I
He was driving home from work with a splitting headache, the kind that throbs so bad you can’t have the air conditioning on or the music too loud. This headache was a common occurrence to him due to the sun, which aimed at him and was at just the right spot to be under his visor; one of the small personal tortures in life. Now, on this particular day the last thing he would be worrying about is his headache, his lack of sleep or what he would do when he finally got home to his unappreciative girlfriend. She cheats on him regularly with his best friend since high school, James, but that is information that won’t pertain to our protagonist until much later in the story. On his way home he had no idea he would soon be part of a small convoy to the after life. He wanted the left over Chinese in the fridge from last night. He hoped she didn’t eat all the Sesame chicken; she always left the cartoon with only the sauce and vegetables inside. No chicken. Though before we get into his problems let me explain a little about him so you can get a rough outline of his persona and life style. I would of course recommend you read this in a car with the sun staring you in the face for a total experience. Well, parked of course.
His name was Riley and he was at a point in his life where he was just not happy anymore. He had a girlfriend named Cassie whom he was in a relationship with for over 3 years. They were in love for the first half of their relationship but Cassie got bored of the constant routine though didn’t want to lose the security of having someone at home. Riley was oblivious to most of it though he knew something was up when he came home once and started to clean his room and there was one condom less then he remembered having. He was the type that would indeed count them. He was also the type that when he did count one missing he passed it on as his miscounting, rather than start an argument. Confrontation was not a word highlighted regularly in Riley’s personal dictionary.
Other than his sad yet, common love life he wasn’t really sure what he was doing in life. He was in his final semesters in college but since last year knew he had made the wrong decision. Almost done with a degree in Organic Chemistry but, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed so contrived to him. He had wanted to be a doctor since the concept was conceived in his mind. Though during a routine day at his job at the hospital as an intern, he realized that it wasn’t at all what he wanted to do. That’s all right though; it won’t matter in a few minutes. Riley is the type that will then feel bad for feeling bad for his failed decision. We all cope in different ways.
Now, on this normal Wednesday in February there was a man named Frank who was not having a good day at all either. He had just left his mothers’ house because she refused to pay his college tuition, she said, “You sit home all day, eat shit and never help me out. I would help you if you at least had a fucking job to pay me back with. But you’re a fucking bum and I refuse to just give you money to sleep in a class.” Well, Frank didn’t agree with her logic so he tied her up in the kitchen and told her to tell him her bank account pin codes so he could withdraw the money. He had to persuade her eventually and even cut her a few times on her leg to prove that he was serious. Around the point where she gave him the information he realized that he could use the money for anything his heart desired. Frank was not well in the head but his single mother was too poor to take him to a shrink and hoped that good motherly love could cure the psychotic tendencies that really brewed inside Frank’s mind. It didn’t work out as she wanted and Frank put his mother in his trunk. Frank then in a frantic rush to go to Wal-Mart to buy himself an inebriating amount of beer missed a red light and drove his car into Riley’s passenger seat.
Now, Riley didn’t know what happened because as soon as Frank hit him his head whip lashed to the side and through his window, which basically guillotined him; a quick and painless death. Frank, sans seatbelt, flew through his window into the side of Riley’s car and crushed his skull completely against the frame. Frank’s mother was still in the trunk and during the accident hit her self against the door of the trunk though lived long enough to know her son had died. She called out his name but, no reply was given and she knew her days were over as she died of blood loss and shock in his trunk. The police did eventually show up but only after a passerby called. That was around ten minutes after the actual accident happened; it’s a slow street.
One of the officers on scene, Dave, whom has no importance in the story beyond this, was a friend of Frank’s from high school. He knew Frank’s episodes and had been there when his mother would reprimand him for not helping take out the trash, do dishes, or drive to get groceries because he was busy doing something else, like sleeping or playing solitaire. He was luckily the first on the scene and was also the first to discover Frank’s mother in the trunk. Suffocated with grief he took her and put her in the passenger seat so that it didn’t end up that Frank was portrayed as crazy in the newspaper and that him and his mother just died together in the accident. This was the last favor he could do for his old friend.
So now we have Riley dead and this is where the story begins.
