My mom used to talk about visiting with the dead.
They would come to her in dreams, her brother mostly. She would sometimes mention these visits, and that's what she called them - visits. They weren't haunting dreams, she saw them as friendly, as a little "hello" from beyond the veil.
Her surviving brother once confessed to her that he'd been visited by a demon. He was on the couch, cruising the infinite entertainment manifold of hyper-premium satellite TV, and a demon crawled out of the bigscreen when it got stuck between channels. It sat down on the couch next to him as though it was waiting for the halftime break to be over, some familiar friend relaxing between beers, its casual bearing somehow even more terrifying than the flames and sharkteeth routine.
I dreamed about my friends last night.
I was at the plot, digging my fucking ass off and looking for my big pinch bar to see just how big the rock was that was sitting in the middle of where I needed to cast a big concrete pylon. Sweating, swearing, and I couldn't find my fucking pinch bar.
My friends showed up in a couple of uparmored trucks and pulled out shovels and picks and started helping me dig, like they'd just run off to the store to get them and were back from the quick trip. In the way of dreams it seemed perfectly normal, like they'd never been dead or fled and either way unreachable.
But any time I tried to talk to someone, they would apologize and leave.
One by one, they were gone, and then I realized somehow the trucks were gone too. And the picks and the shovels, and even the holes they'd dug.
And then I remembered that they were really gone, and I woke up back into the high mileage body that hurts all the time, into the mind that has to check the doors and windows before it's safe to sleep, into the world that exists orthogonal to my real goals. I rolled upright, and put my feet on the floor, not knowing or caring what time it was, and I missed my fucking friends in a way that you can only miss someone who is never coming back.
I don't believe in ghosts or the afterlife. I believe the only place they live on is in memories, and so I believe that in a way, my mother was right. I was visiting with the dead.
I saw a guy in the gas station today, total cretin. Dressed up in cheap black motorcycle gear with at least two cheap, flashy knives among the bunches of collapsible batons, stuffed black canvas pouches, and assorted mall ninja gear his belt. All rigged up for the flea market apocalypse. Mirrored sunglasses to intimidate old people and fools. A bunch of really bad tattoos that included a crooked RANGER tab on his shoulder, and an "Airborn" tab in the wrong place as the chef's kiss.
In a place where it's perfectly legal to stuff a bazooka in your pants, anyone who wants to dress that way would just strap a gun on if they could legally do it. The guy reeked of dipshit recidivist. I desperately, desperately wanted to ask one of the questions that I knew would lead to a lot of mumbling and then an obligation for me to either be angry or laugh in the guy's face.
I had time for neither. I had shit to do.
I contented myself with sizing him up from behind the cloak of invisibility, just another tired lump of flesh picking up a pack of bluntstuff and a Pepsi. Wasting my time with a terrified, tinydick wannabe road bandit doesn't dig holes. My dead friends don't give a fuck about this guy glancing around the place with the kind of nervous energy of an amateur desperate for trouble he can handle with bluster and cheap intimidation. Spooking the olds and praying to God he doesn't meet the Buddha on the road.
When I was still in initial training, I went through a bunch of "what if your shitty old plane crashes in the Atlantic" type stuff, in a big ass motherfucking pool that was doubtless kept at the minimum temperature recommended by military physicians for the planned program of exercise for the demographic.
You gotta jump in that pool with a freezing thunderstorm simulator running, crawl into a GI life raft, get it buttoned up and bailed out with about a dozen other dumb fuckers like you, and complete the exercise. Sometimes, if you're a really good boy for Uncle Sam, they'll strap you into a simulated helicopter chassis, flip the whole thing over, and drop you in so you can claw your way out.
Anyway the thing is they make you do it twice - once without a blown-out, ratty, ancient hand-me-down-forever exposure suit on, and once with. It's known as the poopy suit, because it is well known among those who have used them for real that it fills with shitty piss that accumulates until someone pulls you out of the water and removes you from the suit with a pair of surgical shears. This is done intentionally for any number of reasons that aren't criminal negligence of an invalid, and have to do with things like conserving heat and insulating mass. It's a self-wetting wetsuit. You wet yourself, which wets the suit, because they're otherwise sealed at the wrist, neck, and ankle with a long rubber cuff. We were told repeatedly that if we were putting it on in the real world and thought for sure we would rip it or break our skulls trying, we definitely wouldn't and just push harder.
The second ride, with the one-size-fits-none junkpile gathered around your body, is infinitely more tolerable. They call it "the poopy suit appreciation ride", because it makes you appreciate how important it is to take the time to put it on even when the shit is hitting the fan.
I understand the appeal of the afterlife. It gives us a shot at that poopy suit appreciation ride, a next chance with the horror out of the way.
But even if you know it's not coming, you should still push until you think your skull will break, because it's definitely going to eventually, and there's only one way to find out you're wrong.