The Last Handful of Clover - Book 1: The Hereafter

1.38 Emily D.

June 6, 2:30 pm

"I think I'm doing pretty well, for a guy that woke up dead yesterday," Richard said.

Although he couldn't know for sure, he sensed that it had been close to two hours since the fight on the playground. And he had spent most of that time just lying next to the boy on the blanket and staring up at the sky. To his surprise, his thoughts had actually calmed a great deal.

It is amazing what the human mind can eventually accept as normal, Richard thought.

About a half hour ago a girl his own age had joined the boy, and Richard immediately sensed she was a perfect match for the kid's dark brooding. They both had a bit of Goth about them, or as Richard had learned recently, the more modern parlance was "Steampunk." She had black hair that looked like a home dye job, and a black and red, skin tight top with a silver studded black skirt down below. She had plopped herself next to the boy on the blanket and kissed him briefly. Richard felt a pang of jealousy rush through him, followed immediately by disgust.

Sheesh, just back from the dead, and already I'm latching on to another young man? Really?

But after an hour lying next to the young lovers, he felt almost as close to the girl as the boy. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about either of them. But they were young and they were in love, and those two things alone made Richard's heart ache with loss and loneliness.

Pushing up on his elbows to look at the reclining pair, Richard saw the boy was now just lying with his eyes closed, and his head on the closed journal. His left hand was under his neck, and the right was on his girl's arm, stroking it lightly. The girl had pulled out a thin volume and was reading it, her head on the boy's belly. She had kicked off her shoes and extended her skinny legs off the blanket and onto the grass. She had her knees drawn up so should could wiggle her toes in the grass and the clover.

Somewhere, over the last couple hours, Richard had taken to just talking aloud to the pair. They didn't pay him any mind, and it helped to put his thoughts into words.

"Everything feels different," he said, toying with unmoving strands of the girl's hair. "I've been wandering in this park all afternoon, touching everything, and that's the first thing I've noticed. Take for instance, this grass." He ran his hands over the lawn next to him. "To your toes it feels soft, maybe even sensual. But to me, it's like running my hands over the bristles of a giant steel brush. And see this fold in the blanket? I can't smooth it out, no matter how hard I try. If you laid down on this, you'd hardly notice. For me, it would feel like lying on a line of cobblestones. And your hair. I know it's soft, but it doesn't even feel like hair to me. And even though I'm touching it, you'll never know. So what's the point, really?"

The girl turned the page of her book, readjusted the sunglasses that were slipping down her nose, and let out a long sigh.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to bore you. I wasn't that exciting of a guy, even when I was alive. Work, work, work during the week, and most evenings just home on the couch with Keith. We used to be party animals, when we first met. But I guess we both just eased into another way of living. Time does that to people. Maybe in twenty or thirty years, if you two are still together, you'll know what I mean..."

His voice trailed off as the image of Keith filled his mind. Not the image of him weeping uncontrollably in that pool of blood, but an image of him as Richard wanted to remember him—smiling and laughing across a dinner table. Either just the two of them, or with their friends. They had several other bear couples they spent time with, and Keith was always happiest when Richard would accompany him to a meal with Michelle and Pil. The four of them had spent many evenings at restaurants across the city, and dinners in their own homes. Richard always knew that the Kilanis thought him to be an odd duck, and didn't quite know what to make of him. Many people he met felt that way. But more than most, Michelle and Pil put forth a grand effort to make him feel included. He knew they did it completely for Keith's sake, but what they probably never knew was how much Richard had desperately appreciated their efforts to make him feel part of their circle.