Heeeeeere's Annie!

Okay.  Let's see here.  How to get this thing to work....

Is it on?  It sounds like it's on, but the screen is black.  Maybe the monitor is off?

Turn on.

Turn on, monitor.

What - How - How does it turn on?  Hmmm...let's see...What if I try this?

Oh!  It worked.  Cool.  Alright.  It's on.  So now to delete all that.  So...delete.

Delete.

No, delete.  DELETE.

Delete.  Delete all.

Ugh.

Now that's not even a real word, so why would it type that?

Hmm...Maybe if I think more clearly?

D E L E T E   A L L.

Oh, for crying out loud!

I'll just go from here, I guess.  Sheesh.

Alright, people of the ether - prepare yourself for this:

My name is Annie Givvup and I am dead.

Oh gosh, that's a bit abrupt, isn't it?  Well, there's no going back now, I guess.  Okay, moving on: I don't remember what happened, at least, not all of it.  But I can tell you what I DO remember.

I was walking home from school - work?  No, school...I think?  I was walking home from somewhere when everything went dark.  Not dark like I got knocked unconscious or anything.  No, one second there was sunlight and trees and those things that fly and then the next second there was nothing, like I somehow walked into a pitch-black tunnel.  It didn't matter how wide I opened my eyes; I couldn't see anything.  There was nothing to see!

And I was stuck there.  FOREVER.

Well, it felt like forever.  I don't actually know how long I was in there.  Regardless, not only was it dark, but there was a loud humming noise.  This was not a pleasant humming, though.  No, there something really strange about its frequency.  It gave me a stomachache, and THE WORST headache.

Do you know what that's like?  Being stuck in the pitch black with aching ears, nausea, a migraine, and the worst possible noise you could imagine??

Well, let me tell you.  IT'S HORRIBLE.

It makes me cranky just thinking about -
Whoa.  I need to calm down, maybe take a deep breath.

Oh, that's right.  I don't need to take a breath because I'm DEAD.  Remember that part?

I do.

Anyway, back to my story.  There I was, in the land of the humming nothing, feeling pretty darn terrified and in pain when it all suddenly stopped.  There was sunlight again, and birds, and those tall, wood things with the leaves on them.  Trees - that's it.  And trees.

All that was there - and so much more.  Cars and people and loud noises.  And, strangest of all, I kept hearing my name.  It was faint, but someone definitely said it over and over.

So I followed.  I kept at it until I stood before an odd looking building.  It was almost as though someone had taken a tall but narrow triangle and just stuck it in the ground.  The roof was bleached from the sun, and the building - protected by the extreme overhang- starkly contrasted the roof in its too-dark brown paint.

It was certainly not a welcoming building, but I walked through the open doors anyway.

It was a church, I think.  Wooden pews lined either side of an uncomfortably narrow aisle, and there was a pulpit or stage of some sort at the front of the room.  Nothing in the building signified a particular religion, though.  There were no crosses, no symbols of any sort.  It was depressing and stark.  Barren.

On the stage was a shiny black coffin.  Mine, of course, although I didn't know it at the time.  Next to the coffin stood a woman.  She was attempting to say something, but it wasn't clear because she was crying too hard.  I stared at her, willing her to stop crying for one second so she could speak the word that was stuck in her throat.  She drew a deep breath and then she did.  She said one word:

"Annie."

My name.  I turned sharply and looked at the photos displayed next to the coffin.  All of them featured the same girl with curly blonde hair and brown eyes that squinted when she smiled.  Me.  

Let me take a moment here to ask you a question.  Have you ever attended your own funeral?  Do you know how bizarre that is?  Take my word for it - "bizarre" doesn't even begin to cover it.  Let me put it this way: if I was still breathing I would have hyperventilated.  No doubt.

But I wasn't breathing.  And no one noticed me.  That should have clued me in, but I don't think my brain was working too well because I had somehow missed the fact that when I walked down the aisle at a funeral (in a T-shirt and jeans, no less) NO ONE noticed.

Well, my brain caught up and did so suddenly.  I got so overwhelmed and freaked out that I turned to go, but people started moving.  They must have been coming down the center aisle for their final goodbyes or something, because they were moving toward the casket.

Okay, I know they could have gone through me, that no one would have accidentally crashed into me, but old habits die hard.  (HA - dead person joke)

I turned and ran toward the coffin.  There was nowhere to go - I swear, there was nowhere to go!  They were a stampede in slow motion.  I turned to face them, took a step back and realized I was standing IN THE COFFIN.

There was no time to move, because the crying lady who now led the stampede - was she my mom? - reached out a hand to touch the coffin.  I didn't want her to touch me, although I can't say why.  Cut me some slack, okay?  Anyway, I didn't want her to touch me and so I ducked into the coffin.

I wasn't thinking!!  I didn't even consider what I might find in there, or how it might affect me!  But I don't think anything could have prepared me for what I saw.

The coffin was empty.  EMPTY!!

I wasn't there!

Well, needless to say I freaked out and screamed.  I don't think anyone heard the scream, although a few light bulbs burst so then they freaked out and their stampede went from slow motion to full speed in the opposite direction.

Only the crying lady was left.

I felt a little guilty leaving her, but what else could I do?

I wandered around for a bit until I came to an abandoned house on the edge of town.  I'm not sure what happened here, but it looks like it was ransacked and burned out and like no one has been near it in ages.  I've been bumming around on my own, quite possibly going mad, but I made an amazing discovery:

I found this GhostWriter word processing program!  You know, the programs you speak into and they type for you?  This particular edition is the Catalog of Registered Personal Spoken Expression and so far, so good.

Maybe pretending someone will read this will keep me sane.

A girl can hope.

Alright then, world.  I'm out.

Okay, post.  Post?  Sheesh, how do I post it?  Oh!  Maybe this will work...Okay then, till next time, I guess.  Catch you on the other side.