Page 45 of Unalive On Air

“Shit, man, I’m totally bumming you out now. It’s not all bad, being dead. There’s loads of fun stuff about it, but it takes a while to get used to,” he says.

“It’s okay, honestly,” I say. “I think you probably had a much . . . richer life than I did.”

“Ah, don’t say that.” Trystan sits on the disgusting couch, his arse perfectly balanced atop the cushions like it’s no effort at all to keep himself there.

“It’s . . .” I shake my head. “It is what it is, I guess. My parents live in Spain. They have done since I was fifteen. They left me with my grandmother who . . . She was fine, health wise, but she was so old. She had my dad at forty-two, so when they emigrated, Grandma was in her nineties . . .” I trail off. Trystan doesn’t need to know that essentially my folks disappeared because they knew that, for old Sacha Runcorn, the end was nigh, and they didn’t want to care for her. Didn’t want to count out all her meds, or help her bathe, or redress wounds on her paper-thin skin that would never heal.

That was my life. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. I should have been loitering in the park with my mates, smoking weed or getting smashed on corner shop cider that tasted of piss and ethanol.

Instead, I cooked and cleaned, and ensured Grandma never missed a single episode of Murder She Wrote, Jonathan Creek, and Poirot. We hardly saw Mum and Dad, and when Grandma died, they stopped visiting altogether, like I wasn’t worth the two‑and‑a‑half‑hour plane ride from Seville. My passport expired before the Covid breakout, and I’ve made precisely zero attempts to renew it, so the last time I saw either of my parents was more than half a decade ago.

There’s nothing to miss about my old life. Nothing to mourn that I haven’t already mourned and made peace with.

The memory of fatigued muscles suddenly hits me hard. I attempt to sit next to Trystan, but I fall all the way through the seat to the dusty wooden floorboards.

“Why is sitting so fucking difficult?”

I almost want to cry. Almost. But I know even if I squeezed my lids as tightly as I could, my eyes would still be dryer than my grandma’s collection of vintage M&S talcs.

“The easiest way to learn, I found, is to force your brain to remember what a couch feels like. Or the ground, or any object, really. You can’t really move them unless you get super emotional, but you can sort of manipulate your limbs around the chair or sofa or bed or whatever.”

From looking at the dusty old sofa, I already know the padding is stiffer than comfort levels allow. There are probably a few loose springs waiting to poke me in the spine, and the fabric itself seems to have lost its softness to decades of salt water exposure and the sweat of countless randy surf instructors. I try what Trystan suggested and pretend my body is corporeal. I remember the press of the surface into my flesh, and imagine what it would feel like as I lower my bottom to the cushions.

Yet again, I fall through. Try a third time. This time I stop myself before I tumble into the floorboards.

“See,” Trystan says, sitting forward. “You’re getting there. How do you feel?”

“Like I’m holding a squat.” My voice is somehow strained. “How is it my spirit body can’t remember how to sit, but it can sure as hell remember how much it hates exercise?”

I give up and collapse through the sofa once more before rearranging myself onto the floor, half inside the coffee table and half out of it. My lower legs hang below the wooden boards, and I can no longer see my feet, but it’s about as good as it’s going to get right now.

“Is it okay if I stay here tonight?” I ask. “Only, I’m not sure I have the energy for traipsing around the hotel looking for my own place at the moment.”

“Of course.” Trystan smiles, then smothers it with his palm. When he removes his hand, his lips are clamped between his teeth.

“So . . .” I glance over at the clock. Ten to eight. “Tell me all the good things about being dead.”

“Okay, the best thing about croaking it is the surf.” He laughs. “You can literally go out at all times of day or night, in all weathers, and just . . . ride . . .”

Trystan tucks his hands behind his head and leans back onto the couch’s armrest, and he tells me all about the waves of Helzephron Bay until my little ghost eyes are too heavy to keep open.

twelve

Estimated Time of Departure

The clock on the wall desperately needs replacing. The Perspex front is fogged with condensation, metallic paint peels from the case, and I just know if I turn the thing over the battery housing unit will be rusted shut. But it works, and even though there’s barely any moonlight filtering into the poky little hut, my ghost eyes can clearly make out that it’s four a.m.

Twenty-four hours since I died.

Or thereabouts.

I don’t know my exact time of death, only what I estimated based on certain factors like rigor mortis, liver mortis, and the drying patterns of my blood.

But at least one person knows my true TOD. My killer. Though it’s unlikely I’ll ever get the chance to talk to them face to face to ask them why. Unless, of course, at some point they themselves are killed here and become ghosts.

And if that happens, it’s going to be totes awks for everyone involved.

I don’t remember when I fell into a stasis-not-sleep, but Trystan had been telling me about his afterlife as the spectral surfing champion, about the waves, and the huge annual competition, the Wipeout festival, they used to host every year on this very beach. They apparently stopped after Trystan’s death as a mark of respect. He went quiet after that, but then perked up when I asked him to explain how it’s possible for a ghost to surf without a ghost surfboard.