TITLE: “Big O”

AUTHOR: Polly Burns

EMAIL: go_rimbaud@hotmail.com Roll me and call me the tumbling dice…

SUMMARY: Death is not the end for Warren.

SPOILER WARNINGS: “Seeing Red”, “Villains”.

RATING: Oh, um, PG-15, mainly for references to vile and gory acts. And some bad-words.

DISCLAIMER: Dead-Warren belongs to Joss Whedon and some other people, I guess. Dead-Alex Krycek belongs to Chris Carter- at any rate, they don’t belong to me. Not even after they’ve died. Crap.

NOTES: Yeah, this isn’t the best thing I’ve ever written, and I know it. So please don’t make yourselves look stupid in an attempt to hurt my feelings by stating the obvious. Is this the beginning of my descent into hack-dom?, I wonder. Will I be writing Buffy/Spike next week? Tra la la… This is the “Dead Sociopaths Rehabilitation and Mentoring Program”- because I guess I am secretly one of those girls who wants Warren to be good at heart. But I still liked it when he died. And I always loved Alex Krycek- strangely, I never had any problems with his amorality. But I don’t think he ever shot a hot lesbian witch. When he bought it, I almost cried. I’m a weird-o, huh? Anyway, two pretty, dark-haired boys, one afterlife, my credibility as a writer (what credibility?) down the toilet. Enjoy.

“Was she gonna be your big O?”

- Willow in “Villains”.

1 Big O

They’re right, you know, about orgasm being a small death. Personally, I always thought it was something silly that pretentious fucks said to seem deep and edgy, but that was my mistake. They’re absolutely right, except it’s really the inverse of that statement that holds all the water. You see, orgasm isn’t a small death, but rather, death is a big orgasm.

I can remember every second of it, how I died, that is. Science tells us that the human body can only take so much pain at one time, that sensory overload causes the central nervous system to shut down partially, that shock and desensitization occur. That’s if you’re given time, it’s only in time that your body is overwhelmed and can no longer process the feelings of pain, and that your mind paints over the memories of said pain. Me, I didn’t have that kind of time. I had, what, ten seconds? Ten seconds of being ripped bare, torn to pieces- before I blossomed into a rose of fire and burned up into nothing. The fire wasn’t ordinary fire, though, it was a spontaneous, magickal force, so it didn’t have to behave according to any laws or principles. There’s nothing left of me now, cos the fire wasn’t meant to burn me, to reduce me to cinders- I was obliterated, completely, which was what the fire was meant to do. And I felt that, as I had felt my skin being unfastened from every muscle of my body. I heard it being yanked off- it sounded like tape being pulled from somebody’s shirt…

Pain, that much pain, you can’t really call it by that word anymore. You know how something can be so hot that when you touch it, it’s cold? I used to play this game when I was a kid, on hot days I’d lean my arm out of the car window, the underside of it touching the metal slot that the window rolled down into. When I’d feel the metal against my skin, it felt like an ice cube, and I thought that was cool, cos I was sure that it would burn. It did, kinda, and I’d play this game to see how long I could hold my arm there. Pain is kinda like that- when there’s just so much of it, it doesn’t really feel like pain anymore, it feels like, well, you know-

Now, though, I don’t feel much of anything. I look down at my hands and see that they’re my hands the way I remember them, my hands with pale peach skin and pinkish, bitten finger nails. If I roll up my sleeve, I can see that the flesh of my arms are also covered. If I stripped naked here, wherever here is, I know that my entire body would be intact, undefiled, exactly as it was before the Witch.

The Witch. You’d think I’d be really pissed, right, I mean, just furious. Livid. Is there even a word to describe how I should be feeling? I mean, you get angry if somebody steals your car or if your girlfriend cheats on you or if your mom throws out all your stuff while you’re away at college, but what do you get when somebody uses magic to flay you alive and then incinerates your not-quite-corpse? I was still alive, when she, with the incinerating. Hence the pain-death-orgasm commentary. I don’t really know what I feel, but I’m pretty sure it’s not what I should be feeling. I’m not angry at all, not at Willow, not at Buffy, not at anybody I remember being angry at, not at anybody I remember hating. I’m not exactly loving them right now, but I know I’m not thinking about murdering them anymore. Death does funny things to you, I guess.

