Damned

To anyone reading this who isn't already dead, I wish you luck. Honestly, I do. You just keep swallowing your vitamins. Keep jogging around reservoirs and avoiding secondhand cigarette smoke. Cross your fingers... maybe death won't happen to you.

And yes, I am thirteen and dead and a girl. I might be a touch of a sadist and a little bit jejune... but at least I'm not a victim, not any longer. I hope. I hope, therefore I am. Thank God for hope.

For the rest of you, please don't be afraid. If you go to Heaven, bully for you. But if you don't—well, look me up. The only thing that makes earth feel like Hell, or Hell feel like Hell, is our expectation that it ought to feel like Heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. Another insider fact about the afterlife: If you miss your midnight curfew on All Hallows' Eve you'll be stuck wandering the earth, a ghost trapped among the living, until the next Halloween.

Now, if you'll excuse me, it's late, and I'm in a terrible, terrible hurry to go kick some satanic ass.

To be continued...