Cassandra “Calamity” Simms was a dead woman. Quote unquote. To be sure, she still had her faculties intact. All of them. But she was dead. As a door mouse. Oh yes, she ran every morning before breakfast, laughed at sitcom reruns every evening, at and photographed delicious food (not in that order), and enjoyed all the trivial and mundane activities of a living person in their thirties, with one key difference. Namely: She was not living. She had kicked the big one. Shuffled off the morbid coil. She would sleep to sleep no more, except the recommended eight hours a night if she was lucky.
She discovered she was a dead woman by accident one sleepy, dim, faded brown autumnal evening while sitting beside her laptop in her spacious office cum living room. Someone or other had managed to track down her data mining account of choice and invited her to a high school reunion. Her high school. It was a hastily put together event put together by people she couldn’t remember. It was to be held in a town she fled fourteen years and nine months earlier and was to be attended by people who were long since strangers in her mind. A perfect weekend.
How this revealed her status as a deceased person was she replied to the invitation with the following message:
“Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Cass Simms will not be able to attend this little soiree on account of the fact she snuffed it this summer. By which she has crossed over to Jordan. To be blunt, she is pushing up lilies and counting worm food. This is her boyfriend by the way. I am very tall and handsome and funny. I won’t be coming to the reunion either due to my never setting foot in that horrible podunk school.”
Of course, this alone was not enough to expose Cassandra’s true position as a member of the dearly departed. Oh no. She truly learned she was no longer with us when the condolences came in. And came in they did, like a flurry of rushed letters to the editor after yet another national tragedy. A blizzard of white noise signifying nothing except that Cassandra “Calamity” Simms was an ex human. And she was flattered.
“Oh no, that’s awful. She was such a bright, funny girl in school. Definitely one of my best friends. Always wished we kept in touch. Such a shame. Is there anything I can do?”
Wrote a woman who once inspired a slight eating disorder in Cass’ formative years. The first of many people pretending their history was something else.
The next was from a man who as a child had few redeemable qualities. Every grade had at least one child bereft of strength or cunning or wit, who nevertheless insinuates themselves into a bully’s inner circle. By all accounts, he was not much different as an adult. He worked as a lobbyist, and for an obituary he wrote:
“Absolutely gutted to here this. We always got on really well at school. I remember me and Cass hanging out at my mother’s house while she made us ice cream. What a loss for us all. I was so looking forward to seeing her at the reunion because of this amazing new opportunity to actualise your dreams.”
And more classmates of old appeared with their own damaged recollections of their time together. Not just from high school but college too. By Monday the following week her inbox was littered with such limpid platitudes as:
“Oh no, Cat-Cat! (NB: never one of Cassandra’s nicknames) What a terrible thing to find out before my trip to Mauritius. One of a kind. One of my best friends growing up. Will be missed. #deadfriend #glowupcosmetics #mauritiusofyouaintus”
“Always had a huge crush on Cass, Cass the Lass with the Ass. We all did. Sorry if that’s not PC enough for some of you, but if she was still around she would approve of this comment.” (She was and did not)
“Another great fire snuffed out too soon while greedy fat old men will live another thirty years before dying and leaving me my inheritance. There is no justice in the world. RIP in piece Cassandra.”
And she assumed that was that. No more reunions ever and a helpful reminder the people she’d spent her life avoiding were insincere revisionists. But her imaginary boyfriend’s letter uncorked something that weekend. Like the part in Genesis where everyone is busy with begatting, people were busy talking about their dead classmate. Whether a reflection of their own mortality and increasing age, or else, like, something really bummy they just heard, the news of Cassandra’s death was greatly exaggerated and repeated at length by a long line of people. By Tuesday’s foggy dusk, her old boyfriends, all five of them, had come for her. Also one man, Dylan, who totally thought they were dating even though they only went for coffee once and he ended up going home with a barista he sort of knew.
Young men with Marxist ideals and Led Zeppelin tattoos, now married middle management, lamented “wasting those few nights (they) had together on meaningless debates when (they) could have been out seeing the world.” One boyfriend, a mistake in human form, wrote a seven page, single spaced poem about their unbroken love “despite the years of grating separation,” neglecting to mention the various betrayals and debts she’d endured thanks to his mawkish attempts to be the next Kurt Cobain.
Yes, the men from her past seemed to ruminate on her passing in ways she did not expect. She had no idea she meant so much to Luke, a man who ghosted her after six months, but who sent private messages seance style to her memory lamenting his cowardice and emotional dwarfism. Where was all this while she was alive? Her last lover left after her thirtieth birthday and she’d grown accustomed to living alone (and dead) forever. Enjoyed it even. Without the expectations of marriage or relationships plaguing her existence, she got a lot more work done and had more time for hobbies. Yet in becoming a dead woman, she remembered how much she missed three of the six, how nice it had been to curl up on couches and have someone to talk to beside the indifferent and swirling void of the internet. In baseball terms, she’d done pretty OK for herself.
Of course, as a dead woman, her concerns weren’t only of old lovers and Dylan. Nor was it how much higher she was in the estimation of her school peers now that she had taken her last bow. By Friday lunch time, an unpaid hour no less, she was ushered into the HR department of her office. It was a cold, unforgiving room, where sexual misconduct allegations were ignored and minor timekeeping offences were punished with the severity of an angry god. Cassandra wasn’t sure why she was there, having never done much of anything beyond the bare minimum, but there she was. The abbatoir of the corporate world. Her manager and an HR rep sat her down.
“We hear you’re dead now,” said the manager.
