Heaven
Heaven
by Mur Lafferty
* * *
The Afterlife Series I
Heaven, The Afterlife Series I
Copyright © 2011 Mur Lafferty
Creative Commons BY-NC-ND
Published by Restless Brain Media on Smashwords
This is a work of fiction. Resemblances to persons living or dead is coincidental.
To Eric Daniels, Eric Smith, and Joe Magid.
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE: KATE
BOOK TWO: DANIEL
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SNEAK PEEK OF HELL
THE AFTERLIFE SERIES BOOK II
BOOK ONE: KATE
Heaven must be really boring
If you think about it logically
All the angels must be snoring
Who could stand perfection for eternity?
Not me.
“Heaven Must Be Boring” ~George Hrab
BOOK ONE: KATE
CHAPTER ONE
My best friend Daniel and I died when we were twenty-four. It didn't occur to me that we could die. How many times have you heard that? We were young, healthy, in our prime, blah blah. Death was never on our minds. I’d been led to believe that your youth is the time of greatest potential, but when you’re a dead piece of meat in a crushed Toyota at twenty-three, your potential for greatness drops to zero. Truth be told, my potential for greatness had never been that high. In high school, I fit in comfortably enough with the “smart kids,” but I never won any awards or tried out for any scholarships; I just got by. In college I focused mostly on hanging with friends and pining after my best friend. I dropped out midway through my junior year.
When I visited home for the holidays, my parents ignored the white elephant of my college failure in order to craft the illusion of a happy family, but my grandmother wasn’t buying it. She was one of the few people I trusted, simply because she didn’t feed me bullshit.
Christmas afternoon, she pulled me aside. “Kate, we need to talk about this college thing.”
I rolled my eyes. “Grandma, I told you-”
She waved me silent. “When I was a young woman, President Kennedy said that we were going to go to the moon, not because it was easy, but because it was hard.” She pointed outside her window at the night sky. “Most people take the easy route. Can’t blame them. It’s easy.” Her eyes flitted toward the living room where my father was working on keeping the couch firmly planted on the floor. She’d never said a bad word against her son; but then again, she didn’t have to.
Obviously this time she was talking about me, too. I had taken the easy route since high school; going to Appalachian State University instead of University of Tennessee or Duke, then dropping out, no major declared, no stellar grades in one specific area that would set me on my path.