I’m dead. This can’t be heaven, but I don’t see any guys with pitchforks running around, so I don’t think this is hell, either. I don’t see anybody running around, now that I think about it. There’s like this mist all around. I have a memory of someone, and I know that if he were here, he’d be making some snide remark, about bad special effects or something. Oh, that was me. Now, though, I feel bad about even thinking about mocking this place, or anything. Have I lost my sense of humor? Death really does do funny things to you.

The mist, what looks like mist, is solid white and it’s the only thing that I can see all around me. When I move my legs, I feel something pull on me, hold me back, but not enough to be alarming. Walking around here is like walking through the ocean-

Hey, look, the mist is, um, moving. I can see this dark stain, like a shadow getting closer and closer- I have the thought to be scared, but what am I gonna be scared of, I kinda died in one of the worst possible ways that a person can die. Does that make me a badass in this world? Then I think, Well, y’know, there is eternal torment, cos I wasn’t really the nicest guy when I was alive. I get a flash of Katrina. I wonder where she is. She’s probably in real heaven, with the girl that I shot. Then I get a flash of Buffy, and I somehow know that everything is all right now, on earth. Where the hell am I, anyway? Is this another dimension, or just the sky? The stain-shadow thing is still moving closer. I see now that it’s person-shaped, guy-shaped. Is this the Devil?- I still can’t get over it that I’m not in hell. Cos not a nice guy- eternal torment, right? But, no, that’s not right. I don’t think they really do eternal torment, I don’t think there even is a hell. And then I know, there is no hell, and there’s no heaven either. There just is. If that makes any sense at all.

Finally, this guy gets close enough so that I can see him clearly. He’s tall, dressed in black, with a kinda pissy expression. My first thought is, Did Johnny Cash die after I got immolated?- cos if he did, my mom’s gonna be sad. She always liked all that depressing-ass music.

“I’m not Johnny Cash,” the guy says. His voice is kind of breathless, deep, like Andrew’s if he- No, too easy. Anyway, being dead takes all the fun out of talking shit about people. Dead, I feel nothing but remorse when I think of Andrew. I feel myself frown, I feel like I want to say sorry to Andrew, even if I can only speak the actual words to this guy. Instead, I say, “Dude, you can read minds?”

“It’s not reading minds, it’s just like you know what people are thinking, saying.” I can tell that if he weren’t dead, he would have rolled his eyes at me. I can also tell that he hasn’t been dead all that long, he doesn’t seem much more wise and enlightened than, well, me.

“Are we, like, in heaven, or what?” I ask.

“You know we’re not. There’s no heaven for us.” I look around, expecting something, but I’m not sure what.

“Then why am I being all nice? I don’t even feel like being mean. What did they, um, what happened to me?”

“Being mean was something you did out of self defense, it was your way of dealing with the world. Now, nobody could ever possibly hurt you, so you have no desire to act in a spiteful way.” Oh. That sounds reasonable, if a bit rehearsed. Maybe they have it printed onto tee shirts or something. Why didn’t I get one?

“Oh. Well, um, I guess we’re ghosts, huh?”

“Something like that.” This guy has a cool leather jacket, I wonder where I could get one of those…

“So, if I’m a ghost, why aren’t I all gross and shit? I mean, I guess with the knowing thing, you know how I died.” The guy nods, not showing the slightest bit of emotion. Am I gonna be like that?

“I was like this when I was alive,” he says, one corner of his mouth turning up, “And I think that the reason why we look all right, why we’re even here at all and not rotting in some kind of eternal barbecue pit,” the fire image makes me shiver involuntarily, “Is because… somebody loved us.”

“Because somebody loved us?” Part of me wants to start laughing, it’s like the twitching of a phantom limb, wants to say Are you shitting me? I don’t, though, I just blink and keep looking at him. He seems to have all the answers, or at least a few of them.

“We’re not really ghosts, we’re memories. A ghost, by definition, is a memory of a death, it keeps on repeating its death over and over again, but us, you, me, that guy,” he shakes his hand awkwardly at the mist all around us, “we’re somebody’s memory of our lives. We appear here, now, the way somebody’s remembering us. We get to, not live, but not really die, either, cos somebody cared, cos somebody would be… sad if we ceased to exist completely.”

“I did cease to exist completely,” I mutter. Even though it’s impossible, I imagine myself having a headache. What I really feel like is a couple of hours after you’ve taken the aspirin for the headache. I don’t just feel not-pain, I feel, anesthetized is a good word for it. It’s the absence of pain, but also the relief, the bliss, at knowing that pain was there and left. Irrationally, thinking about the pain is beginning to scare me.

