Death wasn’t so bad after all. By the time it came for her, Ethel Merriweather welcomed it with open arms. Quite literally. The Volkswagen beetle hit her while she was slowly crossing the street – her groceries flying out in every direction. All those years of playing “slug bug” with her nephews came back to bite her in the rump.
Contrary to what one might expect at Ethel’s age, she didn’t die immediately. She was rushed to the hospital for the third time this month. And this time, it would be the last. Which was fine by her. She was tired. Her body frail. Her arms and legs were not much more than flabby sticks. Her house in long disrepair after she couldn’t keep up with it. She had lived a good life. A rewarding one, despite all the challenges. She had married, grown old with her partner, helped raise children, and settled into a somewhat pleasant retirement. Anything beyond that was just a pain in the neck–her back especially had ached for years–and now everything was much worse after being hit by a blue bug.
In the final month of her life a young niece had introduced Ethel to video games to pass the time. A whole new world had opened up to her. One not constrained by physical limitations. Where she could make all the choices she wanted for herself. The ones that involved action and quick reflexes did not interest her. Instead, she latched onto games with management elements. Tending to virtual gardens and pixelated homes was an enjoyable distraction and an acceptable replacement; her real ones had sadly withered away. On the verge of death, Ethel turned a new leaf on her life.
This hobby continued into the final days of her life. Loved ones had visited often, but they couldn’t stay forever. There were times when she was left alone, when not even the nurses came by.
Ethel Merriweather passed away in her sleep. A portable game system still clutched in her hands - a save screen for Animal Crossing still illuminating the dark hours in her hospital room.
****
The night sky as a child was very different by the time I ripened into my later years. There were countless stars, painted across the heavens. You could get lost in them, just staring up into forever and ever. But then the big city folks began to shine up their spotlights to see better and slowly the shy stars winked out. Stage fright is good at killing stars, after all.
So imagine my surprise when I died and the stars came back into my vision.
Stars. Countless numbers of stars. I could have cried.
Except the tears wouldn’t come.
“Thank my lucky stars. I’m not in Hell.” I sighed with relief.
I knew I had died. That was obvious. It just wasn’t obvious which death I would be in.
Well, maybe not. Soon enough the stars grew brighter and brighter. The darkness of space faded away as their lights grew into what I could only describe as a free-floating billboard with bright, cheery lettering. It toed the line into comic-sans territory.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
An annoyingly pleasant female voice thundered out the words all around me, like an airplane safety video being forced upon all the passengers.
“Oh, hell, no,” I replied back. No, not a billboard. A… game over screen?
No, no thank you. Just let me die in peace. Thank you very much. Where’s the remote?
I tried to physically move around, but found that no matter where I looked the screen was there. And there were also no signs of my body physically moving about in the first place. I was in some sort of spiritual state floating in the void - just kind of stuck here and forced to acknowledge a virtual TV screen blotting out my view of the stars.
Since there was no analog inputs I could visibly see anywhere I had to improvise. So naturally, I reacted like any person would that hadn’t grown up with the newfangled touchscreen technology of the twentieth century: I pressed randomly until I got somewhere.
Good lord... She said everything so cheerily. A flurry of hundreds of options scrolled across my eyes. Countless boxes and toggles. Blurry words in tiny fonts streamed across my old eyes like a medication infomercial ad. Because, who knew, death doesn’t come with glasses. And I was sorely missing mine.
“No, that can’t be right…” I briefly squinted at the options available in larger font sizes. All of them sounded miserable. Sword fighter? Archer? Spellsword? What on Earth is that? With this old bag of bones I call mine? I scrolled down as far as I could, pressing on other random parts of the screen more, trying to figure out the buttons or if there were even buttons in the first place. Eventually one seemed reasonable: I’d pick nothing.
“Positive. I don’t want any character.”
I mentally jammed the
“What? No, ugh. Lady, you’re really cooking my grits right now. Work with me, please. Let me have some choice in how I die.”
“You’re voice activated too? God, no wonder this feels like an insurance phone call now. Okay, how about this? Speak with a representative.” That usually did the trick.
Nothing.
I tried again, louder. In my most authoritative, minimal accented “Karen” voice (as the kids called it these days), “Speak with representative!”
Nothing.
“Fine, I don’t need you anyways.”
“Lady, you’re not making this easy at all, are you?”
I sighed. I was getting nowhere. Despite being dead, I somehow managed to develop a headache. I was tired. Somehow, even in space I could feel my bones. I pressed my spiritual forefinger and thumb to my forehead and started to massage my aching…
“Fine!” I groaned. “I’ll just kill myself as soon as I can in the next one!”
Then everything went black.