A Spooky Message from the Afterlife. Ooooooh!

Do you know the worst thing about being dead?

It’s not the necrophiles. They do creep me out, but I’m not using my body anymore, so I guess its better that they hump away on that than some poor unsuspecting heavy sleeper. Besides, I got cremated, so they may as well get amorous with the contents of their vacuum cleaner bags or what’s left from yesterday’s barbeque. After its cooled down, obviously. Or not, I’m not sure of the mechanics of the whole thing. It’s all a bit beyond me.

It’s not having to watch you guys left downstairs. I mean it’s a pretty bad TV show, with you guys all treading on each other for money and power and sex and cheese sandwiches. But I don’t have to watch. Its not like I’m Clarence or the Ghost of Christmas Present or Samuel Beckett and having to pop down there to make right what once went wrong. You’ll all end up here anyway.

The music’s pretty good, but the new stuff’s always a bit rotten. The drug free Hendrix stuff lacks something. Drugs I guess.

Its not even religion. No-one’s told me what the right one is and I’ve been dead over 17 months now. Watching you silly bastards all shouting and killing and pissing on each other because one 2,000 year old book of spells is in a different font than another 2,000 year old book of spells is frustrating, but you all pretty much deserve it. If any one the Legion of Beardy Super Deities in Togas exist they haven’t said anything to me, and I’m damn well sure they haven’t spoken to any of you livvies. Most of the religions seem to be saying ‘be nice to each other and eat bread and don’t go around poking anybody else’s wife’, but somewhere you lot changed it to ‘Shout at anyone who doesn’t agree that my great sky pixie is better than your great cloud super hero, and if that doesn’t work, stone them into soup’. Prats.

Meeting the animals you’ve eaten bits of is pretty weird. I saw a great pile of angry looking prawns staring daggers at me, but behind each one was a great pile of smaller looking aquatic spiders looking similarly pissed off, so I guess it’s the great circle of life. Even the grass looks pretty annoyed at the gnu’s, but they don’t seem to give a crap, they just bellow and stare daggers at the lions.

It’s the insects. Do you have any idea how many bugs and flies and wasps and ants you kill in a lifetime? Well they all end up here, and as soon as you arrive, they’re out looking for you. And it’s the afterlife; you can’t kill them again. So you’ve got to sit with them, hear them out, exchange life stories and drink bad coffee and reconnect emotionally. It’s fucking draining man. I was stuck with a pissed off wasp for three hours last night whilst it told me that all it wanted was to feed its young, get back to the nest and chew up some wood for the walls when I came along, squealed ‘wasp’, and hit it with my shoe. It was on the grass, just stunned, and hoped I’d walk away, but apparently I stamped on it until it was wasp jam. I tried to let it know how guilty I felt, but I didn’t remember any of it. That guy was really fucked off with me. I don’t think he was ever going to forgive me. In the end, I offered to let it sting me, I figured he’d be right into that, ‘cause otherwise what’s the point in being a wasp, right? But no, apparently I’d upset his delicate wasp feelings; he said that it was a slur against his species to suggest that they like stinging people, like its their last line of defence, their nuclear option. I figured that because I killed the guy, I should hear him out, but he just went on and on and on. Finally I cracked and said that maybe if him and his mates would just fuck off and leave our picnics alone, then maybe there’d be less wasp murders. Try not stinging people just because they had a jam sandwich in the last decade. That maybe getting stuck in kitchens and being too dumb to work out the difference between glass and y’know, not fucking glass, might be an idea; they could just fly out the window and we’d all be fucking copacetic. He just glared at me and walked off. I was that close to taking my shoe off and hitting him on his stupid yellow and black head, but I didn’t. Wouldn’t have killed the nasty little sod anyway, just pissed him off more, and he’d get all his mates around and before you know it, there’d be a big wasp demonstration, with placards and chanting and John Lennon’d be there with his acoustic guitar and start singing about All You Need is Love. Really couldn’t be arsed to deal with all that.

Anyway, have any of you livvies seen Elvis? I can’t find him anywhere. Maybe there’s a VIP room with burgers and working fly swats and beer and LSD and stuff. No-one’s give me a key though. Maybe if I prey to one of these beardy robey guys, they’ll let me in.

Love, Dead Pete