“Just your body, but even that’s still in the world, somehow,” he looks up, squints like he’s imagining the sun is up there, “Carbon in the air…”

As he trails off, I know that he is buried in a ditch somewhere. I can feel the velvety cling of the earth to his bones; he’s buried deep, where the soil cuts at your fingers and packs itself under your nails, and it’s wet from ground water and it is black as the night sky. The night sky- I never did get a last look at it.

“Neither did I,” he says. I can’t tell if he regrets this, is sad about it, but I imagine he is.

“So, okay,” I say, cos I don’t want to stand around talking funeral arrangements with this guy who’s deader than me, “So we’re allowed to, I dunno, exist, because when we were really alive, somebody loved us, enough to not want us to be completely destroyed- okay. And I’m not a big pile of skinless ash cos this person who loved me wants to remember me as having skin and not being a pile of ash. So, like, what’s the deal, then, really? What do we do? Is this, like, Purgatory?”

He laughs. “You’re not Catholic.”

“Well, you were for a while, so why don’t you tell me?” It really freaks me out that I know this stuff without asking. I must not be good at it, though, or it’s cos I’m new, because I just can’t figure out what I’m doing here. And I still don’t know who this guy in the leather jacket is. Maybe I just get feelings, not names…

“Alex Krycek,” he says.

“Wha-?”

“My name, Alex Krycek.”

“Oh,” I look down, “Warren Mears. But you-”

“Knew that.” We both nod.

“I’m not entirely sure what the point of us being here is,” says Alex Krycek.

“So it’s just like real life.”

“In a manner of speaking. I just know that we’re supposed to help people.”

Part of me wants to roll its eyes- that phantom-limb-twitch again. I don’t feel like myself, or maybe I feel more like myself than I’ve ever felt. Maybe this is what I’m really like, nonjudgmental, accepting, thoughtful, nice. Why couldn’t I have been this way when I was alive, then? Why couldn’t I have been like this for Katrina, or even Andrew?

“Life makes it hard to be a good person,” Alex Krycek shrugs. I have another, I dunno, flash of knowing stuff and I see, kinda, him doing a bunch of not-good things. Here he’s shooting some old guy, there he’s watching some other guy shoot a pretty girl, here he’s selling out some guy, in a Russian jail, here he’s leaving that same guy convulsing on a staircase… It’s all vague, frayed around the edges, but I still know what’s happening. This guy makes me look like a well-adjusted person.

“Yeah, it does,” I reply, “So, we, ah, help people, huh? Like, um, angels?” I frown slightly, doing so is familiar enough.

“No, angels don’t exist.”

Bummer, I think.

“And we don’t have any of those amazing powers they talk about in the Bible,” he’s nearly pouting here, “I mean, I have yet to smite anybody. And I can’t fly, either. We can talk to living people, though, tell them things that they need to know. We can be anywhere, just by willing ourselves there. That’s about it, though. We have no mass, no weight, we can’t move things around. I think we can walk through walls, though…”

“Oh. So, like, if Buffy Summers needed help, I would have to help her?”

“Yes. Mainly, it’s the people we hurt, and the people they care about who we help.”

I have that vision but not-vision thing again. What’s it’s like, really, is it’s just like thinking. Except, rather than making the thoughts myself, they just kind of seep into my head. You’d think it would be weird or invasive or something, but it’s not, it’s like, it’s like… water raining into my hands, slipping through my fingers…

I see Alex Krycek in some kind of jail, crouched over a sleeping man. I don’t know how, but I know that he loved him, when Alex was alive and they knew each other. I see a trial, a blonde woman, like an older, tired Buffy. I can feel how afraid she is, how she has to hold her arms over her chest, just to feel like she can keep all that fear in, so the men around her won’t know how terrified she is. Then there’s, oh, cold feeling, there’s something not human-

I’m yanked right out of that scene and back into this one. I start thinking about the space-time continuum, about linear versus circular time, but Alex interrupts. “It’s rude to look when you’re not asked to.”

“Sorry,” I mutter, feeling kind of embarrassed, “I didn’t mean to.” Is this like some kind of involuntary function I’m going to have to learn to control?- like mental potty-training, or something?

“It’s all right,” now he sounds embarrassed, “There were just some things I, I still don’t want anybody to see.”

“I know what you mean.” I get another flash of Andrew. Was he the person who loved me? “Was it-”

“Yes, it was him.”

