I tried to sit up, but something sloshed in the back of my head.  No, no, sloshing isn’t right…it was like feeling yourself peel off a hot car seat, but on the back of my head.  It didn’t hurt, it pulled at my eyes like coming up into daylight after a night of heavy, rewarding sleep.
    “Slowly, son, you had a bad fall.”  His nametag said ‘Dr. Jack Harvard.’
    “Dr…Harvard?  Like the school?”  I sat up slower.  The back of my head felt wet.
    “No relation, I assure you.  What was the last thing you remember?”
    “I was…falling.  Working at the-”
    “Hm, the Twin Towers, yes, yes.  Now, after you hit the ground-”
    “Hit the ground!?”
    “-Do you recall seeing or hearing anything?  Any tunnels of light, voices of god?  That sort of superstitious clap-trap?”  Harvard was writing on a clipboard (clipboards have a way of making a person seem professional).  I went pale, or would have if my heart were still beating.  Harvard cleared his throat and looked up at me.
    “Mr. Jones, you fell to your death three days ago.  You were pronounced dead at one thirty-four PM by paramedics who were called by a bystander at the Twin Towers.  Does rising run in your family?”
    “Rising, uh, yeah…my mom rose when I was four or five.  I think her dad rose too, but I’m not sure.”
    “I see…”
    When I was three, my mom died.  My dad was really conservative, in all the stereotypical ways.  He tried to make sure mom didn’t come back into the picture after she rose.  She never got custody, but dad was also a romantic.  She always came to my birthday parties and to Christmas dinner (not that she needed to eat).
    Harvard cleared his throat (again) and gave me a card.
    “This is the Risen orientation group we’re associated with.  They’ll help you out for a few days.”
    “Risen orientation?”
    “Mmmyes, frequently the new members of the Risen community find themselves very disoriented physically as well as mentally.  Did you have a will written?”
    “Of course not.  I’m only twenty-five.”
    “Mmmyes…and your current residence?”
    “Rent was paid for the next month.”
    “And any family?”
    “My dad, but I think he’ll expect a funeral.”
    “That’s to be expected.”
    “No, the traditional kind.”  That shut Harvard up.  He made a face like he was sucking on a lemon and filled out more paperwork.  After a minute of him writing, I finally took a look at myself.  I was still wearing the clothes I had on the day I fell.  Only they were gritty, the left side was sticky with old blood.  I spotted a mirror set to the side of the autopsy slab.  I looked all right, my eyes had the sunken, darkened look that most Risen have, I was pale, but that was expected.  I grinned at my reflection, Harvard was still writing, he said something about being careful, the shock of something or other, not thinking much of it, I stretched a bit, feeling my spin twist in very wrong ways, noticing for the first time a bump at the side of my neck, between my ear and my shoulder.  And fuck, just behind that, the head wound.  It was a big caved in chunk of skull, all black and sticky.  When I was ten, or so, I cracked open a rotten watermelon just to see it.  It was black with mold and smelled rank.  There were maggots copulating in the putrid goo inside the melon, I could imagine the same happening thing in my head.  I hoped to fucking Christ it wouldn’t.  I flashed on that as I stared into my head.  Harvard took the mirror: “Best you don’t obsess over things until you’re a bit more acclimated, eh?  Eh?”
    My heart, while it wasn’t literally functioning, was pounding.

Hooray for writing!