Intersections Read online

  She grabbed my hair and pulled me to her. Our bellies pressed together. My heel slid off and orbited around our intertwined legs. I ran my hand down her spine, enjoying the tickle of her aura. She arched her back and tilted her head. Our lips met, softly at first. Her tongue slipped into my mouth, across my teeth. My tongue’s tip popped up her throat and reattached to me.

  I kissed harder, running my hands through her hair and down her sides, her curves, her ribs. My fingers sipped and savored at her tight little body, so much different from a man’s. It was only when I felt the ponytail ring slide back into place, holding her hair tight, that I remembered where we were at, what we were doing, who we were with.

  By the time we pulled away from each other, Mr. Shady had covered more than half the distance between him and us. He soared toward us—arms and legs spread, lip curled.

  Shit. We were screwed.

  Shannon and I pulled apart, hands still clenched together. Our auras glowed silver. This girl had killed me, and now our souls were going to die together. I looked into her eyes, wide with fear, and suddenly it came back to me. My last living moment. I’d been rolling through the intersection at the four-way-stop when I realized her car was bearing down on me. Panic filled me. I stared into the oncoming driver’s face. At the same time, my hand fumbled with the steering wheel to honk the horn but I’d missed.

  The horn.

  Back in the van, she and I had honked the horn when I was trying to get out. We’d honked the horn. Later, we’d worked the phone. Together, we could move things.

  I pointed to the nearest piece of debris, what looked like an oversized solar panel. A beam of pure light refracted off its surface. She stared at me with a wrinkled brow and shook her head. I motioned for her to come with me. Together, we swam through space away from Mr. Shady and toward the discarded debris.

  As finales go, it was pretty damned anti-climatic. It may well have taken an hour for us to reach the debris. All the way, Mr. Shady closed in on us. He ranted and raved but his words went no further than his black tongue.

  When we finally pressed our hands upon the hunk of junk, I conjured all my strength, all my will, and all my love. That goddamn sermon came back to me—the one from the pickup truck.

  Friction is how we move forward. There are peacekeepers and there are peacemakers.

  As he closed in, we pressed against the panel, trying to aim the beam of light at him. We sandwiched our bodies together, tension growing between us. Slowly, the panel shifted. Likewise, the ribbon of light fractured upon its surface cut outward, narrowly missing Mr. Shady, who now tried to slow his plunge through space. Except he couldn’t. He was coming too fast, with no leverage to stop himself.

  As we move forward and rub against one another, we need to lubricate ourselves with the oil of the Holy Ghost.

  I slid my hand over Shannon’s mangled belly. My fingertips brushed her insides, gathering drops of ectoplasm. She ground her ass against my hips. I rotated my pelvis against her. My glistening fingertips slid lower, as did hers. I gritted my phantom teeth and shoved until my aura merged with hers. Mr. Shady was within spitting distance, his face now contorted with rage and desire.

  We must be anointed. Adversity is sometimes necessary.

  Shannon and I pressed together. I moaned mutely as her fingertips worked in a circle around my clit. Those frantic circles became the center of my universe. I orbited around her blissful touch. Our knuckles bumped together as my fingers entered her. Our merged auras glowed silver. Pleasure swelled inside me. My hands trembled. My body shook. A beautiful storm gathered inside me, and I wanted to laugh and scream and pray. The panel slid still further. Mr. Shady reached his black hands out to grab us.

  Friction is necessary.

  The panel shifted, and the light swerved back directly into his path. It cut him right up the middle. He curled into a ball as the light filled him. A second later, he slammed into the panel, Jeremy’s ghostly form now fractured with a hundred cracks of light. He screamed and flailed then ricocheted off the panel and plummeted back to Earth in a swirl of black holes and white cracks. By the time he hit the atmosphere, he’d become a grey shooting star arcing through the clouds.

  She pushed me against the panel and moved to kiss me. The anticipation of sweet relief throbbed inside me.

  Except it had to wait.

  Something truly remarkable happened. The panel kept moving until it pulled free of the light. Or rather, until the light pulled free of it. When that happened, all the other tangles of light glowed a little bit brighter. The heavenly knot around the Earth—the mess that had bound all the souls to our planet—loosened a little bit.

  I looked first at the mess of black souls crowding the sky on Earth, and then at Shannon. She must’ve understood because she wearily nodded her head. We had a lot of work to do. We couldn’t have each other just yet. Not while so many souls waited in torment. We had an afterworld to save.

  30

  I couldn’t really say how long we toiled. I know that we orbited several dozen times around the Earth before I lost count. We saw a sunset or sunrise maybe every hour or so. Like flittering birds, we soared from debris to debris—working and groping and thrusting ourselves against the bits of junk until we cleared them from the tangled light. We soon lost our fear of space flight, learning how to angle our bodies and control our speed and direction.

  With each subtle shift of junk, the Light grew stronger and the knot grew looser. Likewise, the tension between us swelled harder. Our efforts became more frantic, the both of us eager to see the journey’s end—and to have each other.

  Eventually, the Light became strong enough to untangle itself from the smaller bits of junk, leaving us to handle only the larger obstructions. The last piece we moved was a chunk of what looked like a grey satellite dish over Australia. We shoved it as one, and then like a limp garden hose suddenly filled with water, the Light expanded itself. It circled around the earth in a series of interlocking ovals—brighter than anything I’d ever seen.

  I shielded my eyes, but Shannon pulled my hands from my face.

  From the spot where the Earth was closest to the Sun, a kind of portal yawned open. I’d heard of black holes before, but this was a white hole. A shaft of pure white light—gleaming bright as a pearl—stretched from the white hole down to the tangled mess of black souls bruising the atmosphere. By the portal’s light, the blackness faded away from the souls. They shone like soft ivory.

  The souls rose into the Light—a parade of phantoms at long last ready for the ride of their afterlives.

  We drifted closer to the long shaft of Light, hand-in-hand, transfixed by the spectacle before us. Old men, young women, naked babies, teenagers, Asians, punks, a one-armed man—all of them traipsed merrily together towards whatever came next. All sense of time dissipated. We watched as one by one, the Light drained the souls from the Earth.

  Shannon tapped my shoulder and pointed. I followed her fingertip and saw Jeremy in the grand parade. I waved to him and he saluted back. Later, I spotted the young man and his older bride from the funeral home. And then George, with his charming smile and superb ass. We waved at them all, and I felt as though they should be tossing ghost candy to us.

  When I thought the show couldn’t get any more amazing, a black hole opened not far from the white hole. From it, a shaft composed of swirling shadows pierced the atmosphere. Like some kind of demented water slide, new souls slid down the twisting length of the thing. They were upcycled souls, I suspected, returning to Earth for another ride.

  Another ticket.

  Another go.

  We’d done it. We’d saved the afterlife and restored balance between light and dark. I squeezed Shannon’s hand. We exchanged a wanton look. This was it. Now at last—as the parade of souls passed before us—we embraced. Her hand slid around my waist. Her bashful lips found mine. I closed my eyes though I could still see through my eyelids. Our mouths parted. Our tongues massaged each other. We kissed slo