THERE'S NOTHING BEYOND THIS POINT

He lay in bed most of the day.  Why get up?  However, at last he did.  He went to the kitchen and made a sandwich.  Later he checked his messages on the web. As usual there weren't any that mattered.  He dressed and drove to the local McDonalds and ordered a salad.  He was losing weight, lots of it.  His doctor would be proud.  He went to a convenience store and bought a beer.  He drank it in the park.

The sun was bright, the birds sang, and the ghosts sat without speaking.  Those poor silly ghosts.  James was glad he was still alive.  There was so much a living person could do, unlike a ghost.  The ghost of an old lady sat nearby.  She frowned at him.  He smiled and waved.  He was the only one who could see them.  They didn't like that at all. They liked their privacy.  He wondered where they came from in their old fashioned clothes and the women in their long dresses buttoned to the chin.  How quaint.  there was one ghost, a young girl.  She was very shy and sat beneath a large oak.  He smiled at her but she only put her head down and smoothed her long dress.  He decided he would speak to her but he knew she could not reply.  Ghosts cannot talk of course.

James got out of his car and walked over to the oak.  The ghost of the young woman pretended he wasn't there.  "Its a beautiful day, you look very relaxed there," he said.
She looked up and back down quickly.  She faded just a little and he was afraid she would go away but she didn't quite.  Then she looked up again and nodded.

He sat down close by but not to close.  "You seem awfully young to be a ghost.  I don't mean to bother you but I am very lonely and have no one else to talk to."

To the boy's shock she began to sign to him.  James knew sign very well having had a deaf aunt and a mother that was also very hard of hearing.  "I did not know that anyone could see me here, I have been a little ...lonely."

"I have been lonely too, and depressed."

She looked surprised, her big sad eyes signed rapidly.  "But you are alive and young and I'm sure you have some friends you could visit with."

He signed back, "yes, but I am a little tired of them all Im afraid.  Im afraid my friends are rather boring.  They just sit around and smoke and drink and watch tv."

They sat and talked a long time.  "I must go now, she said.  "I never stay out in the evening."

"Do you mean out of ...your grave?"

"Yes, but its very quite and peaceful there.  I sleep long and well and have the most lovely dreams of all sorts of things."

"I sounds very nice."

"It is, goodbye...will you come tomorrow?"

"I have to work but I am here often."

"Please visit with me soon then.  I have stories I can tell you about things that happened long ago."

"Thank you for being so nice, I have a difficult time making friends," he signed before trudging away.

James went back to his car and drove to the store where he bought more beer.  He went home to his darkened apartment and drank until he passed out.  Life had fallen into such a rut for him.  One knew it was bad when you spent an entire afternoon talking with the dead.  Maybe he was also dead, that would explain things.  Then he dreamed.