Luke was still on the bed, dead, where he was sure he had been for several hours. Rita, b**** that she was, had been pounding on the apartment door off and on for two of those hours.

“Luke!”

He lay still.

“Open up!”

He still gave no response.

“Open up, Luke! I have to get the rest of my stuff and if you don’t open the goddamn door I’ll call the police!”

Luke got up. One thing he thought he was reasonably sure of was that police cremate the dead, unclaimed people. He didn’t know if he would feel it, but cremation didn’t sound pleasant. Luke opened the door.

“God, Luke, you look like s***. What, are you drunk already?”

He shook his head.

“Well good, because you need to drive me back home with my stuff. My car is out of gas and Adrian expects me back by one o’clock.”

Luke shrugged. It didn’t matter much where he went. He was beginning to notice that being dead gave him an uncharacteristically fatalistic mood. He stood back to watch her root through the apartment, her collected things not amounting to much more then a box. He moved to sit back down on the bed - but stopped. She was done now, so she would want that ride home.

“I’m done now, Luke. Hurry up and get out to the car, it’s almost twelve thirty.”

Once they were in the car he paused to light a cigarette. He wondered why he had.
Probably just habit. He realized then he had been trying to breath all day, so he stopped attempting to enjoy his smoke. He threw the cigarette out the window.

The freeway was like a descent into the deepest part of hell. All he could think about was veering into the opposite lane. The impact would hopefully push him out of his stupid body and most likely kill Rita too, for an added joy. It wasn’t really joy though; he supposed that even the dead have their principles.

Rita was uncharacteristically silent. She spoke up. “Luke? What the hell is wrong with you?” She paused, “You haven’t said a word since last week. It’s not like we wanted to hurt you, so don’t take it so personally. People leave their husbands all the time. I just want to date other people, I’m just like that, and I flirt too much. I can’t stand being so tethered down…and besides humans aren’t meant to be monogamous. I told you that. Don’t you understand it? You acted like we killed you when you walked in on us.”

Luke was still silent.

“Well, f*** you then Luke.” She was sneering now. “You don’t have enough brains or balls to do anything to keep me with you anyway. You couldn’t get me wet if you had a squirt gun. Plus, Adrian’s d*** dwarfs yours.”

Luke couldn’t even here her very well, it was all blurring together- the cars, his car, his engine, and her voice- all echoed out of his silent chest and muddled his tired soul.

“Why don’t you f***ing TALK?” She was screaming now. People stared at them, stopped at a stoplight in the middle of Chicago, sunny and eighty degrees with the windows of the car down, a cute domestic dispute between a stupid white b**** and a man so gray he looked dead.

“You A**!” she screamed, “You F***ING MORON, WHATS WRONG WITH YOU!” She slapped him. He didn’t move.

Luke couldn’t hear anything at all now, and it was so dark.

“Fine, I hope you do f***ing die, you creepy b******.” Rita opened her door, the light turned green. “I’ll walk from here, you f***!” She snatched her box off the back seat and strode away.

The cars behind Luke began to honk, and the light turned to yellow, then red.

Luke saw blackness.

His body’s head hit the steering wheel, but Luke didn’t care. He was content. It was dark and quiet. He wondered if he had picked his head up. Whatever, he knew someone would pick his head up, and probably the rest of him too. Hopefully they would cremate him, he regretted opening the door.

Luke stopped thinking, finally.