Cassandra laughed.
“We just wanted to say how much we will miss you now that you’re dead. We really valued your work. You were one of the best employees in your division and we will be setting up a memorial garden in your honour. We will really find it had without you and a psychologist is here if you need to talk about being dead.”
“I’m not really dead.”
“I know this is hard for all of us, but in this difficult time its best to move forward with a clear head and a stiff upper lip. It’s what my dad taught me when he got me this job.”
Cassandra stood up and was about to leave.
“Oh, and Cassandra,” the HR rep said.
“Yes?”
“Please make sure you clock out on time on Monday, we’ve been getting complaints.”
Over the next several weeks at work, people would lament the loss. Praise that was never given while she was alive was handed out like parade candy. People who had never talked to her brought in flowers and cakes and went on meandering speeches about the impact Cassandra had on their wellbeing. It seemed that Cassandra was a far more integral member of the department than she was told while alive. All the commendations and raises and bonuses she could have acquired if people were as open and grateful for her while she was still breathing.
Except of course she was still breathing. She was just dead. Her landlord began showing her apartment. Letters kept showing up from tangentially more obscure associates expressing their remorse and sympathy and loss. Friends would meet her in the street and hug her. The book she tried to self publish when she was going through her bucket list began to sell exceptionally well all things considered; something that would have been very helpful when she was still inspired to pursue such ignoble things as dreams and ambitions. Her data-mining social media accounts of choice, a sad desert of anything real while alive, were now full of both old acquaintances and strangers alike engaged in thoughtful, motivational dialogue. New relationships were formed over Cassandra’s passing. Relatives got over old feuds. A charity she had tried to get funding for in her mid-twenties was set up by old room mates. It was the life she should have been living all along. But she’d wasted it all by being alive. If only she’d known how liberating and empowering death was she would have died much sooner.
On Christmas Eve she visited her mother. Her mother lived alone in a ramshackle townhouse in Lower Manhattan. When she entered, the walls were stripped, mirrors still covered in black towels. And when her mother had ran out of black towels she instead used blue drycloths or oversized burgundy hoodies. Where there should have been a giant and genuine fir tree smothered to death by gold tinsel, there was nothing. Where there should have been a tapestry of photos leading up the stairs to the living room, there was nothing. Her mother must have been cleaning.
She found her mother sat on an old recliner. It had been in storage the last time Cassandra visited. It was mangled and mangy and held together by tape, but her mother couldn’t stand to lose it. While Cassandra was a child, they spent many a night wrapped up in each other on that recliner. Reading stories. This was before Cassandra stopped talking to her mother much. Because. Because why? Time? She couldn’t remember when she’d ran out of time to talk to her own mother, but she had, and she did, and now she was standing over a mournful wraith of her first best friend who sat crying over a black and white photo of a baby and a younger her.
“Cassandra, you’re here?”
“Yeah.”
“I wish you could have come while you were still alive.”
“Well, you know…”
“You were such a happy girl. And then you were such a talented young woman, full of drive and ambition. What happened?”
“I was busy.”
“Busy doing nothing. I know. I was the same. And now you’re dead and I might as well be. It just makes me sad, Sass. You had so much to give and you just sat on a pedestal of isolation and smugness. Did I fail you? Did I let you get hurt? Is that why you gave up?”
“You were the best mother I could have asked for.”
“Then why did you waste your life? I’ve read all these messages you’ve been getting. You had so many friends and people who loved you, and you hid from them. You hid from them and you died and now you’re gone and it’s too late.”
“They’re just saying that stuff online to look good.”
“How do you know? You never bothered to talk to them. Even that man, that man who loved you like no other, you drove him away because you wanted to be safe. It’s my fault. I should have motivated you more. It doesn’t matter any more.”
“Mom, I’m happy. I lived a really good life.”
“Did you?”
“I…” Cassandra stopped. She couldn’t answer. The truth was somewhere along the way she’d stopped caring. Her mother was right. She’d distracted herself and began to see other people as disposable stories for her to tell, and nothing had mattered to her at all. And now she was dead and the people who had been rooting for her all along had come out not out of obligation but because of loss. Or maybe they hadn’t. Maybe it was all posturing. Yes, it was all posturing. Nothing to be learned from it at all. Unless. She needed to walk to a lake or something.
“I’ll miss you, Cassandra. But I’ve missed you for a decade now.”
“Goodbye mother.”
Cassandra made a slow, three day return back to her home and sat down beside her laptop in her living room. Death had reminded her she wanted to be alive. Perhaps for the first time since. Since. Since. She turned to her laptop for the first time in a week and saw a message.
“Oh man. Now Walton Simmons is dead too. Terrible year for all of us. He was the best friend a guy could ask for. See you in the next one, brother.”
She hadn’t spoken to Walton for more than a few minutes while he was alive, but she remembered his goofy smile. His legs too big for his body. His John Cleese gait. He was a nice guy growing up and judging by his profile had gone on to be a good man. Charity work, small business owner, happy family man, dead. Really dead. Not Cassandra dead. Dead dead. Cassandra felt a tear form in her left eye and her fingers found the keyboard.
“So sad to hear this. Walton was always a highlight in any class we had together and I wish we’d have spent more time talking growing up. Sorry for your loss. Seems like he did some amazing things.”
David once walked across the Andes in a leather jacket because his super special Kickstarter hiking jacket didn’t get delivered in time. It was an experience. Other than that, he enjoys ruins, sugar, and Japanese horror films. Follow him @EldritchLake and enjoy one Tweet a month.