"So what's it like to be dead?"

Lori Zaslow giggled as her blond schoolmate, Julie, asked perhaps the most ridiculous question she had ever heard. The two of them, plus their friend Deborah were sitting cross-legged on the floor of Deborah's living room. The Ouija board was spread out before them. Each of the teenagers had her fingers on the edge of the wooden planchettete, waiting expectantly for it to move. To set the mood, Deborah had turned all the lights in the two-bedroom apartment off, and the 'ceremony' was illuminated only with a few scented candles snatched from the bathroom.

"What kind of stupid question is that?" said Lori.

"It's a good question," said Julie. "I wanna know!"

"It's not a real ghost, Julie," said Lori.

"Look-Look!"

The wooden piece began to move beneath the girls' fingers. It slid across the board until the letter 'D' was centered in the small circle. It rested for a moment, and then slid over to 'A,' 'R,' and finally 'K.'

"Dark," said Julie. "He said Dark!"

"Deborah's making the thing move..."

"I am NOT!" protested Deborah. The goofy smirk on her lips said otherwise.

"Yeah, right."

"Honest!"

"Uh-huh. I saw your arm move last time."

"Shhh!" said Julie. "You're breaking my concentration. We're gonna lose Bob!"

At that, Lori burst out in hysterical laughter.

"What?"

"Oh come on, Deb... you couldn't think of a more original name than 'Bob'? Who's it supposed to be the ghost of... Bob Marley?"

"Or Bob Hope!" said Julie.

"Bob Hope is still alive, genius!"

"Maybe we should have named him Paul... after Lori's boyfriend."

"EX-boyfriend. And that's NOT funny."

"Let's just ask Bob what his last name is..." said Deborah.

"Let's not." said Lori. "I've had enough." She stood up and straightened her clothes.

"Lori, you're such a dweeb." said Julie.

"I wasn't the one talking to 'Bob.'"

"Yes you were. You asked questions, too."

"You two don't actually believe that stuff, do you? I mean it's just a game, right?"

"Well..." said Deborah. "When I bought it last week the lady said it COULD be real. There's rules and stuff you're supposed to follow or you could get possessed. Like, you're never supposed to use it alone- "

"Come on, Debbie. It's 1987... no on believes that stuff anymore."

"Well that's what she SAID."

"With your bloodline, you'd believe that, too." said Lori.

"What's THAT supposed to mean?"

"I mean... nothing. Sorry." Lori sighed. She had ventured onto thin ice with her best friend... both of them were sensitive about their families (or what was left of them.) Deborah didn't need to be reminded that her mom was a hyper-gullible religious fanatic any more than Lori needed her mom's nightly appointments with Mr. Jack Daniels. Especially after Debbie had allowed her to hide out for a few hours while their moms were engaged in their respective vices. Speaking of which... "Hey it's almost eleven. When's your mom coming home?"

"ELEVEN! Oh shit!" said Deborah. "Any second! I gotta hide this board... If my mom sees it she'll have a FIT! Quick, grab the candles!"

Deborah snatched up the Ouija board and vanished into her room, turning on the lights as she went. Julie blew out the candles while Lori went into the kitchen to fetch the air freshener.

"Hey turn on the T.V!" Lori shouted. She heard the television click on, but there was no sound. She returned to the small apartment's living room and saturated the air with the scent of Pine Forest, which almost covered the lavender fragrance of the candles.

When her nose could take no more, Lori plopped down on the sofa and grabbed the remote. Deborah and Julie joined her shortly.

"Nope." said Debbie. "We weren't doing anything. Not us... No way!"

The girls giggled.

"Ouija boards? Never HEARD of 'em!"

"Let's see what's on..."

"Only thing on is news this time of night." said Deborah.

Lori un-muted the set and began surfing through the stations.

"...Donner's speech focused on the hope for a new accord between-"

*CLICK*

"-memorial services were held today for Doctor Franklin W-"

*CLICK*

"-possible Sovereign involvement in the explosion that destroyed this cafe-"

*CLICK*

"-and this was the scene in downtown Stone Mountain about an hour ago when violence erupted at an anti-Sovereign protest. Police were called in to quell the disturbance after members of the Church of the Holy Light, also known as the Congregation, began shouting threats and attacking-"

"Oh my GOD, LOOK!" Deborah pointed at the screen, where the camera was focused on a white-haired man standing behind a wooden police barricade. With a thick, southern accent, the man shouted a litany of seemingly random bible verses at police officers who were trying to force him and his followers back. Standing immediately beside him was a plump, middle-aged woman... her own choice words were clearly audible as well. When one cop tried to push the pair back, the woman spat at him. The officer reached for her, but she quickly ducked back into the crowd.

