I keep getting these messages from the beyond. I don't recognize any of the voices. I'm lying in bed trying to doze off when I hear this: "Where's my slippers?" "Who farted?" and "Put the seat down, Frank."
Who are these people? Are they dead, and if so, why do they need toilets?
I was afraid to mention this to anyone until one day, on line at Stop & Shop, I spotted my friend Danielle a few places in front of me. She was holding two heads of broccoli and talking to no one I could see. She wasn't wearing a Blu-Tooth device on her ear. I got her attention and asked who she was talking to. Oh, that was Joe, she said. You know, the guy who went on a hay ride two years ago and was somehow crushed in a thresher. He's been bitching about it ever since and I get to hear his whining voice for some reason.
What does he say, I asked. He complains about the lack of Brillo up there--the guy was a neat freak. Yesterday he moaned about being up there two whole years and not meeting Ingrid Bergman.
I confessed I too had been hearing voices from the beyond. Wanna trade, she asked. You can have Joe & I'll take whoever you got. Just then a nasally voice invaded my consciousness and I recognized Ernie, killed by a falling icicle after leaving a writers meeting. Where's the hazelnut coffee? it asked.
Ernie was kind of shallow and a lousy poet. It's Ernie, I informed her. Never mind, she said. I'll stick with Joe.
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