• The two of them stood just above the cloud-line; their feet level, as though they were standing on a pane of glass. The wind blew across the surface of the earth, blew the clouds past, and yet left these two unaffected. For, to them, the breeze was not something that existed anymore.

    “I’m dead now, I suppose,” one of them whispered. “After all, that car accident was horrendous. I guess… I shouldn’t be surprised I didn’t survive.” Her voice was monotone almost, disbelieving. Her face turned downwards, to look at the street below. “It’s not the way I’d imagined I’d go.” She added, sitting down on their non-existent ground, observing the world that continued on below her.

    “I’d hazard to guess that most people are unaware of how they’re going to die,” her former lover, standing beside her, stated.

    “I guess not,” she said, and looked up with a shaky smile on her face. “And you’re here? Is this the next part? Or…. Were you waiting?” She asked, before looking down again. Her face held a sorrow greatened by the slightest feeling of guild.

    “I’ve been waiting,” was the reply. “I love you yet, and… I didn’t want to go before you. So I’ve been waiting at this cross-roads, and now we both are here.”

    She closed her eyes, and tears ran down her face, slowly. They were tears for a love she lost a long time ago, for a love she lost as she died, and for everything that she had just left behind. “I don’t love you anymore,” she muttered in an unsteady voice, too honest to say otherwise, but too kind to say it easily.

    “I know,” came another simple response. “I’ve been watching over you. There’s not much we can do after we die; but, just incase there was something that I could do, I wanted to be there. I know you’ve moved on.”

    She tilted her head up a bit. “That’s the nature of death, isn’t it? I can feel it. It’s as if we’re in complete silence now.”

    “Yes. Death is the silence, the stillness, after life is over. Life is motion, movement, and change. There is no change after life. Death is, quite simply, the end.”

    Tears now ran freely down her cheeks, the smallest of sobs ran through her body. “That’s so cruel, isn’t it? People always tell you to move on when someone dies, but they can never move on from you.”

    “It… depends on the circumstances. Think of Romeo and Juliet; their love will never fade. After death, emotions never change. They will never love each other any less then they did in their whirlwind romance.”

    She pulled her legs in; her arms found places over her head in a protective gesture. “You loved me, and I moved on. I barely even remember you. I don’t love you, and at this point, I never can. It’s terrible. This is hopeless. Where’s the mercy here?” Her whole body was shaking at this point, in denial of what happened.

    “And yes, your current love will probably move on just as you did. The average human lifespan is far above both of yours; he probably has many, many years left before his death. He will find another to love, and when he in turn dies, will love whoever he did in his last moment. Then, as a forever-unchanging soul, he we come to this place where you and I currently stand, and eventually go on to whatever is next,” her former love said, cruelly honest, but unwilling to lie.

    She simply pulled her protective position in tighter, as if with every word she was losing something, and she could prevent that simply by holding all of herself in place. “Is there even any point in waiting?” She asked, after a moment to calm down.

    “I waited for you.”

    She looked up, eyes still watery. “I guess you did.” She allowed herself one last glance, back downward, to where she was, living, not ten minutes ago. “Do you think there’s another chance? For any of us?”

    “I can not say I know. I hope there is, though.”

    She stood up, brushed her pants to get rid of non-existent dirt out of habit, and gave her former love the last shaky smile she’d give anyone. “Well, if there is, I think I’d like to take another chance with you. I can not love you; but…” She trailed off, unsure of what she meant, exactly.

    The answer to her unspoken question was a held-out hand. “Shall we go together?”

    She nodded, and took the hand. And as if in an instant, the two ghosts disappeared. Or, possibly, it was that the world around them had faded. It could have even been that they had simply moved places. They might not have even ever existed in the first place, come to think of it.

    But in any case, that was death. And death, being what is it, is the end. It is cold, frozen and unforgiving. Any love that exists after death will last forever; as will any hate. Death itself has no use to change anything; which is why, perhaps, life decides to take souls for a spin once in awhile and see which pieces of the endless puzzle like to fit together.