"That's your MOM!" said Lori.

"Oh my God! Oh. My. God. Oh, I'm so embarrassed, how could she DO this!"

"Deborah calm down."

"CALM DOWN?!? That was my MOM being an asshole on national TV! Oh-My-God!"

"Who CARES!

"Oh, I'm gonna be sick! She SPAT on a cop."

"Gross." said Julie.

"Debbie, are you okay?"

"NO, I'M NOT OKAY!!"

The phone rang.

"Should I get that?" asked Lori. Deborah wouldn't even look at her. "Okay, I'll get it."

She answered the phone.

"Hello?" ...pause... "Deborah, it's your mom on the phone!"

"Oh, God! Is she in jail? I am NOT going to get my mother out of jail. I refuse."

"She not in jail, Debbie, now shhh! What's that Mrs. Jenkins? Okay... Debbie she says she's going to stay late at this special prayer service out in Conyers."

"... she's going to spend the night with those weirdos. That's just great..."

"What? Okay, Ms. Jenkins. Okay. Okay, bye."

Lori hung up the phone.

"She says not to wait up and to make sure the door is locked. And May God Bless And Keep Us All."

"I think that's my cue to leave," said Julie.

"Easy for you to say, you live three buildings down..."

"Oh I forgot. Lori, how are you going to get home?"

"Same way I got here; I'll walk. It's not far."

"Yeah, right." said Deborah. "You can stay here, she won't mind."

"You sure?"

Deborah just sighed and shook her head.

"I. Cannot. Believe..."

"You go, Julie," said Lori "I'll stay."

"What about YOUR mom, Lori?"

"Are you kidding? Tonight is Vodka night... she won't even know she HAS a daughter until noon tomorrow, if then."

"Okay, well I'm going." Julie left and went home.

"Move your big feet." Lori swatted Deborah's legs and made room for herself on the couch. "You okay, Deb?"

"You asked that already. I'm not gonna slit my wrists... yet."

"Your mom would just love that."

"I mean... why does she... why does she DO this? Does she know how STUPID she sounds when she starts spitting that Congregation crap? Reverend Jericho says THIS... Reverend Jericho says THAT"

"Sov-REENS are EEEE-VILLLL!"

"Heh. You do that pretty good." Deborah chuckled.

"Sov-REENS are a SICK-NISS upon MAN-KINE! They are EEE-VILLL IN-CAR-NATE and we must DESTROYYY them AWWLL!"

Deborah hid her face in the pillow and laughed out loud.

"Give it up," said Lori. "You can't stay depressed around me and you know it."

"Do Jericho again..."

"Sov-REEEEENS are a SIIIIGN of da ENNN-TIIIIMES! The DAAAY of the LARD is UPON US AWLLL!"

"Day of the lard! Day of the lard!" Debbie nearly rolled off of the sofa in her fits of laughter.

"I swear," said Lori. "Parents. Hey why hasn't she dragged YOU to those stupid meetings?"

"Oh believe me, she's tried. They've got a youth ministry out there and everything."

"Junior Bigots of America."

"Yeah, like I'm gonna join THAT."

The two girls sighed.

"I need a new mom," said Deborah. "What's it like at YOUR house?"

"Yeah, right. She's too greedy for that... one more mouth to feed means less liquor for HER. You know, when my dad died she drank half the life insurance money in the first year. "

"Geez."

"And it's gotten way worse since then. Nothing works at our house now; everything's broken. The TV. The VCR. The Stereo. And she doesn't even CARE. I mean.. our heat's broken and she won't even have it fixed. It's FREEZING in my room and she says she doesn't feel anything."

"Probably doesn't. Drunks stay all warm and toasty right up until they freeze to death"

"And now she's started sneaking in my room and trying to talk to me. I mean I'm just laying there and she comes in and starts whispering at me. By the time I wake up good, she's shuffled back off to her room. She denies everything, of course... but I'm gonna find her passed out on the floor of my bedroom one of these nights. Probably trip over her and break my face."

"But at least she's drunk in her own house. My mom has to go on national TV and embarrass the HELL out of us both! I mean... she was on the NEWS!"

"But you know what?"

"What?"

"Just because our moms are retards... that doesn't make US crazy. We're gonna get through this... one and a half more years of high school and we are OUTTA HERE!"

"If we can make it that long."

"We'll make it."

"Hey we probably shouldn't be awake when my mom gets home. I don't wanna here a replay Reverend Jericho's 'The Sovereign Are Evil' sermon number 327."

