It’s a strange sensation to open your eyes and find yourself in a dark box. Luckily for me I wasn’t buried yet when I “woke up”. My mom opened my casket crying, surrounded by my brother and cousins that I hate oh so much. That was weeks ago however. Oh and if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m dead. My name is Ralph Albert Bearson and I attended my own funeral.
I died on October 26th, 2014 at 1:22 AM when some asshole college kid named Danny Wright decided it’d be a good idea to drunk drive home. I was just walking to 7 Eleven to get a Slim Jim like any other night, not expecting any problems. College really wasn’t my cup of tea, so I decided to fail out 2 weeks into freshman year and was now living at home again. The worst part about getting hit by this d*****bag was that awful last song that I got to listen to on my iPhone during the walk to 7 Eleven. “Low” by Flo-Rida… now all I remember from that night was that shawty with her apple bottom jeans and boots with the fur (the fur). I don't actually remember getting hit but from what I can remember from the funeral: I was hit from behind and snapped my spine, instantly killing me.
My funeral was...fun. I didn’t even know it was mine at first. I woke up, sat up and realized I was sitting “in” someone. Imagine waking up one morning to notice that you’re now detached from your mutilated corpse, not to mention that you’re invisible to the real world and are completely alone. I didn’t know what was going on. I just saw people dressed in black and crying together. The weirdest part was trying to figure out why I was in a casket. Was I dreaming? Did I go a little too hard on the drugs last night? I climbed out of the casket and took a double take at the boy inside before realizing that he was me, or atleast the body I used to live in. I went up to my mother and tried to ask her what was going on but she wouldn’t even look at me. Then it really hit me. Just like a car hitting me from behind on a 1 AM 7 Eleven run. I was dead. I tried to touch my mom's shoulder but my hand just floated through her. I started to yell in hope of waking up from my nightmare but it didn’t work. I tried crying... but tears aren’t a thing when you’re dead.
At this point I was just confused with myself. What’s next, what do I do now? I sat down at a table next to my Aunt May and her recently acquired husband, Ben. I hated Ben. He was that guy at family events who never stopped talking about himself and feels overly entitled because of his stupid degree. Ben thought he was a much better doctor than he was and would never stop bragging about his “glory” days. Then I did what any other recently born ghost-boy would do. As Ben picked up his glass of water I jumped out of my chair and smacked that glass right down onto his new and expensive suit. He was soaked and angry and I was dead and happy. Interesting contradiction huh?
I thought about all the cool ghost things I could do with my life now. I could travel the world for free, not work ever again, scare people, “misplace” items or even write a short story about my life… the possibilities were endless.
The first thing I decided to do was move to the Big Apple. I walked onto a train, flipped off the conductor, sat, and waited. I learned tons of new things on this train ride. DId you know that ghosts don’t get tired or hungry? I could walk around and eavesdrop on any conversation, look over shoulders and snoop on text messages and get in snapchats without anyone noticing. I started singing “Low” again when I heard something, someone. “Oh my god that singing is atrocious!” They yelled.
Not thinking anything about it, I continued to sing my song when I noticed another kid around my age running down the aisle. I stuck out my foot to trip him, not thinking it would actually work.
“OW WHAT THE HELL” the boy said hitting the ground. We locked eyes with each other.
“Wait...can you... see me?” I asked him.
“Yea, the names Rob. You must be new.. die recently?”
“Uhhh yes... got hit last night actually”
“Well that explains why you still have that awful funeral suit on”
“So you’re dead too?”
“Nope I’m God”
“Really?”
“Na just kiddin’, been dead for 2 months now. I just went home to visit my family. Headed back home to the city now, there's a lot of us there”.
I looked at Rob with a blank stare. “Us?”
“Just come with me, I’ll explain everything” Rob said, and he did.
Turns out that there really is a whole network of ghost people just like me. We have Ghostbook, Gwitter, Ghostspace (no one uses that anymore though) and even Glaystation to only mention a few.
We got off at Penn Station and called a Ghuber to pick us up. Ghost cars were an interesting experience. There are no speed limits, no annoying old people, and no randomly getting pulled over. We drove a few blocks over to Rob’s apartment building and went inside.
“Welcome to my house!” Rob said excitedly. It smelled like a new car. There were black leather couches, huge flat screen TV’s and even a ping-pong table next to the hot tub.
“My rooms over there, go change out of that suit. Pick whatever you want, it’s all free anyways” Rob said.
“What do you mean free?” I asked.
“All ghost items are free. There's a monthly Ghost catalog that we can order whatever we want from. It’s actually pretty great”
To be honest, I don’t really mind that I died last night.