“That’s all it took, just Andrew not liking the idea of me being made nonexistent?”

I see him again, turning toward me, smiling. I have never seen him smile like that. I know it’s not for me. Behind him is an ocean, Gulf of Mexico, my mind whispers, the light on the water is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, it’s like blue sequins, light sparkling, moving like it’s a living thing… Image of Katrina, in this dress I used to love, pale blue sequins against her soft breasts. On anybody else, it would have looked odd, but on her- she looks so strong- Something’s filling up my throat, filling up my eyes, making it hard to see. Andrew’s eyes, full as well, full of love, for somebody else now, taking in the wink and shine of the ocean waves. Jonathan is next to him- whoa, he knows I’m there, kind of. Clearly, I can hear, or feel, or whatever, something like If you do anything to him at all, I swear that I’ll find a way to destroy you. Some other me would have been really offended, but I’m not, not this new me, who doesn’t get angry, doesn’t even feel like getting angry. I nod at Jonathan, I know that he can feel it. Now, I just watch, Andrew and Jonathan, so mismatched but so right, standing under the sun, whose light is caress-soft just for them. Then Katrina, twirling giddily in her little shoes, laughing at herself. Andrew. Katrina. Andrew. Katrina.

If there were a God, I don’t think that even he would know why I am doing this to myself. Because it hurts, it hurts worse than what Willow did, it hurts worse than anything I ever felt when I was alive. The pain cuts through me, and it’s sweet, it goes deep and makes every particle of whatever it is I am now sigh and tingle. My eyes are full again. I have to blow my nose. Are there tissues in the afterlife? I look at Alex. His back is turned. As soon as I gaze at him, though, he turns back around.

“We don’t have tissues,” he says softly. I sniff.

“Was it like this, like this for, for you?”

He laughs once, it’s not a happy sound, “It was worse.”

“Really?” I wipe my eyes on my sleeve.

“I had thirty-two years to look back on, you had twenty-four. And I was way badder than you.” This last part he sounds a little proud of.

I start getting images and I try not to look at them. “It’s all right,” he says, “You can look.”

It’s not really pictures this time, I just know what happened, like somebody told me. He betrayed that man from the jail cell, who he loved, more times than I can really count. It all amounted to one big betrayal. He sold out just about everybody else he could, but he still doesn’t feel bad about doing it to them. He pushed an old man downstairs… I shiver, cos I know that that guy is really gone, gone forever gone, like I should be, but I’m not. Alex killed a whole bunch of people. This I see in like a collage. Alex at twenty-two the first time, bent over neat hash marks of white powder afterwards. Smell of cordite practically painted onto his skin. If I get close, I can see it, the traces, the scent of gunpowder- shit, this is weird. Twenty-four, pistol-whipping some guy in what looks like a ski lift. Sharp in a suit nobody else could look good in, smoothes down his hair after delivering the fatal blow. Later that day, poisoning this poor fuck who’s already just shattered… I just stand there watching, cos even though I know that I can still feel horror, still feel pain, I don’t. This has all already happened. These memories are deader than me, deader than the man they belong to.

Instead, I concentrate on some of the things he seems to be trying hard not to show me, even though he said I could see it all. There, like something you see out of the corner of your eye, there is a warmth, something I remember. The free-fall of love. I see hazel eyes, hear a voice that I know always sounds that sleepy; I find myself getting sleepy listening to it- not that I have to sleep ever again… I know that I could be here like this forever, listening to the voice, staring into the eyes, and I know that there is more. In Alex’s mind or heart or whatever it is that houses such feelings and recollections after you’ve died, I know that there are infinite, microscopic details. The stitching around a button hole, the dome-shaped protruding bone in an ankle stretching a black sock, tea- colored circles under his eyes the first time they met-

I could stay like this forever, but I don’t want to. I want to be in a million places at once.

“You can’t,” Alex says, “Just one at a time.”

“Oh.” I have a thought, one that I feel with my entire body. Then, just as easily as I said it in my head, I’m standing in Willow’s bedroom. I know that she used to share this room with the girl I shot. Breakable, as a winter branch, Willow is lying in bed, in a white night gown with the texture of butcher paper. I see Buffy and some guy I’ve never seen before, but who I know is very important, move back and forth, in and out of the room, like in a speeded up video. They bring her soup and ice cream and magazines, things she doesn’t want. The washed-out image of a young girl with long brown hair glides into the room, she carries this light with her- like a white balloon tied around her wrist. I can’t look too closely at her, and it’s weird. Somehow, I can’t figure out what the deal with her is, it’s like my mind is enveloped by static electricity whenever she sways in my direction. When she walks out of the room, after patting Willow’s hand, I’m relieved.