"Hey, maybe he got arrested out there tonight."

"We won't be that lucky. Besides... with all the money he sucks out of people like my mom, he'd be out on bail so fast that he'd actually pass himself on the way IN. Come on..."

Deborah got up and led Lori into her small bedroom, where she pulled a sleeping back out of her closet and tossed it onto the floor. While her friend fetched the pillows, Lori saw the Ouija board on the closet's top shelf... it was plainly visible, jutting out from between two board games.

"Think you can hide that any worse?" said Lori.

"Oh come on... that's Bad Girl's Rule Number One: Hide things in plain sight so nosy parents'll never see it. If I stuffed it under the bed she'd find it tomorrow... but it'll stay hidden up there forever."

"Gee... and I thought MY mom was dim."

"Here!"

A roughly-thrown pillow bounced off of Lori's face. She quickly returned the favor, and the scene rapidly degenerated into a pillow fight. Finally, Deborah clicked off the light and hit the button on her stereo. Soft-rock Top 40 tunes hummed in the background.

"Uggh!" said Lori.

"Helps me sleep."

"Yeah, I'll bet." Lori climbed into her sleeping bag. The two girls talked and giggled for a while, but a lull in the conversation drew gentle snoring sounds from Deborah. Lori yawned and lay her head down on the pillow. She was asleep soon after.

---

...whispering... like a noisy party heard from far away... except there was only one voice... murmuring... a constant muttering of unfamiliar words...no... the words were familiar... but... what?

Lori opened one eye and squinted at the empty room. Why was it so cold in here?

The whispering continued...

"mom? mom stop bothering m-"

Suddenly Lori realized that she wasn't at home. Her mother wasn't whispering to her.

"Very funny, Deborah."

Deborah's light snore nixed that theory before it had finished forming. Her friend was asleep, and no one else was in the room.

And someone was whispering to her.

She threw back the sleeping back and sat up. Lori half expected to see Mrs. Jenkins standing in the doorway, muttering prayers over her sinning daughter and her heathen friend... but instead she was assaulted by a wave a cold air that snatched every ounce heat from her body.

"Dammit!" hissed Lori through clenched teeth. She glanced at the alarm clock, but it was flashing 12:00... just like most of the clocks at her own house. The door was still closed, and it was cold as HELL in the room. Just like at home. Lori noticed that the radio had stopped playing, and then she detected an odd smell in the air. The familiar scent of ruined electrical equipment.

"Deborah, I think your radio is hosed."

Her friend snored on, undisturbed.

Lori convinced herself that a power surge must have hit the house and knocked out the heat. But this complex had GAS heat, didn't it?

Lori wrapped her arms around her body and cast around for a blanket. That was when she saw the Ouija board.

The board was laying face-up on the rug just a few feet away. The planchette was meticulously placed on the bottom left corner, over the word "YES."

"Oh, shit."

Lori stared at the board. She tried to call out to her friend, so Deborah could witness this obvious hallucination... but her lips wouldn't move. Her chest tightened, and she felt her own heartbeat throbbing in her throat.

This was no power surge.

Lori noticed that the whispering sound in her head was gone, but she didn't care. She didn't care about the decreasing temperature of the room, either. Her entire world now consisted of the simple wooden board before her... and the triangular planchette that was sitting there mocking her.

She reached out to touch it. She wanted to scream when her fingers touched the wood. She wanted to yell out when her other hand grasped the pointer as well. She wanted to cry bloody murder when she scooted herself forward and sat before the board with both hands on the planchette.

It moved.

Lori jerked, but her hands stayed put. She felt certain she wasn't moving the pointer, but she could feel the slight tension in her wrists that told her that she was. Wasn't she?

The pointer slid over to the letter "H" and stopped. After a second, it began to move again... this time to the letter "E."

Lori watched in shock as her hands traced out a path from letter to letter. When it reached the "M" she knew what the first half of the message was. If this were actually HER doing,... as it HAD to be...then that part would make sense... but when the pointer swung towards the "D" and then the "E," Lori's mind seized up... it refused to think any further. Why would she do it? Why would she send such a message to herself? Unless it WASN'T HER!

Lori look down at the pointer as it settled on the final letter... a "D." She willed the pointer to continue... to add more letters and obscure the all-too-plain meaning, but it would not move. It was done.

Lori forced herself to re-assemble the message in her mind.

"Oh God." she whispered. "Oh. My. God..."

From beginning to end, the Ouija had spelled out:

H-E-L-P- M-E I-M- D-E-A-D

[To Be Continued]