Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
Once upon a time there was a dead man called Harvey. Harvey hated being dead. He didn’t get to do anything good. He felt alone, depressed. All the other dead guys just laid about in graves, the smug bastards, content to just rest. But Harvey wasn’t like that. He want to be part of the world, be active. He’d been terribly active when he was alive. He’d climbed Kilimanjaro, he’d eaten walrus in the Arctic, he’d made love to beautiful women. Now he didn’t even have a cock. In fact, all he really had was bones. Just dried old bones. He tried to hang out with the living, but frankly, they just depressed him. Once, a little girl told him he was too thin, and she didn’t like his empty eye sockets. He was crushed.
Everyday he’d sit by the cemetery gates and look out at the world as it moved on without him. He was stuck in a time that wasn’t relevant any more. And he felt himself slipping away. Not just physically, most of his flesh had rotted off years ago, but emotionally. Like he was fading, becoming transparent. I mean being just a skeleton, he pretty much was transparent, in the sense that you could stand in front of him and see what was behind him.
One day, as he was mooning about, he noticed the glimmer of metal under a pile of rubbish. He snuck out across the road, and pulled aside the old plaster and faded curtains, and found a rusted bicycle. It was old, but when he picked it up, he knew this was it. It was an ancient thing, barely rideable, but then, he thought, so am I. So he climbed aboard, and took his first wobbling ride down the street. He gained speed, and soon felt the wind whistling through his ribs, his vertebrae stretching and contracting as he flew down the road.
His world changed. Soon, he found himself whizzing about everywhere. He was mobile! He bought a jaunty top hat, and would nod to people on the street. Sometimes they waved. Sometimes they sat with their mouths open, but they all noticed him. He felt more real, more solid than he had in years.
He grew the courage to wake some of the other dead. He showed them his bicycle. The very ancient ones shook their skulls and went back to sleep, but some of the little dead children giggled and begged him for a turn. Soon he was dinking the little ones around. A whole world of joy had been right at his bony toes. The kids laughed and held his hand. Even the very shy ones were soon tugging on his metacarpals to ask quietly if they might go out on his marvellous bicycle. They’d been lonely, the young dead. And now they were having fun.
He thought about this for some time. He’d hit on something. And soon he had a great idea. A big idea. He’d welcome the new ones. He knew it was tough for those kids who’d recently died. They didn’t have parents or friends. He organised a welcoming committee for all the babies and children who’d died because their parents wouldn’t vaccinate, or didn’t watch them when they were playing the near pool, or on the road.
All the other dead children loved the idea and soon rallied around the cause. They made up new games, and dressed in bright ribbons that they found on flowers left around the graveyard.
But the happiest of all was Harvey. At last, he’d found peace. A real peace. A peace more fulfilling than sleeping away eternity. A reason for being. And it was wonderful.