In the periphery of my vision, this shade keeps darting around, like a brown moth. It gets closer and closer to Willow’s bed. Finally, I notice that it’s the girl, the one, the girl I shot by mistake. Her name is Tara, I know that now. She gives me a little smile as she perches on the edge of the bed, leans over Willow.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she says softly, her hand rising to Willow’s face to smooth away hair that she can’t touch. Her voice is gentle, but I know she means it.

“Yeah, I know. I didn’t actually mean to be here, I just kind of, um, got here.”

Her voice is wind and rain; she whispers, “Go.” All it takes is her saying the word, and I’m gone, back in the mist-place. I guess that is dead-guy H.Q. Alex is standing right where he was before, his arms crossed. He looks pissed, but I think that might just be his default facial expression. Cos if I can’t feel anger anymore, I’m guessing he can’t, either.

“You’re going to have to watch how hard you think about things,” he says, his voice is almost as soft as Tara’s. It’s weird- I’ve seen inside this guy’s head, seen his entire life, but it doesn’t shock me to hear him talk like that, in hushed, soothing tones. I guess that death does strange things to everybody.

“Andrew,” I say.

“No,” Alex says and shakes his head, “You can’t be there.”

“I thought I was supposed to, like, check in on the people I hurt while I was alive.”

“No, you help those who need help. Nobody needs helping right now.”

I wonder what would happen if I tried to sit down- would I fall through the mist? “So what do we do, just wait around until somebody needs us? There’s gotta be, like, weeks of off-time.”

He shrugs. “You don’t have to stay here, you just can’t go around disrupting peoples’ lives, messing with things that don’t concern you.”

I get a flash of a woman with bright red hair. “Ohhh,” I say.

“After a while, you stop wanting to, anyway. You’re still feeling like you used to, when you were alive. It all fades after a while.”

Something cold wraps around where my heart used to be. “So, like, I just stop being me?”

“No, not quite. You just,” he frowns and looks up, “I’m not sure how to explain it, and I’m not the one to ask because I haven’t been dead all that long, but it’s like you become a better you. The first way it manifests itself is in how you look.” He holds up his hands, spreads his fingers and wiggles them. “When I was alive, I only had one arm, I died with one arm. Here, I have two arms.”

First, I see the image, like a movie, twenty feet tall, Alex having his left arm sawn off with a red hot steak knife by a guy who also has only one arm. And then, I feel it, like I’m reliving the memory through him. I think of Willow, suddenly, and I get scared. I start to go through the motions of breathing heavily, afraid that at any moment, her memories are going to invade my being.

“You get used to it,” he says, pats me on the shoulder, “All of it. Feeling what they feel, knowing things you’d rather not know. The thing to remember is that you’re dead, nothing can hurt you, not really.”

“But it’s so real.” I feel dizzy, from that taste of pain. For a second, I think of my death, but that was different. I had ten seconds of blinding pain, Alex had a bit longer than that.

“Reality is subjective.”

“Is this real?”

“It has to be some kind of real. We’re dead, but yet, here we are, talking to each other. And I don’t think that we would make each other up.”

“Not my type,” I laugh, having just heard those same words float by on a breeze.

“Not mine either,” he smiles back at me.

“It’s not always bad, painful, whatever,” he says, “Sometimes, it’s, I dunno- It’s really hard describing the way you feel, here, now, after death. You can’t just say something is ‘nice’, cos it never is. There aren’t any small feelings anymore. Everything is going to affect you deeply.”

“Yeah, I noticed.” I should be annoyed, or something, but I don’t think I can feel that anymore. “And we never get angry?”

“No. With death comes acceptance, so I understand.”

“What about scared? Oh, that’s dumb.”

“Cos you’re already dead,” he nods.

“Um,” I look up, trying to think, “Do we, I mean, have you, ever gotten jealous of people who are still alive?”

“I used to, a lot, but not so much anymore. And it was never what you’d call ‘jealousy’, I just missed certain things of the living world so much. But, again, with death comes acceptance.”

“We can feel sad,” I offer, even though “sad” isn’t the right word. I hope that he’ll correct me.

“It’s not sadness,” he says, sounding a little, well, sad, “It’s love.”

“It’s love?” Whoa, that was unexpected.

“That’s what love really feels like.”

“Like if I had a heart still, it would be being ripped out?- that’s what love feels like?”

“In its undiluted form, yes, love is that painful. That’s what got us here, keeps us here.”

“And with the crying and the wanting to die all over again just to get away from it?”

“That is love. L-u-v.” He has a half-smile on his face as he says this.

“I don’t remember feeling like that when I was alive, it was… different. It hurt, but not like that.”

“No, this is clean pain, the pain of an uninfected wound.”

“Alcohol,” I exhale. My head is knocked back a bit and I feel my eyelids flutter; I have a vision of the rising sun. Clean pain. It makes me think of something, but I’m not sure what. All around me, my memories are flapping like papers lost to the wind. I know it now- I’m losing myself. And it hurts, because if I am not myself, what am I?

“You’re still you, just different,” Alex says, “You’re being stripped down to your bare essence.”

Stripped- the word makes me feel how I know, remember, fear feels, felt like. I remember it again, I remember… And though it wasn’t so bad the first time, every following time, it gets worse.

“Let it go,” Alex says.

“Did you let yours go?” My teeth are gritted. I keep getting pieces of dark forest, mingling with the white mist-stuff, blurred around the edges. It’s like two pictures were cut into strips and then pasted to a piece of paper, alternating between the two images.

He shakes his head. “Not yet… There’s something I, I need to keep seeing.”

“Like what?” Now my teeth are chattering.

“His face,” we both say at once. I’ve been trying not to do the mind- reading thing or whatever the hell they call it, but I couldn’t help it this time.

“It’s all right.” He forgives me, and that makes the pain dissolve.

“That was the last thing you saw?” I know that it was. He nods anyway. “I’ll trade you.”

This makes him laugh. “I don’t think that they let you do that. Anyway, you had somebody of your own.”

“I fucked that up good.” I wonder if they don’t like you to swear in the afterlife.

“I didn’t do such a bang-up job, either. I think that’s why we’re here, though. The whole guardian angel, spirit guide, whatever gig. I think of all the bad things we did, betrayal was the worst, and by rights we should be deader than dead, but because of the l-word, we’re here. Working off our debt, kind of. But I just made that up, I didn’t get told anymore than you did when I first got here.”

This is love, that ripped-open feeling? The people who write greeting cards about it have been getting it all wrong. Alex nods his head to the right. “Come on,” he says.

“Where are we going?” I know that I sound six years old, but I don’t care.

“You should see the world, learn about it.”

I laugh. “I was only on earth for twenty-four years, I think I saw something of it.”

“No, you didn’t really see it, you didn’t learn anything at all. See, I have this theory that when you’re there, alive, you’re not really alive. You’re too busy trying to survive, too caught up in the animal game of the moment. Now, though, you have a chance to really live. I know that this is suppose to be a punishment of some kind,” here he closes his eyes, his eye lashes are black as printer ink and longer than most girls’, “but I can’t think of it that way.”

A chill runs through me, I was having that thought, or rather, it was forming, just then.

“Come on,” he says again, “Just let all of it go, just leave it all behind.” I know he’s talking about Andrew, Katrina, Willow, Buffy, all the people whose images make me feel the death-pain again. “Don’t hurt yourself,” he whispers, his eyelids at half-mast. I let him put his hand on my arm, pull me along. I don’t know where we’re going, and I can’t conceive of anything that might be hidden in the white-wash of mist, but I trust him. And he knows it. Nobody’s ever trusted him before, and we both know that. Nobody, but one. And then I feel love, as the thought of him passes from me to Alex, I feel the love Alex still feels for this man, who for a while, trusted him. Nobody’s ever loved me before- and then I see the perfect photographic apparition of Katrina and then I see Andrew, with his eyes closed, facing the sea.

Maybe this is life, maybe Alex’s theory is correct. I feel such a profound sense of… something. Death hasn’t made me any better at expressing what I’m feeling. I just know that I’m this close to breaking down and crying all over Alex’s leather jacket. Better go, better keep moving. And as we continue forward, I know that everything will be all right. It is the feeling that I am intact, not shattered at all. And, y’know, death does some really funny things to you, because right now, I find that what I want more than anything, is for Alex’s theory to be true, because I want to live.

Death is a funny, funny thing.